by Paul A. Rice
I had a great afternoon and was soon meandering back towards Times Square, detouring through Chinatown and Little Italy where there were bars and restaurants aplenty. I called-in and had a few pints along the way, sitting and chuckling as the barman in one particular Irish bar, berated his customers like a scene straight out of the ‘Cheers’ TV show. That guy was one funny fucker, I told him so, too. He bought me a pint and we sat chin-wagging for an hour or two.
By the time I had walked back to the hotel it was nearly midnight and I was dead on my feet. There was a big sign in the foyer, announcing some special promotion that would be held in the hotel’s revolving restaurant the next night. I made a mental note to make sure I went and checked it out, after all – they were offering half-price cocktails.
I showered and went to bed with thoughts of the morning drifting through my head – I hoped it would be Okay and that it wouldn’t be as bad as I supposed it might be.
Sunday was to turn out just fine and was to be another very interesting day in my life, one that would change so many things in so many ways for me…
***
I woke early and padded barefoot over to the window of the room, standing and looking down onto the cold streets of an early, New York morning. It was the same as any other city. Cleaners doing their thing and tramps doing theirs, both going through the bins but with different agendas.
I used the gym and then ordered some breakfast, making myself a cup of tea whilst I waited for it to be delivered. Over my meal, I had a quick read of my emails and checked the phones to see if I’d missed any calls, I’d turned them off when I was walking yesterday because I just wanted to see the sights and not be interrupted. There was one email and one text, both from Vick-the-Stick…
‘Hi, Mr Collins, it’s Victoria, we need to talk! There’s far too much money in your current account! Call me when you have time…’
I shook my head and deleted the messages.
Dragging the ironing board out from the cupboard, I gave my shirt a quick press and then buffed my shoes with the dusters provided in the room. The suit looked good, any little wrinkles from the flight having now fallen out. I laid the whole lot on the bed and went to clean myself up, taking a good shower and actually spending some time in having a decent shave, as opposed to simply whipping the razor around my face like I normally did.
Donning my clothes, I once more went to look in a mirror, this time it was the full-length one hanging on the wall by the door. I’ve never been big on suits and this was one of only two I owned. But, and even if I say so myself, I looked pretty damned snappy. The suit fitted me perfectly, the shoes shone and my face was as smooth as the proverbial.
'Yeah,’ I said, ‘you’ll do, Collins, you’ll do...’
Picking up my phones and wallet, I headed for the door.
By the time I reached the park the sun was shining, the warmth of its rays giving a nice feeling to the place. People were out walking their dogs and a few kids were messing about with footballs and things. I asked an elderly couple the directions to Alice, they told me I was on the right track, all I had to do was keep following this pathway and when I saw the signs, take a right and I couldn’t miss her.
I thanked them and headed off in the general direction.
I found Alice with no problems; she and all her friends were part of a large, bronze sculpture. The sculpture was obviously quite old and the thing I like most was that nobody cared about the fact there were kids of all ages climbing and playing all over it. In fact, and by the looks of things, it was they, and hundreds of others before them, who had buffed the monument’s surface to a nice shine with their playful hands. I watched them for a while, standing in the sun with a strange feeling seeping into my guts. I have no idea why, but I was suddenly filled with a sense of overwhelming calm.
Turning away from the scene of happy children, I lifted my Oakleys and scanned the surrounding area, my gaze soon focussing upon an elderly couple who were in the process of laying out a tartan blanket on the ground. Watching, I saw that they definitely seemed to be preparing for a picnic, a wicker basket and some paper bags lay to one side, I could quite clearly see the end of a bread loaf protruding out from one of the bags.
Deciding to take the bull by the horns, I tucked my shades into a pocket and wandered slowly across. As I drew nearer, the women caught sight of me. Straightening her back, she raised a hand to shield her eyes and looked across to watch me as I approached.
I stopped ten feet away, saying: ‘Hi, are you Andi’s parents?’
The man rose to his feet from where he had been busily laying out some napkins.
