Flynn arrived at the corporate flat around ten that evening. There were four messages on his phone, left since yesterday morning when he’d gotten the call from Joe that the homicide case had broke.
The first was from Iris. “Flynn, darling, do ring me, please. I’ve got some important news.” Good try, Iris, old girl. She was wising up, devising new techniques to harass him.
The second message was from his mother. “Oh Flynn, darling, I was so hoping you’d be in,” she said. “Your father wants to speak with you. Please ring us, will you, so that your father might have a word. Hugs, darling!”
Dear God, now Mum had roped Dad into the whole sordid affair. He felt sorry for the old man, could imagine him fighting tooth and nail to be left out of the gruesome details of Flynn’s love life, but nevertheless being dragged in bit by bit with Mum’s shrill harping, at last giving in for just a moment’s peace, a whimpering shell of the former man he was.
The third message was, as he had guessed, from Rachel, and he winced with each breath she took in her rather long message to him. Christ, he’d really made a mess of it, hadn’t he?
And the last message, the big surprise, was from his brother Ian. “Hello, mate, calling from Paris. Mum’s been a pain in the arse and hounding me a bit, so I thought I’d at least ring you up and see what’s gone on between you and the dragon lady,” he said, referring to Iris—Ian had never been shy about his dislike of her. “Give me a ring when you’ve a moment. Cheers,” he said, and clicked off.
Flynn picked up the phone and dialed Rachel’s number, and got the answering machine. “Ah . . . Flynn here. Rachel, I’m terribly sorry about yesterday. Something rather important came up, and I was called away. Please do ring me,” he said, and hung up, unable to think of how to convey how sorry he was to a blasted answering machine.
And then Flynn lay on the cheap plastic leather couch waiting for the phone to ring, not unlike he had done in his eighth school year when he had waited for Mary Elizabeth to ring up. Just like that night a thousand years ago, he had stared at the ceiling. Except then, he’d stared at a poster of Duran Duran, not a water stain as he was staring at now.
And he was discovering that the wait was just as excruciating at thirty-four years old as it was at thirteen.
Twice, Flynn sat up and reached for the phone, determined to ring again. And twice he lay down again, debating. It was too late, well past midnight, and moreover, he didn’t want to come across as some sort of adolescent stalker. It hadn’t worked particularly well for him the first time. He did, however, call again Saturday morning, when he awoke stiff and freezing on that bloody couch. Bugger, he got her answering machine again, and he was not inclined to leave another groveling message.
He was not inclined to do much of anything but mope around and feel rather sorry for himself, which he did until early afternoon.
Rachel arrived home Saturday afternoon after her temporary stint in a very small glassed-in booth of a gas station which was really suitable for only one person, not two, but nevertheless, she had stood behind Mabel Forrester and run credit cards through the machine.
“Don’t know why they sent you down here,” Mabel said more than once. “I don’t usually got no one here with me.”
“Maybe because of the holiday traffic,” Rachel offered.
Mabel gave a harrumph at that. “It ain’t as if I can’t turn around and run them cards myself,” she muttered.
The woman had a point. Seated in the only chair in the booth, Mabel could swivel around and do just about anything, including stare at Rachel during the few lulls that they had.
It had been a long, exhausting day, both physically and emotionally. As she explained to Mabel (when they had bonded a little later in the day), her date with Mike last evening had been a good one. They’d had a couple of drinks and listened to a rock band that was too loud for her tastes. And then he had returned her to her car and kissed her like any guy would do, and it had been perfectly nice. Just . . . nice. No sizzle, no spark, no desire to hop in the sack with him.
“So? Don’t see him again,” Mabel had said.
“I know . . . but the thing is, Mike is the more practical choice,” Rachel had argued earnestly. “I mean, he’s a nice guy, he likes me, he’s local. But Flynn . . .” She moaned, looked out the murky glass windows at the cars lined up at the pump. “Flynn is like . . . a dream guy. Someone you would never imagine meeting in a million years, you know?”
Mabel snorted. “Girl, why would you want to be living practical when you can be living the dream?” she’d asked, and snorted again. “I’d live the dream my damn self,” she muttered, and swiveled around again to accept money from two guys with dreadlocks.
Live the dream my damn self. How lyrical that had sounded.