Magic & Mayhem

by Susan Conley

  “It’s a shame that hats went out of fashion.” Annabelle considered the battered chapeau. “There’s nothing like those old Forties films, Jimmy Stewart in a pin-striped suit and dapper headgear.”

  Minnehan nodded sagely. “Now, I would have had a wee cap growing up, and the father would have had this on his head every day of the week, not just on the Sunday. Character, it gave to a man. Dignity. Feckin’ shame, indeed.” He stared off into the middle distance, lost in thought, and Annabelle lightly scratched down another impression, an impression that encompassed atmosphere and personality and the present moment.

  “That your role model then, you wagon? His Girl Friday, Rosalind Russell, girl reporter?” Minnehan squinted at Annabelle, and she realized that she passed whatever kind of test he’d set.

  “Okay, so, what’s that mean? Everyone I met in Ireland called me a wagon within fifteen minutes.”

  The venerated Irish rock n’ roll icon threw back his head and roared with laughter, his eyes tearing, his widely open mouth exposing his sadly inadequate orthodontia. He continued to howl, and Annabelle continued observe, and record, glad enough of the reaction even if she still didn’t know what ‘wagon’ meant. For she was sure that she now had her lead: a prose portrait of the world-renown, excessively touchy and famously curmudgeonly Daniel Minnehan wiping tears of mirth from his smiling eyes.

  • • •

  The simple proposal to go out for a walk turned into a mammoth undertaking: several bodyguards — or minders, as Dan called them — were required to tag along, and Minnehan’s curious but worse-for-the-beer band mates, all six of them, decided to come along for a laugh.

  Not exactly designed to blend into the environment, Annabelle thought ruefully. And no way to make sure that I’m not taping traffic as opposed to chit chat. There had to be some way to make the best of this less-than ideal situation …

  Dan paused just then, and cracking a conspiratorial smile, laid a hand on Annabelle’s arm to detain her. Lost in conversation, his handlers and pals kept on walking; so used to his taciturnity, they didn’t realize he had dropped away. Annabelle grinned back, and jerked her head to left, west down a Village side street toward the Hudson River. Dan took to his heels, and in seconds, the two of them were tearing down Bank Street, and away. Laughing like successfully truant children, they charged across Ninth Avenue and paused for breath, leaning against the stoop of one of the neighborhood’s ancient and rare clapboard houses. Annabelle, in between gasps for air, scribbled down more word-pictures of the hyperventilating guitarist: bent over double and wheezing; looking up from the bend to glare at her; flashing the two fingers sign at her and laughing.

  “Want to go to the river?” Annabelle asked, as they fell into a more sedate step.

  Minnehan had the grace to look a bit guilty. “Shouldn’t stray too far, they’ll go mental.” He paused to relight his cigar, and they took a turn uptown into the meat packing district. “I’d kill for a cuppa.”

  They made their way to a cafe, and settled down at an outside table. Not quite the kind of promenade one would get on the streets of Paris, they watched the butcher’s trucks rumble past, skidding through puddles of liquid that didn’t bear too thorough an examination. Annabelle had to change the tape, and in turn revealed her hidden weapon, but oddly, Minnhan didn’t seem to mind.

  “That’s a nice bit of gear.” Minnehan nodded at the recorder.

  Annabelle grinned. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

  Minnehan snickered. “Jesus, I’ll bet your man is kept hoppin’, day and night.”

  A little stab of hurt shot through Annabelle’s heart that almost took her breath away. “Well, actually, he wasn’t much of a hopper. He and I. He. We. I don’t have a boyfriend at the moment.”

  “Some eejit, then,” Minnehan declared, slightly abashed and mortified at the thought of potential tears. He looked at her worriedly out of the corner of his eye.

  Annabelle laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start crying.”

  “Ah, well. Bigger and better things.” The tea arrived, and Minnehan rejected it, unhappy with the presentation. As he impatiently instructed the waiter as to the correct preparation of a pot of tea, Annabelle taped the entire proceedings, and second-guessed her lead.

