Faithful

  “Did you write this?” Shelby asks.

  “It’s a comic. The story is mostly what you see.”

  As Shelby flips through the pages, it becomes clear that the raven is the soul of the main character’s deceased brother. The Misfit has lost the power of speech, and his brother, the Raven, speaks for them both. Together they fight demons in New York City, of which there is an endless supply. Each time another one is defeated, the Misfit comes closer to forgiveness, a state of grace he never can quite reach.

  “It’s a beautiful story,” Shelby says. “Or is it a novel?” she jokes, bringing up their original argument.

  “It’s a novel made up of stories. Like The Illustrated Man.” He holds up a battered copy of Bradbury’s book he picked up at the Strand Book Store. “You were right about this.”

  He’s sitting on the couch, and Shelby goes to sit beside him. “The best book ever,” she says. Instead of speaking, James pulls her onto his lap and kisses her and she kisses him back. Shelby wants to see what it’s like to kiss an angel. As it turns out, it’s a little too good. It’s the best kiss she has ever had. She can feel the monster of desire inside him, and she feels it inside herself. They are desperate for each other, or maybe they’re just desperate. Shelby could go on kissing him, but she forces herself to stop. James lets out a groan. “Shelby,” he says, but she wrenches away. She knows what will happen if they keep on this way. They’ll wind up having sex, then she’ll take him home and he’ll be nice to her dogs and they’ll love him, and she’ll never get away. If they could go back in time to before the terrible things happened, back to when she could feel something, there might have been something between them, but it’s too late now. Shelby is moving to California. She hasn’t told anyone, she can barely believe it herself, but her letter of acceptance from the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine has arrived. She sleeps with it under her pillow, to ensure it won’t vanish.

  James gets the message that she’s wary. He backs off, a gentleman, even though Shelby isn’t a hundred percent certain she wants him to be.

  “That’s why I never came forward and sent the postcards instead,” he says. “I thought I’d scare you.”

  Shelby gives him a look. “I’m not scared.”

  “You seem like you are. You look like Bambi.”

  “I do not! And if anyone should be scared, it’s you.”

  James laughs. “I’m terrified.” He kisses her again, then stops, leaving her breathless. “Tell me right now if this is what you want. I want to hear you say it.”

  For so long Shelby has prided herself on feeling nothing. Every time she held her hand over a flame, every time she ruined a relationship, every time she shaved her head, it was proof of who she was. A girl no one could hurt. Why would she open herself to him now when she’ll soon be leaving?

  James takes her silence to mean she doesn’t want to end up in bed with him. “Right.” He scoops her off his lap and grabs his jacket. “Let’s go. I’ll walk you home.” He gives her a copy of Nevermore on the way out. “For your once-upon-a-time files,” he suggests.

  “Thank you,” Shelby says formally.

  “You can write me a thank-you note if you want to,” he says with some bitterness.

  “Maybe I will.”

  They take Coop and walk toward Chelsea. When Shelby slips her hand into his he doesn’t respond. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark,” he says. He’s getting sarcastic again. He’s pulling away. Not that she can blame him. She’s Miss Conflicted. Miss Weak-in-the-Knees. Why would she let him go, when she’s been waiting for him all this time?

  “I have four dogs,” Shelby tells him.

  “Okay.” James looks more confused than ever.

  “One’s a Great Pyrenees. One’s blind. One’s a poodle.”

  Most men hate poodles, but James doesn’t flinch. “What’s the fourth one? A Great Dane?”

  “A French bulldog. I stole him from a homeless person. I grabbed him and the blind one. Actually, I stole the Great Pyrenees, too.”

  “You’re a dognapper. Do you dress in black and wear a mask?”

  “I stole a kitten, too, but I gave her away.”

  “Good move,” James says. “You’re not a cat person.”

  Shelby goes to kiss him. “This is what I want,” she tells him.

  She brings him into the apartment. She’s got the jewelry box on her night table, and for some reason James goes right for it.

  “Hey,” Shelby says, embarrassed.

  But it’s too late. James has found the postcards. He turns to her with a grin.

  “Okay, I saved them,” Shelby says.

  “So I see.”

  “You knew I would.”

  James shrugs. He greets her dogs, and as Shelby suspected, although they’re suspicious of Coop, they seem to love James. James leans up against Ben’s great-aunt Ida’s dining room table and rubs Pablo’s head. He happens to have dog treats in his pockets, which makes him all the more attractive, except to the General, who has a sour expression. The General is making growling sounds low down in his throat.

  “I don’t like the way he’s looking at me,” James says of the bulldog. “Like I’m a rival.” James grabs Shelby and pulls her into the bathroom, so they can be alone. “How do you turn around in here?” he asks.

  She shows him by sitting on the sink and wrapping her legs around him. “We’re hiding from our dogs,” she whispers.

  They can hear Buddy whining in the hallway. A little paw stretches under the door.

  “I’m not hiding anymore,” James says. “No more postcards.”

  This time she doesn’t stop him from doing anything. Maybe he was a monster once, and maybe she was too. Maybe the only thing they have in common is that they’re survivors. But this is not the past, this is not the icy road. This is what she wants in the here and now.

