Thwonk (5 page)

I got out, and walked to the front of the car, my heart racing. I took one look at the thing in the street.

“
Please
,” I said, giggling.

Trish was huddled in the car, motioning me to come back. I knelt down to get a better look. My headlights shone a yellow glow across the figure.

“What is it?” Trish shouted.

I laughed out loud.

It was a dilapidated cupid doll as big as my hand with a battered bow-and-arrow and a stupid grin.

I picked it up.

He looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy dressed up for Valentine’s Day. He had black painted eyes and a ripped mouth. He was naked except for a little pink sash that covered his lower extremities. I checked under the sash. He had Ken-doll anatomy.

Trish got out of the car and took one look at the cupid. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she scoffed.

I brushed the doll off, giggling. He was plump, squishy, and
totally
Coney Island. His cheek had a rip in it, stuffing oozed out.

“I think,” I said throwing the cupid in the air, “I have my cover shot.”

Trish stepped back. “Pearly will hang you in the Student Center, A.J., if you—”

“She wanted cupids, Trish.”

Trish stared at the doll blankly. “You’ve lost it, A.J.”

“It’s got personality,” I said, heading for the car.

“It’s got fleas!”

We got in the car. I buckled the seat belt around the doll in the backseat because the true bonding between photographer and still-life object cannot begin until the photographer sees life in the nonliving. I patted its dinky head and opened myself to the relationship.

“I am Allison Jean McCreary,” I declared, “master still-life photographer. You have only thirty-six hours to show me who you are!”

I threw the cupid into my studio and crashed down the garage steps, needing sleep. Tomorrow I would take the cover shot.

I stumbled to the upstairs bathroom with Stieglitz at my heels and told my artistic brain to think about something other than the fact that the old pipes in our
old house were creaking and groaning like a maniac murderer was trying to break in. Our house was over a hundred years old and came with a century of problems that helped you forget its rambling charm. I locked the bathroom door and shoved a small vanity in front of it.

There was a crash and a flurry as Stieglitz jumped on the toilet seat. He leapt down, pawed the carpet, and turned in quick, choppy moves.

“Easy, boy!”

Stieglitz shuddered, yelped. I told him to
sit.
He didn’t. Stieglitz only sat at dog-obedience school with master canine trainer Steve Bloodworth, who resembled a pit bull on a bad day. I unlocked the door, shoved the vanity aside, and let Stieglitz leave to patrol the hall.

I plodded to my bedroom. Stieglitz was shaking by the window in uncurbed neurosis. I stepped across the heap of dirty clothes that had missed my hamper and climbed into my futon as Stieglitz whined pathetically at my feet.

I pulled my fat flannel quilt up to my chin and waited for sleep.

I counted sheep.

I counted gorgeous guys.

I counted Stieglitz’s barks that were about to shatter glass.

Stieglitz pounced on me. “
What?
” I jumped out
of bed. He was running in circles, pawing at the door.

“
What is it?
” Stieglitz looked at me through dark, hunted eyes. “
All right
”—I yanked on my L. L. Bean arctic slipper socks—“
show me!
”

Stieglitz tore down the hall thrashing his tail and screeched to a halt at the foot of my studio steps, yelping like mad. I raced after him as the clock struck midnight (only figuratively—it was digital). Stieglitz shot up the stairs and rammed his head against my studio door with the sign on it that read
DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT ENTERING
.

A weirdness wound its way like smoke into the night. It was creepy, crawly. The wind picked up outside. Stieglitz howled like a wolf in the wilderness.

“
What is it, boy?
”

Stieglitz scratched at the door in a fury, taking off paint, trying to shove it open.

“
Everything
,” I screamed, “
is all right!
”

My hand clutched the doorknob. I took a massive breath, pushed the door open…

Stieglitz bolted through it and stopped barking.

I leaned against the doorway and froze.

The cupid!

He was standing there looking at me with fiery black eyes and little rosy cheeks, standing there
breathing
!

The cupid shook his legs and arms like an aerobics instructor.

He fluttered his clear, thin wings.

He rolled his head back and forth and did a couple of quick karate chops on his muscled legs.

I looked madly around to see if I was dreaming…

The cupid put his minuscule hands on his equally teeny waist and peered at me.

I clutched my throat and sank to my knees.

“Are you”—I gasped—“are you…
real?
”

A slight smile flickered across his face. He lifted two feet in the air, spun like a twirling top, and landed on my still-life pedestal.

I started hyperventilating.

“Are you…” I struggled for words. “
What
are you?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, now,” he said in a full-sized voice, “shall we begin?”

“
You talk!
”

“I do many things.” He brushed off his dinky bow-and-arrow.

Moments passed.

Years, maybe.

The cupid scooped a teeny red apple from his satchel and took a bite.

I stared at him, awestruck. It was like a million Disney movies rolled into one. I grinned and hugged my knees with delight. I felt five years old.

I could make him a little bed out of a shoebox.

I could sew him eensy-weensy clothes and he could go everywhere with me in my pocket!

I was dying to touch him. I held out my hand. “Come on,” I cooed, “I won’t hurt you.”

The cupid rose indignantly to his full height, which wasn’t much. “I am,” he informed me, “a master archer!
Not
a plaything!”

