2004-08-18 - 8:52 a.m.
Chapter 1
“This is so undignified.” Mickey grimaced. Her warm, volcanic green eyes took in the scene before her: dust-laden shades, one lone window, and worst of all, a single bed small enough to sneeze through the window of the closed bicycle shop across the street. “Only two rooms, no porters, no extra beds, no—“
“Aw, come on, Mick!” Ryan prodded. He dumped his duffel bag next to a mirror with a cracked wood frame and plopped down onto the bed. “Up until a few minutes ago you loved this town. ‘Quaint and picturesque,’ if I remember correctly?” Though her cousin was grinning like an idiot, she knew he was uncomfortable, too. He just hated to show it.
Mickey’s shoulders sagged. “That was until we found a hotel that has never heard of a roll-away bed,” she said in a pinched voice. Ryan bounced up and down on the mattress before flopping down totally horizontal.
“Don’t get bent out of shape,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll love sleeping on the floor, once you get used to it.”
Mickey ignored him and sat on the corner of the bed. She slipped off her tight, red suede pumps and proceeded to massage her sore heels. “And who ever heard of a town like this having only one hotel—they’re packed way beyond their means!”
Ryan laughed. He unzipped his jacket, exposing a faded red t-shirt with the name of a rowdy rock band Mickey had never cared to familiarize herself with. “Guess conventions on the occult are big potatoes around small hick towns like this.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” she frowned. She closed her eyes a moment and at last got back onto her feet, kicking the pumps under the bed. Ryan watched her pace by the window.
“Thing is,” he said, “we should be in the center ring for this freak show.” He lay down and chuckled, hoping he was lightening the mood a notch.
Mickey didn’t answer. Her mouth was kept pinned in a straight line. She rested her hands on her hips as she surveyed the room. It was small, no doubt, but it had charm. The walls were wallpapered with a neutral design of pastel clipper ships roughing it on the high seas. Three antique paintings depicting the harsh but romantic life of fishermen, hung opposite the bathroom. All the furniture was pine, but painted in a dark, glazed finish with attractive old-fashioned brass hardware. The only problems were cracking walls that hadn’t been fixed since they were built one hundred years ago, dust on the windowsills and no phones or digital clock radio alarms. What a morning wake-up call consisted of, they would soon discover was an old-fashioned knock on the door every ten minutes until someone answered.
In a show of brave optimism, Mickey dragged one of her three suitcases to the corner nearest the dresser, tried not to look cross that her cousin wasn’t offering to help, and took a deep breath before returning to the hall for the last of her luggage. “I mean, this is a far cry from Chicago,” she at last commented. “I’ve never seen a place so cut off from the rest of the world. A four-hour ride from the airport, not even a television for God’s sake . . .!”
“We’ve been in worser situations,” Ryan pointed out. He laced his fingers behind his head on the pillow and released a comfortable moan. “Remember when we all went undercover at that Monastery?”
Mickey rolled her eyes. Avoiding touching the rusted radiator spitting behind the door, she dragged in the last of her luggage. “Don’t remind me. But I still don’t understand why you couldn’t share a room with Jack.”
Ryan lowered his eyes and grinned at the small space between he and the edge of the bed. “I don’t think we’d be right for each other, there, Mickey. Only one old pudgy middle-aged man per square inch. And don’t you dare tell him I said that.”
Mickey shook her head, already exasperated with her cousin’s immeasurable good humor. They had four days in this room until a new one opened up…after the 2-day lecture at the college just outside of town. The small spaces and Ryan’s constant jokes would be the test of all tests. At least at their small second floor apartment above the store (the staircase literally emptied right into Ryan’s “bedroom” space) Mickey had the option of closing her frilly curtained French doors and ignoring him for a while.
After freshening up in the bathroom, Mickey emerged with a fresh new layer of makeup and her wild red frizzles she had for hair tamed into a barrette bundled up in beads. Her sleek fitted animal print Capri pants and red lace up bodice blouse looked like she had just walked out of a fashion shoot in a Beverly Hills nightclub. But it was February in the tip-top region of New England and she was cold. But she looked good and for the moment; she would think Spring thoughts. Egyptian gold earrings yanked painfully on her earlobes. Mickey took them out, rubbed the immediate soreness out and hunted for a new pair of earrings.
She picked out her Chinese character earrings, each one with a different character, though she had never noticed it or knew the true meaning of either one. Ryan had already unpacked and was lying with his head at the foot of the bed, nose buried inside of a room service menu. Knowing her cousin, Mickey had more than a sneaking suspicion that inside it was stashed a limp, shabby-looking comic book. He was twenty-six, only two years younger than she was, but she sometimes felt like she was dealing with a twelve year old.
Mickey began to unpack her suitcase and deposit its contents into what few drawers Ryan hadn’t already claimed. “Haven’t you already read that one?” she asked, though she already knew his answer. As if on cue, a motley-colored comic book flopped out from its hiding place out onto Ryan’s chest. Ryan’s cheeks bent into that simple, boyish grin of his. With his short brown hair looking mussed and his dark, round brown eyes sparkling with mischief, Mickey smiled despite herself. He was just a big child.
“What, Captain Morman of Worbo?” he asked, acting offended. “It’s still good the second—or tenth—time around. Comics are like a good movie. You know what happens but getting there is half the fun.”
“Well, we’re not here for fun. Remember?”
Ryan’s porous smile sunk into seriousness. “How can I forget? That’s hardly a part of my vocabulary anymore. And you’re not the only one suffering, I’ll have you know. I had to give up a date with the most beautiful, sexy, and, well—you know— woman on this earth to come here. We don’t even know if that hand, or whatever, is even still here in Collinsport. Did Jack tell you anymore about this thing than he did to me?”
Mickey scrunched her lips to the side and than passively shook her head. “Not really.”
“We don’t know what this thing does at all?”
Mickey opened her mouth but found she had only the same doubts her cousin had rising to greet her. Her confirming shrug was all she needed to say. The slap of the hotel menu as Ryan struck it against his hand made her jump.
“So we’re going into this blind, as usual. My favorite, and just happens to be our specialty, might I add.”
Mickey yanked the cord for the blinds, sending a swirling cloud of dust into the air. She waved it away, sneezed, and bent down to open the top dresser drawer. “Look,” she said a little testily, “all I know is that he wanted to come up and look for this K. Young’s widow, the name that was written in Uncle Lewis’s Manifest and see if we could just buy the hand back.”
“Yeah, right,” Ryan scoffed. “Like it’s ever been that easy. That tagline is getting very old. But how does this convention dinner thing tonight fit in?”
