Hex and the Single Girl (15 page)

He opened the bar cabinet and said, “Thirsty?” She shook her head. He opened the mini-fridge and asked, “Hungry?”

“Sorry I missed your call,” she said. “You didn’t have to come downtown. We could have rescheduled.”

“I’d rather do this in person,” he said, “I wanted to come and get you.”

He’d found out where she lived and he’d come to get her, just as she asked him to in his daydreams. In reality, Emma felt flattered, but also stalked. She’d stalked dozens of men, not thinking the least about their feelings.
Maybe I should
have,
she thought now.

“It was so dark at Ciao Roma,” said Emma. “And I didn’t stick around long after the lights came on. I’m surprised you could remember my face so well.”

He tapped his temple. “Photographic memory.”

“I thought you might feed me a line about my indelible beauty.”

“I’m an artist, not a poet,” he said. “But that was an indelible kiss.”

Emma said, “Ann Jingo said you want to use my portrait in your marketing for ArtSpeak. I’m going to have to say no.”

“I can make you famous,” he said.

“My preference leans in the other direction,” she said. “And, not to tell you your business, but it’s a bad idea. I’m not that gorgeous.”

“You’re autumn leaves,” he said. “Warm cider, pumpkin pie. Orange and black, a sleek little cat. You’re Halloween, the treat and trick. Come over here and sit on my dick.” He waggled eyebrows at her.

Emma laughed. “I though you weren’t a poet.”

He said, “Emma Hutch—nice to know your name by the way—you have an extraordinary face. You should show the

world. And ArtSpeak is revolutionary. You should be proud to represent it.”

Emma thought of Marcie Skimmer, who’d shown her extraordinary face to the world representing diet pills. She

certainly didn’t seem proud of it, or anything.

“I’m sure it’s a good product,” she started to say.

“It’s a
great
product,” said William, not humble about his work. “The smallest child has the instinct to fist a crayon and draw on the wall. The human brain is hardwired to create. If we can’t, we die. My mother was a painter. She lost her ability to paint and it was the end of her life. ArtSpeak is for everyone who can’t hold a paintbrush. And it’s for everyone who can but doesn’t know what to do with it. People
need
to create. Like they need to eat.”

“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said sincerely.

He nodded, changed the subject. “You’re a visual artist, right?” he asked.

“I’m not…actually, I am,” she said.

“Paint? Clay? Water colors?”

Brain waves. She said, “I’m more of a performance artist.”

“What’s your message?” he asked.

“The greatest good,” she said.

He started to say something but stopped. Then he said, “The truth is, Emma Hutch, although I do want to use those portraits, I needed an excuse to talk to you. About our kiss at Ciao Roma. You were like a human flame in my arms. I saw visions. Fire, smoke, a burning mountain. The whole experience was distracting, to say the least. And it’s stuck in my head, like a tune. Piano music in the wind. Almost eerie.”

“Haunting?” she said.

“Yes!” he agreed.

“That’s how I’ve described it,” she admitted.

“I think about you constantly. Your face pops into my head all day long. I know this sounds crazy, since we don’t know each other at all, but I think I might be in love with you.”

He’d as much as dictated The Good Witch, Inc.’s operating principle. But she was popping into his head without the aid of telegraphopathy. One might describe his reaction to her as organic love. Since he’d set up camp in her head, logic (and magic) would have it that she was in love with him too.

Without warning, William lifted Emma by the waist and deposited her sidesaddle onto his lap. He kissed her before she could object. As soon as their lips touched, she felt her pulse quicken, a heat wave on her skin. Lightning struck again, in the same exact spot. She closed her eyes and saw a spark, like a match spontaneously igniting. As she always explained to clients, it was up to them to fan that spark into a flame.

Or not. It was a choice—the woman’s choice—to go forward with a relationship or to back away from it. If Emma moved forward with William, how would it end? With him running away from her bed, carrying his clothes in a

bundle under his arm? Would he announce one day that he was quitting the relationship to move to an island forever?

Would the pounding flow of blood and heat of sex burst a blood vessel in her brain, rupturing the soft spot she just knew was there, no matter what the doctors had to say? Anise was dead at forty-seven. Only thirteen years older than Emma was right now.

She felt cold suddenly. Scrambling off of William’s lap, she looked out the limo window. “I’m going through a transitional period right now,” she said by way of an explanation.

