Chapter Nine
Washington, DC
A pretty black concierge with straightened hair in plastered waves escorted Walt to his suite. Big, boxy furniture in little rooms, paired televisions and a conference table.
“Anything less election-night?” he asked.
“Lovely view,” she said, opening curtains. “There’s the river.” In the window glare she had a pert silhouette, shapely legs coming to a split point. Like a fountain-pen nib, to sign away his future for present satisfaction.
“Fine. Where do women as lovely as you go for happy hour?”
She forced a smile. “People go to the waterfront. Out the lobby, right and right. Walk until you reach the water.”
He washed and changed clothes. Outside the sun seemed magnified by the thick humid air, but the walk was all downhill. On the short busy boardwalk, runners in shiny tight colors navigated through groups of ambling tourists and tie-loosened office workers out early. Gleaming white cabin cruisers tied to the pier hosted small parties. Downriver, past the boathouse, sat the white and gold Kennedy Center, framed by trees and water like a Japanese temple.
He took shade under the canvas roof of an outdoor bar. The bartender, setting up the bar, didn’t notice him. As she loaded beer into coolers, her taut muscles flickered under her freckled skin. She looked like a sports car raced on dirt roads.
But he was thirsty. “Is this bar open yet?” he asked.
“Didn’t even see you,” she said. She had tall cheeks and a square jaw, bright blue eyes, short dark hair. “Mind’s a million places today. What’ll you have?”
“Bourbon on ice and a bottle of water. More ice for my forehead.”
“Ha. What bourbon?” She held up the well bottle.
“Not the well. You sound like you know bourbon.”
“This Kentucky daughter thanks you,” she said. “Though I drink wine myself. If it’s not that, it’s this.” She held up a better brand. “In a plastic cup. Unless you go inside.”
“‘This’ is fine. In Kentucky they don’t use plastic?”
“Mother tried crystal but Daddy insists on jars.” She poured. “Where you from? Oregon?”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
“You said ‘well,’ not ‘rail,’ so Western. The shirt’s too stylish for Mountain time. Pacific Northwest, Q.E.D.” She drank water.
“Lake Tahoe, at your service.” A boat awkwardly parallel parked across from them, engine revving loud wet bursts. “Do they reserve spots?” he asked.
“First come, first serve. Later arrivals tie up to the early ones, four or five deep.”
“How do the outer ones come ashore for drinks?”
“I’d be pleased if they stayed aboard. Sometimes they run tabs,” she stage whispered.
He watched Kentucky heft a cooler, biceps tight and corded. He could watch her all day. He looked over the water instead. A sudden deep breath took him. He had felt driven since the plane had touched ground, as if a secret reason for his coming here awaited him. No such thing, and a relief. Let the breath out, he was just nervous. He’d been out of circulation.
Kentucky returned, to chop limes. “You’re not fussing with your phone,” she said. “Washingtonians love to be connected. If you fuss with your phone, people might not notice the missing belt. Another round?”
“Next bourbon with water in it.”
“Ice too? In Kentucky it’s not assumed. Here on business?”
“Yes, ice. Yes, business. Also hoping to enjoy the change of scene.”
“Let’s hope,” she said. The busboy called her away.
The bar filled quickly. His fellow patrons were a decade younger, willowy women in dark skirts, stripling men in striped Oxford shirts. Eager and in-place. It had been a while since he’d been in such a large crowd. Louder music, louder voices, hands reaching past him for drinks. Boat people came through, lumpy older men in faded sports shirts, ogling the young women. Low sun glinting yellow on the river. Pooling sweat at the small of his back.
Kentucky came to lift his mood. “Another?”
“Just a water if you don’t mind.”
She passed him a bottle with her right hand while she took orders. “What will you see on your change of scene?”
“Scientists in Bethesda. Alzheimer’s research. There’s also—”
Kentucky stood her full height to face down a wiry man in a manager’s long pants. They argued in gestures. “Sorry,” she said when he left. “It’ll get busier.”
“Good for tips.”
“One hopes.” She didn’t leave. “So there’s also?”
“Day care for children. In Highlands?”
“Washington Highlands?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. Sent a proposal about child development. Caught my eye. A Hail Mary. Maybe.”
“It’s a tough part of town. They could use some good works. I have to—”
He handed her his card. “Close me out.”
She took a long time to come back with his check. The crowd pressed steadily against him. She leaned close, raised her voice. “Enjoy your visit, Mr.—Viz-nu-ski?”
“Wiz-neff-ski. Walt. Kentucky, I’m only here two nights. Have dinner with me?”
“I work until ten,” she said.
“That’s fine.”
“Falafel. By the gas station. Ask your hotel. Ten-thirty. Don’t be late, I hate late.”
“Ten-thirty, falafel, gas station. What’s your name?”
“Missy.” She winked. “See ya.”
* * *
The stinking server’s toilet was small as a coffin, its washbasin improvised from a plastic bucket, but it had a mirror. Missy decided to look as nice as one could in sweatpants and a vinyl shirt. She drew careful lines with her eyeliner. A little big, but better owl than pig.
On her way out Naveen the manager caught her. “Darren said a guy was bothering you tonight?” Darren had no doubt complained about her slacking, but Naveen wouldn’t see that.
