by Susan Conley
“C’mere, I’ve left some messages with that aunt of mine, and she’s fallen off the face of the earth. Off on some tree-hugging expedition, I suspect.”
Annabelle looked around her flat, at the crystals hanging in the window, at the flowers and candles, and lastly, at her altar and all her holistic, goddess-y bits and pieces. He’d think she was a total flake, wouldn’t he?
“You sound like you think she’s a total flake.”
Jamie sounded offended. “Not at all, she’s my favorite altogether. That’s just the kind of stuff she does with her time. She signed up, about twenty years ago, to fly to the moon as a civilian. She reckons her turn’ll come up in 2025.”
“I wanted to do that, but my mother wouldn’t let me.”
“Sure, it’s never too late.”
“I’ll check out NASA’s website, maybe book myself a round-trip ticket.”
They laughed and the slight pause was far less deafening than usual. Annabelle smiled at the ceiling, enjoying herself, wondering where all this was going, and hoping she could keep him on the phone without it seeming like she was keeping him on the phone.
“So, you in for the night?”
“Night?” Annabelle shot up off the couch and went to her bedroom window. “Already? I lost track of the time.” Chamomile tea would be nice right about now, and for dinner? Nothing. Damn it.
“Yeah, me too.” He now sounded distracted. “Nice neighborhood, Carroll Gardens. Loads of great Italian delis, homemade ravioli, fresh bread, gelato.”
“Oh, yeah? Huh.” Annabelle poured the hot water into the pot, and reached for a mug and honey. “They do great take-out things, like little trays of lasagna. I never bother with the raw materials.”
“Do you not know how to cook?”
“I know how to put something in an oven and not take it out until it’s done,” Annabelle said, sitting back down on the couch.
“So that would be a ‘no’.”
She laughed, only because she figured he thought that he was insulting her. “It’s not my thing. I like to eat,” she added helpfully.
“Well, I’ll have to make you a meal sometime.”
She sat up on the edge of the couch. She remembered this, the bob and weave of boy and girl and the making of plans.
“That could be arranged,” she said in voice she hoped was light enough to convey informality, yet sexy enough to suggest … something suggestive.
“Grand. Right. I may pop round the aunties’ this weekend, and you’re welcome to come along.”
Relatives before an actual date? No way. “We’ll see,” Annabelle said. “Let’s keep it loose.”
“Right. All right, so. Speak to you soon.”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks for calling. Bye!”
“Cheers, bye.”
Annabelle returned the handset to the cradle and paced around the room a bit. She knew the signs, she could tell that she was about to settle into a major dissection of the foregoing conversation, from the implications of choice phrases like “I’ll have to make you dinner sometime” up through to “Speak to you soon”, and as she began to build up a good restless pace, she stopped stock still.
Nope.
Don’t want to.
I, thought Annabelle, don’t want to be the kind of woman who does that sort of thing — not anymore.
Why not, she thought to herself, just let things happen as they’re meant to? “Why not,” she said to herself aloud, “keep it loose for yourself, Annabelle?”
The buzzer rang.
No one but Mormons rang Annabelle’s buzzer, and it seemed late in the day, even for them. Curious, but perturbed, brow furrowed, she considered answering the intercom in a Spanish accent, but instead — perhaps foolishly — chose to crack open the door and stick an eyeball out, since she could see the building’s front door from her front door.
It was Jamie, grinning at her eyeball, laden down with bulging shopping bags. “No time like the present!” His voice, muffled but cheery, came ringing down the hallway. She waved and stuck up one finger and said, cheerily, “Hang on a minute, okay?”
She slammed the door and flew into her bedroom. “HowcouldhejustSHOW upataperson’s HOUSE unexpectedlywithabunchoffoodandexpecto — damn it — I SMELL where’smylittlblacktanktop — Ihaven’tSHAVEDdammitdammitdammitdammit — ” and Annabelle shoved things under other things, pulled on some lycra capri pants, slipped her feet into her new slingback sandals, traded her holey T-shirt for a blue gingham cropped top, tried to tidy her mess of a hairdo, lashed on some mascara, skipped the lipstick, doused herself with some Jo Malone, and took a deep breath.
