Russell Banks - The Angel on the Roof

Noonan’s large hand dropped unseen from above, as if through dark water, and came to rest upon hers. She turned, startled, and there was his face a bare few inches away, his large, blood-shot, brown eyes and his porous, peach-colored skin with black whiskers popping through like lopped-off stalks, soft caves of nostrils, red lips, tobacco-stained teeth, wet tongue. She yanked her hand away and stepped back, bringing him into a more appropriate and safe focus, with the bar between them like a fence, keeping him out or her in, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter, as long as they were on opposite sides of it.

“You scared me!” she said.

He leaned across the bar and smiled indulgently. Behind her, the men drank beer and watched baseball. She heard the crowd at the ballpark chitter in anticipation of the pitch. From the dining room came the low rumble of families distributing food among themselves and their hushed commentaries as they evaluated its quality and the size of their portions, praise and disappointment voiced equally low, as if both were gossip, and the clink of their forks and knives, gulps, chomps, an old man’s sudden laugh, the snap of lobster claws and legs breaking.

“Stace, soon’s you get the chance, c’mon out to the kitchen. There’s something I want to tell you.” He turned and abruptly strode to the dining room, spoke a moment to Gail, sympathetically offering to let her go home early, Stacy guessed, getting rid of witnesses, and gathered up a tub of dirty dishes left behind by Timmy LaPierre. As Noonan disappeared into the kitchen, he glanced over at Stacy, and though a stranger would have thought him expressionless, she saw him practically speaking with his face, saw him using it to say in a low, cold voice, “Stace, as soon as we’re alone here tonight, I’m going to take you down.”

She decided to force the issue, to go back to the kitchen right now, before Gail left, while there was still a fairly large number of people in the dining room and the four guys at the bar, and if Noonan said what she expected him to say and did what she expected him to do, then she would walk out the door just like the LaPierre boys had, take off in her car, the doors locked and windows up, the wheels spinning, kicking gravel, and squealing rubber as she left the parking lot and hit the road to Lake Placid.

Who the hell did he think he was, anyhow, coming on to her like that, him a married man, middle-aged, practically? Sure, she had been attracted to him from the first time she saw him, when he interviewed her for the job and had made her turn and turn again, while he sat there on the barstool and looked her over with genuine interest, almost with innocence, as if she were a bouquet of wildflowers he’d ordered for his wife. “Turn around, Stace. Let me see the other side.” She had actually liked his suddenness, his fearless, impersonal way of telling her exactly what he wanted from her, instructing her to wear a tight, white T-shirt and black jeans or shorts to work in and to be friendly with the customers, especially the males, because he wanted return business, not one-night stands, and men will come back and stay late again and again, if they think the pretty girl behind the bar likes them personally. She had smiled like a coconspirator when he told her that and said, “No problema, Mr. Noonan.”

“Hey, you can call me Charlie, or you can call me Noonan. Just don’t call me at home, and never call me Mister. You’re hired, Stace. Go change the dress and be back here by six.”

But all that was before she told him about having been struck by lightning. Until then, she had thought it was safe to flirt with him, he was married, after all; and he was so unlike the losers she usually hooked up with that she had decided it was harmless as well as interesting to be attracted to him, nothing could come of it, anyhow; and wasn’t it intelligent, after all, for a young woman to want a successful older man’s attention and approval? Wasn’t that how you learned about life and who you were?

Somehow, this afternoon everything had changed. She couldn’t have said how it had changed or why, but everything was different now, especially between her and Noonan. It wasn’t what he had done or not done or even anything he had said. It was what she had said.

A woman who has been struck by lightning is not like other people. Most of the time Stacy could forget that fact, could even forget what that horrible night had felt like, when she was only seventeen and thought that she had been shot in the head. But all she had to do was say the words, reestablish the fact, and the whole thing came back in full force — her astonishment, the physical and mental pain, and the long-lasting fear, even to today, that it would happen to her again. The only people who say lightning never strikes twice in the same place have never been struck once. Which was why she was so reluctant to speak of it.

But Noonan had charmed her into speaking of it, and all at once, there it was again, as if a glass wall had appeared between her and other people, Noonan especially. The man had no idea who she was. But that wasn’t his fault. It was hers. She had misled him. She had misled herself. She checked the drinks of the customers at the bar. Then, to show Gail where she was headed, she pointedly flipped a wave across the dining room and walked back to the kitchen.

When she entered, Noonan was leaning against the edge of the sink, his large, bare arms folded across his chest, his head lowered: a man absorbing a sobering thought.

Stacy said, “What’d you want to tell me?” She stayed by the door, propping it open with her foot.

He shook his head as if waking from a nap. “What? Oh, Stace! Sorry, I was thinking. Actually, Stace, I was thinking about you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Close the door. Come on in.” He peered around her into the dining room. “Is Gail okay? She’s not crying or anything anymore, is she?”

“No.” Stacy let the door slide shut behind her. The exhaust fan chugged above the stove, and the dishwasher sloshed quietly next to the sink, tinkling the glasses and silverware inside and jiggling the plates. On a shelf by the rear door, a portable radio played country-and-western music at low volume — sweetly melancholic background music. There was a calming order and peacefulness to the kitchen, a low-key domesticity about it that, even though the room was as familiar to her as the kitchen of her rented A-frame, surprised Stacy. She felt guilty for having been so suspicious of Noonan and so quick to judge and condemn him. He was an ordinary man, that’s all, a basically harmless and well-intended man; she had no reason to fear him. She liked his boyish good looks, didn’t she? and enjoyed his smoky, baritone voice and unapologetic northcountry accent, and she was pleased and flattered by his sudden flashes of intimacy. “What did you want to tell me, Noonan?” she repeated, softly this time, invitingly.

He leaned forward, eyes twinkling, mischief on his mind, and looked right and left, as if not wishing to be overheard. “What do you say we cook that last lobster and split it between ourselves?” He gave her a broad smile and rubbed his hands together. “Don’t tell Gail. I’ll boil and chill the sucker and break out the meat and squeeze a little lime juice over it, and we’ll eat it later, after we close up, just the two of us. Maybe open a bottle of wine. Whaddaya say?” He came up to her and put his arm around her shoulder and steered her toward the door. “You go liberate the animal from its tank, and I’ll bring the kettle to a roiling boil, as they say.”

“No.” She shrugged out from under his arm.

“Huh? What d’you mean, ‘No’?”

“Just that. No. I don’t want a quiet little tête-à-tête out here with you after we close. I don’t want to make it with you, Noonan! You’re married, and I resent the way you act like it doesn’t matter to you. Or worse, me! You act like your being married doesn’t matter to me !”