If there was anything that Annabelle hated more that disorganization, it was lateness, and she was running very, very late. Lack of a decent sleep Saturday night into Sunday morning hadn’t helped, nor had the fact the somehow, her alarm clock failed to go off. Maybe the fact that it no longer told time, but ran LED stock quotes straight from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, had something to do with it.
Oddly enough, her usually reliable shower was a problem as well. Instead of the run-of-the-mill stream of water she was used to, it alternatively spewed out shards of ice, darts of flame, and dishwashing soap.
Add to that the fact that her bags had been mysteriously unpacked sometime during the night. It had taken her ages to discover her laptop hidden in the oven, and all her unused tapes tucked inside her sugar bowl. She managed to dress herself without too much interference, but had a lengthy and almost fruitless battle trying to lock her door, as her key kept either turning to rubber so it wouldn’t go in the locks, or slipped and slid out of her grasp like a tadpole.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told Callie to stop reading my mind, thought Annabelle, as she finally descended the stairs to the subway. Hoping to avoid another crusade from Nosy Ned, Annabelle refrained from swearing aloud during her morning trials—and she certainly didn’t have time to summon the Pooka with sage. She charged through the turnstile at Bergen Street, not noticing that the automatic readout told her she had $600 worth of credit remaining on her MetroCard, and impatiently began pacing back and forth up and down the platform. She checked her watch, whose face was now a picture of Lindsay Lohan, sans hands and numbers. Half past a freckle, Annabelle thought, and spun around in the opposite direction. Being late was bad enough without knowing exactly how late she was. And the F train, not known for its punctuality, was sure to hold her up even further.
That damned Pooka! Why couldn’t she have inherited Bruno Ganz, from Wings of Desire, as a guardian angel? Or even, like, Glinda the Good Witch, for crying out loud. She would get the most spiteful, manipulative, scheming, mischievous entity going, wouldn’t she? “Would you do me a favor,” she muttered aloud, scattering a few nervous commuters, “And send along a freakin’ train, please?”
Whooosh. An F train swept to a stop at the platform, as if out of nowhere. The few straphangers who were paying attention looked slightly confused, and one or two flew off the train in a panic. Those that had been waiting were so delighted that their wait had been cut by at least twenty minutes that they rushed right on.
Annabelle hesitated, and despite the fact that the conductor closed every other door, the one she stood in front of remained open. She stepped on, the door closed with a bang, and the train shot out of the station. Slinging down her bag to rest between her feet, Annabelle leaned up against a pole and looked around a bit sheepishly. Luckily, she thought, no one suspects that it was because of me that the train made its unexpected and unusual appearance from out of—
Eyes darted around the car as someone’s cell phone started ringing. No one’s cell phone rang hundreds of feet below Brooklyn. Annabelle looked around as well, until more than one set of eyes settled on… her. Composing her face in blasé lines, she calmly said, “Hello?”
“It never hurts to say please!” snapped Callie, who then hung up.
Annabelle shoved the phone in her pocket and avoided the curious stares of her fellow passengers. This, she thought darkly, is getting to be a real pain in the ass.
62y
Cybill Franklin-Smith was a slightly frazzled but stylishly dressed African-American woman, and after about 30 seconds, Annabelle knew that she’d made the right decision in taking the job. In addition to the shockingly adequate fee that the woman was paying her, Cybill had good instincts, and was savvy enough to introduce herself and leave Annabelle to it.
“He’s in there,” Cybill said, pointing toward the hotel bar, as she shouldered her oversized, quilted bag. “He’s a bit… grumpy this morning.”
“Because he has a hangover, or because he doesn’t?” Annabelle quipped, and Cybill laughed.
“Exactly.” They both laughed again, and Annabelle hoped they’d build a working relationship—at least until she got her first historical novel published.
“Good luck,” Cybill called over her shoulder as she made for the door. If Annabelle didn’t know better, she’d have thought the editor was running out of the line of fire…
Whatever. She wanted to get this over with, ASAP, and get back to querying the agents who specialized in her sort of thing; this journalism stuff would at least get her name out there, and if she got back to tending her blog, she’d probably see some hits when the feature ran.
