Petty Magic Page 6

  I peer through the front window and see Harry’s nephew bent over a game of solitaire at the counter. I can make out a long pale nose, thick dark hair in need of a cut, and a pianist’s fingers as he turns a card. I get a strange squirmy feeling then. And in the next moment, as I open the door and he looks up from his card game, I believe I have just locked eyes with a ghost.

  The boy has Jonah’s long, earnest face—Jonah’s hair, albeit on the shaggy side—Jonah’s slender fingers—and precisely Jonah’s look of eager expectation. It’s as if these sixty-odd years have melted away in a twinkling.

  A few seconds pass in this amazed silence. He is opening his mouth to speak to me when his mobile goes off—“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” is the ditty—and when he gives me an apologetic look and opens the phone I finally remember myself. This is Justin, Harry’s nephew, and he was only staring at a pretty girl who’d walked into his shop.

  I can hear a female voice through the receiver, and he is adopting a certain tone, that tone, you know what I mean: “Hey, it’s great to hear from you … How’ve you been? That’s good … It’s just that things’ve been so busy around here … Yeah, at my uncle’s shop …”

  Jonah had grown up in London, and he had that glorious upper-crust accent that made you feel, as soon as he spoke, that you were in capable hands; and so my first thought is that this boy’s ordinary Jersey speech is just an act put on for the girl on the other end of the line.

  My heart is thudding in my ears. Desperate for a distraction, I look around the room and pick out the changes since my last visit. To my relief, the horned mermaid chandelier still hangs above my head, but pretty much every item behind the counter has been rearranged and all the furniture dusted and polished. What else … oh! All the books are gone! There’d been no order to the book collection, just a few dusty volumes piled here and there, but now there isn’t a tome in sight. Then I notice an Apple laptop open on the counter in front of him beside a stack of old ledger books. Seems the nephew—Justin—is industrious enough to attempt to bring the Fawkes and Ibis record-keeping system into the twenty-first century. Good luck to him, and he’ll need it.

  “Listen, do you mind if I call you back? I’m still at work … Yeah, see, the thing is, I’m down in Jersey right now, so I don’t think I can make it out tonight … Yeah, okay, I sure will …”

  Slowly I circle the casket table by the window, examining every once-sacred object on its black varnished surface as if for the first time: the reliquary carved and painted in the likeness of a girlish saint, the repoussé incense burners, the monstrance with its tarnished sunburst.

  “Thanks for the call … Enjoy your evening … Uh-huh, you too. Later.”

  Is the girl aware she’s just been jilted? Probably not, if she was stupid enough to ring him in the first place. So we have a rake, have we! Not so much like Jonah, then.

  I meet his gaze again as he flips his phone shut and I feel that frisson, that very particular zing, shooting out of my quim and rearranging all my guts on its way up. Now his face is strangely blank. I look away. A length of scarlet ribbon trails over the side of the casket table, and I hook my finger through the ribbon and hold the pendant up to what daylight remains. It’s a pomander, with a sprig of dried rosemary inside, but I will allow him to tell me so himself. I place the cake box on a shelf, flick the pomander’s tiny clasp, and the rosemary falls into my open palm.

  I can feel his eyes on me. I make a little show of putting the sprig back in the hollow pendant and fumbling with the clasp, and I hear him round the counter and approach the table.

  “Here,” he says gently. “Let me.” Gingerly I hand him the pendant and he smiles at me as he refastens the clasp. “It’s meant to ward off illness, bad spirits, and whatnot.”

  “Though I guess that depends on what you put inside it,” I murmur.

  He squints at the tiny price tag dangling from the ribbon. “Looks like it’s over three hundred years old.”

  “The pomander itself, you mean. Not the ribbon as well, surely.”

  “Seems I’ve been telling you things you already know. You an art history major?”

  I shake my head. “I’m just interested.”

