War for the Oaks

by Emma Bull

  He glanced at her through his eyelashes. “Very well.” And he settled in behind her.

  “You put your feet on those—and watch the pipes, they get hot. Hang on around my waist until you get used to the acceleration,” Eddi told him.

  He made a noise, something between a word and a cough. After a moment, he circled her waist carefully with his arms.

  She wanted suddenly to turn and look at him; she wanted equally suddenly not to meet his eyes. She put the bike in gear instead.

  They didn’t talk on the way back; the wind and the engine noise were a good excuse. Eddi did nerve herself to say, when a stop sign gave her the chance. “You let me take it out alone.”

  She felt the tension in the arms around her waist. “That nice man would have been nervous, surely, if we’d both ridden off,” the phouka said lightly. “I was hostage for your good behavior.”

  Eddi frowned over her shoulder at him and said, “Were you playing with me, ready to reel me back if I tried to run?”

  He closed his eyes, and she saw a muscle work in his jaw. “That must be it. I could not have chosen to trust you.”

  His voice was calm, distant. She did a very sloppy job of accelerating away from the stop sign.

  Eddi turned into the alley behind the building and parked the bike near the back door. “Think somebody’ll steal it?”

  “I believe I can promise you that no one will touch it.”

  “ ‘Warning: this bike protected by attack fairies.’ All the gay guys in the neighborhood would get a kick out of that.”

  The phouka frowned at her. “It would be easier for me to arrange if you didn’t say that name aloud, in the open air.”

  She was confused, until she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to call them fairies. “Sorry.”

  “Come along, then,” he said shortly. She followed him up the stairs, or rather, followed the sound of his high-heeled boots as he ran on ahead of her.

  She washed, put on some makeup, and changed into a white tank top, a short white denim skirt, and a burgundy satin Chinese jacket. Then she spared a few minutes to tidy the bedroom. She didn’t think too much about why she did that.

  The phouka was in the kitchen washing dishes when she came out. “You don’t have to do that,” she told him.

  He didn’t look up from the sink. “I might as well, as long as I’m here.” He sounded cheerful.

  “Any of that cantaloupe left?”

  He nodded toward the refrigerator. “Sliced and waiting.”

  She took a piece into the living room, where she put Boiled in Lead’s “Hotheads” album on the turntable. After a song, she realized she was pacing back and forth between the sofa and the window.

  “Impatient?” the phouka said. He was leaning in the kitchen door­way, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He’d taken off his amazing jacket, and the high throat of the black ruffled shirt was unbuttoned to his breastbone. She could see curls of black hair on his chest. She swallowed and looked away. Then he said, “Or nervous, perhaps?” in such a soft voice, that she looked back. He smiled at her.

  “I think so. Dumb?”

  He shook his head.

  “Hey, where did that money come from?”

  “You don’t want to know,” he grinned wickedly.

  “Why don’t I?”

  “Oh, very well.” He looked pleased with himself. “Sometime after midnight, our lad may want to run his eight hundred dollars through his fingers and gloat. Then he’ll open his wallet, and find, not his lovely money, but eight wilted maple leaves. It’s the nature of fairy gold.”

  Eddi stared at him. “We just stole a motorcycle?”

  “No, how did we? We’ve traded something for something, and if the money he took did not remain money, then it’s only a judgment on him for his wicked ways.”

  “But. . . but you knew, when you gave him the money, that it was an illusion. That makes it no better than counterfeiting. You didn’t really give him any money. We ripped him off.”

  The phouka looked puzzled. “Sweet, he’s done as much to others, and would have done to us, if he could.”

  Eddi slumped onto the couch and pulled her hair. “Shit. Leave him out of it then. Listen.” She leaned forward, trying to ignore his stub­born look. “Maybe he’s got a wife, or a girlfriend. Maybe he gave her one of those hundreds for housekeeping money. She thinks maybe now she can get the window fixed in the back door, with what’s left over from groceries and bills and stuff.”

