“On my nose!”
“Oh, stop whining. I’m missing my game, and you don’t hear me complaining.”
I was not whining. And her game was a rerun of an old Yankee classic. The team never lost in the replays.
“Come here.” She gestured for me to sit in a chair—not her favorite, I noted.
Then she reached over and pinched my nose between her fingers, tightly. How could a little old lady with arthritic joints squeeze so hard? “Hey, are you trying to kill me?”
“Sure, then I can finally have the front apartment with the view.”
Hers faced the building behind us, overlooking a tiny space for the garbage cans. She thought she should have the front unit after my mother decided to live full time in Paumanok Harbor, other than her dog-rescue work around the country. I took the rent-controlled apartment for myself, instead. Mrs. Abbottini squeezed harder.
I jumped up and ran for the door before my poor proboscis broke. “You wouldn’t like it. We get all the street noise.”
“What did you say?”
CHAPTER TWO
I had a meeting, and misgivings.
When I fled Mrs. Abbottini’s apartment and got back to my own, the answering machine light flashed. Deni had found a new way to annoy me.
“I hope this is the right number for Willow Tate even though it says Rose Tate. She’s the famous dog trainer, isn’t she? Her website says her daughter is a famous author, so I’m guessing it’s you, Willy. This is Deni. I thought I could catch you before you left and ride to your meeting with you.”
Oh, boy.
“Maybe you left already. I’ll meet you. You can call me on my cell. Or tweet me.”
I did not tweet with twits who intruded on a person’s private life. I did not return calls from unwanted admirers. I definitely did not give my cell phone number to strangers, and this kid with her high voice and artificial, nervous giggle was sounding stranger and stranger. At least my nose had stopped bleeding, though it was red and swollen and sore from Mrs. Abbottini’s vise grip. The skin on my upper lip was rough from the paper towels and now itched. I did such a Lady Macbeth trying to scrub the dried blood off my hands that they itched, too. What bothered me most was that some kid with no life of her own kept trying to shove herself into mine. I cursed Google. If Deni found my mother’s phone number—still listed because of her dog-training business—she’d know the address. She couldn’t know I lived here, though—hell, just thinking of living with my mother made my fingers itch more—so I didn’t really worry that she’d be waiting around the corner with a stack of sketches. I hated them already.
I was so aggravated at the nerve of some people that I didn’t have time to fret about my red clown nose or my ruined shirt. I grabbed a new top, slapped some concealer on my upper lip, and stuffed tissues in my pocket. I gave Little Red a good-bye cookie, shut all the closet doors tightly so he wouldn’t chew up my shoes in revenge for being left, and still had time to call my father in Florida.
After hearing about his golf game and his poker buddies and the new woman in his condo who made him a cheesecake, I asked if he had any bad vibes lately. His talent was foreseeing menace to his loved ones.
“I have a couple of regrets I need to talk to you about, baby girl. And a favor to ask for a friend.”
“Sure, whatever he needs if I can help. But I meant your bad feelings of danger. Presentiments, I guess they’re called. A fan is being a pest, and I wondered if you thought I should worry.”
“My daughter, the celebrity. With groupies of her own.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. Just a kid who thinks I can help her career. I never should have rented that Stephen King movie last year, you know, the one about the author. And I just had a bad nosebleed.”
“It can happen more if you take a lot of aspirin.”
“I don’t take any.”
“Good. Now that you mention it, I did have a quick shiver this morning, not a fist-to-the-gut kind of feeling, like if you were in real trouble, but just a glimpse of an Irish tenor singing to you. That didn’t seem right.”
Or likely. “I don’t know any Irish tenors. Or anyone who’d sing to me.” Except that haunted house on Shearwater Street in Paumanok Harbor that played music, and Matt in the car. “A tenor doesn’t sound dangerous.”
“That’s what I thought, why I didn’t bother calling to warn you.”
