And then there was Lee-Anne. Jerry had quickly decided that she was far too much like the small-town women back in Stratford. She was a curvy, dark-blonde a couple years older than himself, and, as became quickly apparent to Jerry, she was the married company flirt. She wasn’t participating very much in the conversation, but she leaned over the back of the couch near Jerry, hanging on his every word while she made sure he could see her cleavage out of the corner of his eye. Not staring was taking all the self-control he could muster, because he had to admit to himself that she had really nice cleavage. He’d had a couple drinks and was feeling quite relaxed, so he had to concentrate on the conversation at hand. At the moment, though, Mika had his complete attention, even without flashing her breasts.
“You saw a pod of killer whales?” Jerry was astounded. “While you were just walking down the beach?”
“Yeah. We were collecting shells.” She carefully placed the Blake book down on the coffee table.
Rolf nodded and took a sip of his beer. “I see them all the time, man. Orcas, greys . . .”
“Grey whales?! Where can—?” A headache bumped into him, interrupting him. He put a hand to his temple, massaging.
Rolf leaned in. “Jerry?”
“Just a bit of a headache.” It drilled a hole in his skull. His two-drink limit was down to zero for the rest of the holidays, he decided. He closed his eyes for a second. He felt Lee-Anne’s hands on his shoulders, rubbing slowly, sensuously, and opened his eyes abruptly. She leaned closer and her breasts caressed the back of his head. His eyes went wide with shock.
“Here, Jerry. This’ll get rid of your headache, hon.”
“Uh . . .” He was stumped. He had to stop her, but maybe this was what happened at parties on the West Coast. He tried to pull away, even though the rub actually seemed to be helping his headache. Not only was she married, but Jerry was pretty sure her husband, Tom, was still somewhere in the loft.
Manny saw Jerry’s discomfort and came to his rescue, quietly. “Down, Lee-Anne. Good girl. Sit. It’s late and you’re massaging under the influence again.”
Lee-Anne ignored her boss’s boss and kept rubbing, forcing Jerry to lean forward to escape her reach. But, even tipsy, she was faster than he was and pulled him right back again. The rest of the group was starting to notice and, as Jerry feared, they were curious how he’d respond. Lee-Anne’s husband decided for him.
“Lee-Anne!”
Mika chuckled. “Lee-Anne, I think your husband is calling.”
“Let him take a number—I only have one set of hands.” She held her hands up to show them and Jerry lurched up and out of reach.
He stood up too quickly and the headrush made him wobble a bit, with the headache slamming back in. One hand returned to his temple, feebly trying to squeeze the pain out. The headrush passed in a flash and he was able to ignore the headache for a moment.
“Yes, you do, Lee-Anne, and I think Tom is holding a coat up for them.” Jerry gestured towards a slouched, push-over of a man standing by the front door with a long, supple, red leather coat in his outstretched hands. Tom stepped over with Lee-Anne’s coat and shot Jerry a hard look as if Jerry had been the one to start the flirtatious interchange.
He kept his voice low and Jerry could hear that he was pissed off, but Jerry could also tell that this was probably not the first time Tom had had to stop Lee-Anne from rubbing the wrong shoulders. “Time to go, Honey. The sitter has to be home by 11:30.”
Manny stepped up and gently steered Lee-Anne towards Tom. “That’s a good cue for the rest of us, too. Jerr . . . great party, lad. Sleep that headache away, and we’ll see you when we get back from the mainland in a couple days.”
Jerry smiled through the headache, forcing it back by sheer will. “Thanks for coming out, everyone. Those of you who have time off, enjoy it. Those of you holding down the fort, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The guests all wished each other Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanza, and even Happy Festivus-for-the-rest-of-us, and thanked Jerry for the party, amidst hugs, cheek kisses, and gathering up of coats and sweaters.
TEN MINUTES LATER, Jerry was alone, having scooted Manny and Carmella out the door when they offered to help him clean up. “You’ve already done enough. Please, go home, have a Christmas Eve nightcap and get some sleep.” Their hugs and warm farewells made Jerry feel like he had family for holidays for the first time in too many years. He smiled to no one in particular, and then, as he passed the picture of Isis, he kissed two fingertips and placed them on the forehead of her image. “You’d like these people, Munchkin. I’m in good hands.”