  “So you’ve been back to the ‘auld sod’ to check out yer ‘roots’?” Minnehan sneered.

  “I did, you grouch, and my grandmother’s family home is now a car park.” Annabelle tilted the tape recorder toward him, and took up her pen again.

  “Feck’s sake, like!” Minnehan exploded. “I wouldn’t know me own country if I didn’t feckin’ live there meself.”

  “A lot of it wasn’t what I expected, and I hear it’s changed even more since my last trip.” Annabelle took up a cup of now-acceptable tea, after Dan had rather daintily poured it out.

  “Well, you’d have to see it for yourself to believe it,” he muttered into his cup.

  Annabelle grimaced. “I may not have a feckin’ choice.”

  At Minnehan’s inquisitively arched brow, Annabelle took another sip of the tea. Oh, what the hell, she thought. Not like I’ll ever see this guy again.

  “Do you know anything about Pookas?”

  He sat back in his chair and took a meditative drag off his stogie. “What, like the annoying wee buggers that move yer gear so’s you can’t find it for a week?”

  “Um, well, like the sort that follow you around and change shape and generally start trying to force you to do stuff like take them to Ireland.” Annabelle blurted this out in a rush.

  Minnehan took another drag, and then a sip of tea. He crossed his legs, and leaned forward, his free hand stroking the brim of his hat.

  “Oh. That sort.” Not even the slightest trace of mockery showed in the musician’s piercing black eyes. Annabelle leaned forward as well, even though she was the one who now felt extremely skeptical.

  “Would you ever put that thing away!” Minnehan removed his hat, and Annabelle was treated to the sight of a monk-like tonsure of fading blond curls.

  “Okay. Go on.” She laid the tape player — still running — on her lap, and leaned her elbows on the little table. Dan looked about furtively before he began.

  “There’s a piseog — that’s Irish, for old wives tale — about a certain … strain of Pooka that’s been damned to follow the fortunes, or misfortunes, if you like, of the human race. Now, your common-or-garden variety of Pooka is a free spirit, a bit of scallywag that comes and goes as it pleases, messin’ about with people’s possessions, changing the signs on the roads so that travelers get lost in the back of beyond, and the like. They don’t haunt a place, they sweep in, create a bit of havoc, and then take off again.

  “This other lot, now … ” Minnehan looked about a bit, and lowered his voice another shade. “The story goes that this rogue crowd of Pookas got into more than a spot of bother from feckin’ around with the Queen of the Ban Sí, and missus, that is not something that anybody wants to do, living, dead, undead … “ He trailed off again, and took a somewhat nervous sip of cooling tea. “Now. The Pookas had interfered, shall we say, with the fella the Queen had been courting, and banjaxed the whole romance, if you want to call it that. Infuriated, the Queen laid a geís — a curse — on the troublesome crew, that demanded they each go in service to a different family of the province. It’s not in the Pooka’s nature to do service, if you get my meaning, so the Queen added a bit about the Pookas having to … organize the future happiness of the human to whom they had been attached. Like, love-wise, in that regard, if you take my meaning. They had to make a match between one of their people, and one of her people, one of the families that counted on her, em, regard. Even if they managed to pull off their duty without feckin’ around too much, if they wandered too far from the land of their origin, they would have to be transported
back or else … ”

  “Or else what?” This, thought Annabelle, is really just my luck, isn’t it?

  Minnehan coughed, nervous. “Or else they’re damned to limbo for all eternity. The thing is, if one of them had to go so far afield, it meant that they’d made a mess of things back in Ireland.”

  Annabelle sat back. “Oh, man.”

  Minnehan leaned back as well. “So? You’ve got yerself a Pooka, have ya?”

  Annabelle told him everything that had happened since her meeting with Maeve and the advent of the hazelnut, up to and including the events of that morning. Minnehan shouted with laughter. “It’s not funny! And she — he — whatever — is threatening me with a husband that I don’t even want.”

