Spellbinder: A Love Story With Magical Interruptions

by Melanie Rawn

  Susannah was saying, “He didn’t punch the Reverend just because he was monumentally pissed.” The fine green eyes were watching her, waiting for her to see whatever-it-was for herself.

  “The Reverend’s the type who milks it till it moos,” she said slowly. “The crowd was getting uglier by the minute—but that wouldn’t have troubled him, he’d just keep on while they—”

  Susannah interrupted impatiently. “Would it help if I told you that the NYPD’s haul during the arrests included eleven guns?”

  “Oh, no,” Holly whispered, seeing it at last. “He decked the bastard to get him out of the way before somebody could kill him.”

  “Which isn’t to say Evan wasn’t furious and didn’t want to belt him just on general principles.”

  They drank in silence for quite a while after that.

  When the phone rang, Holly flinched. After one heart-thudding instant she realized it wouldn’t be Evan. She got up and answered it, grateful that her first experience of liquor had been the Widow Farnsworth’s moonshine at age thirteen. A good healthy slug was Aunt Lulah’s sovereign remedy for menstrual cramps.

  Elias said, “Holly? Is Susannah with you?”

  “Yep.”

  A pause. “You’ve both been drinking.”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re going to keep on drinking, aren’t you?”

  He surely did have a keen grasp of the obvious. “Yep.”

  “So I won’t be seeing Susannah tomorrow at the office.”

  “Nope.”

  Another pause. “Don’t let her drive home.”

  “Nope.”

  “Look, Holly, I’m sorry about—”

  “Night, Elias.” And she hung up on him.

  Susannah sat up straight. “That was Elias?”

  An equally keen grasp of the obvious—it must be catching. Holly sat down again, propping her feet on the coffee table. “Sure was.”

  “He’s gonna be mad.”

  “Tough shit. I wonder just how sick we’re gonna be tomorrow.”

  “How much’ve we drunken—drank—,” she corrected herself, frowned, and amended, “—had to drink?”

  Holly held up the Stoli bottle and sloshed it experimentally. Susannah did the same with the Cuervo. “A lot,” Holly said at last.

  “This gonna become a habit with you, McClure?”

  “Over Lachlan?” She laughed bitterly and lit another cigarette. “Fuck ‘im.”

  “Speaking of which, I been meaning to ask. He any good?”

  “Well, Counselor, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth—he’s so great in bed he yells his own name.” She drank straight from the bottle. “But there ain’t a man in the universe worth turnin’ into a drunk over.”

  “Amen, sister.” Sprawling long, jeans-clad legs, Susannah rested her head against the back of the sofa and stared at the ceiling. “Glad to hear you say it, Holly. Evan would kill me if I let you destroy the woman he loves.”

  “‘Destroy’?” Holly laughed again. “Melodrama is my gig, Wingfield. And it’s ‘loved’—past tense.”

  “I’ll believe it when he looks at some other woman the way he looks at you. In fact—” She seemed to lose her train of thought, swallowed another tot of tequila, and chortled softly. “In fact, I’ll bet you my diamond bracelet that he comes back to you—against all your sapphires if he doesn’t.”

  Holly tried to sort that through. “Huh?”

  “I’ll part with the bracelet when Lachlan does what I know he’s gonna do,” Susannah explained. “But if he doesn’t, I want serious consolation for being wrong. Ergo, the sapphires. Besides,” she added impishly, “Elias says I look better in your sapphires than you do.”

  “You look better in anything than I do, you bitch! So what’s the time limit on this wager?”

  “Mrs. Osbourne predicts they’ll change their minds about firing him, but he’ll be doing confiscated property inventory for two-and-a-half to five.”

  Holly winced. “He’s good at his job, Suze, they can’t possibly stick him in some do-nothing position —”

  “He’s lucky he’s still got a job,” was the bleak rejoinder. “And I think that galls him more than almost anything else. You know him, Holly — he’s got pride enough for a dozen. Even a dozen Irishmen. And his pride tells him that until he gets his life together, he’s got nothing to offer you. And the last thing he’ll ever do is justify his actions by explaining them. With Evan, either people trust him and believe him, or they don’t.”

