“I’m serenely patient and would never have said such a thing,” Mona told her.
“Humble, too. Anyway, apparently there are all sorts of tricksy fairy folk, from hobs to brownies. Some relatively nice, some decidedly nasty, but none of them quite fit the Nacky Wilde profile.”
“You mean sarcastic, grubby and bad mannered, but potentially helpful?”
“In a nutshell.”
Mona sighed. “So I’m stuck with him.”
She realized that she’d been absently doodling on her art and set her pen aside before she completely ruined the page.
“It doesn’t seem fair, does it?” she added. “I finally get the apartment to myself, but then some elfin squatter moves in.”
“How are you doing?” Jilly asked. “I mean, aside from your invisible squatter?”
“I don’t feel closure,” Mona said. “I know how weird that sounds, considering what I told you yesterday. After all, Pete stomped out and then snuck back while I was with you last night to get his stuff—so I know it’s over. And the more I think of it, I realize this had to work out the way it did. But I’m still stuck with this emotional baggage, like trying to figure out why things ended up the way they did, and how come I never noticed.”
“Would you take him back?”
“No.”
“But you miss him?”
“I do,” Mona said. “Weird, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly normal, I’d say. Do you want someone to commiserate with?”
“No, I need to get some work done. But thanks.”
After she hung up, Mona stared down at the mess she’d made of the page she’d been working on. She supposed she could try to incorporate all the squiggles into the background, but it didn’t seem worth the bother. Instead she picked up a bottle of white acrylic ink, gave it a shake and opened it. With a clean brush she began to paint over the doodles and the blob of ink she’d dropped by Cecil’s head. It was obvious now that it wouldn’t work as shadow, seeing how the light source was on the same side.
Waiting for the ink to dry, she wandered into the living room and looked around.
“Trouble with your love life?” a familiar, but still disembodied voice asked.
“If you’re going to talk to me,” she said, “at least show your face.”
“Is this a new rule?”
Mona shook her head. “It’s just disorienting to be talking into thin air—especially when the air answers back.”
“Well, since you asked so politely . . .”
Nacky Wilde reappeared, slouching in the stuffed chair this time, a copy of one of Mona’s comic books open on his lap.
“You’re not actually reading that?” Mona said.
He looked down at the comic. “No, of course not. Dwarves can’t read—their brains are much too small to learn such an obviously complex task.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know you didn’t, but I can’t help myself. I have a reputation to maintain.”
“As a dwarf?” Mona asked. “Is that what you are?”
He shrugged and changed the subject. “I’m not surprised you and your boyfriend broke up.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He stabbed the comic book with a short stubby finger. “The tension’s so apparent—if this bird story holds any truth. One never gets the sense that any of the characters really likes Pete.”
Mona sat down on the sofa and swung her feet up onto the cushions. This was just what she needed—an uninvited, usually invisible squatter of a houseguest who was also a self-appointed analyst. Except, when she thought about it, he was right. “My Life as a Bird” was emotionally true, if not always a faithful account of actual events, and the Pete character in it had never been one of her favorites. Like the real Pete, there was an underlying tightness in his character; it was more noticeable in the strip because the rest of the cast was so Bohemian.
“He wasn’t a bad person,” she found herself saying.
“Of course not. Why would you let yourself be attracted to a bad person?”
Mona couldn’t decide if he was being nice or sarcastic.
“They just wore him down,” she said. “In the office. Won him over to their way of thinking, and there was no room for me in his life anymore.”
“Or for him in yours,” Nacky said.
Mona nodded. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Generosity of spirit seems to be so old-fashioned nowadays. We’d rather watch somebody trip on the sidewalk than help them climb the stairs to whatever it is they’re reaching for.”
“What is it you’re reaching for?” Nacky asked.
“Oh, god.” Mona laughed. “Who knows? Happiness, contentment. Some days all I want is for the lines to come together on the page and look like whatever it is that I’m trying to draw.” She leaned back on the arm of the sofa and regarded the ceiling. “You know, that trick you do with invisibility is pretty cool.” She turned her head to look at him. “Is it something that can be taught or do you have to be born magic?”
“Born to it, I’m afraid.”
“I figured as much. But it’s always been a fantasy of mine. That, or being able to change into something else.”
“So I’ve gathered from reading this,’ Nacky said, giving the comic another tap with his finger. “Maybe you should try to be happy just being yourself. Look inside yourself for what you need—the way your character recommends in one of the earlier issues.”
“You really have been reading it.”
“That is why you write it, isn’t it—to be read?”
She gave him a suspicious look. “Why are you being so nice all of a sudden?”
“Just setting you up for the big fall.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Thought of what I can do for you yet?” he asked.
She shook her head. “But I’m working on it.”
“MY LIFE AS A BIRD”
NOTES FOR CHAPTER SEVEN:
(So after Mona meets Gregory, they go walking in Fitzhenry Park and sit on a bench from which they can see Wendy’s Tree of Tales growing. Do I need to explain this, or can it just be something people who know will understand?)
