by Jackie Zack
A thought of a short brown and white dog came to mind. When Griff had realized that she was leaving his ears and tail drifted down. Replaying the memory in her mind was almost more than she could take. “Griff, I miss you,” she whispered. Aye, and she missed her mum, home, and the bookstore.
Her feelings for Kory continued to grow, but how to know if he felt the same? She saw the warmth of love in his eyes, but if it were real, how could he decide her visiting New York by the flip of a coin? She’d tried to put it out of her mind. It was probably nothing.
As Dafina had finished getting dressed for the new day in jeans and a light pink sweater, a knock sounded at the door. She opened the door and stepped outside of her room.
“Hey. I hope you don’t mind, but I have to go see Ed.” Kory stood before her in a smart looking jacket, button down shirt, and gray trousers. She bit back a smile, realizing the clothes were the ones he’d purchased in Wales.
“Ed? The one who sent those two darrens after you?”
“Yes. The one and the same. Don’t worry, you can stay here while I’m gone. There’s a lot of reading material here.” He half smiled. “Or if you want company, Mom is here.”
Reading material? His books? Her face became warm, remembering Fanny’s outburst over the love scene.
“I want to go with you. I want to see that Ed bloke with my own eyes.”
“It’s better if you don’t.”
“Oh, I—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”
Ah, Kory. How unlike him to cut her off and leave her hanging. She’d go see about that reading material.
****
Kory headed out the apartment door with a quick, “See ya,” to his mother. He’d given her an abbreviated run-down of his suspicions about his editor. She hadn’t thought it possible that a business would do such a thing. But she didn’t know Ed. He was a ruthless type, plus a creative mastermind—an explosive combination.
The elevator ride down couldn’t possibly go fast enough. At the street, he boarded a bus and not finding a seat, remained standing and held onto a rail. All he could do was think of the stress Ed’s plan had caused Dafina. Even if Ed’s intentions erred on trying to do something helpful, it could have been a disaster. What was Kory thinking? It was a disaster, and all he could do from storming to the man’s office the minute Kory was in town. Using time for a buffer would hopefully keep him from a heated outburst. He, at least, wanted to remain professional.
He had a mind to give up writing horror, but the scribbles in his journal had made it clear that he couldn’t write anything else and be happy about it. He’d written down snippets of ideas for historical fiction, Amish fiction, and young adult to no avail. Each idea had twisted itself into the horror genre. He wanted to do something worthwhile—something inspirational. To be meaningful to the reader. But how?
A curious thought presented itself to him. He remembered coming up to Dafina as she read. She’d spoken to the character out loud unaware that he stood nearby. She’d told Carl that he needed to get down on his knees and pray. That was the answer. Something good could still be found in writing horror.
Now if he could convince Ed not to add cussing on every page and leave out the sex scenes. That wouldn’t be an easy sell. Why should Kory have to write what he was against including? He could write a thrilling, gripping story without those things.
He exited the bus and headed to skyscraper that housed Ed’s office on the second floor. No lofty office for Ed. Probably what made him so cranky. Kory took the stairs and headed to the front desk.
“I’m here to see Mr. Wappelhorst.”
“I don’t see your name listed. Did you have an appointment?” Molly searched her monitor.
“No appointment. It won’t take long.”
“Go on back. I’ll let him know.” She motioned him on.
Kory strode down the hall, and reached Ed’s half open door. He took in a breath in effort to keep calm and knocked on the door.
“Come in.” He motioned to a chair that Kory declined. Ed held an old fashioned phone in his thin fingered grasp, thanked Molly, and hung up the receiver. “Hey, don’t take off like that again. I had some questions for you about your next book.” His dark eyebrows came together in wrinkle. Kory must have had a rather agitated look on his face because Ed burst out laughing. “Just kidding, you’re fine, but I am glad that you’re back.”
What was it with this guy? “Ed. Was it worth it? Wasn’t it taking too much of chance of someone getting hurt?” Kory struggled to keep his voice even. His heart pounded.