I yanked my hand back. “I’m…sorry…I…”

He stared at me defiantly. I looked away. The cupid could be an extraterrestrial!

He marched up to me and stamped his foot. “I am not,” he insisted, “an extraterrestrial!”

“Did I say that?” I croaked.

“You were thinking it.”

“How do you know what I was thinking?”

The cupid beamed.

“
What planet are you from?
”

He shook his head in disbelief. “You must rid your mind of the dowdy American notion that anything you don’t understand comes from outer space.”

We stared at each other. I grabbed a pair of scissors from a table. “
What kind of trick is this?
”

“I do not perform tricks.” He zoomed off the pedestal and lighted on the rug. “But I do have many talents.”

“Name one…”

The cupid pulled back the string of his bow and aimed his arrow at the Granny Smith apple on my still-life pedestal. He concentrated on his target as his left hand rested at eye level and his right hand, which drew the string, bent above his right shoulder. It shot across the room, hit the apple dead center, and reverberated with a little sound:

Thwonk.

A satisfied grin swept across his face; he remained in shoot position for a moment, then he flew to retrieve the arrow, which he put in a leather satchel behind his back.

“I consult,” he said. “Free of charge. This”—he patted the leather case—“is not a satchel, it is a quiver.”

“Did I say that?”

He looked at me. I had thought it. I pulled at my nightgown and shivered.

“There is nothing,” he assured me, “to fear.”

Right.

“I am here merely to assist you,” he continued. “No strings attached.” He floated to the ceiling and hovered there.

I swallowed hard. “What’s the catch?”

“There is no catch.”

“There’s always a catch.”

“No catch,” he insisted. He was giving my studio a good once-over. “Our relationship can only succeed if we build a relationship of trust.”

“You want me to trust you?”

He began to sharpen his arrow furiously like he was chalking a pool cue. “Teenage consultations are endlessly troublesome!”

“What do you know about teenagers?”

Sadness flickered in his eyes. “I know a great deal about
you
,” he said finally. “It is my job to know.” The cupid swooped down to my gallery of framed prints. “Your work is very moody. Technically, it is excellent, but if you concentrated on more positive aspects of life, you would see an energy coming from your art.”

“There’s energy all over my art!”

“Negative energy,” he said with conviction. “It is a powerful force, but not as strong as positive expression.” He flew over to my east wall and gave my framed prints a once-over. He hovered at my picture of a melting snowman at dusk that spoke volumes about relationships.

“I would experiment more with early-morning light if I were you,” he said.

I stepped back. “I know all about light.”

Stieglitz found his nerve and approached the cupid like he was checking out a squirrel he might want to chase. The cupid, unafraid, stretched out his little hand.

“Sit,” said the cupid. Stieglitz sat. “Good dog,” said the cupid, rearranging his sash. “You should brush him more,” he continued. “The keeshond breed needs constant attention.”

“I brush him all the time!”

The cupid looked right through me. “Lying erodes the fabric of all relationships.”

“
We don’t have a relationship!
”

“We could”—the cupid leaned on my purple Persian floor-pillow—“if you let your defenses down. It’s up to you.”

I ran out of my studio and down two flights of stairs. I had spent years building up my defenses and I liked them just fine. I yanked the phone off the jack and dialed zero.

“Operator,” said a terse female voice.

“
Is this Connecticut?
” I demanded. “
Have we all shifted into another dimension?
”

I heard a click.

“
Operator?
”

I sat in the chair holding the receiver in my hand. I
held it so long that the buzzing noise started. A computer voice said I had to hang up. I gripped it.

The air hung still and weird. My ears strained for the sound of good old reality. A car drove by blaring rock music and threw a beer can onto the driveway.

I was still in Connecticut.

I stood on the safe side of my studio door with Stieglitz. All was quiet but I wasn’t fooled. I snapped my fingers and Stieglitz leapt to attention. “I give you permission, Stieglitz, to do whatever is required. Maiming, destroying, terrorizing. You’re in charge.”

Stieglitz yelped and crashed down the stairs. I glared at him. I was aching to peer inside my studio.

Was the cupid still there?

My studio door opened, the cupid fluttered out, and announced, “Come in, for heaven’s sake, we don’t have much time!”

The cupid flew straight up, then darted in a zigzag. He hovered by the banister, flew backward, and plopped on my shoulder. My throat closed. My palms went gummy.

“Who,” I whimpered, “are you?”

“Ah, now, that is an excellent question.” He did an aerial loop off my shoulder.

I looked at him as much as I dared. “I need to know what’s going on!”

He hovered by my studio window and gazed at the stars. “What is going on depends upon you,” he said. “You’re in control, Allison Jean McCreary, of what you choose to examine in your life.”

I gripped the doorknob.

The cupid’s face darkened. “I’ve always wondered why people are so afraid to trust.”

I clutched my heart.

Sadness flashed in his eyes again. “Some things in life can only be learned through trust.” He fingered his bow slowly.

A wave of warmth was oozing over me, drawing me to something I didn’t understand.

“You must listen to the things that you try to ignore,” he commanded.

The cupid zipped to the window and fluttered his wings. “I see you’re frowning, my friend. For a while I expect you to be most miserable.”