‘Yes, we are – are you Mr Collins, Jake?’ the woman said.
I said I was and stepped forward with my hand outstretched.
‘Oh dear,’ the women said, brushing my hand away gently and holding out her arms instead. ‘Come here, young man!’
So I did, walking forward to engage in a genuine hug with the mother of a beautiful woman I’d so tragically lost in Tripoli. We stayed that way for a few moments, just standing and holding each other and not speaking.
She pushed me away to hold me at arms-length.
Staring into my eyes, she said, ‘Well, it’s no wonder that Andi was so taken by you, you’re a lovely man!’
Hearing the phrase, which I’d last heard on the roof of the villa with Andi, I nearly choked, but not on some whiskey, not this time.
‘I’m Mary, Andi’s Mom,’ the woman said.
Turning to the man, who had remained silent thus far, Mary said, ‘This is my husband – Raymond, but he prefers to be called Ray…’
I reached over and shook his hand. Ray smiled softly, placing his other hand on my shoulder and patting it.
‘It’s good to see you, Jake,’ he said. ‘We’ve heard quite a lot about you over the past few weeks. I feel as though I know you…’
I looked at him in bewilderment.
Ray smiled, saying, ‘Women, Jake, women…’ He made a yakking movement with his hand. ‘There are no secrets anymore, my boy!’
I laughed and said, ‘Thank you so much for allowing me to come today, I can’t tell you what it means to me…’
Mary smiled again, and in that one second I saw how much like her mother, Andi had been. The older woman was tall, beautiful and sported a killer of a dimple, exactly where her daughter had. The resemblance was quite remarkable. I also knew exactly where Andi had acquired those fearsome blue eyes of hers – Ray had those eyes, I had seen them when we shook hands and I knew exactly what they looked like, those eyes would be a pair I would never forgot.
We made our introductions and I watched as Mary began to prepare for the picnic. There was a wooden box sitting in the middle of the blanket. It was well-made and had a picture of Andi’s face embossed into the middle of the lid. Four, creamy-white lilies lay in a loosely-tied bunch next to the box. I guessed that the urn containing Andi’s ashes lay on the inside.
I gave them a hand in laying out the picnic and we made small talk whilst we waited for the others to arrive. As I took a seat on the blanket, sipping on a glass of ice-cold, white wine, Mary suddenly got to her feet, saying: ‘Oh, good! Here they are, and right on time too!’
I turned around, eyes searching the gaggle of people who were around the bronze sculpture. There were lots of kids with their mothers, leaping around and sliding down the slope of Alice’s mushroom, but I couldn’t see any fathers.
Then it happened, the unbelievable, the incredible and the insane.
It was a good job I was sitting because I would have collapsed otherwise. A boy came running over from the sculpture, blonde hair flying as he raced towards us, one look would be all anyone needed to see that this child was Andi’s son – he was the spitting image.
‘Grandma, Granddad!’ he shouted, running towards us with his arms held out like the wings of a plane.
With deafening: ‘Neeeoowww…’ Harley, the ace fighter-pilot, went zooming past us, pulling up on the st
ick and completing an imaginary loop, before banking hard-right to land, expertly, right next to the chocolate cookies. ‘Please may I?’ he asked, delving into the tin upon receipt of Mary’s approving nod.
It wasn’t the boy’s flying skills that had so astounded me, taking the breath from my lungs more effectively than a blow to the solar-plexus. No, it was the women who came striding up behind him who did that – it was the sight of her that gave a coup de grâce to my already fragile sense of reality. She was the absolute image of Andi – in fact, she could easily have been Andi. Even the way she walked was identical. Slim-hipped, long-legged, head held high, blonde-hair flying in the breeze, all of those things, and so many more besides, had been Andi’s traits.
If I had not seen Andi die with my own eyes, then this woman could have been no other. I sat in frozen silence with only the sound of my own heartbeat, thumping like a bass drum in my ears. This was incredible. The woman walked over and stood looking down at me with a grin upon her face – it was that same, sardonic expression I had seen on Andi’s face when our paths crossed at the airport in Dubai. The memories came back in a torrent.