Ed pushed back his dark hair, adjusted his black rectangle glasses. His hand rested on the chair arm, his fingers tapped in a nervous manner. “I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about.”
“You didn’t send two goons to follow me? I half expect them to pop out of the woodwork.” He glanced at the wooden chair rails along the burgundy wall.
“You thought two guys were shadowing you?” Ed took on a sympathetic, worried manner.
“It’ not in my head, Ed. It really happened.” His legs felt weak—much to his distress. He’d wanted to stand, but sat in the offered chair. “They bound me up and stole my money. Then later they caught up with me again—”
“I know you’ve been under a lot of stress. But you’re saying—”
“Why did you do it? I put out bestsellers. There’s no reason to try to scare another one out of me.”
“Kory. I didn’t send anyone after you.” Ed’s eyes appeared honest, willing him to see reason. “I don’t have money for that. The publishing house wouldn’t okay such a thing. You’ve already got what it takes. No need to make you better.”
Whoa.
“Kory. Think about it. There’s no funding for anything like that. We’ve been working on paring down—working with the bare minimum.”
“It makes no sense. Why—” He fumbled for some sort of answer.
“Maybe you were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Ed’s eyebrows contorted in a puzzled manner. “Cliché, I know. Don’t put it in your next book.” He laughed.
Kory left the office with a rather sick feeling, breaking out in a sweat. Thankfully, Dafina had seen Shorty and Laces to know that it really happened. Otherwise he’d be tempted to believe his overactive imagination had made up the whole thing.
Would he enter his mom and dad’s apartment to find Dafina wasn’t there either? His delirious, scrambled mind had concocted everything? He hated the thought.
Or maybe he’d wake up from a coma to learn it was all a dream, and he’d suffered injury in the same accident as Luke. He lifted his line of vision, following the lines of the lofty buildings up to the blue sky. Horns honked, cars and busses whooshed by. Being a writer was the most creative wonderful thing, but he wished he could turn it off sometimes.
****
Dafina headed to the sounds in the kitchen to find Kory’s mum. She looked to be preparing a pudding from a box mix. Chocolate. Certainly the woman was a brave soul, wearing a white shirt in a white kitchen, working with chocolate.
“Good morning.” Kory’s mum smiled and held a spoon that dripped liquid brown over the bowl.
“Good morning. Anything I can do to help?” Dafina offered, but deep down she hoped not. She wanted to get hold of The Unseen.
“Oh, no, I’m getting ready to put the brownies in the oven.”
Brownies. Odd name that. “Kory mentioned that there were books I could look over and read, but I can’t seem to find any in the lounge—I mean, living room.”
“All the books are in Kory’s old room. Help yourself.”
“Ah. Thank you. I’ll see what I can find.” Dafina made her way out of the kitchen and headed down the hall to his room. He’d always kept his door shut, so she had no idea what she’d find.
She opened the door, slightly guilty, feeling that she was invading his old space. But she remembered his half smile as he’d told her about the reading mater
ial. She stepped into his room, amazed to see one whole wall was a book case. She took in a breath at seeing his Agatha Christie collection. He had them all, including The Man in the Brown Suit. Yet, he’d purchased a copy from her.
She glanced to his nightstand where another copy laid—the copy she sold him. His bed, neatly made with a red plaid cover. The walls in his room, a dark green. Thank goodness for some rich colors. Movie posters decorated the walls.
She focused her attention back to the wall of books. A large blue section of the bookcase was all of the original Hardy Boy books, number one through fifty-eight. And numbers one through forty-three of Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. He had all of C.S. Lewis’s books, as far as she could tell, along with J.R. Tolkien. Some Goosebumps books and Stephen King books. Various sci-fi and detective books filled the rest of the shelves. She smiled and tapped an index finger on her lips. Poor child didn’t have a chance other than to be a writer.
Seeing this glimpse into his childhood and young adult life made him even more endearing.