Chapter Seven
@TheTaoOfJerr: “Love is friendship set to music.”
~Jackson Pollock
JERRY LOOKED AROUND at the cluttered loft and realized that Carmella must have been picking up all along because there were only the glasses and coffee cups each of his guests had been using when the party broke up. Dean Martin continued on in the background, a bit louder to Jerry’s ears now that the place was empty of conversation. As he went around picking up the dirty glasses and coffee cups, he sang along with Dino’s smooth version of “White Christmas”.
The headache had receded briefly, but when Jerry picked up a long-stemmed wine glass on the coffee table next to the book of Blake’s poetry, the pain slammed back in like a boxer’s fist. He spasmed and fell to his knees, the wine glass stem snapping in his hand and slicing open his palm when he reached for the support of the table.
“Son of a . . . ! Shit!” The rolling wave of pain receded enough so that he could see again, but was still intense enough to keep him down on his knees. He slowly and deliberately placed the wine glass remnants on the table as the pain of the cut intruded on the misery of the headache. When he opened his hand to let go of the glass, blood flowed freely, dripping onto the tabletop. Sighting a stack of paper cocktail napkins, he grabbed at them, needing to staunch the bleeding, but unable to keep a few drops from landing on the book of poetry. He jammed the entire stack of poinsettia-decorated napkins into his damaged palm and dragged himself to his feet, aiming for the kitchen and the stainless steel countertop.
IN SPITE OF the pain, Jerry moved fast and didn’t notice that the blood, which dropped onto the book, was absorbed quickly into the dark, century-old stain already there. As he stood over the sink, peeling back the crimson-soaked paper napkin, he missed the blue glow that pulsed from the combined stain. In the bright light over the sink, he was too busy washing what had turned out to be a shallow cut and resisting the urge to slam his bloody hands to his forehead to compress the pain of the raging headache to notice when the blue glow enveloped the book, flowed up and out from the stain, and expanded in the air above the coffee table.
SOMETHING WAS VERY different. What had previously been a weak, almost casual force inviting her out of the darkness and into her dreams, was now a powerful, insistent, welcoming pull she simply could not resist. It was such a wonderful feeling she didn’t want to resist. She flowed and ebbed and finally remembered her own shape after so long without anything but pure thought and emotion. This was like no dream she had experienced before. Life flowed into her and a deep memory of her self caught at her heart. She thought of a photo of herself, one she took facing the big mirror in her bedroom at the Winter Palace, but it was an old photo, when she was just a child. She then remembered one of her and her sisters, much more recent, all standing tall and smiling. She felt herself slip into that shape, so familiar.
ONCE HE WAS sure there was no glass in his palm and it was thoroughly washed, Jerry grabbed a fresh, clean dishcloth from the drawer with his free hand and jammed it onto the cut. Gripping it with as tight a fist as he could manage, he went in search of painkillers and the first aid kit in the bathroom. He rummaged around in the medicine cabinet, oblivious to anything but the pain and the blood. He found the ibuprofen, fought with the child-proof cap, got it open, dumped a handful of capsules into his shaking palm, tossed four of t
hem back and dropped the rest back into the bottle. He stuck his face under the tap and gulped hard to get enough water to wash the pills down. While he was hunched over the sink, he splashed cold water on his face with his good hand. After a moment or two he stood up, dried his hand on the towel and, from the first aid kit on the counter next to the sink, took out a tube of antibiotic cream and squeezed a small amount into the cut. He slapped a large adhesive bandage over it all and returned to the living room where he could sit in comfort and let the painkillers do their job.
Although he was a firm believer that everything is possible and nothing is certain, Jerry nearly tripped over his own feet when he came face-to-face with a transparent, teenaged girl with golden hair cut in a scruffy bob, dressed in a simple, bullet-hole-riddled and blood-stained, black linen dress taking shape in the middle of his IKEA coffee table. Blood-loss was making him hallucinate a ghost! “Holy crap–! Wha–?! Who?!”
