The Side of the Angels: A Novel - Hardcover

Bartolomeo, Christina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743204611 ISBN 13: 9780743204613

Publisher: Scribner, 2002

Synopsis

Fresh on the heels of her New York Times Notable debut novel, Cupid and Diana, Christina Bartolomeo delivers a charming romantic comedy that's serious at heart. Nicky Malone, a public relations flack, hasn't seen ex-boyfriend Tony Boltanski in five years, when a contentious, high-stakes, and slightly nutty nurses' strike brings them together again. Despite their separation and the fact that they're both seeing other people, they still share the same interests: fighting for the little guy -- in this case, the beleaguered nurses at a small Catholic hospital that has just been taken over by an enormous health care conglomerate -- and fighting each other. While struggling with the strike and her growing feelings for the still exasperating, pigheaded Tony, Nicky also tries to cope with her nagging widowed mother, who desperately wants Nicky married; a slick boss who promises clients more than Nicky can possibly deliver; and an officious assistant who has read too many articles about cutthroat career women. But for Nicky, those troubles pale in comparison to dealing with a bumbling romance between two cousins from opposite sides of her family: Louise, a professional matchmaker with a chaotic love life, and Johnny, whose love for Louise hasn't stopped him from becoming engaged to another woman. Can Nicky help a group of hardworking nurses pull off an unlikely victory against a corporate giant? Can she force Johnny to see the error of his ways and declare his love for Louise? And can she ever make the right choice between her current beau and the guy who got away? Warmly amusing and sparkling with insight and keen wit, The Side of the Angels is a refreshing, realistic look at the demands -- and rewards -- of career, commitment, Catholicism, and unforgettable love.

About this title

About the Author:

Christina Bartolomeo has worked as a union campaign writer for the American Federation of Teachers. Her first novel, Cupid and Diana, earned unanimous critical acclaim and was adapted for a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One

My cousin Louise and I ate lunch together twice a month at her office, no fail. That's what we were doing the first Wednesday in November when my boss's call came, the one that threw Tony and me, if not back into each other's arms, into each other's orbit. Don't you love it when life suddenly behaves like a movie? There we were, Louise and I, speaking of a man I'd just left -- not Tony, another man -- and I was on the verge of remarking to Louise, "At least I'm not the mess I was after Tony," when the phone rang.

Tony was my old flame, the man who got away. The man whose getting away had so thrown me off my game that I'd fallen into a series of stupid romances, the most recent of which was a three-year-long involvement with Jeremy, a self-enamored British expatriate who'd been cheating on me for six months before I discovered it and kicked him out on his tweedy, two-timing ass.

"The thing about Jeremy," Louise had commented a little earlier as she laid out some pink linen napkins and secondhand china (Louise likes to beautify even a weekday lunch), "is that he's the kind of man who's never happy unless he's exercising his talent for persuasion. Which makes a day-to-day relationship difficult, unless you have some strange arrangement where you pretend you're dumping him every other week, or you wear different wigs to bed, or costumes."

"I would say I was playful in bed," I said defensively. "I read articles and stuff. Once in a while."

"I'm not faulting you, Nicky. You could dress up in a lion tamer's outfit one night and a French maid's the next and it wouldn't be enough for Jeremy."

Louise had never liked Jeremy. Suave, educated, well-spoken types held no charm for her. She preferred her men artistic, tortured, and generally unbathed. Though perhaps she discouraged Jeremy's potential reemergence because she wanted to try her hand at digging up prospects for me. Louise is a professional matchmaker, a harebrained occupation at which she's surprisingly successful. She'd always wanted a shot at seeing what she could do for me. Like a temperance worker with a tippler in the family, she was frustrated that her dedication and devotion to the cause were of no use to her own kin.

"My trouble is, Louise, I can never spot Jeremy's kind until he's stomped on my feelings so badly I don't want him anymore."

"Which, of course, makes him come after you with renewed interest. Look at how he's acting now, like you're the Holy Grail. Where was all that appreciation these past three years?"

Jeremy had been doing his best -- his persuasive, most grandly romantic best -- to get me to give him a second chance. I'd dumped him in July. Needless to say, time had not yet dulled the wound.

Louise's phone rang. We let the machine pick it up -- she still has one of those old-fashioned manual answering machines, now considered as primitive as long-playing records.

