Peony Street (2 page)

Tuppy was still humming a tune from Brigadoon as he parked the car on the main street and got out to stretch. The weather was exactly like that he’d recently endured for several weeks in
Scotland. A bone-chilling misty rain fell and much of the town was obscured by a low-hanging fog bank. The map on his smart phone stubbornly insisted on ending at the dot, even though he’d put in Claire’s parents’ full address. When he zoomed in for a street view of Rose Hill he was only shown a field of gray with the black Co. Rte. 1/1 squiggle and the aforementioned dot. Beyond the dot the squiggle took a sharp left and Co. Rte. 2/1 squiggled over to a town named Glencora, where the ski resort was alleged to be located.

There were very few cars parked on the street and no cars passed through. The only sign of life, a light from the window of a bar on the corner, illuminated his parked car. He could hear what sounded like Irish fiddle music playing inside.

“The Rose and Thorn,” he read on the window.

He thought about going inside to ask for directions, estimated the likelihood that he would be welcomed with open arms by the local rednecks, and decided against it. The town wasn’t that big, after all. He could probably find it on his own.

The absence of traffic noise and the moisture in the air amplified every sound. He could hear the drip, drip, drip of water from every surface, and the tang, tang, tang as it struck hundred-year-old tin roofs above the brick storefronts that lined the street. There was a steady low roar from the nearby river, with which he’d become so intimate during his journey, having crossed it twice. A street sign informed him that he was parked at the corner of Rose Hill Avenue and Peony Street. He recalled Claire mentioning that every street in Rose Hill was named for a flower.

“How quaint,” he’d said at the time, in a tone that indicated it was anything but.

Claire’s parents lived on Iris Avenue, so logically he surmised that if the avenues and streets formed a grid, if he stayed on Peony Street he would eventually cross Iris Avenue. He popped the collar and tightened the belt on his Burberry trench and wished he’d thought to pack an umbrella. After a moment’s consideration he crossed the deserted street and walked east, which in Rose Hill meant up a steep hill.

The town was built on a hillside with the Little Bear River at the foot. Tuppy noticed that as he ascended
Peony Street the homes were bigger, were spread farther apart, and the properties were better kept. He crossed Lilac and Magnolia Avenues and ended up at Morning Glory Avenue, where the homes were quite grand and the architecture was classic Victorian, Edwardian, and Gothic.

He turned and looked down the hill toward the river, where the main street was blanketed in fog. He had yet to see a person. All the homes looked tucked in for the night, with plumes of smoke curling from chimneys and a few windows lit by dim lamps behind sheer curtains. Tuppy had the strange sensation that he had somehow wandered into an Appalachian wormhole and gone back in time. When he returned to his rental car he noticed the Irish fiddle music had ceased and the Rose and Thorn was dark inside. He sent Claire a text.

Tuppy walked down Peony Street beyond the bar and the alley behind it, and was gratified to see the first avenue on his left was Iris. Claire’s parents’ house was the third one on the right. The flickering blue light of a television seemed to indicate someone was still awake. Tuppy hoped it was Claire, having taken an earlier flight and suffering from insomnia after crossing time zones.

A large, elderly man answered his knock. He had on a stained sweatshirt, flannel pajama pants, and corduroy slippers. His eyebrows were wild and he needed a haircut. He was frowning but there was also an unfocused, fuzzy look in his eyes; Tuppy apologized for waking him.

“I wasn’t asleep,” the man said gruffly.

Tuppy explained who he was and that he was looking for Claire. This seemed to agitate the man.

“Claire’s in California,” he said. “She and Pip live in Los Angeles.”

Tuppy knew that Pip was Claire’s ex-husband, whom she hadn’t seen in many years. Then the penny dropped. Claire had mentioned multiple strokes, memory problems. Tuppy felt ashamed of how bored he’d been by the subject, and how poorly he’d listened.

