4. Annie
One of the best things about having a sister was knowing she would always answer the phone and come to the rescue when the other was in crisis. One of the worst things about being a sister was always having to come to the rescue when the phone rang—especially when I’d only been home from a double shift long enough for a quick catnap.
But…sisters. So, there I was. Listening to my sister fight with her husband while I sipped my coffee and tried to insert reason into the conversation wherever I could.
Richard stood blinking under the overhead light, looking like a kicked puppy. “Honey, I honestly don’t know where this is coming from. You know I was at the firehouse for the last three days. My shift schedule is right there on the fridge.” He pointed at the shiny silver door covered in animal magnets they’d collected from various zoos.
Her eyes filled with tears, probably for the third time in the last ten minutes. “But you didn’t even call. It’s like the minute you walk out that door, I don’t exist anymore.”
This was the general theme of the entire argument. Richard groaned and paced the floor. He’d already pointed out to her twice that he had called, but she hadn’t picked up, so he’d left her a voicemail. He showed great restraint in not repeating himself a third time. She’d already decided he knew when she would be in the shower or in the laundry room and wouldn’t hear him call.
Something was definitely wrong with Val.
I set my mug on the table and reached under the table to scratch Maggie’s head. She licked my hand and whined. Mommy and Daddy were fighting, and Maggie didn’t like it. I didn’t like it, either.
Maggie’s head came up, nostrils flaring. She let out a chuff and turned toward the arched doorway into the living room. Her tail wagged slowly as if unsure whether to be happy or not.
I lifted my head, much like Maggie had, and sniffed the air. The windows were closed, but I smelled something like a combination of clean laundry and freshly mown grass. I frowned.
Maggie trotted into the living room, and I followed until she stopped at the front door and fell back on her haunches.
“What did you smell, sweetheart?” I patted her head. The scent lingered for a moment, then disappeared, as if between us, we’d sniffed it all up. I glanced toward the kitchen and considered whether to call out to my sister and brother-in-law, so in the unlikely event they noticed I was gone, they wouldn’t be worried. Val’s voice got louder, so I decided not to interrupt. “I’ll be right back, Maggie.”
I opened the door and stepped out on the porch, sniffing the breeze. After a moment, I caught the scent again and followed it down the steps.
The likelihood that I was hallucinating due to lack of sleep was strong. I shrugged off any self-doubt and followed the elusive smell down the sidewalk and around the corner.
The street was empty. The only life I saw was a pair of squirrels chasing each other around a tree and a robin eyeing me sideways from a bush. A few cars sat in driveways, but mostly people were gone for the day or their cars were in their garages. A gray car—one of those compact models that really wanted to be a Mini but wasn’t—was the only car on the street.
As I stood contemplating my own sanity and made plans to turn off my phone when I got home so I could get some real sleep, my hallucinations added sight and sound to the previous smells I’d been experiencing.
“Dammit. Let go already, you stupid—” A man’s voice came out of nowhere from somewhere near the little gray car. A second later, the man popped into existence, struggling with something hanging off his back.
I stepped behind the nearest tree, feeling vulnerable and stupid. I wasn’t even surprised that he was the cute guy I’d checked in at the hotel the night before. His scent was unique, and I’d enjoyed it until he’d turned out to be a slimeball. I was obviously having one of those junk dreams where random items from the previous day made appearances.
When I peeked around the tree, he’d managed to pull the white thing off his shoulders. His shouts had turned to mumbles, and I couldn’t make out the words. When he held up the object of his wrath, I could see they were wings—big, white, flat wings. I’d worn a similar contraption several Halloweens ago when I’d dressed as the Ghost of Christmas Past, but mine had been pretty. His were ridiculous.
Maybe parachute material was the manly version of fairy wings.
I chuckled to myself. Maybe he was in town for a tooth fairy convention. My chuckle turned to a giggle, and I had to cover my mouth. Was he wearing tights under those cargo shorts? Was it casual Tuesday for tooth fairies?
I had reached the point in sleep deprivation where I’d gone a little loopy, and the image of a hot womanizer running around in pink tights, “manly wings,” and a tutu did me in. I bent in half, laughing so hard tears clouded my vision, and I had trouble breathing.
As I almost got a hold on myself, I wondered if his wand was manly, too, and the laughter started all over. I was braced against the tree, bent over, laughing in hysteric silence when the car door slammed and the car pulled away.
I pulled myself together, straightened, and wiped the tears from my cheeks. That was it. My sister was going to have to figure her problems out for herself today.
