Enter Three Witches (15 page)

Another band, this time composed of oddly assorted wind instruments, was coming down the street playing ragtime. The crowd began to sway and sing, and Erika felt the first small wave of panic wash over her. He’ll come back for me, she said to herself. Or will he? She studied the mob behind her. It was clear that wanting to come back for her and being able to were not the same thing. “I’ve got to get out of here,” Erika said out loud, but nobody heard her. She could hardly hear herself. The people who hemmed her in were still a cheerful, happy lot, but their grinning faces began to take on a look of manic mindlessness that was almost as frightening as hostility.

“Excuse me!” Erika shouted at the huge man who stood behind her. It was like yelling at the Empire State Building. Her head reached only to the middle button on his red hunting jacket, and he was craning his neck to see the band. Erika, now quite desperate, stamped ferociously with one high-heeled boot on his sneakered toe and was momentarily pleased with the effect. He howled and staggered back into the crowd. The resulting turbulence permitted her to squeeze through as far as the iron railings that separated the houses from the sidewalk. Here her situation was hardly improved, but she was angry now as well as frightened. Slowly, painfully, twisting, squirming, and occasionally stamping, she made her way to the corner of Sixth Avenue and burst out of the crowd into open space.

Erika was disoriented. She had paid little attention to the route she had followed a few hours before with Bren—Bren the comforting and knowledgeable New Yorker who had abandoned her in this nightmarish mob scene. It was clear that she was not going to find him again except by some extraordinary stroke of good luck, and Erika felt that her luck had definitely run out. She would have to go home alone, and that meant finding the subway. To her left across Sixth Avenue the eerie Jefferson Market tower stood against the black sky. The spider was climbing up to its balcony, while the lower windows flickered ominously. “That’s where it is, then,” Erika said aloud, “and it’s only a few blocks away.” She crossed the avenue, but the street she thought they had taken was choked by the parade. I’ll just make a small circle to the left, Erika thought, and come out at the Christopher Street station.

It was a reasonable strategy, but not one recommended to a stranger in the Village. She walked through unfamiliar streets, buffeted by indifferent merrymakers, increasingly confused and disheartened. I’m lost, she said to herself, hopelessly and ridiculously lost. And now the feeling of being physically lost expanded and grew into a sense of general loss, of a desolation so sharp that it made her catch her breath in a gasp of pain. Why had Bren left her when he had seemed so eager for their date, so enchanted with her company? Once, when she was just starting junior high, an older boy had asked her to meet him in front of a theater where a wonderful rock group was to play. She had taken hours to dress and had escaped the house by elaborate subterfuge, only to stand for an hour trying to look casual and sophisticated while a throng of teen-agers jostled their way into the theater. Later she learned that she had been stood up for a joke.

But I hardly knew that jerk, she thought. This was different. This was Bren, the original sweetheart who wouldn’t be rude to a roach. Miserable though she was, Erika felt sure there was no kinship between Bren and the sadistic prankster of her twelfth year, but the painful memory reinforced the loneliness and confusion of the present. “They’re all alike,” she muttered. “Creeps, rat finks. But this won’t get me home, and home is where I truly want to be.”

Erika looked around for someone to ask the way to the subway, but found it difficult to address Miss Piggy and the Phantom of the Opera, who were coming down the sidewalk with their arms around each other. She leaned against the trunk of a tree, thinking that perhaps, if she just stood still for a moment, sanity and some sense of direction would return. Instead there was a hoarse animal cry above her head, followed by a great rustling and cracking of branches. She looked up and stifled a scream as an enormous gorilla dropped to the sidewalk at her feet. “Ha! Little white woman,” the gorilla snarled. “Now I have you in my power.” The sight was horrific, but the voice was familiar.

“Jeremy!” Erika cried. “God, you scared me, but am I glad to hear a familiar voice. I am utterly lost in this stupid part of town. Nothing makes any sense.”

“You come down here alone?” asked the gorilla. “That’s a mistake for a foreigner.”

“I actually came with Bren,” Erika said, but some remnant of loyalty made her add, “We got separated somehow, and there’s no way you can find anybody again. I can’t even find the subway. I’ve been trying for hours.”

“Good old Bren,” Jeremy said. “He sure has a talent for screwing things up. Did you get to see the parade?”

