Mr. Flood's Last Resort(64)

Her shadow grows and deepens. I watch it saturate the floor.

I look down into a deep dark puddle.

I see a face reflected, but it’s not mine. It has a wide smile. I look up and there she is, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to me with a white bow in her fair hair. She opens her mouth to talk and an earwig falls out. She giggles and clasps a hand over her mouth. She tries again. She opens her mouth and a whole host of them tumble over her chin.

She is no longer smiling.

She spits out tangle after tangle of black-bronze insects with a panicked look in her eyes. They tumble and writhe, hitting the floor and crawling up under her school skirt and into her shoes and down the cuffs of her socks.

Then I notice: Maggie Dunne isn’t quite herself.

There’s a certain thinness to her arms and legs, her eyes are sunken, and her teeth are loose. She spits them out onto the ground after the earwigs, with little exhausted coughing sounds. With effort Maggie stands. She looks down in dismay at the pearly maggots on her blouse. She picks them off, a sheepish smile on her green lips. Then she’s away, a clumsy run, an awkward skip, her shoulders hunched.

Then I see: the frayed bandages on her wrists, her hair pulled out in clumps, the bruises— *

“IF I were you I’d lay off the crime tales.”

I sit up in bed, bathed in sweat and in the rays of golden light coming from the wardrobe.

“The krupnik might not help either.”

I shield my eyes.

“Wait, I’ll adjust the brightness,” he says.

And then I see him: the inordinately beautiful St. Raphael (lovers, insanity, nightmares). He folds his wings with a demure whirr and sits down on the edge of the bed, looking at me with his eyes large and dark in his heart-shaped face. Even on his dimmer switch St. Raphael shines. His eyes, lips, skin, and hair: all are burnished and lit by some radiant sun. Only his wings are in shadow: two arched black shapes that move behind him with a faint rustle.

“The nightmares are back, Maud?”

I nod.

“Perhaps it’s best you give up the case. Take the quiet life.” He pushes a bronze curl behind his ear and leans forwards. “You know you’ll only bring grief,” he whispers.

I try to think of some words I can put together, to explain.

“Give it up, baby.” He smiles.

“I can’t,” I answer. “I have to find out what happened.”

He folds his shimmering arms and looks through his eyelashes at me. “Raking over old coals can be dangerous; some of them are still burning.”

“Is Maggie Dunne still alive?”

He frowns. “I can’t tell you that.” Velvet shadows flit behind him. I hear a wing beat, a sudden soft whirr. “But I know who might be able to.”

“Marguerite?”

He ignores me, glancing over to the empty side of the bed.

“I don’t think he’ll be back.” As I say it, I realize how near I am to crying.

St. Raphael looks at me with his dark eyes burning with kindness. “Who can say?”

To my shame, I start to cry. “Will he be back?”

“Are you still waiting for a happy ending, Maud?” His smile is so sad that I want to look away.

“No,” I say, “I just want to know what to expect.”

He nods. “Warp and weave, Maud, warp and weave.”

And then he’s gone, leaving the day all the grayer.



CATHAL IS in evil spirits today. He comes in for his breakfast with a face on him.

“Come on, now,” I say. “It’s nearly your birthday.”

“That Spanish tart has dealt me a good one.”

I’m hardly listening. I measure tea into the pot.

“Her next door, the wagon.” He pushes a cat off the chair and sits down at the table. “Coming round here giving out about her bald pussy.”

I laugh, and Cathal looks at me sourly, for this is no joke.

“She’s going to call the agency, and the fecking police. She says they’ll get a warrant to search the house. That thing was worth a lot of money; she charged for it to go with lady cats.”

“Mrs. Cabello is a cat pimp? Who’d have thought it?” I pour hot water into the teapot.

“This isn’t funny, Drennan.” He taps on the table, one finger after another, and glances up at me. Underneath the table his knee will be jiggling, no doubt. “They’ll all be round, battering the door down. Swarming through the place. Another raid.”

“They’ll not be given a warrant to find a cat.”

“It’s not the police I’m worried about.” He rubs his forehead. “It’s her. She’ll get me now. Even after all this.” He waves his hand around the tidy kitchen.

“Who’ll get you? Mrs. Cabello?”

“No, that fat agency bitch. She told me she would do for me the minute I misbehaved again. Jesus, she’s terrifying.”

I laugh. “Biba Morel?”

Cathal isn’t laughing. “She told me I was a dirty old bastard and if I put a toe wrong she’d have me banged up as quick as Jack Shit in a home for the bewildered.”

“I doubt Biba Morel said that.”

“She fucking did. Those same exact words. So I told her I’d make sure that there wouldn’t be a home that would take me.” Cathal scowls. “I threatened trouble on a biblical scale.”