by Willa Okati
“But…no one except Janie and I know what happened, you know.” Lisa dropped her voice to a whisper, “Before.”
“Not sure I take your meaning.”
She shot him an annoyed look and jiggled her sheaf of papers, trying to straight-edge them. “Don’t want to or won’t?”
“My, my, look at the time.”
“Be that way, then.” Lisa rolled her eyes and, quick as a hummingbird, darted in to stretch up on tiptoe and kiss Harper’s cheek. “Lurk around and sulk all day if you want. Janie and I are gonna be stuck in meetings. New plotlines and breakdowns for Twilight Rising.”
“The show must go on. Hey.” He rumpled her hair, or rather attempted to bend the spikes, finding he could still grin when she cursed and tried to swat him away from the ‘do.’ “It’s not like I’m going to be out of work.”
“Yeah, big time congrats and all that.” She squinted at him. “Kind of wish it hadn’t come around when you’re as miserable as a hound dog on a cloudy day.”
“I’ll live.”
“Will you live happy? Don’t answer that. You’ll just dive deeper into the pool of maudlinity ‑‑ is that a real word?”
“If it isn’t, it should be,” they said together.
“Made you smile.” She awkwardly patted his hand. “There, there.”
He snatched it back, almost laughing. “Lisa, you suck at this. Go do your job.”
“Can I? Thank God.” She waved the papers at him. “My first 100-percent-solo script, minus Janie’s interference. Wish me luck?”
“All the luck in the world.”
“And you’re not going to, I don’t know, hang yourself from a gargoyle fifty stories up?”
“That’d be a waste of a good gargoyle.”
“Harper.”
“No. Don’t worry about that. Rory, he…he’d have kicked my ass for that.”
“But you want to,” Lisa guessed shrewdly. “Or to drink yourself into a stupor and not crawl out until you’re numb.”
“The thought’s crossed my mind.”
“Thank God.”
“Excuse me?”
Lisa clapped him heartily on the arm. “This, I can help you with. Meet me at Tavish’s Tavern tonight. The supposed-to-be-genuine Scottish pub down on Forty-fifth. We’ll get sloshed, hammered, wake up with splitting headaches and the world might start to seem to be a better place.”
“You’re a true friend.”
“Absolutely.” Lisa shifted her weight to the balls of her feet. “Harper? I really am sorry about Rory. I could see the way you two loved each other, and damn. That’s the stuff most people only ever get to dream about.”
“Yeah.” Harper’s slight good mood drained away. “I know.”
Lisa cursed. “You said it yourself, I suck at this.” She caught his hand and squeezed, her nicotine-stained fingers cool and surprisingly rough. “I’m out of here before you start thinking gargoyles are a good idea. If you don’t meet us at Tavish’s tonight, I’m hunting your ass down, and don’t think I won’t.”
“You’re a good friend,” Harper told her, in all seriousness. “Wait. Who’s ‘we’?”
“Um. Janie.”
Harper frowned, trying to put the pieces together. He arrived at a number that hit like a punch to the solar plexus. “You’re not serious.”
Lisa slapped his arm. “Pervert. We’re just better friends than we used to be after all that’s gone down in the past couple of months. Turns out we can both use a soul sister who knows her way around being bitter and cynical.”
“Work that system, ma’am.” Harper gave her a light push. “Go. Plot evil against mankind. Write. Be happy.”
She winked at him before taking her leave, a bounce to her step. Harper propped his shoulders against the set wall, watching her go. Lisa looked happy. He’d be an ass to grudge her that.
Silver lining, huh? he could hear Rory saying with a leer. Just friends or not, you think they’d let us watch? Bet it’s like two wild tigresses. Fight to the little death.
“Psycho,” Harper murmured, forgetting for a moment that Rory wasn’t actually at his side.
Bah. I have healthy appetites, his mental Rory scoffed. You got one thing right, though. You told her to “work the system.” Think about it, Harper. The faintest of cool pressures wafted over Harper’s cheek. Gotta go, but I’ll be back if I can.
