That Magic Mischief (16 page)

“For the moment,” Lorna murmured, delighted at the prospect of a chink in MG’s chaste armor.

Maria Grazia pulled Lorna over to the nearest coffee shop and said what she was sure was the final word on the subject. “All that’s left is for us to keep our heads, and to follow these stupid instructions. It’ll be a snap. Belle believes in synchronicity and fate and all that crap. She won’t suspect a thing.”

She didn’t like to think that she was a cynical creature, or distrustful, and if she couldn’t trust her oldest, dearest friends, then who could she trust?

But right this second, Annabelle didn’t trust Maria Grazia or Lorna as far as she could throw them.

Or Kelli, for that matter. As her body swayed with the rocking motion of the F train to Manhattan, her mind seemed to take on the same aspect, looking at her present situation from side-to-side rather than dead on. Exhibit A: Kelli had booked her to review a show. Okay, so that often happened. But Kelli had distinctly —
distinctly
— mentioned that the show was in a similar vein to her own production, and wouldn’t it help Annabelle’s development of Kelli’s website if Annabelle checked this one out? The kicker? Oh, just that several of the ‘brain trust’ would probably be going along as well, the major players, the lighting guy, the choreographer, several random mimes … the set painter.

When Annabelle had begun to question that little nugget of info, Kelli had promptly hung up.

That may in fact be exhibits B & C
, Annabelle thought as she continued to sway.

Exhibit D: Maria Grazia had rung less than an hour later, commiserating about the ‘assignment’, but happy enough to go along. She’d book the tickets so that they could sit together. She seemed to be rather adamant about this point in particular, despite Annabelle’s protests that as a reviewer she would be given a pair automatically — and MG had promptly hung up.

Exhibit E: Lorna had rung her that afternoon sometime around three to say that Maria Grazia was sick with
laryngitis
, and that she, Lorna would be Annabelle’s date. This is where it got extremely fishy. Lorna’s loathing of Kelli extended to her projects, to any projects the woman thought worthwhile, to the very air she breathed. When Annabelle questioned
this
— dial tone.

Am I a suspicious person?
Annabelle didn’t think she was, but she wasn’t sure anymore. Seriously, though? In the last few weeks, hadn’t Lorna tried to set her up? Hadn’t Maria Grazia been bugging her about Rembrandt?
Oh!
Annabelle bounced in her seat — Exhibit E! All teasing about the painter-slash-restorer had inexplicably ceased.
Ohmigod
, thought Annabelle.
What if he’s there tonight?
Her eyes widened, and she leaped up from her seat, for no apparent reason, resulting in absolutely no reaction whatsoever from the rest of the train’s passengers. She sat back down again abruptly.

Well, so what if he was? Who cared? She didn’t.
“
I
don’t,” she said aloud, and was once again roundly ignored. Nevertheless … she checked out her appearance as best she could in a grimy, clouded window. Hair: excellent; make-up: minimal but flattering; fragrance: Jo Malone Lime Basil & Mandarin; outfit: casual with a bit of sexy thanks to a low-ish cut top, and new faux-lizard bottle green ankle boots with a three inch heel.

She was sick of pretending that she hated being tall.

So … if anybody cared, she looked pretty, thank you very much.

The train shuddered to a halt at East Broadway. Two stops to go, and Annabelle put a hand to her chest, her heart inexplicably racing. Her
broken
heart — beating like a drum. She had better pull herself together, because if something
was
up, it wouldn’t do to be all aflutter and … expecting something to be up — which it wasn’t — how could it be? Maria Grazia didn’t know The Irish Guy, and Lorna only saw him the one time and … no!

Annabelle shook her head and sat back in her seat. “No way!” she cried, and a homeless guy, pushing his shopping trolley down the aisle, agreed. “No frickin’ way!” he hollered. The only connection between The Irish Guy and herself was Kelli, and no
way
could she imagine that Maria Grazia, much less Lorna, would kick off some master plan between the three of them.

