That Magic Mischief (21 page)

She had gone down a path not of her own making. That’s why it wasn’t working out. It wasn’t
hers
.

Well, there’s that all figured out,
she thought.
I am not the kind of person who can succeed on someone else’s path.
This was as good a time as any to do an exercise she’d read about in a holistic health book, and she proceeded to make a mental list of all the things she was and wasn’t.

I am organized.

I am punctual.

I keep my promises.

I am a writer! Of what
I
want to write! (
Yay!
She cheered herself on.)

I am … a witch?

Her phone, which she hadn’t bothered to turn back on after leaving the interview, vibrated in her pocket.
Wonder who
this
could be.

“Hello, Callie.”

Genuine surprise. “How’d you know it was me?”

“Who else could call me when my phone is off?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that witch business if I was you. You’ve got acres to learn before you could call yourself that in any case.”

“Well, I must have some potential. I’m dealing with you, aren’t I?”

“Now as to that. Have ye booked yourself on a flight to — ”

Annabelle tried for a breezy, dismissive tone to change the subject. “How’ve you been, anyway? Oh, nice work on the inside of the fridge, although it seems a waste of such an elaborate mosaic reproduction of
The Last Supper
. But I do like all that silk and satin bedding you replaced my other stuff with. No complaints there.”

“That’s a first!” the Pooka shot back. “Dare I hope that you’ll have the same reaction when you realize who your husband is.”

“Bullshit!” Annabelle shouted rudely, getting a few dirty looks from the rest of the crowd waiting to cross the avenue. “Sorry, sorry — ”

“Thank you,” said Callie, rather primly.

“Not you!” Annabelle shouted again, and several people moved away down the curb. “Listen, no one’s going to force me into anything, not into a relationship, and especially not into a marriage! And besides, you don’t even know what my type is.”

Annabelle hung up and shoved her phone back into her pocket. As she strode south, she tried to get herself back into the beautiful spring day, surely the first absolutely perfect day of the year thus far; not a cloud troubled the achingly blue sky, and a light breeze wafted by, carrying the smell of earth and grass and flowers. The few trees that studded the pavement were well in leaf, and the birds were happily chirping away. In fact, they seemed to be making more noise than was usual, because Annabelle actually noticed their song above the traffic.

Actually, Annabelle noticed, the flock that was twittering away on Smith Street seemed a bit … disturbed: they were swarming in crazed loops from tree to tree, and they sounded alarmed. She paused and looked up and spotted the cause of their distress, an oversized crow with — wait for it — hazel eyes was chasing them all away.

“Stop it! You’re making everyone crazy now, even innocent bystanders!” Standing under a tree full of demented birds was probably a really bad idea, and Annabelle moved well away. “Leave them alone! Come on! Come on out of there!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Annabelle saw a little boy drop his scooter and go running toward a nearby brownstone. All she needed was an oversensitive Cobble Hill mother calling the cops, and she hurried off down Smith. For safety’s sake, she pulled out her phone and pretended to talk into it, as the bird followed in her wake, hopping from mailboxes to parking meters to the roofs of cars.

“You’re looking rather … solid,” Annabelle noted, as the Pooka’s smoky, shadowy textures seemed to have coalesced into a more conventional appearance.

The crow paused on a pyramid of oranges piled up in front of a Korean deli. It seemed to droop as its voice came across through Annabelle’s phone. “It’s a terrible thing, missus, a terrible thing. The more firmly I take to form, the more likely it is that I am failing in my task. And the punishment … the punishment is great and severe.”

The bird took to the air, and Annabelle watched it circle above and away. “Wait! Listen, I met that Irish musician guy, and we got to talking, and he told me this legend or something? About the Queen of the Ban — ”

An ear-splitting cawing came through the phone as well as filling the air, so much so that one or two passersby looked about for the cause. Annabelle watched Callie the Crow flail about a bit against an invisibly high wind, and as the bird battled an element only it could see, Annabelle felt her first feeling of genuine fear and sadness for her Pooka.
What was going to happen to it? Maybe it wasn’t such a tall tale after all —

“You’re a revelation, you are. Finally starting to sink in, hey?”