“If I wasn’t so organized this place would be a mess and then people who just turned up on my doorstep would be appalled by the state of my home — ” she muttered to herself as she yanked open her door and walked right into Jamie.
“Yer man let me in.” Jamie gestured over his shoulder at Nosy Ned, who was creeping up the stairs with almost no discernible movement. His beady little eyes were fixed violently on the innocent back of Jamie’s curly head, and Annabelle yanked him to safety, waved her thanks to Mister Meddlesome, and slammed the door.
“If this isn’t a good time, I can — I heard you kind of, em, grumbling a bit — ”
“Oh, no, not all, just a bit surprised. I kind of enjoy mumbling aloud to myself crankily,” Annabelle smiled, and with her left foot, nudged a pile of newspapers into the bathroom.
“You’re sure?” Jamie’s grip on the bags in his arms clutched, reflexively, and a pepper sprang out of one and hit the floor.
Oh, he looks all uncomfortable now. “Positive.” Annabelle picked up the pepper, and took one of the bags. “Will I show you where everything is?” She pointed to the kitchenette that ran along the wall. “It’s there.” They laughed, and Annabelle set her bag down on the table, and Jamie tried to balance his on the tiny strip of counter space that was between the stove and the sink.
“First of all,” said Jamie, pausing for effect. Annabelle had a horrified thought that he was going to start asking for Cuisinarts and copper-clad pans. “Corkscrew.”
“That I can do.” Annabelle heaved a sigh of relief. “I am assuming that you’re some kind of foodie, so I should warn you that there might be a severe lack of resources at your disposal, as it were.”
“All I need are a couple of knives, a pan or two, a glass of wine, and good company.” He smiled down at her as she started reaching around him, pulling out a small fry pan, a medium-sized saucepan, two small saucepans, a loaf tin, and a large crockpot. “Here’s the good knife,” she said, handing him a six-inch blade that hadn’t been sharpened since God knew when, and dusting off two odd wineglasses, went for the bottle.
“Does this have to breathe, or anything?” Annabelle asked as she uncorked the Chianti, and when she turned to look at Jamie, saw what was nothing less than a transformation.
“I thought I’d bring along a couple of things,” he said, slightly abashed. “Never go too far without any of my tools.” He had unwrapped what looked like a cloth belt that held a variety of cutting implements that Annabelle had only ever seen on cooking shows on television, and he was busily sharpening her good knife on a small block. He had also thought to bring a collapsible vegetable steamer and a whisk. Annabelle shook her head.
“I’ll remember this the next time you mock my organizational abilities.” She poured him a glass of wine and they toasted, smiling. “To … ” Annabelle trailed off.
Jamie smiled. “To good food, good wine, and the good knife.”
• • •
The apartment filled with the unfamiliar smell of homemade pasta sauce bubbling away on the stove. Annabelle had loaded up the CD player with a few choice albums, including Dan Minnehan’s latest. Jamie sang along, badly, with the title track, and Annabelle h
id a smile as she tried to dice an eggplant according to his specific — but gently given — instructions. They’d made good headway on the first bottle of Chianti, and like the Wizard of Oz, Jamie’s little bag had come up with another.
Singing into his whisk, Jamie crescendoed along with Dan and sighed when the song was done. “Ah, well. I’ve always wanted to be a singer.”
“Hmmm,” murmured Annabelle noncommittally. Shame he’s tone deaf.
“Haven’t got a note in me head, I’m afraid.” He looked over at Annabelle, bent over the aubergine, struggling not to laugh. “None of us do.”
“How many of you are there?” Annabelle asked, as she surveyed her handiwork. Not bad. Let’s hope Gordon Ramsey thinks so, too.
“Well done,” he said as he scooped up the pieces of aubergine and threw them into a frying pan of lightly boiling oil. The ensuing sizzle, and the sudden burst of fresh pepper and garlic in the air had Annabelle’s stomach rumbling so loudly it almost drowned out Jamie’s reply.