“Oh, sugar, not even.” She rested a strong hand on Naveen’s shoulder, personal but not coy. “Some hippie from Vermont, looking to score weed. I sent him on his way.”
“You can call security. Or me.” Naveen frowned, as if surprised by his own vehemence.
After her first hopeless interview, Missy had kept a lock of Naveen’s thick black hair. The glamour got her the job but gave Naveen a weird crush, like a lovesick older brother. For now she acted stupid and hoped the spell would fade.
Missy gave a dopey smile. “Naveen, it’s fine. I gotta go. I’m meeting some friends.”
“You look nice,” he said.
She jogged past House of Sweden’s amber glass tiles, glad for loose clothes and sports shoes. Work was a workout, like tennis in heat, but the city re-energized her. Noise and motion, chatty tables at restaurants, pop music from convertibles. Dumpster air and exhaust in the warm breeze. She crossed the canal, a frolic inside her, a mad urge to run up the towpath, shucking her clothes, growing fur and long teeth.
She took a breath, held her hand before her, long fingers twitching. In coven lore only Moira McCauley O’Connell claimed lycanthropy, tales of running past tents of Union troops, in the same fields where now sat car factories. Until this sharp moment Missy never felt great interest. Nothing this feral—
She took a deep breath, let her heart settle, shook her arms out. This, after she’d thrown herself at Mr. Walt Wisniewski. A question in itself. He was hardly the first to ask, not the first passing through. Not the first truly single, not the handsomest. He was grand, though, his height and size, his stern face, his aquiline nose. A truth to offer Mother when next she pried. Still a question, but the answer might spoil the fun, and mostly she wanted fun.
At the Lebanese place Walt waited outside reading his phone, in a crisp black shirt with green and brown circles. He stood when he saw her, kissed her cheek, clasped her hand in both of his. He pointed across M Street at the clock tower. “Is that a nice place? I hate my hotel.”
“It’s quite fancy,” she said. “I thought you were only here two nights?”
“I hate my hotel.”
“If you complain maybe they’ll give you a suite.” Missy laughed. “You already have a suite, don’t you? Perhaps I should have picked a better restaurant.”
“Being with you is the best part of my day. And there’s no Lebanese in Lake Tahoe.”
Inside the three tables were full but the counter only had one customer. Sounds of frying, loud Spanish from the soccer game on the screen. She exchanged French pleasantries with the owner’s nephew while he got sodas from the case.
Walt paid and led her back outside. “So you’re a regular.”
“Alumna, really. Time was I lived here on Saturday nights.” She tilted her phone to check his reflection in the dark mirror of the sleeping screen. Nothing evil that eyes couldn’t see. “After the clubs closed, diplomat kids came here. Sat in sleek clothes, smoking and chatting, a taste of home. After Kentucky it felt so cosmopolitan.”
“You’re slumming, aren’t you?” Walt asked. “You tend bar for kicks.”
She blew her annoyance out from rounded lips. “You put that together quick.”
“I know from slumming,” he said. “To slumming. Cheers.” They clinked cans. “Why?”
“My grandmother just died,” Missy said.
“My condolences.”
“Thank you. I was her main caretaker. I stopped working. Now I’m studying. I needed something social to balance it, and a little exercise too. Beats paying for the gym. It’s been an education. I used to work on the Hill, before Gramma. These customers I serve now, I used to be one. I’ve seen old co-workers not recognize me. Shit tips too.”
“That sounds like penance.”
“I don’t even apologize, sugar. It’s been an education, though. There’s a few actors or wonks awaiting security clearances, but mostly the people who keep server jobs here can’t afford to be unpaid interns. I’ve learned to bite my tongue, not to keep my job, but not to risk anyone else’s. Maybe it will be useful going forward.”
“You’re rich,” Walt said. “You’re richer than I am. Hmm. A puzzle. I like puzzles.”
The food came, falafel for her, two shawarmas for him. Walt took a bite and slapped the table. “Locals know the best places. What was your old job?”
“Legislative affairs for a consulting firm. I studied political science. My father’s trade. Not that I could ever run for office. I’m better with deals in smoky rooms.”
“That’s sexy. Was he state or national?”
“One term here, a decade in Frankfort. He helped bring auto factories to Kentucky.”
“And now, you’re studying?”
“Cultural anthropology,” Missy said. “Celtic and Pagan religious traditions.” Her stock answer but tonight it sounded embarrassingly weak. Ridiculous. To tell her truth to a man she’d known for an hour was crazy, a wetness, not lube but nervous pee.
He had no idea. “If you already have money—”
“You’re a stinker. Enough about me. You don’t seem like a businessman.”
“English major,” Walt said, “I have a third of a bad novel somewhere. I had a knack for computers, and friends I trusted. Easier to make a company.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No one has ever asked me that.” He looked away. She waited him out, glad to have hit a nerve. He spread out his foil sandwich wrappers and folded them into neat compulsive squares. “In business I saw more and did more and earned more than any graduate student. But, it wasn’t—once I made my money I got out. I graduated. You understand?”
“I do. There’s a park nearby. Shall we stroll?”
He offered his arm with an easy smile, but his skin was hot. They walked uphill. After a block the streets grew dim and quiet. “Is it all residential up the hill?” he asked.