“Emma, my lips are on fire,” he said.

“Drink your seltzer,” she said.

“Why are you rejecting me?” he asked, his English lilt growing limp. “I know you’re attracted.”

“I just can’t do it,” she said. For days, she’d been resisting because of professional ethics. Now Emma knew her fear of getting close to William ran much deeper. If Susan were in the limo, Emma would tell her, “Emotional

breakthroughs might not be as few and far between as previously thought.”

William reached over to stroke her hair. She turned to look at him. She loved his face. His bangs, the soulful green eyes. “Okay. I’m going to tell you the truth, Liam,” she said. He smiled, eager for it. “The truth is, I’m anorgasmic.”

Emma waited for him to say, “You’re
what?
”

But he said, “Bullshit. You have earthquake orgasms with lightning speed, and since our kiss in the dark, I’ve been the cause of every one. I know. I’ve seen them.” She must have looked shocked. He tapped his forehead. “In here.”

Just as she’d seen his orgasms in her head.

Emma said, “I have to get out of here. Pull over.”

“You’re afraid of me,” he said. “Of my reputation with women.”

“That too,” she agreed.

“What else? Just tell me what the problem is,” he pleaded.

“You don’t know a thing about me,” she said.

“So tell me,” he pleaded.

She was tempted, certainly, to unload. But she’d learned from age nine that people reacted predictably when she told the truth about herself. At first, everyone—including Victor—recoiled with distrust.

Emma said, “Don’t you have somewhere to go?”

Chapter 16

I
f Hoff’s doorman recognized Emma from the one time she’d been there before, he didn’t acknowledge it. He merely smiled and flipped a page in his magazine as she hurried to the elevator bank. She rode to floor seventeen, found Hoff’s two-bedroom exactly where he’d left it. The key worked too.

Flicking on the lights, Emma was struck again by Hoff’s color scheme. Slate, pewter, navy, charcoal. Dark and darker.

It’d been puzzling for Emma, having thought of Hoff as a lighthearted, happy fellow, to enter his blue and gray space.

Emma accused him of falling for an interior decorator’s line about a “masculine palette.” But Hoff insisted he’d picked his own colors, finding them calming and comforting after a long day of fluorescent oppression at work.

Emma searched his closet for a suitcase. Finding an L.L. Bean duffle, she chucked a week’s worth of clothes into it.

His closet and dresser drawers were organized, but not pathologically. On top of his dresser, a framed photo of preppy ten-year-old Hoff with his family caught Emma’s eye. His mom was blond and plump, a generous face and relaxed manner. His dad grinned down at his wife, Hoff, and his younger gap-toothed sister. They were sitting on a boulder, a lake in the background, a station wagon with Connecticut plates in the foreground. A summer trip? Their country house?

She plopped down on Hoff’s blue bed and missed her own parents suddenly. After Emma’s mom died, Harry, her dad, moved out of New York. He was still young—forty-nine at the time—and he wanted to see America. He didn’t stop moving for five years, keeping in touch with Emma via postcard and cell phone. He met his new wife, Claire, a woman Emma still had never met, in Santa Fe, where they lived and worked, running a bed and breakfast out of their house.

Emma closed her eyes and tried to conjure a snapshot of her family sitting on a boulder by a lake. An impossible task.

Emma’s family trip memories were of museums in foreign cities, meals at five-spoon restaurants. An only—not to mention lonely—child, Emma’s parents treated her like a mini adult. And she behaved accordingly, which explained, in part, her awkwardness with other kids.

The cell phone rang, mercifully dragging Emma back to the present.

“Armand?” she asked.

He said, “Yes. We’re here. Room 512.”

“Great. I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said.

“With the money,” he reminded her.

Emma hurried to finish packing, riffling through Hoff’s top dresser drawer for underwear. She found two dozen pairs of the Banana Republic boxers she’d seen on him, in a variety of colors, along with ball after ball of cashmere socks.

Underneath those, she found a roll of cash. Next to the roll, the bundled pages of a manuscript.

The cover sheet was a letter from a copy editor, with a page-by-page breakdown of errors and typos. Emma flipped a few sheets in and saw the title page.
Smoke and Mirrors: How Greedy Underlings Made Millions Disappear and
Blamed Me for Their Crime,
by Seymour Lankey.