  “Is that so?” Minnehan mused. “Me own auntie had a spot of bother with one of that lot, went around talkin’ to herself and generally running wild, claimed she didn’t want the benefit of their expertise, shall we say, and sure didn’t she settle down by the end of that year into a fine aul’ marriage with the village smith.”

  “Great.” Annabelle looked at her recorder and fiddled with the directional mic.

  “Yer man might come back to ye, now,” Minnehan offered half-heartedly.

  “I don’t want him back,” Annabelle said definitively.

  “Got an iron in the fire?” Dan wondered.

  “I haven’t!” Defensive, Annabelle started gathering up her gear.

  “Ah, go on … ” Lighting his cigar for the hundredth time, Minnehan leaned forward keenly. “Nothing like a bit o’ gossip.”

  “Just some guy. Some Irish guy.” Annabelle ignored Minnehan’s meaningful grunt. “My friends tried to throw me at him the other night, at the opening of this show, and it’s none of their business, you know? But then I kind of … well, it would have been nice if he asked for my number, maybe, or something.” She trailed off, sullen.

  “What’s he called?”

  “His last name is Flynn.”

  Minnehan’s eyes lit up with puckish glee. His shout of laughter scared a flock of pigeons into flight, and chased a hard-working platoon of transvestite hookers further out toward the Westside Highway.

  Annabelle waited for him to compose himself. She tapped her fingers impatiently on her teacup as he slowly calmed down.

  “My nutter of an auntie, the one who married the smith, always told me that I’d see the truth of her, em, experience, one of these days, and so I have, and I’m off to light a candle to her blessed memory.” He ruined his pious statement with an utterly wicked giggle.

  Annabelle rose with him, and knocked away his extended hand. “You want to tell me what is so feckin’ funny?”

  “Language!” He tried for a conciliatory look, and took her hand. Wrapping both of his around hers, she could feel the calluses of a thousand gigs stroking her palm. “Let’s just say I’m not laughing at your troubles, and I comprehend your story with the whole of my heart. I am only amused as ever at the truth in aul piseogs and the real-life that always comes through in the fairy tale.” He patted her cheek, and tweaked her nose. “Now look me in the face and tell me you don’t fancy this Flynn character.”

  Annabelle avoided his gaze, shrugged, and said, “Maybe I wouldn’t mind seeing him again. Maybe.”

  Minnehan grinned and clapped his faithful fedora on his half-bald head. “You mightn’t be able to help it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In the two weeks following the Minnehan experience, Annabelle’s freelance writing career took off like a rocket. One recommendation from Cybill Franklin-Smith, it seemed, was worth its weight in gold, and she found herself interviewing hordes of new people, interesting people, from all walks of life.

  Taking the long way home to Carroll Gardens via Smith Street, after conducting yet another successful interview, this time with a Brooklyn-based personal-chef-to-the-stars, Annabelle allowed herself to fully feel the impact that her suddenly flourishing livelihood was having on her life. Basically? No complaints, really, except for the fact that she’d been practically bullied into the whole thing by a freakin’ supernatural life form. But then, she’d always been kind of stubborn. She guessed it would take an intervention from a Celtic mythological figure to get her off her butt.

  No, she thought. It’s not that I’m lazy … “I just got sidetracked. Big time,” she muttered.

  Jeez, she thought, shaking her head in disbelief. I had really let Wilson, er, influence my life, hadn’t I? The little teasing comments about journalistic hackery, so easily overlooked when they’d met in that gallery, erupted now and again, particularly when Annabelle had an assignment that interfered with weekends with Wilson’s colleagues, either in the Hamptons or Stowe, depending upon the season. It was easier to start taking smaller gigs, and anyway, he was paying for everything, so surely going along wasn’t a big hardship —

  Annabelle stopped short — luckily, it turns out, as the parking lot she was passing was emptying out as the pre-rush rush hour started to kick in. Yes, Annabelle, that really did happen. That is how the madness, the chasing after agents and publishers and research, began. With distance, and a certain degree of asperity, she could see that Wilson had been edging her into a career that was more sensational and less embarrassing to explain to his friends. ‘My girlfriend the historical novelist, so trendy’ had that bit more cachet than had ‘my girlfriend the freelance journalist’. Had she — she had, she had let this one person, this one relationship, derail the entire course of her life. And as much as she’d love to dump the whole load of blame onto Wilson’s deceiving, stuck-up dark brown head … well, she did have to take responsibility herself.