“Mostly. Here—” she pointed up “—one of our infamous gingko trees. Their berries stink like vomit in the autumn.”
“People put up with that?”
“Georgetowners are impressed with their own stoicism, especially those with chauffeurs.”
“You live here, don’t you?”
“Six blocks away. Not the biggest mansion.” They walked across the street to the long narrow park. “Below us is Rock Creek Parkway, which follows Rock Creek through the city.”
“Nice to have green in the middle of the city. Are we going to the creek?”
“We are going to that picnic table to our left,” Missy said, “being careful as we walk not to step in dog poo. May I ask you, what are your spiritual beliefs?”
Walt looked glum. “And it was going so well.”
“Really? Do you worship serpents?”
He looked down. “Is there a lot of dog poo?”
“Some things are harder to avoid,” Missy said. “But we can sit at that picnic table.”
“Fine.” Walt sat on the tabletop, his feet on the bench. Missy stood in front of him. “Since you ask. I’m a grim agnostic, or maybe that’s a gnostic. I don’t believe in the God of my fathers. There may be intelligences greater than ours. I think they act in their sphere, for their own reasons. If any greater being were to notice us, to guide us or punish us, I suspect it’s not with our best interest at heart. I no more trust it than the rat should trust the researcher. When I die, I die. Not here, not anywhere. With luck, remembered by the living.”
His eyes bright in the dimness like he expected a slap.
“I can work with that,” Missy said.
“Oh. Good.”
She took his hand and sat next to him. Lone cars passed on the parkway below.
“I love that sound,” Walt said. “Cars on old roads. You know those albums of nature sounds for relaxation, rainstorms and waves and jungle birds? I want this. Cars on night roads. No honking, no rumbling, just—” He let the next passing car end the sentence.
“It is relaxing. I never noticed,” Missy said. “Are you going to ask what I believe?”
“You’ll tell me soon enough.”
They sat a while, calm and quiet. She liked it past all telling.
* * *
The paved park trail led Walt and Missy northeast to a playground and tennis courts. They walked hand in hand. Missy talked about farmer’s markets. “Wednesdays here, Sundays in Dupont. Fine meats, cheeses, fancy mushrooms. Great produce. I used to do brunches but the last thing I want is to serve people these days.”
They took a stone bridge with old-fashioned metal lampposts, over the parkway and the creek. Missy leaned over the high stone railing. The creek ran fast below, glinting in the streetlights. “The park widens as you go north. Two miles up there’s stables. Before Gramma, I owned a share of a horse. I’d ride trails three times a week. Now I walk, a couple hours every day. For my people, nature is the start and the end.”
“Your people?” Had it come up? “Devereaux. Cajun?”
“You were doing so well. What does your girlfriend think about philanthropy?”
“My ex-girlfriend,” Walt said, “considered it cheap marketing.”
“Is that why she’s your ex-girlfriend?”
“I liked her fine. She figured out I wasn’t going to put a ring on her finger.”
“Did you think you were going to?”
“She was good company.”
“So no. I want coffee. Nice place up here.”
They got iced coffees to go, and walked uphill past busy bars and restaurants. More people in a block than Walt saw in a day in Tahoe.
“I love this too,” Missy said, as if she heard his thoughts. “Gramma and I were city mice. Last week I’m walking home and a block from my house two guys were having oral sex in a minivan. I love it. Do you like city or country?”
“I haven’t made a lot of time for city life lately. Around Lake Tahoe it’s all towns. But I know how to enjoy cities.”
“Oh, that sounded so worldly.” At the top of the hill a large traffic circle enclosed a park ringed with benches and trees. “Let’s sit in the circle.”
Sad-looking people on the benches, talking excitedly and laughing hoarsely. “Is it safe?” Walt asked.
“A little sketchy. But you’re a big man.” She led him at arm’s length, wrist cocked up, like a dance. They sat at the gnarled base of a bushy tree, knees to knees. “Do you know why pumpkins are part of Halloween?” she asked.
“Because they’re in season?”
“But, isn’t that orange a little spooky? Like a tarantula, a dying fire. Where’s your phone?” He handed it over. She walked through the settings and gave it back. She had turned the display color-negative, black for white, green for red, the sky-blue browser button now pumpkin orange. “The pumpkin inverts the sky. A primal understanding, a backstage pass beneath consciousness. I study the deep structure of our species. How to use it, how to hack it. The seat of dreams and the power of wishes. If you had a wish, what would it be?”
“Other than getting my phone restored?”
“Ha.” She took it to reset. “What else?”
“The game is, if I could wish for something? Any wish?”
“I’d like to grant you a wish.”
Streets and cars and fountain, hooting people sharing booze. The trees eerie in the stark white streetlights. Hands brushed the hairs he had shaved off his neck. “Are you a genie?”
“If I was?” She wasn’t smiling. “Nothing about me specifically. No killing ancestral enemies. No world peace, and nothing you can just buy. Other than that—try me.”
“What’s it cost?”
“This time it’s free. Special introductory offer. If I can do it.”
“Does something bad happen for my wish to come true?”
“Depends on the wish.”
It was a quirky game but clever. A long time since a woman had made him nervous. “I said I know from slumming,” Walt said. “That letter to my foundation? It was a mirror. I used to make things. I’m out of practice. I’d love to skip the montage. I wish to feel my peak again. Not just caffeinated, but energized. Clear-headed and quick. Body and mind.”