Harper’s hand clapped over his cheek. He could still feel the strange tingles, as if…Rory…had been there, in spirit, to kiss him. “Rory?” he whispered, mouth dry as sand. “Rory, is that you?”
The vibrations he received in the next second were not friendly, nor were they warm and sexually driven and affectionate. They emanated from his cell phone, to which Harper reacted much as a man afraid of snakes would react to Indiana Jones.
He debated not answering. But what if… Harper had seen “ghost in the machine” movies. Couldn’t be. No way would the Clerk let Rory sneak around. He had to have been imagining the whole whisper from beyond, plus kiss. Cracking up under the pressure of double-strength angst.
Yet if he wasn’t…
“I’m an idiot,” Harper muttered. He dug for his BlackBerry and clicked it on. “Rory?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but no,” the caller replied in extremely un-Roryish accents indicating he was the last thing from sorry. More like homicidal.
“Good morning to you too, Patrick.” Harper pinched the bridge of his nose. “How’d you get my new number?”
“I have sources.”
“Had, unless they want to hang out with a guy who has spastic episodes on a busy street.”
Patrick snarled wordlessly.
“What do you want?”
“Five minutes of your time. Five minutes. Outside. You owe me that much.”
Harper withdrew the phone to better stare at it in disbelief. “You’re not serious. I owe you? For what?”
“If you don’t come down and meet me, you’ll never find out.”
“I think I can live happily in ignorance, thanks.”
“Sure you can. Skip down the daisy lanes with your fingers in your ears all you want, but remember this: I know something about Rory that you don’t, and either you meet me or I lock it up forever.”
Harper’s chest tightened. “You don’t know a damn thing about Rory.”
“Don’t I? Incorporeal muse taken flesh, the most irritating and horniest parts of your subconscious walking around eating Little Debbies by the case? Gone now, from what I hear?”
Breathing became a problem. “You son of a bitch.”
“Talk prettier than that to me, Harper, or say bye-bye to anything I know.”
With strength Harper hadn’t known he possessed, he swallowed his gale-force wrath. “I’ll be down in ten. You have five.”
“Excellent. Clock starts now. Don’t be late.”
* * * * *
For once in his life, Patrick had told the truth. He waited for Harper on a park bench, patiently as one might say. If he were on crack.
Minus the bruises and the battered shape of his hat, Patrick looked as polished and debonair as ever, from his repaired manicure to the shining toes of his wing tips.
Harper took a moment to stop and smell the roses, admire Rory’s feral handiwork, and wondered: What would Rory do?
Aha.
He swung into place next to Patrick, jostling the seat. Patrick smirked. “You should try the Viennese cinnamon blend. Half the carcinogenic tar and twice the flavor of overheated hot-plate.”
“Skip the polite chitchat. You know something about Rory. Spit it out.”
“Not so fast, handsome. There’s a price on this information. You give me what I want, and I give you what you want. I love the smell of capitalism in the morning.”
“Okay.” Harper nodded thoughtfully, snatched the piping hot paper cup from Patrick’s hands, and held it tilted at a precarious angle over a planter full of desiccated petunias beside the bench. “Bet you want your caffeine back
now,” he said in response to Patrick’s indignant sputter. “How about we start the bargaining there?”
“How about we start with me messing up your face?”
“Big talk from a guy who looks like he went five rounds with Tyson in the glory days.”
Patrick glowered at him. “How about you take it easy on a fella?”
“I’ll take my grip off this coffee easy and make sure it lands in your lap.” Harper was done playing. “In case I haven’t made this clear, I am on the verge of losing my grip on the moral compass of right and wrong, and if you don’t spit it out ‑‑”
“Asshole.” Patrick kept a wary eye on the coffee ‑‑ figured that a threat to the ultimate source of his attitude would spur him into action ‑‑ and withdrew a cell phone from his breast pocket. “I have something you should hear.”
If Harper never saw another phone again, he reflected that it might just be too soon. “What is it?”
“You won’t believe me if I tell you, so man up and listen to the damn voice mail already.” Patrick tossed it in Harper’s lap.