“Two parents, three sisters, me, one younger brother. Dara, the oldest sister, married with kids, has the family home in the ’Batter. The folks have moved back out to Clare, into my mother’s family home. Second sister, Cathleen, is a wanderer, she’s in Bali at the minute, living on a boat with some aul’ geezer; the father won’t talk about it without his wee bald head turning scarlet. Third sister, Sharon, is also married with kids, and is a stand-up comedienne, the husband is her agent. Me: tall-dark-handsome-single-restorer-slash-painter, but you already know all that.”
“You’re not that tall,” Annabelle rose to light candles, and he jabbed at her playfully with a spatula.
“Youngest brother Sean, also married with kids, lives in the country near the mother. Ten grandchildren and the woman’s still not satisfied. Jesus,” he mused aloud, flipping aubergine in the pan, “It’s like some kind of sickness, some kind of lust for posterity, the woman’s unbelievable.”
“She putting you under pressure?”
“Ah, well, Cathleen gets the worst of it, really, since that fella she’s with is old enough to be her father. Living in sin.”
“Floating in sin.” Annabelle did the math. “That’s a lot of bodies at Christmas. Do you buy for all the nieces and nephews?”
Jamie shook his head, and turned down the heat under the pasta pot. “God, no. We’d be bankrupt. We pick names out of a hat, or Dara picks names by proxy. The kids all want Sharon, she gets them joke ice cubes with bugs in them, and fart cushions.” Jamie took a sip of wine and sat down at the table across from Annabelle. “How many of you are there?”
“A sister and a brother, both younger. Both still at home with the parents, in New Jersey.” Annabelle raised a hand. “No jokes, please.”
“I love Jersey. I did my J1 in Seaside Heights when I was twenty — it’s the reason I wanted to live here.”
“We went to Lavallette. I loved the shore. What’s a J1?”
As the gorgeous smell of tomato, eggplant/aubergine, garlic, basil, onions, and rosemary filled the apartment, the conversation flowed with the kind of ease that Annabelle had never experienced. Not that she was some kind of social moron, but she felt really comfortable — Well, I am in my own home, she thought, but still … this is just really nice and comfortable without being boring, and the cooking thing is very very sexy, I don’t think I’ve ever been with a man who actually hand-made me a meal before, in my whole life, and —
“Hmmm? What?” Annabelle blinked. Jamie was back at the stove, a patient look on his face.
He laughed. “One minute you’re in the room, and then it’s like you take a notion and off you go.”
“I know. I get caught up in my own tangents. Sorry.” Annabelle blushed and shrugged. “I’ve done it since I was a kid. Didn’t go down well in primary school. And Wil — ” Oh, yuck.
Jamie stirred the pot. “Your ex?”
“Wilson. Hated it. A banker-like tendency, I imagine, to dislike digressions. Especially silent ones. Can I chop something else?”
“All under control.” Jamie tossed the fresh pasta into the salted water. “I admit I am digging for information.”
“About Wilson? Really? Well, we went out for three years and nine months and, um, we travelled a lot. We had summer shares and lots of boat trips up the coast from Connecticut. It was very yuppie. I loved him. Things weren’t great toward the end, but I was in a fog or something. He came out here and dumped me, had an envelope full of papers and ‘receipts for tax purposes’. He hadn’t always been so stuffy … I think.” Annabelle rose, and started setting the table. “That’s enough of that, if you don’t mind.”
Jamie slid a loaf of garlic bread into the oven (which needed a good cleaning, possibly a sandblasting). “My ex didn’t even dump me in person. She sent me a text.”
“I don’t believe you!” Annabelle almost dropped the plates. “That’s impossible, nobody does that in real life, do they? I mean, nobody’s that much of a — whoops. You’re serious.”
“I am serious.” Jamie, lacking anything better to do, cleaned his knives. “She, Sherrie, had started up her own art gallery, which, as I’m sure you realize, requires whispered midnight phone calls and weekends away … ”
“Oh, no,” Annabelle commiserated, folding paper towels into interesting shapes to disguise the fact that they weren’t proper napkins.
