Tooth and Nail

by Jennifer Safrey

  “Instead of?”

  “Instead of the famous person I have a crush on who shares the rent.”

  “The former scenario is more appealing, eh?”

  “It’s the fantasy thing.”

  “This isn’t a fantasy?”

  I reached down to the floor beside the bed and lifted one black, dusty sock. “This,” I said, holding it up with two fingers, “isn’t a fantasy.”

  “My socks are never on the floor,” he protested. “In fact, I think you planted that there, like a bloody glove at the crime scene, so you could make a convenient point at a moment like this one.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted, and flung the sock at him. It hit his shoulder. “Do you really need me to go with you?”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll be back Sunday morning.”

  I was relieved, because I needed to stay here to monitor the Clayton situation. Until I knew for sure Mahoney had held up his end of the deal, I didn’t want to go anywhere. Luckily, if I’d played my cards right—and I was confident I did—Clayton would cease to be a Olde Way threat this very weekend and would be hiring a lawyer, and I could tune in to TV-Spree Monday night and buy lipsticks or mops or casserole dishes—anything but toothpaste.

  “Hopefully when I’m back,” Avery was saying, “I won’t be bummed because I managed to look like an idiot on national television.”

  “How could you?”

  “The last time a McCormack was on television,” Avery pointed out, “it was Dad, and they were crucifying him. Outside of Virginia and D.C., that’s all the public remembers about my family.”

  “God damn it, already,” I said. I hopped off the bed and wedged myself between him and his suitcase. “Look at me. Look at me. That is the past. You’re the new McCormack in town. Quit looking over your shoulder. There’s nothing back there for you. You’re you and today is today and that’s the end of it.”

  He furrowed his brow and took a step back as if to get a better look at me. “Wow.”

  “Wow, what?”

  “Wow, that’s exactly what I’ve said to you about your past, about your father.”

  I crawled back onto the bed and leaned into the pillows. “Obviously, that’s not the same thing.”

  “No, of course not, but the advice is still sound. Would you take your own advice, then?”

  Would I? “Yes,” I said, nodding my head once as punctuation. “Yes, I would. I’m not still living with the consequences of what he did.”

  Avery lifted a brow.

  “I’m not,” I insisted. “Not anymore. I’ve gotten out from under that, and it’s been recently.”

  “What brought on that transformation?” Avery asked.

  “I’ve been transformed in ways even I can’t get over.” I dropped my head on the pillow and reached my arms over my head.

  “You’ve gotten a sunburn, at any rate,” Avery noted.

  I had to admit, I was feeling pretty good. I was tempted to call Svein and gloat about my simple solution to Clayton’s huge problem, but I decided to wait it out. Let him hear about it himself. With any luck, it would be news tomorrow.

  Avery slipped a pair of black dress shoes into the sides of the suitcase. “Let’s practice,” I said to him.

  “Practice what?”

  “Practice what you’re going to say on Wright’s show tomorrow night.”

  “How can I do that?”

  “I’ll pretend to be Wright and throw a few things at you, and you practice reacting off the cuff.”

  “This is silly,” he said, but he’d stopped packing and I was certain the perfectionist in him loved the idea.

  “It can’t possibly hurt, and maybe it will even help.” I scooted over on my knees, lifted his wheeled bag and placed it on the floor. “Have a seat, Avery McCormack. Let the studio audience get a good look at you. You’re a handsome man, you know that?”

  “He won’t say that.”

  “Believe me,” I said, “he very well could.” I deepened my voice. “Great to have you on the show.”

  “Glad to be here, Graham.”

  “I understand you’re looking to represent Virginia in the House of Representatives.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you think Virginia can bring to the table? Anything? I mean, they couldn’t even hang on to West Virginia.”

  “Gemma, I’m pretty sure Graham isn’t going to make me talk about secession.”

  “You really never know. That’s why we’re practicing.” I deepened my voice again. “So, Virginia. As in, Virginia is for Lovers.”

