The Last Will of Moira Leahy: A Novel

by Therese Walsh

  "I hear you breathing."

  "I'll be there in a minute," he called back. "Just wait."

  Wait? I squared my shoulders, the keris still in my hand. Alvilda wouldn't wait for some guy. In fact, Alvilda wouldn't knock. I turned the handle between our rooms. It gave way. And there, with a towel around his waist, stood my bonny friend.

  "Christ," he said. Water rivulets streamed down his face. "I said 'wait,' not 'come in.'"

  "Oops. Sorry." Every bit of me went hot, and I knew it had nothing to do with the keris or the temperature of the room. I stared at his eyes, tried to pretend he wore more than a scrap of cotton terry, though my peripheral vision took comprehensive notes on his toned body and scatter of chest hair. If I'd had any functioning brain cells, I would've slunk back into my room. As it was, it took a vast effort to pull my gaze off him. That's when I saw the big envelope on the floor near his door. "Look!" I picked it up. "Another FedEx from Garrick!"

  "Another?"

  Ah, hell. "That time Jakes called, I needed something to write with so I opened your drawer and saw the FedEx, and I noticed that it was from Garrick, but I didn't open it even though it might've been important. Have you opened it yet?"

  "No." He stepped so close I could smell the soap on his skin, and then he took the envelope from me and tossed it onto his bed.

  My non-keris-holding hand jangled in his face. "But ... but, what are they?"

  "Packages from my grandfather."

  "We've established that. Why haven't you opened them?"

  "Let's say I won't grasp the language. It's lost to me."

  "I don't understand."

  "There's no reason you should. Now are you going to let me get dressed?"

  "I don't think I will. Frankly, I've had enough of your bad moods." And then, because three cups of espresso does things to a person, I lifted the sheathed keris and put my hand on my hip. "En guard, scurvy dog!"

  "You have me at a disadvantage," he said, right before reaching behind him at lightning speed. I barely registered a flash of white when the pillow hit me in the face and dropped artlessly to the floor.

  "Grab your sketchbook. There's an inspiration for you." I looked at the keris, which now pointed toward the floor as well. "The impotent sparrist." I snorted. He chuckled. "Not that I don't know how to wield this thing," I continued, waving the keris. "I mean, let's be clear."

  "Cute."

  "I am, aren't I? So cute you'll explain those packages."

  "Persistent as a bloodthirsty mosquito." He pushed wet hair out of his face.

  I made a high-pitched mosquitoesque sound.

  "After you told my grandfather that I came here to find my mother--"

  "I didn't exactly tell him--"

  "--he sent some of her old letters. He thought there might be a clue in them to help an investigation. Problem was, I didn't have an investigator. So he hired Jakes."

  "But why didn't you have--"

  "Now Jakes is harassing me to turn over the letters so he can analyze the hell out of them," he said. "But I won't give them to him until I've read them. And I won't read them."

  "Why not read them? Why not give them to the investigator?"

  He crossed his arms over his chest. I thought his towel might fall, but it must've been superglued in place.

  "You know why this is crap? I don't need her. I don't even think about her."

  None of this made sense.

  "Then what's all this for?" I asked. "Why come so far, spend all this time and money on finding someone you don't even think about?" He didn't answer, just turned his wet back on me. Any respectable person would give him some privacy, leave him alone to dry off and dress. I stepped a little closer. "You've become a real stub of companionability, you know."

  "You almost died." He struck at the last word like a gong.

  I wanted to reach out and touch him, but didn't. "It was a mistake. Can't you just let it go?"

  "What? The image of you nearly flattened by a bus?"

  "A bloody bus," I said, trying to lighten the moment.

  "It would've been bloody."

  "I lost my head for a second."

  "You might've lost it forever. Christ."

  "Noel, I--" I strode around his still form, looked him in the eye. "It was like a dream," I said. "I was out of it."

  "If that's true--" He grunted. "You should see a doctor."

  "Now you sound like Kit."

  "Good. Kit's a smart woman. Listen to her."

  "I feel great today." I tried for a smile, but his glower sapped the will from my lips.

