Chapter Four #2
Calisa pushed the covers off and clicked on the light.
It sounded like Jack hadn’t actually gone to sleep, which was excellent since there was no way she was falling asleep anytime soon, not with the way her thoughts kept bouncing around in her skull, and if she lay here in the dark and the silence too long, she’d begin to brood.
Or worse, mope. She had zero intention of moping while she was here, whether it was for three days or the entire summer.
She paused at the door, glancing down at her nightshirt and flannel shorts.
The shirt was emblazoned with the silhouette of a superhero and a robot beneath the words “Fight Evil, Read Books.” No holes.
No stains. Eh, it’s fine. She didn’t want to delay to change into clothes and risk Jack heading back upstairs before she had the chance to talk with him again.
Taking her key, Calisa slipped into the hallway. The carpet felt like moss under her bare feet. It silenced her footsteps, making her feel like she was tiptoeing, even though she wasn’t. She passed by the stairs, through the lobby, and into the kitchen.
Standing at the counter amid the stacks of pots and bowls was a fifty-to-sixty-year-old man, as thin as a skeleton, with wild white hair that poked out at all angles and skin so pale he looked nearly translucent.
He was wearing all black—a black turtleneck, black slacks, and a single black gem earring—and humming “Ain’t No Sunshine” as he poured milk into a bowl.
He had to be one of the guests.
“Hi,” Calisa said.
“Gah!” His hand shook as he jumped, and milk splashed onto the counter. “Oh dear.”
“Sorry!” Calisa rushed forward and grabbed a towel from next to the sink. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She mopped up the spilled milk while he fluttered near her, flapping his arms like a bird.
“What a mess, what a shame,” he said.
“It’s fine. No worries.”
“Oh no, dear girl, you shouldn’t have to clean my disaster,” he said. But she’d already finished. It hadn’t been more than a spatter—the towel was barely damp. “Very kind of you. Yes, indeed. I am grateful.”
“I’m the one who startled you,” Calisa said. “Not your fault, and not a disaster at all.”
“Of course, yes, of course.” He beamed at her.
She smiled back, feeling awkward. What was a brand-new B more like vice versa.
She relaxed a little. Surely, Auntie Zee wouldn’t kick her out just for interacting with a guest.
He sighed dramatically. “I’m relieved to hear it. I was assured it wouldn’t be a bother if I used the kitchen facilities after-hours. I know we all come to the Faraway Inn for a sliver of peace to touch our souls, and I wouldn’t dream of disturbing the repose of the other guests.”
Calisa pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t laugh.
He reminded her of a man she’d seen at the renaissance fair that Crystal had dragged her and Maddy to last summer—a willowy man in a black cloak who’d spouted poetry while hawking corsets.
Like that man, this guest enunciated every sentence as if it were a sonnet.
“No repose disturbed,” she told him. “And I’m not one of the guests.
I’m Calisa, Auntie Zee’s niece. I’m working here for the summer. ” Hopefully.
He laid his hand over his heart, and she thought for an instant that he was going to bow. “Ah, a blood relation of our illustrious hostess! I’m honored to meet you. My name is Mulligan, and I am a regular visitor to this bucolic haven.”
“Nice to meet you,” Calisa said. “I just arrived today, so I don’t know anything yet, but is there something I can help you with? What are you making?”
“Ah! This”—he gestured at the bowl with a flourish—“is a potion for the wounded heart. A salve for a shattered soul. A concoction to comfort those caught in the crushing misery of an unkind fate.” He struck an actor-overplaying-Hamlet pose, arm raised, head back, silhouetted against the darkness of the kitchen window.
She wondered if Mulligan had ever done theater. “Sounds great.”
He dropped his hand. “It is more colloquially known as ‘hot chocolate.’ ”
Calisa grinned. “Definitely great.”
“I make it from scratch with only the finest ingredients: whole milk, unsweetened cocoa powder, sugar, chopped chocolate, and the secret ingredient…vanilla extract from the highest-quality bean in all the known realms.” He lifted a bottle of vanilla, displaying it as if it were a rare wine bottle. “Would you care to join me?”
She opened her mouth to say no, she was fine.
