Ghostheart (21 page)

‘You’ll stop drinking if I get serious with someone?’

Sullivan shook his head. ‘I’m not talking about serious … serious never worked for me. I’m just talking about something with substance, something that has some kind of meaning for you.’

Annie smiled.

‘What?’ Sullivan asked. ‘The three-book guy?’

‘The three-book guy,’ she replied.

‘You saw him again?’

‘I did.’

‘And did you … you know?’

‘Did I fuck him?’ Annie asked.

Sullivan started to laugh. ‘Jesus Annie O’Neill, I can’t ever remember hearing you use that word.’

‘Well I did. There we go. Fuck. Fuck and fuck and fuck. And to answer your question, no I didn’t … but there’s time.’

Sullivan nodded approvingly. ‘Good enough,’ he said.

‘So don’t be buying any more fifths of Crown Royal, okay? I think you got enough in your apartment to keep you going.’

‘You’re keeping the deal?’

Annie smiled. ‘It was your deal Jack Sullivan … you’re the one who has to keep the deal.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘You make it through this, make it work Annie, and I’ll never drink another drop.’

Sullivan reached out his hand. Annie took it, held it for a moment, and then she smiled.

‘You’re a good friend Jack,’ she said. ‘Best friend I ever had.’

‘Likewise,’ Sullivan said, and then he reached up and touched her face, held his hand against her cheek for a moment. ‘So when d’you see this man again … what was his name?’

‘David, David Quinn … and I don’t know when I’ll see him again.’

‘You have his number?’

She shook her head. ‘No, no number.’

Sullivan frowned. ‘This doesn’t sound too promising.’

Annie smiled. ‘He’ll show up Monday or Tuesday at the store.’

‘If you show up yourself.’

‘I’ll be there Monday … I have another reader’s club meeting, right?’

‘Right,’ Sullivan said. ‘Another meeting. Hell, you’re getting something of a whirlwind social calendar, young lady.’

‘I am,’ Annie said. ‘Following your advice, right?’

‘Take care huh?’

‘I’m not a little girl any more Jack.’

Sullivan was silent for a moment, and then he looked directly at her. ‘Sometimes you are,’ he said, and though there was nothing critical or offensive in the way he said it Annie felt a momentary irritation.

‘I can look after myself,’ she said, her tone a little sharp.

‘I know you can,’ Sullivan replied. ‘But I wanna make sure someone else does too.’

‘I’ll be fine Jack.’

Sullivan smiled. ‘I’m here if you need me … always here Annie.’

‘I know you are Jack Sullivan … my ancestral guiding spirit, my Iwa.’

‘Your Iwa,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Anyway, I’m outta here … got a good five or six bottles to drink before you get laid.’

Annie dragged a cushion out from behind her and threw it at him as he reached the door. He ducked it, opened the door, and closed it behind him, laughing.

‘Howl like a banshee so I know when to stop drinking,’ he shouted from the hallway.

‘Asshole!’ she shouted back, but Jack’s door had slammed shut.

Annie opened the store Saturday morning. Late, but nevertheless she opened it. She went not out of obligation or desire, but because she hoped David would come. Closing the door behind her she saw a plain envelope on the mat, she picked it up, turned it over, and there in a neat hand was written
Annie
.

She knew what it would say before she opened it.

She read through the note again, her eyes finding the last two words and concentrating on them:
Love, David
.

Was this merely the routine salutation found at the end of so many informal notes … or did it mean something else?

Love, David
.

And did it matter what it meant? This was a hard question, a question for the heart, the soul perhaps. Did it really mean anything to her?

The question was asked; the answer came swiftly. It did matter. It did mean something, or rather she
wanted
it to mean something. There were no perfect human beings, men or women, and there was enough about this man David Quinn for her to feel that something could be built here. Wasn’t it
always a risk? Wasn’t there always some chance of losing? Of course there was. Surely –
surely
– that was life.

She returned the note to the envelope, held it in her hand for a moment, and then tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. She had worn jeans today for a reason, jeans and a tee-shirt. Today she possessed a figure, a form, some contours. Today she was not a shapeless sweater and calf-length woollen skirt. She felt more like a woman than she had in some considerable time, and she resigned herself to feeling like this alone.

She logged stock, she updated her inventory, but for some reason she paused with each battered paperback in her hand, read the flyleaf notes, in some cases the acknowledgements and tributes.

This book is dedicated to Martha, who was always there
.

This book was written for many people, many of whom I cannot name, but safe to say that they all possessed their own sense of magic, and for this magic I owe them much more than I could ever repay
.

For Daniel, Kelly and Frederick
.

For my agent, LeAnnie Hollander
.

For my editor at Huntseckers, Gerry Liebermann
.

Most of all to my wife Catherine, who made me believe I could
.

Annie traced her finger over the names, and imagined who they might be, what they might have said, the times they listened, advised, criticized, applauded. She gave them faces and mannerisms, quirks of character and idiosyncrasies. Gerry at Huntseckers wore Homer Simpson socks with a Brooks Brothers suit. He smoked cheroots that smelled awful, and he insisted on having his office window wide even when it was five degrees outside. These were people with lives,
real
lives, and so real were their lives that they possessed sufficient reality for it to overflow and affect the lives of others. They had dreams, and in some small way both David Quinn and Robert Franklin Forrester had opened a door to her own dreams.