‘Hello, Jake,’ the woman said, looking down at me as though I was insane. ‘Up, up, up!’ she ordered, motioning with her hand, whilst Andi’s voice spilled from her lips.
‘Oh, I... oh, blast, I’m so sorry!’ I exclaimed, jumping to my feet.
The woman stood there grinning at me.
She was ghost, surely? I felt like I’d lost my mind. It had taken a while, but now I knew for sure – I was totally insane.
I had just started dusting my hands off when the woman did exactly as Mary had done earlier. Dragging my hand towards her, she embraced me in her arms and held me there. I squeezed tightly, overcome by her fragrance. She even smelled like Andi, but without the fear and without the blood.
She was Andi. I knew she was.
I felt as though I had died, and now I was here, waiting to go down to that place where I would stay forever. And this, well… this was just one last chance for God to have a fucking good laugh at my expense.
Then, she pushed me away to hold me at arms-length, staring into my face, her eyes searching mine. I saw the gold flecks, they were right there, just where they ought to have been, swimming in the fathomless, blue pools of those familiar eyes, Andi’s eyes.
I felt myself start to teeter. The woman’s grip tightened on my arms as she sensed my lack of equilibrium.
‘Hi,’ she said, her voice severing my trance.
Taking a breath, I said, ‘Hello, I…’
My mind slowed, dragging its feet through the treacle of this madness. ‘What a stupid thing to say,’ I thought. It should have been something more along the lines of: ‘Where the-fuck have you been? Is this real, who are you? What’s going on, am I mad?’
But I didn’t. Oh no, not me. All I did was to stand in total silence, mouth hanging open. Whoever she was, the woman must have thought I was completely soft in the head.
‘I’m Bry – Andi’s sister,’ she said, quietly.
The shock at hearing those words was like being on the wrong-end of a Taser. Andi’s sister… I couldn’t believe my ears.
‘Bry… what, but, I… I mean, I thought he was…?’ I mumbled.
She laughed, saying: ‘Why don’t you sit down, Jake? This must be quite a lot for you to take-in!’
Not needing any second invitation, I immediately took her advice.
Bry sat next to me, stretching out her long legs and leaning backwards to rest on outstretched arms. For the next hour, whilst sitting in the sunny climes of Central Park, I was given a quick education on the situation of Andi and her twin sister, Bryony – or Bry, to those who knew her better…
They were identical-twins, born within minutes of each other, Bryony entering the world first to be followed shortly by Andi. Mary and Ray had been faithfully told that one of the twins was a boy, and so they had already chosen the names for their unborn children. When it turned out that Andi, too, was a girl, they had taken the chosen name – Andrew – and changed it slightly. They had no real choice as they had already become so use to referring to the kids as Andy and Bryony.
The twins’ path in life had also been nearly identical. Both of them graduated with degrees in journalism, and both went on to gain positions within major American news corporations. Then Andi had fallen pregnant with Harley, and, at almost the same time, Bryony had lost her job. The die was cast – Andi was a shooting-star, rising so fast within the ranks of her profession that everyone wanted to employ her and the undoubted talents she possessed. Whilst Bryony, in the meantime, struggled to even find work.
It was a no-brainer. Andi should stay on at work and Bry would take care of the baby in her absence.
By all accounts, Andi’s husband had already started going off the straight-and-narrow. ‘He couldn’t handle the fact that Andi was the successful one,’ Mary said. ‘The fact that she was the major-earner in the relationship became a real issue with him. He demanded that Andi give up her job, which, at that time, was just ridiculous!’
The relationship had failed and so, whilst Andi went out to work, Bry and her parents had raised Harley. It was a good set up, Harley was a bright kid, he had a stable home, and between them all they had built a good life. There were only two bugbears. Firstly – Andi was away from home a lot, a situation that she detested. Secondly – her husband had started to become a real pain, demanding money and threatening to sue for custody of Harley if Andi didn’t pay up.
