Exile

by Caleb James

  Charlie thought of lots of reasons this was a bad idea. He could hear the things they’d say at the station—If they find out…. They always find out. But looking into Liam’s eyes, he saw raw fear but something more. Fuck it! “My gran rents out a room in Gramercy. She needs help around her apartment, and her last tenant graduated from CUNY and moved away. Interested?”

  Liam flinched at the inflected question. “Yes.”

  Charlie, still kneeling with his hand on Liam’s shoulder, asked, “You’re not some old-lady serial killer are you?”

  Liam heard the question, but having survived so many this night, he answered in seriousness. “I’ve never killed an old lady.”

  “Good to know. It’s going to be a long night, Liam.” Without asking permission, he unbuckled the straps and helped him to sit. “You see that truck over there?”

  “Yes, with the red cross like Jenn Trainer.”

  “They’ll give you something to eat and some clothes. I’ll find you when I’m done.”

  “You put out fires,” Liam stated.

  “I do.”

  “And save people from burning houses.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Liam pondered. “Putting out fires and saving people.” Swaddled in his blanket and the sheet from the navy people, he stared at Charlie, with his soot-streaked face and bright blue eyes. “And invite a stranger into a loved one’s home.” He shook his head. “You’re a saint or a fool.”

  His statement floored Charlie. “I hope neither.” He stood, but it was difficult to move. His work was far from over, but he didn’t want to leave Liam, who should go to the hospital, who was confused and in shock, and who made Charlie feel like he was filled with light. “Eat something. I’ll find you. So wait for me, okay?”

  Liam nodded.

  Charlie stepped back, not wanting to break the connection. “I’ll find you.” And with a force of will, he returned to the smoldering building and the smell of cookies.

  Four

  WHEN HER bedside phone rang at 3:00 a.m., eighty-three-year-old Flora Fitzgerald braced for badness. She pushed aside the bound doctoral dissertation she’d fallen asleep reading, entitled On the Trail of Maeve and the Hound, and reached for the illuminated handset. Acid churned in her stomach as she picked up. Aldo, one of her five cats, repositioned himself, brushing his lush tabby tail against her cheek.

  “Gran?”

  “Charlie.” She heard smoke in his voice. “What’s wrong?” She pressed against the headboard as Aldo pounced on her blanket-covered legs. “What’s happened?” Don’t be hurt, Charlie.

  Flora was no stranger to bad news in the night. Born outside Limerick in 1933, she’d lost her father, Michael, to Hitler when she was eight. Always poor but never before desperate, her dad’s death had pushed her iron-willed mother, Rose, to pack up her five children, and with the sponsorship of relatives, they’d made the voyage to New York in 1947.

  She gripped the receiver and saw the faces of her dead—two of her own children, three of her NYPD and FDNY grandsons on 9/11, her no-good but loved-him-madly husband, Rory, to lung cancer and drink. “What’s happened, Charlie?” Why isn’t he answering?

  “Nothing bad, Gran. It’s just… I have a favor to ask.”

  While Flora knew it was wrong to have favorites—everyone from Oprah to Doctor Oz said so—there was no denying that of the entire brood, Charlie was hers. From that moment in the delivery room with her daughter-in-law Kate, when she’d first locked eyes on him, she’d known. As they’d pulled off the membrane that covered his head and one of the young resident doctors had quipped, “Isn’t that called being born with the caul?” she’d known. This one is mine. “Not another cat, Charlie.”

  He paused. “Not a cat, Gran… but since Derrick graduated and moved out….”

  She sighed. No, not another cat. “Why are you bringing up my boarder… and my empty bedroom, Charlie?” The weirdness of their bond kicked in. He’s up to something. “Where are you?”

  “In the lobby.”

  “Of course you are. And you’ve brought someone.”

  “Yes.”

  Aldo had now been joined by his white-faced brother, Andre. The two of them, like furry sharks, circled her feet as she sought for her slippers and grabbed her fleece robe from the end of the bed. “Then you’d best bring him up, hadn’t you?”

  “Thanks, Gran…. How did you know it was a him?”

