“That’s pretty lame,” Laurie says.
I’m thinking about the movement of the spell, frenetic and unstable.
“You’ve got that look.” Laurie is peering at me.
“What look?” I compose my face into what I hope is “normal Elizabeth.”
He laughs. “The look that you get when you’re about to get a forty-point word in Scrabble.”
I crack a smile. “I think I might be starting to understand how the spells work.”
“Really?” He’s still laughing, but his eyes are bright with interest.
“So, it’s like what you just said,” I say. “The cab thing. She can’t get one, which is annoying, but not life and death . . . not like Stephen.”
He nods.
“And her curse was . . . wobbly,” I say, wishing I could think of a better word. “It felt off balance, like it wouldn’t hold together much longer. So what if the way I sense the spell has to do with how strong, or bad, it is?”
“It’s a theory,” Laurie says. “Why don’t you try again?”
I chew my lip. Laurie steps aside, making it obvious that he will no longer distract me. I giggle and it takes me a minute to be able to let go of the world and move into the background. But once I’m there it’s only a few seconds before she catches my eyes.
The woman is moving through the crowded street with purpose. She’s decked head to toe in designs that are meticulous and refined without being ostentatious. Her cell phone rings. It takes less than two minutes for her to finalize the deal she’s been working on all day. It looks like she’d love to skip down the street in celebration, but that wouldn’t help the image she so carefully built over the years. As she sweeps past me, I see the spell swirling around her. It surges and shimmers, a snowfall gently pouring over her. The tinkling of bells and a child’s laughter chase in her wake.
“Wow,” I say, blinking away the giddiness that coursed through me when the spell was near.
Laurie comes to attention. “Another one?”
“A good one this time,” I say. “She was surrounded by success.”
“How does success look?” he asks.
I cringe a little. “Sparkly. It didn’t wobble. It poured.”
Laurie pretends to wipe his brow. “Well, it’s a relief to know it’s not only curses out there. Maybe we can cast a spell that will get Sean to ask me out?”
“Laurie,” I groan.
“I was kidding.” He holds his hands up pleadingly, but I can see the gears working in his mind.
“No spells.” I shake a finger at him before taking another bite of the apple while I ponder our next move.
“Nothing for you?” I ask, noting that he isn’t chomping on fruit like me.
He holds up a paper bag. “Mango.”
I wipe juice from my chin. “How are you going to eat that while we’re walking?”
“I’m saving it for later,” he says. “It’ll go great with vanilla bean ice cream.”
“When did you get ice cream?” I ask as we cross the street. I’m leading, taking us towards the park.
He grins. “I haven’t yet. I figure I’ll get it at one of our stops along the way.”
But the second stop at a store never comes. What I see in the park sets me off in a new direction. We’ve been walking for half an hour while Laurie drops hints about leaving the greenery for the sake of ice cream hunting when I see him.
He’s an artist or he wants to be, and I automatically feel kinship with him. I also like him because he’s perched beneath the angel that Stephen brought me to just after I moved to New York. This place calms me. Though the world’s been lurching under my feet ever since I found out about Stephen and now me, this spot in the park reminds me that no matter what madness life churns out, Stephen and I still have this place. And each other.
The man is in his twenties, wearing glasses with thick, clear plastic frames and a rambling mishmash of clothes. He’s staring at a blank canvas and shuffling brushes in his hand like a deck of cards.
I stop, watching him.
Laurie takes a long look at me. “We gonna be here a while?”
“I think so,” I say.
He drops to the ground, rummaging in his bag for the mango.
“Okay, then,” I say to myself. Each time I do this it feels new and I’m nervous that it won’t work. But a moment later the world has blurred and I’m in the background again. Only the artist remains in focus. I wait, keeping my breath steady. The air around him begins to move, take shape. This isn’t like falling straw but appears as threads, weaving around his body. I swear I can hear a low hissing, like angry whispers, chasing around his body as the threads move. I can sense them knotting, tightening.
I pull myself out of the background, a little shaken by what I saw.
Laurie’s on his feet. He clasps my wrists, steadying me. His fingers are sticky with mango juice.
“What’s wrong?”
“He has no inspiration,” I say.
“That painter?”
I shake my head. “His creativity is blocked. That’s the curse.”
“And it was different than the cab lady’s?”
“Yeah,” I say. “This one is meant to last. It was tying itself around him. And it had a sound.”
Laurie takes a step back. “The curses make sounds.”
“His does.” I look at the artist.
He’s standing up, shoving brushes into a satchel. He kicks the blank canvas over, startling a cluster of pigeons. He doesn’t pick it up as he stalks away from the fountain.
“So it’s worse,” Laurie says, watching him leave.
I don’t say anything. I don’t need to.
“Well, let’s go, then,” Laurie says.
“Where?” I ask, still watching the artist. The angry set of his shoulders melts into a slump of despair as he disappears down the path.
Laurie waits until he has my attention. “To see what Stephen’s curse feels like.”
* * *
I can tell he’s surprised to see me. And even more surprised that Laurie’s at my side.
“Hey.” He recovers quickly, leaning in to kiss me.
I resist the urge to try to see his curse right then and there. He deserves fair warning before we do this. Even though as we know there’s a curse and kind of know its history, getting me this involved is taking our detective work to the next level.