"Nicky," came Ron's voice through the static, "I know you said not to bother you, but this is important. Call me."

It was always important. Ron liked to pretend he lived in an atmosphere of crisis. He was an ardent fan of those medical dramas where the doctor races through the hospital corridor shouting angrily, "Get me a CBC on that kid, stat." Ron wished with all his meager, little heart that he could someday say "Stat." Unfortunately, there wasn't much call for that sort of thing when you headed a second-rate PR firm that specialized in hopeless causes. Not only was Ron's firm second-rate, so was his taste in names. He had christened his business "Advocacy, Inc." despite all my persuasions. I cringed whenever I glanced at our letterhead.

Ron clicked off. Then the phone rang again. If Ron applied only half the single-minded devotion to his clueless, charity-bent clients that he did to getting his own way, how much better off the widow, orphan, and unspayed house pet would be.

"Just ignore it," I said to Louise.

"Nicky, if you're there having lunch with Louise, and I know you are because you told Myrlene that was where you were going, please pick up. It really is important. I mean it. I'm sincere. Please pick up."

This was a man whose last honest emotion was when he cried at the baptismal font.

"Shouldn't you call him?" said Louise. "Maybe it's some sort of personal problem."

Louise is good in ways I'll never be. Serene and unflustered, Louise manages to be lovable despite the fact that she floats down the river of life as if on a golden barge.

Nine months younger than I am, my cousin Louise has been at hand for nearly every major event of my life, from my first Communion to my first pregnancy scare. She is my sounding board, my reference point, my unshakable ally. When we were teenagers and nearly every other girl I knew was cruel or unapproachable, Louise was my friend. Because of her, I had survived four years in one of the meanest, snootiest convent schools on the East Coast, the St. Madeleine Sophie Academy for Young Women. Our parents had scraped and saved to send us there; the parents of the other girls considered themselves deprived if they didn't fit in a second trip to Europe every year. We were made to feel this difference. But, because of Louise, the petty hurts inflicted year after year, the sly daily nastiness that adolescent girls are such experts at, hadn't done lasting harm.

Louise got there a year after me, being younger, and a month into her first semester my cousin's uncrushably lighthearted presence transformed the place, for me, from a daily incarceration stretching endlessly before me into a temporary stint, a launching pad, a joke. I'd not only survived high school, I'd largely forgotten it -- because Louise was there too, looking out for me in her unobtrusive way.

Lest she sound too good to be true, Louise is also impractical, maddeningly slow to put any plan of her own into action (though she's usually sure of what I should do), and chronically, outrageously late, to the extent that I always bring a book when I go to meet her in a restaurant. Most annoyingly, Louise spends much of her time in a bright mist of hazy, optimistic pseudo-spiritualism. There are few side roads on the journey to enlightenment that she hasn't explored -- group therapy, tai chi, vegan purification diets, past-life regression -- and it gets on my nerves sometimes. It's one thing to keep an open mind. It's another to seriously consider joining your local witches' coven.

The phone rang again. I threw down my forkful of chicken in tarragon mayonnaise (there is an excellent gourmet shop around the corner from Louise's business) and snatched up the receiver.

"Ron, I specifically told Myrlene to tell you not to bother me. For one hour. One lousy hour."

"I know, but we've got a problem," said Ron's mellifluous voice. In his college days, Ron earned extra money as a radio announcer.

"What problem?" I injected some controlled fury into my voice. Ron is like a dog -- he responds to tones more than actual words. "This better not be that Mallard Pond thing again. That's your baby."

Three years ago I would never have used a phrase like "that's your baby," but you can't touch pitch and not be defiled, I guess. I only hoped that Ron's effect on my moral fiber was less insidious than his effect on my vocabulary. It wasn't as if I'd been overburdened with moral fiber to start with.

The Mallard Pond account was more trouble than it was worth. Mallard Pond was a tiny, algae-filmed lake near a planned community in northern Virginia, a spot that had been farmland when I was growing up. The Mallard Gardens Homeowners Association had hired Advocacy to get some press attention for their fight to save this pristine if not particularly scenic body of water from rapacious developers. The homeowners, I suspected, were more concerned that the arrival of video rental emporiums and mo

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743204611
• ISBN 13: 9780743204613
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304