Chapter Six
SIX
Callahan
I press my forehead to the cool wood of the desk—which I used an entire container of disinfectant wipes on after I walked in on Harold and Inés getting freaky—and let out a groan.
“The Development of Taxidermy and the History of Ornithology” by Paul Lawrence Farber, as it turns out, is entirely useless to me despite the article’s promising title.
All right, that might be unfair to the late Professor Farber; I do at least now know this goose is not from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries.
Which I kind of already assumed, considering its relatively good condition, and the way it—
CRASH!
I spring up from my chair and rush out of the office to the front of Virtu to see what the hell happened. It sounded a lot like…
Oh, shit. It was.
Broken glass is strewn over the floor in both large chunks and barely visible shards that glitter in the cracks of the hardwood and the low-pile fibers of the Persian rug beside it.
I’m attempting to figure out by the color and pattern what exactly has shattered when I realize that Annie is standing there, looking like she’s using every ounce of her strength to hold back tears as deep red trickles over the edge of her palm like the world’s slowest, most macabre waterfall.
“Geez, Annie,” I say and move toward her. Some of the glass crunches under my boot as I motion for her to let me see. I’ll need to grab the Shop-Vac to clean up the floor, but that’s the very least of my concerns at the moment.
Her lower lip trembles as she uncurls her fingers and holds out her injured hand. “I—I was trying to get a better angle on the cocktail pitcher with the g-gold and I don’t know what happened. The handle just…broke in my hand and the rest of it fell to the floor.”
“I told you not to move anything without talking to me first.” I try to keep my voice soft and the anger out of it.
Because while I’m slightly annoyed about the destruction of a stock piece and the resulting mess, the thing that has me downright furious is the blood pooling in Annie’s cupped palm.
I hate that she’s hurt, and that it feels like my fault somehow.
“I know. I’m sorry.” The tears finally spill over her cheeks as she apologizes.
“You don’t need to be sorry,” I say. “Just…come on. We need to clean that up and see if you need stitches.”
“But the mess—”
“Isn’t going anywhere.” When she looks at me with her chin tilted down and those deep rosy-brown eyes cast up to meet mine, it activates some strange protective instinct inside me. “Come on,” I say again and gently cup her elbow, steering her toward the stairs.
“Where are we going? The bathroom is—”
“Up to my apartment. I have a better-stocked first aid kit there.”
Annie takes the stairs slowly, and I let my hand hover at her lower back in case she starts to feel unsteady. I don’t think she’s lost a ton of blood, but she does look alarmingly white. When we reach the top, I move ahead of her to unlock the door faster than I have in my entire life.
“Do you think you can warsh it in the kitchen zink—I mean, wash it in the kitchen sink—while I grab the kit?” Despite quickly correcting myself, I can’t help but be embarrassed by the accent slip; there’s an Ivy League diploma and a master’s degree hanging on my wall, and yet certain words still sometimes come out of my mouth sounding like my crabber grandfather when I’m not careful.
But Annie doesn’t say anything about it, only nods, sniffling.
I open the hall closet and grab Graham’s old red metal toolbox, which never actually held any tools.
Instead, it’s filled to the brim with all sorts of bandages, ointments, and braces.
He was notorious for his clumsiness—a result of clearly undiagnosed ADHD that frequently affected both his spatial awareness and attention span.
I put together this first aid kit for him as a birthday present when I was seventeen, and Graham got a good laugh out of it.
When I started cleaning up the apartment to live in myself post-breakup, I came across the box, kept refreshed and well-stocked even after all those years, even after he moved in with his partner, Francis, and wasn’t living here anymore.
As if my small gesture of showing I cared meant something infinitely larger than the gift itself.
I cried for two hours straight that night.
No time for those memories now. Annie needs me. I grab the box and stride back to the kitchen.
Annie’s seated at the table, diluted red blooming like watercolor paint through the damp paper towel she has wrapped around the injury. I wash and dry my hands, then sink to my knees in front of her. She holds her bloody palm out to me without my having to ask. Like she trusts me to make it better.
That shouldn’t make me feel as good as it does.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, wincing as I inspect the gash. “I’ll pay for it.”
“Shush.”
“Why are you shushing me?”
“Because you’re being stupid.”
Her eyebrows raise in an expression that clearly means excuse you?
Thankfully, the cut isn’t as long or as deep as I feared, but there are some small pieces of glass stuck in it. Something I think we can take care of here instead of going to urgent care. “You don’t have to pay for it,” I say, reaching for tweezers and an alcohol wipe. “It isn’t a big deal.”
