A week after Pete had moved out, Mona met up with Jilly at the Cyberbean Café. They were planning to attend the opening of Sophie’s latest show at the Green Man Gallery, and Mona had once again promised herself not to dump her problems on Jilly, but there was no one else she could talk to.
“It’s so typical,” she found herself saying. “Out of all the hundreds of magical beings that populate folktales and legends, I had to get stuck with the one that has a multiple personality disorder. He’s driving me crazy.”
“Is he with us now?” Jilly asked.
“Who knows? Who cares?” Then Mona had to laugh. “God, listen to me. It’s like I’m complaining about a bad relationship.”
“Well, it is a bad relationship.”
“I know. And isn’t it pathetic?” Mona shook her head. “If this is what I rebounded to from Pete, I don’t want to know what I’ll end up with when I finally get this nasty little man out of my life. At least the sex was good with Pete.”
Jilly’s eyes went wide. “You’re not …?”
“Oh, please. That’d be like sleeping with the eighth dwarf, Snotty — the one Disney kept out of his movie, and with good reason.”
Jilly had to laugh. “I’m sorry, but it’s just so—”
Mona wagged a finger at her. “Don’t say it. You wouldn’t be laughing if it was happening to you.” She looked at her watch. “We should get going.”
Jilly took a last sip of her coffee. Wrapping what she hadn’t finished of her cookie in a napkin, she stuck it in her pocket.
“What are you going to do?” she asked as they left the café.
“Well, I looked in the yellow pages, but none of the exterminators have cranky dwarves listed among the household pests they’ll get rid of, so I guess I’m stuck with him for now. Though I haven’t looked under exorcists yet.”
“Is he Catholic?” Jilly asked.
“I didn’t think it mattered. They just get rid of evil spirits, don’t they?”
“Why not just ask him to leave? That’s something no one else but he can do for you.”
“I already thought of that,” Mona told her.
“And?”
“Apparently it doesn’t work that way.”
“Maybe you should ask him what he can do for you.”
Mona nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I never thought of that. I just assumed this whole business was one of those Rumpelstiltskin kind of things — that I had to come up with it on my own.”
“What?’ Nacky said later that night when Mona returned from the gallery and asked him to show himself. “You want me to list my services like on a menu? I’m not a restaurant.”
“Or computer software,” Mona agreed, “though it might be easier if you were either, because then at least I’d know what you can do without having to go through a song and dance to get the information out of you.”
“No one’s ever asked this kind of thing before.”
“So what?” she asked. “Is it against the rules?”
Nacky scowled. “What makes you think there are rules?”
“There are always rules. So come on. Give.”
“Fine,” Nacky said. “We’ll start with the most popular items.” He began to count the items off on his fingers. “Potions, charms, spells, incantations—”
Mona held up a hand. “Hold on there. Let’s back up a bit. What are these potions and charms and stuff?”
“Well, take your ex-boyfriend,” Nacky said.
Please do, Mona thought.
“I could put a spell on him so that every time he looked at a woman that he was attracted to, he’d break out in hives.”
“You could do that?”
Nacky nodded. “Or it could just be a minor irritation — an itch that will never go away.”
“How long would it last?”
“Your choice. For the rest of his life, if you want.”
Wouldn’t that serve Pete right, Mona thought. Talk about a serious payback for all those mean things he’d said about her and The Girl Zone.
“This is so tempting,” she said.
“So what will it be?” Nacky asked, briskly rubbing his hands together. “Hives? An itch? Perhaps a nervous tic under his eye so that people will always think he’s winking at them. Seems harmless, but it’s good for any number of face slaps and more serious altercations.”
“Hang on,” Mona told him. “What’s the big hurry?”
“I’m in no hurry. I thought you were. I thought the sooner you got rid of Snotty, the eighth dwarf, the happier you’d be.”
So he had been in the café.
“Okay,” Mona said. “But first I have to ask you. These charms and things of yours — do they only do negative stuff?”
Nacky shook his head. “No. They can teach you the language of birds, choose your dreams before you go to sleep, make you appear to not be somewhere when you really are—”
“Wait a sec. You told me I had to be born magic to do that.”
“No. You asked about, and I quote, ‘the trick you do with invisibility,’ the emphasis being mine. How I do it, you have to be born magic. An invisibility charm is something else.”
“But it does the same thing?”
“For all intents and purposes.”
God, but he could be infuriating.
“So why didn’t you tell me that?”
Nacky smirked. “You didn’t ask.”
I will not get angry, she told herself. I am calmness incarnate.
“Okay,” she said. “What else?”
He went back to counting the items on his fingers, starting again with a tap of his right index finger onto his left. “Potions to fall in love, to fall out of love. To make hair longer, or thicker. To make one taller, or shorter, or—” He gave her a wicked grin. “—slimmer. To speak with the recent dead, to heal the sick—”
“Heal them of what?” Mona wanted to know.
“Whatever ails them,” he said, then went on in a bored voice. “To turn kettles into foxes, and vice versa. To—”
Mona was beginning to suffer overload.
“Enough already,” she said. “I get the point.”
“But you—”
“Shh. Let me think.”
She laid her head back in her chair and closed her eyes. Basically, what it boiled down to was she could have whatever she wanted. She could have revenge on Pete — not for leaving her, but for being so mean-spirited about it. She could be invisible, or understand the language of birds and animals. And though he’d claimed not to have a pot of gold when they first met, she could probably have fame and fortune, too.
But she didn’t really want revenge on Pete. And being invisible probably wasn’t such a good idea since she already spent far too much time on her own as it was. What she should really do is get out more, meet more people, make more friends of her own, instead of all the people she knew through Pete. As for fame and fortune … corny as it might sound, she really did believe that the process was what was important, the journey her art and stories took her on, not the place where they all ended up.
She opened her eyes and looked at Nacky.
“Well?” he said.
She stood up and picked up her coat where she’d dropped it on the end of the sofa.
“Come on,” she said as she put it on.
“Where are we going?”
“To hail a cab.”
She had the taxi take them to the children’s hospital. After paying the fare, she got out and stood on the lawn. Nacky, invisible in the vehicle, popped back into view. Leaves crackled underfoot as he joined her.