That Magic Mischief (2 page)

Waiting for Lorna, Annabelle sat by the phone, which was also by the front door, the door to the bathroom, and the kitchen sink, and looked around the long and narrow front room. She had cunningly divided it into a ‘living room,’ a ‘dining room’ (where she was currently seated), and an ‘office.’ Her eyes roved from her tiny loveseat, to the tall narrow pine bookshelves that flanked her ‘office’ desk, to her sacred space, which was actually an old sewing machine she’d picked up off the street … which should have been the biggest clue that the thing didn’t work.

So much for those slipcovers she thought she’d run up. Too heavy to drag back out again, she began idly placing objects on the sky blue cloth she had draped over the top: a vase of flowers, crystal candleholders holding beeswax candles, a few of her more important goddess books, a tin of incense that Maria Grazia had brought back from Morocco, a box full of images she had yet to paste into a wish book, and her tarot cards.

Annabelle lit the candles and sat down on the floor. She tried deep breathing for a few seconds, and feeling slightly calmer, took the deck out of its wooden box, and began to shuffle the cards. Her mind was far from clear, she was far from centered, but she wanted answers. She wanted results. She wanted guarantees.

She let her breath flow in and out; it lulled her, cleared her head, calmed her down, and the smell of the burning wax soothed her, as she tried to formulate a mature, non-attached-type question. Not:
Will Wilson come back to me, please, please?

Her breathing hitched.
Yeah, definitely not that
. “Okay. The issue is … Wilson. Um. Do we have a future together?”

She turned over a card. The Knight of Pentacles, reversed.

“Damn it.” Reversed, this Knight meant carelessness, a standstill in affairs. “Okay, so if things are at a standstill, that means they can move forward again, right?” She turned another card.

Three of Swords, reversed. Sorrow due to loss.
Well, duh
, Annabelle thought, and then winced, as if she’d said it out loud. As if the cards could hear …

She turned over the next card warily.

Wheel of Fortune. Not always a good sign, though, as it could mean an unexpected loss rather than a gain, even when in the upright position as it was now. “I don’t know what any of this means,” Annabelle mumbled, knowing full well what it meant. This was all about the now, and she didn’t like the now.

At moments like these, Annabelle found it was usually a good thing to stop pulling cards.

Queen of Cups. She shivered. That was her court card. Good natured, intuitive, a loving female figure, one whose imagination often outweighed her good sense …

Strength. The beautiful woman gently pats the lion on his head, symbolizing serenity, and the power of the human spirit to overcome any obstacle.
Yeah, yeah, yeah …

The Sun. “Summertime? Two months from now? I’ll be better in two months?”

Annabelle gathered up the reading and returned the deck to its box. This wasn’t what the cards were for, to be used as replacement for experience and living. Even if she didn’t like what her experience was telling her and the way her life was going, it was time to put the tarot away.

She continued to sit. She tried to go back to the deep breathing but got bored. She just sat still, and remembered that she’d never had much luck reading Wilson’s cards. Maybe it never worked was because it was almost always post-coital, the only time he was ever mellow enough to entertain the idea. She could never make sense of his configurations, none of the images seemed to relate to the others, she’d pull card after card and make a spread that was meaningless, confused. He would lose interest and patience. She would feel as though she’d failed. Ugh.

She’d like to blame it all on him, but she supposed her own muddled thinking got in the way as well: always hoping he was asking about the future of their relationship, whether she would marry him, whether she would like an emerald-cut diamond in a platinum setting, as opposed to a three carat marquis-cut in white gold.

Someday, maybe, she’d find that remotely amusing.

But not today. Rising, she left the candles burning and got some incense going as well. Lavender: soothing, healing. She wanted healing. She wanted that fistful of pain to get out of her chest and dissolve into the ether. She wanted all her lessons learned in a six-week correspondence course, she wanted a whole, strong heart, she wanted Wilson back, she wanted all the sadness to leak out of her pores, she wanted her life back. Her self back.
Now.

• • •

Lorna emerged from the taxi at the corner of Court and Clinton. She ascended the curb, and paused. Having never been, in her entire life, on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, she sniffed the air, unable to imagine what this part of the world could possibly smell like. Finding nothing out of the usual, she removed her iPhone from her elegantly understated Coach bag and called up her Map app. As she waited to be enlightened as to her coordinates, she cast her cool glance over the neighborhood.