I needed to get some sleep.
~*~
As much as I wanted to sleep all day and into the next, I had to be at work for my regular shift that evening. I managed about six hours of dreamless bliss before I had to get up and do it all over again.
Normally, after a double shift, someone would cover my shift the next day. But we were seriously understaffed at the moment. Best-case scenario was my only having to work one shift today and someone else would cover Chet’s shift. If all went well, I’d go to work for eight hours, then come right back to bed for the night.
Fingers crossed.
I’d showered earlier, so I slept as late as I could, climbed out of bed, pulled myself together, and grabbed a sandwich on my way out the door. Bed to car in under a half hour.
Stuart was in a good mood when I arrived, having spent the previous evening sampling cheese. Most people liked cheese. I, myself, liked cheese. Stuart was obsessed with it. I’d learned over the years to manage my conversations with him. If I didn’t, he’d take over and I’d end up listening to a tutorial on how to make something he called Basement Gouda. One day I came in with a nasty head cold and lost control so much, he was able to give me a three-hour lecture on how to properly milk a goat.
I didn’t let Stuart get the upper hand ever again after that.
I stashed my stuff in the back and returned up front for the update. “What do we have today?”
Stuart cleared his throat and grabbed his clipboard from under the counter. “Most of the check-ins are already here. I still have three more listed, but one already called to say they won’t be here until the wee hours, so Chet will handle that.”
“Chet’s coming in tonight?” I frowned. It seemed a shame he had to come back so soon.
Stuart nodded. “False alarm. The hospital sent them home. They were only there for about an hour.”
I stood in front of him trying to get my head around what he was saying and working up a good hissy fit. Realistically, of course Chet would have wanted stay home with his wife after that. A small part of my brain completely understood this. The part of my head that needed more sleep thought he could have at least called to see how I was doing and make sure I didn’t need anything. I didn’t mind covering his shift. What kind of monster wouldn’t cover for somebody to go to the hospital for the birth of his first child? Not me. I wasn’t a monster. I was a nice person. A nice person who was constantly taken for granted. A nice person whose own sister thought nothing of waking her up and dragging her out of bed after an unplanned double shift so she could have a witness to her irrational outbursts with her husband.
I was tired. I was irritated. And I was angry with myself for wanting to be more like my sister and cause a ridiculous scene.
I took a deep breath, held it, counted to ten, and exhaled. “Stuart, I’m sorry. I left something in my car. Can you hold down the fort while I run back out and get it? Five minutes.”
“Oh, sure. I was heading over to Caffrey’s for dinner anyway. I can wait a bit. They don’t start charging dinner rates for another hour.”
I was still angry, but I wanted to hug Stuart. He was so odd. “Thank you.” I went in the back and grabbed my keys to make it look as if I really was going to my car, then bolted out the front door to get some air.
Once I was outside, I followed the sidewalk around back to the parking lot we shared with the office building next door. My car was parked far in the back, since the hotel liked to keep the small amount of designated parking for our guests. During convention season, all the hotels in the area filled up, and parking was a nightmare. I’d have to park several blocks away, then get someone to cover for me so I could move it to our lot later once the office people went home for the night.
Dallas was a nice city, but I wasn’t walking six blocks to my car by myself when my shifted ended at 11:00 PM.
I didn’t actually need anything from my car, but I did need to burn off a little steam, so I made the trek to the back of the lot, touched my car as if it were home base, then turned and kept walking, circling the lot.
I figured three circuits around the lot should be enough to cool me down, then I’d head back inside, my regular, calm self. Halfway through my second round, a red convertible pulled up to curb near the front of the lot. Jill, the woman I’d helped with her lipstick the night before hopped out, smoothing the same skirt she’d left in. She blew a kiss to the driver, shut the door, and sashayed confidently into the hotel. The driver tooted his horn twice and drove away.
Watching Jill lifted my spirits and made me realize how ridiculous I was being. I wasn’t mad at Chet. Of course he didn’t come in for the rest of his shift. I’d have sent him home if he’d tried. And I wasn’t angry with my sister, either. She was feeling neglected for some reason, and her husband needed to know it. Sure, she had taken things to the extreme, and Richard wasn’t neglecting her or having an affair as far as I could see. But that didn’t mean her feelings weren’t valid. Something was triggering her. Something else.
No. If I was angry with anybody, it was myself. I took far better care of the folks around me than I took care of me.
