by Susan Conley
Annabelle looked at her expectant friends. Maria Grazia had set the scene for a good smoke-and-cry, and Lorna, tense as she normally was in such circumstances, had been unflaggingly stalwart in the taxi, and now sat on the couch as if awaiting orders.
“I don’t want a difference of opinion regarding my sanity to come between us,” Annabelle said, as she sat down next to Lorna. “I know that you guys love me, and I love you, and that’s that. If my Pooka trouble bothers you that much, then I won’t speak about it ever again. It’s about to resolve itself anyway. I’ll be taking her back to the auld sod after all.” Annabelle laughed. “Husband or no husband, I owe her, big time, after that little episode.”
“So you think it was … ” Maria Grazia trailed off.
“Husband?” Lorna croaked.
“Callie,” Annabelle supplied, ignoring Lorna. “Yeah, the dog’s eyes were hazel, it’s the only consistency between the shapes that she takes on. The eyes are always the same color.”
“And you think that she, um, put it into our heads that you were going to be in Manhattan today … ” Maria Grazia trailed off in confusion.
“I guess,” Annabelle replied and looked at Lorna, who was scowling.
“I don’t like that bit,” she grumbled, “Running around, putting thoughts into people’s heads!”
“You should have seen my face when she stole my favorite toothbrush.”
“And what husband?” Lorna looked revolted.
“Can we talk about that some other time?” Annabelle closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the couch. A companionable silence fell. She wondered if she was going to cry, to burst into tears at any moment. She sat still, waiting for the deluge, and Maria Grazia eyed her sympathetically.
“So? How are you feeling?” MG asked.
Annabelle paused, gave it some thought. “I feel like shit, mostly. I feel like … ” she shook her head as she searched for the words. “I feel bad, but it’s a transitory kind of bad. I feel like an idiot — I don’t think Wilson is impulsive enough to get engaged to someone he’d only been with for two months.”
“Who was that bitch?” spat Lorna.
“An old childhood friend. So they had history, in any case.” Her voice wobbled, and a few tears gathered in her eyes. “Oh, that hurt. That hurt a lot. Did you see the size of that rock? Ow, ow, ow — “ Lorna reached over and clutched Annabelle’s hand. “It hurt because I had wanted it to be me, because I thought I wanted to marry him. And in the middle of me thinking all those things, he was already replacing me before he’d even unloaded me. Tea?” She jumped up from the couch and began grabbing mugs, heating water, and busying herself in general as the hurt she was feeling was rapidly turning into anger. She paused with her back to her friends.
“I stood there, where Maria Grazia is, I stood there and let him dump me, no explanations, no excuses, no illumination — I stood there and took it. I was so shocked, he got to walk out that door, mission accomplished, free and clear. I was so out of it, I was so stunned, that he didn’t have to explain himself in any way, and that is really pissing me off right now.”
The kettle whistled, and Annabelle sloshed hot water over the random tea bags she’d tossed into the mugs. She haphazardly handed them around, and almost tipped Lorna’s into her lap as she fell onto the couch once more.
“Any questions or comments at this juncture?” Annabelle looked at her unusually silent pals.
Maria Grazia and Lorna exchanged a look, and Maria Grazia cleared her throat. “So I was gonna apologize, before the Wilson sighting,” she said, “And I was gonna basically reiterate everything that you had pointed out to us, with our agreement that you are probably right, that Lorna and I have been slightly more focused on your love life than was entirely healthy. And that I should mind my own business, and I know better. I know! But I love you, and I couldn’t help it.” She sniffled.
“You’re a big girl now,” Lorna added. “And I apologize for interfering with you and Monet.”
Annabelle leaned over and air kissed Lorna’s nearest cheek, and got up to give an emotional Maria Grazia a big hug. “Thanks, guys. I apologize for making you let me read your cards, and your palms, and anything else I haven’t remembered that I tried to make you do.”
“There was that spate of reiki you were giving out,” offered Maria Grazia.