“That’s a good wish. I will grant it. As thanks for the evening.” She sprang to her feet. “Let’s share a cab to your hotel.”
“Am I inviting you up?”
“If you were to, I would decline. But thank you.”
They rode an old rust-brown taxi down wide avenues of low buildings. She held his hand but looked out the window, smiling coyly.
“Give me your phone again,” she said when they neared his hotel. She dialed a number. A buzz from her pocket. She hung up. “For your contacts. Devereaux ends in X.”
“Sure I can’t tempt you to come in?”
She shook her head. “Temptation’s my job.”
She pulled herself on his lap. They kissed in turns as if sharing air. She broke away with a gasp, a proud smile. Her eyes glinted green.
On the sidewalk, he felt as if he had leapt from a carnival ride. As if he were still falling.
* * *
The spell for Walt had been hard, the powers fighting her altruism like a skittish horse avoiding deep mud. Her tinny rhymes, her cracking voice, her pinprick doubts—but none of the foulness of a spell gone wrong, the hot wet feel of carrion failure. She sat lotus on her purple ottoman, meditating on giving, on sharing, joyous yang to the spell’s dogged yin. Stillness, sounds of breathing, the grow lights’ hum, clicks from the shared server under the desk.
As a young woman, before satellites, Missy’s grandmother had cast spells on the roof. Missy worked in her secret basement vault. Once a root cellar, later dug out for a bomb shelter, Missy had renovated it alone during her lobbying years, paneling cement walls in light maple, installing grow lights and irrigation for ficus and citrus trees, adding filtration. Her circle and star were stained red on the golden bamboo floor, resealed twice a month with oil varnish. It was as lovely as a room without windows could be, a lair worthy of a supervillain.
She always resented sharing the vault, with her mother, with the clan grandees who came to pay last respects, even with Gramma. She might have considered that before making Walt a present here. She imagined herself wrapping a gift, the paper creasing and folding in lumps despite her best efforts.
She laughed aloud.
The clan grandees had stopped visiting, the first pressure to return her to the family estate. Never mind she was more likely to meet a husband in a major city, than among the one group of people the goddess had ordered her not to marry.
Walt had come along at maybe the last convenient time.
Convenient hardly meant trustworthy. She wanted a week, a month, but he was here now.
She closed the vault and went upstairs, through two hidden doors to the house’s dainty library. It had its own visitors, historians or obituary writers consulting her father’s papers. Last week she’d hosted a young professor researching the demise of moderate Republicans. She had played a sly political daughter, wearing pearls with jeans, offering mint sweet tea and cookies. The black armband had given him pause, but he would have gone for digits had she let him. Smart and poor, Mother would say, what’s the use of that?
Her phone rang. Missy’s own fault for thinking of her. “Hello Mother.”
“Early in the year for gift-giving.”
“Do you have no life of your own?”
“Ha. My first years as Brigid, your grandmother checked my bowel movements.”
“I thought people who forgot the past repeated it.”
“Enough,” she said. “Tell me about him.”
“A philanthropist with a taste for red meat, you’ll be pleased to know. Agnostic.”
“So it’s a Mabon handfasting, then? The grounds look lovely in September.”
“Why not Yule? In the meadow we can build a snowman, then sacrifice it.”
“Take this seriously, daughter. It’s bad enough the goddess overruled the coven’s choice of your husband. ‘Another white page in the grimoire.’ Even I think it’s insulting, you can imagine how the coven took it. There needs to be a husband soon.”
“There needs to be a daughter soon,” Missy said. “I could go to a sperm bank. White is easy to find.”
“Missy Devereaux!” Mother’s voice rose as if she were being waxed. “I have bitten my tongue clean through.” Mother grunted. Hard discipline, for one who only months ago had led, to have no power but wisdom and history. “You’re a great witch now, but on a dark road. The Christians are arrogant. Balance will come, but in a storm. We must be strong. This can’t be a complication.”
“Mother, don’t worry,” Missy said. “I’m finding my way. Even if it seems odd.”
“Are you keeping fit?”
“Yes.”
“That’s something. Don’t dawdle.”
Dainty library. Mausoleum in drag, gilt and pink and dead like old flowers. Empty house, empty future. She had no idea how to fill it.
She went back through the hidden doors, locking them behind her. Her own odors still hung in the vault air, hot under the full grow lights. From the small desk’s drawer, she took out a laptop, plugged in power and network cables. When she had first come to Washington, Missy had ordered the coven archives scanned, back to the blood-written Compact deeding a great magic to Cullodena McCauley and her daughters. The virtual copy let the acolytes who rotated through as nurses keep up their studies. It had been months since Missy herself had used it. Her grandmother’s final oral teachings had been study enough.
She opened Moira’s database and searched for wolves. Wolf. Werewolf. Lycanthropy. She found no record. No note of omission, no refusal to discuss—a witch’s prerogative, but usually documented.
The acolytes had been thorough. It wouldn’t have escaped tagging. Had it been lost? Had it been redacted? Not a unique act, but rare. Missy could no more use Moira’s spells than wear her whalebone corsets. Not that she even wanted to.
