That Magic Mischief (17 page)

Nose to nose, eye to eye, the sound in the manically busy theater seemed to fade, and Annabelle thought,
Why not kiss him right now? That’d definitely send him running for the door and put an end to all this machination and manipulation and, and, then I’ll know for sure whether or not he was any good at kissing and —

“Looks like I’m throwing myself at you as well
,
” he murmured, and Annabelle stared at him as he stared at her mouth. She took a deep breath and moved back a fraction. Holding up the tickets, she raised an eyebrow. “J7 or J9?”

“J9. ‘I’m feelin’ lucky.’”

“Pacino?” Annabelle wondered aloud. “Or Ned Flanders?”

“Missus, you’ve no thought to my ego at all.” Jamie plucked a ticket out of her hand without looking, grinning down at her, his gaze lingering on her mouth, and Annabelle — Annabelle swept by him into the row of seats with what she was sure was aplomb.
I can handle this,
she thought, and then almost tripped over her own feet when Jamie laid his hand on the small of her back.

• • •

‘Johan Und Johannes’, a deconstructionist mime/dance/musical that purported to dramatize the history of Gutenberg’s movable type with a nod to queer theory, was reaching its climax: as the two main actors sung their last exchange with one another, one symbolically in jail via marriage, and the other actually in jail for what had once been termed ‘gross indecencies’, twenty-six mimes, each representing an individual letter of the alphabet, threw themselves around the stage to compose some of the more provocative and significant words. That there was a deficiency of vowels didn’t seem to noticeably detract from the overall effect. Annabelle had hand to them, for despite the overall mimic element of ‘pretending to be in a box’, the music was quite beautiful, and the setting evocative and spare. It was sophisticated if a little self-conscious, and at seventy-five minutes straight through, vigorous yet thorough. Annabelle heaved a little sigh of relief. It made her job that much easier.

As she and Jamie reluctantly joined in the rapturous standing ovation, whatever irritation Annabelle felt with her friends passed. What was the point of staying mad? They meant well, and, as all her books told her, whether witchy, self-help-y, or otherwise, nobody could make her doing anything she didn’t want to do; nobody but her dear departed plant, the thought of whose passing making her sigh as the stage lights went to black, and the house lights rose.

“Sorry it’s over?” Jamie leaned over and shouted in her ear over the continuing applause.

“Huh? Oh, well, it wasn’t that bad, was it? Thank God. I really don’t like to write bad reviews. I mean, I write excellent reviews, but I don’t like to — you know what I mean.” Annabelle sighed. “No, I had a plant, and I think it died before I left the house.”

“Like, it just keeled straight over? Plants usually take their time about dying.”

Annabelle shook her head. “This wasn’t an ordinary plant.”

They filed out with the rest of the audience, the majority of whom were openly enthusing about the show.

“That really was kind of okay.”

Jamie nodded. “I don’t know why Kelli had me come to see the set, sure, there was none to speak of … ”

An awkward silence as the penny dropped, and Annabelle started folding and unfolding her program. Should they go for a quick drink? Would he ask for her number? Would she ask for his? What difference did it make — did it make a difference all of a sudden? Oh
God
— this wasn’t happening … was it?

“What?” she blinked and looked up at Jamie. Apparently, in the midst of asking herself questions, Jamie had posed one of his own.

“Are you off? Now?” He repeated.

“Um. I have to write this up, file it. I kind of need to do it right away, and I never go out after, people always want to talk about the show, which is natural, of course, but I can’t risk, you know, not having my own … thoughts.”

“Right. Okay, Well — nice seeing you, even it was under imposed circumstances.” He took a step back, stopped, stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Not so bad, really, after all,” Annabelle said “And not your fault, or anything.”
Damn him with faint praise, why don’t you.

“Okay, so. Good luck with the review.” He took his hands out of his pockets. Put them back in. “Have a nice, uh, Saturday night.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Two matching, searching grins later, and Jamie was out the door, and Annabelle was feeling slightly forlorn.
Damn it,
she thought. What happened to all that righteous indignation? Where had all that high dudgeon gone? How had The Irish Guy gotten under her skin? What difference did it make? Why did she feel like she’d blown it?