“Some of it—a lot of it, I guess. It was awesome. I wouldn’t have missed it, but right now the dear old boring comforts of home are looking very good. Where’s the subway, Jeremy? I know it can’t be far, but I could wander around here for the rest of my life without finding it.”

The gorilla dug into the fur around its stomach and produced a large pocket watch. “Can’t go home at nine o’clock on Halloween,” it said. “Let’s party.”

Erika was beginning to feel disoriented again. “Party?” she asked. “Here?”

“Village is full of parties. Full of subways, too, so don’t worry. Come on.”

Erika found her wrist imprisoned in a hairy paw and was dragged protesting down the street. “I don’t have a costume. I don’t feel festive,” she began, but it was even harder to talk to the back of a gorilla’s head than to Miss Piggy and the Phantom. She gave up and yielded to the persistent pull of the creature she knew to be Jeremy.

They turned into the doorway of a small, shabby apartment building and began to climb the stairs. Disco music grew louder with each of the five flights. The door at the top stood open, and Erika saw what appeared to be an impenetrable mass of bodies writhing and swaying under a revolving light that illuminated the costumed dancers in a succession of garish colors—red, purple, orange, green. Jeremy seemed to know the place, however, and she followed him willingly now as he wormed his way around the mob to a small open space where a formidable stack of warm Budweiser cans stood on a rickety table.

Erika accepted the unappetizing beverage gratefully and gulped it down. “Thirsty,” she commented to Jeremy, who did not reply. It was disconcerting to be with someone whose features were so completely masked. Jeremy’s face might be expressing admiration, disgust, boredom, lechery, or a host of other emotions as he watched her drink; all she could see was the conventional snarl of animal rage beneath the gorilla’s beetling brows. She looked around the room, which seemed to be unfurnished except for the table and some large pillows pushed into corners. On one of these, an athletic-looking girl, wearing copper arm bands, a stuffed boa constrictor, and little else, grappled enthusiastically with Darth Vader. The latter was impeded by his elaborate costume, which he seemed to be trying to shed. Erika looked away and saw the first of several supplementary lighting fixtures. Cleverly constructed of translucent plastic, it was all too obviously a severed leg streaked realistically with gore.

“The rest of the body is scattered around,” Jeremy said, following her gaze. “They do it every year.”

“Less than tasteful,” Erika commented, taking another beer.

“You think so?” Jeremy sounded puzzled. “I thought it was neat.”

“You would,” Erika said, then added more charitably, “That stuff would make great props, I guess.”

“Yeah. Wait till you see the head. It’s a prop man’s dream.”

“I’ll pass,” Erika said. “Let’s dance.” She backed into the wriggling throng and soon lost Jeremy. No one seemed to have a partner anyway. At least it would have been hard to tell which costumed figure belonged to which. With the overpowering music and the warm beer beating in her veins, Erika began, briefly, to enjoy herself.

First one bizarre male figure and then another bounded into the small space in front of her, grinning, jerking, undulating, gyrating. There was an energetic fat boy in a space suit; then a coal miner streaked with sweat and soot (no close dancing with this one, Erika thought); then another gorilla, brown this time, so it wasn’t Jeremy. “What’s with the gorillas this year?” Erika shouted, but wasn’t heard in the horrendous din. She was overheating badly in her orange ski sweater, and there really wasn’t room to dance. As her enthusiasm flagged, the whole scene took on a nightmarish quality. A huge black man, who might have come straight from the witch doctor act in the parade, leapt in front of her previous partner. He was almost naked except for a grass skirt, a headdress, and much vivid body paint. There seemed to be a bone thrust through his nostrils. “This is carrying the fun of make-believe a bit far,” Erika said, confident that he couldn’t hear a word. Certainly he was an amazing dancer, and she thought how, in more favorable conditions, she might have enjoyed trying to imitate the boneless twisting of his shining, paint-streaked torso, his stupendous leaps into the air. Instead she felt suddenly exhausted, awkward, and incompetent in her heavy, unsuitable clothes.

She was rescued by Jeremy, her black gorilla, who had finally managed to reach her through the crush. Jeremy, apparently, was no dancer. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her from the dance floor and around a corner into a narrow hall.