  She paused, wiggled her toes, and Aldo jumped on her foot. She looked at the sweet creature and remembered something her ma had said about cats. Don’t be the toy. “I just did, Charlie.” Is that what this is about? When he was sixteen, Charlie had told Flora he was gay. He’d been frightened of her response. In truth, she’d suspected, and they’d spent the afternoon talking about how he’d break it to his family, his pa—her son Mike, never Michael—in particular. She’d told him that everything would work out, that his family, including his pa, loved him, and they always would. She’d not been certain, but she had been right.

  She hung up, and knowing the rhythm of her building, where it took three minutes to get from the lobby to her twelfth-floor three-bedroom apartment where she’d lived for over fifty years, she did the only thing one does in these situations. She put on the kettle and loaded the counter with eggs, link sausage, and the grainy wheat bread that Charlie liked.

  Aldo and Andre followed underfoot, now joined by the more senior black-and-white long-haired sisters, Lulu and Lily, and the psychologically disturbed Siamese, Daisy. All rescue cats, all brought to her by Charlie. To them, Flora in the kitchen signaled the possibility of snacks. While pulling mugs from a glass-fronted cabinet, she let herself be swayed by their meows and purring passes against her bare ankles. “This is not snack time.” As the S word left her mouth, their excitement grew. Aldo swatted at Daisy’s snakelike tail and tried to bite it. She growled and hissed at him. “Stop it! Be good.”

  She flipped the top of a can of Salmon Feast and divided it onto two flat saucers. She bent down, feeling the familiar sciatica pain in her right hip, which ached like an infected tooth. She placed the dishes by the oversized water bowl and stroked Aldo’s still kittenish fur as Daisy whined with envy.

  Suddenly the oddest thing happened, because nothing kept her fuzzy brood from the delights of canned food—especially the fishy varieties. Their heads turned in unison to the hall. Two seconds later, the doorbell rang.

  Flora stared as they galloped from the kitchen to her bookshelf-lined foyer. She shivered. Yes, her cats were fond of Charlie, but even he couldn’t compete with Salmon Feast. What have you brought, Charlie? What are you bringing into my house?

  “Coming,” she yelled. The stove clock read three fifteen. Something is wrong. She paused and for an instant wondered what would happen if she didn’t open the door. It was an odd thought as she imagined leaving Charlie—her beloved boy—in the hall with whomever he’d brought. Another thought intruded as five cats howled from the hall. What if it’s not a who but a what?

  “Shh.” She waded through the cats, not liking the way their backs arched and their fur hackled. “I’m coming.” With one hand on the doorknob, she unlocked first the top and then the second dead bolt. She exhaled and opened the door.

  The smell hit her first—cookies fresh from the oven. Her gaze landed on Charlie, her tall and handsome grandson, still in his navy workpants and FDNY T-shirt. She scanned for injuries with practiced eyes. That all the men—and now a good portion of the women—in her family felt the need to chase criminals or run into burning buildings was a painful reality. He’s not hurt, just filthy. His face, hands, and arms were smudged with soot, and his thick wavy hair clung matted to his scalp from the Kevlar hood of his respirator. This part feels familiar. A late-night visit with a cat or two. He’d grab a shower and a change of clothes before heading home to Staten Island. But this was no new furry friend. What have you brought me? She took in the young man dressed in gray sweats and an oversized Red Cross tee. He was fi
xated on the howling cats, his face obscured by shoulder-length hair the color of ripened wheat.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with them.” She needed to see the stranger’s face.

  “They don’t like me,” the blond said, edging to where he was half-hidden by Charlie’s taller frame. He glanced up at Flora.

  Even in the dim light, the color of his eyes gave her pause. She squinted and didn’t hide her scrutiny. What is this feeling… and that smell? She looked to Charlie, who held his breath, as if awaiting her verdict.

  Oh no, she thought. “Tell me your name, young man.”

  “I am Liam, Liam Summer.”

  He appeared dazed, and like Charlie was filthy with whatever tragedy he’d gone through. But there was more, as memories of her childhood intruded. Ancient bits, before the voyage across the sea. I have smelled this before. Her mother’s scolding tone. “It’s just stories, Flora. You mustn’t tell lies.”

  The five cats grew silent, arranged like sentinels on either side of her feet, their gazes fixed on Liam.