  Shelby has come home from the clinic at the Humane Society to find Teddy and Dorian hunkered down on the steps outside her building. At first it seems like a hallucination. But it’s not her imagination. That is definitely Mrs. Diaz’s Subaru parked on Tenth Avenue, and those are the twins making themselves comfortable on the stoop. One is supposed to be in Valley Stream, and the other is in a boarding school he is not allowed to leave.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Shelby says. It’s the end of a bright spring day, and the air is clear and sweet after a brief shower. “Tell me you’re not here.”

  “Hey, Shelby.” Teddy stands to embrace her. “You don’t know how good it is to see you.”

  Still too handsome for his own good, and still a charmer.

  “We decided to visit you,” Dorian tells Shelby. At least he has the decency to look guilty.

  “You drove up and got him?” Shelby asks Dorian. “With your grandmother’s car and a learner’s permit?”

  They’ve been wandering around the city all afternoon and are clearly exhausted and depending on her. The boys explain that Teddy signed in to the clinic at his school complaining of a stomach virus, then, as preplanned, he climbed out the window, ran through the field, dove under the bushes, and squeezed through a hole in the fence to where Dorian was parked and waiting.

  “Like a jailbreak,” Shelby says.

  “More like a day off,” Teddy corrects her. “The nurse doesn’t come back till eleven at night. My buddy delivers the dinner trays, and he’s going to cover for me.”

  “And you came here because you’d like me to be arrested for harboring a juvenile who has defied a court order?”

  The twins exchange a look. Maravelle always says that, as toddlers, they slept in the same bed. They hated to be separated, and it’s been hard on both of them.

  “We came to you because I can’t drive without someone over twenty­-one in the car,” Dorian tells her.

  Shelby laug
hs. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Really, Shelby. Legally, I can’t. If I get caught I’ll never get my license.”

  It’s all clear to Shelby now. They came to her because they’ve realized how much trouble they could get into, and they want a driver. “If you think I’m driving you back to Albany, you’re mistaken. I don’t drive.”

  “You have to,” Dorian pleads.

  “Actually, I don’t.” Shelby unlocks the front door. Why then does she feel the heat of Dorian’s eyes on her back, pleading even when he doesn’t speak? The twins follow her upstairs, where the dogs are overjoyed to see them. She asks Dorian to call the Hunan Kitchen and order them some supper. While he’s on the phone she turns to Teddy. “Are you happy that you’ve involved your brother in an illegal act?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of it that way.”

  “You have to start thinking,” Shelby advises him.

  She has a copy of Nevermore out on the table, and Teddy scoops it up. “You read this stuff? Comics?” He seems surprised.

  He settles onto the couch to read while Dorian clips on the dogs’ leashes to take them for a walk and pick up their takeout. He looks the way he did when Shelby first met him, back when she hated children, or thought she did until she took care of him and Dorian and Jasmine.

  After dinner Shelby says, “Let’s go now. Before I change my mind.”

  They pile into the car and get onto the West Side Highway headed for the Thruway. Shelby’s heart is pounding. She’s rarely driven since the night of the accident, and now she’s responsible for Maravelle’s sons. Her hands are sweating as she grips the wheel tightly. Dorian’s in the passenger seat, directing her. He seems to think he’s an expert. “Stay in the middle lane, then no one can merge into you.”

  Teddy’s sprawled in the backseat, engrossed in Nevermore. In James’s book the Misfit cries ice instead of tears. He can freeze a lawn, a street, an alleyway, a heart. And yet he’s nothing without his brother. Teddy has reached the end of the story. “So there’s the good brother who is a raven who has to pay for the bad brother’s sins. This is one fucked-up story your friend is telling. He’s just ripping off Cain and Abel, you know. It’s nothing new.”

  “That’s not what he’s doing.” Shelby glances at Teddy in the rearview mirror. James never got to be sixteen, the age Dorian and Teddy are now. He went from being ten to being a hundred. “He’s writing about guilt and sorrow.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be looking at the road?” Dorian says to her.

  “The author’s brother died,” Shelby tells Teddy. “He didn’t have a second chance.”

  “Am I supposed to feel sorry for him because he feels responsible for his brother? Should the bad brother jump off the roof or something? Save the world from his despicable self? And what makes you think this is a second chance for me? Maybe it’s what puts me over the edge into true evil.”

  “Give me the book.” Shelby reaches behind her.

  “Not while you’re driving,” Dorian tells her.

  “I got all the bad genes,” Teddy says. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Bullshit,” Dorian says.

  Teddy’s referring to their father, a man with a criminal past who spent time at Rikers and hasn’t seen the boys since they were four years old. Occasionally the children’s father will send Maravelle a check, which she tears into tiny, confetti-like pieces. She says if she takes nothing, she owes him nothing.

  “You know it’s not true,” Shelby tells Teddy. “Don’t waste your life trying to prove that it is.”

  They stop at a service station. The boys pump gas, then head to the store for snacks and drinks. By now, Shelby is drenched in sweat. Driving has taken all her concentration, and her muscles are tense. She wonders if she could go to jail for this escapade.

