25: Edmund j. Polly

Brig­it en­tered the café feel­ing even more de­flat­ed than when she had left Be­lin­da back at the of­fice. She had hoped to spend a few mo­ments with Mag­gie, to re­lax and per­haps vent ev­ery­thing that had gone on late­ly at work. Mag­gie was gone, though. By the time on the clock in the kitchen, Brig­it quick­ly re­al­ized that Mag­gie was still at work. It was prob­ably just as well, she de­cid­ed as she ex­it­ed the apart­ment they had shared to­geth­er. Mag­gie wouldn’t have heard a word she said any­way.

Giuseppe gave her his usu­al nod be­fore turn­ing to make her a cup of cof­fee. Brig­it thanked him qui­et­ly when the cup of the steam­ing brew was slid be­fore her. He had al­ready added the cream and sug­ar for her. The aro­ma of it was sweet to her phan­tom sense of smell. She wished for half a sec­ond that Giuseppe was a con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist. Yet, in the time since her first en­trance in­to the Bleeck­er Street Café, the smil­ing man be­hind the bar had nev­er ut­tered a word.

Brig­it turned her at­ten­tion to the win­dow. She knew that she need­ed to re­turn to work soon -- es­pe­cial­ly if she was go­ing to have any kind of ar­gu­ment to present to John when he re­turned to­mor­row. Per­haps, she thought as she sipped the cof­fee, he would be some­what con­sid­er­ate of the fact that she had tripled – if not quadru­pled – her work load on top of sac­ri­fic­ing her time with Mag­gie just to main­tain the pace dur­ing his ab­sence. There were so many sce­nar­ios to en­vi­sion, though. Brig­it de­cid­ed it was prob­ably best if she wast­ed no more time try­ing to find the per­fect one to hope for. John would do what­ev­er he would do. Brig­it would sim­ply have to suck it up and face what­ev­er he de­cid­ed to mete out in the form of dis­ci­pline. Her last re­main­ing hope was that, at the least, he would give her the chance to ex­plain what had re­al­ly hap­pened. She had the deep­en­ing sense that Sea­mus Flan­nery would tell a sto­ry that was far from the truth…

She was emerg­ing from this last thought when she felt it. It was an odd sen­sa­tion, she thought as she looked over her shoul­der at the spir­its seat­ed in the booths be­hind her. The feel­ing wasn’t com­ing from them. They seemed to be lost in their own thoughts and con­ver­sa­tions – ig­nor­ing com­plete­ly the fact that a Reaper was sit­ting amongst them. Slow­ly, Brig­it scanned the room for the eyes that she could feel bor­ing in­to her.

They were trained on her with a de­ter­mi­na­tion she could not have imag­ined him to have. The sad blue eyes that met hers seemed to silent­ly beck­on her to join him in the booth next to the front win­dow. As if un­der a pow­er not of her own, Brig­it stood and crossed the café un­til she was stand­ing be­fore him. With a wave of his hand, he in­vit­ed her to join him.

“What’s on your mind?” Brig­it asked, try­ing not to sound con­fused.

The old man with the sad blue eyes mere­ly stared at her. She not­ed that the sad­ness she usu­al­ly felt when pass­ing him was cur­rent­ly not present. She won­dered what had changed that he would fi­nal­ly re­lease such an emo­tion.

“Well?” Brig­it pressed be­fore rais­ing her cof­fee to take an­oth­er drink. The si­lence from the oth­er side con­tin­ued. Brig­it sat her cup on the ta­ble be­tween the, try­ing to de­cide whether to con­tin­ue to be po­lite and re­main at the ta­ble or to be rude and sim­ply walk away. Fi­nal­ly, she de­cid­ed it was best to get go­ing. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the old man was wast­ing her time. As she made to slide out of the booth, the old man caught her arm.

Sur­prised by the agili­ty of his mo­tion, Brig­it looked at the with­ered hand on her fore­arm and then slow­ly back at the old man. A gen­tle smile came to his lips as he stared deep in­to her eyes. Though his lips nev­er moved, she could have sworn she heard his voice clear­ly.

“Lis­ten with your mind, girl…”

At first, it was a clear whis­per and it star­tled her. It must have shown on her face. A big­ger smile be­gan to emerge on the old man’s lips.