  Still in the door, wondering why Gran was acting so odd, Charlie spoke. “He’s nowhere to go, Gran. I don’t know if you saw it on TV. It was a bad one.”

  Flora let his words wash across. She heard them but wasn’t listening, at least not to what lay on their surface. He’s nervous, talking too fast…. How he looks at this Liam. Charlie, no, no, not this. Clear as a bell, she heard the shuffle of her across-the-hall neighbor’s feet. She pictured the blousy thrice-divorced actress, still a regular on a popular daytime soap, spying through the fish-eye.

  “You’d best come in.”

  The chorus of cats growled as Charlie and then Liam crossed the threshold.

  “Odd.” Her gaze lingered on Liam. In the brighter light of her hall, made narrow by crammed floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, his attractiveness was undeniable. A handsome face can hide the devil. She tried to glimpse his ears, concealed by his hair, and the shape of his teeth, but those were perfectly white and straight. “You’re imagining things, Flora,” her mother would say. “It’s all fairy tales. Don’t tell lies, and don’t talk about the things you thought you saw. Just a child’s imagination. You don’t want people to think you’re queer.”

  “Come.” She led them into her spacious kitchen with its black-and-white-checkered floor, which Charlie had crawled across as a babe and where he’d taken his first steps. The hiss of the kettle turned to a whistle, and even with hunks of Salmon Feast still on the plates, none of the cats followed. Stranger still. You are not imagining things, Flora. Nor did you as a child, no matter what Ma said. She watched the men reflected in the cupboard glass as she pulled down mugs and poured boiling water into a cat-shaped teapot—a gift from Charlie. This Liam was too quiet and far too handsome, with his high cheekbones, strong jaw, straight nose, and eyes like Elizabeth Taylor’s. And Charlie, I know that look. This one is not for you.

  With practiced efficiency, she scrambled eggs, browned the sausage, and made toast. She placed the steaming plates before them and sat. She watched as Liam pushed the food from one edge of the plate to the other. “It’s not to your liking,” she stated.

  “I’m sorry. I have no appetite.”

  “Of course.” She looked at Charlie. “Shouldn’t you have brought him to the hospital?”

  Charlie, who had no trouble plowing through his eggs and sausage, gave a weak smile. “I tried. He wouldn’t go.”

  Liam sniffed the tea. He sipped. “This is bitter.”

  Flora edged the sugar bowl and creamer across the table. “Try this.” No, his ears are normal. Not like theirs. A memory, worn faint by time—she’d been no more than three or four that first time—played in her head. Twinkly lights in the woods out back of their thatched-roof hut. She’d been playing with her doll. It’s the smell. He carries the smell. His face, perfectly formed. Those eyes… what person has purple eyes?

  She watched as he tentatively scooped in three spoons of sugar and a dollop of cream.

  He sipped. “Better. Sweeter.” He drained the mug.

  “Good.” She poured him a fresh cup. “Charlie, we need to get you both cleaned up. Help me find some clothes for the two of you.”

  “Sure, Gran.” He stood and looked at Liam, his plate untouched. “You need anything? The bathroom’s the first door on the right…. Try to eat something.”

  Liam tensed at the question. “No, Charlie, the tea is enough. It’s good. It’s sweet.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right back.” Charlie wondered if maybe the guy was a model and the way he maintained his zero body fat and rippling abs was by only drinking tea.

  He followed Gran to the back bedroom, the one where he, often with other siblings or cousins, would crash after a visit to the city. The instant he was through the door, Gran shut it.

  “Okay, Charles Michael Fitzgerald, what possessed you to bring him here?”

  “He had nowhere, Gran.”

  “Doesn’t he have family?”

  “I don’t know. He’s in shock. I think he lost everything.” As the words left his mouth, he couldn’t help but think of that bare apartment where he’d found Liam. No one was living there. It was being renovated. What was he doing there? Why was he naked? There were no clothes, no suitcases….

  “People have insurance for that,” Gran said as she opened a closet filled with an assortment of mostly men’s clothes. She grabbed clean tees, sweatshirts, a pair of Charlie’s jeans, and another from one of his shorter cousins.