  With difficulty, Holly said, “My trust and belief aren’t the issue.”

  “Exactly. Right now it’s his belief in himself that’s at stake, that he can get through this on his own.”

  “If he needs me or anybody else, he can’t be a real man,” she interpreted, and her friend nodded. “And if I was some helpless, faint-hearted little thing who couldn’t hardly think for herself and needed him to make every decision, then he wouldn’t’ve left, because he’d have to stay and be strong for me, right?”

  “Holly, if you were some pathetic clingy type he had to take care of, he wouldn’t’ve been with you at all.”

  “Why are men such morons?”

  “Nature of the beast. But it’s not entirely his fault. He’s been essentially alone all his life, you know. ‘Dysfunctional’ is a polite term for his family. When he’s in trouble, it’s instinct to handle it alone.” She squeezed an already limp wedge of lime into her glass and mused, “For a hot-tempered Irishman, he does a great impersonation of the next ice age. Nobody gets in when he’s like this.”

  “Not even me.”

  “Especially not you. He’s a fighter—and he goes into the ring alone.”

  “But he doesn’t have to!”

  “A lifetime’s conditioning is hard to break. Once he’s convinced he’s done it on his own, and he’s got something to give you, he’ll be back.”

  “And until then, I do my Statue of Liberty imitation. Terrific.”

  Susannah hesitated. “That’s up to you. But that torch may get awful heavy.”

  “I’m stuck with it,” she replied bleakly. “It’s got his name on it.”

  “Well, anyway, I’d bet on about six months before he comes back to you. Have we got a deal?”

  “We got a deal, Counselor. But make it a year.”

  “It won’t take that long.”

  They sealed it with a clink of bottles and long swigs of liquor. Holly sat back again, regarding her friend. “You really love that bracelet,” she remarked.

  “I know. But I really love you and Evan more.” In lousy imitation of Holly’s Virginia accent: “Holly ‘Lizbeth, honeychile, y’all gonna look so purdy wearin’ them thar diamonds on y’all’s weddin’ day.”

  Holly’s eyes flooded with tears. A sound escaped her, harsh and desperate. She bent her head, fist crammed between her teeth, trying to muffle the cries that clawed her throat, terrible gasping cries that she couldn’t stop. A moment later Susannah gathered her close. She hid her face on her friend’s shoulder and wept.

  Twenty

  THE NAME ON THE DISPLAY of hardbound novels leaps out at him. This is why he hasn’t willingly been inside a bookstore in over a year. But the United States Marshals Service has jurisdiction over escaped fugitives, and this suburban New Jersey bookstore’s horrified owner has discovered on this fine Friday afternoon in October that last month she hired a wanted felon. So here he is—but only because his name was on the original case file, and somebody had neglected to adjust for new realities.

  When the senior deputies arrive, he gives his report tersely and quietly. They know who he is. Was. They know he was put back on the job after an incident across the river that ultimately resulted in a sixty-day suspension. They also know that he used to be assigned this case — and they all expect him to do their work for him. And they’re waiting for him to make a mistake. But he doesn’t make mistakes. Not anymore. He does his job, but not theirs. He refuses to let his mind
worry at puzzles—when they present themselves. That isn’t too often. Not anymore.

  When the senior deputies tell him okay, we’ll take it from here, he goes to the front of the store. He takes a copy of the book to the desk. The owner is still shaky. She stares at the twenties he hands her as if she’s never seen money before, then snaps back into her job. As he has been hoping she would. When the criminal world intersects with the conventional world, the sooner someone gives the victims something familiar to do, the sooner they calm down.

  He waits for her to make change and bag his purchase, and nods when she asks if he’s read the author’s other books. Yeah, he says, I’ve read everything she’s ever written. The woman—firmly back on familiar ground, her world righting itself—says she really likes this writer’s work, too, she read this book when it came out in June, it’s really good, really sad but really good.