At four
A.M.
, after blindly stumbling to the bathroom, Annabelle stumbled out again, slightly less blindly, awake enough to take in the state of her practically dead hazelnut plant. Blinking rapidly, trying to focus, her head throbbing, she was shocked to see that the huge bloom was now one-tenth its original size, and that the stalk was so weak that it couldn’t even support the bloom’s diminished weight. The plant hung limply over the left side of the pot, like a rag doll.

The rush of regret that Annabelle experienced seemed excessive, given that all of her energy since encountering the nut had to do with getting rid of the damn thing. Was it too late for her to administer a blast of reiki? She placed her hands on either side of the pot, cupping it gently, but it was so frigidly cold that she pulled her hands away in surprise. Damn it, she thought. Freezing cold, cold as the grave? “Oh no. I’m not going to cry, am I, not over
this
?”

She reached out — then hesitated. In all this time, she’d only once touched the plant directly. “I wish there was something I could do for you.” She stroked the wilted stalk, and lightly touched a desiccated petal. “I wish I could help.”

Sadly, Annabelle shuffled back to her bedroom, and quietly shut the door.

At 4:07
A.M.
, the plant rose up one last time, and like a drowning man, slowly sunk beneath the surface of its soil.

At 4:08
A.M.
, the beautifully glazed and celtically decorated pot began to shake violently.

BANG!

At 4:08:01
A.M.
on Sunday morning, Annabelle shot out of the bed she’d only fallen back into seconds before. Her heart racing, her mind choosing ‘gas explosion’ to explain the noise, she fell onto the floor. She crawled to the door, and edged it open, not at all sure what to expect, pretty sure she should put on some sweat pants, definitely sure that Nosy Ned would come knocking any second now.

Still on her hands and knees, she crept forward. Would the oven be in pieces? Was the window in the ‘dining room’ shattered? Was there danger of suffocation, or something? Should she just crawl out the front window and run for the cops? What if the —

“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Annabelle shot to her feet and surveyed a disaster that had nothing to do with a gas stove, and everything to do with that flippin’ plant! Dirt covered everything — everything! — table and chairs, couch, coffee table, the dishes in the drain, the dishes in the sink, her
computer
, her filing cabinet, the fridge, the stove, the bookshelves. Mounds of muck lay on the floor, and Annabelle realized that every single book, framed photo, knick-knack and tchochke she owned had flown off every shelf and surface, landed on the floor, and gotten covered in soil.

Shards of pottery were scattered throughout the place, and she leaned down to pick one up. The remnants of a beautifully hand-drawn spiral was etched into the small piece of broken clay.

Her heart was no longer racing with fear — it now pounded like a high school marching band of anger. She threw the piece of clay in the general direction of its original resting place on her altar — now covered with a pile of grime — and stood frozen in place, quivering with rage, chest heaving with every furious breath.

“And I felt
sorry
for you?!” Annabelle roared. “You pain in the ass, trouble-making, frickin’ … nut! You made this mess!
You
clean it up!”

• • •

Six thirty-five
A.M.
Damn it! It was Sunday morning, the crack of dawn, and Annabelle was wide awake.
What a mess
, she thought.
What a literal mess.
Curled up under the covers, she willed herself to go back to sleep, but how was that supposed to happen when every single nerve ending she possessed was vibrating with the kind of tornado of emotions that required a pharmacist’s cocktail to soothe?

She got out from under the covers and tip-toed over to the door. Pressing her ear against it, she listened for … what? The sounds of a mystical cleaning crew putting her apartment to rights?
God damn it
, so much for a trip to the Met this afternoon, although a springtime Sunday was probably the single worst day to go to the museum. Not that it would make mopping up that mess out there any less irritating or arduous … She yanked open the bedroom door —

The room was so spotless, it shone. Annabelle closed the door, banged her head against it just to make sure she was awake, and opened it again.

Still clean — probably cleaner than it had ever been in since the building had been built. The hardwood floor gleamed as brightly as the mirror on the wall, and the sink had been scrubbed within an inch of its life. She could see herself in the oven door. Every key on her computer’s keyboard looked as though it had been spit-polished. Her altar, most importantly, seemed restored to its former state, and then some: it was spotless and gleaming in the dim light of the corner, and as Annabelle approached it, it appeared to be glowing with more than cleanliness.

