“Nonsense!” Josie lay down again, turning her back to him.
“I mean it. I’ll buy you a miniature horse.”
“What would I do with a stupid horse?”
“You would take him for a ride.” Russell kissed the rim of her ear. “You would mount it,” he slid a finger down the line of her neck, “and I would parade you by the canals. ‘Here comes the queen,’ I’ll say, ‘Aquí viene la reina,’ and you will salute your subjects, waving your hand.”
“How stupid! Where would I keep a horse?”
“At your house.” Russell kissed her shoulder. “Your landladies wouldn’t mind a miniature horse to eat the overgrown grass in their front yard.”
“What if somebody steals him?”
“I would find the thief and chop off his head with my bare hands,” he squeezed Josie’s bottom.
“They would take you to jail,” Josie laughed.
“They wouldn’t,” Russell brushed his stubble against her ears. “Stealing from the queen is considered treason. And if they did,” he kissed her shoulder and rubbed the tip of his nose against her back, “you would come and visit me every day, wouldn’t you?”
“Not every day,” Josie responded, turning back to him. “But at least every Sunday.”
Richard would have paid her rent, but he wouldn’t be able to make love to her the way Russell did, she told herself that evening, sitting amidst a cloud of smoke between two of Russell’s friends inside the Gas House Café during a poetry reading, after a dinner that had consisted of wine and a bag of day-old discounted pastries. No one could, she corrected herself, looking at her boyfriend’s handsome profile, feeling a shiver run through her spine all the way to her eyebrows, not Richard, not any other man on the planet. Besides, she stole a look at the table, it was much more fun to hang out with the gang, all dressed in clothes half-eaten by moths, than with a millionaire old enough to be her father.
But that was exactly her problem, she pursed her lips. She liked so much better to listen to her boyfriend play the bongos to the rhythms of jazz than to listen to a classical ensemble. She preferred to hang out with a group of misfits in an artists’ dive that looked like an abandoned warehouse than with a rich gentleman in a fancy restaurant that resembled a palace.
The man standing at the center of the room finished his poem:
My bike is my horse
Your car is your cancer.
The crowd celebrated with applause.
Josie turned to Russell’s roommate, hoping he would explain the poem.
“Bicycles don’t pollute,” John responded. “It’s simple.”
Well, she hadn’t found it that simple. Her eyes wandered around the room. The interior of the Gas House Café was very plain: four walls painted in white, bereft of any of the architectural embellishments you would expect in buildings from the same period, but almost completely covered with unframed canvases and amateurish sculptures. There was a long counter at the back, a remnant from the times the building had been a self-serve restaurant, a few sofas scattered around, and six wooden tables riddled with carved-in initials that identified past patrons.
John jutted over the table and said something to Russell that Josie couldn’t understand. Russell started laughing. Josie took a hand to her chest. Were they making fun of her? she wondered.
Another poet stood up:
Santa Monica College students
Flaunting their youth
Josie looked down at her nails. She never understood any of those stupid poeMs. They didn’t rhyme. The art in this place wasn’t much to look at either. At least not in her humble opinion. A cat made out of clay? Pieces of cardboard held together with chicken wire? She looked up. The ceiling had lost all trace of its turn-of-the-century splendor. The chandeliers were gone and the plaster had fallen off, leaving the beams that supported the roof exposed. None of the chairs matched, and there were so many cracks in the tiled floor that some parts had been covered with cardboard to avoid accidents. The place was a dive. Nonetheless, she straightened herself up and looked again at the group sitting at her table, she preferred all this to having surf-and-turf and bubbling wine with a geezer.
Russell winked at her.
Josie thanked the gesture with a big smile.