The book was slight, less than two hundred pages. She knew this was Hoff’s top-secret project. She weighed packing the manuscript in the duffle but decided against it. Emma peeled four fifties off the money roll (reimbursement and another hundred for Armand) and put them in her pocket. She threw the rest of the cash into the duffle. The doorman didn’t look up from his magazine when she left.

In the cab downtown, Emma called Susan Knight. “Are you still not speaking to me?”

Susan asked, “You have news?”

“Meet me at the Tribeca Grand. Room 512. If you walk fast, you can be there in twenty minutes.”

Susan should hear what Jeff Bragg had done to Hoff from his own lips. Emma would enjoy the redemption, and she wanted an apology from Susan. Emma also wanted some emotional service—handholding, shoulder leaning. She

needed a friend. A female friend to make her feel better. Emma had pitched long enough; tonight, she wanted to catch.

“I can’t leave the office right now,” protested the petite lawyer.

“Just be there,” said Emma and then she hung up.

The Tribeca Grand was Emma’s favorite hotel in New York, mainly for the understated lobby design. She liked the autumnal hues of the interior, the reds, browns, and oranges that comprised her body’s color wheel. The piped-in music was consistently pleasing, ranging from Josh Redman to Steve Earle. Unlike the opulent palaces uptown, the Tribeca Grand didn’t overwhelm its guests with Honda-sized crystal chandeliers, obsequious epaulette-bearing valets, five-story floral arrangements, and tarted-up gilt tables and chairs. The Tribeca Grand was warm and cool, simply elegant. Emma inhaled deeply when she hit the lobby. Apples and allspice with undertones of new carpet.

Emma took the elevator to five. By the time she stepped out of the cushioned box, her mood was better. Change of setting couldn’t be underestimated to lighten one’s emotional load. She’d forgotten her simpering dip into childhood.

Her errands for Hoff forced William from her mind. Emma felt relieved and glad to be alive in New York City with a rising moon, cash in her pocket, and one-touch room service.

She knocked on the door of 512. Armand let her in. Nothing too fancy about the room, except the pinkish-purplish recessed lighting that cast strategic spotlights, including a glow over the bed where Hoff lay propped up with pillows.

He was in bad shape. Armand had tended to him, covering him with a comforter, putting a pitcher of water, a vial of Vicodin, and a few ice packs on the night table.

Emma turned to the orderly orderly. “Do you work on Wednesdays?” she asked.

Armand said, “Unless I call in sick.”

“Calling in sick to the hospital,” said Emma. “It seems so wrong. That said, how about doing it tomorrow and coming here instead?”

Armand didn’t have to think too hard. “Fifty an hour?”

Emma hoped Hoff was good for it. She said, “Around nine?”

He nodded. But he didn’t leave.

“Oh, right, the hundred.” Emma reached into her pants pocket for the bills, having to tug because the jeans were tight, flashing a bit of tummy by accident. She slapped the cash into Armand’s hand. He slapped his hand over hers, trapping it. He didn’t let go.

Emma closed her eyes.

Two seconds later, Armand squeaked, released her hand, and fled the room. She called down the hall, “See you

tomorrow,” shut the door, and then sat on the edge of the bed.

Hoff was awake. He said, “You put a picture in his head?”

“A fat nun, with chin hairs.”

“Why would that scare him?”

“She was naked. Except for the wimple.”

Hoff laughed, then groaned, clutching his ribs.

Emma asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Waiting for the Vicodin to kick in,” he said. “See what all the hubbub is about.”

Emma said, “I invited a friend to come over.”

He said, “I’m in no shape to entertain.”

“On the contrary. We have a mini-bar. Room service. Prescription opiates. The makings of a swell party.” He looked horrified. “Kidding,” said Emma. “She’s not going to steal your drugs. That’s what I’m here for.”

He reached for her hand, squeezed. He said, “You may not know this about me, but I’ve led a pretty sheltered life. I grew up in Greenwich. Went to boarding school. Exeter. Not a very tough crowd there. Until this morning, I’ve never felt the threat of physical violence. Granted, I beat myself up. But the experience was rich, and it’ll make me a better person for having had it.”

“Only you could put a positive spin on a mugging,” she marveled. “You’re a keeper, Hoff.”