SHE WASN’T ALONE! There was the man, again, from her dream. He stumbled back to the kitchen island, as shocked to see her as she was to see him. He flinched and she was hurt. She was harmless. She was Ana, and she would never hurt a flea! Just ask her younger brother. “Where am I? Who are you?”
FREAKED OUT, BUT pretty sure a hazy, glowing girl couldn’t hurt him, Jerry stepped toward the coffee table where he could get a better look at his “houseguest”. “Who the hell are you?” Could she be the girl he’d been dreaming about?
The ghost tilted her head as if to hear better, but shook it, frustrated. She pointed at her ears and shook her head again. Jerry guessed that she couldn’t hear him any more than he could hear her. With the headache still thumping but slipping slowly into the background, he took another step closer. The ghost moved back, eyes wide and hands raised just a bit defensively. Recognizing fear when he saw it, Jerry stopped advancing and held up his hands in an “I’m-unarmed-and-come-in-peace” gesture. As he addressed the girl again, he accompanied his spoken words with sign language.
“Hello. My name is Jerry.”
ANA COULD SEE his lips move, but she still heard no sounds whatsoever. She shook her head. “I do not understand.” The man held out his hands to show that he was no threat and stepped toward the table, pointing at a pen next to a book. Ana shifted warily to the side but didn’t feel the need to flee. He carefully picked up the pen in a bandaged hand, held up a greeting card of some sort with the other hand, and began writing on the back of the card. After a moment he held it up for her to see. She took a tentative, floating step so she could see what he’d written.
“My name is Jerry. Who are you?”
She smiled.
THE GHOST GIRL pointed at Jerry, mouthing words. Understanding, Jerry grinned and nodded. “Yes, I am Jerry.” While Jerry signed, the ghost watched closely. “Yes! My name is Jerry. J-E-R-R-Y.”
The ghost copied the signs to spell his name and Jerry laughed. “Yes! Jerry!”
The girl continued, signing slowly, a look of concentration on her face as she tried to remember what Jerry had just shown her. “My name is . . .” Not having the signs for the necessary letters, she silently mouthed her name. Jerry didn’t understand her. He could sign with the best of them but he never needed to develop his lip-reading until now. The ghost held out her hand for the pen but when Jerry handed it to her it fell through her fingers and onto the table, landing on the book of poetry. The girl looked at the pen, frustrated, but then she pointed at it excitedly. Jerry picked it up and offered it to her again but she waved it off and pressed her finger down and into the book.
Understanding finally dawned on Jerry so he picked up the book and offered it to her. With a half-smile she shook her head “no” and mimed for him to open it. Jerry opened the cover and showed her the note inside the cover. Written on the title page in faded blue fountain pen was “To Ana, Love Mama. Christmas 1915.” The girl pointed at the inscription and then at herself.
Jerry got the message clearly, if not loudly. “That’s you?” he signed and spoke. “You’re Ana? Anastasia?” He signed slowly. “Your name is A-N-A?”
ANA NODDED VIGOROUSLY. Hand signs! She put her palm over her heart like she had seen him do and made the finger shapes for her name. “I am Ana.”
“Hello, Ana.” His words were simple so she could both read his lips and follow his hand signs.
“Hello, Jerry.”
THE HEADACHE SWEPT in again and grabbed Jerry’s attention. His eyes went wide and he stumbled to the closest seat, dropping the book back onto the coffee table. Ana followed him, a look of concern evident on her transparent face.
Jerry pressed on his temples with both hands. “Headache. Bad one.”
Ana glanced around the apartment, saw the kitchen sink, pointed at it, and mimed that Jerry should drink lots of water and then sleep.
“You’re pretty smart for a ghost. Sleep. I need a week’s worth of sleep.” He forced a smile, levered himself slowly up out the chair and stumbled to the kitchen area. When he got to the sink, he grabbed a clean tumbler with his good hand and held it up for his guest to see that he understood what she’d suggested.