Annabelle’s entrance into the gloomy, heavily paneled bar provoked the house parrot, housed in an ornate Victorian cage, to burst into an aria of frenzied squawking. Squinting in the low light, Annabelle approached it, checking to see if its eyes were that all-too familiar green, and her proximity sent the colorful bird into further hysterics.
“Would you ever get away from that bloody thing!” A guttural growl exploded from around the short end of the bar, and Annabelle looked over to see a small, crouched figure leaning with its head in its hands. A battered fedora hid his face from view, but the Irish accent gave away its wearer’s identity. “Feckin’ crack of dawn for feckin’ interviews and the feckin’ bird is feckin’ screaming down the house and destroying my feckin’ head!’
“Watch your language!” Annabelle retorted, fighting fire with fire.
“Ah, now, a girl reporter,” Minnehan moaned. “Last time they sent a girl, she had me talkin’ about me girlfriends, and me mammy—”
“I said, watch it!” Annabelle heaved her bags onto the opposite end of the bar, and proceeded to ignore the irate mumbling coming from the shadows. Okay. There had been no reason to bring her laptop. Not that she often tapped away while talking to anybody, but you never knew. She’d once bonded with Perez Hilton over hardware.
Instead, she chose to wire herself for sound, swiftly slipping the hair-thin cable up her sleeve, and tucking her miniature cassette recorder into the breast pocket of her jeans jacket, and edged over to the slouching genius of an Irish guitarist and singer-songwriter.
She watched him check her out from half-mast eyelids, and, despite the smoking ban, he struck a wooden match and lit up a cigar. Annabelle hopped up onto a stool, and mimicked his posture, elbows on the softly gleaming bar.
“I’m Annabelle Walsh,” she said, casually angling her wrist toward him “And I’m a woman, not a girl.”
“A feckin’ feminist! From feckin’ Kilkenny!” He bared his teeth at her and delighted, she snapped again.
“Yeah, my grandmother was from Inistioge.”
“And you realize you’re all but Welsh? Did you know that, did ya?” Minnehan took a drag on his cigar, and expelled the smoke downwards onto the bar.
“And you’d be from… Kerry?”
“No, I am feckin’ not!” Minnehan roared. “I’m a Dub, born and bred!”
As he leaned forward and got in her face, gesturing with the cigar, Annabelle snapped, “You’re from ‘feckin’’ Killiney, you posh bastard.” He froze in mid-lunge, his mouth hanging open in disbelief, his moldy old hat shoved to the back of his head to reveal a cowlick of… blond curls.
He leaned back, and turned almost fully away from her.
“Watch your feckin’ language.”
Sulking, he took another deep drag from his cigar, and as reflected in yet another mirror, he looked like an injured, aging gnome. Silence reigned, but for the ruffling feathers of the parrot.
Annabelle reached over to her bag and retrieved her pad and pen, deciding it would look rather odd if it didn’t look like she was making some kind of chronicle of the event—
“No autographs!” Minnehan bellowed, and swatted at the pen.
“Don’t touch!” Annabelle scolded. “My dad gave me this. It’s a Mont Blanc. Graduation present.”
“Me Da give me this,” Minnehan reached up and handled his hat fondly. “And his father give it to him.”
Annabelle scratched a note without looking at the page. Minnehan stroked his tatty old fedora with unconditional love.
This was fun.
“It’s a shame that hats went out of fashion.” Annabelle considered the battered chapeau. “There’s nothing like those old Forties films, Jimmy Stewart in a pin-striped suit and dapper headgear.”
Minnehan nodded sagely. “Now, I would have a wee cap growing up, and the father would have this on his head every day of the week, not just on a Sunday. Character, it gave to a man. Dignity. Feckin’ shame, indeed.” He stared off into the middle distance, lost in thought, and Annabelle lightly scratched down another impression, an impression that encompassed atmosphere and personality and the present moment.
“That your role model then, you wagon? His Girl Friday, Rosalind Russell, girl reporter?” Minnehan squinted at Annabelle, and she realized that she passed whatever kind of test he’d set.
“Okay, so, what’s that mean? Everyone I met in Ireland called me a wagon within fifteen minutes.”
The venerated Irish rock n’ roll icon threw back his head and roared with laughter. Annabelle continued observing and recording, glad enough of the reaction even if she still didn’t know what ‘wagon’ meant. For she was sure she now had her lead; a prose portrait of the world-renown, excessively touchy and famously curmudgeonly Daniel Minnehan wiping tears of mirth from his smiling eyes.
