Chapter Seven #2
‘Now do you see why this Love Library idea is a terrible thing? Why I didn’t want you leaving the library?
Just how many drinks did you pour down his throat when surely it’s obvious that the man has serious mental health issues?
’ Gabe paused to regroup. Regather. Then he could continue reading Tess the riot act though really he was more cross with Ella than this unfortunate woman who’d been the guinea pig for a scheme that was over now.
Gabe was really going to put his foot down.
He wouldn’t listen to any more pleas or excuses …
He realised that Tess was standing there motionless.
Even in the dark alley, lit only by a streetlamp at its far end, Gabe could see how pale she was.
She muttered something under her breath and put a hand to her chest. Gabe didn’t want to have his attention drawn to where her bosoms were heaving again.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she whispered. ‘No, I haven’t had that much to drink.’
‘I knew you were drunk in charge of library property! I knew it!’
Tess blinked as if she’d forgotten that Gabe was even there.
‘He went into the book. He did, didn’t he?
He was here and then, pouf!’ She waggled the fingers of the hand that wasn’t clutching his umbrella.
‘He was gone. Is that part of the whole shtick? A little bit of illusion magic to finish the show?’
‘There was no illusion. You saw what happened. He went back into the book,’ Gabe snapped, because it was late, it was still raining and she had his umbrella and so, to top off all his other grievances, he was very soggy. ‘Just like he came out of the book back in the library.’
‘But he didn’t come out of the book. He came through the doors in a shower of gold …’
‘That’s only because it wouldn’t be very practical to have a character come out of the book. Someone could get hurt. There are health and safety protocols …’
‘Do I look that gullible?’ Tess gestured towards herself, and she did look, if not gullible, then soft.
As if she gave people the benefit of the doubt even when they didn’t really deserve it.
‘Talking of health and safety protocols, you really need a better vetting process for the actors that you use.’
What was she talking about? ‘What are you talking about?’ Gabe asked, shuddering as a big fat raindrop plopped on his nose.
‘I appreciate that maybe playing a character out of a book for an immersive dating experience isn’t exactly Hamlet at the Globe and yes, in some ways it was admirable that he wouldn’t break character, but in a lot of other ways, it was actually really, really annoying.’
‘He wasn’t an actor,’ Gabe insisted because this woman had eyes. And a brain. Allegedly.
‘You mean he was just some random who knew a lot about Wuthering Heights …’
God, give him strength. Gabe ushered her closer. ‘Can you hold the umbrella over me for a second?’
‘I suppose.’ Tess took a few steps and then held up the umbrella. ‘You are very tall. Could you stoop a bit?’
Gabe ignored her and took out the book again, though he didn’t really know why he felt the need to give her another show and tell. He unlocked the book, his eyes fixed on Tess, who gazed back at him with a frown.
‘Nelly Dean,’ he said, opening the book, and in another shimmer of gold dust, there was the redoubtable lady herself standing a couple of metres away from them. She was in nightgown and nightcap and looked rightfully ticked off.
‘Really, Mr Sharma,’ she berated him. ‘Why the need to drag me from my bed at such a godforsaken hour? And in the rain too?’
‘I’m so sorry, Nelly,’ Gabe said. ‘Restore!’
Nelly disappeared in the cloud of grey glitter and a puff of smoke, which this time smelt of freshly baked bread and boot polish. Gabe shut the book again and locked it.
‘See! Not an actor.’
‘What the actual fuck?’ Tess breathed, dropping the umbrella, so it bounced on the ground, upturned and would be of absolutely no use now. ‘She came out of the book, she went back into the book. So, he … it wasn’t …’
‘Not an out-of-work actor. Heathcliff himself,’ Gabe said. Was she always this slow on the uptake?
‘It’s not possible,’ she insisted.
‘But you saw it with your own eyes. Twice!’ Gabe reminded her. ‘I don’t know why it’s such a shock. You know that we live in a world full of strange things. Of the unexplained. Donald Trump getting re-elected for a second term, for instance.’
Tess nodded slowly. ‘I guess,’ she said but she didn’t sound entirely on board.
‘Well, there you go then,’ Gabe said quickly and he hoped definitively. He was soaked. His jacket was pure wool and he was pretty sure that it was now destined to always smell like wet dog. ‘Can we go now because …?’
‘But we live in a world of technology and scientific shizz and that was … I can’t believe I’m even asking this, but was that magic?’
‘There have been lots of peer-reviewed studies correlating science with what lay people call magic, probably because they don’t have a grasp on basic metaphysics.’ Gabe was certain that Tess was one of those people.
‘Ordinarily, I’d be quite pissed off about you patronising me but right now, I’m too traumatised to process anything other than the fact that I’ve just been on a date with Heathcliff. Out of Wuthering Heights. Actual Heathcliff.’
Ordinarily, Gabe would have been quite entranced at the way her damp dress was now clinging to her curves, but brains went hand in hand with beauty for him and she was clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
‘Does it always take you this long to process quite simple information?’ He wasn’t even being sarcastic, well, maybe just a little bit, but because he genuinely wanted to know.
Even the most hopeless of his first-year undergraduate students were able to grasp basic concepts once they’d had them explained.
Tess blinked again as if she was coming back to life. The glare returned. ‘Oh my God, shut up!’ Then she stuck her tongue out at him. ‘You are one of the rudest men I’ve ever met and, again, I’ve just been on a date with bloody Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights fame.’
‘How many other Heathcliffs are there?’
‘Rude! So rude!’ Tess exclaimed and she picked up the umbrella, Gabe’s umbrella, which was full of water and about as much use in fending off the rain as holding a tissue over one’s head.
She thrust it away from her with a furious little huff, turned on her heel and stomped away.
‘I’d rather spend a whole week with Heathcliff than another second with you,’ she called over her shoulder.
‘I’d rather spend a whole week with Catherine de Medici than another second with you and she was a notorious poisoner,’ Gabe shouted after her because his toxic trait, according to Ella, was always having to have the last word.
‘Whatever!’
Apparently, it was Tess’s toxic trait too.
Gabe knew lots of things. Lots of complicated, intellectual things but he couldn’t explain how even though this wasn’t flirting, it still felt like flirting.