Mesmerized, Annie watched the top until it wallowed to a stop and lay on its side. Then she picked it up and looked at it. It was an ordinary old-fashioned wooden top. Her brother John had owned one just like it a long time ago.
Later on, when Flimnap came in from mowing the entire front lawn, Annie showed him the top. “This is yours?”
“Perhaps.” Flimnap took it, pulled a string out of his pocket, wound it carefully around the top, and flung it on the floor. Again the top whizzed and sang.
Annie laughed and began putting away her groceries, comparing the prosaic contents of her kitchen shelves with the sprightly presence of Flimnap O’Dougherty. Flimnap didn’t belong in the world of paper bags and canned tomatoes and cartons of milk. He was a refugee from her wall, an escapee, a participant in its astonishing events. He belonged up there in that gallery, along with Aesop and Beatrix Potter and Hans Christian Andersen. Their enchanted plaster was the air he breathed.
Someone knocked on the glass of the French door. “Hello there, Eddy,” said Flimnap, opening it, letting him in.
“Oh, Eddy,” said Annie. “I’m sorry, but I can’t read to you today. I have to go to Cambridge.”
“It’s all right,” said Flimnap. “I’ll be here for a while. Come on, Eddy, look at this.” Once again, while Annie hurried the rest of her groceries into the refrigerator and slammed her cupboard doors, Flimnap spun the top.
Eddy wanted to try it. Flimnap wound the string for him, but when Eddy threw it down, the top fell on its side and rattled across the floor. Annie hurried into her bedroom and changed her clothes. When she came back, Flimnap was juggling plastic plates. “One, two, three—whoops!” The fourth plate bounced on the floor. “I can never manage four,” said Flimnap, grinning at Eddy. He tried again, while Eddy laughed and clapped his hands.
Annie spent half the day in Harvard Square, taking a holiday from her painted wall. She met Minnie Peck for lunch. Min made huge metal sculptures from car parts, bedsprings, and old washing machines. Annie was envious of Min’s cosmopolitan life. She was always popping off to New York for a gallery opening or a play. She knew everybody in the contemporary art scene. Today at lunch she told Annie about a party for some illustrator, Miguel Somebody.
“Miguel Delgado?”
“That’s right. He does those crazy clowns, right? And elephants? Green and purple elephants?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. What’s he like?”
“Oh, really good-looking, sexy. Long black hair, and he’s got these burning eyes.”
“Oh, Min, did anybody mention Noakes? Joseph Noakes I’ve heard a rumor that he’s dead.”
“Oh, no, he was there. He’s not dead.”
“Oh, thank goodness. What’s he like?”
“Noakes? Oh, sort of stark and really intense. Big shoulders. Gorgeous. You know.” Then Min wrinkled her brow with doubt. “Unless it was Boakes, Joe Boakes. Is there somebody called Boakes?”
Annie sighed and picked up the carafe of wine. Joseph Noakes-Boakes sounded a lot like her old boyfriend Jack. But now Min was off on something else, her latest work of art. “I call it Millennial Woman. It’s almost finished. It’s hubcaps, shiny hubcaps, rusty hubcaps, thousands of hubcaps. And you know what? It would look really fabulous on your lawn.” Min reached across the table and gripped Annie’s arm. “Look, why don’t I truck it over? You could try it here and there. Special price for an old friend.”
“Well, I don’t know, Min,” said Annie cautiously. “I was thinking more of a sundial.”
On the way home she felt slightly tipsy. On Route 2 she stared straight ahead, widening her eyes, concentrating on the traffic rushing ahead of her, beside her, behind her, then ramming on her brakes when the car in front suddenly veered to one side and stopped with a jolt.
Something had run out on the road, some kind of animal. The driver yelled out the window, “Jesus Christ, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He wasn’t yelling at Annie, he was shouting at a small shape on the road. While other cars dodged around her and sounded angry horns, she threw open the door and ran to Eddy.
“Is that your kid?” bellowed the man who had nearly driven over him. “Criminal negligence,” he shouted at Annie, as she hurried Eddy back to her car and pushed him into the front seat.
“Eddy,” she said, working her way back into the slow lane, “what happened? What were you doing out there on the highway?”
“Cambridge,” he said, looking up at her, his voice trembling. “Going to Cambridge.”