She tried to recall the journal page, not the image she had crafted from its story. Had she ever read it?
Had someone told her the story?
She shut down the laptop and went upstairs in a growing fury. Whimsy denied. Another cost for that damn spell.
* * *
Walt’s phone said seven, his watch four, but his body felt buffed and ready like a robed boxer. A night without drinking had merits. While coffee brewed, he dressed in gym clothes, pushed furniture against the walls, laid towels on the carpet. Stretches, pushups, crunches, skipping imaginary rope, knee-bends, jumping. Anything to move. Stomach crunches, bicycle kicks, curls holding his flight bag. His appalling belly fat could power the world.
The hotel had arranged a town car. On the slow drive north to Bethesda, the car grew dingier, chips and scratches and loose threads appearing slowly like stars. Why did Washington have such junky hired transport? Boat owners and poor tips, the clunker taxi he had shared last night. He wrote in his little notebook: In the land of no chairs the old log is comfortable.
The Institute was a tired complex of jet-age office towers and bucolic red-brick buildings. In the Welcome Center, a young heavy beige woman, in pointed lipstick and a navy dress, grasped his hand. “I’m Connie, Mr. Wisniewski, Connie Yang. We’re delighted to show you the work your generous sponsorship is funding. It’s an exciting time.”
“Especially with the spinal tap testing. Can I meet a research director?”
“On our tour you’ll see several labs and you can meet some of our researchers.”
“I don’t want the golf-cart ride watching students run tests.” Walt spoke just above a whisper, a trick from his work days to make people listen. “My foundation invests to give you money. No insider stuff, just ten firms the smart money is betting on.”
Connie pursed her sharpened lips. “I know some guys.”
Two late-twenties post-docs met them at the cafeteria. Jahari had a goatee and gold trapezoidal glasses. Ping wore spiky short hair, his business card both English and Chinese. Connie bought them cardboard lattes.
The post-docs talked him through current trials, sometimes wildly disagreeing. They drew red and green molecules on the backs of daily menus, like a metastatic game of hangman. Walt loved it. He felt his old professional meetings, whiteboard black databases and blue clouds, like a softly-stroked phantom limb. Connie stepped away to make phone calls.
“Ever consider directly funding research?” Jahari asked when she was gone.
“Not through here?” Walt asked.
“What is it business types say, government can’t pick winners? Here old farts who peaked twenty years ago pick what makes sense to them. Crazy new approaches? They keep those guys out. One’s a genius, and we’re missing it.”
“In Canada, the grant system costs so much to run,” Ping said, “they would have done better just to give every scientist, even the weak ones, thirty thousand dollars for the asking. It’s worse here. Science funding sucks.”
“What about angel investors?”
“Right after we fuck supermodels,” Jahari said. “Angels need returns, which narrows the scope of inquiry. You know how astronomy works today? They have so much data they just offer it up. Lay people categorize it, call out interesting things. Huge time saver.”
“Get us something like that,” Ping said.
“Don’t you all need peer review?” Walt asked.
“We need a lot of things.” Jahari winked at Walt and uncapped his marker. He was deep into the molecules when Connie came back.
* * *
Washington’s east had started out like its west, low brick buildings and wide streets, but someone had played keep-away with its money for decades. The town car drove slowly, as if worried other cars would mug it. Grim, but many places were grim.
He took out the form letter sent by Ophir Learning Center, still wondering what had inspired him to fly here. Breakfast for toddlers in day care, run on a shoestring in a church basement. One government grant and some institutional donors. Good work, but many people did good work. A Hail Mary, he had told Missy. Less athlete than ball.
Ophir’s door was in the back of an old church, across from dumpsters. Scab-red brick, ash-gray mortar sloppily repointed in bile-yellow. Metal door, blistered with rust, too heavy for a child to open. Narrow stairs painted sky-blue led down to a low-ceilinged vestibule, its cinder block walls sporting large decals of geometric shapes.
Orange light drew his shadow. He turned to see:
A being of fire wearing coals for jewels. Its mouth opened, a glowing fissure. Like A Data Center For GOD, it said.
“Mr. Wisniewski?” A short, dark black woman, with apple cheeks and a wide jaw. Her long thin braids wobbled stiffly like cables. In her latex-gloved hands, a bucket and cloths.
The vision was gone.
Walt could compartmentalize. “Ms. Blackwell.”
“I had hoped to buzz you in to show you our impressive security.”
“Can I help?”
“I just need to empty it.”
She returned a minute later. She was a head-turner, lips and eyes and bosom and ass all round and full. A woman men followed with flowers. The vision gone-not-gone now, reigning in his baser thoughts.
He looked back at the wall of shapes. “Platonic solids?”
“I wanted something more rigorous than clouds and rainbows,” she said. “Did I get your name right?”
“Yes, thank you. Do you know Slavic languages?”
“I worked in Central Europe, picked up some phrases.” They exchanged cards. Hers was home-printed on perforated stock, Ophir’s logo of stick-figure children pixelated and smeared. She took his in the Japanese manner, with both hands and polite study before putting it carefully in her card case. “May I show you around?” she asked. “This is a good time, wired and cranky before they go down for naps.”