The homeless guy turned to her as she rose to get off at Second Avenue. “Stranger things have been known to happen!” he bellowed with glee, and Annabelle rushed off the train, up the stairs, and into the fresh air of a semi-balmy spring evening. As she strode up the avenue toward the theater, she was blind to the usual mayhem that was the Lower East Side: the newest generation of Mohawk-sporting teenagers, the steady stream of guys with guitars slung across their bags on their way to early gigs, the gaggles of bridge-and-tunnel girls, over-dressed and over-loud, descending on the cheap Mexican restaurants and the even cheaper pitchers of margaritas. She wasn’t nervous, excited, hopeful — nothing. She had too much on her mind, the last thing she needed was … expectations. She was too raw to flirt, too tender to even fathom anything that would be more than a soulless one-night stand. Resilience was one thing; another entirely was the kind of flexibility that spoke to low standards and lack of self-respect. “I have self-respect,” Annabelle mumbled. “I know what my limits are. I’ll know when I’m ready to date again.”

Not that she and Wilson had really ‘dated’, in the strictest sense of the word. They met, and went out, and went out again, and never had any issues around availability or exclusivity; it was an unspoken assumption that after the first weekend away, they were officially a monogamous couple. That tended to be her pattern, actually, and Annabelle, lost in thought, narrowly missed being flattened by the Second Avenue bus.
I must be a serial monogamist. I’ve never, like, had to juggle men
— and the ensuing mental image of herself in red nose and curly green wig, tossing around fully grown men like bowling pins, made her laugh out loud.
Maybe I should try that,
she thought — and immediately discarded the idea.
It’s just not me
, she thought, running across the avenue against the light.
It’s good to know that.

She warily approached the door to Two Two Two, an experimental theatre and dance space at 22 East 2nd Street. Negotiating the gauntlet of junkies and winos certainly added to its cutting edge cachet, and Annabelle wondered, not for the first time, how people could bear to work in dives like this one.

She was surprised upon entering the lobby to see an elegantly designed room, all chrome and low lighting; sheets of chain metal hung down the walls to the tiled floor, and the exposed girders of the ceiling were antiqued to look like weathered copper. Recessed lighting threw only the most flattering illuminations onto the people thronging the lobby, but the cool and distancing lines of the room were not equal to the absolute chaos of opening night, an excess of energy in the air that translated itself into high-spirited chatter and bursts of laughter. It was exciting, and Annabelle told herself that’s what had those rogue butterflies doing another circuit of her stomach. Opening night nerves. They must be contagious.

Annabelle began to work her way toward the box office when her phone rang. Lorna.

“I’m here, over by the door.”

“Darling, can’t make it after all. Crisis.”

And that, Annabelle knew, would be all that she’d get in the way of explanation.

“Great,” she said. “Thanks so much letting me know.”

“Oh, of course.” Silence.

An explanation might be nice
. “Yeah, I don’t know if I’d be good company, anyway. My plant died. You know, the one that grew out of my hazelnut?”
Take that!

“Your … what?” Lorna shrieked.

Any intent Annabelle had about goading Lorna disappeared as she realized that she was really sad about the mystery monster plant. “I did a ritual, last week, and all the branches disappeared, and then there was just this one big bloom, and now the flower’s all shriveled up and it looks like it’s sinking back into the dirt.”

A deep and arctic silence greeted this remark. Annabelle, lost in regret, went on. “I guess I kind of got used to it, you know? I’ve been living on my own for four years now … but it wasn’t like having a roommate, not exactly. It didn’t leave dirty dishes around and drink all my milk, although it did deface some photographs and steal my favorite toothbrush.”

“Are you
out
of your
mind
?” Annabelle could the furious clicking of Lorna’s lighter.

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Annabelle pushed her way through the crowd; it was almost show time.

“No. It isn’t. Are you completely insane? Little bags of herbs to hang over the door are one thing, a crystal or two to put on the windowsill is another. All that is fairly harmless, but this? You can
not
expect me to believe this.”

“Hmmm. Now, if I understand correctly, if I’m really crazy, then I wouldn’t know it, and I would say ‘No, I’m not crazy!’ But if I
wasn’t
crazy, then I’d freely admit the possibility that my sanity was questionable. So … yes, Lorna, I am crazy!” Her voice rose as she continued. “I am out of my tree, ready for the booby hatch, the nuthouse, I am certifiable and ready to go quietly with nice men from Bellevue!”

She hung up as triumphantly as one could on a cell phone, and spun around, not looking where she was going and —

She plowed into the The Irish Guy.

“Fancy meeting
you
here!” Annabelle snapped, glaring at him.

