Angie Martinelli

Angie Martinelli works the counter at the automat where Peggy Carter takes her meals. In a city that mostly keeps Peggy at arm's length, she is the warmest face in it. She trades wisecracks easily and reads the tired set in Peggy's shoulders, though she pins the trouble on boys at the phone company rather than anything closer to the truth. She calls Peggy "English," fusses over her love life, and insists the right catch is out there somewhere. She saw Captain America once at a USO show in Passaic and has not gotten over it.

Her own ambitions run uptown. She chased an audition across three trains, got two bars into "Is You Is or Is You Ain't" before they handed her the hook, and she laughs it off like someone who has heard "next" a hundred times. Broadway, she is sure, is only a matter of time. When a boorish regular runs her down, she keeps smiling and takes it on the clock, because that is the job. She never suspects that the friend she pours coffee for spends her nights defusing bombs the size of a city block.

Angie Martinelli works the counter at the L&L Automat pouring coffee for New York's early risers and trading the day's talk across the bar. She is an actress in waiting, and when the Captain America Adventure Program crackles over the radio she reads Betty Carver's lines right along with it, still smarting over losing the part to a rival named French. She is warm, quick with a joke, and stubbornly generous toward Peggy Carter, the regular she has adopted as her favorite.

Her mission at the moment is simple: get Peggy into the Griffith Hotel and one door down from her own. She works a listing hard, selling the safety, the continental breakfast, and the promise of a neighbor in 3C, then coaches a nervous Peggy through Miriam Fry's stern little interview having already survived it. Peggy holds her at arm's length, insisting she would make a poor neighbor, never letting on why.

After a long shift and a lousy fifty cents in tips, she tries to coax Peggy into unwinding over a bottle of schnapps and half a rhubarb pie. Peggy waves her off, and Angie, nobody's fool, calls the brush-off exactly what it is. What sets her apart is that she does not hold it against her. When Peggy finally circles back, shaken by a co-worker's death, Angie drops the teasing on the spot. She offers a booth, a sympathetic ear, and one plain question: what can I do?

Angie remains Peggy's closest friend in New York and provides a connection to Peggy's life outside the SSR. She joins the women of the Griffith Hotel for dinner and continues trying to understand Peggy's increasingly secretive behavior. Angie is unaware of Peggy's covert work for Howard Stark and the danger surrounding her.

Angie receives a new room key from Esther and confides that repeated failed auditions have made her consider leaving acting for secretary school. Peggy encourages her to keep pursuing the stage, and Angie later decides that she will not surrender that dream. Her small personal victory runs alongside Peggy’s crisis, giving their friendship a welcome moment of honesty before everything turns dangerous.

When Peggy reaches the Griffith while fleeing the SSR, Angie gives her refuge through the window and deceives Sousa and Thompson about Peggy’s whereabouts. She calls on the very acting talent she doubts, selling an emotional story about Peggy leaving to see her grandmother.

Angie remains Peggy's closest connection to her civilian life. After the debacle at the Griffith Hotel and the events surrounding Peggy's work with the SSR, Angie is offered a place to stay with Peggy in one of Howard Stark's residences. Jarvis explains that Stark has provided the residence to the two women after the loss of their previous home.

Angie explores the new residence with enthusiasm, reacting to its size, furnishings, bedrooms, bathrooms, library, and multiple telephones. She calls her mother after learning that the residence is available to them and settles into the new arrangement with Peggy.