GREGORY: Did you ever notice how we don’t tell family stories anymore?
MONA: What do you mean?
GREGORY: Families used to be made up of stories—their history—and those stories were told down through the generations. It’s where a family got its identity, the same way a neighborhood or even a country did. Now the stories we share we get from television and the only thing we talk about is ourselves.
(Mona realizes this is true—maybe not for everybody, but it’s true for her. Argh. How do I draw this???)
MONA: Maybe the family stories don’t work anymore. Maybe they’ve lost their relevance.
GREGORY: They’ve lost nothing.
(He looks away from her, out across the park.)
GREGORY: But we have.
In the days that followed, Nacky Wilde alternated between the sarcastic grump Mona had first met and the surprisingly good company he could prove to be when he didn’t, as she told him one night, “have a bee up his butt.” Unfortunately, the good of the one didn’t outweigh the frustration of having to put up with the other and there was no getting rid of him. When he was in one of his moods, she didn’t know which was worse: having to look at his scowl and listen to his bad-tempered remarks, or telling him to vanish but knowing that he was still sulking around the apartment, invisible and watching her.
A week after Pete had moved out, Mona met up with Jilly at the Cyberbean Café. They were planning to attend the opening of Sophie’s latest show at The Green Man Gallery and Mona had once again promised herself not to dump her problems on Jilly, but there was no one else she could talk to.
“It’s so typical,” she found herself saying. “Out of all the hundreds of magical beings that populate folk tales and legends, I had to get stuck with the one that has a multiple personality disorder. He’
s driving me crazy.”
“Is he with us now?” Jilly asked.
“Who knows? Who cares?” Then Mona had to laugh. “God, listen to me. It’s like I’m complaining about a bad relationship.”
“Well, it is a bad relationship.”
“I know. And isn’t it pathetic?” Mona shook her head. “If this is what I rebounded to from Pete, I don’t want to know what I’ll end up with when I finally get this nasty little man out of my life. At least the sex was good with Pete.”
Jilly’s eyes went wide. “You’re not . . . ?
“Oh, please. That’d be like sleeping with the eighth dwarf, Snotty—the one Disney kept out of his movie and with good reason.”
Jilly had to laugh. “I’m sorry, but it’s just so—”
Mona wagged a finger at her. “Don’t say it. You wouldn’t be laughing if it was happening to you.” She looked at her watch. “We should get going.”
Jilly took a last sip of her coffee. Wrapping what she hadn’t finished of her cookie in a napkin, she stuck it in her pocket.
“What are you going to do?” she asked as they left the café.
“Well, I looked in the Yellow Pages, but none of the exterminators have cranky dwarves listed among the household pests they’ll get rid of, so I guess I’m stuck with him for now. Though I haven’t looked under exorcists yet.”
“Is he Catholic?” Jilly asked.
“I didn’t think it mattered. They just get rid of evil spirits, don’t they?”
“Why not just ask him to leave? That’s something no one else but he can do for you.”
“I already thought of that,” Mona told her.
“And?”
“Apparently it doesn’t work that way.”
“Maybe you should ask him what he can do for you.”
Mona nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I never thought of that. I just assumed this whole business was one of those Rumpelstiltskin kind of things—that I had to come up with it on my own.
“What?” Nacky said later that night when Mona returned from the gallery and asked him to show himself. “You want me to list my services like on a menu? I’m not a restaurant.”
“Or computer software,” Mona agreed, “though it might be easier if you were either, because then at least I’d know what you can do without having to go through a song and dance to get the information out of you.”
“No one’s ever asked this kind of thing before.”
“So what?” she asked. “Is is against the rules?”
Nacky scowled. “What makes you think there are rules?”
“There are always rules. So come on. Give.”
“Fine,” Nacky said. “We’ll start with the most popular items.” He began to count the items off on his fingers. “Potions, charms, spells, incantations—”
Mona held up a hand. “Hold on there. Let’s back up a bit. What are these potions and charms and stuff?”
“Well, take your ex-boyfriend,” Nacky said.
Please do, Mona thought.
“I could put a spell on him so that every time he looked at a woman that he was attracted to, he’d break out in hives.”
“You could do that?”
Nacky nodded. “Or it could just be a minor irritation—an itch that will never go away.”
“How long would it last?”
“Your choice. For the rest of his life, if you want.”
Wouldn’t that serve Pete right, Mona thought. Talk about a serious payback for all those mean things he’d said about her and The Girl Zone.
“This is so tempting,” she said.
“So what will it be?” Nacky asked, briskly rubbing his hands together. “Hives? An itch? Perhaps a nervous tic under his eye so that people will always think he’s winking at them. Seems harmless, but it’s good for any number of face slaps and more serious altercations.”