“And the time you tried to secretly feng shui my apartment,” added Lorna. “And remember that time you shoved all those herbs into my pocketbook before I went on my interview with Matrix?” asked Lorna.
“And that whole color therapy thing with the little bottles of oils that you gave us for Christmas?” chirped Maria Grazia.
“Okay, okay!” Annabelle laughed. “No more alternative therapies unless I’m asked.”
“Are you really okay?” Maria Grazia sat down on a chair, finally relaxing.
“I guess. I’d already let him go,” Annabelle said, “And although I can’t deny that the sight of him happy infuriates me, much less the sight of him with his fiancée, I’m much better than I was than the last time you all were here. I’m better than I have been in years.”
“That is frickin’ fantastic, Belle,” said Maria Grazia, welling up a bit. “We need to frickin’ celebrate!”
“It would be nice to toast this with some truly superior champagne,” Lorna agreed.
Annabelle laughed, and on instinct, said, “Check the fridge. You never know.”
Lorna got up and tugged open the door. “Well, well, well.” She withdrew a magnum of Dom Perignon. “Too bad about that smell of fish. And what’s this?” She took out a striped ball and tossed it to Annabelle, who caught it and laughed.
“It’s a gentle reminder.”
Maria Grazia popped the cork, and Annabelle dug out a few glasses. They stood, and raised their glasses, and simultaneously toasted, “To us!” As they took their first sips, a deluge of metallic confetti, silver and gold, fluttered down from the ceiling, exuding their own light and flashing as they floated around the room. Annabelle merely smiled as Maria Grazia shouted inarticulately with joy, and both of them gaped in surprise as Lorna sat down hard on the sofa and burst into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Keeping it loose was one thing, but ringing Annabelle about coming to meet his aunt when he was just about to meet her was another. He didn’t know why he had left it so late, except he had been getting nervous about hearing from Ireland about the commission, and he had really got stuck into his paintings, and he had to help install Kelli’s feckin’s panels … I’m not making excuses, he told himself indignantly. It’s just the way things worked out.
He eyed the disused storefront as he waited for Annabelle to pick up. Sure, she was a busy woman herself, she might not even be around, and he hoped that feckin’ Maeve wasn’t going to stand him up this time. She might really be out somewhere hugging trees, or liberating dolphins, or dancing down the moon —
“Hello? Hello!” Annabelle’s voice went from inquiring to indignant.
“Howaya, it’s Jamie. I was taking a page from your book, off on some mental side trip.”
“And you didn’t even think to send a postcard.”
“You sound like the aunt, who, oddly enough, I am just waiting to meet right now. Did you want to come meet her, or … ” he trailed off lamely. Right, he thought. This is the last person in the world to ring about something last minute.
“I can’t.” Well, at least she sounded chagrined. “I have to go interview Damien Hirst.”
“Oh. Wow. Too bad. I mean, that’s cool … ”
“Left it a bit late, didn’t you?” Annabelle asked, and Jamie winced. “Listen, I was a kind of wary of meeting a relative at this point, anyway,” she went on. “Regardless of the fact that it was more like a business discussion.”
“Fair
enough, fair enough,” Jamie agreed. “Sorry.”
“No sweat.” There was a burst of siren-blare, and then she was back. “So. Are you on for the big pre-show cast bonding party?”
“Yeah, deffo. Em. So. Will I meet you there, or come collect you, or what?”
“How about ‘or what’?” Annabelle laughed. “I intend to make an entrance. Try to be on time.” She hung up, and Jamie put his phone in his pocket.
How’d she known that he was punctually challenged? And wasn’t he already half an hour late for Maeve?
Who really should be able to predict such behavior, in fairness.
He loped up Thirtieth Street, again — and again, not sure what he was doing there. Didn’t Maeve still have the flat — apartment — in Morningside Heights? Ah, sure, no matter: he was happy enough to be out and about in the fresh air, several big refinishing and retouching jobs sorted, and … and. And! And a gorgeous girl roaming about the edges of his mind, skipping in and out of his thoughts, moving in closer and closer, and hopefully, by Saturday night, moving in for the —
“You’re hopeless! Hopeless!” Maeve seemed to appear out of thin air to shriek up at Jamie, who, in normal circumstances, would have defended himself strenuously, if dishonestly, but the sight of his aunt was enough to smack his gob completely.
