“Curiouser isn’t a word.”
They stood for a moment, facing each other.
“Goodnight,” he said, and a minute later she could hear him climbing the ladder into the loft.
13
“Okay,” Paul said. “Here’s the deal.”
Two weeks had passed. The power had come on at Libby’s. Her car had been freed from the tree and towed to a lot behind a local body shop so an insurance adjuster could pronounce it officially totaled. She was driving a rental now.
She’d said goodbye to Dean and hadn’t seen him since.
So things were back to normal.
Now she was sitting across from Paul and his nachos appetizer, and he was preparing to pronounce the fate of Skin Tones.
“You liked the last issue though, right?”
“Oh yeah.” He scooped up a glob of melted cheese with a tortilla chip that was almost too big across for his mouth, but not quite. He chewed and swallowed and said, “We’re keeping the same name. Same format—everything.”
“Same everything?”
“Well, except instead of stories about sick people getting better, it’ll be stories about old peop—aging people getting better.”
Libby sighed. But it was a quiet sigh. She’d pretty much expected this, and since Paul was, technically, her boss on Skin Tones—off with the boyfriend hat, on with the boss’s—she had to act . . . you know, accommodating. Client is always right, all that stuff. “Does Dormet have the contacts—customers I can interview?”
“Oh yeah. They have a rocking customer database.” He angled another nacho into his mouth with one hand and caught a falling slice of jalapeno pepper in the other just before it hit his plate.
The server walked up and slid their entrées onto the table.
“Well, just tell me who to interview. And what your deadline is.”
“You should be happy about this, you know,” he said. “I was kind of worried they’d make it a glorified sales letter. But they got it—the whole concept.”
“Thanks for doing this.”
“Yeah,” he said, and took a bite of steak.
♦ ♦ ♦
It was a Saturday night, so they’d met at Paul’s condo and taken his car to the restaurant. They talked about going to a club after dinner, but Libby found herself unable to get enthused about the idea. Maybe she just didn’t want to stay up very late. And it’s not like there was a band in town either of them was dying to see. So they ended up driving back to Paul’s place instead.
“How d’you like the rental car?” They were standing on the sidewalk, because Paul’s condo is in a converted mansion. There’s only room enough for one car per tenant in the driveway, so his guests have to park on the street.
“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s not a Toyota.”
“Well, at least you didn’t owe anything on it.”
“I had two payments left.”
“That’s nothing. Dinner tomorrow night?” He put his arms around her.
She shook her head. “Probably not. I have some stuff I need to get done.”
“Do it during the day.”
“Have a newsletter to get out, too.”
“What kind of stuff?”
She still hadn’t told Paul about the business with the little man, of course. Which made two things she hadn’t bothered mentioning to Paul, counting that her neighbor had by the way kissed her and kind of like he meant it. “I have a ton of paperwork to do, to get this certification thing started.”
He must have been thinking about something else, because he didn’t press it. “Come in with me for awhile?”
But she wanted to get home. The truth was, she needed a little space right now. She wanted to be able to focus on everything that was going on in her life without the added strain of having to hide things—temporarily, of course—from Paul.
“Lemme take a rain check, okay? I’d kind of like to get a good night’s sleep and . . . you know. Have a fresh start. All that paperwork—”
He looked disappointed but they necked awhile leaned up against her rental, and then he seemed okay, so she got in and headed home.
She thought about the little man as she drove and felt her heart rate pick up because she had decided what she was going to do about him. She’d decided she was going to see what would happen if she sought him out on purpose.
♦ ♦ ♦
She spent the next day filling out forms about her property, the paperwork she needed to do to start the organic certification process. She had to draw up maps to show where she was going to plant, and how the adjacent land was being used. She had to answer questions about whether she might get hit by industrial run-off or drift from crop dusters. She had to document where she was buying her seed and what sort of fertilizer and pest control she planned to use.
She finally finished late afternoon, and then she had to go into town and make photocopies and mail off the originals.
Then finally, after supper, she was ready for the second item on her to-do list.
She put on a sweatshirt and picked out a blanket and went downstairs.
Maisey and Tyler were curled up on the couch watching TV.
She reheated some decaf and poured it into a Thermos. Then she told the kids she was going for a walk and she’d be back in a little bit.
Outside, she grabbed one of the old boat cushions that was hanging in the shed. Walked up back. Picked a spot near where she’d seen the little man the second time, sat down, and made herself as comfortable as she could.
On the one hand, yeah, she was a little sorry she’d told Dean about her little man. It would serve her right, she figured, if he blabbed it around town and she ended up labeled That Crazy Lady Up On the Hill. But she also had to admit his response had been helpful. There was no real reason for her to be afraid. The best thing was to face this thing head-on. Go out and look for him, ask him what he wanted of her.
And Dean—a man that taciturn, what were the odds that he was a blabberer? Not very high. Which is why, of course, she’d felt comfortable opening up to him in the first place. It didn’t have anything to do with . . . anything else.