This time she was determined to walk through it, head held high, eyes wide open, teeth gritted, fists clenched, and take on
whatever came her way. Too long in the background, too long skulking in the shadows waiting for someone to call her name and have her come forward. If you wanted it, you had to go and get it. Surely this was the case? Both Harry Rose and Johnnie Redbird seemed to have such a belief as their guiding philosophy. And Sullivan would have agreed with them on that point if nothing else, and Sullivan was perhaps the closest she had to a real friend. If you could not trust your friends, then whom could you trust? David had showed her something – his experiment, his parlor trick – but there was something of substance in what he had done. And then she had asked him to kiss her, and kiss her he did, no more, no less. She had trusted him, and he had not violated that trust. A small thing, but didn’t everything begin with something small, and then grow? And Forrester. Was he to be trusted? She knew nothing of either of them, but each in his own way – David with his words, Forrester with letters from her father and a story that touched the edges of her imagination – had served to strip away some of the façade, the face she had worn for the world for as long as she could recall. It was not her own face – it was a composite of all the things she’d ever believed people wished her to be, like a suitcase, and dependent upon the event there was always an identity within that suitcase that she could wear for the occasion. Sometimes they suited her, sometimes not.

She considered these things and a great deal more besides, and with each passing silhouette beyond the door she wished the bell would ring, that someone would enter her store, her
life
, and bring with them a little of the outside world in which she could share.

But the morning disappeared without visitors, and she wondered how much of this disconnection she had created for herself.

A little before one Annie locked up and returned home. She sat for a while watching some old black-and-white movie on the TV, defeated a pint and a half of cappuccino ice cream, and
when she was done she wandered across the hall to call on Sullivan.

He wasn’t home, more than likely in a bar down the street, and considering the possibility that she might walk down there and join him she stood on the landing in the silence of the house.

There was a sound below. The street door opened, slammed shut, and then there was the sound of footsteps on the risers.

They were not Sullivan’s footsteps. His footsteps she had heard several times a day every day she’d lived here. This was someone else, and as there were only two upper floor apartments – her own and Sullivan’s – the person now hurrying up the stairs had to be a stranger.

A taut sense of apprehension invaded the skin across the back of her neck. She glanced to her right, the door to her own apartment, and even though the impulse to hurry inside was there, to close and lock and deadbolt the door behind her, there was also something that forced her to stay right where she was.

What are you doing Annie?

Her mother’s voice.

Get inside girl, get inside … you’re inviting trouble … you don’t know who it is
…

Annie clenched her fists involuntarily.

She took a step backwards, almost as if she wished to fold silently into the shadows at the head of the well. She took a second step back, a third, and found the wall behind her. It was cool and hard and unyielding.

She had felt like this before. This was not a new sensation.

The footsteps gathered speed, gathered sound, and soon there was nothing she could hear but the hammering of those feet on the risers as they turned the last corner and came up towards her.

A sound escaped her lips.

Where had she felt this?

And then it came. David’s apartment. The trick he had played on her.

She looked at her door, cursed herself for not rushing inside it and closing it tight behind her.

She felt her skin go cold and tight. Again that sense of rushing nausea building in her chest. She started to breathe – fast and shallow – and when she closed her eyes she saw that same depth of blackness she’d seen when she was blindfolded.

She saw the shadow of the intruder …

Perhaps the guy from across the street had come to check out where his showgirl has gotten to
…

And then she found herself sliding down the wall to her haunches, her knuckles white, the fingernails of her right hand embedding themselves in the flesh of her palm.

She closed her eyes, she held her breath, she waited for the intruder to make himself known, to do whatever he had come to do …

The sound of footsteps was like a frightened heartbeat … her own heart even now trip-hammering in her chest, getting louder, faster, and hearing the blood rush in her ears …

This was just like David’s apartment … just like it, but worse, because this time she could hear someone coming, and this time they were coming to get her …

They were seconds away, less than seconds, less than the heartbeat that was even now deafening her …

‘Annie?’

The sound that escaped her lips as she opened her eyes was almost a scream. A sound of shock and surprise. A release of bottled emotion.

She looked up.

‘Annie … what the hell are you doing down there?’

‘David?’

He took a step forward, was standing over her with his hand outstretched.

She took it, her eyes wide, the color drained from her face,
and when she stood she could do nothing but let his arms enfold her and pull her tight.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here David?’ Her voice was tinged with fear.

‘Jeez, you’re shaking,’ he said. ‘Let’s go inside Annie,’ and then he stopped, hesitant, looking both left and right in turn.

‘This one,’ she said, indicating her apartment, and without pausing he hurried her into the apartment and closed the door behind them.

‘I got your note,’ she said, fumbling to retrieve it from the pocket of her jeans even as she was speaking.

‘The job was canceled,’ David said. ‘I think they had someone closer … I got a call and they canceled the job.’

He stood for a moment, his eyes on Annie, and then looking around the room he started to nod his head. ‘This is one hell of a place Annie … this is really something. Did you do these colors and things yourself?’

She nodded, surprised and bemused that he would notice such a thing at all, even more so that he seemed to have forgotten how shaken up she was.

He looked back at her. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘I really gave you a shock, didn’t I?’

‘A little,’ she said, and then she started to smile. She cut the smile short, she frowned, tilted her head to one side. ‘Anyway, how come you’re here … how did you find out where I lived?’ A fleeting moment of disturbance, the sensation of being threatened, invaded. She had not known this man when she had gone to his apartment, and now he was here, here within her sanctum sanctorum, and truth be known she knew him no better.

‘The phone book,’ David replied. ‘You’re the only “A. O’Neill” that lives in this suburb.’

Annie nodded. She was still shaken, visibly so.

‘I can go,’ he said. ‘I went down to the store to see if you were still there but you’d closed up. If you want me to go I can go right now. I’m sorry if –’

Annie raised her hand. ‘It’s okay … I don’t know what happened. I went out to check on Sullivan and then I heard someone coming up the stairs, and for some reason I just stood there like a halfwit.’

‘Sullivan?’ David asked. ‘Is that … is that like your cat or something?’