  “That it is.”

  “I’ll bet. I understand you and your girlfriend are living in sin.”

  Avery laughed. “I wouldn’t exactly call it that, Graham.”

  “Well, then, what would you call it?”

  “I call it spending the most intimate part of my life with the most intimate person in my life, a woman who I very much plan on convincing to change her last name at some point in the near future. Maybe even a nearer future than she thinks.”

  I lost my voice.

  “Graham,” he said, “I seem to have astonished you with that response.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said in my normal voice and then remembered my role. “No, I just can’t believe you managed to weasel out of that line of questioning so, ah, so nicely.”

  Avery’s eyes sparkled.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “If Graham Wright said that to me,” Avery said, “I’m pretty sure it would be one of the most famous interviews ever.”

  “Sorry. What I mean is, um, er …” I struggled to get back into interviewer mode. “Where was I? Right, Virginia. As in, ‘Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.’ Are you familiar with that piece of literature?”

  “Yes, Graham, that was a newspaper editorial written in the 19th century in which the writer sought to convince a little girl that it was very much worth it to believe in Santa Claus, and faeries, and other magical things that can’t be seen, because just because you haven’t seen them, it doesn’t mean they don’t, in fact, exist.”

  I was astonished for the second time. I had just been free-associating when I came up with that article, and I would have never remembered that the article had mentioned faeries. But while we were on the topic: “So, then, you’re saying you believe in Santa Claus?”

  Avery shifted. “I do believe in Santa Claus, on a certain level. I believe in the meaning of Santa Claus, the generosity of Christmas and the wonder of children.”

  “So what about fae?”

  “What?”

  “Faeries,” I said, wincing.

  “What about them?”

  “Do you believe they exist?”

  “I’m—I’m going to have to say no.” Avery smiled a perfect politician smile, humoring and kind but, at the same time, just a bit detached.

  “Why not?” I asked. “Didn’t you just say that you believe in Santa Claus?”

  “I believe in the spirit of the Santa Claus legend. I don’t believe in an old man in a red velvet suit.”

  “Do you believe in the faerie legend?”

  “I wasn’t aware that there was a faerie legend. I mean, certainly not surrounding a major American tradition.”

  I swallowed, and smiled to hide every little thing I was thinking in that moment. “So you’ve never heard of the tooth faeries?”

  “Tooth faeries? There are more than one?”

  “Oh, so you do believe there is at least one.”

  “No, I don’t think … “

  “Careful, Avery,” I said in my non-Graham voice. “There are always kids who are up too late watching television. This is why you need to practice.”

  “There are a lot of things Graham Wright could ask me,” Avery said, standing, “but I think I’m pretty safe from the topic of the freaking tooth faerie.”

  “You’re awfully quick to mock beliefs on my show tonight, Mr. McCormack,” I said in Graham-speak. “What about people wh
o worship a different God than you do? Would you be so quick to mock their beliefs?”

  “Jesus, Gemma.” He picked up his suitcase and tossed it back onto the bed, bouncing me a little.

  “Jesus, Allah, whoever.”

  “I stand for the right for every American to believe—and not believe—in any way or in anything he or she chooses.”

  “Except for the ‘freaking tooth faerie.’”

  “The tooth faerie,” Avery said, rolling up a pair of boxers and shoving them in the bag, “is not a religion. It’s a story we tell children to ease the pain of coming into adulthood.”

  “So all these parents are telling lies to their kids?”

  “Where are you going with this, Gemma?” Avery asked. “Because I’ve got enough on my mind as it is without you badgering me with complete and total lunacy.”

  “I’m not Gemma, I’m Graham,” I said. A vein in my temple was throbbing now. Mom had said I needed to be honest with Avery. I had said I wouldn’t tell him about me, but really, deep inside, I’d hoped that one day, I could. That the man I loved—and who apparently loved me enough to marry me someday, I now learned—would have the strength come around to something that practically no one else could.