  "You walked in front of a bus," he said. "Tell me how this is a good thing."

  "Right. And you saved my life."

  "Not that you need rescuing. Isn't that how it is?"

  "Not that I do, generally speaking, but you came in handy just then." My voice softened. "Thank you for being there."

  He regarded me for a long moment. "Giovanni wants us ready around eleven."

  I'd forgotten. The club. My outfit. "We don't have to go," I said. "If you'd rather--"

  "He took the night off to help us." Words spoken slowly, enunciated crisply.

  "All right, all right," I said.

  I'd just crossed the threshold to my room when I was struck in the back of the head with a damp towel. The door thumped closed behind me.

  I turned, put my hand to the door, and envisioned Noel on the other side. The keris flared hot in my hand. My vision blurred. I leaned against the settee, let the blade fall onto a pillow.

  Color and focus came back slowly as a fine film of sweat formed on my upper lip. There was risk and then there was stupidity. I wouldn't wear that outfit. I just wouldn't.

  Out of Time

  Castine, Maine

  LATE OCTOBER 2000

  Moira and Maeve are sixteen

  Moira nearly slammed into Maeve as she stepped out of the bathroom.

  "Don't go," Maeve said. Just that.

  Moira had been a wreck of nerves all day, but she'd made a decision: Tonight would be the night with Ian. Making love would bond them completely. She'd have time, after, to explain things. For now, she was obsessed over the details of the moment: What would she wear? How should she behave? Would it hurt?

  She'd found an outfit--a black stretchy top, a nice pair of jeans--and she'd applied just a little of Mama's perfume, some of her lipstick. She'd left her hair loose and mussed it into a semiwild state. And just when she felt satisfied with her reflection, Maeve stood in her way and asked her not to go.

  Moira walked around her and into their bedroom. She kept her voice low. "What's the matter with you? I'm going to Ann's."

  "No, you're not."

  "Are you calling me a liar?"

  Maeve rounded on her to barricade Moira from their closet. "I know you didn't go out with her last week. I know because I saw her in school and asked about the movie. She said there wasn't a movie."

  "Stop butting into my business!" Moira tried to push past her twin, but Maeve grabbed her arms.

  "I have a bad feeling. Don't go."

  Moira stiffened. "Your feelings aren't always right."

  "They're right most of the time."

  "Not this time."

  "Stay here tonight." The storm in Maeve's eyes softened. "I have a new piece, and I think it'd be easy to adapt to piano--"

  "I don't need your charity." Moira felt the words land like a blow to her sister and regretted it. Still, this was her night with Ian. The only time she'd give away her virginity. Nothing was going to stop her, not even Maeve and her bad feelings. She tried again to dodge her twin and succeeded this time in snatching her sneakers.

  "Why would you say that? You know I love to play with you."

  "I'm not in your league, and we both know it. You're too busy with your Hollywood stuff for me now." She stuffed her feet inside the leather.

  "It's not Hollywood stuff."

  "New York, whatever." Moira hated her jealousy, the way it heaved in her like a
sickness, but she couldn't seem to stop it.

  "Why are you doing this to us?"

  "I didn't do this to us! You did this!" she said before she could stop herself.

  "I did? How did I?"

  By being perfect and always so sure of yourself. By flying high while I stood on the ground and watched. By not helping me learn to fly, too. By making Ian love you.

  "By making my life impossible!" Moira made for the door.

  Maeve grasped her arm again--"Please, don't go, please"--and again Moira pulled away.

  "I will go. I don't believe in your feeling," she said, already down the hall and at least three steps ahead.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IL SOTTO ABBASSO

  Something about Rome stimulated contact and intimacy; maybe--the fountain water everyone sipped was laced with pheromones. People held hands, embraced, kissed. Even the statues twined around one another. So it was easy to blame the great city's power of suggestion for my ogling Noel, which began the moment I appeared back in his room. Perfectly tailored pants the color of rich espresso. Midnight blue silk shirt fitted like a skin, open at the neck. My eyes roamed him as he chatted with Giovanni. Abdomen, shoulders, thighs, mouth.