She poured some decaf into the Thermos cap. Of course, now that she’d decided to look for the little man, he was nowhere to be found. She chalked it up to a “facing your fears” kind of deal. You decide not to run away anymore, and the scary thing disappears. Which in some ways would be a relief. Maybe now that she had decided not to resist the experience, it would never happen again.
Good deal, she thought. She’d be pretty happy if it worked out that way.
♦ ♦ ♦
The sun had gone down quite awhile ago. The sky overhead was a deep royal blue, the air smelled damp and earthy.
The coffee was all gone, and she started to feel chilly and a bit stiff. Nothing had happened. She’d been waiting a good hour and a half.
She picked up her things and started back down the hill.
But she hadn’t gone ten paces when a voice said, “Been waiting long?”
Only it wasn’t a man’s voice. It was a woman’s. Sort of. Kind of reedy, but not as low-pitched as the other’s had been.
Libby looked intently in the direction of the voice, but she couldn’t see anything.
She took a deep breath to try to calm her hammering heart.
“Who’s there? Where are you?”
But there wasn’t any answer.
The sky was darker now, setting off the half-moon and next to it Venus, dangling in the southwest sky just above the treeline.
Libby plunked her cushion back down on the ground again and sat on it, pulling the blanket back around her shoulders. And waited some more.
The chill stopped bothering her for some reason, and she supposed maybe she became a little drowsy. Then all of a sudden she realized someone was sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of her. And her first impression had been correct. It was a woman this time. Same size as the little man. Same sort of dark clothi
ng. Leggings, not a dress. But her face was softer and there was no beard.
“You’ve calmed down a bit,” the little woman remarked.
Libby had planned out what she was going to say. Over and over again, scripting and re-scripting in her head. And now, of course, remembered none of it. “Who are you?” she blurted out, instead.
Libby noticed she could see the little woman’s eyes quite well, despite the dark. She seemed to be studying Libby’s face very intently. Finally, she answered. “We,” she said, “are what you sometimes call ‘fairies.’”
Libby suppressed a groan.
“But you don’t have to think of us that way, if it bothers you so much.”
“I don’t see as I have much choice.”
The little woman stood up. “Things you see with your eyes can sometimes take different shapes. They are representations.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Doesn’t it?”
She didn’t exactly disappear—she didn’t dissolve, or blink off like, say, Elizabeth Montgomery’s mother in Bewitched. But Libby didn’t see her walk away, either. It was more like the night became a little bit thicker and she could no longer make out the little person’s form enfolded within the darkness.
She waited a little while longer, but nothing else happened, so she gathered her things and went back down to the house.
14
It was spring. Time to plow. Only turns out, it took longer to pick a spot to plow than to actually plow it.
That’s because Al Butterman had different ideas about where to plow than Libby did.
Al ran a thirty-head dairy farm a mile up the road. He was in his 60s and Libby could tell he thought she was bonkers to try to do vegetables on the Stowe place. But apparently not “there’s no helping her bonkers” because he still offered opinions on how she should go about it, apparently thinking maybe he could at least save her from complete and total ruin.
His first piece of advice was that she should plant close to the road on the northernmost boundary of her property. To make it easier to load your produce, he said.
But she wanted to start things closer to her house. She had no good reason for this, she admitted to herself. She just liked the idea of it being closer to her, to where she slept. Under her wings.
So Al gave up and drove his tractor to the field closest to her house.
Then they discussed what part of that field he should plow. He thought all of it, then she could plant anywhere she wanted. But she didn’t want to expose topsoil needlessly and then let it sit—that’s a no-no for organic growing, you risk erosion, and nutrients will leach from your soil. “Better get it mown, then, if you’re not going to plow it,” he warned. “You’ll have trees growing here next year if you don’t.”
She noticed that her hands were clenched slightly and reminded herself to relax. She’d worry about baby trees some other time. “It gets the most sun up there,” she said, pointing to the highest part of the field.
“Soil will be better down there,” Al answered, tipping his head in the other direction.
Stand up for yourself, Libby. “All the same, if you don’t mind, I want to try that spot this year.”
So he plowed where she wanted him to plow. Charged her twenty dollars, which probably didn’t cover his fuel, considering how long his tractor had idled while they argued.
Then afterward he threaded the tractor back through the break in the hedgerows and she listened to it mutter away down the road toward his place, and she stood looking at the spot he’d plowed, smelling the newly-turned earth.
And for the first time, it seemed real. That she was really doing it, starting a farm, starting her new life.
♦ ♦ ♦
“So did you decide what you’re going to plant?” Maisey asked.
Libby was sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by seed catalogues. “Yeah,” she said. “Lots of things. But to start, mostly tatsoi.”
“Huh?”
“It’s an oriental green—it’s like bok choy, only the leaves are smaller.”
“Picture.” That was a request. Libby tossed over a Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalogue.
“In there, somewhere.”
“Mom and her squeeze are growing pineapples.”
“Oh, really?” Libby hadn’t realized her sister’s “business venture” was an agribusiness.
