It was here that Edwina's One True Path took a sharp right off the spiritual interstate and left the rest of her contemporaries far behind. Whereas they only nosed around the borderline belief systems, she jumped in feet first, with eyes and mind wide open. While her tribemates picked up this or that back-to-the-Earth faith, only to put it down again when the glitter of the new toy wore off (or when it failed to piss off their parents sufficiently), Edwina actually spent serious study time on every non-suburbia-standard religion she encountered.
And when Moonbeam Suntoucher (nee Greta Bradford-Smythe) announced that she was a shaman because she had bought a genuine dreamcatcher and a boatload of dried sage, or when Frodo Freelove (Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan's firstborn son, Sammy) insisted he'd achieved samsara because the check he'd written out to the Happy Times Ashram and Salad Bar had finally cleared, Edwina calmly went about the business of improving her grasp on the true powers that underlie the more Gaia-centric beliefs, if you sought them out with enough application and sincerity.
Either that or she just got lucky. But whatever the case, the fact remained that Edwina Godz came away from all of her spiritual quests with a command of magic and something more: the realization that the people who were following the many separate paths of some really Old Time Religions didn't have the business sense of bread mold.
It was sad. There they sat—be they tribe or coven or council or conglomeration of congregants—able to raise the might of the great earth-powers but helpless to do more than take it in the unmentionables every year when Income Tax Day rolled around.
Edwina had fixed all that. Edwina was good at fixing things. Perhaps it was her personal muse at work, perhaps it was thanks to her father's legal-eagle spirit, raised during one of the many assorted ceremonies in which Edwina had participated over the years, perhaps it was simply out-of-the-blue inspiration, but whatever the source, the result was the same: Edwina Godz saw a way to help both the old earth-religion followers, by whatever name they chose to call themselves, and herself. Retracing the steps of her spiritual journey, she approached them one by one with her modest proposal: that she show them the ropes of fund-raising, the benefits of obtaining tax-exempt status as registered, organized religions, and the basics of bookkeeping to safeguard their continued economic health.
Could she help it if the best, most efficient way for them to do this was by her founding her own corporation and taking all of them on board as her subsidiaries? Was she to blame if they were so grateful to lay hold of the advantages she offered that they never uttered so much as a whisper of objection when she collected a nice, fat piece of the action in exchange for services rendered? Did anyone protest when she used the magic powers she'd mastered during her years of Searching to help run E. Godz, Inc. so smoothly?
Of course not. There was more than enough butter to go around so that everyone's bread was fully covered. The boat wasn't rocking, nothing was broken, and all was roses.
Except for a couple of thorns named Dov and Peez. In a perfect world, Edwina's children would have appreciated the goldmine that their mother had created for them. Instead they seemed to spend their free time trying to give each other the shaft. Didn't they understand that if their bickering over personal differences got out of control it could adversely affect E. Godz, Inc.? And then where would they be? Were they even fit for any other sort of employment?
That annoying *ding!* sounded again, signaling the end of a transmission. The pair of pens softly laid themselves down, their jobs done. Still clutching the family photo in her left hand, Edwina reached in with her right to remove the sheets bearing the transcribed conversation. It was a miracle that the papers didn't spontaneously combust in her hand, given the level of volcanic vituperation zipping back and forth between the siblings. As with every intercepted communication Edwina had ever seen, Dov and Peez each managed to let the other know that:
A. He/she did not like her/him.
B. He/she did not trust her/him.
C. He/she knew how to run the family business far better than her/him.
D. If there were any justice in the universe, the day would come when he/she would have the power to push her/him the hell out of her/his cushy, undeserved position and then all would be right with the world.
