karenika - books - speaking with the angel

Speaking With the Angel

I watch Vincent steer his girlfriend towards us.

He's grown his hair long and now sports a weird beard and moustache, Lucifer-style. Plus, he's wearing a shirt with huge pointy collars jutting out like fangs over his jacket.

When he reaches us, I say, "Happy Halloween."

"Hello, Meg," he says, Dr. Droll.

I say, "Seth this is-"

Vincent interrupts and introduces himself as "Enzo."

"Enzo?" I say.

He doesn't answer, and I remember his New Jersey friends calling him Vinnie, and his firm correction: "Vincent."

He pulls his model front and center and says, "This is Amanda."

"I'm Meg," I say to her. Then I get to say, "This is my boyfriend, Seth."

"Hi." She is both chirpy and cool, an ice chick. "We know each other," she says about the man I've just introduced as my boyfriend, and she kisses him - just his cheek , but so far back that her pouty mouth appears to be traveling neck- or ear-ward.

I stare at her, even while I'm telling myself not to. I fall under the spell not of her eyes but her eyebrows, which are perfectly arched and skinny and make me aware of my own thick and feral pair; mine are a forest and hers are a trail.

When I blink myself out of my trance, Vincent is saying, "Whenever anyone would say, 'Small world', Meg used to say, 'Actually it's medium-sized.'"

I say, "I was about eleven when I knew Vincent."

Then, like the hostess my mother taught me to be, I say, "Vincent is a musician, too."

"I used to be," and names the best-known of the bands he played in, though I happen to know it was only for about fifteen minutes. Then he asks Seth, "Who do you play with?"

I can tell Vincent's impressed by Seth's band and doesn't want to be; he fast talks about starting a start-up - an on-line recording studio, a real-time distribution outlet, a virtual record label - he goes on and on, Vincent style, grandiose and impossible to understand.

I say, "Basically, you do everything but teach kindergarten?"

Vincent says, "There's an educational component."

Seth comes off as gentle, even meek, but I know he's intolerant of talk like this. He squeezes my hand three times.

"Oh, shoot," I say, looking at my wrist for a watch I'm not wearing, "we have to go," and I love the sound of we, and I love that it's Seth who wants to go and I love that we are going.

Vincent says they're headed to another party themselves. He kisses both my cheeks - what now must be the signature Enzo kiss- and he looks at me as though he cares deeply for me, a look I never got when we were together, a look that Seth notices, and I think, Phew: Seth will think another man loved me; he will think I am the lovable kind of woman, the kind a man better love right or somebody else will.

Vincent says, "You look great, Meg," and I think of saying, Whereas you look a little strange, but I just say, "See you, Vinnie."

A few more pleasantries and we're in the elevator.

As soon as the elevator doors close, I say, "Good thing she was just a model." I am giddy just to be out. "I think that would've been really hard if she were a supermodel."

Seth looks at me, not sure what I mean.

I've been a huge Nick Hornby fan ever since I read High Fidelity even though About a Boy is my favorite. Just his name would have been enough for me to pick up Speaking With the Angel. But once I saw Dave Eggers and Melissa Bank, I had to read it immediately. Well, as immediately as the library acts.

Several of the stories in the collection didn't do much for me but I adored a few. Nick Hornby's and Melissa Bank's were among my favorites. The excerpt below is taken from Melissa Bank's story.