He laughed. “Has the show already begun?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Annabelle was beginning to feel a little foolish, combined with a dash of recklessness: a potentially potent combination, since she suddenly didn’t care if this guy thought she was totally crackers, and she didn’t care if the whole thing blew up, because she knew, she just
knew
that her friends were behind this ‘chance’ meeting.
The hell with it
, she thought.
If it all blows up, then I can just blame it on my them.

“Stella! Stellllllaaaaa!” Jamie started howling apropos of nothing, tearing at his white T shirt, and Annabelle couldn’t help it, and cracked up.
It’s not his fault after all …

“You do a much better Brando than a Mae West.” She edged her way over to the box office, and he followed.

“My family are great ones for the impressions. Okay, who’s this.” Jamie composed his face into hang dog lines, his eyes drooping at the corners, his forehead creased with the weight of the world. “’Play it again, Sam,’” he lisped, and Annabelle applauded.

“Ingrid Berman! Very good.”

Jamie sighed dramatically. “You’ve no ear at all.”

“I think the problem is actually your mouth,” Annabelle retorted, and then wanted to die.
I can’t believe I
said
that,
she thought, and in effort to stop staring at aforementioned mouth, which was
grinning
at her, she turned to the annoyed and clearly put-out box office girl.

“Annabelle Walsh,” she said briskly. “
NYC Weekly
.”

This terse statement had a galvanizing effect on the box officer, who flipped through an index box furiously, as if one moment keeping Annabelle waiting would impact on the imminent review of the show.

“Nice one.” Annabelle looked at Jamie quizzically. He nodded to the obsequiously searching box office manager, and grinned. She shrugged, smiled, and turned to accept her effusively proffered envelope and program.

“Really nice,” he murmured, although, given his proximity it was hard for him to say if he was talking about Annabelle’s effect on the woman behind the little window, or the effect Annabelle’s perfume was having on him, a kind of lemony-limey thing that made him want to lick the little pink earlobe that was nestled in a sweep of lush blonde —

“Wha’?” he asked inelegantly, looking down into her eyes, those wide, smiling blue eyes.

“Your turn,” Annabelle breathed, and edged back to lessen the nearness.

“Ah, yeah. Jamie Flynn.” And with no less enthusiasm, the attendant trawled through the reservations.

Her confusion turned to sheer desperation as she looked between Annabelle and Jamie. “I’m afraid I haven’t got a ticket for you.”

Yup, Kelli is in it, too. There will be hell to pay
. “Funny enough, I have a spare.” She smiled comfortingly at the distraught box office girl, and looked up (
up!
) at Jamie. “That’s handy. Both Maria Grazia and Lorna cancelled on me tonight.”

“Lucky me.” Jamie’s eyes twinkled as he followed her into the auditorium.

She angled her head over in his direction. “Oh, I don’t know. I feel I should let you know that this whole thing is a conspiracy.”

“You mean like the thing with the kidneys and the tub full of ice?”

“No, that’s an urban myth,” Annabelle said. “Anyway, if I was in your position, I think I’d like to know what was what, and the what of this is that my friends are throwing me at you.” That ought to do it — she had yet to meet the male who didn’t run like the wind at the first whiff of romantic interference.

“Are you afraid I mightn’t catch you?” He gave into a lesser form of temptation and whispered in that tantalizing ear, inhaling a lemony-limey-womanly blend that went straight to his head.

“You’re assuming that I want to be caught.” Annabelle tried to edge away, but the aisle was impassable, and she was, for all intents and purposes, trapped.

“Typical male self-centered behavior. It’s terrible, I know.” He kept the tone light as he recognized the mutinous set to her jaw, the anxiety that underlay the brash tone — not for nothing did he have three older sisters, and Annabelle’s mood was reminding him of his second oldest sister, the sensitive one whose heart was all the more defended for being worn on her sleeve. He knew he’d have to go easy, or else he’d blow it. Why this had become so important, he’d wonder about later, but between the gorgeous scent and the vulnerable blue eyes, he was lost.

As masses of people pushed them first left, then right, Annabelle was turned completely around to face Jamie. He sounded flippant, but there was something going on his eyes, that even his usual layer of light amusement couldn’t cover. She couldn’t tell what it was, but it wasn’t self-centeredness at all. Someone shoved vigorously into his back, with a force that would have toppled them both had Jamie not quickly grabbed Annabelle’s shoulders, taking all the weight.