E. So there.
"I blame myself," Edwina muttered, crumpling up the papers and tossing them away. The parlor wastebasket sprouted cherub wings and zoomed in to catch the discarded transcriptions before they hit the floor, then fluttered back to its place, only pausing long enough to trade high-fives with the fireplace-ash broom. "A little. On second thought, no, I don't blame myself at all. Why should I? I always did what was best for them. I sent them away from home as soon as I could manage it, legally and financially. So I'm the Great Earth Manager, not the Great Earth Mother: So sue me. Which is worse, raising your kids yourself, come hell or high water, when you darn well know that it's not your scene, or sending them to the finest daycare centers and boarding schools and colleges that money can buy? Money which, might I add, we never would have had in the first place if I'd been tied down wiping runny noses and kissing boo-boos and baking cupcakes instead of being free to build up the business. I think I did damn well by those kids. If it's anyone's fault that they can't get along, it's theirs."
She put the family photo back on the table and made herself a fresh pot of tea, but despite a brew containing enough St. John's wort to turn Attila the Hun into a tree sloth, Edwina found herself unable to release her troubles and go with the cosmic flow.
The cosmic flow didn't have children.
She made an impatient sound with her tongue and sat up straight on the sofa. She had reached a decision:
"It may not be my problem if Dov and Peez want to wear each other's guts for garters, but if I don't want E. Godz, Inc. to go down the corporate tubes, I'd better be the one to fix it," she said. "The question is—how?"
She settled back among the cushions, took a deep draught of tea, and closed her eyes while she brought all the powers of a mind Machiavelli might envy to bear upon the present sticky wicket. Music from an unseen source wafted gently through the parlor, a medley of New Age hits that she had conjured up to help her think. At last, when it seemed as though she would burst out of her house stark naked and foaming at the mouth if she had to listen to one more meandering flute trill, Edwina's eyes popped open, the light of inspiration shining bright within.
"Of course," she said aloud. "It's the perfect plan: simple, elegant and practical. Excellent." A sharklike grin—her father's corporate lawyer heritage at work—spread itself across her face as she told the air: "Take a letter."
Three more ensorcelled fountain pens floated up from the green baize-lined leather box atop Edwina's desk. The left-hand top drawer opened of its own accord and three sheets of blank paper like three white miniature flying carpets arose to take their places beneath the waiting nibs. The top right-hand drawer opened and two envelopes slithered out to await developments. A ghostly file cabinet hovered on the edge of materialization, pending the completion of the letter under composition. Ever the consummate businesswoman, Edwina never failed to make a copy of all correspondence for her personal records.
"My dearest children," she began her dictation, to the accompanying scritch-scritch- scratch of the three animate pens. "It is with a heavy heart that I write this from what will be, in the inevitable course of time, my death bed. There is no cure for the ailment that has so suddenly come over me and my doctor tells me that I have, at most, a few months more to live. I admit that I've been toying with the idea of retirement for a while now, but this news has forced my hand.
"Thus I find myself compelled to make a decision which I have been putting off, namely determining who shall succeed me as the new chairperson of E. Godz, Inc. My deepest desire has always been to be able to turn over cooperative control of the business to the two of you, but I realize that this is impossible. You two couldn't find cooperative in the dictionary even if I cast a spell
on it and had it bite you in the butt. How to describe your relationship? Cats versus dogs? Hatfields versus McCoys? Pepsi versus Coke? Trekkies versus Trekkers?
"If I gave you joint control of E. Godz, Inc., it would only be a matter of time before your bickering, sniping, and outright attacks on one another distracted you from the business of running my company well and profitably. I didn't work so hard all these years to have my creation torn to shreds after I'm gone.
"Therefore I am resolved: Only one of you will inherit control of the company, together with the bulk of my estate. Which one? I'm still thinking it over. To be frank, though I love you both for the totality of your personhoods and embrace your unique younesses with the wholehearted, nonjudgmental attitude of our Mother Earth, as far as your business smarts go, neither of you has impressed me worth a dog fart. As for leadership ability, if either one of you encountered a horde of midair lemmings who had already gone headfirst over the cliff's edge, I sincerely doubt whether you could persuade them to complete the plunge.
