Free Bloody Fabulous by Ekaterina Sedia Page A

would be completely in my interest to see you again.”
    It’s been awhile since anyone flirted with me. But it’s not me he’s flirting with. It’s a woman with long hair in a red blouse.
    “I have to go,” I tell him. “My condolences, again, on your father.”
    Out on the sidewalk, I see that he rode here on a motorcycle. If ever Sorrow had reason to wail, it’s because of men and their motorcycles. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?” he asks.
    Banshees can lie just like anyone else. “No, my ride is coming.”
    He passes me his leather coat. “You’ll freeze to death in the meantime. Take this.”
    His hands brush my shoulders as he helps pull it on. I think, under slightly different circumstances, he might try to kiss my cheek. And I’d let him. But the rawness is still in him, and it stings.
    He goes his way and I go mine.
    At the hotel I realized I don’t have any way to return his jacket. Worse, still, he left his cell phone in the inside pocket. A nice silver gadget, one with all the latest apps. I call the number from the Craigslist ad but it goes to voicemail. I can’t just leave it, so I take it with me on the flight and back in Dublin leave it in a kitchen drawer. The leather jacket, I wear to market. It smells like an American soldier and it looks good on me.
    It’s my luck to work on Thanksgiving. It’s also my luck to catch the flu and spend the week afterward sick in bed, because being a banshee doesn’t save you from tiny little bacteria of doom. And it’s my luck that I’m just getting out of the shower, barely feeling well again, when my neighbor Mr. Hubbard comes knocking to borrow sugar again.
    Except that the man on my door is not Mr. Hubbard at all.
    “Sorry.” John O’Neill eyes my oversized men’s bathrobe and spiky wet hair. “Bad time?”
    Dark circles stain the skin under his eyes, and he’s got the sour smell of a man who’s been cooped up recently on an airplane. He’s wearing rumpled civilian clothes.
    “How did you find me?” I ask.
    “You have my phone. It has a GPS function.”
    “Did you plan that?” I ask angrily. “Lend me your jacket just so you could track it across the world?”
    “No. I didn’t plan it. But it was lucky for me that you turned it on while you were here,” he says. “You cut your hair. It looks good.”
    Surely he’s kidding. Very few men like short hair on a woman. They think we’re lesbians or man-haters. But he seems sincere.
    “Can I come in?” He holds up a paper bag. “I brought bagels. With nutella. I don’t like nutella, but I thought maybe you would.”
    So, yes, I’m angry he came looking for me, but let’s be frank. My doorstep hasn’t seen this fine a man since the bathroom flooded and the landlord sent Thomas the plumber. Shabby clothes but a chiseled jaw and lovely biceps, that Thomas.
    “It’s a mess inside,” I warn him.
    “I live in a barracks with a dozen unwashed men. When they throw their underwear aside, sometimes it sticks to the wall.”
    I grimace. He grimaces, too, and says, “Sorry, I’ve been awake for twenty hours.”
    “Just to come see me?”
    “It’s my mother,” he says. “She’s dying.”
    Once inside, seated at my breakfast table, he tells the whole tale. He’d barely been settled back with his unit in Iraq before the Red Cross delivered another message. His mother has fallen ill and is not expected to survive much longer. He’s the only child, no close relatives to speak of, and she needs him. Also, she asked for him to bring home the “girl who sang” for his father.
    “I know it’s an imposition,” he says. “But it’s a dying woman’s wish and I’d be in your debt.”
    It’s hard to look him in the eye. “I’m sorry about your mother, but I’m not allowed. I’m not properly qualified. It’s a special thing that requires a special person. But I can find you one . . . ”
    “I don’t need anyone else,” he says. “You’re qualified enough. You sang