This was, indeed, a neighborhood. If pushed, she would grudgingly admit that it was rather pretty. The buildings were lower, the trees were taller, the combination allowed the light to filter down in a soothing green — very natural, she mused. The storefronts were homey and well kept, and the predominantly Italian flavor to the place gave it an old world, old New York vibe, and, she could
maybe
, perhaps, see the charm in living in a place like this. Well, it really was darling, wasn’t it. How nice for Anna.

But for Lorna — no. The mental leap required to cross a body of water every day to get into the city did not register as doable. She couldn’t conceive of it. Crossing bodies of water meant a
journey
, not a commute. She was perfectly happy in the West Village. Who wouldn’t be, really. Downtown, convenient, leafy, as leafy as this, in all honesty — if you stood on her toilet you could see the Hudson. Anything anywhere on the island of Manhattan, just a raised arm away. The
idea
of having to take the subway
everywhere
, sitting there, rocking and bumping around with the hordes — not only that but the
time
involved, walking to the subway, waiting on the platform, sitting on the train, getting into town,
transferring
, for God’s sake.

Had the neighborhood glanced back at the tall, willowy woman standing as still as a statue on the curb, it would have taken in the platinum blonde locks that fell, sheet-like, down her back, noticed the flawless ivory skin, the impeccable
maquillage
, the tasteful ensemble, and perhaps, perhaps, it would have shivered just a little bit. Lorna would graciously accept the conclusion of cool, as she cultivated coolness — but only her friends would know, in her heart of hearts, that she would clutch at the verdict of
cold
. And that’s why they were her friends, the best friends in the world.

As her handheld hovered between question and answer —
My God, not even a decent
connection
out here
— Lorna reached for her smokes. Extracting a pack of Gitanes from the pocket of her oyster grey Anne Klein car coat, she flicked the lighter (also located in said pocket), and stepped gracefully out of the way of a mob of mothers wheeling their progeny down the sidewalk.

Families
. Lorna shuddered mildly. Screaming kids, disgruntled dads, washed-out moms.
Surrounded
. No wonder Anna was so distraught about that idiot Willy. Lorna allowed herself the ghost of a smirk. How he loathed that. How he loathed her. Mister Other People’s Money Humorless Bloody
Wilson
.

Ah, but poor Anna. Poor, poor dear. It had been ages since she’d dated anybody that was even as passable as ol’ Wils. Such a big heart, a big romantic heart that took anybody on board and gave them a shot. Good Lord, that wrestler guy. Always had an A&P bag full of vitamins and powdered drinks on hand so he could bulk up at will and in all situations. And that string of actors, useless bastards, who used up all her mousse and stole her CDs. The yearly crush, the annual all-consuming fixation on some guy at work, or the donut vendor, or God knew.

How could anybody be that receptive all the time? Anna walked around like an open flower — not like she was a flake, or a Moonie, but you could see it in her face, especially since she got heavily involved in that witchy business
. We’d all been relieved when she started dating ol’ Wilson,
thought Lorna, giving her phone an impatient shake. Well, he was entirely too pretentious, but he was steadily employed, had his own apartment, and spoke in complete, intelligible sentences. So what had
happened
?

It didn’t seem like Maria Grazia had much of a clue what was going on, which was truly strange, because she, of the nonexistent boundaries, was always the first to know. Mind you, she had been present almost immediately after The Dumping, but as far as circumstances were concerned, MG was as clueless as Lorna was. It was a bit mysterious, not at all like Anna to hold out, or neglect to ‘share’. Especially when she was running around trying to read people’s fortunes, or giving her friends little wish boxes on Valentine’s Day.

Lorna used hers to hold her condoms. Unlike the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this was by no means a permanent collection. In her youth, those wild crazy days, fruit flavors would have been top of the pile, but now she was into a sophisticated brand of French ticklers, ordered through the mail from an exclusive Tunisian import-export. Only for connoisseurs of top-of-the-line, adventurous, blistering sex.
And no indeed, you wouldn’t know it to look at me.