  He looks at me as if to say So am I—and when he asks, “Is there something in particular I can help you with?” I am confident he isn’t talking about his inventory, though his manners are technically beyond reproach.

  I remember myself and pick up the cake box. “I haven’t come to browse, actually.” With slightly trembling hands I give him the box. “It’s for you. It’s a cake. A toffee cake. For you.”

  He stares at me, agape, and I’m not taking literary license here. After a long moment he says, “For me?”

  “My aunt baked it. She’s a friend of your uncle’s, comes in here all the time. She just asked me to drop it off.”

  “Wow,” he says. “Wow. Thank you so much.” I’m touched at how touched he is.

  “I’ll tell my auntie you were thrilled.”

  He offers his free hand. “I’m Justin.”

  “Eve.” His hand is warm, his grip hearty. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Well, Eve. I’m closing the shop soon. What do you say we wash this down with a cup of coffee? Two cups, I mean. One for me and one for you.”

  “Can’t stay, I’m afraid. I’ve got to get home for dinner.”

  “Do you live here, then?”

  I shake my head. “Just visiting. I live in New York.”

  His eyes light up. “The city?”

  I nod. “I live with my sister. We come down some weekends.”

  “And what do you do for fun while you’re in Blackabbey?”

  “We might go out for a drink. You know the Blind Pig Gin Mill?”

  “Will you be there tonight?”

  I shrug. “Should be.”

  “Great,” he says with an enthusiasm that reminds me even more of Jonah. I feel a pricking round the eyes. “I’ll see you there.” He walks me to the door and hesitates. “Are you sure you can’t come for a drink now?”

  “Quite sure. My aunts will be waiting for me. Tonight then?”

  “Tonight,” he says, and I can tell he’s biting back the urge to ask exactly what time I’ll be there. “All right. Bye, then.” He parts the blackout curtain and opens the door for me, and when I glance back he’s still standing in the doorway looking after me.

  AFTER DINNER I am playing a game of Neverending Hobscobble with Vega at the kitchen table when the doorbell rings. Vega leaves her hand on the table, ventures into the hall, and puts her eye to the peephole. “It’s a boy,” she whispers. “I don’t know him. Are you expecting anyone, Auntie?”

  “Not particularly,” I reply, but I come up swiftly behind her and yank the door open.

  “Hello, Eve.” Justin pauses. “I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Uncle Harry where your family lived and he gave me your address. Your aunt’s address, I mean.”

  I usher him in and Vega looks at me as if to say, So this is why you haven’t put your old skin back on.

  I pay her no mind. “I thought we were meeting at the bar.”

  “We are. I mean, I was down there for a while, and then I started to wonder if you’d made other plans, so I just thought I’d come by and …” Justin casts a curious glance about the foyer, then remembers himself and lets out a nervous laugh.

  I smile up at him. “I’ll just get my purse.”

  OUR CONVERSATION is pleasant on the walk into town. We chat for a bit about Emmet Fawkes’s European itinerary and how Justin is settling into the upstairs apartment (not exactly home, but he’s getting used to the weird smells and antediluvian appliances); he tells me I have a classy name and that if it weren’t on my house he’d have thought it was a stage name. I laugh as though I haven’t heard this before. Like the names of all the classic film stars, ours generally sound as if we’ve made them up.

  We arrive at the Blind Pig Gin Mill, a cozy, dimly lit pub where the blue-
collar barflies and their lively sports chatter are a welcome alternative to the stodgy pretensions of the Harveysville Inn. The bartenders tease you if you order anything besides the swill they’ve got on tap, though the Harbinger girls are more or less exempt; I order a dry martini and the boy behind the counter nods without so much as a twitch of the mouth. Justin orders a pint of Miller Lite.

  He tells me he’s excited to be working for his uncle and that he’d like to travel the world “going picking.” He admits he doesn’t have much of a head for business, but he hopes it’s something that can be taught. “Have you ever seen my uncle deal with somebody trying to make a return?” he asks, and I laugh. “He’s a total hardass. I’d never be able to do that.”