“If this is something you got off a nine-hundred-number line…” Harper warned. He wiped the earpiece and mouthpiece for the sake of needling Patrick and raised it to his ear.
“Press Star forty-two,” Patrick grouched. “Why am I being helpful, you ask? You’ll hear.”
Harper punched the three keys and waited through Patrick’s smarmy, prerecorded spiel inviting business associates to leave a message, which he’d return as soon as he had the time, ciao baby, a lengthy pause, and then a Barry White croon inviting all ladies and gentlemen of the night to ‑‑ whoa. “What was I thinking to jump in bed with you?”
“You had a panoramic feast laid out before you. I’m the one counting minutes now, because trust me I don’t want this to go on longer than it has to.” Patrick made a futile grab for his coffee.
“You have one saved message,” the faux-human answering service chirped at him. “Please press nine.”
Harper took a steadying breath and tapped the key.
“Heyyyyyyy, cheese-dick.”
His fingers, numb, nearly lost their grip on the phone. Rory. He stared at Patrick, who looked far more smug yet still uneasy as he made a “told you so” gesture.
“You hate me, I hate you, yada, yada, yada. Sorry about the pavement pizza I made of you. Actually, wait. I’m not sorry at all. Road rash is a good look on you. Anyway. Odds are good that by tomorrow morning I’ll be gone.”
“Rory.” Harper wanted to crawl inside Rory’s rich voice, laced with humor and crackling with energy, and stay there.
“God, you’re pathetic, the pair of you,” Patrick grumbled.
Harper ignored him, ear pressed tightly to the phone, listening for all he was worth.
“-- so. You get Harper, get him to listen to this because if it’s coming from you he won’t think it’s a figment of his imagination. Love him to death, but he’s not the best in a crisis and right about now he’s probably two degrees away from losing his mind. Hey, babe. This Bud’s for you, and it comes with a question. Am I right, or am I right?”
“Rory.”
“You sound like a broken record,” Patrick griped. “Coffee. Give it. Now.”
“Not so fast.” Harper waited for more, but only silence filled his ear. “Is that all?”
“Nope.”
The recorded Rory cleared his throat. “Okay. You have to tell him something in case I don’t get a chance to. Even if I don’t before I leave, I’ll do my best to afterward, but I like to cover all possible plot twists. And don’t ask what I mean.”
“So, what’s in it for me?” Patrick murmured, resigned, folding his hands over his stomach.
“Here’s what’s in it for you. An old associate of mine, fantastic with the whip and laying on the sugar. Makes fishnets look good. She’ll beat your ass sixty ways to Sunday, drive you out of your ever-loving mind, inspire you to heights of oratory magnificence and make you a star like you’ve always dreamed. You pass this message on to Harper and I’ll pull some strings to send her your way. Deal?”
“For the record, I don’t believe it for a second,” Patrick said, obviously knowing the message by heart. “Still, it’s relevant enough to my interests that it caught my attention.” He raised his voice. “I’m here, punk. Deal!”
Harper opened the top buttons of his shirt and loosened his tie. Patrick’s presence or no, the rumbling cadences of Rory’s voice were starting to work their familiar magic. He squirmed out of his suit jacket and threw it over his lap.
Another pause, a break of static and a snatch of some rapid, angry argument between two Swedish women, and Rory returned to the message. “I’m losing the connection. Trust me, you don’t want to know what I had to promise to get this much in the first place.”
“You talk way, way too much,” Harper murmured. His heart hurt. “Don’t go.”
“Make sure Harper hears this. It’s the important bit. Work the system. If he gives the little gray cells a chance to chew that over, he’ll understand. Tell him I trust him enough to piss off the highest powers in my sphere, and ‑‑ hell if I’m saying this on your machine, but he knows what else I ‘enough’ for him.”
Patrick mouthed awwww at him.
I love you too, Harper answered silently. The connection dissolved into screeching static and disconnected.