She shut one drawer and yanked open the next one which was stiff with rust and New England dampness. Something dark skittered just out of view. She shivered and anxiously wiped her palms on her thighs. “The woman who is the guest speaker is an expert in the field of religious relics and talismans,” she answered. “Since Jack could find next to nothing about the hand in his research, he thought he could kill two birds with one stone and see what he could find out from her. Don’t forget, it’s at eight o’clock—and we have to dress for the occasion.”
Her cousin made a face. “You know,” he said, half moaning as he got up from his lying position, “whether you see it or not, we’re kind of like the comic superheroes like Captain Morman here. We pretend to be good law-abiding citizens by day and by night we’re evil-fighting machines, ready for action when the sun sets. Except we don’t have the x-ray vision or those fancy, cool costumes and stuff.”
Mickey sent him a look telling him she didn’t buy it. She worried about the same things Ryan did. She at least admitted that much. Every day was a new challenge, facing killers that had once been good people, but had been blackened by the touch of the Devil’s greedy power. Their seemingly endless search for fatal antiques wore on them like a dull knife on a strip of rope. Even Ryan’s energetic jokes had taken on a more caustic delivery lately, sounding more tired, bitter. She was sure it was changing her, too, but didn’t like to think too hard about it. It only made her angry. But Jack had dedicated his whole life to recovering the cursed antiques, making it his one and only goal whereas she and Ryan had gotten sucked into the realm of blackness and lies purely accidentally. The three of them had come close to death so many times chasing after the owners of the antiques who had become so possessed by their greed that they would stop at nothing until they got to the top. But these spineless killers always found they would never be satisfied, and the unquenchable thirst for blood would drive them onward, more and more into insanity.
Life had been so simple just a few years ago. Mickey had been engaged to a successful, young, ambitious lawyer, was planning a career in music as a promising singer—and suddenly she found herself saddled with an inheritance she didn’t want, and still couldn’t get rid of. She and Ryan had thought the recovery of the antiques they had unwittingly sold the day before they met Jack would only take a week, maybe two. When weeks turned to months, Mickey began to realize what she had gotten herself into. But even though her fiancé put it to her that it was either him or the store, she found she couldn’t abandon Ryan and Jack and the work they did. Selfishly, many times she wished their Uncle Lewis hadn’t died. But that wouldn’t have made anything any better. Lewis would still have been running his antique shop, circulating more and more of his dangerous, cursed wares.
Mickey pushed the past away in a violent rush of will and turned her attention back to her job of unpacking. She got down on one knee and a swelling scent of mothballs greeted her. A black speck like a discarded button rested on a pile of clothes she had just put down. She didn’t remember seeing it there before but wasn’t really concerned how it got there. Before folding the jeans she had in hand, she made a quick brushing movement across the neatly folded satiny cloth of the blouse to remove it. In a flash she leapt back, the jeans landing in a clump on the floor.
“Oh my god, spider!!” she screamed.
“And every superhero has his kryptonite,” joked her unaffected cousin.
“Oh shut-up, Ryan, and just kill it!” she cried shrilly.
“All right, all right, don’t get all worked up. It’s just a spider.” Ryan got to his feet, rolling up his comic book in a tight tube shape. “You face death and demons every day and you’re clowning around about a harmless bug.”
“I don’t care,” she insisted hotly.
Ryan shifted through the drawers and almost jumped himself when he saw the size of the arachnid. “Stand back, Mickey. This one may splatter.” Mickey moaned at his theatrics, but still took a safe vantage point behind him to make sure she saw the spider’s quick and complete demise. Swinging with the might of a lightening strike, Ryan made contact. The spider was dead, for sure, though he stuck like glue to the death-enforced instrument. “Feels like those Monastery days all over again, doesn’t it?” he said grimacing at the mangled carcass.
“My hero,” she tossed back sarcastically.
Ryan grinned. “Can’t imagine what you would’ve done without me sharing the room tonight. You would have probably stayed up all night with a flashlight.”
“That’s not funny, Ryan,” she huffed. She grabbed a blouse from the suitcase and shook it with an indignant snap. A mild knock and a soft muffled voice broke up the mutiny building between the cousins.
“Mickey? Ryan?”
She and Ryan exchanged knowing glances.
“Yeah, Jack?” answered Ryan though the door. He was frowning over his favorite piece of literature now smeared with insect guts.
“I’m already settled in. I’ll be waiting for you downstairs in the diner when you’re ready.” Jack obviously didn’t expect an answer, for they heard his footsteps pepper away from their door as soon as he stopped speaking. They would have guessed as much. Whenever they were on a case, Jack never thought, ate, breathed or lived anything but accomplishing their mission. Ryan found a trashcan and let the comic book fall in with a deadening clunk.
“Get that cape on, Captain Morman,” he said giving a sloppy smirk. “It’s down into the mines we go.”
Mickey made sure she made her cousin aware she found nothing funny about it and abandoned the task of unpacking to get ready to meet Jack downstairs.
(No safe for her jewels and watch??)
okay, somewhere in here mention how Ryan always changed his tune and the aldreneline would always kick at the “moment of truth” and he’d become a hero chasing down those cursed goods.
Chapter 2
Angelique Collins pinned the last flawless blonde curl into place when she heard Hoffman’s telltale walk coming down the hall then stop outside her closed double doors. “Come in, Hoffman,” she entreated even before the woman had the chance to knock. It was always like this between the two women. They understood each other all too well.
Hoffman, a severe looking woman about mid-forties, opened the doors sturdy double doors and closed them behind her in one well-practiced swoop. She had pale marble skin and deep red hair done into a bun, and wearing a modest black dress and a sour expression as she did everyday. “Ms. Corinne Skinner is waiting for you down in the Drawing Room,” she informed her mistress rather unenthusiastically.
Angelique plucked a short chain from her jewelry chest, pleased with her choice. A smooth tear shaped pearl quivered as she lifted it to her neck. “Thank you, Hoffman. Oh, Hoffman,” she called out. Hoffman turned in her tracks, her arms arcing out from her body as if by whiplash. “Do help me with this necklace, would you?” The maid took the chain into her hands. Angelique waited patiently until the necklace fell to her skin, latched and secure. The woman was naturally stunning, but jewels only enhanced her allure. She fingered the pearl tentatively, though she was already thinking over what perfume to wear.
“You look radiant tonight, Mrs. Collins,” Hoffman said softly, taking away her warm, pasty hands and putting them into her pockets. Angelique saw that spark of adoration in her maid’s judgmental green-grey eyes.
“Thank you, Hoffman.”
