UNINVITED GUEST

1. There’s A Man In My Bed

Yeah, it sounds stupid, but I came home at 12:30 a. m. and found a guy sleeping in my bed, and I thought nothing of it.

Overnight guests weren’t new; ever since we were in high school, my parents made the rule that anyone who’d been drinking had to stay the night. From then on, it wasn’t unusual to see someone on the couch early Saturday or Sunday morning.

The practice carried over when Paulie and I got our own place. His friends are always over here, and I guess I just got used to it. So when I found someone crashed in my bed, it wasn’t alarming. Annoying, maybe, but not alarming.

I pulled out the couch (where our guest should have slept) and made it up. I finally got to sleep about one o’clock.

I woke up about eight or so, and tiptoed out to the kitchen to make some coffee. Once Paul got his butt out of bed, I’d have a few words with him about my room being off-limits to crashers. I didn’t even know the guy, though he looked like someone who had been here for the Super Bowl party. We had four or five staying over that night, but I didn’t think he was one of them.

Paulie must have smelled the coffee; he made his appearance shortly after I did. “Hey, Toni.”

“Listen, baby brother,” I said, “next time you invite your friends to spend the night, make sure they sleep on the couch.”

He looked at me. “I’m not following you.”

“There’s somebody sleeping in my bed.”

“Right now?”

“He was there when I got in last night. You mean you didn’t invite him?”

“No.”

I thought about it. We had been to a family wedding the night before, and most of the family knew about our open-door policy. “Maybe he’s one of Greg and Kay’s friends.”

“Wouldn’t he be staying at their place then?”

“Way up on the North Shore? Besides, they stayed at Ma’s last night.”

“We’d better wake him up and ask him.”

“I’ll do it if you make breakfast,” I teased him. Paulie can just about scramble an egg and that’s it. We eat a lot of takeout.

“Deal.”

Hoping I wouldn’t regret this, I went back to my room to confront the stranger.

He was lying with his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face. My expensive designer sheets (all right, I got them at Bed and Bath on sale) were bunched around his waist, and I noticed that he had no body hair. None. His pale skin was as smooth as a baby’s.

“Hey.” I nudged his shoulder. “Goldilocks. Wake up.” He had gorgeous silvery-blonde hair that I just wanted to run my fingers through. I don’t usually like long hair on guys; I think it looks unkempt. But this guy’s hair looked expensively maintained. Maybe he was a model.

“Come on, fella, you gotta get up.” I nudged him again, harder, and he stirred and rolled over. I found myself looking into the most captivating blue/gray eyes I’d ever seen.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Toni. This is my room.” As if he couldn’t tell by the big wooden TONI sign Paul had made for me in high school shop class. Plus the room had a certain girlishness to it—pink fluffy comforter, frilly curtains, my figurine collection up on the shelf.

“What place is this?” he asked.

“Boy, you must have really been hammered last night. You weren’t at the wedding, were you? I didn’t see you.”

He stared at me, confusion in his eyes.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Paul—that’s my brother, he lives here with me—he’s making breakfast, and then one of us will drive you home. I didn’t see a car outside; did someone drop you off?”

“What place is this?” he repeated. He threw the covers aside and stood up. I became acutely aware of the fact that he wasn’t wearing anything. And that I was staring. Embarrassed, I looked away.

“Why don’t you get dressed, and we’ll fill you in over breakfast?” I took the opportunity to discreetly leave the room.

“Is he up?” Paul asked,when I went back to the kitchen.

“He’s getting dressed,” I said. “I told him we’d drop him off after breakfast.”

“So who is he?”

“Someone who had a lot to drink last night,” I shrugged. “He kept asking where he was.”

“You didn’t get his name?”

“My name is Legolas.”

I practically jumped out of my chair. I hadn’t heard him come in. Neither had Paul, from the look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” our guest said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“That’s all right,” I said. At least he was dressed. Legolas . . . strange name. Sounded either Greek or Portuguese—both of which are all over our neighborhood now—but he didn’t look like either one. Unless he was half-and-half, or something. I had a friend in college whose last name was Gonzales, but she had bright red hair and blue eyes. She took after her mother, an O’Malley. I wondered if something similar was the case here.

“How did you get in last night?” Paul asked.

“Mr. Ramirez let me in.”

“The super?”

Legolas nodded. “He said you wouldn’t mind, that you had people over all the time.”

Well, that was true, but . . . I was still searching for a tactful way to ask our guest who he was, when Paul said, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“I do not even know where ‘here’ is.”

“Morrow.”

The name clearly didn’t register with him.

“Morrow, Massachusetts. Just outside of Boston?”

“I know not this Boston.”

“Then where the hell are you from? You speak perfect English, so you must have lived in this country a while. Are you English? Swedish? Norwegian? What?”

“None of those. I am an Elf of Mirkwood. How I came here, I know not. I am very far from my home.”

“You’re a what?” No, I couldn’t have possibly heard that right.

“An Elf.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Of course there is. I am one.”

Well, he didn’t look crazy. And then I noticed the shimmering material of his cloak, like nothing I had ever seen. Looking closer, I saw points on the tips of his ears. No, it couldn’t be . . .

“Could you excuse us?” I asked, taking Paulie aside. When we were around the corner I whispered, “What if he’s telling the truth?”

“He can’t be telling the truth! This isn’t a fairy tale, Toni! There’s no such things as Elves!”

“What if there are?”

“You’ve been reading too many romance novels. The guy is crazy, possibly dangerous; he can’t stay here!”

“He is not dangerous!”

“He’s carrying a knife in his belt. You think that’s not dangerous?”

“It’s part of his costume!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands into the air. “Maybe he’s in town for the sci-fi convention, and his hotel lost his reservation. You can’t just throw the guy out!”

“This is my house too, Toni, and I say who stays and who goes!”

The doorbell rang.