  The phouka frowned from the kitchen doorway. “Or maybe,” she went on, “our guy went to the all-night supermarket, and spent one of those hundreds. The kid at the checkout puts it in the register.

  “So what happens at midnight, or the next day? The kid rings out the register and comes up a hundred bucks short, and the manager takes it out of the kid’s check. Or the guy’s wife looks in her wallet and finds a goddamn leaf. How does she tell him that a hundred bucks just went up in smoke? How does she get through the week if she doesn’t?”

  The phouka seemed wholly absorbed in the kitchen towel he pulled back and forth through his hands.

  “Don’t you see?” she asked him. “Maybe the guy does deserve to get shafted by somebody. But can you be sure that nobody else is getting screwed along with him?”

  She dropped her gaze to the floor between her feet, searching for words eloquent enough to reach him, despairing of finding them. Then the toes of his boots appeared in her field of vision, and he knelt on the rug before her.

  “I do see,” he said. “I didn’t know—ah, sweet, not tears. I never meant to cause you those.” He blotted one delicately away with a fin­gertip.

  “It’s just frustration,” she smiled weakly. “I always cry when I’m frustrated.”

  “Oh dear.” He shook his head. “I’ll surely have to mend my ways now.”

  He was holding one of her hands lightly. His other hand maintained its fragile touch on her cheek. His smile was mocking, but as if out of habit, something left over from some other mood.

  The door buzzer made them both jump. He tossed the kitchen towel into the air. “Ash and Thorn, I hate that thing,” he muttered, and disappeared into the kitchen again.

  “Hello?” she said into the speaker.

  “Hullo. Should I have called first?”

  A tingle shot along her skin. Even rendered up by the intercom speaker, Willy Silver’s voice was rich as chocolate, full of music. “You did, this morning. C’mon up.” She unlocked the downstairs door.

  There was silence in the kitchen. “Phouka?” she said, and realized from the feel of it on her lips that she’d never called out to him before.

  After a moment, he came to the kitchen door. “Mmm?”

  They stared at each other. “Nothing,” Eddi mumbled.

  He grinned ruefully and raked a hand through his hair. “If you’re wondering what to do with me, don’t fret, my sweet. I’ll be discreetly absent when you get home.”

  “That’s . . . I wasn’t thinking that.”

  The knock came at the door, and Eddi opened it.

  “Good evening,” Willy said, a little shy. The hall lights gleamed in his black hair, fired an uncanny glow in his eyes.

  “Come on in,” she smiled at him. Willy smiled back. It made her dizzy.

  The phouka was still standing in the kitchen door, but Willy seemed to ignore him. For a moment Eddi wondered if he’d made himself invisible.

  “Any objection to First Avenue?” Willy asked her.

  “Who’s playing?”

  He shrugged, making it an elegant gesture. “It’s danceteria in the main room, but Summer of Love is playing downstairs in the Entry.”

  “Good choice.” Her gaze slid self-consciously to the phouka.

  Willy looked at him for the first time. “How’s it going?” he said, friendly but distant.

  “Fine. Want to do a few dishes?”

  “Silly ass,” Eddi laughed. Then she noticed Willy’s measuring look. “He’s a go
od friend,” she told Willy, and wondered why she felt she should tell him anything.

  Her words provoked another exchange of looks between Willy and the phouka, none of them decipherable. “I am, in fact, an excellent friend,” the phouka said. “And you?”

  “Good enough,” Willy replied.

  Eddi looked nervously from one to the other. “Urn . . . we should go.”

  The phouka held the door for them. “Don’t stay out too late, chil­dren.”

  “Right, Pop,” said Eddi, and led the way out the door. But once Willy was in the hall, she stuck her head back into the apartment and glared at the phouka. “You’ll get yours,” she hissed.

  The phouka smiled. “I certainly hope so.”

  Eddi blushed and slammed the door.

  chapter 8 – Lucky Girl

  Eddi breathed the night air, savoring the smell of damp earth and bark, the satiny texture and temperature of the breeze. “Ye gods, are we really going to have spring this year? It’s not just a tease?”