Hoffman picked up a few dresses from the bed and surrounding chairs, choices Angelique rejected for the engagement tonight. The beautiful woman sat down at her mirror and brushed a faint pink rouge across her ageless, unmarred cheekbones. The warm, tiffany lights cast a bronze glow on her face and her large, owl-like blue eyes stared back at her with satisfaction. She had to admit it to herself: there was no doubt she was positively irresistible.
Applying lipstick to her full lips, she stared a moment at herself. Ever since she had been a child, her father had told her and her twin sister that they would take the world by storm when they matured. Angelique soon found her looks to astound those around her, and quickly put that to good use. She was infectious, even unavoidably intoxicating and that became the key to her sociability. There came a day when her more traditional sister, Alexis, tired of having her twin sister steal the limelight and always being told she would never match up to her sister. Taking one last look at her home, she left Collinsport. The Stokes family became nothing but a bitter memory. She traveled to Europe to console herself with people who didn’t expect her to be anyone but herself. Angelique didn’t concern herself. She shared little kinship with anyone. It wasn’t long before she landed herself a husband though seduction, he being the most eligible, sought after, and richest man in town.
“Is Mr. Collins bringing you to the lecture dinner tonight?” asked Hoffman upon returning from the closet in her boudoir. Angelique froze mid-stroke with a mascara brush.
“No,” she answered tersely, returning the brush to its vessel. “No, Mr. Collins won’t be going tonight. I have someone else in mind to be my escort.”
“Oh?” Hoffman pursed her lips. She kneeled on the window seat on the other side of the room to draw the bright green and teal curtains closed. “You didn’t tell me about this. Who do you have in mind?”
Angelique rose from her chair, the icy, moonlight-blue satin fabric of her dress conforming to her attractive figure. She smiled inside at the sleekness of it on her skin. She refrained from voicing the words Hoffman already knew: Quentin, as usual, was infuriated with her interest in the occult. and would have nothing to do with the dinner tonight. He most likely would not even see her off. Naturally she had to look elsewhere for a common thread of interest. Quentin had little patience with his wife’s dabbling interests and could always be expected to disappear when her father or Aunt Hannah came to visit, the two most influential people in her life that had encouraged her interest since she could remember. Her bedroom was now on the farthest extremity of the East Wing because of their feigned marriage. It was rarely visited by her husband. The strain on their marriage and relationship had become even more apparent now that their son had been sent away to school. Tonight was just one more attempt on her part to move her husband in the only way she knew, to induce any kind of emotional response toward her even if it was fury. Angelique watched Hoffman pull the curtains a little tighter against the harsh evening sunset.
“Damion,” she answered her companion unconcernedly. “Damion Edwards.”
“Mr. Edwards?” Hoffman froze, her thin mouth forming a small “o.” She looked about to fall off her high horse. “I’d rather you didn’t go at all, then, if that’s your only choice. I’ve never approved of him and I didn’t think you did, either. Even Mr. Bruno Hess would be a more suitable choice.”
Angelique turned. Her expression wrought unsuppressed ire. Sharp-edged daggers slick with venom surfaced in her soulful eyes. “What would you have me do, then? Go alone and look like a complete fool? There’s talk enough without fueling the fire. And you forget who’s mistress of this house and who isn’t! It’s not your place to make my decisions for me, is it, Hoffman?”
A cold silence pulsed like electricity between the women that could be felt from across the room. Hoffman’s chin elevated into an indignant position. Angelique could almost feel her anger subside. But she couldn’t apologize. As dedicated as they were to each other, Angelique couldn’t let her maid become accustomed to overstepping her place. It wouldn’t be accepted by her husband’s affluent family. Not that she was a slave to convention, but she was trying to fit the role of the Lady-of-the-manor in every mode just to stay on top where she had effortlessly placed herself. At last Hoffman broke the silence, though her body was defensively rigid.
“I am sorry, Mrs. Collins. I will never speak out of turn again.”
Angelique hated to put that wedge in their relationship. Hoffman had been dedicated to her, almost to a fault, since her marriage to Quentin. Besides her many male companions, Julia Hoffman had been her only true and loyal friend in Collinwood. They held no secrets from each other. Angelique drew herself up into a regal posture and nodded, accepting the apology gracefully. “That’s fine, Hoffman. Please go downstairs and tell Corinne I will be right with her.”
Like a ghost receding into the shadows of night at first light, Hoffman left to do her mistress’s bidding.
Chapter 3
After a quick “huddle” and a light dinner to satisfy a day’s worth of fasting, Mickey, Ryan and Jack prepared for the dinner. Ryan was in a tux and had his hair slicked within fifteen minutes, whereas Mickey took a little more time. “You women,” he called through the bathroom door opened only a crack. “What on earth takes so long just to get ready to go out somewhere?”
Ryan heard the sputter of the styling gel as Mickey squeezed it into a soft cone onto her palm then throw the squeeze bottle in the sink. “No one said you had to wait for me,” she replied. She ran her fingertips through the puddled goop and painstakingly raked it through her wet curls. “You can go down to the lobby and look for Jack. I’m sure he’s already waiting.”
Ryan scoffed. “Yeah, that’s for sure.”
“Ryan!” she cried, thumping her sticky, gel-laden hands onto the counter.
“All right, all right,” he mumbled. “Just hurry up, will you? This thing starts in an hour and we don’t even know how to get there yet.”
Ryan scooped up his rather thinly stocked wallet and stuffed it into his tux pocket along with the room key. With the top button of his shirt still left casually unbuttoned and the untied bowtie hanging limply from both sides of his collar, he left and followed the swinging hall lantern lights toward the stairs. The hotel was small, Ryan admitted wholeheartedly. It had two floors above the ground lobby entrance and diner and had only 27 rooms. The halls appeared to have received a clean coat of blue paint recently, looking glazed and plastic. As Ryan descended the narrow staircase to the first floor, he spied fancy gold room numbers that the upper floors obviously were lacking tacked onto pine doors. They must have been in the middle of a hell of an overhaul when this busy season suddenly sprung up, Ryan surmised. It still had him dumbfounded that a town out in the middle of nowhere land with probably only a citizen count of 300 could ever experience this kind of overfill.
“What a crazy place,” he commented amusedly to himself. He stopped in front of a mirror at the end of the hall to comb through the gelled, slicked back mobster-style hair once more—but he didn’t touch the bowtie. He wasn’t ready yet to choke to death. It was bad enough that Jack had convinced them to go with him to the convention, but Ryan knew it was for the best. God knows there wasn’t anything else in the vicinity that could have kept he and Mickey amused and as much as he enjoyed a good comic book, he hadn’t brought enough to last a week’s worth of nights without television.
