“Yes, all good.” James smirks behind his coffee mug. “Miscommunication is a bitch, you know.”
The corner of Nelle’s mouth tugs upward, as if James planted a hook where he kissed.
“Oh, I know, I—” Jessie cracks open the oven, and smoke spills out into her face, the dead smoke detector watching in amusement. “My quiche!”
Washington Square Park is a rare patch of green among the concrete, brick, and glass of the city.
James drops his empty coffee in a recycling can and finds a bench to sit on. Nelle settles in beside him. The last sentence in the journal reads,Nelle roams freely around the park.
After Jessie went to work, they spent the morning and early afternoon testing the boundaries of Nelle’s existence.
“Father already experimented with how much Icanbe controlled,” Nelle said before they left the apartment. “Time to figure out how I much I can’t.”
Though her independence doesn’t stretch beyond Jessie’s apartment door, James successfully wrote for her to roam all four floors of the Union Square Barnes & Noble. Why she can traverse one multifloor building and not another boggles him, but who is he to question thefickle rules of magic? Bryant Park also proved to be a success, so long as she stayed within its border. Central Park was a failure.
James discovers that he can write for her togoplaces by herself, like Quill did on the Fourth, but doing so requires a written command to return. They tried it with the coffee shop on the corner, and Nelle came back with two iced lattes, smiling brightly. James mirrored her glee, but in truth her joy only made his chest ache. Having been imprisoned by Quill her whole life, a simple solo walk down the street was a miraculous experience for her. And James takes it for granted every damn day.
He knew New York was a walking city, but holy hell, his legs are tired. He sits and digs two battered paperbacks from his back pockets, both from Jessie’s bookshelf, a romance and a thriller. In his left hand, a half-naked man and woman sit enraptured on a cliffside, wind thrashing their orgasmic expressions. In his right hand, a rain-streaked window looks out on a lamplit street.
“What’s this one about?” Nelle asks as he hands her a book.
“I think it’s a murder mystery.” He cracks open the romance novel, research fortrying something new. The dedication makes him smile:To my cat.Three pages in, he is walking in the author’s world. Two chapters later, if the two leads do not end up together, he will riot.
He looks up during the book’s turbulent midpoint, startled to see that his shadow has grown longer. People gather around the fountain, tossing pennies into its rippled water. A woman in a flat fedora strums a folk song, an open guitar case at her feet containing two crumpled dollar bills.
“Do you like your book?” Nelle asks.
“I do,” James says, flipping it over to examine the cover again. “It’s like if a strawberry milkshake was a novel.”
She jabs his side. “Inspirational?”
He thinks about the beats of the plot, the character-focused scenes, the banter between the two love interests. Would it be refreshing totake a break from castles, dragons, and battles to write about something softer? Something slightly more real?
He pulls out the pen with Nelle’s ink. “Want to grab another coffee before we go back to the apartment?”
“Sure,” Nelle says, “but I have another idea for after coffee, before home.”
Fresh cortado in hand, ice rattling, James steps after Nelle through the door of an antique store. Dust coats every shelf, yellow-paged book, and creepy doll. He gags on the smell of mildew as the doorbell tinkles. The old man behind the narrow counter smokes a cigarette and flips his magazine page.
“Nice place,” James mutters, steering clear of a supersize teddy bear covered in brown stains. “Are you looking to buy a demon-possessed Barbie?”
“No.” Nelle scans every shelf, low and high. “Just looking. How cool is this?” She plucks a gold locket from a necklace rack, the smooth oval engraved with a rose. Inside are tiny empty frames, waiting to house two floating heads.
James watches as she clicks the locket open and closed. “We should get it.”
Nelle double-checks his face. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He holds it up to the dim light. “We can put our faces in it.”
“I’d love that.” She spears down another cluttered aisle. “But we need to find a souvenir for you, too.”
He waves the idea away. “I don’t need anything.”
She gasps. “James!”
He ducks around the shelves and finds her kneeling on the floor next to a small suitcase.
“Isn’t thisgorgeous?” She unbuckles the case and opens the lid.