  “You’ll learn, I suppose.”

  Over and over he impresses me with his swiftly acquired knowledge of the Fawkes and Ibis inventory, his stories of crisscrossing Europe on a series of night trains and of the oddball customers in the secondhand record shop, and his impeccable manners. He’d held the door open for me, of course, he listens raptly to my own little anecdotes, and when my shawl falls off the back of my chair he bends automatically to retrieve it.

  “How was your beer?” I ask as he drains his pint glass.

  “Awful. But it’s gone to a better place.” He pauses. “Are you okay? You just went all pale.”

  That had always been Jonah’s peculiar expression, from the day I met him ’til the night before he died. Whenever you asked Jonah how he’d liked his hearty lamb stew, his brandy, his just-finished cigar (on those rare occasions when there was a cigar to be smoked), he always responded with “gone to a better place”—no matter how much, or little, he’d actually enjoyed it. I’ve never heard anyone else use that expression except at the funerals of ordinary people.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I take a breath to steady myself. “Nothing. I’m all right. It’s just … I knew someone once who used to say his food and drink had ‘gone to a better place.’ It … always made me laugh.”

  “I thought I’d made it up,” he says a little ruefully.

  I sigh. “I’m sure he did too.”

  He has the tact to say no more. Yes, I am impressed.

  But I can tell you one thing: no matter how innocently he may present himself, this boy’s got a bag o’ tricks. How can he remind me so much of Jonah, then? It isn’t only his eyes, his face, his fingers. He carries himself just the same—easygoing on the surface, but watchful underneath. I had often wondered what Jonah was like when he was a younger man, but I never thought I’d get the chance to find out.

  The memory of that phone call in the shop this afternoon gives me pause, and I raise my eyebrows when he rests his hand on my bare knee. “You’re being rather presumptuous, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?”

  He withdraws his hand with a frown. “When you came into the shop, you … well, you didn’t look at me as if there was somebody else.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean. But what about you, Mister Kiss-and-Run?” He turns red. “I suppose you picked her up at a bar. Am I right?”

  He glances away, gives a slight nod.

  “Let’s try this, then: why don’t you show me how you did it? I find this all very interesting from an anthropological point of view.”

  “I don’t—I didn’t—”

  “Don’t even bother trying to tell me you didn’t use some slick sort of line. Now, seduce me exactly as you seduced that poor girl on the telephone earlier.”

  “But—”

  “Go on! I won’t make fun.”

  He gives me a look, as if he can’t figure out if he’s walking willingly into a trap. “Well, it was her friend’s birthday and she was picking up the tab. I watched her sign the credit card slip, and—”

  “Ah, so you’re an expert in graphology! No, no, go on, by all means. Hand me a napkin and I’ll sign my name.”

  He plucks a fresh napkin from a holder by his elbow. I pull out a fountain pen—“Got this at your shop, by the way”—and write “Eve” with an immodest flourish at the end. I hand him the napkin and as he looks at it a smile flits across his face.

  “Now, I suppose you’re about to tell me the long tail on my lowercase E is indicative of my generosity? Perhaps to a fault?”

  He stares at me.

  “Never fails, does it?”

  Justin clears his throat. “Not ’til now.”

  I take the last sip of my martini and pop the olive, chewing thoughtfully as I watch him fidget. “I wonder what you say if the girl’s name ends in some other letter. Then again, I suppose most girls make long tails on their As and Ys as well.”

  He’s now red as a beet. I don’t treat other men this way, of course—if I made a habit of this I’d never see any action.

  I feel a tingling in my fingers and toes. I’ve been ignoring this nagging feeling since we first sat ourselves at the bar. Running out of oomph is like running out of petrol: a smart motorist finds a fill-up station as soon as she sees the flash of the little red warning light, and I fear I’m running on fumes. You don’t want to see what would happen if I were to run out: within seconds I’d be standing in the middle of the bar looking like a threepenny hoor.