  She had gone down a path not of her own making. That’s why it wasn’t working out. It wasn’t hers.

  Well, there’s that all figured out, she thought. I am not the kind of person who can succeed on someone else’s path. This was as good a time as any to do an exercise she’d read about in a holistic health book, and she proceeded to make a mental list of all the things she was and wasn’t.

  I am organized.

  I am punctual.

  I keep my promises.

  I am a writer! Of what I want to write! (Yay! She cheered herself on.)

  I am … a witch?

  Her phone, which she hadn’t bothered to turn back on after leaving the interview, vibrated in her pocket. Wonder who this could be.

  “Hello, Callie.”

  Genuine surprise. “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Who else could call me when my phone is off?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that witch business if I was you. You’ve got acres to learn before you could call yourself that in any case.”

  “Well, I must have some potential. I’m dealing with you, aren’t I?”

  “Now as to that. Have ye booked yourself on a flight to — ”

  Annabelle tried for a breezy, dismissive tone to change the subject. “How’ve you been, anyway? Oh, nice work on the inside of the fridge, although it seems a waste of such an elaborate mosaic reproduction of The Last Supper. But I do like all that silk and satin bedding you replaced my other stuff with. No complaints there.”

  “That’s a first!” the Pooka shot back. “Dare I hope that you’ll have the same reaction when you realize who your husband is.”

  “Bullshit!” Annabelle shouted rudely, getting a few dirty looks from the rest of the crowd waiting to cross the avenue. “Sorry, sorry — ”

  “Thank you,” said Callie, rather primly.

  “Not you!” Annabelle shouted again, and several people moved away down the curb. “Listen, no one’s going to force me into anything, not into a relationship, and especially not into a marriage! And besides, you don’t even know what my type is.”

  Annabelle hung up and shoved her phone back into her pocket. As she strode sou
th, she tried to get herself back into the beautiful spring day, surely the first absolutely perfect day of the year thus far; not a cloud troubled the achingly blue sky, and a light breeze wafted by, carrying the smell of earth and grass and flowers. The few trees that studded the pavement were well in leaf, and the birds were happily chirping away. In fact, they seemed to be making more noise than was usual, because Annabelle actually noticed their song above the traffic.

  Actually, Annabelle noticed, the flock that was twittering away on Smith Street seemed a bit … disturbed: they were swarming in crazed loops from tree to tree, and they sounded alarmed. She paused and looked up and spotted the cause of their distress, an oversized crow with — wait for it — hazel eyes was chasing them all away.

  “Stop it! You’re making everyone crazy now, even innocent bystanders!” Standing under a tree full of demented birds was probably a really bad idea, and Annabelle moved well away. “Leave them alone! Come on! Come on out of there!”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Annabelle saw a little boy drop his scooter and go running toward a nearby brownstone. All she needed was an oversensitive Cobble Hill mother calling the cops, and she hurried off down Smith. For safety’s sake, she pulled out her phone and pretended to talk into it, as the bird followed in her wake, hopping from mailboxes to parking meters to the roofs of cars.

  “You’re looking rather … solid,” Annabelle noted, as the Pooka’s smoky, shadowy textures seemed to have coalesced into a more conventional appearance.

  The crow paused on a pyramid of oranges piled up in front of a Korean deli. It seemed to droop as its voice came across through Annabelle’s phone. “It’s a terrible thing, missus, a terrible thing. The more firmly I take to form, the more likely it is that I am failing in my task. And the punishment … the punishment is great and severe.”

  The bird took to the air, and Annabelle watched it circle above and away. “Wait! Listen, I met that Irish musician guy, and we got to talking, and he told me this legend or something? About the Queen of the Ban — ”