Carol O’Connell - Stone Angel

This man had obviously researched the New Age promise of enlightenment, lucre, and instant, everlasting love – all on sale at any bookstore.

So the New Church was yet another shoppers’ outlet for a larger life, a hipper soul and every tactile desire. And it was pain-free, labor-free, and best of all – tax free, for this was a religious enterprise.

“There is a lacking in your life, isn’t there?” The brightness was back in Malcolm’s eyes. “What you have is not enough. You want something more. Am I right?”

“Of course,” said Charles. Who did not?

“The kingdom of heaven is all around them and men do not see it.”

In keeping with New Age style, Malcolm had failed to give Jesus Christ a credit line. “Shall I tell you how to get the thing you prize the most?”

Somehow, Charles doubted that he could, but he waved his hand as an invitation to continue.

“It’s a woman you want, isn’t it?” And now the man was nodding, in answer to his own question, as though he had just seen the word ‘yes’ lighting up in the center of Charles’s forehead, in a splash of neon light. “A woman – that’s it!” More confidential now, he asked, “The prisoner in Sheriff Jessop’s cell is a beautiful woman, isn’t she?”

Charles said nothing, yet he knew he had given a reply of sorts, for Malcolm was aglow with satisfaction over his discovery of this raw nerve, this emotional admission of a very personal link to Mallory.

How to fix this? And how to avoid betraying her with every change of expression? Mallory had once reminded him that unartful deception was the downfall of a man with something to hide. More precisely, she had said: ‘You shouldn’t be allowed to play poker without a bag over your head.’

Sudden inspiration made him smile broadly, well aware that this expression gave him the unwitting appearance of a cheerful, but harmless lunatic. It was the only deception he could pull off with any great success, for he had been born with this foolish feature. But until this moment, he had found no practical use for it.

“I see where you’re going with this, Mr. Laurie,” said Charles, disregarding the invitation to use the man’s given name. “Yes, I suppose attractive women are beyond the man who is decidedly unattractive.”

“I never meant – ”

“No, that’s all right. Every mirror reminds me of it. I can well understand your making that connection. You’re right – my fantasy is a beautiful woman I can never have. But anyone who’d seen my face would’ve guessed that. So while your observation is accurate, it’s not particularly astute.” And this was the truth, mightier than the lie.

Now Malcolm’s own smile wavered. “But there is one woman you want.” He said this with a rising inflection, close to a question, not quite so self-assured.

“New York is full of beautiful women, and not one of them has the slightest romantic interest in me. Perhaps it’s the nose that puts them off. Hard to ignore it, lunging out in space as it does. But I’m worse off than you know. I also require intelligence. A woman with that combination can have any man on the planet. She won’t pick an ugly one. I’m nothing if not a realist.”

Malcolm sat back in his chair, and Charles watched the blue eyes making reassessments and finally fixing on a course. “I believe I’ve isolated the problem. Your enemy is your ego. It anticipates reaction to everything you do. It creates fear and kills all your forward motions.”

“I must be careful about my forward motions. I wouldn’t like to accidentally batter a woman with my nose.”

This time, Malcolm grinned with spontaneity. “So, in your mind, it would take a miracle to get that woman.”

“I would say so.”

“What a coincidence. Miracles are my business.”

“Business implies a price tag.”

“I like you, Mr. Butler. Your money’s no good with me. I’m going to see that you get what you want. I look on it as karma in the bank.” Malcolm lightly slapped one hand on the table. He was smiling with purpose, metaphysically rolling up his sleeves to go to work in earnest. “Forget the past and every failure, every rejection. Don’t think about the future.” The commands were soft-spoken, but they were commands. “Accept the moment for what it is. Surrender to it, and then you can observe the problem with some detachment.”

Detachment? But his largest problem was hanging off the end of his face.

“Not your nose,” said Malcolm, following the track of Charles’s eyes to that peninsula of flesh at the center of his visual field. “The woman.”

And now Malcolm ceased the plagiarism of an Indian twelve-step program to universal insight. He leaned forward on the prop of his folded arms, and the conversation became a more personal conspiracy of men against that other sex. Charles soon discovered that a beautiful woman had certain expectations, which Malcolm listed as the attention, admiration and dogged devotion of males.

“So don’t be predictable. She expects you to follow after her,” said Malcolm. “Don’t do that. Just walk away. That’ll tie her up in knots for a while, and then she will come to you.”

“But why?”

“All of a sudden, you’re the unattainable one. She’ll assume you’ve found some fault with her. It’ll drive her crazy until she figures out what it is.”

“So, by moving away from her, I’ve created an equal but opposite reaction?”

Malcolm nodded. “And remember, a beautiful woman has no experience in failure. That’s where you have the edge.”

“And now my drawbacks have become advantages.” Charles was rather enjoying this. From his early years, as a child among grown college students, to his adulthood in the think tanks, he had met no one who could competently discuss women. He had made his most intimate friends late in life, too late for adolescent questions like – How do you get a woman?

“All right,” said Charles. “Now she’s following me. How do I close the gap without reversing her forward motion?”

“Let her do that. Women are the ones who make the contract, lay down the rules, create the relationship. That’s their job. Your job is to grudgingly allow her to bind you to her. Just remember, as she’s dragging you off – you’re only humoring her to be polite.”

There was good logic here. But would any of it apply to Mallory? Some malformation in her psyche had created a disfigured mirror, which neatly killed the concept of beauty’s expectations. Yet his own behavior was still predictable to her, for every time she turned around, there he was. Perhaps that was why she had not said a word about her plans to leave New York. It would have been predictable that he would follow her, creating problems by giving up all her secrets with his naked face.

“You have some doubts, Mr. Butler?”

Charles met the eyes of the mind reader – more accurately, the face reader. Evidently, his raised eyebrow had expressed a doubt, and he had punctuated the thought with downcast eyes. He resorted to the old conjuror’s trick of substitution. “Mr. Laurie, what do you suppose women really want?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He grinned, accepting this doubt in place of the other. “If you work this right, you’ll never be troubled with that question again.”

Against his will and better judgment, Charles liked this man and found himself smiling more and more. He was leaning into the conversation, drawn to Malcolm. The charismatic quality put Charles in mind of Louis Markowitz. He had seen his old friend draw strangers close enough to bind them up in toasty warm intimacy on only ten minutes’ acquaintance. And now he made a mental note to write his next paper on charm as a true gift.