“Are you sure? You’ve got no twinges about an adolescent psycho, no hints of a hemophilia plague?”
“Nothing like that. And I’m as sure as I ever am about these things. You know how it works. I’m fast asleep, taking a shower, or waiting to tee off, and there it is—a sound, an image, a creepy sensation that someone I love is threatened. A guy with an Irish accent and a nice voice serenaded you. That’s all.”
“Okay.” I knew exactly how my father’s precog ability worked: inscrutably, like the Oracle at Delphi or the Sphinx. His premonitions often proved true, but usually after the peril was past and I had time to interpret the warnings or backtrack the clues. Like the time he warned me of a creature, but the true danger was a teacher. His green-eyed mouser wasn’t a cat at all but jealousy, the green-eyed monster. Other times he was dead-on, like his warnings about boats. Every time I got near one, I almost died. And got seasick, too. “I’ll stay out of O’Murphy’s Pub for awhile. Thanks.”
“Sure. About my friend, though . . .”
“Sorry, I don’t have time right now. I have a big meeting downtown, but I’ll talk to you later. Okay?”
“It’s comedy night at the clubhouse, but I’ll try to call before if we finish dinner in time. Lucille is making lasagna.”
“Don’t eat a lot of it, or the cheesecake. It’s not good for your heart.”
Neither were all the women my father dated, too few months since bypass surgery, but I refused to be a nag like my mother. “Be careful.”
“And you. Love you, baby girl.”
“Love you, too, Dad.”
* * *
The trip downtown turned out to be uneventful.
I didn’t take subways if I could help it. Or tunnels, taxis with one-eyed drivers, or planes. Escalators and elevators were problematic but conquerable if I kept my eyes shut and told myself I’d lived through worse, like lightning storms and kidnappings and fire-breathing babies.
I never said I was brave.
I got the bus, transferred to another one, and walked. Nice fall day, not too much pollution, good exercise. And I could keep my eyes out for street singers, pubs, and teenagers with satchels full of manuscripts and drawings instead of being trapped inside a thundering metal roller coaster underground.
* * *
The offices of DCP, my publishers, were in the financial district, where people walked a little faster and dressed a little better than uptown. The bars had names like The Old Brokers’ Inn, the Bulls and Bears, and the Speculator, not an O’Anything in sight.
“I love, love, love your new book, Willy.”
Oh, God, she found me.
No, the speaker was DCP’s latest twenty-something receptionist, editorial assistant, and proofreader. In other words, Sandy—Mandy? Randy?—an overworked, underpaid English major with aspirations, was the small company’s gofer.
I said thanks, and she told me to go on to the conference room. Everyone was waiting.
Everyone consisted of Don Carr, the owner, founder, and editor in chief of DCP, Don Carr Publishing, three other writers who doubled as senior editor, managing editor, and art director, two staff graphics artists, the sales manager, and three men and one woman introduced as sales reps and distributors. The last group could make or break a book by pushing it to buyers or burying it under other, favored titles. The men favored books with bare bosomed women on the covers. Content didn’t matter as muc
h to them as the artwork and the author’s track record of previous sales. Their opinions at these marketing meetings decided how many of each book was actually printed.
So I smiled and shook hands all around, hoping no one noticed my raw, tender skin or how I rubbed my itchy fingers together afterward.
While Sandy served coffee and bottled water and muffins, I dabbed at my nose with a tissue to check for disaster. Fine so far.
So was the response to my new book and the proposed cover, now that my illustration had the title in bold colors and my name along with “Award winner.”
The sales people smiled around their muffins. I had good sell-throughs, which meant they got rid of most of the Willy Tate books we published.
“It’s another winner, Willy,” Don said. “A lot stronger than your last couple. Better plotted, better characters.”
“I’m glad you think so, Don. I was a little worried.”
“Yeah, me, too. That sea monster was pretty scary.”
And he hadn’t seen the real thing the way I did. “I was afraid it was too scary.”