But where were the books that he’d written? There they were. All of the books except The Unseen. The shelves were full though—no room for anything else. Perhaps he had it stashed somewhere in a closet or under the bed.
She felt kind of silly crouched down looking under his bed, imagining him to happen upon her. A quick search showed nothing.
He’d left the mostly empty closet open. The orange suitcase stood in the corner along with his back pack. A few shirts and pairs of pants hung above them. The right side of the closet proved more interesting with a simple type desk with a single central drawer. On top of the desk sat a container with an assortment of pens and pencils, paperweights and various books that looked like journals. The drawer stood ajar. She could make out a stack of papers—a manuscript? Oh, how she’d love to read his writing, before it had become a book. Was it his first story that hadn’t been published?
She stood in front of the desk for several long seconds, not wanting to be nosey, but yet wanting to enjoy his early writing. Feeling like Pandora opening the box, she slowly pulled the drawer open. A stack of paper at least eight centimeters thick was bound together by an oversized red rubber-band. Typed on the top sheet was the wording: Sleight of Hand by Kory Slate.
Before she’d thought of any repercussions of reading his unpublished work, she had the stack in her hand, stepped over to a chair by the bookcase, and sat down.
As she read, the pages slipped down to a stack on the floor. She had skim read to get through as much of the manuscript as possible. How could it possibly be? Two guys were shadowing the main character. Part of the story was a chase scene on bikes. Odd that it was the same as recent events. Oh, bogies, the main character called the bad guys Snotty and Lucifer.
She took in a surprised breath. He’d met a girl at a grocery store and befriended her. Dafina hurried along through the pages half expecting to read about herself reading the story at the end.
Just as she approached the part where Snotty and Lucifer had the main character and the girl trapped inside her home, Kory’s door sprang open.
“Oh…hi, there. What are you doing?” Kory looked at the papers in her hands and the stack on the floor. “So you found the old manuscript, huh?” He smiled broadly.
Whew. He wasn’t upset at all, even though she felt guiltier than sin. “Yes. Quite the interesting read. How did it go with Ed?”
Kory raked a hand through his hair. “He said he didn’t send the guys. If he’s telling the truth, I guess it was a coincidence that the two picked me.”
“Seems more like it was planned. Two bad guys, a bike chase—” She held up the papers in her hand.
“I chose to get a bike.”
Mm. And the names of the bad guys similar because he had named them. “Still too much the same for my liking.” What if Kory orchestrated the whole thing? The thought snaked through her mind and she looked again at his smiling face. Ah, no. Impossible.
She glanced around at the bookcase and the plaid bed cover. “I like your room—the best room ‘ere,” she whispered. “Reminds me of home, it does.”
“I’m glad.” He took her hand to help her up. “You can put the rest of the manuscript on the chair and read it later, if you want. I picked up the pictures on the way back—the ones I had printed for Luke. Want to go see him now?”
Her thoughts raced. “Yes, I would. But could we see your apartment first? I’d love to get an idea how the American writer lives.”
He laughed. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I’m sure. Except a bunch of dead plants that didn’t get watered when I was gone.”
“But it’s important, because it’s you—your place.”
“Angel cake,” he said then turned his head toward the doorway. “Aunt Nesta is coming.”
“Wha—”
Kory pulled her close and kissed her gently on the lips, sending her heart to beat at a faster pace. She smiled inside at his words, using an excuse like that to kiss her. Aunt Nesta was a world away.
When he stepped away, his eyes held warm kindness, love.
“The best pretend ‘usband, you are.” She said the words a bit breathlessly, and Kory smiled. Had he smiled because of her words or how she said them? At any rate, he seemed pleased and it multiplied her happiness.
“Just how many pretend husbands have you had?”
“Just you and a stuffed dummy.”
“I see I’m in good company.”