It was a short tour. Ophir had reclaimed two rooms and a toilet. In one room a dozen kids, brown and black, sat and listened to a middle-aged woman reading a story, each page in two languages. In the next, more kids played quietly with building blocks by the grow light of a table of seedlings. All shelving and tables, raw graffiti-tagged lumber.
“I had friends reporting on good dumpsters,” she said. “Our grants keep the lights on and buy essentials. We can barely afford to keep up with city requirements, much less certification. One day I want to grow into a charter school, but that’s a long way off.”
The kids were eager to be distracted. Several came to hug Sasha. Walt studied the posters: cartoon animals in yoga poses, a construction-paper tree with Chinese characters, collages of scientists and disaster workers, college graduates in gowns and mortarboards. Black or brown, the occasional beige. No whites.
She noticed him looking. “In the mornings we try a little instruction,” she said. “English and Spanish, a little Chinese. We have three teaching assistants, and me. Let’s go to my office.”
Sasha’s office was two folding chairs beneath the wall of shapes, and an old red netbook with glittering teacher’s stars stuck around the screen. Small numbers in small fonts. Walt feigned interest while he thought about Sasha and Missy. More opposite than orange and blue, but they shared an outsized presence. Did Washington draw such women? Maybe tomorrow yet another. Maybe the place was full of them.
“Why are you doing this?” Walt asked. “What is all this to you?”
“I’m closer to these kids than it may seem,” Sasha said. “Though most come from kinder homes than mine. I had nothing to challenge me except hostility. This executive took me under her wing. I got large for a while.” She winced as at a sour taste. “Maybe my heart just grew. I want to give these kids what I needed. Now while it’s still cheap for them. While they can still get it with love. Our Healthy Eating Initiative—”
“Let’s just say I pay for kids to have breakfast. What will you ask the next person for?”
Her eyes grew, balloons of frustration. “What do you think? Look around you.”
“I have been,” Walt said. “This isn’t just do-gooding, basic support. I recognize the Montessori gear. I see the Chinese words and the brown skins. I looked up the name. The city of Ophir sent treasure from Africa to King Solomon. You’re up to something.”
“Look at this city,” Sasha said. “Capital of the greatest country in the world and they let this neighborhood look like this. It’s shameful. I think they’ve got something coming to them for that.” She licked her lips, settled back. “I want to give these kids love, but also pride.”
“What would you do,” Walt said, “if I gave you another zero more than you asked for?”
“Why would you do that?”
“I like the idea of a cohort of you.”
“Mr. Wisniewski, I don’t know what I would do.”
“Figure something out, Ms. Blackwell. Here’s what you asked for.” He handed her an envelope. “Call me next week.”
“Thank you.” Her smile warmed him, heated him. “Please, call me Sasha.”
Walt wondered if the fire being were a chaperone. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to keep it formal,” Walt said.
* * *
The bartender brought Walt a plate of pork delicacies, a mint julep in a metal tumbler with round white ice the size of pearls. The screens above the bar played financial news, the captioning one screen behind: BIG BUMP FOR TECH over a chart of energy declines.
Walt took out his notebook. In the land of no chairs the old log is comfortable, he had written. On a new page he wrote investment ideas. Bargain-hunt health care and green tech, dump his obese gold hedge while suckers plowed in. More ideas came, obvious if he had ever stopped to think. Soon he had pages of dense notes, a flow chart for online science solicitations, thoughts on how to expand Sasha Blackwell’s school. Abrupt euphoria like the time he’d tried skydiving.
Around him the bar had filled and the screens now played sports news. He paged back through his notebook, surprised how much he had written. A dream inspiration, slipped past memory but here on the page. He took pictures of the notes with his phone camera.
“That’s smart.” A chalk-white brunette with arty style and short straight hair took the seat between him and a pillar. Bitchy face, thin sharp nose. “Are the snacks good?” she asked.
“They’re all right. I like the juleps.”
“Can’t do bourbon.” The bartender came. “What he’s eating and a vodka tonic.” She offered a flabby hand with heavy silver rings. “I’m Arwen. Like the book.”
Walt missed the reference. “I’m Walt. In town on business from Lake Tahoe.”
“That’s mountains, right?”
Nancy joined Arwen. She was round and pink-white, with big red curls, pretty blue eyes, a mannish chin. They were designers. “It’s one of the big firms.”
“Not for long,” Arwen said, shaking her head ruefully.
“Don’t say that.” Nancy glanced around, as if for spies.
Walt gave Nancy his barstool. Another round. The women relaxed, catty talk about co-workers, about the gorgeous petite blonde just out of earshot. The sugary julep revived him, revved him up. He could walk ahead of where the women were talking, divert them into new talk. Like a good ski day. Nancy brushed his hand, Arwen squeezed his arm. An easy threesome, their own rivalry the heat to fire them. Fire beings.
“Be right back,” he said.
Outside the restroom he called Missy Devereaux. As the phone rang he felt a nervous urge to hang up. As if it were hard to have the world handed to him.
“Hello I’m at work,” she said.
“I want to see you,” Walt said. “For many reasons starting with your beauty.”
“You talk pretty. Eleven, chez moi? I’ll text. Bye now.”
He turned his phone off. Hours till he saw Missy.
His lust keening like a slide guitar.