I stopped in my tracks and squinted at the sun’s reflection on the side mirror or a small, gray car that wanted to be a Mini but wasn’t. I made a face. “Not the same car, Annie. Don’t be ridiculous. The other car wasn’t real.”
When I’d woken up that afternoon, I thought about the weird episode with the guy with the ugly wings for a moment, snickered to myself about the guy in 317 being a tooth fairy at a convention, then forgot about it, believing I’d dreamed it. Hell, I was so tired, I wasn’t even positive I’d been to my sister’s house this morning, except that I’d found dog hair on my pants and had to find a clean pair for work.
It was probably time to go back in and let Stuart go have his discounted dinner and free mozzarella sticks. He was being nice for once. I should reward the behavior.
But there was nothing wrong with walking past the gray car on my way.
As I approached the car, I felt stupid. Not only was it not the same car, I wouldn’t be able to differentiate it from one exactly like it if it was the same car. I glanced at it on my way past, expecting nothing, and stopped.
The damn wings were right there in the backseat. He hadn’t bothered to cover them or anything. Okay. So, they probably weren’t magic—though I couldn’t figure out why a grown man was traipsing around in cheap wings in broad daylight with no children around. And he had seemed to appear out of nowhere.
I did a casual scan of the parking lot. Nobody was around. Of course he would have locked the car doors. Even if nobody wanted the wings—they were easy to ignore—the GPS and stereo would be good targets for thieves.
I turned my back to the car and looked the other direction while my hand snaked behind my back and tried the door handle. I nearly fell over when the door swung toward me.
“This is so stupid.” After another frantic glance around the lot, I ducked into the car and shut the door behind me. Apparently, breaking and entering was okay, but I hadn’t yet come to terms with theft.
The wings were slick. My initial assumption that they were made out of parachute material was right. It was stretched across a sort of bendy wire structure. As kids, Val and I’d had a bunch of hollow cubes made of the same material as this stuff. When they were open, they strung together to make a fort or a tunnel. But if they were twisted just right, they collapsed into a flat package that was easy to store.
The wings were broken. One of the elastic bands that was meant to loop over a person’s shoulder had snapped. Two strings hung from one side, which I assumed was to tie the whole thing up in its compact form. A set of longer strings hung from the center of the contraption, probably to tie the wings into place.
I experimented with the wings, attempting to twist them into a smaller shape, fascinated with the puzzle. I almost didn’t notice Carson, the restaurant manager, approaching the car. If he saw me, that would be it for my job. There was no way I could explain what I was doing. I caught my own panicked look in the rearview mirror. He was heading straight for me. There was no doubt in my mind that he’d seen me, or at least thought he had. Ducking down was not an option, and he’d see me if I opened the door and made a run for it.
Heaven help me, I panicked and pulled on the wings. I didn’t actually believe they could make me invisible, but so far, everything else in that crazy dream appeared to be true. If I did nothing, I’d get caught anyway. Nothing left to lose. One arm went through the loop, then I grabbed the broken elastic and wrapped it around my shoulder to touch where it was supposed to connect.
Carson walked right up to the car, frowning. He bent with his hand up shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare and peered inside the car. I would swear he looked right at me. He scanned the rest of the car, shook his head, then walked away.
I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. It was gone.
The wings came off easily—no swearing or struggling on my part—and I messed with them again to try to collapse them. The wing that didn’t have the two strings on it had a tag, much like the washing instructions on T-shirts and underwear. I smoothed it out and took a look.
Mt. Olympus Employment Agency: Cupid Department
“Cupid department. So…not a tooth fairy.” My fingers smoothed over the tag in wonder.
Could it be true? There were actual Cupids in the world? I scowled. That guy Josh had no business being a Cupid. He was a womanizing slimeball. He didn’t even believe in true love. What kind of Cupid didn’t believe in true love?
As if I’d handled them all my life, I twisted the wings and collapsed them, then folded them over each other and tied them in place. They were about the size and shape of large stack of pancakes. I hesitated. Was I really going to do this? Obviously, stealing was wrong. I turned the packed wings over in my hands.
Maybe it wouldn’t be wrong if I did a better job than he did. I couldn’t believe he’d be any good at it, between leaving his wings lying around and the fact that he didn’t believe in what he did.
I held the wings against my chest. I would be better at it. Nobody believed in true love more than I did.
“Sorry, Josh. You’ve been replaced.” I searched the car and found nothing else of interest. But I knew there had to be more. Cupids had arrows. “As soon as I can find the rest of your work tools.”
When I got done, my little area of Dallas was going to have so much love, nobody would ever be unhappy again.