The mirror before him had a large, round shape welded to a decorative, gold metal anchor which didn’t seem too well fastened to the wall. He reached out to touch the pimply surface and the metal was as cold as ice. His confused expression reflected back at him, along with a cold, uncomfortable feeling of being watched. Slowly Ryan craned his neck, holding his breath in tightly. The hall was empty. So was the staircase. Not even a security camera was to be found. And it was so silent. His heart began to race as the feeling of being watched became even stronger. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up pin straight. He took a slow step forward, and then another, each time seeing an inch further down the hall beyond the corner.
ATMOSPHERE OF HOTEL? LOOKS LIKE? FEELS LIKE? WHAT’S WHAT, WHAT’S WHERE? LITTLE CLUES WOVEN INTO NARRATIVE ALREADY HERE.
“Hello?” The apprehension in his own voice made Ryan uncomfortable. He listened intently. Every part of his body was stiff with anticipation. Nothing moved. No reply. Ryan waited an agonizingly long moment longer before shaking his head. He let out a fluid breath and turned back toward the mirror to arrange his itchy collar. “You’re losing it, buddy, really losing—”
He stopped dead, his eyes widening the more he had time to focus. A grey form had just appeared over his shoulder behind his reflection. Instinctively Ryan knew it wasn’t a living person that had just walked up the hall. A malevolent rage was wreathed into that invisible stare that was so rancid, he swore he could smell it, like singed hair. Chills and a swarming rush of adrenaline ejected into his blood stream. He opened his mouth but that frozen cry lodged itself vigorously in his throat. The face was so pale, the lips blue and purple. It was too far away to see its feature clearly, as if it were trying to hide around the corner, but the eyes….the eyes…. He blinked and the form vanished, but a frozen hand fell onto his shoulder.
“Oh shit!” he hollered not caring who heard him. He jumped into the stairwell and tore off his tux jacket as if in a whirlwind. It had been a frenzied attempt to rid himself of the lingering sensation of the disembodied hand’s grip, but it hadn’t succeeded in making him feel any less horrified. A round, encompassing rush of what sounded like wind, or a sigh, swept through the hall and escaped through an unseen portal. He even thought he heard a slight zip of electricity.
Ryan frantically searched the hall, the ceiling, looking but finding nothing but a silent, empty corridor. Only a slight rocking of the hanging lanterns met his darting gaze. Brown and yellow shadows were thrown onto the walls, edged to the floor and back again. It took a few good minutes for Ryan to convincingly pep talk himself into stepping back up out of the stairwell before he actually did it. Warily his eyes shot back to the mirror. Nothing but a neat row of quaint hotel doors, the same doors he saw when he looked the opposite way. He rubbed his shoulder intensely as if he were trying to rub off the memory of that icy touch. The feeling of being watched had vanished but he was too spooked to truly be relieved.
“Goddamn,” he muttered, and took a few sporadic breaths. “Goddamn. Goddamn, friggin’….” Not wasting another second more than he had to, he spun around and continued down the staircase.
Suddenly a strong wave of smells bulldozed his senses: beer, gravy or sauce, ocean salt, burnt coffee grounds, and a bungle of men and women’s colognes trampled in the mix. He followed the overwhelming odors in a daze wondering where they could possibly have come from so suddenly. An army of men and women in business attire, suits and ties barricaded the middle of the tight staircase as he reached the first landing. Each person had a cell phone sewn to their earlobes, talking over each other, through each other, but seemingly not to anyone at all while their other hand gripped handles of rolling blue suitcases with red trim. None of them seemed to take any notice of him—the pale, haunted looking, half-dressed young man. Ryan could just imagine someone mistaking him for a drunk or high straying wedding party usher. Perhaps that was why they ignored him.
He tried to push past them, knocking into suitcases, elbows, snagging wires connected to cell phone earpieces. Behind the coagulated swarm of businesspeople approached another large noisy group, making the passageway even thicker like blood sealing a freshly torn wound. The noise and the smells made Ryan’s head swim. His thoughts were jumbled inside his mind and the conversations billowing up around him hung like fog around his head. Three blonde children all about the age of ten scampered past, straining their voices in a competition for loudest racer. One of those six Nike sneakers pounded like a meat tenderizer onto his toes. Ryan stopped to grab hold of the rail, clenched his teeth and groaned. A large woman in a peacock feather-laden hat, accompanied by two younger men in grey suits and obnoxious ties, bumped into him from behind.
“Watch it, you fool, you’ll wrinkle my coat,” she bleated to the man behind her on the left. Ryan’s eyes were tearing up from the smoke of her cigar waving right in front of him. The woman turned and directed her pouting round face down toward Ryan. “Well?” she demanded in a terse Maine accent. “Are we going to shove off or are you practicing to be a Greek statue? Move it!”
Ryan raised his hand curtly in reply and limped onto the next step. When at last he made it to the lobby he was surrounded by people. The stairs happened to be located dead center of the lobby and the tiny area between the front oval cut glass doors and the lobby desk (where a haggard-looking desk clerk slaved over an aged computer) was so crammed with people that Ryan couldn’t even get off the last step. He still felt chills ripple through his body and the hairs on his neck and arms were still strung out as if he had were full of static electricity. All the people, the realness of the scene before him made him begin to doubt what he thought he experienced. True, he had that “hand” they were searching for on his mind as he was walking. Could his overactive imagination have whipped up that little scene simply from that mental suggestion? Or could it have been real? Ryan shook away the thought. Until he had reason to dismiss it, he knew he couldn’t believe he hadn’t actually felt that cold hand, nor could he ignore those eyes or that oppressive, crushing feeling of hate they emanated. It wasn’t his imagination. But the fact that he had to walk back through that hall later on that night to get back to his and Mickey’s room didn’t thrill him.
“Ryan!”
The voice that called out his name above the clamoring din of voices he recognized as Jack’s but at first he couldn’t locate him. Finally he spied a tall, weighty man in a tux and well-groomed rust and white beard over near the doors. He almost didn’t recognize Jack if it hadn’t for his floppy tweed hat accented with a neat upturned brim. He was waving his hand and calling out again. Ryan waved his hand in reply and squeezed his way over.
“This place is a mad house,” Ryan shouted over the noisy pandemonium of guests.
“You could call it that,” Jack nodded with a smile in his eyes. “I called you three or four times, but I guess you couldn’t hear me over the commotion.” His mouth continued moving but Ryan couldn’t hear what was being said.
“What?” he raised his voice and leaned a little closer.