“I won’t keep you,” Tuppy said. “Claire’s coming here to see you this week. Please give her this.”

“What is it?” the older man asked.

“A book,” Tuppy said. “Will you make sure she gets it?”

“My memory isn’t too good,” Claire’s father said.

“Tell her it’s from Tuppy.”

“What in the heck kinda name is that?”

“A family name,” Tuppy said.

“I probably won’t remember it. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” Tuppy said. “It was nice to meet you.”

“You could come in,” the older man said. “You want me to get Delia?”

“No, please don’t wake her. I’ve got to go. Goodbye.”

Tuppy walked halfway down the block toward
Peony Street and then turned to look back. Claire’s father had shut the door. His phone tweedled that he had a text; it was from Sloan

“I no whr u r cmn 4 u”

It may have been a combination of fatigue, worry, and the freezing rain falling in this creepy fog-covered town that time forgot, but Tuppy suddenly had the urge to get the hell out of Rose Hill as soon as possible. Sloan’s attorney Stanley had sleazy contacts everywhere and enough money to arrange any dirty deed. They must know where he’d gone; the rental car company could have tracked him through the GPS. Someone may have followed him at a distance.

Tuppy called Claire, left a voicemail, and then sent her a text. He had just pressed send when he heard raised voices nearby. A car started up with a roar and tires squealed. Then there were footsteps on wet pavement behind him, running in his direction. The fog was so thick he couldn’t see farther than a few yards in front of him.

Fear raced though his nervous system and adrenaline surged through his veins. He took off, running as fast as he had ever run in his life, only to trip over the curb and fall headlong into the middle of Peony Street. He was just picking himself up off the ground when headlights illuminated him, blinded him. The car roared toward him, and the impact flung him up over the hood of the car into the windshield, rolled him over the roof, across the trunk, and then dropped him back on the street.

Tuppy’s head hit the pavement as he landed and a sharp pain radiated throughout his entire body. His ears rang and a buzzing sound bloomed in his head. He felt so dizzy he became nauseated.

‘This is so inconvenient,’ he thought. ‘I have the most important meeting of my life on Monday.’

Then he could no longer feel the hard, wet pavement, and the pain disappeared. He could see his motionless body on the street beneath him as he floated above it, but he only felt a benign sort of attachment to it. He felt confused, but not worried.

‘This is interesting,’ he thought.

The dark night evaporated, leaving everything shrouded in gray fog, but lit from above. It was like being on a plane as it ascended through a cloud, just before it rises into bright sunshine in a blue sky. He realized he wasn’t floating up; he was being drawn up.

‘I must be in a coma,’ he thought.

He heard music: a choir singing with an orchestra accompanying.

‘Oh, please,’ he thought. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Really?’

The music became louder as he rose higher. It was more than a sound, it had a strong vibration that overwhelmed him and infused his body with invigorating energy. This energy filled him up and expanded his sense of himself until he felt huge, vast, and couldn’t tell where he ended and the fog began. As he emerged into what looked and felt like bright warm sunshine in a brilliant blue sky, the music rang out with the raucous joy of a gospel choir.

Bright light dazzled and thrilled him, opened him up completely, and then the music filled him with what felt like warm, peaceful glee. In the distance a tableau appeared against a backdrop of brilliant white light. Tuppy felt drawn to this apparition, whatever it was, and as soon as he had the thought that he wanted to get closer he instantly found himself right in front of it.

Tuppy had never before seen a two-sided grand piano with a keyboard on each side, let alone a glistening white one. There were two players seated, one on either side, and both were dressed in white tuxedos. Behind them Tuppy sensed rather than saw the accompanying choir and orchestra.

“Get out,” Tuppy said. “You are not serious.”

Seated on one side of the piano, Liberace grinned as he waved a heavily be-ringed hand in Tuppy’s direction, while on the other side Ray Charles swayed and stomped one foot. While Ray played rollicking blues-infused gospel, Liberace embellished it with his famous flourishes. It shouldn’t have worked; instead it was the most sublime music Tuppy had ever heard. Tuppy’s last thought as his soul left the earthly plane was that maybe the afterlife wouldn’t be such a complete drag after all.