Oh, yes, it was so much more fun to share a table with a group of beatniks, to watch Russell’s friends attempt to make music using the silverware as drumsticks, to listen to the actresses rehearse their lines with mouths full of crumbs, than to drink champagne perched upon the legs of a banker. It was definitely much more fun to hang out with the young and poor than with the old and wealthy, to sneak into Pacific Ocean Park without paying, to go eat for free at the Jewish Center for the Shabbos, than to drive through Sunset Boulevard in a Cadillac Cabrio next to a living mummy.
The opposite of an olive is a nail.
“A nail?” Josie forced a laugh, trying to sound sophisticated. She pulled in her legs and took a sip of her coffee. “I would have said that the opposite of an olive is a cherry,” she turned to John again. “You know—as in a cherry martini.”
John rolled a strip of Benzedrine into a small ball and dropped it into his cup. “The nail is a symbol of physical suffering,” he explained, inviting the girl to have a sip. “It represents war. Oppression of men by men.”
“The olive represents peace,” Russell concluded.
Josie felt her face warm up with pride. Russell was so smart. Or was it the effect of the bennies? Either way, he was so smart and so handsome. How could she ever have thought of breaking up with him? Just because he was poor?
And his friends were incredibly cool. She liked John. He was a pressed stud, dressed as if he had just stepped out of an office: long sleeve shirt, bow tie, and gray pants held up by suspenders. A well-trimmed mustache complemented his image. She could fuck him, she thought. If he weren’t black and, of course, if she was single.
The opposite of a smile is a hammer…
She took a sip of her coffee. She didn’t understand what that meant either, but whatever. She didn’t need to. She felt fortunate, surrounded by youth, wit, and good looks. Money didn’t matter.
Alas, going out with Russell and his friends was too costly to do often. They never had any money, and each of them ate as if they were two, including the chicks. Twice before she had found herself forced to pay a check for six. Not cool when you’re only working part-time and making a dollar and fifteen cents an hour, she pouted.
Even if she didn’t have to pay for them every time, she had to pay for herself, and Josie was not used to doing that in the company of others. She was not that kind of girl. Dinner at Ciro’s or anywhere else on the Sunset Strip could always be for free, if she wanted, and while the sensation of a spoonful of crème brûlée melting inside your mouth couldn’t overcome the distaste of having a man twice your age rub your knee with his hand and look at you with the kind of lust that is so offensive to a young lady, it should be forbidden, the peace of mind brought by having money in your purse certainly could.
She finished her coffee. Refill was just a penny. Alas, she couldn’t afford spending that penny. She pouted again. What was she doing there? She hated being poor and being surrounded by poor people.
“I wish they served martinis in here,” she ventured.
Russell celebrated her comment with a chuckle.
I wish you were rich too, she added, to herself. What had happened to the paid gig he had mentioned before? He had gotten so stoned he completely forgot about it, that’s what had happened.
“You’re my favorite martini,” Russell whispered in her ear.
She was? Josie’s nostrils expanded. And probably his main source of income, too.
She left early that night, claiming to be tired.
As if to confirm her suspicions, Russell showed up at her place a couple hours later, asking for two-
hundred dollars.
“I don’t have that kind of money!” Josie replied from the stair landing.
“I know you don’t,” Russell cleaned his nose with the sleeve of his jacket, “but you could ask one of your friends, perhaps?”
Friends? What was he implying? Josie felt infuriated.
“They’re going to kill John if we don’t pay, babydoll,” Russell winced, as he only did when he was sober.
Kill John? What about Russell? Was he in danger? “Who’s going to kill him?”
“You don’t want to know, baby,” Russell laughed, shaking a little. “Do you think you could ask? Fifty, perhaps? Anything?”
John was Russell’s dearest friend; she couldn’t refuse to help him. She gave her boyfriend all the money she had: seven dollars.
She could only hope they wouldn’t use the money to buy junk.
Oh, she loved him. She had no doubt about it now, not after she had seen him fall on his knees and cry like a little baby. Russell was her first thought when she woke up, and her last before she fell asleep. But how on earth could she afford him? She dreaded the idea of having to practice further economies than the ones she already made if she wanted to continue dating Russell. Spend a bit less on food, mend her ripped tights, walk home instead of taking the bus, cut down on her smoking.