Perched on the edge of the surface sat a small figure, seemingly composed of grey smoke and black shadows, wearing a long cloak. Its streaming locks waved as if stirred by a slight breeze and were emitting a glow, like the light of the full moon in winter. The only thing colorful about it were its piercing hazel eyes, eyes which crinkled at the corners with spiteful glee as Annabelle, shocked beyond belief, backed into the bathroom and shut the door.

“First things first,” Annabelle muttered aloud, and stuck her head under the faucet. The rush of freezing cold water did nothing to wipe out the image of that gnomish, spooky figure sitting in her front room. Repeated dunking in the ice-cold stream spewing into the sink did not wash away her panic.

Shaking the excess water out of her hair, she looked at herself in the mirror. Eyes wide with shock, the top of her head soaked with water, she poked her cheeks, her chin, her ears, to convince herself that she was actually awake. “Maybe I’m dreaming,” she whispered to her reflection. “Maybe this is just a dream.”

She rubbed her face and hair briskly with a hand towel and when she looked back up at the mirror, the reflection of a life-sized version of the figure from her altar appeared in the glass. “Oh, this isn’t a dream, chicken,” it said, its voice sounding like a combination of a whisper and an echo.

Annabelle ran out of the bathroom and back into the living room, and hid behind her little couch, leaning up against its back. She sat still and tried to take deep cleansing breaths, but her heart was pumping with such anxiety that she couldn’t seem to breathe deeper than her collarbones.

Okay. Okay. How to forestall an anxiety attack: ground yourself in your body. Annabelle made herself become aware of the coldness of the floor under her butt, of the scratchy fabric of the couch biting through her light T-shirt. Okay. Now name your surroundings. “My computer, my camera equipment, my bookshelves, my pictures, my books … ” Annabelle trailed off as she got a good look at her usually meticulously organized bookshelves. Not only were they completely out of alphabetical order, all the genres had been mixed up, and some of the books had been replaced upside down, or with the bindings facing
in
, toward the
back
… “I don’t believe this!” She leaped up and began to pull the volumes out by the armful.

“Yes, you do. Deep down, you believe this. Else I wouldn’t be here.”

Goosebumps erupted along Annabelle’s arms and legs. If this were a movie, the heroine would inevitably engage with the creature instead of doing the sensible thing, which would be to run out of the house.
Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille
, Annabelle thought giddily. Refusing to turn around, she strove for a light, conversational tone as she sorted her books into their proper order. “Maybe I do believe this. But did you have to make such a mess?”

The creature’s tone turned decidedly sulky. “I cleaned it up, didn’t I?”

“You made in the first place! So it doesn’t count!”

“
You
said that you wanted to help! Calling out to the Universe in all the four directions, help me, help me!” She whined, pathetically.

“What?”
Oh, yeah. I did, didn’t I.
“And this is the thanks I get?” Annabelle threw Jane Austen down on top of Virginia Woolf. “Do you have any idea how long sorting out my books is going to take?” Annabelle huffed an irritated sigh, and separated Joseph Campbell and Edith Wharton.

A low grumbling and a grudging mumble told Annabelle that she’d won a point. “Stand back!” the creature demanded. Annabelle turned and saw that she had now become a rather large swan, and that it was sitting on the ‘dining room’ table.

“Why?” Annabelle demanded, boldly, considering that since this thing seemed able to become anything it wanted, that it might not be very wise to spar with a supernatural entities with unlimited powers. “Why should I?” she demanded, recklessly.

One minute she was standing in front of her bookshelves, the next, in a blink of an eye, she was on the other side of her couch, and her books were flying around the room, swirling as if on the current of a hurricane, floating and flying about like a flock of birds. Spinning and spiraling in a crescendo of flapping pages and fluttering covers, they lightly set themselves back on their shelves, perfectly aligned, alphabetically according to genre, just the way Annabelle liked them. One dramatic beat later, her knick-knacks, photographs, and tchotchkes followed suit, arranged chronologically in a fashion that Annabelle had always thought about, but had never got around to doing.