The Search Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

her templesso hard she stretches her eyelids. “Frenetic sound is dangerous to my system. It mimics my children.”
    “We could call the cops,” Faith says.
    “I could bring my kids one afternoon,” says Ginny. “Set them loose in his place. No one can survive them for three straight hours. Not even me.”
    “Oh, we’ll give him noise,” Faith says. “He’ll regret the day, believe you me.”
    “You can’t get even with a deaf guy by making noise,” says Ginny. “We have to go drastic.”
    “No one’s going drastic,” says Eleanor. “I’ll talk to him. I’m sure he’s reasonable.”
    “And if he isn’t?” asks Faith.
    Ginny grins. “That’s when we go drastic!”
    Faith glances through the front window. “Speak of the devil.”
    They crowd the window display to gape at a tall man in his late thirties, hair like a teddy bear that’s been through the wash a few times, dressed in requisite music-store attire of ripped jeans, Band of Horses tee, and motorcycle boots. With a rag in hand, he walks across the sidewalk toward the road.
    “Definitely not elderly,” Ginny says, her brows raised.
    Ali leans over a change table for a better view. “No indeedy.”
    He wipes the night’s rain from the hood of a black Audi. The trouble is, the sky has started dripping again. No sooner has he wiped down the roof than the hood is wet again. And once the hood is gleaming, the trunk is splotchy.
    “It’s going to be a challenge,” says Eleanor. “Catching every raindrop before it hits the car.”
    Ginny turns to her in mock disgust. “I can’t
believe
you just made fun of a deaf man.”
    “He was out here last night, doing the same thing,” Faith says. “Walked round and round before it started raining to wipe off the aerospheric detritus.”
    “He’s darling,” Ali McGraw says. “In a slept-in-the-backseat kind of way.”
    As the rain grows heavier, the new store owner gives up and lopes back to his store for shelter. The women quickly feign interest in the change table they’ve been leaning over, lest he realize they’ve been staring. Only Ginny doesn’t budge. She sucks in her stomach and waggles her fingers in coquettish greeting. He glances over them, completely disinterested, and disappears into his shop.
    By noon, the rain has cleared. Nancy from the adoption agency has called three times. Eleanor has hidden from every call. Nancy’s going to want to talk rescheduling and Eleanor doesn’t trust herself to not burst into tears. She’d hoped Jonathan would have realized by now that this was simply a poorly timed case of cold feet; according to what Nancy said during their earlier visits, it happens all the time. Particularly to husbands. But with every hour that passes, this explanation seems less and less likely.
    Jonathan hasn’t called once.
    She busies herself with inspecting diaper creams and baby lotions from an exclusive French supplier named La Jeune, pulling out several blue boxes wrapped in a rubber band. The tag identifies them as free samples. Oui ou Non, they’re called. French pregnancy tests.
    “Bohemian Rhapsody” continues to obliterate her cello music. Ginny’s been complaining all morning about her headache. Faith from upstairs has passed by the window several times miming aural agony by cupping hands over ears and making a face. So when Eleanor sees the new store owner out front again, she puts away the samples and heads next door to find him kneeled on his own threshold, taping a Buzzcocks concert poster onto the door to cover Birdie’s hand-painted cupcake. Not that his store appears to be one note. Below the Buzzcocks are an Andrea Bocelli poster, a notice for the upcoming Classic Christmas on Frog Pond, and a gigantic sticker of a black crow.
    Eleanor arranges herself behind his Sex Pistols T-shirt. The Buzzcocks poster is crooked. Before she can open her mouth, Ginny booms from behind her, “I’M GINNY, THIS IS ELEANOR. WE’RE PRETTY BABY.”
    “Noel