When they called it a night, an hour and another half pitcher of draught later, Mona took a longer route home than she normally would. She wanted to clear her head of the decided buzz that was making her stride less than steady, though considering the empty apartment she was going home to, maybe that wasn’t the best idea, never mind her brave words to Jilly. Maybe, instead, she should go back to the pub and down a couple of whiskey’s so that she’d really be too tipsy to mope.
“Oh, damn him anyway,” she muttered and kicked at a tangle of crumpled newspapers that were spilling out of the mouth of an alleyway she was passing.
“Hey, watch it!”
Mona stopped at the sound of the odd gruff voice, then backed away as the smallest man she’d ever seen crawled out of the nest of papers to glare at her. He couldn’t have stood more than two feet high, a disagreeable and ugly little troll of a man with a face that seemed roughly carved and then left unfinished. His clothes were ragged and shabby, his face bristly with stubble. What hair she could see coming out from under his cloth cap was tangled and greasy.
Oh my, she thought. She was drunker than she’d realized.
She stood there swaying for a long moment, staring down at him and half expecting him to simply drift apart like smoke, or vanish. But he did neither and she finally managed to find her voice.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t see you down . . . there.” This was coming out all wrong. “I mean . . .”
His glare deepened. “I suppose you think I’m too small to be noticed?”
“No. It’s not that. I. . .”
She knew that his size was only some quirk of genetics, an unusual enough trait to find in someone out and about on a Crowsea street at midnight, but at the same time her imagination or, more likely, all the beer she’d had, was telling her that the little man scowling up at her had a more exotic origin.
“Are you a leprechaun?” she found herself asking.
“If I had a pot of gold, do you think I’d be sleeping on the street?”
She shrugged. “No, of course not. It’s just. . .”
He put a finger to the side of his nose and blew a stream of snot onto the pavement. Mona’s stomach did a flip and a sour taste rose up in her throat. Trust her that, when she finally did have some curious encounter like the kind Jilly had so often, it had to be with a grotty little dwarf such as this.
The little man wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket and grinned at her.
“What’s the matter, princess?” he asked. “If I can’t afford a bed for the night, what makes you think I’d go out and buy a handkerchief just to avoid offending your sensibilities?”
It took her a moment to digest that. Then digging in the bib pocket of her overalls, she found a couple of crumpled dollar bills and offered them to him. He regarded the money with suspicion and made no move to take it from her.
“What’s this?” he said.
“I just. . . I thought maybe you could use a couple of dollars.”
“Freely given?” he asked. “No strings, no ties?”
“Well, it’s not a loan,” she told him. Like she was ever going to see him again.
He took the money with obvious reluctance and a muttered “Damn.”
Mona couldn’t help herself. “Most people would say thank you,” she said.
“Most people wouldn’t be beholden to you because of it,” he replied.
“I’m sorry?”
“What for?”
Mona blinked. “I meant, I don’t understand why you’re indebted to me now. It was just a couple of dollars.”
“Then why apologize?”
“I didn’t. Or I suppose I did, but—” This was getting far too confusing. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want anything in return.”
“Too late for that.” He stuffed the money in his pocket. “Because your gift was freely given, it means I owe you now.” He offered her his hand. “Nacky Wilde, at your service.”
Seeing it was the same one he’d used to blow his nose, Mona decided to forgo the social amenities. She stuck her own hands in the side pockets of her overalls.
“Mona Morgan,” she told him.
“Alliterative parents?”
“What?”
“You really should see a doctor about your hearing problem.”
“I don’t have a hearing problem,” she said.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Well, lead on. Where are we going?”
“We’re not going anywhere. I’m going home and you can go back to doing whatever it was you were doing before we started this conversation.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. I have to stick with you until I can repay my debt.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, it’s very much so. What’s the matter? Ashamed to be seen in my company? I’m too short for you? Too grubby? I can be invisible, if you like, but I get the feeling that’d only upset you more.”
She had to be way more drunk than she thought she was. This wasn’t even remotely a normal conversation.
“Invisible,” she repeated.
He gave her an irritated look. “As in, not perceivable by the human eye. You do understand the concept, don’t you?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“No, of course not. I’m making it up just to appear more interesting to you. Great big, semi-deaf women like you feature prominently in my daydreams, so naturally I’ll say anything to try to win you over.”
Working all day at her drawing desk didn’t give Mona as much chance to exercise as she’d like, so she was a bit touchy about the few extra pounds she was carrying.
“I’m not big.”
He craned his neck. “Depends on the perspective, sweetheart.”
“And I’m not deaf.”
“I was being polite. I thought it was kinder than saying you were mentally disadvantaged.”
“And you’re certainly not coming home with me.”
“Whatever you say,” he said.
And then he vanished.
One moment he was there, two feet of unsavory rudeness, and the next she was alone on the street. The abruptness of his disappearance, the very weirdness of it, made her legs go all watery and she had to put a hand against the wall until the weak feeling went away.
I am way too drunk, she thought as she pushed off from the wall.