  He is tempted to say, Really? but restrains himself. She is a victim, and he is always gentle with victims. He will not do the other marshals’ job for them, he will not play the catch-the-perp game, because that’s not why he’s still in this business. He doesn’t care about catching the bad guys, not the way he did before. He cares about the victims now. This is a change in him, and he recognizes it with a mixture of amusement and fatalism. He’d felt like a victim for a while himself.

  He heads back to the office, finishes his paperwork, and goes downstairs to his locker to change into street clothes—jeans, shirt, jacket left over from that other life—and heads for the nearest bar.

  In that other life, he would have gone with somebody else from the office. A few drinks, a few bullshitting hours winding down. Now he goes alone. For a single beer. It is all he can afford — not monetarily, for his apartment rent is cheap, and he has never been an expensive person. A single beer is all his body can afford, because any more than one—or any fewer than a dozen—and he feels himself weaken, and he is prey to things he doesn’t want to feel, and he gets even less sleep than usual, because the nightmares come.

  He has his usual single beer, staring all the while at the bag beside him on the bar. He can read the title through the thin paper, and the name of the author. He turns the bag over, and can almost but not quite see the picture on the back cover.

  He starts to open the bag, then shakes his head. Later. When he’s alone. He knows that feeling is going to flood him, and if he drowns, he doesn’t want anyone to see. He’d been stupid enough a few months ago to reread his favorite of her books, and it was like hearing her talk to him in that low, quick, husky voice. If this book is what he thinks it is, and he’s certain it is, he must be alone when he reads it, where no one can see him.

  But where? Not his apartment. Except for her books, and one blue cashmere sweater tucked away in a drawer, there is nothing of her in that place. She doesn’t belong there. Her letters and postcards, Granna Maureen’s ring, the art books from Italy—none of it. He doesn’t even have a photo of her, not even buried somewhere in his desk. The one he does have, the only one, is with the ring in his safety-deposit box. Someone took the picture at her alumni party, and she gave it to him in a silver frame. She is in a glittery green dress; he is in a dark blue business suit and white silk shirt. He sits on a bar stool, she stands behind him with arms wrapped around his chest, chin on his shoulder. He can hear echoes of her laughter whenever he looks at it. Which is not often. As for him—the look on his face in that photo is one he hasn’t seen in a very long time. He looks happy.

  If not his apartment, maybe the roof. Cindy Ramirez has a garden up there, trees in pots and vegetables in long wooden troughs, safe playground created for her fatherless children. He helped her put together a jungle gym last fall, and this spring found some discarded barrels in an empty lot and dragged them upstairs for roses. She isn’t into herbs, which is a relief. Too many memories connect with the scents.

  In his apartment, he pours a Diet Coke, tucks the book under his arm, takes an ashtray and two cigars and climbs up to the roof garden. Cindy is there, tending tomato plants. He plays catch for a while with Eduardo Junior and Rita. Cindy smiles, and he thinks that in the year since he moved into the building Cindy’s face has grown younger. Widowed at thirty with two little kids to raise, she used to look ten years older. Perhaps she is finally recovering from her grief. He hopes so. She is a nice woman, a good woman, who deserves a good man in her life again. They talk sometimes, she of her husband, he of the life he’d left behind.

  That can’t be your dinner, she scolds, eyeing the Coke and the cigars. When he shrugs, she tsks. She goes downstairs with the kids and ten minutes later comes back up with a bowl of spaghetti, half a bottle of Chianti, and a glass. He protests; she tells him to hush up and eat, there’s plenty. She stands with fists on hips for a minute or so, to make sure he does eat, then returns home to feed her children.

  He eats because she’s a good cook and because a severe cutback on alcohol has reduced his weight. All that liquor, months of it—though never on duty, he’s not that stupid—was detrimental to his blood pressure as well as his waistline, and his annual physical provoked the medical version of the riot act. He’s been careful since March, and it shows. So he eats Cindy’s spaghetti and drinks her Chianti, and finally, with the late sunset, lights a cigar. The roof lights have come on, one right behind his deck chair. He opens the bag and takes out the book.