“Yup. He’s got some new kind of pineapple he invented. It’s called ‘honeyham.’”
Honeyham? What, a salty pineapple? Or pink, perhaps? Nitrates sold separately? “What do you mean, ‘invented’?”
“He, like, crossed one kind of pineapple with another kind, or something. Well, more than once.”
So he’d bred it. “Is he from Hawaii, then?”
“Yeah. He’s not a native, though. Mom thinks he went there to dodge the draft or something.”
“What draft?”
“He’s old.”
Viet Nam, then. “Ah.” Hawaii. Just like Canada. Only tropical.
Libby leafed through another catalogue, thinking about Gina and her boyfriend and that she really needed to forget about Gina and her boyfriend and get her seed order in.
Oh, all right. She was annoyed.
For no good reason, of course. There’s plenty of room in the world for both Gina and Libby to grow a bit of produce.
Libby rubbed her temples and reminded herself to relax her jaw. Libby got headaches sometimes if she clenched her jaw too much.
If it turned out Gina’s boyfriend was rich and she was now living in an island paradise, Libby was going to be seriously pissed off. And not because she wanted a rich boyfriend and an island paradise, either. But running a farm was her dream, not Gina’s.
Trust Gina to step through an easy door into something Libby wanted but had to struggle to get. Gina was the sort of person who could leave her car parked on top of a fire hydrant for six months and never get a ticket. While meanwhile, if Libby so much as glanced at a handicapped-only parking sign, a SWAT team would rappel down a nearby skyscraper, yank her out of her car, and throw her to the ground in handcuffs.
Tyler walked into the living room and handed Maisey her breakfast. It looked like it was supposed to be an omelet. But had turned out more like something he’d scraped off a tire. But Maisey smiled sweetly and said, “Mmmm” and he smiled back, and then returned to the kitchen. To scrape another tire for himself, presumably.
“Hey, Aunt Libby, you ever hear from that Carhartt guy?”
Libby flipped to the next page of her catalogue and looked at a description of a pie pumpkin. She’d picked Tatsoi because it was a fast maturer, something she could harvest relatively early in the season. But she’d also have to pick some things to plant that would be ready for harvesting later on. “No . . . why should I?”
“Well you were living with him! For, like, over a week!”
Libby shrugged casually. “So?”
Maisey giggled. Prurient fascination with her aunt’s personal life, Libby guessed. “Why does he live like that—all alone in the woods, like that?”
“I have no idea.” Maybe she’d wait on ordering pumpkin seeds . . .
Maisey took a bite of toast. “So what’s Paul think of you moving in with a stra-ange man like that?” Drawing out the word strange to make Dean sound stranger. “He knows that’s where you were staying, right?”
“Of course,” Libby said smoothly. She was going to add, “I would never hide anything from Paul,” but she started re-stacking her catalogues instead.
“He’s probably some sort of Ted Kaczynski type,” Maisey said. Tyler walked in and Maisey moved down one couch cushion to make room for him. “He’s probably holed up writing a manifesto about the evils of society, about how corporations are stealing our souls—”
“I thought you figured he was hiding out because of a broken heart?” Tyler mumbled through a mouthful of food.
“Corporations do not steal peoples’ souls.” Libby pushed t
he catalogs into their storage spot, on the floor under an end table, and carefully re-straightened the stack. “They buy souls, not steal them. And not all corporations even do that. Which you’d know, if you actually had a job.”
That last observation had no visible impact. Maisey received a monthly allowance from her father. Small by adult standards, riches beyond measure to a nineteen-year-old. Or anyway, enough that she saw no real reason to work.
“Ty and I are going to go visit him, aren’t we, Ty?”
Libby reversed herself and returned quickly to the living room. “Visit who?”
“Ted. The Carhartt guy.”
“Ted? You mean Dean? His name is Dean. You can’t visit him.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t want visitors.” But she wondered, when she said that, if it were really true. Or if he was, behind that wall of solitude he’d built up, secretly wishing someone would drop by. Did he ever wish maybe Libby would drop by . . .
“I want to see Bo.”
“You can’t just—you can’t just drop in on people. You need to be invited.”
“He’s a neighbor. We have to be neighborly. And I want to see his cabin. I love log cabins.”
Argh.
But what could Libby do? If she kicked up a serious fuss, it would seem . . . odd. Whereas if she dropped it quietly, chances were Maisey would forget about it. It’s not like the kid had a record-breaking attention span.
“Suit yourself,” Libby muttered and retreated to her office.
And mulled, sitting at her computer. She didn’t like this—this mixing of two worlds. Which was how she’d come to think of it. Her life had been so disrupted lately. Ever since the separation, really. And then the move, and the ice storm . . . sleeping on Dean’s couch—which in a way had lasted almost long enough to start feeling normal. And then NYPRG restored her electricity, and just like that she was back in her house, watching a plumber solder a new section of pipe into place in the basement, checking her email, talking to Paul on the phone—the old new normal, back again.
She’d never had two normals before. So that took getting used to.
When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae Page 7