She peered into the alleyway, then looked up and down the street. Nothing. Gave the nest of newspapers a poke with her foot. Still nothing. Finally she started walking again, but nervously now, listening for footsteps, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching her. She was almost back at her apartment when she remembered what he’d said about how he could be invisible.
Impossible.
But what if. . . ?
In the end she found a phonebooth and gave Jilly a call.
“Is it too late to change my mind?” she asked.
“Not at all. Come on over.”
Mona leaned against the glass of the booth and watched the street all around her. Occasional cabs went by. She saw a couple at the far end of the block and followed them with her gaze until they turned a corner. So far as she could tell, there was no little man, grotty or otherwise, anywhere in view.
“Is it okay if I bring my invisible friend?” she said.
Jilly laughed. “Sure. I’ll put the kettle on. Does your invisible friend drink coffee?”
“I haven’t asked him.”
“Well,” Jilly said, “if either of you is feeling as woozy as I am, I’m sure you could use a mug.”
“I could use something.” Mona said after she’d hung up.
“MY LIFE AS A BIRD”
MONA’S MONOLOGUE FROM CHAPTER EIGHT:
Sometimes I think of God as this little man sitting on a café patio somewhere, bewildered at how it’s all gotten so out of his control. He had such good intentions, but everything he made had a mind of its own and, right from the first, he
found himself unable to contain their conflicting impulses. He tried to create paradise, but he soon discovered that free will and paradise were incompatible because everybody has a different idea as to what paradise should be like.
But usually when I think of him, I think of a cat: a little mysterious, a little aloof, never coming when he’s called. And in my mind, God’s always a he. The bible makes it pretty clear that men are the doers; women can only be virgins or whores. In God’s eyes, we can only exist somewhere in between the two Marys, the mother of Jesus and the Magdalene.
What kind of a religion is that? What kind of religion ignores the rights of half the world’s population just because they’re supposed to have envy instead of a penis? One run by men. The strong, the brave, the true. The old boys’ club that wrote the book and made the laws.
I’d like to find him and ask him, ‘Is that it, God? Did we really get cloned from a rib and because we’re hand-me-downs, you don’t think we’ve got what it takes to be strong and brave and true?”
But that’s only part of what’s wrong with the world. You also have to ask, what’s the rationale behind wars and sickness and suffering?
Or is there no point? Is God just as bewildered as the rest of us? Has he finally given up, spending his days now on that café patio, sipping strong espresso, and watching the world go by, none of it his concern anymore? Has he washed his hands of it all?
I’ve got a thousand questions for God, but he never answers any of them. Maybe he’s still trying to figure out where I fit on the scale between the two Marys and he can’t reply until he does. Maybe he doesn’t hear me, doesn’t see me, doesn’t think of me at all. Maybe in his version of what the world is, I don’t even exist.
Or if he’s a cat, then I’m a bird, and he’s just waiting to pounce.
“You actually believe me, don’t you?” Mona said.
The two of them were sitting in the windowseat of Jilly’s studio loft, sipping coffee from fat china mugs, piano music playing softly in the background, courtesy of a recording by Mitsuko Uchida. The studio was tidier than Mona had ever seen it. All the canvases that weren’t hanging up had been neatly stacked against one wall. Books were in their shelves, paintbrushes cleaned and lying out in rows on the worktable, tubes of paint organized by color in wooden and cardboard boxes. The drop cloth under the easel even looked as though it had recently gone through a wash.
“Spring clean-up and tidying,” Jilly had said by way of explanation.
“Hello? It’s September.”
“So I’m late.”
The coffee had been waiting for Mona when she arrived, as had been a willing ear as she related her curious encounter after leaving the pub. Jilly, of course, was enchanted with the story. Mona didn’t know why she was surprised.
“Let’s say I don’t disbelieve you,” Jilly said.
“I don’t know if I believe me. It’s easier to put it down to those two pitchers of beer we had.”
Jilly touched a hand to her head. “Don’t remind me.”
“Besides,” Mona went on. “Why doesn’t he show himself now?” She looked around Jilly’s disconcertingly tidy studio. “Well?” she said, aiming her question at the room in general. “What’s the big secret, Mr. Nacky Wilde?”
“Well, it stands to reason,” Jilly said. “He knows that I could just give him something as well, and then he’d indebted to me, too.”
“I don’t want him indebted to me.”
“It’s kind of late for that.”
“That’s what he said.”
“He’d probably know.”
“Okay. I’ll just get him to do my dishes for me or something.”
Jilly shook her head. “I doubt it works that way. It probably has to be something that no one else can do for you except him.”
“This is ridiculous. All I did was give him a couple of dollars. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Money doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“Jilly. It was only two dollars.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s still money and no matter how much we’d like things to be different, the world revolves around our being able to pay the rent and buy art supplies and the like, so money’s important in our lives. You freely gave him something that means something to you and now he has to return that in kind.”
“But anybody could have given him the money.”
Jilly nodded. “Anybody could have, but they didn’t. You did.”
“How do I get myself into these things?”