So much for that.
“I am beginning to realize that I’ve spent the last three years and nine months of my life getting subtly pushed around by the guy that I thought — I hoped — I would have married. So I object to this less-than-subtle manipulation regarding my personal life, my professional life, my choice of vacations — ”

“Aren’t you sick o’ bangin’ on this way?” The bird landed on Annabelle’s shoulder, and hissed into her ear. “If you would have married that aul’ tosser, why not the next fella you meet? Why not … him?”

The waiter who had come out to place the sandwich board in front of Chez LuLu found himself spun around by the scruff of the neck and planted in Annabelle’s path. A flutter of a feather spun him around on his toes, and his eyes began to dart with increasing unrest as another light flick of a wing caused his mouth to drop open, giving Annabelle a good look at the state of his teeth.

“He’s got ’em all,” said Callie. “And all his hair.”

“Let him go!” Annabelle, appalled, giggled. “He’s a waiter in a place called Chez LuLu. As
if
he was straight.”

Dropped back down to terra firma, the waiter fussed with the board as if nothing had happened. Annabelle and the Pooka made their way across Bergen Street. Her conscience flaring up, Annabelle turned to check that the poor waiter was okay, and as she turned back, found herself face to face with a muscular male decked out in jogging gear. His slightly flushed face took on an alarming scarlet hue as Callie bounced him up and down in a parody of his former movement.

“No. Let him go.” Callie did, and the jogger broke into a flat-out run. “I wouldn’t guess he was playing on my side of the field, either. Are you a boy bird or a girl bird?”

A gauntlet of likely suspects were momentarily jerked out of their present moments and paraded before Annabelle’s discerning eye. It was actually a bit of a hoot, and despite the rumors and what everyone said, there really were plenty of men in New York City — except Callie seemed to be an equal opportunity Pooka, and wedding rings, sexual preference, and advanced age didn’t seem to be any part of the criteria. Annabelle spun around, her back to the action, and had to laugh. The crow settled to rest on the rear view mirror of a motorcycle.

“You’ve got no standards at all.”

The crow huffed. “Maybe you have too many!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Annabelle rolled her eyes. “You’re as bad as Lorna, fixing me up with anything with a penis. I don’t want a married, bisexual, ninety-year-old man! I want someone to like me because he likes me, not because you’ve, like, bewitched him or something. I don’t want
you
to make anybody like me!”

The big black bird ruffled its feathers and stretched out its wings. “It’s bloody useless exercise in any case. You know as well as I do that somebody already ‘likes’ ya, but you’re being dead thick and stubborn about it. ‘Like’! Ha!” The Pooka’s voice dripped with scorn, and it took to the air, flying low, beating its wings to stay level with Annabelle’s annoyed face. It flew at her, and forced her to step back and back and back. “Love! Lust! That’s what you should be aiming for, missus. ‘
Liking
!’ HA!”

With that, the bird lightly pecked Annabelle on the nose, making her jump back in surprise — and right into Jamie Flynn’s waiting — and curious — arms.

“I told you I’d catch you.”

Annabelle leaped away, and, as it became increasingly apparent that the earth at her feet wasn’t going to do her a favor and swallow her up, she made a bit of a show of straightening her hair, her denim jacket, her shoelaces …
Unless I run away down the street with my head in my bag,
she thought,
I’m going to have to look up at him sometime.

“Hi.”
Oh, very good, Annabelle. Pithy, yet appropriate. Succinct, yet suitable.

Jamie removed his Ray-Bans and scratched his nose with an earpiece. “Howaya. Working?” He gestured towards the smaller version of her monstrously organized bag dangling precariously off her shoulder.

“Interview with a celebrity personal chef. And you?”

“Delivered a hope chest to a client.”

Annabelle’s eyes lit up. “A hope chest? For a bride? Like they used to do in the Fifties?”

“She’s practically in her fifties,” said Jamie. “Fourth time around, and she’s running around town after linen
and lingerie.”

“Four weddings. That’s something else.” Annabelle had cause to ponder the unfathomable deepness of her middle-class mindset.
I am middle-class,
she reluctantly added to her mental list of qualities, and sighed.

Jamie misinterpreted the sound. “You fancy four walks down the old aisle?”

“Oh, God, no!” Annabelle reddened again. “I was thinking that I’m old-fashioned and hopelessly middle-class since I’m shocked by the idea of three divorces. I guess that’s the issue, looking at it as four weddings as opposed to four marriages.”