Claire Fitzpatrick flipped the rental car’s high beams on and off. The fog from the Little Bear River kept appearing in dense patches along the curvy two-lane road, making it hard to see very far ahead. It was four in the morning and Claire had been awake for over twenty-four hours. Her eyes burned with exhaustion but she was almost home, almost to Rose Hill.

She sighed with relief as she passed the “Welcome to Rose Hill” sign. She passed the farmer’s market, the city hall, the fire department, the police station, and then turned right on Peony Street. The pub on the opposite corner, called the Rose and Thorn, was owned by her family, but at this time of the night it was locked up tight. She just had to go one block, turn left on Iris Avenue, then go half a block, and she would be home. It was awfully early in the day to surprise her parents, but she knew they wouldn’t mind.

Claire desperately wanted three things: to go to the bathroom, drink a big glass of ice water, and then immediately lie down and sleep. Anywhere would do; the kitchen floor, for instance.

She had just passed the alley behind the Rose and Thorn when she saw something lying in the middle of Peony Street. The neighborhood was shrouded in fog so she had to stop and get out of the car before she could properly see the thing. At first she thought it was a big duffle bag, like the ones her cousins took with them when they went into military service. When she got closer she realized it was not a thing, it was a person.

“Hey, buddy,” she said. “Have a little too much to drink?”

She nudged the man, who was lying curled up on his side, facing away from her. Claire assumed he’d passed out in the middle of the street, a situation that was not that shocking to the daughter of a bar owner.

“You need to move or you’ll get hit by a car,” she said, and then walked around him so she could see his face.

It was covered in blood.

Twenty-four hours earlier Claire had been deeply asleep in the tastefully appointed bedroom of a rented flat above a luxury bath goods shop on
Church Street in Kensington. When the alarm clock went off her heart began to race and a feeling of panic rose up in her throat. She tried telling herself she had nothing to worry about; she’d done nothing wrong. She’d given a month’s notice, as was stipulated in her contract. She’d collected her last check. The previous night she’d said good-bye to everyone she cared about at the going away party, a party from which her former boss was glaringly absent.

The problem wasn’t that she felt menaced or harassed, as was Sloan’s tendency when Claire didn’t do as she commanded. The problem was Sloan hadn’t done anything to her for two days; that scared her more. When she said good-bye to her employer in the entryway of the Milestone apartment, Sloan had ignored her, acted as if she was just another faceless service provider, not someone who had been with her for twenty years. For two decades Claire had waited on Sloan hand and foot, put up with her mean-spirited abuse, and received little thanks for continually rescuing her from every sticky situation. She had expected Tuppy to call her every five minutes with increasingly sweet offers alternating with escalating threats. Instead, there had been only this ominous silence.

Even though Sloan had ceased all communication, she made sure Claire’s exit was not completely without drama. The estate agent had claimed the production company extended her lease for another three months. When they couldn’t produce a lease signed by Claire for the additional time, she told them to take it up with the producer, that she would leave the key in their drop box on her way out of town the next morning. The estate agent glared at Claire as she waved cheerily on her way out of the office.

“Bloody Americans,” she heard him say to his secretary.

Claire’s Boston Terrier, Miss Mackenzie Peabody MacGuffin, rattled the tags on her pink, rhinestone-studded collar as she stretched and yawned.

“Good morning, Mackie Pea,” Claire said.

The little dog nuzzled Claire’s hand, hopped down to the floor, and went to the door, where she stood expectantly.

“We’ll take a nice long walk in the park, pick up gifts for Mom, Dad, and the cousins, and pack our boxes to ship,” Claire said. “After that we’ll have some lunch, another quick walk, and then we’re out of here.”