  But he was human after all. And it broke my heart, and I wanted to lash out. “What if your girlfriend, whom you just claimed you love so much, believed in the tooth faerie?”

  Avery threw up his arms and went into our small bathroom. I followed him, and hung in the door frame as he packed his electric razor and a washcloth into a little black nylon pouch. I reached a hand over my shoulder to scratch at my itching, burning back. “I mean, what if Gemma really believed with all her heart and soul?” I asked. “If she said, ‘I know for a living, breathing fact that the tooth faerie is real’?”

  He turned to leave the bathroom, but I was blocking his way. “Back off with this craziness, Gemma,” he said quietly, prying my hand off the wall and slipping past me. “Please. I don’t know what we’re doing here, but now is not a good time.”

  “I have to know,” I demanded. “What would you say to her? To me?” My breathing was rapid and panting, and my shoulder blades quivered violently. “Would you love me enough to believe me?”

  He stared at me, bewildered and angry. “All right, here’s your answer,” he said. “And I hope that after this, this insane subject is closed. I would love you enough—to make sure you got the psychological and pharmaceutical help you needed to get out of your delusional world and back into the real one.”

  I stepped back as if I’d been slapped. My two realities crashed together inside my chest and I couldn’t choose, because I was both. I needed to be both, now, in my own home, with the man who loved me. But he would never believe me, and he would never fully understand me, and I wished I’d never known what I was, and I couldn’t accept …

  And I couldn’t breathe …

  My wings exploded out of my back, their power pushing me to my knees on the cold tile. I looked up, and Avery stood there, his eyes wide and filled with sheer terror.

  “Avery,” I said, trying to crawl on aching knees over to him but he scrambled back, sliding on the sock I’d thrown at him earlier and half-landing on the bed. “Oh, my God, Avery.”

  He pushed himself up and his frantic gaze darted around the room, as if expecting more terrible things to appear, or as if searching for an exit.

  “It’s me, Avery,” I said, lifting myself to my feet, swaying as I adjusted to my new form. He cringed. I held out my hands, palm up. “I’m me. I’m the same me. I love you. Please. Let me explain.”

  For the briefest moment, his eyes met mine, and I tried as hard as I could to project all the love in my heart to him, shining it out of my gaze, my fingertips, every part of me.

  But the next moment, his eyes rolled up in his head and he crashed to the floor, unconscious.

  CHAPTER 20

  Chaos raged inside me, which was why when Avery awoke a few minutes later, my wings hadn’t retracted, and I was still a fearsome apparition.

  Luckily his head had hit the fluffy bath mat. I sat on the floor beside him holding his hand in both of mine, willing the impossible to occur—for him to give me a chance to make him understand.

  He blinked over and over, as if he could make the sight of me fall away like sleep dust from his eyes. But I remained, and he stared over my shoulders at my pale gossamer wings. “What,” he rasped, “are you?”

  “Fae,” I said.

  He shook his head, not comprehending.

  “Fae, like faerie,” I clarified for his human mind. “But only half. I’m half human. I didn’t even know. I thought I was human until the other week when they found me and …“

  “Don’t tell me,” he said, and rolled away from me. He stood, unsteady, and put out both arms for balance. “I don’t want to know. I want to get out of here.”

  “I wanted to tell you,” I said. Weakness spread throughout my body. My shoulders slumped, my hands lay inert in my lap, my head hung down. “But I knew it would sound—that you would think I’m…“

  “Crazy?” Avery said, with clear hysteria. “Crazy, I could do. Crazy, I can cope with. But this? What the hell is this?”

  “You know what faeries are,” I said. “You’ve heard about them all your life. You just didn’t know they were true. You didn’t know that,” I hesitated, “that I’m one. Everything else is the same. When I found this out, and I was scared, my mother told me to remember that I’m the same person I always was, that the only thing that changed was my self-awareness. And I eventually realized she was right. I’m still Gemma the boxer and Gemma the ex-pollster and Gemma, your girlfriend. There’s just something extra that we have to get used to.”