“To play this message again, please press nine,” the operator chirped. “To retrace this number, please press four. To ‑‑”
“Don’t even think about it. The number goes to a pizza parlor in Powoahautak, Wisconsin.” Patrick made a successful grab and snatched his phone back. “There. I’ve done my part.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Harper asked, tugging his ear. “Work the system?”
Taken together with the offer he’d made Patrick ‑‑ and wasn’t that a sweet mental image, considering the visual of Patrick tormented by a dominatrix muse who’d whip some humility into him? He wondered if…
Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Rory mentioned pulling strings. Take it up with a higher authority, the Clerk had said, and see how far that gets you.
What if…
Harper swallowed down a mouthful of floating, brightly burning hope to keep it safe. “Holy ‑‑”
“Mmm, the sweet sounds of an epiphany. Care to share?”
“Not on your life.” Suspicious again, Harper narrowed his eyes at Patrick. “If you don’t believe any of this, which is a lie of the highest order since you know what Rory is ‑‑ hey, wait, how do you know?”
“There’s this thing called the Internet.” Patrick waggled his fingers. “If you get knocked down and pinned by an invisible man, there are a considerable number of embittered poets and painters who will tell you, at length, about their former sources of inspiration. Not that it was easy to read my way through reams of emo poetry before finding the links, but ‑‑”
“Pfft. Like you’d pay half a second’s worth of attention to anyone who wasn’t talking about you,” Harper scoffed.
“But am I right?”
Harper shut up.
Patrick smirked. “Thought so. Even if they’re wrong and I’m crazy, I have the sweet satisfaction of knowing you’re equally bonkers. If I go down, I’m taking you with me.” He waved Harper quiet. “I’m full up on invective. Save it.”
Kill, pussycat, kill. “Tell me honestly. Why did you bring this to me? Can’t be for the promise of a muse who knows her way around a cat o’ nine, not if you don’t really believe.”
Patrick’s dark glare made a comeback. “Because I know you, you sneaky twit, and I’m not the only one who knows how to use a video phone. I want the footage I know you or one of your buddies caught of everything that happened yesterday.”
Harper considered it for a moment. “Done.”
“What? Really?” Patrick sat up straighter. “You’re serious?”
“As the grave. Sending you the file now, and then I’ll delete mine. And
you delete Rory’s message.” Harper choked a little over the request, but Rory was his, not for sharing with Patrick’s voice mail service.
“It’s a bargain.” Patrick fell silent during the short, sharp flurry of beeps and file transfers. He showed Harper his screen to prove he’d made good, and Harper did the same. “Coffee now, please?”
It’d gone lukewarm anyway. Harper passed the cup back over and spread his arms over the back of the bench when Patrick stood up.
Patrick straightened the hang of his suit and looked down at Harper, his expression unreadable. “We were good once upon a time, weren’t we?”
“Once. Not for long.”
“You ever think about giving me a second chance?”
“Have you seen the man I was with recently?”
“Not even a quick ride for old times’ sake?”
“Not with Ron Jeremy’s severed dick on a stick at ten paces.”
“Up yours,” Patrick snapped, face reddening. “Truce over. You’re on your own and trust me, I’ll be watching for anything I can get.”
“You do that,” Harper replied amiably just to piss him off.
As Patrick stalked away, swallowed by the New York foot traffic, Harper patted the lump of his phone. It really had been dumb of Patrick, all things considered, not to ask if he’d made a backup. Let Patrick stalk him or try to double-cross him, which knowing Patrick, of course he would.
That, however, would keep for another day. Harper tipped his head back, closing his eyes against the brightness of the sun, and let the hamster wheels in his mind run wild. “Work the system,” he murmured. “Work the system. What’s that supposed to mean?”
Oh. Harper’s eyes snapped open. Contracts. Clauses. If ‑‑
He whipped out his phone and speed dialed Janie. Two rings, three ‑‑
“Harper?” Janie sounded almost worried. “Who do you think you are, walking off the job? You haven’t signed a contract yet and that means I still own your balls.” She sighed. “Rory really did leave, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Crap. Harper, are you going to be okay?”
“Maybe.”
She hmmphed. “Better be, because I’ll have your head on a pike if you relapse into who you were.”