At just before three o’clock Claire took one last look out her bedroom window at the beautiful view across the street: an ancient stone church surrounded by green leafy trees in a small park. The rain that had steadily drizzled all morning had finally stopped, and sunlight gleamed on the wet cobblestones as black cabs, double-decker buses, and tiny cars wove through the busy street below. This had been her morning and evening view for the past four weeks while Sloan dubbed dialogue in a London studio during the day and led the paparazzi on a merry chase through the most fashionable clubs at night. Claire was usually given the smallest hotel room available to share with another staff member. Renting this flat had been a last ditch effort by her boss to convince her to sign up for another tour of duty, as in, “see what you’ll be missing?”

“This is the most expensive piece of real estate you or I will ever have slept upon,” she told the dog. “It’s all downhill from here.”

The bath goods store manager had agreed to ship Claire’s boxes of belongings to the U.S., so Claire carried them down one by one and then paid for shipping.

The cab driver who picked her up in front of the
Church Street flat was talkative and nosy, so Claire filled him in on her troubles with the estate agent as he drove her to their office. He waited for her to drop the key and then conveyed her in the direction of Heathrow. Due to a car accident traffic was snarled, and for the full ten minutes it took the cab to convey her one block she considered abandoning it for the underground. She also considered the four-inch heels she was wearing, the overloaded carry-on bag and Miss MacGuffin’s travel case, and decided against it.

Her smart phone played “The Wicked Witch of the West” theme from The Wizard of Oz, which meant her ex-boss was finally calling. She knew Sloan had been invited to an engagement party for the royal couple that was to take place that evening and was probably in a vicious panic. Claire decided it would not help her nerves to hear that ominous tune play over and over all evening so she turned off her phone.

She took a deep breath and resigned herself to the inevitable Sloan Merryweather temper tantrum. There was no telling what that woman would do next. Claire prayed that Sloan’s personal assistant Tuppy had not betrayed her. Otherwise Sloan might have her thug lawyer waiting at Heathrow.

“La, la, la,” she said.

“What’s that, love?” the cab driver asked.

“Nothing,” Claire said, “just talking to myself.”

“You’ll want to watch that,” he said, smiling at her in the rear view mirror. “There’s some will think you’re a nutter.”

She hadn’t realized she’d said it out loud.

Just as she feared, after an agonizingly slow cab ride she reached Heathrow after her flight had departed. Although she felt like collapsing into a sobbing heap in the middle of the concourse, she knew that looking panicked or upset in an airport could mean a one-way ticket to a security hold and a body cavity search. She was able to maintain her composure as she purchased a new ticket for a 7:00 p.m. GMT flight. She kept herself together all the way to the gate of the next available flight. There she realized she’d left her smart phone in the cab. The tears she’d felt welling up all morning threatened to spill over, so she looked up and blinked hard to force them back.

‘Not now,’ she sternly reprimanded herself. ‘This is not a safe place to fall apart.’

She dug her long nails into her palms until the pain distracted her.

‘La, la, la,’ she said under her breath. ‘Let’s just get through this.’

Claire’s phone was her life line. It not only kept her world organized, it was her primary means of communication with her friends, colleagues, and family. Upon waking in the middle of the night on an airplane or in a hotel room, she often had trouble remembering which country she was leaving, going to, or was in, but as long as her phone was nearby she felt securely tethered to the earth.

She took some deep breaths and willed herself to be calm lest someone suspect she was sad about some terrorist act she might be planning. She reminded herself that all was not lost. She still had her carry-on bag (in which she’d stowed her handbag), Miss MacGuffin’s carrier, her passport, and a new ticket.

To pass the time she bought some magazines and tabloids which all featured stories about her former employer. She rolled her eyes at the flattering “exclusives” she knew had been written by Sloan’s publicist Ayelet. These, along with the carefully staged paparazzi photos that accompanied them, were passed off as real interviews by publications willing to flatter Sloan in return for access.