  I thought Noel caught me once or twice, but I always looked away, then.

  "You will change, yes?" Giovanni asked me at one point. I still wore the outfit I'd had on that day.

  "I thought maybe this would--"

  He tsk-tsked. "No," he said. He looked sinful himself in black pants and a leopard-print shirt with an overlay of bold orange stripes. "Where is your flow-in-the-dark?"

  I glanced at Noel, who raised a brow.

  "I ... I don't--"

  "Mariella said you have a new and beautiful thing. You go. Go now and change."

  Before I could respond, Giovanni began a twisty little dance. "Sunday night and I ain got no body! I got some money 'cause I just got paid! Mama let me have someone to talk to, and there will be jazz tonight." He continued to sing and dance while my thoughts snagged on just one word.

  "Jazz?"

  "Music," Noel said. "It's a jazz club."

  Ah, hell. Jazz almost always meant the sax. Though I hadn't managed to evade all sax music over the last decade, I'd done my best. I imagined it was like seeing an old lover, happy without you; hearing the live sound of a reed's voice made me ache. It had ever since my instrument drowned in the Penobscot, met up somewhere on the sea's rock-and-silt floor with my family's old keris. Time to pull out my Chinese Brother skills and take a long drag of air; I wouldn't let Noel down again.

  Back in my room, I closeted up with my new clothes, my old concerns, and finally my resolutions. And when I finished with my transformation, I stared at the woman in the glass. Her wisp-of-smoke skirt showed the curve of slender hips. Her sheer black top revealed a dimple belly button, and its elaborate silver threading concealed only the most intimate parts of her breasts. There was something medieval about her sleeves--the way they hugged tight to her forearms and flared at her wrists. Her cheeks and lips looked ruby-kissed, her eyes dramatic, and her hair held a flock of butterfly clips. A pair of red heels made miraculous work of her calves.

  "Who are you?" I asked the mirror.

  You are Alvilda. You are Maeve. You fear nothing.

  Right, then. I would go. I would face Noel as I faced the glass. And I would face the music.

  I REPLACED THE keris in my safe before I left. "Stay," I told it. I knew I was stalling.

  I donned a silver wrap, then took a deep breath and opened the door. Noel and Giovanni looked staggered, and I had to admit to a thrill of feminine power.

  "My girlfriend will kill me for saying so"--when the words came, Giovanni Benedetto Chioli sounded as American as Billy Crystal--"but you look marvelous!"

  "That's the magnum opus of understatement," Noel said.

  I smiled and wondered if I might glow in the dark after all.

  NOEL SETTLED HIS jacket over my shoulders as we walked a short but chilly distance to the outskirts of Trastevere. When Giovanni announced that we'd reached our destination, I thought he'd lost his mind; we stood before what looked like a long shed. He opened a door marked with nothing but a thin growth of moss, and in we stepped. We traveled a dim hall, then a long flight of stairs, before passing through another door and down more steps.

  I hadn't known places like Il Sotto Abbasso existed--a club beneath modern-day Rome, where a buried city sprawled in mute glory. Shops and homes, streets and aqueducts--there were many such places, even under people's houses, Giovanni said, and owners hid them away to maintain their peace. It fascinated me, the idea of a secret world beneath the surface.

  Before the final door was even opened, I heard the din of holler-talk along with strains of Louis Armstrong's "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." Relief. Recorded trumpeting I could handle.

  Giovanni left us to visit with friends while we took in the room. Tall tables dotted the floor, amid a throng of swaying bodies. I turned to Noel, ready to let loose a comment about the likelihood of me going out to dance, but he stopped me.

  "You look delicious," he said.

  I shook my head. Delicious wasn't a label I could own.

  "You make it hard sometimes, Maeve Leahy, to be a gentleman."

  "But you are one."

  "An effing inconvenient reputation," he said with a grimace. "But I know the rules. I'll be good."