  “Gran, he was renting… I think, maybe subletting. I don’t know.” Why am I lying to her?

  “And you brought him here? Why not back to Staten Island? You and your folks have more space than I do. What’s going on, Charlie? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked him in the eyes. I think you do. “Fine, he can stay a day or two till he gets sorted. I’m not promising more.”

  A caterwaul of cats interrupted.

  “What the hell?” Charlie raced to the kitchen and found Liam cowering in a corner, surrounded by the cats, who’d arranged themselves at perfectly spaced intervals.

  “Get them away from me!”

  Flora entered the kitchen. The smell of cookies had faded, but that, combined with her cats’ odd behavior, made the memory stronger. She’d followed the dancing lights into the woods…. So pretty, and she’d seen them… and they’d seen her. Fairies, mostly naked, with butterfly wings and beautiful faces but pointy ears, and as she got closer, close enough to smell their bonfire, she saw their teeth, sharp as needles. She shook her head, grabbed another can of cat food even though they’d not finished the first, and popped the lid. It distracted the two older cats, but Daisy and the near-grown tabbies stayed fixed, their eyes on Liam. Don’t be the toy, Flora thought.

  With the two black-and-whites following her, she set the food down outside the kitchen and closed the door. Charlie grabbed the kittens and gently tossed them out after them and returned for blue-eyed Daisy, who hissed and clawed as he pulled her away and dropped her in the hall.

  Liam let go of the counter. “They don’t like me. If I were small enough, they’d eat me.”

  Gran smiled. “Yes, there’s something about you, Liam. But there’s a door on your room. Close it and they won’t bother you.” She looked to Charlie. “Best you get home, and call me later.”

  The kittens clawed at the door, trying to get back in.

  She looked at Liam’s untouched food, next to Charlie’s ketchup-smeared plate. She watched the blond’s hand tremble as he poured a fourth cup of tea and loaded in scoop after scoop of sugar. She tapped the table to get his attention. This is not my imagination.

  He looked up.

  “Liam Summer, you will do no harm here.”

  He met her gaze. “No, ma’am. I am your guest. I will do no harm to you or to those you love.”

  “Yes, the rules of courtesy must be obeyed. I shall hold you to your word.” Flora sensed her grandson
’s confusion. How to explain the inexplicable or how she knew that danger had entered her home? If her ma still lived, she’d tell Flora it was all her imagination. The good people—the fey, the sidhe—were folklore and legend. They didn’t come into your home and gulp tea. But that was her ma, who had not friended the fairies in the woods, gazed into their fire, and listened to their high-pitched gossip. And while Ma and the housewives of their little town would say it was stuff and nonsense, they’d still toss the heel of a fresh-baked loaf into the backyard and leave a saucer of milk on the windowsill as offerings. It’s why they kept a cat or two, to sound the alarm should the good people try to steal a baby and leave a changeling in its crib. Yes, Liam Summer, with your beautiful face and witches’ eyes. You shall do no harm here. But as she looked at Charlie and the way he gazed at Liam, she knew. The harm is already done.

  Five

  LIAM WANTED Charlie Fitzgerald to stay. Or to take him to the Staten Island. The old woman with her devil cats frightened him, but she also carried the whiff of something familiar.

  He watched as she kissed tall Charlie good-bye and extracted a promise that he would call in the morning.

  Emboldened, Liam approached the man who’d pulled him from death. He would not beg him to stay, much as he wanted to. “Thank you, Charlie.” He reached up and kissed him on his darkly stubbled cheek.

  Charlie pulled back. “What was that for?”

  Liam saw the blacks of Charlie’s eyes widen. He heard the catch in his throat and saw the artery in his neck quicken. No! In his short time in the human realm, Liam had faced the loss of his magic. But seeing… sensing Charlie’s response, he knew that was not entirely true. No. Of all his abilities, this was the one he would gladly lose, the thing May had used him for—his glamour. It’s why she murdered his parents, who would not be her whores.

  Charlie appeared dazed, and Liam felt the connection. I should not have kissed him. I promised to do no harm. I did not know. I thought my magic was gone. In the court of Queen May, it’s what he and his family were raised for, the queen’s courtesans, her cat’s-paws. “I’m sorry.”