“I ran it by my daughter and some of her friends in our focus age group.”
I held my breath, waiting for him to tell me I had to tone down the paralyzing, petrifying horror of the waterspout serpent that swallowed ships. “Did they have nightmares?”
“Who cares? They all gave it a ten. My kid adored the parrot.”
I did, too. It helped save my friends and helped vanquish the kraken.
“She fell in love with the hero.”
Me, too.
“I thought it was a great touch, having him own a pet shop. Kids love that, even when they’re trying to be tough.”
“He’s a vet.”
Don flipped pages. “No, I’m sure you had him in a store.”
“You’re right. I, ah, changed my mind halfway through.”
No, I didn’t. Spenser Matthews, the superhero sea god whose alter ego ran a pet shop, starred in my latest book. Matt Spenser, veterinarian and altogether super guy, starred in my life. Or he would if he met me halfway, and I don’t mean some motel midway on the Long Island Expressway.
Mrs. Abbottini was right: you can’t build a relationship from three hours away. Absence might make the heart grow fonder, but it also led to frustration, loneliness, and doubts. How could I think about the future when we couldn’t work out a weekend? We both had commitments, careers, and dogs. We both liked our chosen locales and our homes, although my apartment suddenly felt cold and empty, especially at night.
I’ve met some amazing men recently and loved all of them a little, or a lot. I even thought about marrying a handsome, wealthy, brilliant British lord. I didn’t want to live in England, though, or learn to curtsy to the queen. I didn’t want to follow the world’s finest, and nicest, equestrian on his rodeo rounds, either. And I didn’t consider for an instant building a life with the wonderful man who saved lives by running into burning buildings.
The Royce Institute for Psionic Research and its Department of Unexplained Events sent them all to me. The people there—and everyone in Paumanok Harbor—hoped one or the other dude would be a match, helping me face the challenges of my own knack for getting into trouble with the trespassers from another world. They also wanted my children to expand the gene pool of talented espers.
I chose Matt for myself. He didn’t have a drop of psychic powers until we got involved. He didn’t have wanderlust and wasn’t a daredevil. He was solid, steady, and caring, with enough bravery for the two of us. If I were a willow tree, swaying with the slightest breeze, Matt was an oak. I didn’t care that he didn’t have Paumanok Harbor blood in his veins; I wanted to be with him. I wanted a nice, normal life like his, without serpents or trolls or spectral horses that caused nightmares. I wasn’t certain about kids, but if I had any, I wanted them to be ordinary, not empaths or telepaths or any kind of oddball psychopaths. Like half the residents of Paumanok Harbor.
I loved Matt. I’m pretty certain of that, anyway. Marriage didn’t scare me anymore like snakes and going crazy like my father’s mother did. Not that Matt had asked me yet, but I did not want to be his little wife who helped run his little veterinary practice, kept his tidy little house, raised his little children, and lived the rest of her life in the isolated, inbred, idiosyncratic little village of Paumanok Harbor.
The Harbor was great for summer weekends, the beach, the clear skies, the sounds of surf and seagulls. I did not want to live there.
Or here in Manhattan, with my mother.
Or anywhere, without Matt.
All of which made my head spin, which, naturally, made my nose bleed again.
CHAPTER THREE
I had more blood and mortification.
Contrary to popular expectations and opinions and any hopes a person might have, one did not die of embarrassment. I learned that a long time ago as a shy teenager when a snake ran over my foot during a tryst in a secluded area of Paumanok Harbor. Unfortunately, that secluded area was on an estate, during a fancy charity gala. The entire party—including the mayor, the chief of police, and my own parents—saw me run shrieking across the lawns, buck naked.
I did not die then. Or last month, when the Hispanic dishwasher at my uncle’s restaurant caught Matt and me naked. At least I had clothes on today.
So I did not expire on the spot, not even when the twenty-something offered me two junior tampons to shove up my nose in front of the people whose respect my career most depended upon.