* * *
“My word, you reek of fuck,” Missy said. She stepped onto the stoop and kissed his lips, deep to banish whatever trashy bitch he’d idled with. “I’m glad you liked my present.” Bitches plural, and not paid for. Predictably male but still unexpected. She forced a smile, patted his chest. “What excuse did you give them to get them out?”
“Ha. A Japanese brain-age researcher on a late flight. Umami-san.”
“Doesn’t that mean ‘Mr. Tastes-like-MSG’?”
“You did something to me.”
“I did what you asked.” She lifted her heels to stand en pointe, let her palms fall open. “Comin’ in?”
Walt glanced around as if for weapons. “You’re remodeling?”
“Our once and future parlor,” Missy said. “A hospital room while Gramma was dying. I’m restoring the house to its glory.”
Walt went into the library. “This isn’t how I pictured your house.”
“My family’s house. This room is the Jesse Devereaux Congressional Library. Supposedly a tax deduction. Fine decor in its day. Rugs, pictures, candlesticks, all antique. Great-Granddaddy Johnson’s portrait is in a gilt frame from pre-revolutionary France.”
“Mr. Johnson was a handsome man.”
“In his day he cut a swath through the debutantes. Come on to the kitchen. I made iced tea.” She took his hand and led him. “What do you think of the word ‘allow’? As a literary man. I was listening to the news in the shower. Politicians ‘allow them to’ this, ‘allows us to’ that. What’s wrong with letting? I let you alone. It’s what Orwell said, drowning us in empty language.” In the tiny kitchen she walked to the refrigerator without turning on the light. “The switch is to your left. It’s old. I confess to a small phobia my finger will get stuck.”
Walt pushed the button. The light flickered on. “Wow. This is good antique.” He ran his hand along the steel countertop, the teal veneer cabinets.
“You have a marked interest in furnishing.” Missy set out pitcher and glasses.
“I mostly live under rented roofs. Do you cook? Last night you mentioned the farmer’s markets.”
“I cook. I haven’t been. Too easy to eat at work, eat out when not at work. This kitchen dates from when letting people watch you cook was like letting them watch you do laundry. There’s a music salon upstairs. Or Daddy’s library.”
Walt put his warm hand on her cool hand. “Let’s adapt to the Social Kitchen Era. Funny you mention Orwell. I like Huxley better. Brave New World? Too close to home. Huxley is funny. Orwell, grim. Grim is worthwhile but the school board gets on your ass for teaching funny. Maybe that’s best. Comedy should be uncomfortable in schools.”
“I’m glad you read,” Missy said. “I can’t talk books with my friends.”
“Are we friends now?” He put down his glass.
“We’re not strangers. You don’t like the tea?”
“I’ll allow it’s a little sweet.”
“Ha. You’re like my friend Zarabeth. What is it about Yankees and unsweetened tea?”
“Too cold to grow cane and no slaves to cut it.”
“You are a stinker.”
“I apologize. Perhaps with some water.”
“Of course.” She got a bottle from the fridge. He watched her with amused impatience, nearly her father’s expression. Was a time Missy didn’t want men like her father.
She topped off his glass. “Tell me about your day, dear.”
“Every day should be like this. I worked out hard and I’m not sore. I’m rethinking my science funding. I may build a charter school. I planned my investments. I bedded two women and now I am with you. Thank you. How did you do it?”
“I wrote and cast a spell,” Missy said. “I danced and sang on the circle on the star, offering energy, gumption, plasticity of thought. The powers love their genitives. I’m a witch.”
“I thought you were called Wiccans now.”
“Think of Wicca like Unix,” she said. “We are a closed-source fork.”
“Got it. So, you perform rites, you—you cast spells?” He looked afraid to sound foolish. “You practice magic and it works. Your studies, the Pagan traditions—”
“They’re my own. Mine and my coven’s,” Missy said. “I am Brigid of Coven McCauley, fourteenth in my line and Keeper of the Compact. We’re a matriarchy. My grandmother died, my mother became Elder, I became Brigid. Brigid I will be, until my daughter completes the rites.”
“Brigid is a title?”
“From a Celtic goddess. ‘Priestess’ would imply priests.”
“Ha. Fourteenth? That’s—you run a four-centuries-old mystical matriarchy. Wow.”
“Most people react more strongly,” Missy said.
“Earlier I saw—a person, not a person. Made of fire. Had to keep my cool then.”
“Plenty of people like that here,” Missy said. “You just saw things clearer. Wasn’t part of your dessert, was it?”
“No. Their fire—Never mind. How does it work?”
“That’s like asking me how to paint. It’s not reciting. It’s creating a place in your mind. Your little spell took me an hour, between writing and performing.” She poured herself more tea. “I have studied magic since I could speak. There are techniques, rules, guidelines. But it’s an improvisatory art, always of its time and place. And there’s the cost. The spell itself, the effort and perfection of its execution. The powers feed on beauty.”
“What are the powers?”
Missy shrugged. “Perhaps my eleven-greats-grandmother really signed a compact with a fairy queen. Perhaps we have unlearned the false barriers of consciousness by inventing goddesses to bridge them. Faith is more vital than understanding. For our efforts, the powers grant our wishes. But only possible things happen. As great as my powers are, the world is greater still. The rebalancing is osmotic.”
“You get less possible?”
