Ghostheart (42 page)

Dad
, she thought, and this thought brought more tears, and when her eyes were raw-red she made her way to the bathroom and washed her face.

She stood there for a while, stood there doing nothing but looking at her reflection in the mirror.

Perhaps all of them, she thought, Perhaps Tom Parselle and Ben Leonhardt and Richard Lorentzen and Michael Duggan … even David Quinn, and in a curious way Jack Sullivan … perhaps all of them were nothing more than substitutes for him. For Frank. For Daddy
.

Later she cried some more, and then she slept.

Did not dream.

Too tired, too hollow, too broken up to dream.

And when morning came she was still sleeping, and Sullivan – mindful of sleep’s curative nature – left her that way. Seemed the best he could do. At least for now.

Friday the thirteenth
was Annie O’Neill’s first thought as she woke.

Her second was
Fuck it
.

The third was neither as portentous nor as angry, it was simply
David
.

It seemed as if the atmosphere in the room had pressed down on her during the night and was challenging her to rise from where she lay. She felt bruised – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually – and even as she tried to move the will to do so was not there. She slumped back onto the mattress and tried to sleep again, tried to force her mind to close down and succumb; but there was traffic beyond the window, the sound of life moving on without her, and it beckoned and teased and cajoled her into unwilling wakefulness.

Eventually, resisting every inch of the way, she dragged herself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. She sat there, naked but for her panties, and looked down at her own body – her breasts, her stomach, the tops of her thighs. It seemed only hours ago that she had permitted this man – this David whoever-the-fuck-he-was – to invade every inch of her, inside and out. It seemed like only last night that he had taken everything she possessed and consumed it for his own entertainment, and then he had walked. Just got up and walked with no intention of returning.

‘Bastard!’ she said out loud, and then clenching her fist she turned and thumped the pillow repeatedly, and with each impact she hissed ‘Bastard … bastard! … bastard!’

She leaned forward and buried her face in her hands.

There were tears, but she would not allow them to come. She would not allow this man to bring her to the edge of grief once more. He didn’t deserve it. She was better than that. Annie O’Neill, bookstore owner, was altogether better than that. At least she had strength of character, some backbone, some honor and integrity and a willingness to speak the truth. David Quinn had possessed none of these things, and what he had possessed had been insufficient even to proffer an explanation, an apology.

We need to talk
.

It all seems to have happened so fast
.

‘Asshole,’ she muttered under her breath and stood up.

From beneath the rushing shower she didn’t hear Sullivan come in. He knocked on the door and Annie jumped, slightly startled, when he hollered ‘Coffee?’ over the sound of the water.

‘Please!’ she shouted back, and spent another minute attempting to scrub David Quinn from her body before she came out of the bathroom in her robe. Her wet hair hung in tails around her face.

‘I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair,’ Sullivan said as Annie entered the kitchen.

‘Don’t try the humor,’ she said. ‘Humor never suited you Jack Sullivan.’

‘Coffee,’ he said, handing her a cup. She took it and sat at the kitchen table.

Sullivan sat facing her. ‘You’re gonna get over this,’ he said.

‘That a question or a statement?’ she asked.

‘Whichever way you wanna take it,’ Sullivan replied.

‘If it’s a question,’ she said, ‘then the answer is yes. If it’s a statement then sympathetic platitudes are the last thing I need.’

‘How does it go?’

‘What?’ she asked, frowning.

‘The emotional rollercoaster.’

She smiled. ‘Grief, hopelessness, futility, and then maybe contempt and bitterness. After that you feel angry, hateful, destructive, and after that I s’pose you go kind of numb, and then you find yourself again and you’re okay.’

‘And where would you be today?’ Sullivan asked.

‘Contempt and bitterness,’ she said.

‘So I’ve got the really fun things to look forward to?’

‘You have,’ Annie said, and drank her coffee.

‘I think maybe I’ll go stay with my sister for a couple of weeks.’

‘You haven’t got a sister,’ she said.

‘I’ll buy one.’

‘Smartmouth,’ she said.

‘Sassy, beautiful, independent, stubborn, hard-headed bitch,’ Sullivan replied.

‘Thank you,’ Annie said. ‘You can go home now.’