Was he worth it? She only needed to close her eyes and reminisce about the smell of his body pressed against hers to know that he was worth it. Was he the one? She had no proof of it. Less than two decades old, Josie had the wisdom to recognize she didn’t have much true-love experience. He loved her. That was a fact. He would have sold his soul for one of her kisses. However, love described as wide as the Earth and as long as a million turns around Jupiter wasn’t enough proof that he was the one and only. She needed facts. She needed the truth. She needed something more substantial and exact than a promise.
“What is it that you want to know?” the old woman offered Josie a deck of cards.
Josie sat on a folding metal chair inside her landladies’ kitchen with her knees trapped against the stove. Victoria sat in front of her on an upholstered chair covered with a pink quilt to hide the tears in the padding. Behind her stood a rickety cupboard full of food and kitchen utensils on top of which lay an empty cage that once held a parrot. A folding TV tray on metal legs served as the reading table.
“I want to know if I should continue dating my boyfriend.”
The room smelled of grease and bird droppings.
“Shuffle the cards three times.”
To supplement their expenses, the two sisters had become cartomancists.
“Now, cut them in two.”
Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, the house transformed into a psychic parlor by means of installing a dividing drapery between the living room and the dining table. On First Fridays, their younger sister set up a desk and a shade for them at the boardwalk.
“I see a man,” Victoria said, raising her eyebrows. “A man with money.”
“That must be Richard,” Josie replied.
Rosa sat to her sister’s left, in her wheelchair, watching a musical show on a small television set perched upon a tower of soda crates next to Josie. Every once in a while she turned her attention from the TV and looked at either Josie or the cards for a few seconds before turning back to her show.
“And a young man.” Victoria laid down a second card.
“That must be Russell.”
“And a woman.”
“That must be me!”
“It is not you,” Victoria responded.
“Which one is me then?” Josie pleaded.
Divination is, however, one of the most imprecise branches of magic.
“Do you see something bad?”
“Problems. Difficulties. Terrible circumstances… The six of pentacles.”
The two sisters’ talent in cartomancy was as weak as their faded beauty.
“Is that good or bad?”
Clients were scarce, profit was little. The majority of their customers were as poor as they were, if not poorer, and many relied on the sisters’ willingness to give credit—as a marketing strategy—and their occasional inability to remember names—as a mental condition—to avoid paying. By the same token, the two sisters relied on the human inability to remember which predictions did and which ones didn’t come true to maintain a few regular paying customers. It was their youngest sister’s responsibility to pay for their food and substance, but these regular clients were the ones that paid for their incidentals.
One of these regular clients was a young woman with a broken heart by the name of Heather Wildfeuer. She was a tantalizing belle in her mid-thirties, plump, but still delicious, with big green eyes, a sensuous mane of brown hair, and seductive red lips that distorted with every word she pronounced, like the body of a jellyfish floating in water.
Ms. Wildfeuer had been seeing the sisters for almost two years now. Depending on whose turn it was to see her, Rosa or Victoria’s, since the two sisters took turns as the working seer at random—depending on who had been “kissed by the spirit” that morning—she would get a “Yes, he will” or a “No, he will not” to her main question of every session: “Is he leaving his wife?” Notwithstanding the contradictory answers, Heather arrived punctually every second Tuesday at five, waited anywhere from ten minutes to a full hour, sat on a couch that smelled of mold and dog urine, eager to share her tragic story of treason, deception, and unconditional true love, to whomever was willing to hear it, as if the mere act of retelling it could ever change its ending.
“I come here to learn if my boyfriend still loves me,” Heather said to her ear for the day, sometimes another heartbroken girl; sometimes a widow wondering if she should remarry; sometimes an old man, desperate by the lack of employment.