Now the eyebrows say, I don’t believe that for a second.
“Okay,” I admit, wiping down the tweezers. “It’s sort of a big deal. But not a huge one. That pitcher was only worth about a hundred bucks, and Harold got it from some estate sale for like thirty. It’s not going to make or break us.”
“Still,” she says, then sucks in a sharp breath as I find and remove a tiny sliver of glass.
“I told you, some of the stuff at Virtu is more fragile than it looks. And yeah, you shouldn’t be picking glassware up by the handle. But I also should have been out there to help you instead of leaving you alone. So, consider yourself absolved.”
There’s a moment of silence while I adjust her hand to get a better look at what I’m doing.
“You said you came here once as a kid. Did you meet Graham?” I ask, keeping my attention on her injury even though my eyes desperately want to find hers.
Her head moves in my peripheral vision—a nod, I think. “Yeah. He was really nice to me.”
“He was a good man,” I say quietly, uncomfortable with how much of an understatement that description is.
In reality, he was the best. Out of nothing but the kindness of his heart he decided to teach me—a kid to whom he owed absolutely nothing—everything he knew about antiques and about life, all while allowing me to feel the sort of parental love and support my mother never had the time or inclination to provide.
But that isn’t the point I’m trying to make, so I let it go.
“He was also incredibly accident-prone. Apparently, one time shortly after he and Harold opened the shop, he tripped on the corner of a rug and fell straight through a seven-thousand-dollar hand-painted panel screen.”
I do look up then and find Annie’s eyes have gone wide. “Holy shit! Seven thousand?”
“Yep. So these sorts of things happen. And it’s often much, much worse than a one-hundred-dollar pitcher.”
“That does make me feel a little better,” she says. Her free hand grips the edge of the chair as if she might get launched off any second while I tweeze out another piece. “Jesus, I wish you could stop doing that already.”
“I wish I could too. It feels sort of like playing Operation, and I never particularly enjoyed that game.”
“You don’t seem the type to enjoy games at all,” she says with a slight slant to the corner of her mouth.
I frown. “I like chess.”
“Of course you do.”
The wound finally clear of debris, I dig around in the box for the antibiotic ointment.
“I’ll have you know, Annie O’Neill, despite everything you think you know about me, I am actually a very fun person.
” I can’t even manage to get through the sentence with a straight face, it’s such an egregious lie.
Fun has simply never been high on my list of priorities.
I had too many responsibilities for much of it as a child, caring for my ailing grandfather while my mother worked two or three jobs.
Then, as a teen and young adult, it seemed more important to spend my free time studying and improving myself, so I’d become the person Graham believed I could be.
So that he wouldn’t regret the kindness he extended to me when I probably didn’t deserve it.
I’m grateful the sardonic quip at least gets a chuckle out of Annie. “Of course you are,” she says placatingly.
We both turn serious as I put some antibiotic ointment on a square of gauze, then place it over the cut and secure it with medical tape.
Our fingertips slide against each other as I pull away, and our eyes meet at that exact second.
It feels so intimate. I don’t know if I glance away first, if she does, or if we manage to do it simultaneously, as if coming to a mutual agreement that it’s all just a bit too much for two strangers who won’t be knowing each other long enough to bother getting comfortable having capital-M Moments like this.
Although it’s interesting that it seems like she isn’t totally opposed to the idea. Or at least not as opposed as she might have been before.
“I’m actually the one who owes you an apology, anyway,” I say, hand planted on the corner of the table as I hoist myself up from the floor.
“I know I haven’t been particularly welcoming or nice and…
well, I’m really sorry about that. I’m under quite a bit of stress at the moment, but that isn’t an excuse for how I’ve treated you.
I’m going to try to do better going forward. ”
Annie looks up at me from where she’s sitting on one of the dining room chairs, and I realize for the first time that, despite how challenging I’ve found it having her here while I have so many other concerns needing my attention, it has never actually felt wrong.
“Okay,” she says. “Thank you. For that, and uh, this.” She holds up her bandaged hand. “And if you change your mind about me paying for the pitcher…”
Annie’s words generate the image of the broken glass all over the floor downstairs, which reminds me that I didn’t actually lock the shop door in my hurry to take care of her.
“Ah, fuck,” I say. “We’re still open downstairs.
I need to go make sure no one came in while we were busy here and close things up for the afternoon. ”
“I can help—”
She starts to stand and I lightly press her shoulder until she’s seated again. “I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.”