“Sorry,” Erika said, as soon as she could be heard. “I thought you wanted to dance.”

“Did you ask?” Jeremy inquired.

“I just sort of got sucked in,” Erika said. “Anyway, it wasn’t much fun, and here I am!” She felt vaguely that she owed Jeremy something.

He seemed to think so too. He pulled off the entire head of his costume and stood grinning at her, his handsome face and blond hair rising incongruously from shaggy black shoulders. “There’s all kinds of fun,” said Jeremy, advancing upon her.

Erika retreated to a corner of the hall and stopped. “Just don’t carry me off, Godzilla,” she said. She was fighting a sense of futility, a feeling of déjà vu. It was true she had never been mauled by a gorilla with a human head before, but otherwise this end-of-party scene was depressingly familiar. Jeremy’s furry embrace was hot and prickly, his kisses experienced but lacking in finesse. Erika made a heroic effort, but then she thought of Bren in the cool morning by the river. It wouldn’t do. She tried a polite withdrawal, knowing full well that there is no such thing.

“I’m just awfully hot and tired,” she said. “I’m sorry, Jeremy. You were sweet to bring me here. I knew I should have gone home, and now I’ve got to.”

“Well, hot you’re not,” Jeremy said disgustedly. “I sure guessed wrong about that. Now I suppose you want me to take you to the subway and miss some more of this great party.”

“I’ll find it myself, thanks,” Erika said.

“Just go right at the door and then right again. Even you can’t miss it.” Jeremy was peering into the living room, where a girl in a beaded chemise that ended less than an inch below her crotch was lighting a cigarette in a long holder.

Erika wasted no more time on apologies. It was a battle to get out of the apartment, but one she was glad to fight. The crowd was even denser, the noise level even more appalling. “Did I use to like this sort of thing?” she mumbled. “Surely not!”

The street was cold, littered, and nearly deserted. “Heavenly,” said Erika, and headed for the subway, which she found without delay.

An hour earlier Bren had taken the uptown train from Sheridan Square. The journey to Eighty-sixth Street, amid crowds of tired children being taken home by parents and exuberant teen-agers whose night was still young, had been grim and interminable.

He had stalked the edges of the parade in a rage, blaming first his mother for her juvenile notion of Halloween fun and then himself for not sticking to Erika at all costs. The likelihood that Miranda would have greeted him or revealed their relationship was small, and surely anything would have been better than this horrible conclusion to what had seemed so promising an evening. This has to be the end, he thought as he climbed the subway stairs, and it is all, one hundred percent, my fault. What’s worse, I have to call her and see if she got home all right. Bren cast about for a plausible reason for abandoning his date in the middle of the Halloween parade. Short of some kind of fit or psychic breakdown, he could think of nothing remotely believable, and there had already been the hideous incident of the supposed migraine headache after the dance program. “I ought to be put away in a loony bin,” he muttered, momentarily forgetting that these excuses were entirely of his own invention.

All three witches having gone to separate Sabbats, the house was empty when Bren arrived. He went to the phone bravely, like a martyr to the stake, but there was no answer from the Apthorp. What if she’s lost down there, he thought, or something worse? The Village is full of creeps. I’ve not only made her mad, I’ve endangered her life. He paced the kitchen floor, circling the couch and ignoring Shadow, who was baffled and hurt. Passing the mantel for the third time, his eye fell upon the bottle of Scotch Miranda kept for his father. “I’ll get drunk,” he said, seizing the bottle and turning suddenly on his startled dog. “That’s what people do when they can’t cope.”

An abstemious life of beer and the occasional margarita had not prepared Bren for straight whisky, but in spite of the awful taste, he persevered. He put the bottle beside the telephone, pulled up a chair, and began a siege of dialing interspersed with determined gulps of Scotch. Time went by, and the sound of the telephone ringing in an empty apartment came to seem normal to his increasingly muddled brain. When Erika answered, he almost dropped the bottle.

“Erika!” he shouted. “Where are you?”

“Where do you think I am, lamebrain?” she snapped.

“I don’t mean where are you. I mean
how
are you?” Bren said wildly. “I mean are you all right? I’ve been going crazy.”

“Going crazy?” Erika said. “How far did you have to go?”