Sure, sit around continuing the sales meeting with white strings hanging out of my nostrils? Sure, they were the most absorbent items on hand, but what happened when they absorbed and expanded? My nose exploded, like a potato in the microwave when I forgot to punch holes in it?
I politely refused, meanwhile offering prayers to whatever gods were listening, of this world or that other one, to have the floor open up and swallow me. When it didn’t, I accepted a box of tissues and Don’s offer to call a town car to drive me home.
He didn’t offer to pay for it. He was as glad to get rid of me, itching and bleeding and stammering in embarrassment, as I was to take my now empty portfolio and be gone.
While I waited for the car, I kept telling myself the indelible, blood-spattered impression I made on these people did not matter. I’d written a good book, with vivid graphics and dramatic scenes. Besides, I hated dealing with middle-aged men with soup stains on their ties asking if I could add a mermaid to the cover. A bare-breasted one, of course.
At least I wouldn’t have to see these people any time soon, although I’d be seeing their looks of horror in my nightmares. Sure there’d been a lot of concern mixed with the usual aversion to gore, but mostly everyone stepped back, in case they caught whatever malady I had.
They could kiss my sore nose and itchy skin—and all the money I brought in—good-bye. I loved my Willy Tate novels and illustrations, but my next project paid better, carried more prestige, and challenged me in a hundred new, exciting ways. I’m illustrating Professor James Everett Harmon’s Bestiary of Fantastical Creatures, a coffee-table art book. My art, my name under his. My pride.
I’d be happy to get home to my work, my dog, my apartment. The town car driver drove like he couldn’t wait to get rid of me either, the leper in the back seat, so I got to my street in a third of the time it took me to get downtown. The nosebleed stopped under the force of the car’s velocity.
Better yet, I found flowers outside my door.
Matt loved me! He missed me. He was sorry he couldn’t come into the city.
No. The enclosed note said Deni was sorry I’d left before she could meet me. Next time? She’d call tomorrow.
I bet illustrators of fancy books by famous scholars didn’t get harassed by obnoxious readers.
Packages for my brownstone had
to be left with the building manager next door, not carried past the two sets of locked doors unless one of the residents gave permission. Too many city apartments without doormen had been robbed by bogus delivery people to let strangers wander up the stairs. Sometimes the mailman left boxes in the vestibule with his key, and sometimes they disappeared.
Yet here were flowers, daisies dyed ugly, unnatural colors like electric blue and kelly green, and a computer printout of an amateurish, sloppy cartoon.
Hell, the cartoon was one of mine. Most of it, anyway. Deni’d taken a page from one of my books, then altered it to put neon-tinted flowers in the hands of my hero.
That made me maddest of all. You can insult my writing, invade my privacy, give me a headache, but steal my ideas? Copy my drawings? Over my dead body, and my copyright attorney’s.
I stomped across the hall.
“Mrs. Abbottini, did you see who delivered these flowers? She had to be buzzed in.”
“Aren’t they beautiful?”
No, and yes, she’d seen them. “Who brought them? There’s no florist card.”
“A nice young man. He said he had flowers from an admirer of yours. I thought they came from your veterinarian, the one you’re not bonking with like bunnies on the beach.”
“I’m not . . . So you let him come upstairs? You could have been robbed.”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t have done that. I was coming home from bingo and saw him pushing all the call buttons. You know, like those upstairs tenants do when one of them forgets his keys.”
“That should have told you he didn’t belong here. You should have called the police, or the manager. What if he were dangerous?”
“I had my mace can, like always.”
Which, in the shaking hands of a half-deaf old woman would not have discouraged anyone intent on mayhem. “So you told him you’d bring the flowers upstairs, to Willy Tate’s apartment?”
“Well, they weren’t for me, were they?”
She looked at the horrid flowers with longing, so I shoved them into her arms. “If you like them, you can have them. Just don’t do that again.”
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