It wasn’t that he was bossy. No one could be more self-effacing. It was as though he exuded a vapor she couldn’t help inhaling, some sort of airy potion that filled the inner spaces of her house, a delicate secretion that stuck to chairs and tables and clung to Annie’s nose and hair. Once again she played with the fancy that he was an emanation of her painted wall, while she, Annie, went back and forth between her playful images and the grubby facts of the real world—her overdue bills, her parking ticket, her occasional indulgence in booze. Annie winced, remembering last week’s embarrassing dinner in honor of a big important librarian, when she had drunk too much wine. When they had asked her for a few words, she had sprung up and talked too fast and giggled too much at her own jokes and sat down suddenly, nearly falling off her chair.
Of course Flimnap too had to navigate among the lumpy facts of commonplace life. He managed it very well, better than Annie. He could fix anything, make anything, do anything. And yet the Hitchcock chair he had repaired for Annie, gluing the rungs fast in their holes, now had a Flimnappian air. She liked to sit in it, as though his influence might flow up and saturate her soul.
Their relation as employer and employee had changed. Flimnap had begun to make up his own tasks, deciding for himself what needed to be done. Were they friends now, equals, partners? More than friends? Perhaps Flimnap didn’t really like her at all. She was eager to know what he thought of her, but there was some sort of gap between them. Something was wrong. Flimnap was like a puzzle with a missing piece. And in his case the piece was crucial. Without it the rest of the linked pieces didn’t hang together.
So things were on hold. Annie had become shy about looking at Flimnap directly. His light eyes seemed focused on things far away. Like her wall, he was a story without an end, like the enfolded tales of The Arabian Nights, told by Scheherazade to the heartless sultan. If Scheherazade were ever to complete the last of her stories, if her imagination ever faltered, she would lose her head. What was Flimnap’s last chapter? Who was waiting for him with a headsman’s ax?
Praise be to God … whose purposes concerning me are as yet hid in darkness.
The Thousand and One Nights
Chapter 21
The Gasts were having a party. All their friends came. Annie was invited, Flimnap wasn’t.
They had put up a fence between the two front yards. Annie walked through the gate and joined the party. It was a lovely April afternoon, as warm as a day in June, and everyone had drifted outside. Charlene carried around a tray of snacks. Some of her friends from school helped with the trays, and then they all gathered in Charlene’s room, and admired her princess doll and her swimming trophies and giggled and bounced on her bed.
A teenage babysitter had been provided for Eddy, but just when the talk and laughter were at their height, he appeared in the middle of the party, gaping up at the guests and clutching the front of his pants, which were wet. The teenager was indoors, helping herself to a glass of wine.
Roberta grasped Eddy by the collar, found the babysitter, hissed at her, and removed the two of them to the upper regions.
The party wound down and the guests departed. Annie went home, feeling sorry for Eddy. But as soon as she walked into her part of the house, she forgot about Eddy Gast. There was another unwanted face on her wall. Once again it was ugly and demonic. The eyes were fiercer than before, and the blue beard was matted with blood.
Annie stared at it, shocked and frightened. Who was doing this to her, who was invading her wall, disturbing her jolly visions of children’s stories? Who else could it possibly be but Flimnap? Surely it was Flimnap O’Dpugherty! Flimnap had a key to her house, he could walk on his hands and juggle six balls at once and keep three plates in the air (but not four). He could throw his hat in the air so cleverly that it came down on his head. Flimnap could do anything!
No, not quite anything, remembered Annie, exonerating him once again. It couldn’t be Flimnap, because he couldn’t draw at all. He couldn’t draw, he couldn’t write, he couldn’t even make a diagram. He had no use for pencil and paper. It was one of the missing pieces in the puzzle that was Flimnap O’Dougherty.
This time Annie got rid of the ugly face herself, brushing over it a coat of quick-drying varnish and a layer of ocher-colored paint. As the staring black-ringed eyes disappeared, she heard a whimpering from next door. Through the open windows came the sound of crying and raised voices.
Eddy was being punished. Poor Eddy!
The poor kid was certainly accident-prone. On the very day after the party, he had another misfortune on the highway. The door of his father’s car flew open and Eddy tumbled out. Somehow the traffic behind the car missed him as he rolled over and over and sat up, dazed and bruised, in the middle of the road.