No Place for an Angel by Elizabeth Spencer Page A

herself asking Charles. What else could I do? Can you tell me?

    There was no one like Catherine Sasser. A lot of men had said that, and Irene had always to agree: there was no one else like Catherine. She entered gently, not looking quite well, not entirely in good health, but in total command of such wonderful manners, asking if the boys were there, and saying how disappointing it was to miss them.
    Irene took her coat. “You look wonderful,” she lied, though in a way it was always true. To steady herself, she had bolted a vodka in the kitchen before the doorbell rang, and now got herself another and a whiskey for Catherine, who let it sit on the coffee table while the ice melted. What she was doing in New York was vague; Irene suspected doctors and did not press for an answer.
    â€œSo I wonder how Barry is?” she asked.
    Something in Irene’s head grew stubborn as flint. This is not my business, she thought. Why should I let them make it my business? “I think Barry may need his privacy these days,” she said. “I assume this as I don’t see much of him. Perhaps that’s all he needs to turn out some really great work. This is what Charles thinks, what several critics we know were frank in saying they think.”
    She went on in this vein, knowing only too well how to package a thing in a New York way, to give it the sound of the latest, the different, the explosive, the final, soon-to-be-revealed, superlative word. She had been a little taken in herself by this quality in New York when she had first come there to live, but then her energy, stirred, had risen to meet and challenge it; she saw that it was only a game, and started, forthwith, to play it. “So I think the best we can do for him—”
    Catherine, reading a match folder in her lap, did not seem to hear the end of the sentence. “I see. Well, I’m so glad, really so glad.”
    Irene laughed. “The last time I saw him, he said, It’s happier not being in love; it’s really great . . .”
    â€œOh, but I didn’t mean . . . !”
    â€œOh, good heavens, he didn’t mean you,” Irene hastened to explain. “I think he had a fling with an odd-ball girl down in the Village. Charles called it his existentialist period—ten years too late. I never saw her but once and she looked slightly dirty. Those girls like that—I always want to say, Look, honey, what you need, first of all, is a good long bath.”
    â€œI see.”
    Once Catherine did think she saw, she would not embarrass anyone by continuing to pursue the matter. She would put herself in Irene’s place; Irene was obviously doing her best to be kind. She brightly asked all about Charles. Charles was traveling a lot, Irene said; the company was expanding, it was having tiny replicas of its New York offices all over, one after another, like kittens. At present, he was in Miami.
    Catherine accepted this. She never looked deeply into business matters of other people. The instant one said “company” she stopped listening.
    â€œI’m going away in a few days,” she told Irene.
    There were distances in her voice which made a chill down Irene’s spine. It was always in the realm of the possible that Catherine was being seen for the last time. And here was Irene keeping her from seeing Barry.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    Catherine stood up. “To South America. Chile, I think. They say it’s rather beautiful. I’ve never been there.”
    â€œLook,” said Irene, “I want you to take Barry’s number. I’ll give you the address. It’s not for me to say whether or not—”
    â€œPlease, no,” said Catherine. “To think of hurting any more people. It was through not having much of anything but his work that he got attached to me, and pretty soon, before I knew it, I was everything to him. But I didn’t know it. You must understand that. I