“Our bad luck increases. Brakes fail, lightning strikes. Don’t fly with an old witch. Mostly, we pay with our bodies. The human body is a trillion machines, any of which can stop the whole show.”
“That’s a heck of an occupational hazard.”
“Better returns than being a nuclear plant worker. Magic is finite, labor-intensive and polluting, like anything else. Invest it like money. I’m sorry. I’m a terrible hostess. Here you are on vacation and I’m keeping you in a tiny kitchen.”
“I am delighted to be here. But I’d enjoy some fresh air.”
Missy led him three flights up the house’s service stairs. At the top of the stairwell a folded metal ladder hung from the roof. She tapped a switch. The ladder unfolded with a gentle whirr while a wide door in the roof opened. The half-moon hung directly above, lighting the stairwell.
Walt grabbed the railing, shook it. “Sturdy.”
“I carry bags of soil.” She scrambled up and he followed.
On the roof deck Walt walked between the rows of garden boxes, rubbing the lavender and verbena, plucking a mint leaf to chew. “You are the urban garden goddess,” he said. “How many plants do you have here?”
“More than I can use, even dried. Look, the basil’s gone to seed. But I like them.”
“Your private Eden.” He came back to sit with her by the small table. “Why share all this with me?”
“You appreciate it. And I have a good feeling about you. I need to talk to someone, Walt, someone without a stake in this.”
“I have clarity and gumption in abundance,” Walt said. “How long will it last?”
“Another day or two.”
“I’ll cancel my flight,” Walt said. “Can’t waste this in transit. You were saying?”
“I lead a centuries-old secret society. I’ve been bred for it from my first lullaby. I have studied power for decades, in and out of my coven. I’m a skilled witch. Why don’t I feel ready?”
“There’s a difference between being good at something and liking it,” Walt said.
“I have responsibilities,” Missy said. “It’s not all about pleasure.”
“If you’re not engaged, you miss opportunities. That’s why I am a retired businessman courting beautiful witches, not a frustrated writer eating ramen noodles. Serving light beer is you acting out. What do you want to do that you’re not doing?”
Even in the right, Missy was not lectured to, not by men. But she had asked. She kept her tone in check. “Covens are defensive. They were for a war that, in America at least, is ending—a war with patriarchy. We have suffrage now. Jobs and positions of temporal power. I could have one. Instead I feel like I’m running a militia of aggressive gentility.”
Walt sat silent a long while. “Are all these herbs for cooking?”
“Some are for incense and ritual uses. Some for remedies.”
“We call that pharmacology now,” Walt said. “The zealots who burned your ancestors also made Galileo recant. Now we live in a universe of thousands of galaxies with no center. What you do is specialized. I’m not sure it needs to be secret. Only a privileged American woman isn’t still at war with patriarchy. You have a bigger audience than you think. Your militia is meant to do something. Put it to work. You want to change your coven for the world. Maybe you need to change the world.”
“That’s—interesting.”
“Interesting is good. Let’s shoot for fun. Maybe my help will be my dowry. That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Résumés first, love later, if there is love. That’s how queens marry. All this is a proposal.”
Her plan complete, still it surprised her to hear it. “What do you think of my proposal?”
“I liked you at first sight.” He took her hands. “It won’t be hard to love you.”
She closed her eyes. A pang in her chest, her melting heart lava-hot. Inversion, opposition. Missy’s line did things differently. Here, a man who understood.
He let go one hand. “So do it again.”
“Were you not listening?” she said, playing at anger.
“Like you don’t smoke at parties.” Walt grinned like a kid. “Trust but verify.”
“Ha. I did expect this. OK. Stand up.” She put her palm on his chest. His heart pounded. “Look at my courtiers’ ghetto,” she said, unfurling her dudgeon. “Tiny houses that cost millions. Let’s break something. Pick a streetlight. Any one you can see.”
Walt pointed southwest. “By the yellow house.”
She closed her eyes. The streetlight was a small thing, and she was big. Her face curled into a nasty sneer, as if to draw her lip to her eyes. The streetlight quivered, fighting her. Her vandalism splashed back like hot oil. All for Walt who had enjoyed a sultan’s day: charity in the morning, sex in the evening, midnight magic show. Would he use up her love with his wanting, riddle her with tumors and sclerosis? Kill him now before it became—
“Sorry,” Missy said. “Bit distracted. Now.” She pressed her hands together, tapped her fingers twice.
A moan of tearing metal. The streetlight wobbled, fell onto a parked car. Sparks, breaking glass, hoots from the car alarm. “That cost more than your day,” Missy said. “No more demos.”
“I’m sold.” Walt started to laugh, little sounds but they made his torso shudder, as if he took the beating she gave the streetlight. “Everything I know is wrong.”
“There’s just more to it. Let’s get out of this noise.”
Inside with the roof closed they no longer heard the alarm. Walt took Missy’s hand in the dark. “What’s your real name?”
“Artemis. Artemis McCauley Devereaux.”
“Artemis,” he said. “Goddess of the hunt. Of course you are.” He stepped back and bowed to her. “Waldemar Tadeusz Wisniewski. At your service.”
“Waldemar,” she said. “A powerful ruler who seeks peace. Of course you are. Come to my bed, Waldemar.”