62y
The simple proposal to go out for a walk turned into a mammoth undertaking, in which several bodyguards—or minders, as Dan called them—accompanied them, and Minnehan’s curious but worse-for-the-beer band mates, all six of them, decided to come along for a laugh.
Not exactly designed to blend into the environment, Annabelle thought. And no way to make sure that I’m not taping traffic as opposed to chit chat. There had to be some way to make the best of this less-than ideal situation…
Dan paused just then, and cracking a conspiratorial smile, laid a hand on Annabelle’s arm to detain her. Lost in conversation, his handlers and pals kept on walking; so used to his taciturnity, they didn’t realize he dropped away. Annabelle grinned back, and jerked her head to the left, heading west down a Village side street toward the Hudson River. Dan took to his heels, and in seconds, the two of them were tearing down Bank Street, and away. Laughing like successfully truant children, they charged across 9th Avenue and paused for a breath, leaning against the stoop of one of the neighborhood’s ancient and rare clapboard houses. Annabelle, in between gasps for air, scribbled down more word-pictures of the hyperventilating guitarist, bent over double and wheezing, looking up from the bend to glare at her, and flashing the two finger signs at her while laughing.
“Want to go to the river?” Annabelle asked, as they fell into a more sedate step.
Minnehan had the grace to look guilty. “Shouldn’t stray too far, they’ll go mental.” He paused to relight his cigar, and they took a turn uptown into the meat packing district. “I’d kill for a cuppa.”
They made their way to a cafe, and settled down at an outside table. Annabelle had to change the tape, and in turn revealed her hidden weapon, but oddly, Minnhan didn’t seem to mind.
“That’s a nice bit of gear.” Minnehan nodded at the recorder.
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
Minnehan snickered. “I’ll bet your man is kept hoppin,’ day and night.”
A little stab of hurt shot through Annabelle’s heart that almost took her breath away. “Well, actually, he wasn’t much of a hopper. He and I. He. We. I don’t have a boyfriend at the moment.”
“Some eejit, then,” Minnehan declared. He looked at her, abashed, out of the corner of his eye.
Annabelle laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start crying.”
“Ah, well. Bigger and better things.” The tea arrived, and Minnehan rejected it, unhappy with the presentation. As he impatiently instructed the waiter as to the correct preparation of a pot of tea, Annabelle taped the entire proceedings, and second-guessed her lead.
“So you’ve been back to the ‘auld sod’ to check out yer ‘roots’?” Minnehan sneered.
“I did, you grouch, and my grandmother’s family home is now a car park.” Annabelle tilted the tape recorder toward him, and took up her pen again.
“Feck’s sake, like!” Minnehan exploded. “I wouldn’t know me own country if I didn’t feckin’ live there meself.”
“A lot of it wasn’t what I expected, and I hear it’s changed even more since my last trip.” Annabelle took up a cup of now-acceptable tea, after Dan had rather daintily poured it out.
“Well, you’d have to see it for yourself to believe it,” he muttered into his cup.
Annabelle grimaced. “I may not have a feckin’ choice.”
At Minnehan’s inquisitively arched brow, Annabelle took another sip of the tea. Oh, what the hell, she thought. Not like I’ll ever see this guy again.
“Do you know anything about Pookas?”
He sat back in his chair and took a meditative drag off his stogie. “What, like the annoying wee buggers that move yer gear so’s you can’t find it for a week?’
“Um, well, like the sort that follow you around and change shape and generally start trying to force you to do stuff like take them to Ireland.” Annabelle blurted this out in a rush.
Minnehan took another drag, and then a sip of tea. He crossed his legs, and leaned forward, his free hand stroking the brim of his hat.
“Oh. That sort.” Not even the slightest trace of mockery showed in the musician’s piercing black eyes. Annabelle leaned forward as well, even though she was the one who now felt extremely skeptical.
“Would you ever put that thing away!” Minnehan removed his hat, and Annabelle was treated to the sight of a monk-like tonsure of fading blond curls.
“Okay. Go on.” She laid the tape player—still running—on her lap, and leaned her elbows on the little table. Dan looked about furtively before he began.