“It eases heartache.”
“Sure, yes, that would be nice,” she said. “Thank you.”
Mulligan smiled so widely that the skin of his cheeks stretched thin.
“Delightful indeed to have company in this time of sorrow, to share the pain of existence with a fellow traveler of the deepest part of the night.” He bustled over to the stove and placed a copper pot on it, and then he poured the mixture he’d been stirring in the bowl into the pot.
“Low heat, and when it’s ready, we shall add the chocolate.
Would you be a dear, my dear, and chop-chop-chop?
” He flapped his hand toward the counter.
She located the bag of chocolate, tied with a pink ribbon. As she opened it, the scent of chocolate rolled out, and she breathed it in, rich and luxurious. “Smells wonderful.”
“The most wonderful!” Mulligan agreed. “It is made from the rarest of cocoa beans, cultivated by the reclusive denizens of the forest of everlasting day and obtained from the Night Market.”
She wondered where that was. He did have a bit of an accent. Maybe British? Maybe Indian? She couldn’t tell. “Sounds amazing. How much should I chop?”
“A generous amount, my sweet fellow seeker of solace.” He stirred the milk and cocoa while she spilled a handful of chocolate chunks onto a cutting board and located a knife. “Tell me, what has drawn you out of slumber and into the cold unflinching night?”
Again, it was only nine-thirty, but she wasn’t going to point that out.
“You don’t need to share if you don’t wish to,” Mulligan continued. “I don’t intend to pry. If you wish to hold your pain close—”
“Heartbreak,” Calisa said. “Really ordinary, embarrassing, he-cheated-on-me-then-tried-to-lie-about-it heartbreak. It’s not a very interesting story, and I’m hoping that this place will help me forget it.
” She said it as lightly as she could. Not going to mope.
It wouldn’t bring back the imagined dream of a future with Ethan, the summer she was supposed to have, the next school year, whatever followed…
. She’d spent time worrying about how they’d fare with a long-distance relationship after graduation, if she went off to one college and he went to another.
She’d nearly decided to pick the same city as him, when it came time.
But they hadn’t made it to senior year. Or even July.
“Ah, yes, the pain of life’s inexorable cruelty.
I know it well. I too am nursing a heartache, though of a different sort.
” He sighed even more dramatically than before.
“Mine is the pain of regret, of failure, for I continue to fail the one I love the most.” He gazed out the window for a moment at the darkened gardens and then said, “But I think you are perhaps not as cavalier about your wound as you pretend? It is new, yes?”
She felt a lump in her throat. It wasn’t all that new—it had been a few weeks, and she had plenty of proof that she was better off without him. Other stories about other girls…He wasn’t who she’d thought he was.
It still hurt, though. Like someone had reached into her heart and clawed out a chunk.
“Chop as fine as you wish,” Mulligan advised. “It will only melt faster. Like joyful memories as time dissolves them in the never-ending night of loss.”
“It’s more that I miss who he should have been,” Calisa said. “What I thought I had. What I did have—I have all these joyful memories, yes, but I also had all these hopes and dreams.” She sliced the chocolate into slivers.
“You mourn the loss of someone who never was,” Mulligan said. “A future that never will be. That is as much a death as a true one.”
“Except he’s walking around, smiling and laughing.” She chopped faster.
“He is not. That is a simulacrum. You carry the true him in your heart, or the him as he could have been, and there is no shame in that. Allow yourself to feel what your heart wishes to feel. Do not deny your pain.”
That was…actually nice to hear. So many friends told her to forget him, that he wasn’t worth a single tear, that he didn’t deserve her pain, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.
“I’m not denying it,” Calisa said. “I’m just hoping that being here and far away from his smiling and laughing simulacrum will, you know, make it better.
” She wasn’t sure if it would work. She wasn’t doing a good job distracting herself from thoughts of him so far.
“Did you…Is that why you’re here? Do you want to talk about your heartache? ”
He smiled, stretching his skeletal face. “Not at present, but I thank you for your kindness in asking, and for your assistance with tonight’s concoction.”
She showed him the slivers on the cutting board. “Is this the right amount?”
He clapped his hands together. “Perfection! Now, bring them here.”