  Willy laughed, a sound like some well-played wind instrument. “You’d think it never happened.”

  “You must be new in town,” Eddi said.

  “Relatively.”

  “I thought so. If you’d been playing guitar like that around here, surely I would have heard.”

  Willy made a little dismissing motion with his hands. In anyone else, Eddi would have thought it nervous. “I played a lot back East.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “All over.”

  Eddi raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t we all.”

  He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s complex—and a little tense, I guess. My family’s British, but I was born here.”

  “In Minnesota?”

  He shook his head. “Western Virginia. But I left when I was young and did a lot of traveling.” He fell silent for a moment, then added, “I’m the family oddball, you see. Not a black sheep, I haven’t done anything dreadful. They just don’t know what to do with me, exactly.” He shrugged and gave a wistful little grimace. Then he turned his face away, his eyes on the darkening sky over the rooftops.

  “I grew up in Winnipeg,” Eddi offered in trade. “Moved here with my mother when my parents divorced, went to the U of M—where I met Carla—dropped out at the end of my third year, and been rock ‘n’ rolling ever since.”

  “Your mother still live here?”

  Eddi shook her head. “She’s out in Washington state, living in a cabin and being a forester.” She made a face at Willy. “Why am I telling you all this?”

  “ ‘Cause I like to know,” he said, and his smile made her skin tickle. “So no other family here? No brothers or sisters?”

  “No. My brother stayed with my dad in Canada.”

  Willy nodded, as if this made some sort of sense independent of the words themselves. Eddi took advantage of his distraction to study him again. He looked elegantly underdressed in black pleated trousers, a black-and-white Art Deco print shirt, and a black chalkstripe vest, which he wore unbuttoned. His black leather jacket hung over one shoulder. His hair was rumpled and slightly damp, as if just washed, and Eddi caught an herbal-soap scent, rosemary and elder-flowers, when he shook his head.

  “So,” Willy said, “why no spring?”

  “What? Oh! We just don’t.”

  “Everybody has spring,” he said, like a religious man chiding her for saying there was no God.

  “The joke goes that we have two seasons: road repair and snow removal. Or is that snow repair and road removal?” To her surprise, he looked a little shocked. “Well,” she amended quickly, “it’s not al­ways true. Sometimes they run out of money for snow removal.”

  They were walking north toward downtown. Willy eyed the fea­tureless backside of the Hyatt-Regency Hotel and said, “That’s the kind of thinking that leads to buildings with windows that don’t open.”

  If it did, Eddi decided it must be by a circuitous route. She studied his preoccupied expression. “Is something bothering you?”

  A frown flew across his face and was gone: the apologetic grin that followed almost made her forget it. “Not exactly. And nothing to do with you. It’s”—his smile took on an ironic cast—“sort of a family problem.”

  “Does that translate as, ‘None of your business?’ ”

  Willy seemed to find this uncommonly funny. “Sort of,” he said at last.

  Eddi stared at him, wondering what to say. She knew she should be annoyed, and even had a vague notion that she was. But it seemed—inappropriate? “All right,” she sighed. “I won’t ask.”

  He caught her hand. “Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said, rueful and coaxing. Light caught in one of his eyes, edging the iris with pale green fire. The laughter melted from his face as he looked at her. The intensity that fascinated her so seemed to shine from him like candlelight through alabaster.

  “You’re very beautiful,” he said softly.

  That was confusing; she knew she wasn’t. She shook her head.

  “You don’t believe me? For shame.”

  As a relief from his eyes, she looked down at the hands that held hers—long and pale, smooth, pleasantly cool, with neatly trimmed nails. Stuart had bitten his fingernails.

  He raised her head with a finger under her chin, then put both hands around her waist and drew her close. He kissed her as if in­tending to burn the caution out of her.

  She stepped back after a few moments and laughed shakily. “Do that again and you’ll have to carry me downtown. That does funny things to my knees.”

  He laughed, and tucked her arm into his own.