One day it was Josie.
“I know he loves me, but I need to know if he’s serious.”
No other words could have held a stronger grasp of the girl’s attention. Josie had become a regular too, unable to satisfy her curiosity for what the future held for her in just one session. She set down the old magazine she had just picked up from the table and moved closer to Heather.
“He says he is, and I believe him,” Heather continued, with a smirk of triumph for having grabbed somebody’s attention; it was not always easy. “You can’t lie about that. You do not say ‘I love you’ if you really don’t mean it.”
Josie bobbed her head in agreement. It was true. You cannot fake sentiments.
“If it was a lie, I would know,” Heather raised her eyebrows, giving her face the same expression of a soprano about to begin her interpretation of “Der Hölle Rache” to a live audience. “Your eyes are the window to your soul and when I look into Will’s eyes, I know I’m looking deep into his soul. That’s how I know that he isn’t lying; I know because he still wants to be with me and have sex with me, and you cannot lie about that, you cannot lie when you kiss someone the way he kisses me, you cannot lie when you stare at someone right in the eye and say I love you—can you?”
She stopped, giving Josie the opportunity to respond.
Josie couldn’t.
“I just need to know for sure if he is leaving his wife,” Heather continued. “When, I should say,” she chuckled. “I need to know when he is leaving her. That’s all.”
Josie laughed too. When was the appropriate word. She liked the way of this woman’s thinking. “It is horrible not to know when things will happen,” she ventured.
“It is,” Heather agreed, with an expression of agony.
They returned to their magazines.
“My son loves him,” Heather said, after a minute. “Will is like an older brother for him.”
“You mean a father?” Josie asked.
“No,” Heather checked the hem of her skirt for loose threads, as if sud
denly annoyed by Josie’s question. “Will is too young to be my son’s father.”
The draperies opened and a concerned-looking woman left the house.
“It’s my turn now,” said Heather, standing up. “My name is Heather Wildfeuer.” She extended her hand.
“My name is Josie.”
“Last name?”
“García.”
Heather looked the girl up and down. “Well, Josie,” she said nonchalantly, “it’s been a pleasure talking to you. We can hang out one day if you want. I have a car.”
“That would be nice,” Josie responded.
Heather winked an eye and walked behind the curtain.
Ten minutes later, she came out. Her eyes were red from crying. She smiled at the girl and waved her good-bye.
10
In which we learn how to summon a demon
Ah, the foolish things one goes about when in love! With the help of a dictionary, Russell started writing love songs to his lady friend in Spanish. He didn’t know that indiana was not the proper word to use, nor that it could be taken as offensive by certain people. He called Josie “mi Bella Indiana,” and sang about her many qualities in a serenade that he and his friends organized for her on her nineteenth birthday, on June 27.
Josie began knitting. A scarf, for her lover, who would turn twenty-eight in November. She didn’t know how to knit. She didn’t know that she would need two needles, but she had plenty of time, as it was now only summer, so she bought two balls of yarn and a knitting basket.
“I won’t be blamed if he gets a cold this winter,” she said, with the pragmatism of a mother forcing into her child a free medicine sample.
Heather agreed to a threesome with her ex and a waitress from the Kumbala. “I will not be told I didn’t try hard enough to get his heart back,” she said, with tears in her eyes, the next time she ran into Josie.
Our short, dim, tight-lipped little friend continued using the facial cream that Josie gave her. She browsed through the fashion magazines that the girl and some of her other employers discarded and followed all of their beauty advice. She washed her face just before going to sleep and right after waking up every morning. She exfoliated her skin with a mixture of lemon juice and brown sugar. She wore a hat to protect her skin from the sun. She consumed less salt and she drank more water. Her skin condition improved slightly. Some of the lines and the dark spots vanished. She lost a few pounds, the dizziness and the fatigue of the mid-afternoon disappeared.
Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle Page 13