She shook the iPhone once more. No love for her, thanks. She vaguely remembered having been there, in that doughy, semi-conscious state of absorption and symbiosis, and she’d rather be forced to wear sneakers with her vintage Chanel suit for thirty days in a row than revisit that maudlin, cloying swamp of a place.

She really ought to get on with it. ‘Get on with it’. Like it was a chore. It wasn’t that, at all: Lorna would do anything for darling Anna … but the truth was she really wasn’t the comforting type … Was it too early for cocktails? Going on a bender — Lorna was excellent company for that. She glanced at the page her phone had deigned to load. Oh. She was right there — practically in front of Anna’s building. She quickly searched ‘liquor stores Court Street’ and, feeling daring, walked toward those — admittedly charming — storefronts.

• • •

Lorna made entrances. Annabelle could hear her heels clacking briskly down the hall, and as she opened the door, Lorna swanned in without a hitch in her stride, having fully expected the door to be opened. Indeed, it never occurred to her that it wouldn’t, and if it hadn’t, she would have been shocked down to her French pedicured toes.

She stopped short in the middle of the ‘living room’, spun, kissed Annabelle on both cheeks, and plunked the plastic shopping bags down on the counter. She looked around, nodded, “Very sweet,” and threw herself onto the loveseat.

“Please tell me that you have matches. My lighter died.”

“Yeah. Been smoking my brains out.”

“Poor Anna.”

Annabelle got a book of matches from the big jar on top of the fridge, matches from all the restaurants she’d ever been to in New York. It was terribly sentimental, and she knew it, which was why she started using them … and then snipping off the covers and throwing them into a box, maybe she’d decoupage them onto a chair or something.

She looked at the chosen matchbook, and practically threw them at Lorna.

“Easy, darling.”

“They’re from Nobu. Our first date.”

Lorna lit up a fortifying Gitane, exhaled, and tried to stay patient. She really wasn’t any
good
at this. “Easy, darling. Honestly. All right, now, how long have you been holed up in here?”

“Three days.”

“Good God,” Lorna averted her eyes from Anna’s disheveled state. “And does it … seem like it’s … passing?”

“This is going to take a while. I can feel it. I don’t know why, but it will.”

Lorna got up and started taking things out of the bags. She sat Annabelle down at the table, and, after rinsing them in the sink, handed her some strawberries.

“First things first. Daiquiris.”

“I don’t want to get drunk, Lorna — ”

“Just a little tipsy, maybe slightly soused, nothing to write home about, just take the edge off. Something to accompany all those cigarettes.” Lorna began poking around in the cupboards.

“Do you have a blender? Thank God. I couldn’t imagine where I would get a blender around
here
. Not that this isn’t a lovely part of town. Quite charming.

“I must admit I’m
un peu dérange
. I don’t know what happened, how it happened, even exactly when it happened. So. I am here and all I want to do is help you along the road to recovery, get you back up on that horse, etc., etc. Tell.”

Annabelle watched as Lorna simultaneously chopped ice, poured rum, chain-smoked, and carved out identically dainty wedges of lime. The whirr of the blender cut in before Annabelle could speak, and it was just as well. Lorna was fabulous, but not exactly the most comforting type of friend. But Lorna was exactly what she needed today: smoking, lightly cursing
en Francais
, and maybe, after all, drinking.

“I should put on Adele,” Annabelle offered, leaving the berries for the stereo. “Or maybe Billy Holliday.”

“No, darling, that’s my brand. Slightly out of your league.”

“Thought your heart couldn’t be broken.”

“It’s for breaking the hearts of others, not for repairing my own. Sit.” Lorna resumed her lounging position on the couch, and Annabelle, preferring the floor, sat cross-legged on a big cushion. Lorna ran cynical eyes around the altar space, lit up another smoke, and handed Annabelle a cocktail.

“Tell.”

Annabelle took a sip of the daiquiri, and told.

She was in the bathroom repotting her fern when the door opened. After three years and nine months, she and Wilson had keys to each other’s places, although naturally she spent more time at his than at hers, he living conveniently on the Upper West side, even though it took them both just as long to get to mid-Manhattan from his place as from hers. She stuck her head out of the doorway, and looked up, cheerful, she hoped, hopeful at worst, trying not to look as afraid as she felt.