“I said these people must have just arrived by train, because the last one rolled in a only about a half an hour ago. I spoke with the clerk about it.”
Ryan nodded half-heartedly. Beads of cold sweat were forming over his brow and he used the rented tux shirt cuff to swipe across his forehead.
“Are you all right?” Jack inquired as he slid his hat further back on his head. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Ryan’s heart sank. If that’s fate’s way of displaying her sense of humor, he thought miserably, I’m not laughing. He yanked his coat onto his arm and averted eye contact. “No—no, I’m fine. I, uh, I just—just the crowd and everything. Let’s wait for Mickey outside, huh? It’s warm in here and I’m already tired of carrying around this jacket.”
Chapter 4
The grey Lincoln limo sped through the center of Bangor just as the storm began to break over the horizon. Angelique ended her phone call on the cell and stared through the marbled speckles of splattered raindrops glossing the heavily tinted windows. Colors and rushing people with umbrellas sped by with a Picasso-like blur. Blinking neon signs and fatally bright awning lights washed over her face as they passed, casting a complex map of crystallized dots like ghostly tattoos of teardrops on her skin. She spread her red and blue silk headscarf across the watery fabric of her lap, adjusting it before rolling it into a ball and stuffing it into her small sequined purse. The light drizzle as she ran to the car from the house had certainly ruined it. She had many more at home, a lion’s share, in her trunk, but that was no comfort; it was just one more thing that went wrong this night.
The black woman sitting across from her stirred. Angelique could feel the static of an unasked question awaiting an answer. She pursed her lips as she snapped the purse closed. “I apologize for my husband,” she stated coldly and handed the cell phone across to the woman.
The woman, dressed in a deep orange blouse and a smart, elegantly tailored pinstriped business suit, leaned forward so Angelique could see her dark brown eyes clearly. Her short skintight haircut accentuated her handsome features. “If I’d have known for one second that something like that would have taken place, I would never have shown up like that.”
“Corinne, it’s not your fault,” she said. Her arms crossed across her torso like a shirt of linked chain mail. “Quentin can be so…SELFISH, sometimes.”
“But you didn’t have to jump in. I’m a big girl—“
“It needn’t have happened,” she snapped. “It’s inexcusable and would have been unfair of me to let him think he could speak to one of my friends in that way.”
Corinne fingered the window switch with blood red undetectably faux nails. A red neon line crossed her face, as if scanning it to store in memory. Angelique barely detected a spark of pearl as Corinne smiled in the dark. “I don’t see it as anyone’s fault, from where I’m sitting—“
“It needn’t have happened,” she repeated but this time sounding more deflated than before. Corinne shook her head. Her large deco-style triangle earrings swung from her lobes like sharp pendulums. She rolled the window down splashing the car with a sobering wave of cold, wet air. It wasn’t as saturated with the smell of the sea as Collinsport, but it still lingered there like a well-kept secret. Corinne threw her spent cigarette out and rolled the window back up, with a hand already searching her pockets for another one to replace it. Angelique pretended not to notice when instead of producing another cigarette from her pocket, she removed a pinkie-length rolled joint.
“So that kid from Tampa’s going to meet us there?” she asked sounding not particularly interested. She took a slow drag, inhaled deeply, and slowly released the white, silky smoke. Angelique opened her window a crack.
“Damion? Yes.”
Her friend shook her head again. A dark glint flashed in her eyes. “That one needs an attitude adjustment.” To Angelique’s relief, Corinne left the conversation at that and knocked on the window behind her to get the driver’s attention. The man was balding in the back, and from her perch in the rear of the car, Angelique could detect flakes of dandruff on his collar. She rolled her fur around her neck and wondered if the driver could smell the marijuana. After requesting a stop at the campus offices before dropping them off at the dining hall, Corinne motioned that he put the divider back into place. She gingerly placed the joint inside the dainty metal ashtray in the door’s frame and in the dark fished for her black pumps she had shed earlier.
“Now,” she began again as if there had been no interruption, “I could understand if that’s what your husband was all bothered over. Knowing that kid was your kingpin for the night.”
Angelique’s eyebrow rose slightly at the implication but did not get angry. “Quentin has nothing to get upset about. Damion Edwards is not everyone’s favorite person, but my husband honestly does not feel one way or the other about him. He’s just a boy, for Christ’s sake.”
A sly smirk curled around the edges of Corinne’s mouth. She bent over slightly and massaged the pantehose through her pants away from her ankles and completed with brushing her knee like a magician waving his wand dramatically for his last act. “If that’s what you think, then that’s how it is,” she said smoothly meeting Angelique’s cold blue eyes with her own fearless gaze. She took one last hit from the joint and blew it softly in her direction. “But I’m pretty sure it isn’t helping things too greatly.”
The beautiful blonde scowled and jerked her eyes back toward the cold, passing cityscape.
Chapter 5
As Mickey stepped out into the cold, colorless winter air where he and Jack waited, Ryan found himself looking twice. Even though he and Mickey were first cousins, Ryan could understand why the men she passed stared after her. Her blood red hair was now tamed and spun in ringlets around her face and secured in a decorative hairpiece in the back, her pale complexion accentuating those smoky green eyes. She smiled when she saw them and crossed the rather vestigial carriage platform, the fringes of her yarn shawl dancing around her like a spider. It draped to her hips over a single shoulder strapped hunter green and gold dress that pulled and wrapped in all the right places.
“You sure took your sweet time,” Ryan teased, though a hint of annoyance slipped in. Mickey darted him a rather daunting, but innocuous spiked look.
“But, I must say, worth waiting for,” Jack said and gentlemanly offered his hand. “May we be on our way, Miss Foster?” Mickey smiled and took his hand almost theatrically.
“Why, thank you, Jack,” she said warmly and tossing a smug look toward her cousin. “At least someone here knows how to treat a lady.”
Ryan smirked as they all headed toward their rented car. “Yeah, I wouldn’t count on it. His tux is like a Cinderella thing . . . he’ll change into his p.j.’s by midnight and turn back into plain old Jack.” He opened up the passenger door, pulled the front seat forward and motioned Mickey to climb in. She rolled her eyes.
“What’s your excuse then?” she asked, shaking her head. Neither of them moved. “Get in, Ryan,” she demanded, “or else I just may let it slip that you’re gay.”
Ryan smiled at first until the thought sunk in fully. His smile faded and his eyes shrunk in concern. “You wouldn’t dare.” Mickey stared back with a ‘try me’ smile on her lips.