“You didn’t move your mouth,” Brig­it said out loud. The old man nod­ded in agree­ment. “I don’t think I un­der­stand.”

“Just hear with your mind.” The in­struc­tion was some­what loud­er this time and Brig­it felt her­self re­lax­ing. “Can you hear me clear­ly?”

“Yes.”

Brig­it was still con­fused by it, but she no­ticed that she was be­gin­ning to hear it all. The con­ver­sa­tions from the booths be­hind her flowed eas­ily to her ears. She glanced over her shoul­der at the oth­er pa­trons of the cafe and saw that their mouths were not mov­ing de­spite the fact that their at­ten­tions were clear­ly fo­cused on the oth­er spir­it they were en­gaged with. Sud­den­ly, even Giuseppe had a voice – all be it – one with a very heavy Ital­ian ac­cent.

“How did this hap­pen?” Brig­it asked, re­turn­ing her at­ten­tion to the old man.

“It is a sim­ple pro­cess once you open your mind to it,” he an­swered. “My name is Ed­mund J. Pol­ly.”

“Brig­it Mal­one,” Brig­it in­tro­duced her­self.

“I know. Mr. Black­wick thinks quite high­ly of you. He was so ex­cit­ed the day you came in. I over­heard him telling Mr. Cin­cot­ta all about you be­fore you ar­rived. He was so re­lieved to have found some­one with the prop­er qual­ifi­ca­tion to be a Reaper,” Ed­mund J. Pol­ly re­lat­ed. Brig­it sud­den­ly felt the weight on her shoul­ders dou­ble.

“His per­cep­tion may change af­ter to­mor­row,” she sighed.

“Why would you think so?”

“I’ve failed to main­tain, Mr. Pol­ly. I was not ag­gres­sive enough in my man­ag­ing role and as a re­sult, Sea­mus Flan­nery has been hurt. So, es­sen­tial­ly, John and I are kind of back to where we were be­fore we found Sea­mus and it’s my fault.”

Ed­mund shook his head, but Brig­it was un­sure whether it was in amuse­ment or agree­ment that it was a bad place to be.

“That Mr. Flan­nery is a hot head. Don’t blame your­self, Miss Mal­one. He would have got­ten him­self in­to trou­ble one day whether you were present or not. The up side to that is that you were present, eh?”

“I was,” Brig­it con­firmed. “But I have the feel­ing Sea­mus will tell a very dif­fer­ent ver­sion of the sto­ry than what re­al­ly hap­pened,” she ad­mit­ted.

“Posh!” Ed­mund waved his old hand in dis­re­gard to his com­pan­ion’s ad­mit­ted fear. “So what if he does? You will sim­ply have to make sure you tell the true ver­sion of it, am I right?”

Brig­it nod­ded. As quick­ly as the weight on her shoul­ders had seemed to dou­ble, it sud­den­ly be­gan to feel lighter.

“May I ask you some­thing, Mr. Pol­ly?” she asked af­ter a few min­utes of lis­ten­ing to the qui­et hum of the café that sur­round­ed them. Ed­mund J. Pol­ly arched his eye­brows in pa­tient wait­ing for her ques­tion. “Ev­ery day that I have seen you here, you have looked so sad. Why?”

A touch of the sad­ness quick­ly re­turned to wrap it­self around Ed­mund J. Pol­ly. Brig­it im­me­di­ate­ly felt sor­ry for ask­ing the ques­tion.

“I’m wait­ing for the love of my life,” Ed­mund sighed. He turned to gaze out the win­dow as a pair of mor­tals strolled by arm in arm. They were young and so ob­vi­ous­ly in love. The rip­ples of their en­er­gies com­bined and cre­at­ed an enor­mous bub­ble that threat­ened to per­me­ate the glass of the ghost café they had just passed.

“You see, we were to meet here the night of the fire. It was so sud­den – like a grenade go­ing off. We all tried to run as soon as we smelled the smoke; but the roof col­lapsed so quick­ly. There were orig­inal­ly ten of us that were caught in the col­lapse. Some have al­ready crossed over, you see; but not me. Nor Giuseppe. He’s too proud to leave the café in some­one else’s care. He says he’ll be con­tent to stay here for eter­ni­ty. Some­thing about it be­ing a good busi­ness,” Ed­mund shook his head again. This time, Brig­it could see the amuse­ment flow­ing with his thoughts.