Then there were the tabloid publishers, who had no legitimate access and just threw any wild fabrication on the cover. Sloan was often desperately trying to get pregnant, was already secretly pregnant, or devastated because she wasn’t pregnant. They might say she was having a torrid affair with her latest costar, was broken-hearted and bitter, or head-over-heels in love again with an ex, sometimes all in the same week. Tabloid editors were always looking for incriminating evidence they could use to either sell as a shocking expose or use to blackmail Sloan into cooperating with milder versions of the same story. Writers had approached Claire with offers of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but by the use of signed non-disclosure agreements with stiff penalties Sloan had made it impossible for her to take them up on their offers, even if she wanted to.

Two hours later Claire was one of the first to board her flight, as all they’d had left were first class seats. She justified the expense as her reward for all the abuse she’d put up with over the past two decades. After devoting half of her life serving one of the most demanding divas in the movie business she felt she’d earned a little pampering.

Miss MacGuffin, an excellent traveler, was soon snoring quietly in her carrier, but Claire couldn’t sleep. Memories from the past three months kept floating through her mind like a montage on a movie screen. Before she left the British Isles Claire had been determined to see the sites where her favorite movies were filmed. In
Scotland that meant visiting the village of Pennan and the beaches of Arisaig, and Morar, where Local Hero was filmed. In Ireland that meant staying a few days in Dawros Bay, in Donegal, where The Secret of Roan Inish was shot; and taking a tour of the Isle of Man in honor of Waking Ned Divine.

She had gone on two Harry Potter tours, one in
Oxford and one in Gloucester; and had hired a very enthusiastic film student to take her to many of the London spots featured in Love Actually, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. The Victoria and Albert Museum fed her Young Victoria craving, and Buckingham Palace represented The King’s Speech. After seeing so many of these places immortalized in movies, the British Isles seem to Claire like one big film set. She had felt the same way the first time she went to New York, Paris, and Venice.

Claire would have seemed like the typical American tourist on each of these tours if it weren’t for all the crying she did. She may have set a record for Yankees who cry on famous
UK landmarks; she didn’t know where the standing record was recorded so she couldn’t compare her stats. Needless to say she wasn’t the most popular seatmate on the bus or in great demand at dinner stops.

Finally giving notice and then sticking to that decision was something she had dreamed of for so long. The enormity of that decision and the subsequent reality of what her life would be like afterward were only starting to sink in.

As Claire allowed herself to relax the tears welled up again, so she blinked and sniffed them back. To distract herself she pulled out a small notebook and made a list:

1.
              Good long visit with Mom & Dad

2.
              Decide what to do next & where to do it (open salon? Freelance?)

3.
              Relax somewhere sunny (or go back to LA and look for work?)

4.
              Order food for Mackie Pea

5.
              Buy new smart phone (move to #1)

6.
              Sleep for a month

The in-flight movie was a recent cliché-ridden, by-the-numbers romantic comedy featuring leads she knew for a fact to be a heroin addict and a former prostitute; they were also two of the highest paid actors in the film industry. The supporting actors were actually more compelling, and at least their faces still moved in a natural way. Although a critical failure, the film had recouped its budget and made a substantial profit, so there were a half dozen more similarly themed romantic comedies, or “rom coms” in the works.

After the movie Claire slept, but fitfully. She kept waking suddenly with a nauseating wrench in her midsection, as if her soul had been let out on a long string while she slept and was suddenly reeled back into her body as she was jolted back into consciousness. It felt like waking up on a rollercoaster. Each time she woke she reached for her phone and was grieved anew to remember it was lost.

When they landed in DC, Claire found her connecting flight to
Pittsburgh had been delayed due to an approaching thunderstorm. Claire was used to such irritating developments. She had puppy training pads that Mackie Pea used while traveling, so she had no reason to go out in the gale force wind and sheets of rain that lashed the terminal windows.