Her long black hair was nominally caught up in a braid, with hanks of it flying round her face. The face itself was looking gaunt, and as she was no more than a wisp of a woman, she couldn’t afford the loss of weight. If she had indeed dropped a stone or two, Jamie had no way of telling, as she was wrapped from throat to toe in a long black cloak.
“All right, missus?” Jamie inquired, worried, reaching out to brush the hair from her face.
She slapped his hand away. “You’ll be late for your own funeral!” she roared, and raced around him to dart up the street.
“What the? Auntie Maeve! Aunti — ” There was nothing for it but to chase after her, and try to take the case she was lugging off her hands.
“Leave it, leave it!” she panted, looking wildly up the avenue for a taxi.
Her panic was infectious, and Jamie felt his breath catch in his chest. “What is it? Where are you going? Home? Jesus, is it Da? Nobody rang me, it can’t be — ”
“It’s nothing to do with the humans,” Maeve muttered. “Not something you modern Irish folk want getting around, if you take my meaning.”
“C’mere, we’ll sit down, have a cuppa, we were meant to have a nice long visit, and here you are, getting all in a welter — ”
Maeve bashed him in the shins with her case. “I’ve no time for you now! You poxy late little bugger!” She thrust her hand in to one pocket after the next, as she ranted on. “The last Pooka has been made ready to help its human, and has been transfigured, and is entering its last phase, and we, the Flynns are implicated, and in fact, the only eligible fella of our line at this point in time is at the heart of it.” She scowled up at him hopefully.
“This is, er, kind of handy, as I wanted to ask you about a Pooka,” said Jamie gently, thanking God that Annabelle hadn’t come after all. “I mean, there’s this girl that has one, she says it’s only in the cupboards, ack!” He leant down to rub his other shin. What in the bloody hell had she packed in that case? “What? What’s wrong with ya?”
“You may be tardy, but you are not a complete simpleton.” Maeve thrust her small arm in the air and a taxi swerved across four lanes of traffic to slide to halt at her side. “Surely you recall those lovely, peaceful evenings round the fire, and the stories I’d tell ya ’til yees begged me to go on and on — ”
What Jamie recalled were dark shadows dancing on the walls, the rasp of Maeve’s voice as she scared the stuffing out of all the nieces and nephews with the tale of the Ban Sí that followed the Flynns and their kin through history, The Queen and her army of minions who exacted fierce pacts with his flesh and blood down the years, eons of mutual plotting and thwarting that were meant to culminate in the union of a Flynn and one of the Queen’s relations and —
“Here. I’ve no time for you now. I’ve got to be on the move.” She cast a quick look up and down the avenue, her green eyes deep with worry and what looked like sly amusement? Jamie couldn’t tell, she wouldn’t hold his gaze. She handily tossed the case that had just about broken his legs into the back of the cab, and thrust an envelope into his hands. “It’s all in there. All you need.” She reached up and cupped his face in her hands.
“Do not make a bollocks of this, you eejit.” And with that touching valediction, she nipped into the taxi and was off.
Jamie ran his fingers through his hair, and wandered off aimlessly. Every few feet he stopped, a realization just on the tip of his brain, and he’d stop, sure he’d retrieve the essence of what was troubling him — as if there wasn’t enough to be troubled by, fer feck’s sake! — when it occurred to him to open the envelope.
It was a short letter, a note, really, wrapped around keys. Jamie held them aloft, and a ray of sunshine seemed to dart straight out of the sky, illuminating them as Jamie’s mind flashed on that dream he’d had, the dream of the world’s most perfect studio in the back garden of —
“The house. In Dollymount,” he whispered, and opened that last fold of the note.
Maeve’s scrawl was recognizable, and as impatient as she had been in person.