“More to the point, how do you get yourself out?”
“You’re the expert. You tell me.”
“Let me think about it.”
Nacky Wilde didn’t show himself again until Mona got back to her own apartment the next morning. She had just enough time to realize that Pete had been back to collect his things—there were gaps in the bookshelves and the stack of CDs on top of the stereo was only half the size it had been the previous night—when the little man reappeared. He was slouched on her sofa, even more disreputable looking in the daylight, his glower softened by what could only be the pleasure he took from her gasp at his sudden appearance.
She sat down on the stuffed chair across the table from him. There used to be two, but Pete had obviously taken one.
“So,” she said. “I’m sober and you’re here, so I guess you must be real.”
“Does it always take you this long to accept the obvious?”
“Grubby little men who can appear out of thin air and then disappear back into it again aren’t exactly a part of my everyday life.”
“Ever been to Japan?” he asked.
“No. What’s that got to—”
“But you believe it exists, don’t you?”
“Oh, please. It’s not at all the same thing. Next thing you’ll be wanting me to believe in alien abductions and little green men from Mars.”
He gave her a wicked grin. “They’re not green and they don’t come from—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she told him, blocking her ears. When she saw he wasn’t going to continue, she went on, “So was Jilly right? I’m stuck with you?”
“It doesn’t make me any happier than it does you.”
“Okay. Then we have to have some ground rules.”
“You’re taking this rather well,” he said.
“I’m a practical person. Now listen up. No bothering me when I’m working. No sneaking around being invisible when I’m in the bathroom or having a shower. No watching me sleep—or getting into bed with me.”
He looked disgusted at the idea. Yeah, me too, Mona thought.
“And you clean up after yourself,” she finished. “Come to think of it, you could clean up yourself, too.”
He glared at her. “Fine. Now for my rules. First—”
Mona shook her head. “Uh-uh. This is my place. The only rules that get made here are by me.”
“That hardly seems fair.”
“None of this is fair,” she shot back. “Remember, nobody asked you to tag along after me.”
“Nobody asked you to give me that money,” he said and promptly disappeared.
“I hate it when you do that.”
“Good,” a disembodied voice replied.
Mona stared thoughtfully at the now-empty sofa cushions and found herself wondering what it would be like to be invisible, which got her thinking about all the ways one could be nonintrusive and still observe the world. After a while, she got up and took down one of her old sketchbooks, flipping through it until she came to the notes she’d made when she’d first started planning her semi-autobiographical strip for The Girl Zone.
“MY LIFE AS A BIRD”
NOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE:
(Mona and Hazel are sitting at the kitchen table in Mona’s apartment having tea and muffins. Mona is watching Jamaica, asleep on the windowsill, only the tip of her tail twitching.)
MONA: Being invisible would be the coolest, but the next best thing would b
e, like, if you could be a bird or a cat—something that no one pays any attention to.
HAZEL: What kind of bird?
MONA: I don’t know. A crow, all blue-black wings and shadowy. Or, no. Maybe something even less noticeable, like a pigeon or a sparrow.
(She gets a happy look on her face.)
MONA: Because you can tell. They pay attention to everything, but no one pays attention to them.
HAZEL: And the cat would be black, too, I suppose?
MONA: Mmm. Lean and slinky like Jamaica. Very Egyptian. But a bird would be better—more mobility—though I guess it wouldn’t matter, really. The important thing is how you’d just be there, another piece of the landscape, but you’d be watching everything. You wouldn’t miss a thing.
HAZEL: Bit of a voyeur, are we?
MONA: No, nothing like that. I’m not even interested in high drama, just the things that go on every day in our lives—the stuff most people don’t pay attention to. That’s the real magic.
HAZEL: Sounds boring.
MONA: No, it would be very Zen. Almost like meditating.
HAZEL: You’ve been drawing that comic of yours for too long.
The phone rang that evening while Mona was inking a new page for “Jupiter Jewel.” The sudden sound startled her and a blob of ink fell from the end of her nib pen, right beside Cecil’s head. At least it hadn’t landed on his face.
I’ll make that a shadow, she decided as she answered the phone.
“So do you still have an invisible friend?” Jilly asked.
Mona looked down the hall from the kitchen table where she was working. What she could see of the apartment appeared empty, but she didn’t trust her eyesight when it came to her uninvited houseguest.
“I can’t see him,” she said, “but I have to assume he hasn’t left.”
“Well, I don’t have any useful news. I’ve checked with all the usual sources and no one quite knows what to make of him.”
“The usual sources being?”
“Christy. The professor. An old copy of The Newford Examiner with a special section on the fairy folk of Newford.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am,” Jilly admitted. “But I did go to the library and had a wonderful time looking through all sorts of interesting books, from K. M. Briggs to When the Desert Dreams by Anne Bourke, neither of whom writes about Newford, but I’ve always loved those fairy lore books Briggs compiled and Anne Bourke lived here, as I’m sure you knew, and I really liked the picture on the cover of her book. I know,” she added, before Mona could break in. “Get to the point already.”