I watched the boy; he had run off to play as soon as he’d had his fill of Grandma’s tasty picnic. Harley was now busy carrying out an intense aerial dogfight with all of his chums. They flew around Alice and her, bronze, companions, making all sorts of machinegun and aeroplane noises as they did so. By the looks of things, Andi’s son was a little cracker.
Ray asked me to tell him what I knew about the events that had led to his daughter’s death. Upon hearing his words, both Mary and Bryony fell into silence. I looked at them, asking if they were sure, if they would rather wait.
As one, the trio of Andi’s family shook their heads.
‘No, we would like to hear the tale, please,’ Bryony said. ‘Andi’s here with us, we only got her back this morning, and I think that she’d want us to know what happened...’ She reached over and placed the palm of her hand onto the lid of the wooden box, gently rubbing the picture of Andi with her thumb.
‘Okay, but if it gets too tough then just say so and we’ll leave it for some other time,’ I said, smiling ruefully at them.
‘Go ahead, Jake,’ Mary whispered.
And so I did.
I never gave them any gory details, just sticking to the facts and the reasons behind the tragic events of that day. I explained about how it had been in Tripoli and of how much Andi had achieved whilst she was there, especially on that day inside the compound when the gates had still been smoking as we’d gone inside.
I told them why she had been killed; omitting any and all details of Gino in the process. There would have been absolutely no point whatsoever in telling them way in which I felt about that man.
I told them as much as I felt they could handle, drawing the tale to a close with me saying goodbye to Andi when they’d taken her body away in Djerba. When I had finished, I sat in silence and waited whilst they digested the information I had given them.
‘Did you kill the men who did this to her?’ Ray asked, quietly.
‘Yes, we did – my friend and I… we shot them,’
‘Are you sorry for that, has it affected you?’ Mary asked.
‘No, I’m not, and nor does it affect me,’ I said, quietly. ‘I’ve had to do things like that many times before…’
Mary nodded, reaching over to grasp Ray’s hand.
‘Were you with Andi, at the end, when she…’ Bryony asked, a gentle sob escaping her lips. Sniffing back the tears, she took a breath and said, ‘When Andi died, were you there, was she alive when
you found her?’
‘Yes, we talked and I held her in my arms.’
‘So, she never died alone?’
‘No, I held her – she was with me until the end,’ I paused, gathering myself before saying: ‘I couldn’t save her, I… I’m so sorry…’
’Oh, Jake,’ Bry whispered. ‘You shouldn’t apologise, that’s the last thought on our minds!’
‘It still bothers me,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t help her; I couldn’t do what I needed to do…’ I stopped talking. This was getting out of control.
Ray looked at me, saying: ‘It’s Okay, Jake, we know why she died – we have the coroner’s report, there was no way that anyone on this earth could have saved her…’ He shrugged helplessly.
I watched as the tears began to roll down his cheeks. Ray sat there and let them have their way. Bryony and Mary gathered around him and together they let it all come out. I felt like some terrible, black, angel of death. Flying in without a care in the world to give them a free delivery of bad news…
After a while, and once the pain of their grief had subsided somewhat, they gathered themselves and prepared to scatter Andi’s ashes. Bry opened the wooden box and took out Andi’s urn. Mary called Harley, he came running over and as he arrived by our sides, I asked if he wanted a ride on my shoulders. He was up there like a flash. Ray picked up the lilies, holding them in one hand whilst placing the other around Mary’s waist. Together we walked across to a nearby lake, going down to the water’s edge and standing quietly to look out across the lake towards a large wooden restaurant that protruded into the water on the other side.
‘We had a meal in there on the night before she left for Libya,’ Ray said, pointing at the building. ‘This was Andi’s favourite place, she use to come ice-skating here in winter, when she and Bryony were kids and the water was frozen…’ I could see him rolling back the memories of his little girls, blonde hair tucked under their woollen hats, zipping around on the ice like there was no tomorrow.