  I realized then, in that under-down place, why I'd kept Noel in my life when I'd shunned others. Because he was, at heart, an old-world chap like his grandfather. A man who might've stepped from the pages of Jane Eyre. Safe. And maybe I'd wanted him close because I knew he genuinely cared for and admired me as a woman, and I craved that rush, even if I took nothing else. Not kisses or sweet words. Not a body to hold at night. Noel Ryan was my not-mate mate. My not-lover love. My gentleman who didn't always want to be a gentleman.

  What a selfish bitch I'd been. To both of us.

  I let my wrap slide down to the crook of my arms and held out my hand. "Let's dance."

  He regarded me with hooded eyes, then joined his palm with mine. Not at all awkward, just ... just.

  I pressed my face against his chest as we melded in to become two more people on the dance floor. "You know something? I missed your smell."

  He laughed. "My smell? God, do I smell?"

  His scent was rich with complex notes--like air, earth, water, and fire, distilled and woven into his DNA. Like a seasoned shore, maybe, one that had endured some bad times and survived. "You smell good."

  The song changed, became "Dream a Little Dream of Me." I spoke in time with the tune, mimicked Louis' words: "Say nighty-night and kiss me. Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me ..."

  He stilled, swayed again.

  When the next verse began, with talk of craving kisses and lingering till dawn, I switched to Italian. "S'affievoliscono le stelle, ma io, tesoro, indugio con l'anelito tenace, bramante per il tuo bacio. Con l'ardore languisco ... E gia e l'alba! Tesoro, che posso dirti?"

  He sang the next words in my ear. I don't think I'd ever heard him sing before, but his voice was a rich, clear tenor. "Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you. Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you. But in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me."

  His fingers splayed over my bare back, and I leaned into him, held tight. Here we were again, like the night I'd had too much to drink and called him a ninny. Like then, but different.

  "God, Maeve, it's worse and worse," he said in a soft-serious mutter. "You have no idea."

  "Yes, I do." My hand dipped to his hip, flexed there.

  He pulled back, and the expression on his face--like I was it for him, the only woman in the room--filled me with rapture. I realized in that honey-covered moment, as he tucked a finger under my chin, that I'd kissed Noel a thousand times in my dreams. But this was no dream. His lips were warm and gentle. They didn't ask much, just to be still with mine. Not nearly enough for my res
urrected yearnings. Just as I'd begun to brush my mouth over his, though, Louis' song stopped abruptly--

  --and was replaced by the squeal of a microphone. I jerked my head back as a stew of live sounds thickened the room. The pluck of a bass, the steady tap-tap of the cymbals, a beat on drums, and an ivory-key melody. Oh, Moira. And there, not quite on key, the sax.

  MY JOY SOURED as the player sustained his bad start. Strident notes sounded out with a hiss--the clear protest of a harassed instrument. I put my hands to my lips, my ears, set them down again.

  A black curtain lifted in a dark corner, revealing a stage and a group of musicians. A woman with black hair and red lips at the piano. A thin man plucking a bass. A bald drummer who married stick to metal with his eyes closed. And a guy with hair whiter than mine who completed a flat run on an airy nonnote, his fingers wrapped around a sax.

  "Are you all right?" The man I'd just kissed looked at me with a reasonable question in his eyes, as my eyes stung.

  "Sorry. I'm just ..."

  Noel shook his head in question, and I shook mine back in response. The tale of my music, of my sax, was one of a long-lost love. Intimate. Over.

  Cymbals crashed. I turned to see metal disks fluttering on their stands as the sax player righted himself, squealed out another note. He had to be drunk or high. Plenty of people laughed. My fingers itched to steal his instrument.

  Remember the taste of reeds?

  My tongue watered and curled. I had to get out of there.

  I opened my mouth to offer an excuse. Headache. Fatigue. The urge to kill. That's when I noticed a high shelf loaded with skulls just beyond Noel, a Jolly Roger pinned to the wall. The sight of those disembodied heads took my anxiety up a significant notch. I would gladly have sunk into the floor to escape, but deep in Il Sotto Abbasso, there was nowhere to go but up.

  I pushed my way through the crowd and to the exit, and had run halfway up the first set of stairs when Noel called. I waited as he followed me up, reached the step just below mine. We stood almost nose to nose.

  "Was it that bad?" Pride and hurt warred in his eyes.