“Let’s go, kids,” Jack called from inside the car. The engine turned and the car shimmied, stalled, turned again, then stabilized in the raw cold of the evening. Ryan shook his finger at his cousin but couldn’t come up with a smart enough response and defeatedly slunk into the back seat.
…. “Oh, you must be with the Collins party?”
Corinne had always been direct and that was had drew the two women together three years ago. She could not, though, admit to herself that Corinne saw through to the core of her immaculately disastrous marriage. Quentin’s raised shouts and barbed words from the hour before needled her mind even now. She could barely think over them. All she could had thought about was hurting him, tempting him just one step more, just one step further to getting violent. She threw insults about his own duties as a husband, waiting to see him fly into a rage, egging him on in Corinne’s presence AND DON’T FORGET TO ADD THAT CORINNE DID NOT WITNESS THIS. SHE CAME AFTER AND THAT’S WHEN THIS ALTERCATION BEGAN.
But he did nothing. Instead he reeled from her to Corinne. He balked about her “charlatan” profession and drunkenly threatened everything from lawsuits to running her out of town.
“You’re nothing but a beggar and a leach,” Quentin had spat and waved his brandy glass menacingly at an unaffected Corinne. “All you care about is the Collins fortune, and you think you can come here to make fools of my family. Well, I won’t have it, no matter what my dear wife thinks. Go peddle your voodoo somewhere else where there are people stupid enough to swallow it!”
“How dare you!” Angelique had seethed before Corinne could utter a word. In one graceful movement she grasped the brandy sifter Quentin had in his hand and the remnants of the brown liquid inside sprang from the glass. Momentarily stunned, Quentin remained quiet as the brandy dripped from his chin and down his shirtfront. Each breath that pulsed in and out of Angelique’s lungs felt like a time bomb waiting to explode. The seconds that ticked was a moment closer to when Quentin’s unbridled temper would rear its ugly head and there was no telling what he would do. Her eyes grew wider and wider in the eerie quiet.
Angelique sunk even further into her coat in the warm Lincoln town car as she recalled how quickly her husband’s strong, flexed hand had shot up from his side. She had cried out his name frantically, mixing in a pleading but piercing “No!” before another voice was heard, pounding Quentin’s name out into the air like a hammer. Quentin’s contorted snarl on his lean, handsome face dropped slightly. Both his and Angelique’s head spun around to see a stately gentleman with a stone-like stern expression standing in the doorway. Roger Collins, a dapper but unusually confident man, stared down Quentin until he at last let his hand fall to his side.
“Fine, you meddlesome fool,” he shot back sluggishly at his cousin. His cold steely blue eyes burned brightly in contempt. “Take her. She’s all yours!” Smashing the glass into the hearth, Quentin stormed out. Moments later a slammed door could be heard echoing through the mansion. Had Quentin’s older cousin Roger not entered when he did . . . Angelique’s blood ran cold at the thought. All she could picture was glass shards and blood.
The car stopped sharply and jolted her back into the present. They were parked in front of a pale, professional looking building with four round decorative columns lining the front. Corinne waved a computer floppy disk in the air. “Have to go print out my speech.” She opened the door to get out before the driver could even unlock his. She kept her hand on the handle as she looked in on her friend and shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t take anything I say too harshly, Angelique. I’m just a battle-axe bitch, right? I just don’t see the purpose of beating around the bush. You know I trust your judgment.”
Her last words sounded more like a question than a statement, but Angelique welcomed them soundly. She nodded with a stiff movement and braided her fingers around her knee. “Good. But I don’t like ass-kissers,” she remarked firmly. Corinne’s genuine laugh got caught up in a cool wave of wind before the door clunked shut.
Neither liked head games, but there were times when their devotion to honesty came at a great cost to their shaky relationship. Predominantly professional relationship…had written her about her third book on voodoo and offered her financial backing. Quickly turned to mutual respect.
There had been many times they had grown apart and had gone months without so much as a letter or call just to say hello. Two months ago had been the very same thing when Angelique had uninhibitedly informed her that she considered Corinne’s last work a sham and nothing more than a parlor room conversational piece. The only reason she was here with Corinne now was the fact that Corinne was in town as an invited guest speaker for the lecture dinner and was working on her sixth book, two chapters of which touched on topics that required Angelique’s particular expertise. She admired the woman’s work and her driven dedication with the same verve she herself housed within her heart and Corinne knew that all too well. Attending the dinner was the least she could do to show her support and perhaps rally some rather wealthy contacts from the cities to amplify the validity of her research. It was all one big package deal, and in the end it was Corinne who received any benefit from the alliance.
Okay – add a scene with Damion, of course. We are always shown the user use the object, and the murder scene with Corinne.
But don’t forget the altercation between she and Quentin. Maybe when these three question Angie about Corinne and find out about the fight, Quentin’s high on their suspicion list . . . though we know better.
PERHAPS RYAN HAS A DISCMAN, AND ONE NIGHT WHILE READING A NEWSPAPER AND THEN PICKING UP A COMIC BOOK, MICKEY SAYS, “ALL RIGHT, GIVE ME ONE.” Ryan looked up disbelief, which quickly converted to a sparkle of victory in his eyes.
“Are you serious?”
Mickey rolled her eyes. “Yes! Alright? This place is that boring that I’ll read anything right about now.”
Ryan’s fingers touched the cold metal of the handle to open the door of the Grand Am while at the same time peeking in the back window. There were at least seven more boxes like the last one Jack was still struggling with. Each layer of the shifty-looking pyramid shape they made looked heaver than the one on top.
“Jack,” he queried with a slant of disbelief to his voice, “what the hell is all this?”
Jack turned around and made a movement with his head for Ryan to follow. Ryan shook his head and tugged at the closest box to him. He groaned at the weight and somehow made his way into the Inn. Jack was inside the lobby, waiting for him. “The widow I spoke with,” he began to explain as they headed upstairs, “wasn’t all that forthcoming, I can tell you, but was more than willing to get rid of anything belonging to him.” They were halfway up the second flight when Jack had to stop. He propped himself against the wall to catch his breath. “They should really invest in an elevator,” he said between breaths. Ryan had been doing all right but now the weight had shifted in the box. He was barely able to keep a grip on the corners and the cardboard smelled dank and dirty. Ryan rested the corners of his box on the edge of a flimsy banister and heaved out a heavy sigh.
“They should invest in a lot of things,” he grumbled. “Like maybe that guy behind the desk could have gotten off his duff and helped us out or something.”