“There’s a piseog—that’s Irish, for old wives tale—about a certain… strain of Pooka that’s been damned to follow the fortunes, or misfortunes, if you like, of the human race. Now, your common-or-garden variety of Pooka is a free spirit, a bit of a scallywag that comes and goes as it pleases, messin’ about with people’s possessions, changing the signs on the roads so that travelers get lost in the back of beyond, and the like. They don’t haunt a place, they sweep in, create a bit of havoc, and then take off again.
“This other lot, now…” Minnehan looked about a bit, and lowered his voice another shade. “The story goes that this rogue crowd of Pookas got into more than a spot of bother from feckin’ around with the Queen of the Ban Sí, and missus, that is not something anybody wants to do, living, dead, undead…” He trailed off again, and took a sip of cooling tea.
“Now. The Pookas interfered with, shall we say, the fella the Queen had been courting, and banjaxed the entire romance—if you want to call it that. Infuriated, the Queen laid a geís—a curse—on the troublesome crew and demanded they each go into service for a different family of the province. It’s not in the Pooka’s nature to perform service, if you get my meaning, so the Queen added a bit about the Pooka’s having to… organize the future happiness of the human whom they were given. Like love-wise—in that regard, if you take my meaning—they had to match between one of their people, and one of her people. Even if they managed to pull off their duty without feckin’ around too much, and if they wandered too far from the land of their origin, they would have to be transported back, or else...”
“Or else what?” This, thought Annabelle, is really just my luck, isn’t it?
Minnehan coughed nervously, “Or else they were damned to limbo for all eternity. The thing is, if one of them had to go so far afield, it meant they’d made a mess of things back in Ireland.”
Annabelle sat back. “Oh, man.”
Minnehan leaned back as well. “So? You’ve got yerself a Pooka, have ya?”
Annabelle told him everything that happened since her meeting with Maeve and the advent of the hazelnut, up to and including the events of that morning. Minnehan laughed in all the wrong places, if you asked her.
“It’s not funny! And she—he—they—is threatening me with a husband that I don’t even want.”
“Is that so?” Minnehan mused. “Me own auntie had a spot of bother with one of that lot, went around talkin’ to herself and generally running wild, claimed she didn’t want the benefit of their expertise, shall we say. And sure didn’t she settle down by the end of that year into a fine aul’ marriage with the village smith.”
“Great.” Annabelle fiddled with the directional mic of her recorder.
“Yer man might come back to ye, now,” Minnehan offered half-heartedly.
“I don’t want him back,” Annabelle said definitively.
“Got an iron in the fire?” Dan wondered.
“I haven’t!” Defensive, Annabelle started gathering up her gear.
“Ah, go on…” Lighting his cigar for the hundredth time, Minnehan leaned forward keenly. “Nothing like a bit o’ gossip.”
“Just some guy. Some Irish guy.” Annabelle ignored Minnehan’s meaningful grunt. “My friends tried to throw me at him the other night, at the opening of this show, and it’s none of their business, you know? But then I kind of… well, it would have been nice if he asked for my number, maybe, or whatever.” She trailed off, sullen.
“What’s he called?”
“His last name is Flynn.”
Minnehan’s eyes lit up with puckish glee, his shout of laughter scaring a flock of pigeons into flight.
Annabelle waited for him to compose himself. She tapped her fingers impatiently on her teacup as he slowly calmed down.
“My nutter of an auntie, the one who married the smith, always told me that I’d see the truth of her experience, one of these days. And so I have, and I’m off to light a candle to her blessed memory.” He ruined his pious statement with an utterly wicked giggle.
Annabelle rose with him, and knocked away his extended hand. “You want to tell me what is so feckin’ funny?”
“Language!” He tried for a conciliatory look, and took her hand. Wrapping both of his around hers, she could feel the calluses of a thousand gigs stroking her palm. “Let’s just say I’m not laughing at your troubles, and I comprehend your story with the whole of my heart. I am only amused as ever at the truth in aul piseog’s and the real-life that always comes through in the fairy tale.” He patted her cheek, and tweaked her nose. “Now look me in the face and tell me you don’t fancy this Flynn character.”
Annabelle avoided his gaze and shrugged. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind seeing him again. Maybe.”
Minnehan grinned and clapped his faithful fedora on his half-bald head. “You mightn’t be able to help it.”