****
Kory took Dafina to his corner coffee place for breakfast. He had to keep telling himself that she was indeed real. How strange to experience complete infatuation at this point in his life. Sure he’d had crushes when in school, but being with Dafina gave him a whole different outlook on his life. Everything proved itself to be more promising, better and more worthwhile, shiny, and in her words, brilliant. The coffee shop seemed more endearing, the pastries more tempting, the coffee more deep and flavorful.
They sat with their coffees at a table by a window. She with her lemon poppy seed muffin, and he with a cheese pastry. He pointed out his apartment from their vantage point. “If you count five floors up and three windows over from the left, you can see my apartment.”
She looked in the direction he pointed. “Aye, I see it. The plants in the window look lively and green. That’s a good sign.”
Hmm, she was right. “It’s probably like dried herbs—you know, still green but no moisture. I forgot to ask my mom if anyone stopped by and watered them.”
“I like this part of the city. Busy—very busy—but it has a quaint feel to it. Maybe it’s the cheerful dark blue and red of the apartments—the green plants and flowers on the balconies. A classy, lively feel.”
“Do you think you could get to like it?”
“As in…?” She gave him a little smile and narrowed her eyes.
“Enough to live here?”
Her eyes narrowed more and her smile all but disappeared.
“Like a second home?” He tried to make it less threatening.
“You mean still keep my real home?”
He nodded and absentmindedly took a bite of pastry.
“I don’t know for sure, Kory Slate, writer of horror.” She smiled again. “What does the writer think of Wales?”
“The writer is completely impressed with Wales and even more so with—”
“What?”
“Not what...” He’d wanted to tease her, but there was no way to go through with it. Besides he wasn’t sure how to tease anymore. He was seriously in love.
“Who?” she asked.
He looked down at his breakfast with one bite out of it. Would she understand the sincerity of his feelings for her? He looked at her lovely face, her expression expectant, waiting for an answer. “It’s you.”
“Ah, Kory. Isn’t it that I remind you of the character in your last book? I remember you called me Carl’s pet name for her…the platinum princess.”
“I did? When?”
“Shortly after Aunt Nesta arrived, I think.”
Whoa. Wait. No, he didn’t think so. “You’re so much more to me than a character in a book.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. Besides, I call you a lot of different pet names.”
“I know. You like to tease me, you do. Lucky for you the names you use are always something sweet.” Her eyes regarded him coolly and her lips had the faintest hint of amusement.
There had to be some way for them to make a life together. He could well imagine going through time with her, watching her create her gardens and pottery, helping her with her bed and breakfast business in the old stone cottage.
After eating, they stepped into an antique store nearby. She fairly pulled him into the shop. Funny how he never paid attention to the place before. He observed what items drew her interest. A pastel vase—for her flowers of course. He could almost see the thought patterns of her mind visualizing how the colors would work together. She stepped to a case of antique jewelry and perused the ornate designs, pointing out different jewels.
“I love the tiger-eye, I do. Moving—always moving as it does.” She looked closer at the ring with its tag. “Hm. My size, it is,” she said to herself in a barely audible voice. A grouping of white china boxes with roses caught her eye, and she stepped toward them. Then something out around a corner captured her interest. She disappeared from view.
He motioned to a clerk and pointed to the ring. The young man smiled with understanding and kept quiet as he processed the sale and handed Kory the ring in a box. He slipped it in his jacket pocket.
After perusing a display of old books, Kory took her to his apartment building and they rode the elevator up. He opened the door expecting chaos, but thankfully he’d tidied up the place before he’d left on the trip.
He watched her as she took in his apartment. He tried to view it through her eyes as if seeing it for the first time. The worn numbly tan carpet, brown leather sofa, pale green walls with dark brown trim, desk with a chair facing a bulletin board filled with photos, clippings, odds and ends. Stacks of books on the desk along with a computer monitor and post-it notes with snippets of thoughts and doodles. A shoulder-high bookcase on one wall with books by Kory Slate and other authors. Various house plants on a table in front of a window. Live—well watered and cared for plants. A flat screen TV, a couple of well worn chairs…