Sullivan smiled. ‘Can I say he wasn’t worth it, that you were too good for him?’

‘You can,’ she said. ‘But it will mean absolutely nothing seeing as how you didn’t even know him.’

‘But I met him once, and there was something weak about his eyes … you can always tell what someone’s like by looking at their eyes.’

‘You can, can you?’

‘Sure you can,’ Sullivan said.

‘Let me see,’ Annie said, leaning forward and gazing at Sullivan’s face. ‘I see a washed-out ex-alcoholic, a lush by anyone’s standards, a man who could no more find gainful employment than he could find a girlfriend.’

Sullivan raised his eyebrows. ‘Getting personal now, are we?’

‘You started it,’ she said.

‘Okay, truce,’ Sullivan replied. ‘We start again. You’re gonna be okay, right?’

She nodded. ‘I’m gonna be okay.’

‘So what do we do today? We gonna try and find this guy?’

Annie shook her head. ‘Even if I could be bothered I
wouldn’t know where to start. What I plan to do is nothing, not today, not the whole weekend, and then after I see Forrester on Monday I’m going to take a holiday.’

‘A holiday?’

‘Sure, a holiday.’

‘Where?’

‘God knows,’ she said. ‘Maybe go up to Niagara Falls or someplace … you wanna come?’

Sullivan nodded thoughtfully. ‘Sure I’ll come. Never been to Niagara Falls.’

‘Then apparently you have never lived.’

Sullivan smiled, drank his coffee, thought briefly about asking Annie O’Neill to marry him and then decided against it. Timing wasn’t right. Timing would have sucked.

Later, as if an afterthought, Annie asked Sullivan what
he
felt she should do.

‘Let it go,’ he said.

Annie didn’t reply. She seemed pensive, withdrawn.

‘You know the old thing about if you love someone the real test is to let them go and see if they come back?’

She nodded.

‘Well here … well it doesn’t exactly apply here, but the point I’m making is that if this guy really had a thing for you he wouldn’t have done what he did. He would have come forward with some kind of explanation, right?’

‘I s’pose so, yes.’

‘There’s no s’pose about it. The truth of the matter is that the world is jammed solid from end to end with people who don’t have a clue what they want, and even when it’s staring them right in the face they still can’t decide.’ Sullivan smiled. ‘You have to let him go, or he’ll haunt you.’

Annie frowned. ‘Haunt me? What d’you mean?’

‘He’ll be there, always there at the back of your mind, and you’ll more than likely find yourself in some situation in the not-too-distant future where there’s an opportunity … you
know, an opportunity to meet someone else, to start all over, but because this guy is there in your mind you won’t let yourself. It may be tough to let go, but if you do you also open yourself up to seeing what’s there in front of you when it comes.’

‘You’d have made someone a good husband Jack,’ Annie said.

‘I know.’

‘Apart from the conceit,’ Annie added.

Sullivan nodded. ‘I used to figure I was conceited until I actually realized I was perfect.’

Annie was quiet for a time, and then she said, ‘So you reckon the only way out of this is to let it go, to forget all about it?’

‘Not forget, no,’ he replied. ‘Don’t ever forget. It’s a life experience kind of thing. It’s what life is for. The only things that ever really come back to hurt you are the things you never really faced, and the things you forgot about. What I mean is that you imagine it’s like an article of clothing that’s too small for you, but there’s something sentimental about it so you don’t throw it out. You fold it up neat, you stow it in the bottom of your dresser, and every once in a while you remind yourself that it’s there. It’s something you once possessed, and at one time it was perhaps the thing that made you feel best, the thing you felt you looked good in, but that was then, and this is now, and now you have something else that works for you.’

‘Homespun philosophy,’ Annie said.

‘Homespun it may be, but there’s a thread of truth in what I say. You don’t spend your life looking over your shoulder at what might have been, what could have been … you spend your life looking at what you have right now and how you can make it better for tomorrow.’

‘Or you go the Prozac and vodka route,’ Annie said drily.

‘Or the Prozac and vodka,’ Sullivan said.

‘So today, now, I forget the asshole of the century.’

He nodded. ‘Good enough.’

‘So what do we do?’