“How long will you wait for her?” Brig­it asked. Ed­mund J. Pol­ly lev­eled his gaze on her.

"For true love, I’ll wait for­ev­er. Sure­ly, you of all peo­ple would un­der­stand that con­cept, Miss Mal­one.” Brig­it nod­ded in silent agree­ment un­der his know­ing gaze. Sure­ly he would have over­heard her con­ver­sa­tions with John re­gard­ing Mag­gie.

“What was her name?” She fi­nal­ly asked.

“Lil­iana Mar­gari­ta de la Huer­ta. She was so beau­ti­ful,” Ed­mund sighed. “We were go­ing to elope that night so many years ago. It was our plan to use the mon­ey my fa­ther had giv­en me for col­lege to board a ship and sail for Spain. Lil­iana had fam­ily there, you see. We had the in­ten­tion to seek out their as­sis­tance in start­ing our lives to­geth­er there.”

“Why elope? Why not stay here and build your lives?” Brig­it asked. “You were in love. Sure­ly no one would have de­nied your hap­pi­ness,” she point­ed out. The old man on­ly shook his head.

“My fa­ther would have. It would not have been prop­er for some­one of my so­cial sta­tus to mar­ry Lil­iana. She was our house­keep­er, you see? My fa­ther was a very promi­nent busi­ness man with many so­cial and po­lit­ical ties. It would have been a scan­dal if our ro­mance had ev­er been dis­cov­ered. You still seem con­fused, Miss Mal­one,” Ed­mund J. Pol­ly point­ed out as Brig­it sud­den­ly re­al­ized he was telling the tale of a young man.

Her con­fu­sion arose from the vi­su­al sight that was sit­ting across from her. Ed­mund J. Pol­ly, as Brig­it saw him, was a man that ap­peared to be well in­to his sev­en­ties or ear­ly eight­ies at the time of his death – not a young man of maybe twen­ty.

“Well, I apol­ogize for say­ing so, but; you’re old. You’re telling me a sto­ry of young love,” Brig­it fi­nal­ly ad­mit­ted. A slight smile touched the old man’s face once more.

“I was young,” he con­firmed. “The vi­sion of me that you see now is the soul that was with­in the body that per­ished that night in the fire. I’m sure you have come to re­al­ize by now that not ev­ery­thing is as it ap­pears on this side of liv­ing,” he chuck­led.

“I sup­pose I should have thought of that,” Brig­it sighed.

“There is still much for you to learn, Miss Mal­one; but in due time you will pos­sess a wis­dom of this world that will ri­val Mr. Black­wick. You are a quick study. You must sim­ply re­mem­ber to keep an open mind.”

A com­fort­able si­lence fell be­tween them, as if they were long time friends. Ed­mund J. Pol­ly had be­come that, Brig­it thought. He had lis­tened to her and re­as­sured her as an un­der­stand­ing and car­ing friend would have and that amount of kind­ness meant the world to her at the mo­ment. He had been a young man with an old soul and he had taught her the sim­ple truth of the les­son be­hind hav­ing an opened mind. One could hear so much more if they just al­lowed them­selves to hear with more than their ears. One could say so much with­out ev­er open­ing their mouth. This was what she had learned from the old man with the sad blue eyes.

Af­ter awhile, Bir­git re­turned to her thoughts of work and the idea that she should get back to it as soon as pos­si­ble. When she said as much to her new friend, she found a small mea­sure of re­as­sur­ance in his blue eyes as he reached across the ta­ble and gen­tly pat­ted her hand.

“Have faith, Miss Mal­one. Mr. Black­wick is a sen­si­ble fel­low. Just be sure to be com­plete­ly hon­est with him. All will go well for you,” Ed­mund J. Pol­ly pre­dict­ed.

“Thank you, Mr. Pol­ly,” Brig­it said, forc­ing a slight smile to her face. Con­sid­er­ing the fact that Ed­mund J. Pol­ly had been sit­ting in this very same booth on the day that John Black­wick had first en­tered the café him­self, she guessed he would know bet­ter than she about her men­tor’s char­ac­ter.