  Sometime in the middle of my small speech, Avery had started shaking his head and he kept it up. “No. No. This is—I don’t know what this is.” He covered his face with his hands and rubbed. “I haven’t been getting enough sleep. I’m overtired. I’m having a nightmare.”

  I stood and reached out a hand. “Avery, please.”

  He jerked away. “Don’t touch me,” he shouted. “Just—don’t touch me.”

  Hot tears filled my eyes and I wouldn’t blink them away, instead letting them slide tracks down my face so that he could see I was human too, that this was hurting me too.

  But he turned away. He turned his back and grabbed two fistfuls of his hair, his shoulders folding in. He said nothing for several minutes.

  I sat on the bed, pulled my legs cross-legged and I breathed. I breathed into my heart, and I breathed into the space between Avery and I, and I breathed into the place on my back where my wings connected to the rest of me, and then I felt them retract into me. I shivered through the torn back of my tank top.

  Then I heard Avery mumbling. I leaned a little closer to him to hear. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real. I have a campaign to do. I have a show to do. I’m dreaming. I—”

  “Avery?”

  He spun around and startled, realizing my wings were gone. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then said, “I’m really tired.”

  A tear rolled over my upper lip and I tasted the salt. “I know.”

  “I have to get out of here.”

  “No,” I said, “you don’t.”

  “I’m going to be on TV.” His voice was eerie, hollow.

  “You’re not leaving until morning.”

  “I’m leaving right now.” He rushed over to the suitcase, zipped it up and dragged it into the living room. I followed, trying not to get too close to him but desperate to make him stay.

  “It’s late,” I babbled, “and you just said you’re tired. Go to sleep. I’ll stay down here. I can wake you up early for your flight.”

  He dropped the bag with a clatter and whirled around. “No,” he said, “I can’t wake up to this. I just woke up a moment ago and saw you…” He put up his trembling hands, opening and closing them. “I can’t wake up to you like that. This—you, us—is what I
counted on to get me through.” His voice broke. “This is what I knew was true. Us. This is what I believed in. How can this be falling apart? How?”

  “It’s not,” I begged. “It’s not. We can get used to this, get past this. I have so much to tell you, so much I wanted to tell you and now I can…”

  He stuffed his feet inside a pair of sneakers and stood there in his sweats, bedraggled and panicky, with only one plan—to leave.

  “Don’t go,” I said, and fell to my knees. “Avery, don’t go. I believe in us. It won’t fall apart.” I broke down, my sobs coming fast and hard and agonized.

  “I have to go,” he said, backing away from me to the front door. He pulled a hooded sweatshirt off the coat rack and tugged it on, reaching in for his cell phone. “I’ll call a cab.”

  “You’re coming home,” I said between sobs. “You’re coming home on Sunday.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, Gemma,” he said, and opened the door.

  “Don’t leave me,” I said, crying harder. “I love you. I love you.”

  He looked at me, and I tried to catch my breath. He was the man I slept with, laughed with, made plans with. I knew everything about him. And now he knew everything about me.

  I couldn’t read his expression at all. Hate, pity, fear, love, remorse. It could have been all of them, or none of them, or a thousand other things. But I had no idea.

  Then he left, closing the door gently behind him.

  “Avery!” I screamed in a voice that wasn’t mine. I pounded my fists on the floor, then collapsed onto my side, crying, curling into a fetal position, clutching at myself, mourning what I’d known all along I was destined to lose.

  >=<

  I didn’t want to knock and risk no one answering. I was already alone, and I couldn’t stand to be even more so. Instead, I intended and walked through the closed door.

  He was there, sitting at the cramped desk. He took in my ragged hair, my sweatpants and ripped tank top, my untied sneakers. “What the hell happened to you?” Svein asked.

  “He left,” I said. My empty voice echoed in my own ears. It had been years since I’d cried over anything or anyone, and two straight hours of weeping had left me drained, hopeless and incoherent. “My wings came out. He ran away. He ran away from me and us.”