Sullivan smiled. ‘I take you to the Italian restaurant on 112th, we eat crab and avocado antipasta, we gorge ourselves sick on fusilli and mortadella and Montepulciano, and then we get a cab home and laugh about how stupid everyone else is but us.’

‘Deal,’ Annie said. ‘You’re paying.’

He put on a shocked expression. ‘Me? Pay? An old lush incapable of finding gainful employment?’

‘You pay or I stay home and sulk about how life is a bitch and how everyone has it in for me.’

Sullivan shrugged. ‘So I pay … get your coat.’

They walked. It was no more than a couple of blocks, and there on West 112th between Amsterdam and Broadway, was the little trattoria with its subdued lighting, bursting at the seams with Genovese dialects and atmosphere. They took a table near the window, and through the clouded glass Annie watched people walk by in the street. People alone, people in twos and threes, all of them heading someplace with something in mind. She and Sullivan ate, they talked little, and after Annie’s third or fourth glass of wine the world appeared to have mellowed a little. The sharp edges were smoother, the rough edges had been sanded down by some unseen and benevolent hand, and as she sat moving a small tiramisu creation around the edges of her plate she felt that perhaps she would recover. There really was no other way. What else could she do – give up?

She looked up at Sullivan.

He smiled. ‘It comes, and then it goes,’ he said quietly.

She nodded, set down her spoon and closed her eyes for a moment.

‘What you doing?’ Sullivan asked. ‘You forget grace or what?’

She laughed. ‘I was just thinking –’

‘’Bout what?’

‘About another birthday in two months’ time.’

‘What is this? You soliciting for birthday presents already?’

‘Sure I am,’ she said. ‘You can get me a car.’

‘This is New York, you don’t do cars, you do taxicabs and subways.’

‘So buy me a subway, what’s your problem?’

They smiled at one another, and things felt okay. Somehow, some way, they felt okay. And then a thought came. Out of left field, out of nowhere.
Wish it was my father here with me. He would know what to say, would know what to do. He would be the sort of man who could make a call and find someone, and drive me there, and stand beside me while I said what I wanted to say, and protect me if things got ugly, and tell me I was right … tell me I was right and the rest of the world was so fucking wrong
…

She turned to the window as a movement caught the corner of her eye.

David Quinn looked back at her through the glass.

The sound that escaped her lips was a scream, a sudden inhalation, a gasp of surprise, all these things together. She felt she would choke.

She tried to stand up, but somehow the tops of her legs caught the edge of the table and, before Sullivan had a chance to react, the bottle of wine had toppled over and the red Montepulciano was flooding the table, filling the spaces between their plates.

Annie didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate, and coming out from the table her chair fell backwards, collided with someone who was seated behind her. He started to rise also, and confusion spread like a small whirlwind through the half-dozen or so tables near the window.

Annie’s face was white, shocked. Not until she reached the door did she realize she was holding her breath.

‘Annie!’ Sullivan was calling, confused, unaware of what she’d seen.

He followed her, trying as best he could to settle the people around them, and when he went out through the door, a
waiter following – perhaps believing that they were planning to run without paying the bill – he found Annie standing on the sidewalk, her whole body shaking, her head moving swiftly back and forth as she scanned left and right down the street.

‘Annie?’ Sullivan was asking. ‘Annie … what is it?’

She looked at him, her eyes wide and brimming with tears, perhaps from the cold he thought, but then she opened her mouth and her tone of voice told him that it was nothing to do with the temperature.

‘Da-David,’ she stuttered. ‘David was here … looking … looking through the window at me. David Quinn was right here on the sidewalk …’

Sullivan stepped forward and held onto her as if she would suddenly turn and bolt.

She looked at him, seemed to look right through him, and then once again she was looking left and right, trying to see between the passing cars and taxicabs to the other side of the street.

‘You’re sure?’ was all Sullivan could think to ask.

‘As sure as I could ever be,’ Annie said. ‘I turned to look out of the window and there he was, right there in front of me looking in at us.’

‘It can’t have been –’

‘It was!’ Annie snapped. ‘Jesus, I should know Jack, I had the man practically living with me. I don’t forget a face, especially a man I’ve slept with.’