  They crossed over to Hennepin Avenue on Tenth Street. Hennepin was still changing from its daytime clothes to evening ones, from office bustle to party strut. Men and women in suits waited for buses that sucked them in and deposited suburban high school kids, dressed for Friday night, in their places.

  Willy stopped in front of the painted scenic windows of the Rhine-haus. “Dinner?”

  “This is a little steeper than I had in mind.”

  “I’m buying tonight, so it’s my pick. German food.” He held the door for her, and gave a little bow, which made her laugh. It also, annoyingly enough, reminded her of the phouka in one of his courtly moods.

  “Something wrong?” Willy asked.

  “No, why?”

  “You frowned.”

  Eddi shrugged. “Just thinking about—my friend. Back at my apart­ment.”

  “Mmm.”

  The Rhinehaus was atmospherically gloomy. Hurricane candles quivered in their jars, isolating each heavy pine table in its own pool of uncertain light. The corners of the room disappeared, and the few clearly seen details took on the fascination of objets d’art. A painted-glass picture of a stag and hounds seemed to billow like a tapestry; an ornate cuckoo clock seemed as full of fluttering as a pine tree sheltering a flock of sparrows. In the dark air redolent of wine and unfamiliar spices, thought itself was muted and mysterious, and all its sharp edges were planed down.

  They ordered things they’d never tried or never heard of, sausages with rich and silly names, hot salad, cold soup, bread as brown as the phouka’s skin. They debated the merits of beer and wine with the concentration of executives planning a corporate takeover. They chose mulled wine. The waiter brought it well before the food, and the smell itself seemed to fill Eddi’s head with a glimmering haze.

  Willy stretched a hand across the table and laid it over Eddi’s. She felt a pleasant nervous discomfort. “So,” he said softly, as befitted the dark room, “what about your friend?”

  She stared at him.

  “Back at your apartment,” he added helpfully.

  “Oh, the—right. What about him?”

  “That’s what I asked,” Willy said, looking patient. “Am I stepping on any toes? Should I expect a nasty scene?”

  Eddi wasn’t certain, given the phouka, that she could deny the pos­sibility of some kind of scene. Bu
t it wouldn’t be the sort that Willy meant. For a moment, she wondered if Willy cared whether she would be subjected to an ugly quarrel. That, however, was surely splitting hairs. “He’s a friend.”

  “An old one?”

  Eddi had a ridiculous itch to tell him the whole thing. She shrugged instead.

  “Just wondered. I mean, he does your dishes.”

  She felt an absurd irritation on the phouka’s behalf. “Remember the women’s movement? We don’t always have to do the dishes nowadays.”

  That made him laugh. “Okay, I was just making sure. Wouldn’t want him to gather his friends and go looking for me.”

  And his friends would amaze you. Eddie mentally assured him.

  They ordered linzer torte and coffee, and Eddi asked, “What are we going to name the band?”

  Willy winced and pushed both hands through his black hair. The white streak flashed between his fingers. “Dino Lessons,” he said fi­nally, grinning.

  “Good God—like dinosaur? Where’d you get that?”

  “Something I overheard.”

  “Well, I don’t think so. But it’s . . . arresting. How about Love and Rockets?” Eddi asked, thinking of titles in Carla’s comic book collec­tion.

  Willy shook his head. “Already used.”

  “Are you serious? Dirty rats. Gargoyles? No, too metal.”

  “Mmm. So’s Wages of Sin. I don’t know. I still like Free Beer.”

  “No,” Eddi said firmly. “The Sneakers?”

  “Too . . .” Willy made a graceful gesture with shoulders and hands. “. . . frivolous.”

  “Behavior Modification.”

  “I kinda like that. Long, though.”

  “Too long.” Eddi sighed. “And not quite it. Well, maybe something will come to us when we know what we sound like. Oh, did I tell you? Carla got us a job.”

  Willy looked impressed. “When?”

  “Good grief, I didn’t ask her. It’s at MCAD, though, for a student show and reception.”

  “MCAD?”

  “College of Art and Design. You’ll like it. And better still, they’ll like you.”

  “Well,” he said, “of course. Artists have taste and refinement.”