  “Sorry,” Teddy says when the boys get back into the car. Dorian has obviously had a talk with him. “I know you’re helping me.”

  “The story is about how much he loves his brother,” Shelby says. “That’s all it is.”

  “He gets it,” Dorian says.

  It’s pitch-dark when they reach the school. Shelby squints as the headlights pierce through the black night. Dorian directs her to pull over beside a field; he tells her to cut her lights.

  They all get out and stand in the drifting darkness. The world beyond the field feels dangerous and broken. There is the scent of the woods nearby, swamp cabbage and loamy earth. The brothers kid around, punching each other and saying good-bye, then embrace in a bear hug. “Wait till I’m out of here,” Teddy says. “We’ll be back like we were.”

  When Shelby goes to hug Teddy, he’s so tall she has to stand on tiptoes so she can whisper, “You can do this.”

  Teddy grins at her. “I still don’t believe you were ever that bad.”

  “I was a monster,” Shelby says.

  “No,” Teddy says. “Not you.”

  The journey home seems to take forever. Dorian switches on the radio to make sure Shelby stays awake. There’s a Bob Dylan station, and his nasal, heartbreaking voice suits the long, dark drive. When “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” plays, Shelby starts to cry. This is why she never wanted to have a heart. She wishes Teddy could have met James, that he could have seen how good a man a monster can become.

  “It’s probably better not to cry and drive,” Dorian says.

  “Right.” Shelby blows her nose on her sleeve, and they both laugh. “I did this in fourth grade and was embarrassed for the rest of the year.”

  “I can see why.”

  They laugh again, but they’re both exhausted. Shelby pulls off the highway in search of a diner. They order French fries and coffee, and then get back on the road again. They have to circle around Manhattan, which looks as if it’s made from silver and gold. On the Throgs Neck Bridge, Shelby should be panicking, but she stays in the middle lane, as Dorian suggested, and she does fine.

  When they’re almost in Valley Stream, Dorian says, “I’ll tell my mother about today. You don’t have to.”

  She’s so proud of him, and he’s not even her kid. “I don’t care what they say about twins. You’re you even when you’re without him,” she tells Dorian. “I’ll bet when you were little you let him do all the talking for you.”

  Dorian shrugs. “He was better at it.”

  “No. You’re better at it,” Shelby says. “You’re better at a lot of things, and you’re going to have to accept that.”

  Dorian gazes out the window at the familiar streets. “You’re a pretty good driver.” He grins at Shelby. “You’re just going to have to accept that,” he tells her.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Shelby is drawn to the places she went to when she first moved to the city. She goes to Union Square on Greenmarket days, when farms truck in fresh vegetables and fruit and there are jars of honey and jams, along with brilliant flowers, the dew still on their leaves. Everything smells like mint. She does her shopping, a box of strawberries and some soft green lettuce, then gets a hot tea from the deli and finds herself a bit of space on a bench.

  Today Shelby’s got Blinkie with her. He’s getting old and she hates to leave him alone for too long. He’s so small he fits in her tote bag. She thinks he may be shrinking, vanishing bit by bit. She wonders if Blinkie knows where he is, the park where she stole him on a hot summer day. She still looks for the tattooed girl whenever she’s in the area. It’s been so long since she’s spied her, Shelby assumes she’s vanished, but suddenly she sees her crossing the park, walking briskly. Shelby decides to follow her. She tosses her tea in a trash can and trails along behind the tattooed girl toward Broadway. She’s surprised to discover their destination is the Strand Book Store, open since 1927, home of over two million books, perhaps the best bookstore in the world. It’s one of James’s favorite places and has become one of Shelby’s as
well.

  The tattooed girl goes in and waves to someone, then heads downstairs, two steps at a time. Shelby follows as if she were in a dream. She’s always thought that if she didn’t end up as herself, she would have been the tattooed girl. She wants to see what her alternative fate might have been.

  The basement of the Strand is filled with boxes of books delivered from the loading dock. “Geez, Shawna, how about being on time?” a young, handsome clerk with a ponytail calls to the tattooed girl.

  “Screw you, Henry,” she shoots back. “Like you’re punctual.”

  The girl grins and this Henry grins back. Up close the girl’s tribal tattoos are quite beautiful, yet Shelby can’t help but think of what Maravelle said to her when she looks at the blue swirls across the girl’s face. How is that going to look when you’re eighty years old?

  The girl and Henry begin unpacking new shipments of books. It’s dusty and dark, but they’re talking the whole time until Blinkie barks. Then they both turn to look at Shelby.

  “Did you say something?” Henry asks. He’s young, maybe twenty.

  “I’m looking for the graphic novels,” Shelby blurts. She’s got Never­more on the brain. Every time she reads it she discovers more about the way James thinks about the world and his place in it. She’s fallen in love not only with him but with his story.

  “Did you just bark?” Shawna asks.

  “Do you work here?” Shelby asks.

  “No, I’m unpacking these boxes for free,” Shawna says. “I like to do crappy work for nothing.”