Jack regarded him with a slight shrug. He grimaced as he tried to resituate his load more comfortably and glanced toward the top of the stairway. Too spent himself, Ryan didn’t say another thing as he followed Jack until he dumped the cardboard box onto the bed. It jumped twice and then landed on its side spilling a good amount of its contents. Jack placed his with a bit more care on top of his dresser and wiped his forehead with a green handkerchief. Ryan plopped down next to his box and flipped aside the top flap. It was stacked to the brim with volumes of expensively bound books, each at least seven inches thick.
“Books?” he gasped. His face dropped and he shot Jack, who was examining the spine of a red leather cover, an annoyed look. “They’re not all books, Jack. Are they?”
“Pretty much.” Jack was too distracted to notice the painful scowl of complaint that drew across Ryan’s face. He removed his spectacles from the breast pocket of his cardigan to get a better look at the antiquated volume. His eyes narrowed and his head tilted back while he leaned the book further away from him. It was only moments before Jack began to stroke his bearded chin. That meant he found the book interesting. Ryan craned his neck as far back as it went then brought it forward again, hearing a satisfying snap. Book after book Ryan picked up then threw across the bed, lining his hands with a stench he couldn’t quite decipher. His nose wrinkled as he sniffed at the binding of one slim paper pamphlet. Raw bile threatened to squeeze through his system, and he gagged covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve.
“Oh, God! This smells like it survived Vietnam, Chernobyl, and the Bush Administration combined. Jesus. Were they buried with him or something?” Jack angled his gaze over his spectacles to look at him. Ryan shoved the soiled box away in disgust. “What are we possibly going to do with all of this…stuff?”
Jack snapped the red cover shut. “I don’t know, really. The hard part is finding out how we’ll get this back to the store.”
Ryan groaned. He hadn’t even thought of that. Jack took off his glasses and rested his elbow on the corner of the box. “I probably won’t keep them all. As soon as they’re all up here I’ll have a chance to go over them and assess which ones could be of interest.”
“What could they possibly have that’s of interest,” he quipped and held one up with plain cover strictly entitled Science and Medicine. Jack tipped his head slightly to one side as his eyebrows arched a hair.
“You can never tell.”
SECOND RUN THEY HAD LEFT DOOR OPEN, MICKEY COMES IN, ASKING WHAT WAS ALL THIS?! Talk about them and Jack said Young had a dark taste in literature but it could be useful.
You can see here, now, Ryan’s frustration. He’s no longer making jokes, but is aggravated and distant.
ANGRY SPIRIT, WANTS TO DESTROY ALL ASSOCIATE WITH THA HAND (SINCE THEY ARE LOOKING FOR IT). RYAN ENDS UP WITH A ROOM ON FIRST FLOOR AFTER ALL THE ATTENDEES GO HOME.
“Why, what’s wrong with the first floor?” Mickey asked.
Ryan pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to share what he’s been dealing with so that he wouldn’t be quietly mad all by himself. Ryan glanced at the clerk whose finger was hovering over the “enter” key on the keyboard. Mickey was staring at him, too.
“Oh, forget it. It’s fine. Perfect, in fact. It’s closer to the soda machines.” The clerk narrowed his eyes reproachfully as if he actually doubted Ryan’s reason. The hotel lacked anything even resembling a soda or snack vending machine. “A joke, man, it was a joke,” he mumbled. Mickey sent him a raised eyebrow look which he pretended to ignore. He grabbed the receipt and stuffed it into his pocket without another word and headed outside.
DOES HE HAVE DREAMS, HAVE THINGS SHOW UP IN HIS ROOM? LIKE TIMOTHY SHAW’S PERSONAL CARD AS A CLUE…
RATHER THAN JACK HAVING A DREAM, HE’LL JUST HAVE VISION AS SKINNER’S SPIRIT SHOWS UP IN HIS ROOM.
Always a death…Mickey and Ryan come across a body of someone. Two of them ask questions while Jack is off seeking out Pf. Stokes, an old acquaintance (cousin of Stokes in PT, who is the STEP-FATHER of Angie and Alexis).
Mention here that Jack had actually found in the paper trail Lewis left behind that the hand had been in his register of things bought, but was never officially sold … evidence of him trying to find it. Perhaps even a letter from him found in one of the books that the Widow Young gave Jack.
“So what does that mean?” Ryan asked, shrugging.
PIPE??
Jack methodically loosed his spectacles from each ear before replying. “It means,” he said softly, “that whatever that hand is capable of doing, it was enough to make Lewis want it more than any of the other objects in his possession. It must have incredible powers, perhaps enough to rival the Devil himself.”
Ryan whistled, impressed. The blood in Mickey’s face drained and both went quiet as they processed the information. That hadn’t what either of the cousins were expecting to hear. Mickey exhaled and nervously took a jacket button between her fingers and twisted. Ryan glanced up anxiously expecting her to say something. There was even a slight tap against the side of her shoe. “What?” she mouthed at him. He shrugged slightly and picked up his fork to chase the onions around his plate. She frowned. There was something he was hiding but she couldn’t imagine what it could be. He had changed drastically since they had arrived. He became uncharacteristically quiet and whenever someone spoke to him it jarred him.
In fact, he was jumpy about a lot of things lately. From the strange way he behaved that morning to his staring into space, she knew he was worried about something and that had Mickey concerned. They were on a case together and the last thing they needed were they to start keeping secrets. Jack must have noticed Ryan’s shifty attitude for certain. Mickey tacked a mental note to the back of her mind to mention it to him later. Since she hadn’t had luck so far trying it on her own, he would be the one to have to talk to Ryan. For the moment she had to put it out of her mind. Clearing her throat softly, she asked in a sheepish tone, “So, . . . what do we do now?”
Also, perhaps he went to library found a document that wasn’t allowed to be photocopied because of its age so Jack used a micro camera to get the pages and he developed them and talked to ryan and mickey later. Tells them that the hand is older than they thought (one account says it has a mind of its own). Ryan asks how can they be sure that’s the object they’re looking for. Jack eventually explains that Lewis has the paperwork for his acquiring the hand, but never the sale of it.
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “Then Lewis didn’t—“
“No,” Jack shook his head and shuffled through the papers. He positioned the small spectacles toward the end of his broad nose and bent his head back to browse the document before him. “It doesn’t appear that way now.”
“So, what does this thing have to do with Lewis at all?” Ryan asked impatiently.
Mickey eyed Jack with a sudden understanding. “Nothing,” she stated blandly. Ryan turned and looked at her in muted surprise.
“Wait a second here,” he had his hands up as if trying to deflect the idea from bombarding him. “What are we saying here? That he went through all this trouble to GET the hand then just let it slip out of his fingers? That doesn’t fly. What—could it have been stolen?”