“Oh, yeah. And she texted me from L.A., saying that it was over and that she hoped I’d get my things out of her place. She’d left a box with the doorman.”
“Oh, no!”
“And then she — ah, sure, feck it. Let’s not spoil our appetites.”
Annabelle took a deep sniff. “I bet all my neighbors think someone new has moved in. It smells great.”
Jamie drained the fresh linguine. “It’s not complicated, anybody could throw it together, it’s the ingredients that make the difference.”
Annabelle topped up his glass. “No, that’s not true, and don’t rationalize.”
“‘Yes, ma’am!’”
“Was that from that cartoon, I only saw it once, what, South Central — ”
“South Park, have you no appreciation for you own culture?”
“Only when it appreciates me.”
• • •
Two helpings of fettucine with tomato and eggplant sauce later, the second bottle of Chianti was on its way to a place in history. Annabelle thought about running out to the liquor store, but decided against it. Nature taking its course was one thing, but inebriated nature was another entirely, and Annabelle made a silent vow to never get drunk and bang some guy ever again.
“So what do you paint?” She got up and put the kettle on, and arranged a selection of teas on a plate.
“Landscapes, mostly. Ireland, primarily, oddly enough. I’m working on glass at the moment, I was walking by a building site, they were after tossing away sheets and sheets of it, twenty by forty feet, it was only going to waste. I used one for that application thing.”
“Wow.” Annabelle rinsed out a couple of mugs, and scraped what little was on left on their plates into the trash. As they waited for the kettle to boil, Jamie told Annabelle about Sinaan, leaving out the bit about the dream and the way it had ended up looking like her. As he described the government scheme, his work, and the benefits involved, Annabelle watched the visible wrestling match that this project had him in the grips of. He wants to go home, she thought, and he doesn’t know it. She smiled at him, fondly, and she had to fight a natural impulse to run a finger down and around the bicep nearest her as he lost himself in the tale.
“But sure you probably know that old yarn already.”
“No. Why would I?”
He gestured to her altar. “It looks like you have an interest in that sort of thing.”
The kettle whistled, and Annabe
lle got up to make the tea. “I do,” she said. “I don’t read auras or tea leaves, or anything.”
“One of my cousins does auras. She’s got a holistic center in the back arse of nowhere in Kerry. Also reflexology and animal communication. And Auntie Maeve, she does the tea leaves.”
“I’m not being defensive!” Annabelle said defensively, and they both laughed. She set the tea down with a few packets of purloined coffee shop sugar, ignoring Jamie’s raised eyebrow. “I just had a blow-out with my friends about this stuff. Maria Grazia and Lorna? The co-conspirators, of the set-up thing? They think I’m crazy. Which is their opinion, and perfectly fine, but I feel like they’ve been humoring me all these years, and it really bugs me.
“I mean, I’m not really Wiccan or anything, I’m just kind of an ‘over-the-counter’ practitioner, but my Pooka business kind of pushed their envelopes. They were okay with the tarot and stuff, but apparently their cut-off point has to do with interfering poltergeists from foreign countries.”
Jamie slapped his hand down in front of her mug of tea. “Go on, then,” he grinned. “Tell me my fortune.”
She reached over and bent his fingers over his palm. “I don’t do palms. I had a couple of experiences that got kind of … antagonistic. I prefer the cards — they provide a bit of distance between myself and the other person.” She reached toward her altar and stopped. “I don’t know — do you really? Want a reading?”
“Sure, why not?”
Annabelle’s face was clouded with emotion as she took her deck out of its wooden box. She looked up into Jamie’s questioning gaze. “I just realized that I never really offered this properly. I mean, I offered, but I kind of nagged about it, too. Lorna and Maria Grazia were unwilling guinea pigs as I practiced doing readings.” She scowled down at the cards in her hands. “That wasn’t very fair.”
“Friends fight all the time. You’ll make it up.”
“Maria Grazia has a pathological aversion to confrontation, and I’ve always been a bit afraid of yelling at Lorna, so these friends have never fought at all. So much to think about.” She smiled at Jamie, and held out the deck to him. “Shuffle them, and when you’re ready, cut the cards into three piles.”