“Hang on,” Mona told him. “What’s the big hurry?”
“I’m in no hurry. I thought you were. I thought the sooner you got rid of Snotty, the eighth dwarf, the happier you’d be.”
So he had been in the café.
“Okay,” Mona said. “But first I have to ask you. These charms and things of yours—do they only do negative stuff?”
Nacky shook his head. “No. They can teach you the language of birds, choose your dreams before you go to sleep, make you appear to not be somewhere when you really are—”
“Wait a sec. You told me I had to be born magic to do that.”
“No. You asked about, and I quote, ‘the trick you do with invisibility,’ the emphasis being mine. How I do it, you have to be born magic. An invisibility charm is something else.”
“But it does the same thing?”
“For all intents and purposes.”
God, but he could be infuriating.
“So why didn’t you tell me that?”
Nacky smirked. “You didn’t ask.”
I will not get angry, she told herself. I am calmness incarnate.
“Okay,” she said. “What else?”
He went back to counting the items on his fingers, starting again with a tap of his right index finger onto his left. “Potions to fall in love, to fall out of love. To make hair longer, or thicker. To make one taller, or shorter, or—” he gave her a wicked grin “—slimmer. To speak with the recent dead, to heal a person who’s sick—”
“Heal them of what?” Mona wanted to know.
“Whatever ails them,” he said, then went on in a bored voice. “To turn kettles into foxes, and vice versa. To—”
Mona was beginning to suffer overload.
“Enough already,” she said. “I get the point.”
“But you—”
“Shh. Let me think.”
She laid her head back in her chair and closed her eyes. Basically, what it boiled down to was that she could have whatever she wanted. She could have revenge on Pete—not for leaving her, but for being so mean-spirited about it. She could be invisible, or understand the language of bird and animals. And though he’d claimed not to have a pot of gold when they first met, she could probably have fame and fortune, too.
But she didn’t really want revenge on Pete. And being invisible probably wasn’t such a good idea since she already spent far too much time on her own as it was. What she should really do is get out more, meet more people, make more friends of her own, instead of all the people she knew through Pete. As for fame and fortune . . . corny as it might sound, she really did believe that the process was what was important, the journey her art and stories took her on, not the place where they all ended up.
She opened her eyes and looked at Nacky.
“Well?” he said.
She stood up and picked up her coat from where she’d dropped it on the end of the sofa.
“Come on,” she said as she put it on.
“Where are we going?”
“To hail a cab.”
She had a taxi take them to the children’s hospital. After paying the fare, she got out and stood on the lawn. Nacky, invisible in the vehicle, popped back into view. Leaves crackled underfoot as he joined her.
“There,” Mona said, pointing at the long square block of a building. “I want you to heal all the kids in there.”
There was a long moment of silence. When Mona turned to look at her companion, it was to find him regarding her with a thoughtful expression.
“I can’t do that,” he said.
Mona shook her head. “Like you couldn’t make me invisible?”
“No, semantics this time,” he said. “I can’t heal them all.”
“But that’s what I want.”
Nacky sighed. “It’s like asking for world peace. It’s too big a task. But I could heal one of them.”
“Just one?”
Nacky nodded.
Mona turned to look at the building again. “Then heal the sickest one.”
She watched him cross the lawn. When he reached the front doors, his figure shimmered and
he seemed to flow through the glass rather than step through the actual doors.
He was gone a long time. When he finally returned, his pace was much slower and there was a haunted look in his eyes.
“There was a little girl with cancer,” he said. “She would have died later tonight. Her name—”
“I don’t want to know her name,” Mona told him. “I just want to know, will she be all right?”
He nodded.
I could have had anything, she found herself thinking.
“Do you regret giving the gift away,” Nacky asked her.
She shook her head. “No. I only wish I had more of them.” She eyed him for a long moment. “I don’t suppose I could freely give you another couple of dollars . . . ?”
“No. It doesn’t—”
“Work that way,” she finished. “I kind of figured as much.” She knelt down so that she wasn’t towering over him. “So now what? Where will you go?”
“I have a question for you,” he said.
“Shoot.”
“If I asked, would you let me stay on with you?”
Mona laughed.
“I’m serious,” he told her.
“And what? Things would be different now, or would you still be snarly more often than not?”
He shook his head. “No different.”
“You know I can’t afford to keep that apartment,” she said. “I’m probably going to have to get a bachelor somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
Mona knew she’d be insane to agree. All she’d been doing for the past week was trying to get him out of her life. But then she thought of the look in his eyes when he’d come back from the hospital and knew that he wasn’t all bad. Maybe he was a little magic man, but he was still stuck living on the street and how happy could that make a person? Could be, all he needed was what everybody needed—a fair break. Could be, if he was treated fairly, he wouldn’t glower so much, or be so bad-tempered.
But could she put up with it?
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she told him, “but, yeah. You can come back with me.”