“Or maybe he couldn’t get it to work for him,” Mickey offered and met the glances of both men. “Maybe he thought if he gave it to someone else, they would get it to work for him. But they never did.”
Ryan cocked his head slightly to consider the idea before he nodded. “That makes sense.”
Jack fingered the corner of a sleeve of paper and frowned solemnly. Mickey and Ryan exchanged concerned glances. The tiffany lamp above them dimmed for three seconds then opened back up, like an eye. Jack laid the photos he had taken face up in front of him with a gravely steady hand. “Or maybe even Lewis was afraid of the power of the hand. He could have used it and discovered he couldn’t control it.” Ryan’s cool demeanor soured. Spooked, he looked like he was caving in on himself as his posture shrunk against the chair. Mickey could almost swear she heard her heart skip a beat.
Jack observed their reactions. “It’s not improbable.”
Ryan leaned into his hand and rested his forehead in his palm. “But did he just— GIVE it away?”
Jack gave a shrugging nod.
“That’s a hard one to swallow, Jack.”
“It’s just so frightening,” Mickey shivered. “I mean, I don’t think of Uncle Lewis as being scared of anything. He created some of the most awful, hellish things on this earth. Then to think that there was something that even he couldn’t wait to get off his hands. . .”
Ryan nodded glumly throwing a pear-shaped peanut into the puddle of gin at the bottom of his glass. “It’s friggin’ ghoulish.”
“Yes, well,” Jack murmured thoughtfully as he gazed at the photographs. “Don’t forget, he wasn’t the devil himself. The dark one was the entity that gave Lewis his power, but he also took it away without thinking twice. Lewis lost his life because he got too cocky.”
“Talk about stepping on the wrong toes,” Ryan said tonelessly.
“So what does this hand have to do with us, then?” Mickey’s fiery words somersaulted from her mouth in a frightened, flood-like rush. Jack regarded her and removed his wire-rimmed spectacles. “If Uncle Lewis has nothing to do with what this hand is doing to people,” she continued, “then why are we here? If Uncle Lewis couldn’t even harness it, then what makes you think we can get anywhere NEAR it?”
Ryan nodded. “She’s right. We’re way out of our league here. We could get ourselves killed.”
Jack sighed tiredly. He took a hold of Mickey’s cold hand and squeezed lightly. “Now you two, listen to me carefully,” he said with soft compassion. “ I know this is not the simple case it started out being, and I’m asking a lot of you by helping me; if you don’t want to continue, I will understand. This is not your fight. But just remember something.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to an almost inaudible level above the rowdy din of the bar. “Whether Lewis cursed that object or not, it’s still just as dangerous in the wrong hands. The quicker we get that hand in the vault back at the shop, the better. Or else . . .” Jack’s hand let go of Mickey’s and spread out in a silent gesture of helplessness. Ryan leaned back in his chair. The three were silent for some minutes.
“Who’s to say the hand will even stay in the vault?” Mickey asked at last in a more subdued tone. “Is it safe enough there?”
The older man could only shake his head. “It’s our only option, Mickey. We have to at least try.”
Ryan and Maggie …. Quick romance? Before she goes off to New York.
Things about Maggie Ryan notices:
Everything about her, every movement, expressed such optimism. She’s quite forward. Her girl-next-door charm reminded him of Meg Ryan, but bolder and more confident. Her large, expressive hazel brown eyes sparkled with energetic wit and courage. Ryan knew then he was a goner. Meets her the two days after the dinner, right after they hear about Corinne’s disappearance and/or death. He had already met her their first breakfast. Sees the name Maggie on the nametag fastened to her apron. The more he talks with her, the harder he begins to fall (doesn’t work out later because he gets preoccupied with ghost and the hand, plus her father’s death doesn’t help). He initially questions her about his uncle to see if he had ever been there. No recognition of the name. He shows her a business card that Lewis had made that was quite expensive (they no longer are so extravagant: have simple black on white cards with the name of the store on it, address and phone) that has a picture of him on it. “Oh yes!” she exclaimed exuberantly as she took the card. “Mr. Vendredi, of course! Now I remember. Quite a gentleman. Big tipper, too.” She handed the card back smirking. “That counts in a joint like this.”
“Did he say what he was in town for?” he inquired.
Maggie says, “(…).”
“Well, if you think of anything…” he handed her their more simple, plain lettered business card after writing his room number on the back.
“Sure, but I can’t promise anything. It was years ago.”
Ryan says, “Would you say you’d remember something by dinner time? Say, oh, I don’t know. Six o’clock?” hahaha, so smooth, and so Ryan.
Perhaps Maggie tells jack at breakfast there’s no smoking in the diner their first day, and points toward a plastic neatly hand printed sign. “Oh, I beg your pardon, my dear. I didn’t even see the sign.”
“That’s all right,” she laughed. “The sign’s not big enough, anyway. You’re not the first one who’s missed it. What’ll you folks have this morning?”
After father dies, she goes to New York to spend time and grieve with her sister, Jennifer Evans, while Ryan’s heading back to Chicago. What the problem here is that she asked him to move to New York with her. . . and the problem was he was THIS damn close to doing it, but realized he couldn’t abandon Jack, Mickey, and the store. This scene comes when he meets her and she sees he doesn’t have any luggage. He doesn’t even have to tell her he’s not going. She could read it on his face (but don’t forget this is all from HIS POV!!).
“Next time you’re in New York, look me up,” she said. Ryan knew she was aware of the improbability as much as he, but he agreed he would. She wrapped her arms around him and he was surrounded by the mingled scents of her jasmine perfume and peach-scented shampoo. Wearing pink paisley. A car horn sounded outside and at last she unwound her arms but he kept hold of her hand. They both moved outside but neither could force themselves to part from the stoop. Ryan’s stomach lurched. He felt like it was being tied in knots and being used in a game of tug of war inside his body. “Take care of yourself,” she said softly. She gently swung his arm and flashed him that familiar fragile smile. He swallowed the lump in his throat but managed to return her smile.
“You, too.” He squeezed her hand lightly. She squeezed back briefly and then her hand was gone. He hid his hands from the cold inside the deep pockets of his coat, and sighed. The cab driver packed her things in an orderly fashion inside the trunk but Ryan still felt he made too quick a job of it. Maggie was already in the car but he could barely make out her face from the messy glare of the Inn’s reflection in the glass. All that was visible inside the car was a shadow he took for a wave as the cab pulled away from the curb. (of course will add Ryan’s words and actions in between later)
OKAY, this is last scene in Collinsport, then last scene is the wrap up at the shop, after putting the hand away in the vault.
THE END