"I may be telling you something you already know. Perhaps you have been working for E. Godz, Inc. solely out of family loyalty rather than real vocation. If you've spent the last few years just pushing papers without a thought for the people behind them, this is your chance to bow out gracefully and seek your true world-path. If one or the other of you wishes to withdraw from the running, voluntarily, do so, and do it quickly. Lift the burden of decision from my shoulders.
"Please.
"Love, Edwina."
The three pens capped themselves and retreated to their box. One copy of the letter flew across the room to pop itself neatly into the phantom file cabinet, which promptly vanished. Only the copies of the letter intended for Dov and Peez remained, along with the two envelopes.
"On second thought," Edwina told the loitering stationery, "I believe I'll fax this." The superfluous copy of the letter let out a low moan of despair and tore itself into a shower of still-grieving confetti. The two envelopes slunk back into their desk drawer, muttering darkly through their gummed flaps.
As the lone page fluttered away to run itself through the fax machine, Edwina headed upstairs. If she was going to pose as the victim of a mysterious-but-fatal illness, it wouldn't hurt to get into the spirit of things by taking to her bed. In fact, it might be more than just a melodramatic necessity. Dov and Peez weren't exactly newly hatched chicks when it came to matters of magic. Though Edwina had spied on them diligently ever since they'd taken up their posts in the New York and Miami offices, she knew that even the tightest espionage net could still let a fishie or two slip through the meshes.
For all she knew, someday they might try spying on her. The nerve!
Edwina's bedroom was as luxuriously Victorian as the rest of the mansion, its centerpiece being a four-poster with creamy white brocade curtains, an avalanche of plump pillows, and mattresses soft yet firm enough to demand a 911 call to the Paradox Police. A big-screen TV with built-in DVD player was hidden in the armoire opposite, with two large, well-stocked bookcases flanking it. A satisfactory selection of drinks and snack foods were stowed in the refrigerator disguised as a hope chest that stood at the foot of Edwina's bed. If she required anything more, she had only to invoke her powers and it would be brought to her by invisible hands.
"Not a bad way to wait for Death," Edwina said, changing into an Egyptian cotton nightgown. "A nice, long wait, but the kids won't need to know that."
She grabbed a pleasantly tawdry romance novel to keep her company, slipped under the bedcovers, and settled comfortably back among her pillows to await developments.
Chapter Two
The phone in Peez Godz's office rang while she was in the middle of giving dictation. Her secretary, the formidable Wilma Pilut, answered it with the warm, welcoming tones of a testy Doberman. One bark, two snarls, and a protracted growl into the mouthpiece later, she turned to her employer and reported: "Chicago on line two, Ms. Godz."
"Not those idiots again," Peez grumbled, finagling a particularly tricky paper clip into the chain she'd been working on since eight that morning. She looked up from her mindless, endless task and gave the secretary her most engaging smile. "Tell them I'm not in, please, Wilma."
Wilma refused to be engaged. "That would be a lie, Ms. Godz," she said brusquely. "The Great Mother doesn't like lies."
"The Great Mother doesn't need to know," Peez replied, doing her best not to sound like she was wheedling. "Besides, it's not like you're lying; you're just relaying a teensy, weensy, miniscule li'l ol' fib of mine."
Wilma shook her blocky head ponderously. "The Great Mother would know. And She wouldn't like it." When Edwina first had set up Peez in the New York City office of E. Godz, Inc., she'd provided her daughter with everything needed to run the business smoothly, including this short, stocky, monolithic secretary. There was something so very, well, not earth-y so much as earth-en about the woman that Peez had spent most of her first week at work on the phone to her mother making Edwina swear again and again, on a stack of talismans, that Wilma was not actually a golem in disguise.
Now Peez stared at the impassive face of her recalcitrant secretary and gritted her teeth in silent frustration. Too bad she's not a golem, she thought. At least a golem obeys orders. With the sigh of the much put-upon she replied, "If it weren't for me, Wilma dear, you'd never have discovered the Way of the Great Mother and you'd still be doing those dreary covered-dish suppers at that former church of yours. I'm sure that if you do me this one itsy-bitsy favor, She'll forgive you. She's good that way."
