The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [83]
Bari simply adored Andrew’s Chinese wontons.
“What are you doing? Bari, stop that!” Andrew entered the kitchen and halted before the sight. He was wearing a black, thick-cotton dress shirt, black Levi’s and a slim white tie. “Those aren’t for you.”
Bari was caught, startled, vanished immediately into whatever dimension she next occupied. The consumed food, of course, material as it was, plopped onto the tile floor in a semi-digested, disgusting pile from where her midsection once was. She then reappeared a few feet away, the lower torso of her slender golden body wispy torrents of air, which blew and swirled against the hem of the tablecloth in rippling waves, much in the same fashion as the tips of her waist-length flowing black hair.
She looked upon Andrew apologetically, like a sorrowful puppy dog. She could no longer find nourishment nor sustenance in food, but she could sure as hell taste it.
To Andrew, it was almost like living in Bewitched.
Andrew entered the kitchen, made his way to the stove. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Bari said. “I’m just so used to it being me and you. I know better.”
“How many did you eat anyway?” He sidestepped the messy glob on the floor.
“Only a few. They’re for you and your monumental date, I know. I just couldn’t help myself. I was once human too, you understand.”
“So you’ve always told me.” He checked and rewrapped the aluminum foil, lowered the flame on the kettle and covered it. He then turned to face her, could not avoid the serene glare of those orange glowing eyes, how they never failed to mesmerize him, even after all those years. “You set me up with her, didn’t you?”
Bari was silent, watched him.
Andrew continued, “You don’t have to tell me. I know. You’ve never allowed me to see anyone so easily, so...coincidentally. I’ve thought about this and it didn’t take me long. You’re not as much a mystery to me as you think you are.”
“Oh, but I am,” Bari told him truthfully. “You just perceive me on a human level. And you’ve become quite used to my presence in your life. My intervention. But as I’ve told you oftentimes before, you still don’t know exactly what I am. You only know me as who I am. As the mystical Bari that no one else has but you. And you don’t even know who exactly it is that are. You’ve just lived in your awareness of me long enough to accept me and to keep me a secret.”
“Yeah, like The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.”
“I am not a television show.”
“Well, you sure make it seem like I’m in one. No Other guy I’ve ever met or heard of has what I have with you. And no one would ever believe me.”
“No one ever has.”
“Thanks to you.”
“But that doesn’t mean no one ever will.”
Andrew let out a sigh, reentered the living room and seated his anxious self into the black leather recliner under the bookshelf lamplight. He glanced at the wall clock, which returned a 7:05 glare. In the kitchen behind him, Bari swept her scrumptious residue into a dustpan with her hands, as he knew she would.
Then came the sudden, awaited door chime.
His date had arrived. This was a given, since he scarcely had visitors and the time was right. He catapulted from the recliner, re-checked the kitchen and dining room area. Bari had vanished from sight.
Very good.
Now, hopefully, he could commence with the evening at hand.
Without interruption.
***
The directions Andrew had given Mel during the prior day’s brief phone conversation proved simple enough to follow, but it was only until she was en route early that Sunday evening when it began to strike her as curiously odd that the place Andrew called home lay right smack in the armpit of The Crow Job’s nefarious backyard. It didn’t seem to make much sense that