  Jerusalem Lost, it says, and her name below it. The picture on the back cover is black-and-white, but memory fills in the colors of hair and eyes and mouth. This is not the cat-and-sweater photo, where she was smiling. She wears a dark shirt and her mother’s pearls; her hair is scraped back, all its soft curl repressed, to expose the stubborn square jaw and chin, the high rounded Celtic forehead, the fine arch of brows, the ruler-straight nose. She seems to be assessing whoever might be looking at this picture, her eyes seeking, questioning—but knowing there is only one person who can give her the answer she craves.

  That person is staring at her picture right now.

  The sight of her hollows his chest, makes him ache with need. He closes his eyes and unwisely allows himself to remember …

  … the perfume of her skin, her soft sigh of his name in Gaelic, her fingers cradling his face in tenderness and her body moving sweetly and powerfully beneath his, and the brandy and coffee and her of her mouth –

  – the stench of sweat and liquor and cigarettes on his skin, the cruel jeering of his voice, the fear-bunched muscles of her shoulders as he shoves her against the wall, and her blood from where her teeth cut her lip when he tries to rape her.

  He opens the book and begins to read.

  EPILOGUE

  She had always looked down on men. From the high window of her tower chamber, as they strutted and pranced and fancied themselves lords of all creation; from the top of the stone stairs into her father’s great hall, shy when she was young, then pausing to collect their gazes as she learned her power, from her gilded chair, looking down on the drunkards and the boors and the merely stupid.

  Only one man had ever made her lift her gaze to meet his. She could make them all look at her — look up at her. All but him,

  In seeing him, she had also seen lumitless sky and wild wind-chased clouds and the sweet infinity of the stars. Sky, wind, stars — poor substitutes for him, but she was used to that.

  Perhaps he would have been happier had she died of the wanting of him. But it was the only life she knew how to live, after all these years: to survive, strong of not whole; to live, wanting him.

  He rode away from her for the last time, long back and proud shoulders rigid, obstinate conviction in every line of him. He knew be was right, ad surely as she knew, he was wrong. If he was herd, then he could not still be his own. What a fool he wan. She had been his these many years — bad it crippled her, caused her to be a thing less than herself?

  “I have nothing left to offer you, Elisabeth. Nothing to give –”

  “Except yourself. Do you think I would be conte
nt with less?”

  “I think that you deserve more.”

  “What is this ‘more’ you talk of? Wealth I have, and possessions, and name and rank, and such power as is granted to women. What ‘more’ can you offer me that I would ever need — except yourself?”

  And though she might offer herself, gladly and willingly and with pride in the giving — strength to strength, need to need — he would not take what was his. If he needed, only he would know of it. His life was his own, and he would live it alone. For be had nothing to offer her except himself.

  All the loving that had been his for the taking lay in the gutter, to be washed down into the middens with the next hard rain.

  She wanted to hate him. But she had spent so much of herself loving him that there was very little left within her with which to hate. She would have this last sight of him, of his proud back and strong shoulders and graying dark head with the red glints of Hell’s fire still bright in the sunshine. And that was all. Some part of her wanted it so, was glad she had sent him away. Perhaps without him there could be peace, of a sort. But it would be lonely, this life, a thing of bleak bitterness, knowing there was no man worthy of her gaze who could lift her eyed and her heart and her soul.

  There was still sky. Wind. Stars. And she wan used to loneliness.

  Finis

  THAT JUNE SHE STAYS IN New York long enough to attend launch parties for Jerusalem Lost, do a few signings at her favorite bookstores, and take Susannah to a lavish lunch that becomes a pleasantly drunken dinner during which a certain name is never mentioned. She visits Mugger, who now lives quite happily with Alec and Nicky at the Connecticut farmhouse. She stays most of July at Woodhush with Aunt Lulah. And then she returns to London, where the book had been written last autumn and winter. She has spent much of 2003 anywhere but Manhattan: Spain, her beloved Florence, California. She has repeatedly told herself that she deserves time off, especially after the exhaustion of finishing Jerusalem Lost.