“It’s time for you to do your job for the aul Queen, sure I only told you the story over and over when you were a wee fella. If you get all stubborn on me about this girl — you know who, that wee blonde one — I’ll kill ya. It’s very important!!!!! (This last was underlined emphatically twice.) Congratulations on the — (here was a thorough scratching out of text, and Jamie couldn’t read it) — never mind, don’t want to give it all away. Do not make a mess of things, it’s the same class of stubbornness that made a mess of things in the first place, and you can be an awful pig-headed git. Love, Aunt Maeve.”
That ridiculous story. That fairy tale. He shook his head, and wandered back uptown. “Ah, sure, it’s only an aul’ piseog, anyway … ” And he trailed off again, an uncomfortable feeling welling up in the pit of his stomach, and he suddenly understood Annabelle’s quirky little hang up about not liking feeling as though she was being watched.
Annabelle. He scowled. Just how much did she know about this carry-on, and how much had she chosen not to tell him?
• • •
Annabelle backed up the Damien Hirst interview she’d managed to transcribe in record time. It had gone really, really well, and she’d loved every minute of it. She loved that she’d told him that she didn’t like his work, it was risky and crazy and could easily have been ill-advised, but he’d decided that it was simply a matter of education, and they had a true dialogue, a real conversation and she felt absolutely confident in what she was sure would be a fantastic piece.
She loved the way that the stats on her blog kept going up and up, she loved her little desk, she loved Brooklyn, she loved her career (she’d love it even more if she had an agent) and she loved her friends and the weather and the way Jamie —
Whoops. She called up a file she’d started, deciding to commit her mental list of her good qualities to virtual paper, just in case she ever forgot herself again … which she wouldn’t, but still. Since she’d begun paying attention, the list had grown, and it seemed like a useful exercise. Maybe she’d write a self-help book about this after she’d done the Pooka handbook. Annabelle stopped, and looked around the living room. No physical sign of Callie now for almost a week.
Now too depressed to do up her list, she shut down the computer and fired up another batch of sage. She was choking with the stuff, but she was really worried, especially as she’d admitted defeat and was going to bring her Pooka back wherever she wanted to go.
“Did you hear that?” Annabelle said. “I said I�
��ll take you to Ireland!”
Silence. Perversely, she missed the annoying, pushy, troublemaking thing. It’s amazing, she thought, what a person can get used to.
“I’m going to try to book a ticket this week. There’s still a bit of time.” She went over to her Filofax to check off the days as she nattered away. “Kelli is throwing a pre-show cast bonding party this Friday. She’s still conspiring, about me and Jamie, even though she doesn’t have to. I should let her know. I know she has money to burn, but she’s not doing this party just to — ” She lost track of her counting and started over. It was approximate at best, anyway, it wasn’t like she’d made a notation, ‘Pooka demands to be returned to Ireland five weeks from now’.
“I’m going to wear the red dress. I’m going to kiss him.” She giggled like a teenager. “This whole thing is so ridiculous, but it’s really fun, too. Where are you? If you’ve gone, then it’s really rude of you not to have let me know. Thanks for the confetti — I saved a bit of it, I hope that’s okay.”
No response. “If you’ve gone on holiday, the least you could have done was — ”
A postcard fluttered to the floor at Annabelle’s feet.
“See? How much trouble was that?” She picked it up, a rather moody shot of the Cliffs of Moher in the driving rain, and flipped it over.
TEN DAYS TO GO.
Damn it! “Are you sure?” Silence. “You’d know better than anybody, I guess.” Annabelle rose and stuck the ominous message on the fridge with a magnet, and shrugged. “So, I just kiss Jamie on Saturday night. How hard is that going to be?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“So?” Lorna asked.
Annabelle looked up from her plate. At least when Lorna had lunch in, she had it in style. None of this eating out of a clear plastic deli box: a tablecloth had been produced and employed, and proper utensils and cloth napkins rounded off the illusion that they weren’t actually pathetic people sitting in an office eating at a desk.