ANA SMILED BACK, pleased that Jerry was able to understand her, but suddenly the darkness was there again, beckoning her, pulling her away from this new world of light and colour and Jerry. No! It couldn’t be over! Dream or no dream, she wanted to stay. She reached out for him, as if he could grab her hands and pull her into his world, but that world was fading fast. The darkness swirled up and out of the book but she finally realized that it wasn’t dragging her back in; it was simply embracing her while her strength waned. Suddenly she was so very tired and the dark seemed like a perfectly reasonable place to rest and get strong enough to return to the world of this Jerry person.
She looked up as she left the dream, and waved to Jerry to say “goodnight”. Jerry waved back, but she thought he looked more than a little bit confused. Then her world went black, and she was once again alone, but now it didn't bother her in the least. She knew now that there was somewhere other than the darkness, and in that dream place there lived a very sweet, somewhat handsome, man named Jerry.
JERRY RUBBED HIS eyes, shook his head, and took another swig of water. He wanted to pick up the little book but didn’t dare touch it. She was gone, but he wasn’t even sure she’d actually ever even been there. Had his headaches gotten so bad that he was hallucinating? Had one of his new West Coast friends slipped something into his drink? Were the mushrooms on the crackers magic ones? He had no idea, and if he were honest with himself, he didn’t have the energy to think about it much longer. He needed sleep more than he needed answers right now. To that end, he tugged off his party clothes, dragged on his grandpa-style flannel pajamas, and crawled into his antique, solid pine, spindle bed in the loft’s screened-off sleeping area. He fell asleep quickly, feeling much older than his years.
SOME HOURS LATER, Ana reached in the darkness for the seam of light that led to the dream world where Jerry lived. Much about it was familiar, yet there were differences she couldn’t, yet, put her finger on. Unsure of what to expect, she pushed just her face through. She kept her eyes closed at first, fearing what might be truly beyond in the light, but then realized that she was being silly. She was quite certain that she was dead and so what could possibly be the worst that could happen to her? There were no tales she’d ever heard of people dying twice, except maybe vampyres. Even Our Lord Jesus Christ died just the once.
Ana snuck one eye open. She appeared to be alone, so she opened the other, and “pulled” herself fully into the flat. She turned a circle, admiring the beauty of the space. She was certainly used to much grander, but near the end of their exile, this would have been truly luxurious. The warm woods and plush furniture were so sumptuous compared to the sparse, drafty conditions of the rooms they had been confined to for their last days. She admired the beautiful, dark, hardwood floors and the Persian rug—and then she saw that she was floating eight inches above the floor. Well, that’s silly! She f
rowned, scrunched her face up to focus her considerable will, and “told” her feet to go lower. She dropped too quickly and ended up four inches into the floor. Disappointed, she put her hands on her hips, concentrated harder and, a moment later, Anastasia “stood” on the flat’s floor, quite pleased with herself. I wonder if . . . She concentrated a bit harder and soon she could actually feel the solidity of the floor through the leather soles of her lace-up boots.
Not seeing her host, but knowing that he had intended to retire for the night, she wandered around the flat until she saw the corner of Jerry’s bed not hidden by the screen. She hesitantly poked her head through the privacy screen, saw by the rhythm of his breathing that he slept soundly, then withdrew, and turned back to the wonderful flat around her.
She floated up in the air, moving around the loft, then caught herself. This will not do at all! She shook her head, closed her eyes, and imagined herself on the floor, walking across the room and not floating all willy-nilly through the air. When her feet touched down once again, she smiled, quite pleased with herself. Much better! Where to now? That’s when she saw a foot-tall, electrically-lit jar on Jerry’s desk containing a slowly undulating green liquid. A soundless giggle escaped her lips as she skipped over to examine the strangeness.
Carefully slipping her diaphanous hand through the glass of the jar, Ana slid her fingertips into the heart of the illuminated green fluid. She focused and imagined just her fingertips being a bit more solid and then suddenly there was less light visible through them. She concentrated a bit harder and the slowly rising ooze deflected around the new obstacles, like green magma around rocks. A silent giggle shook her ghostly form, and she willed her fingertips to be transparent, once again. She pulled her hand back, slowly, not wanting to break the odd little lamp.
Waking Anastasia Page 7