"She's not good, She's just Great." Again that slow, weighty, side-to-side turning of Wilma's almost cubic head on her nigh-nonexistent neck. Peez found herself marveling at the fact that her secretary's terra-cotta-colored hair shed real dandruff and not flakes of dried clay. "You can't guarantee that She'll forgive me," Wilma intoned in a voice so husky it spoke of a three-box-a-day cigar habit begun some time in kindergarten. "She might even get angry. You know what happens when the Great Mother gets angry."
Peez sighed again, bringing this one all the way up from the soles of her plain black ballet flats. Of course she knew what happened when the Great Mother got angry. So did Wilma, having just achieved the rank of Junior High Priestess of the Sacred Grove, cum laude. However, Peez reasoned, if she took the time to enumerate the various afflictions that could ensue from the Great Mother's anger, perhaps her off-the-cuff filibustering would take up so much time that those pests on the line from Chicago would get tired of waiting for her to answer and would hang up.
One by one she uncurled her fingers, reckoning up the sum of divine displeasure: "Floods, droughts, crop blights, cattle murrain, slowed download times, failure of the cacao crop, plagues of feral hamsters, skyrocketing movie ticket prices—"
She could have gone on for a much longer time, ticking off all the ways that the Great Mother had on tap to let mortals know that they'd pissed Her off, but Wilma cut in with the last item on the list.
"—zits," Wilma said in a no-nonsense tone of voice that let Peez know that further disaster-listing was unnecessary and would be punished to the full extent of a secretary's considerable powers. "I know about all the rest and I can handle them just fine, but I'm not going to risk zits. Not this weekend. I've got a date."
"You've ... got ... a ... what?"
A little while later, after she had sent Wilma off to do some filing and had dealt with the call from Chicago (more whining about the whole human sacrifice squabble, which somehow had managed to slip out of committee and turn into a full-blown flamewar on the Net), Peez leaned back in her butter-soft leather desk chair with built-in footrest, CD player, aromatherapy dispenser, heating and massage capabilities, and wished she were dead.
"Brilliant," she told the ceiling. "I am just so brilliant. If I were any more brilliant, I'd be a black hole. What was I thinking?"
"You were thinking that Wilma Pilut, the girl voted Most Likely to Date Mount Rushmore, has romantic plans fo
r this weekend and you don't."
The voice that responded to Peez's self-deprecating declaration was a little too thin and a lot too sweet to be anything human. The sweetness, however, was all inherent in the false-as-a-padded-bra tone of voice, not in the cold, cruel words it spoke.
"Then you thought that Wilma didn't notice how shocked you were to hear about her upcoming date. But you know that she did notice; she's only built thick." The voice skirled up into a trill of nerve-grating giggles. It was coming from one of Peez's desk drawers and it showed no signs of shutting up any time soon. "Then you thought you covered that little faux pas by pretending that you'd misheard her, that you thought she'd said she had some bait this weekend, so you asked her where she was going fishing. Oh, that was a brave effort! Remember how you never got cast in any of your school plays? Ever wonder why? Well, if you can't figure it out after having given that lousy performance for an audience of one very ticked-off secretary, maybe you're the one with clay between your ears! And then do you want to know what you thought?" The desk drawer rattled loudly. Something inside was trying to get out. "Do you? Do you? Huh, huh, do you?"
Peez closed her eyes and tucked a limp strand of her long, dull black hair behind one ear. "Tell me," she said wearily.
"Take me out first," said the thing in the desk.
"Why should I? I know you can let yourself out any time you like. And I also know what I was thinking, and just how stupid it was, so I don't really need you to tell me that."
"But it's not the same unless you hear it from me, is it Peezie-pie?" The drawer shook with a new attack of those high-pitched giggles.
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