She thought she heard the cackle of a crow blow by in the wind …

“So!” She carried on brightly, refusing to acknowledge either omens or portents. “So, how’d she like it?”

Jamie shrugged. “Ah, you know, she’s mad about everything at this stage. The ceremony’s tomorrow.”

Annabelle grimaced. “Cutting it a bit close, weren’t you?”

“Sure, it added to the drama.”

“You look a bit wiped out.”
I am a clod
, Annabelle thought. “I mean, like you’ve been working hard.”

“Ah, sure,” Jamie said, wryly. “I’ve got this deadline for a thingie, over in Ireland, a commission kind of thing, and I’ve been working flat out.” He held up a phone card, still wrapped in its cellophane. “I stopped in here to buy this so I can call the Council while I’m out, let them know I’ll be a bit late with it.”

His complete lack of concern with lateness threatened to send Annabelle into a tizzy, but hey — not her business. But — “So … an extension. You’ll get an extension.”

“Things are much looser over there than here.” Jamie grinned into her dilating pupils and shook his head. “It makes things over here hard to get used to.”

“Even after almost seven years?”

“You remembered.” His smile widened. “It’s almost worse, in a weird, inverse related way.”

Annabelle tried not to stare too hard at the thrilling stubble on his chin, at the even messier-than-usual head full of curls, at the smiling green eyes. Staring in general was not only rude but also kind of disturbing to her as well. The more she looked at him, the more used to it she got, and she felt extremely wary of getting used to Jamie Flynn, not the least of which was the fact of that bloody Pooka’s threats re: husband-y things and, and, and the state of her heart in general —

“Huh?”
There I go again, off on a tangent,
she thought; Jamie had asked her something.

“Do you live around here?” He repeated himself patiently.

“Oh, uh huh. Carroll Gardens, between Court and Clinton. Do you know it? I’ve been at that place for four years, but I’ve been around the neighborhood since I graduated college. And this,” she gestured to Smith Street at large, trying to stop the babble. “It’s unbelievable, the way it’s changed.”

“I lived on Atlantic Avenue for a week — crashed with a cousin — and it was dire down here. Deadly. Literally.”

“And now look at it.” They scanned the upscale restaurants, and hip, jewel-box bars, cheek by jowl with a few stalwart laundromats and Spanish bodegas.

“It couldn’t know itself.”

Annabelle narrowed her eyes. “You still have your accent. That’s kind of unusual.”

He laid it on thick. “Ah, now, missus, and sure it’s only useful to have a bit o’ the auld accent going now.”

“Where did you go after Atlantic Ave? Woodside?”

“Jesus, no!” Jamie exclaimed. “No, I stayed away from the displaced Irish, and moved in with the displaced Poles. I’m in Greenpoint.”

“Oh, the hip new gallery scene. I read about in the
New Yorker
.”

“Most of it’s like, stolen clothes hung up on sheets of tornado fencing and spattered with red paint for blood, and shite like that.” Jamie’s lip curled with disdain.

“I’ve never made it over there, so I’ll take your word for it.” A torrent of schoolchildren, liberated at last, came pouring down the street toward them, and they had no choice but to fall into step to avoid the deluge.

Jamie scratched his head with his cell phone. “Why not come out and have a look. Greenpoint’s not at the other end of the earth.”

Uh oh.
Annabelle kept in step, but her mind whirled off in a thousand directions. Was he — did he mean — what if — oh, for crying out loud. “I vaguely remember seeing it at the end of the L.”
Non-committal, but not dismissive
, she thought.
Your move, Irish Guy.

Jamie forged on. “Ah, sure, some Saturday afternoon, I’ll show you around, take you to Jimmy Polgardi’s Polish Palace for a meal. No strings.” He grinned, beguilingly. “No pressure.”

“Huh.”

“Just friendly. Right?”

“Oh.”

They kept walking and now Annabelle was slightly insulted. Just friendly? Not exactly the anathemic ‘just friends’ but pretty darn close.

“You, know, I guess I am a self-centered male after all,” he said. She stopped dead, and he turned to grin down at her. “I’m assuming that you’d be interested in spending any time with me at all, however innocently. You weren’t too pleased with your friend’s little scheming the other night.”