  “I’ve got to go home,” I say abruptly.

  “Now that your work here is done?” he says, but he is making a valiant attempt at a smile.

  “I’m sorry,” I say as I fumble for my pocketbook. “I didn’t mean to humiliate you.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “Well, I only meant to humble you a little. I’m afraid I overshot, though, and for that I apologize.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he says as we exit the bar. “Can I walk you home?”

  “Thank you, but your place is in the opposite direction.”

  “But I’d rather walk y—”

  “No, honestly, Justin, I appreciate the gesture but I’m in a hurry now. There’s something I’ve forgotten to do at home and so I’ve got to run.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Well, I won’t keep you. Wait—just one thing. Is there any point in my asking for your cell number?”

  “There isn’t, but only because I don’t have one.”

  “Really!” He’s fascinated, impressed even. “I’m always talking about getting rid of mine. There’s something not right about being able to be reached at any place, at any hour. Could I have your e-mail address then?”

  “I don’t have one of those either.”

  “What! How am I going to keep in touch with you?”

  I laugh. “I do have a telephone, you know.”

  I pull my pen out of my purse, grab his hand, and write my number on his palm as he’s saying, “But what if you’re not at home?”

  “Then you’ll leave a message and I’ll ring you back. That’s what they did in the old days, you know.”

  “Is this a phony number you’re giving me?”

  “Would I give you a phony number if I wanted to see you again?”

  “Uh-oh. She’s not answering my question.”

  “Call it and find out. I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.” I bid him good night and hurry up the avenue toward home as that awful tingling spreads up my legs. My backward transformation is imminent.

  I stumble through my bedroom door, slam it behind me, and wriggle out of my frock just as my skin is beginning to pucker. I put on an old silk robe and totter into the bathroom, where I smear on the Pond’s without looking in the mirror.

  The White Witch

  10.

  Berlin, 1930s

  MY NEIGHBORS called me die weisse Hexe—the white witch. I had upwards of a dozen callers a day, many of whom were repeat visitors. I even felt a certain degree of affection, born of familiarity, for the middle-aged women who asked if their civil-servant husbands would receive a promotion and the elderly ladies who only wanted to know if their dear Heinrichs were still waiting for them �
��on the other side.” If I’d grown to trust them, I might even give them a glimpse of the snow globe I kept under a knitted cozy on the mantelpiece, my very own crystal ball, where flakes of porcelain snow fell on Alpine villages inhabited by their loved ones in miniature.

  Inevitably, though, there were the one-time callers I couldn’t wait to be rid of, and I’ll never forget the first Nazi who showed up on my doorstep asking for a palm reading.

  Nazis were the original stock villains, sneering and stomping and slapping their leather gloves about, demanding to hear all you knew under pain of death when you copped perfectly well they were going to kill you regardless. And yet they loved their wives, children, and pets, same as anybody else, and experienced happiness and sorrow as keenly as you or me. We thought of them as monsters, even the underlings; but I could only regard this man as a singular creature in a hive of insects, or one of the apes who wait upon Mephistopheles.

  I let him in, repugnant as I found his uniform and manner, because I thought perhaps I could learn from him. He would pay me for my services, but I would receive his for free and in perfect ignorance on his part.

  “You have a secret, which must be concealed at all costs,” I said. His father was half-Jewish, meaning he was a Mischling—rather common as far as secrets went, in those times, but to him the revealing of it would have brought ruination.

  “Will I be able to keep it?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Even the safest secret can’t be kept forever.”

  “You say I’ll be found out?”

  “In the end, yes. But your position will not be affected.”

  He heaved a sigh of tempered relief. “And … will I have a long life?”

  “That all depends.” I carefully avoided his gaze. “I can only tell you what will happen if you continue on your present course.”

  All at once the air in the room grew dark and heavy. He understood me. “Yes?”