Husband Rehab (7 page)

He shakes his head, as if it were no more problematic than she being a female prize fighter. Her mother had been so bothered by her grandmother’s craft that she turned to booze and drugs and left Josie to be raised by whomever would help. Her grandmother, was her guiding light. She saw what was in Josie, and she introduced her to the craft. She died an old woman, happy her granddaughter can prosper in these new modern times.

Lennox inspects the banquet-hall door. It’s nearly eight feet tall, each side of the frame nearly as wide as Josie’s waist. She fully expects it to be locked. When he pushes on the heavy handle, to her surprise, it swings open.

“You know,” she says and walks forward, “I haven’t been in here in years.”

She walks into the massive space. She can’t remember the dimensions, although she measured them one summer as she prepared for a school project. She wrote a paper and gave a presentation on Birchall. She visited every one of its rooms. This is one of her favorite. The hall’s arched ceiling of exposed wood is sixty feet tall. Two huge, iron chandeliers in the form of layered circles hang from the ribbed ceiling. A lacquered chestnut dinner table is still set for a party that won’t arrive. The far wall is dominated by a massive, two-chimney fireplace, the single flue, a wide brick affair tapering toward the ceiling. The other walls are adorned with European tapestries with knights and dragons. These stretch all the way to clerestory-like windows.

 
Josie edges around the dining table, staring up at the ceiling. “I use to come in here and pretend to be a princess. The house wasn’t as shut up then as it is now. Even so, I’d get in trouble.” She pauses when she notices Lennox watching her. “What is it?”

“You,” he says. “You really love this place.”

“It’s seen better days. Even when I was younger it was in decline. I’d love to see it prosper.”

“Husband Rehab?”

“That’s the idea.”

“When my wife came to me and said she wanted me to go to therapy, alone, I thought I’d be sitting in my mom’s office, or something similar. Then I heard about this. Your Aunt Emma sure likes to chat. I remembered you always talking about this place, and I knew you were in town, so I told Stella I’d go to therapy. To my delight, there you were last night to welcome me. I knew, right then, I’d have someone who could help me.”

“Help you?”

She can’t imagine Lennox being the difficult one in the relationship. She hasn’t yet figured out what she’ll do when it’s the wife who’s the problem. Probably won’t have to deal with that too often, she tells herself. With Lennox, he could be her first instance of a genuine victim.

“Stella and I are at each other’s throats all day long, all night long. We can’t agree on anything. We fight, and rarely make up. We’re both so raw with each other it hurts. It’s my fault, I think. I’ve changed. When she married me I was happy to be an actor. We went all over the world. She got to live the life with me. Now, I’m tired of it. I want to do other things. That drives her crazy. I also don’t want the limelight. That’s even worse for her. I think she’s less interested in me now.”

She’s an idiot.

Josie feels sweat form on the back of her neck, as if he’s propositioning her. She can imagine a heady encounter, maybe in the side passage that leads from the banquet hall to the main kitchen. She could scream her head off in ecstasy and no one hear.
 

“What can you do to save me from my ruined marriage?” he asks.

Josie feels her mouth hanging open. She shouldn’t be having this conversation. First, she’s not a therapist. Not a real one. She’s here to twist the ears of men who’ve forgotten how to live civilly with their wives. She’s not here to help them escape—as if they would need her help, as if Lennox would ever need help …

Wait a minute, why would he need saving …?

“Lennox, what’s going on?”

He glances around the room, as if peep holes might allow spies to listen to their conversation.
 

“I’m … I’m not what you think.”

Christine confirmed. But Josie’s always known. All this time, she’s known there is something special about him.
Warlock!

“Really?”

He nods, as if he’s a drug abuser admitting his history to another drug abuser. “Since I was a boy.”

Josie rushes to his side. “That’s so dangerous, Lennox, especially here.”

“I know. Stella uses me for her own reasons, and my mother can’t stop her. Stella’s only a minor witch, herself, but she has powerful friends.”

“I’ve heard.”

“Since you know now, she’ll expect you to break me down, make me pliable. She’ll expect you to keep her secret, as if she’s the one who’s keeping me from practicing. She’ll pretend she’s harnessing me for the good of society when she really uses me. We have to fool her.”

“I can figure something out.” Josie muses over this curious fact and realizes she’s just found a way to get close to Lennox without drawing anyone’s attention. A secret between them …”What if I pretend to cast a spell to make you amenable? Uhm, tell her that it takes some time to work. You’ll need to stay for a week … or two.” A slow grin crosses his face, the kind that might emerge over a glass of wine. “Say that any time you’re difficult or whatever, you’ll get a raging headache.” She nods furiously. “That’s it. It’ll give us time to figure out what to do about her … and you. You know what I mean.”

He grasps her tiny hands in his large ones. “Thank you.”

She thinks he might lean in for a kiss. Instead, he whisks himself by her toward the exit.

Lennox Cruz and I have a secret, she thinks with a soaring heart, and I totally have a crush on him again.
 

* * *

Josie slams the door to her room and drops the bolt.

Enough morning sunlight pours through the window panes to illuminate the room. The center of her wood floor is dominated by an oval rug. She jumps on it like a surf board. It slides, and she rights herself. She dances a few steps, her hands swatting the air like a break dancer’s.
 

“Yes, yes, yes,” she says.

Josie hurries into her closet, past all the old clothes (and a few new ones she’s hung up). She finds a latch in the far wall. A door on silent hinges swings inward. She walks down three wooden steps into a wide space running from the doorway to a far gable. She’s covered the wood floor in several mismatched rugs. The roof is slanted on one side. Bare, wooden struts and beams cross the space above her. She surveys her workroom to make sure no one’s been in here. The five windows on the south wall allow in plenty of light, the curtains held back by rings.
 

The room is muggy, so she activates a portable air conditioner that’s running via an extension cord connected to an outlet in her room.

She walks past her main workbench, which is covered with household items she’ll need to finish her potions.

Against the gable wall’s wide window is another desk. She sits at a chair and stares at the four business cards that Roxy ensorcelled. She brought them in earlier as a precaution; didn’t want to leave them lying around in her bedroom. The enchanted objects continue to cycle through key moments of the men’s wrongdoing. She’s already studied Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Creeley’s. She pushes these aside and stares down at the other two.

Okay, Mr. Brookings, she thinks, let’s see what all the fuss is about.

She lifts up the business card. Inside, a window plays into Mr. Brooking’s past. It’s a montage of events from his life of lies. There he is telling his wife he’s at work, when he’s at a restaurant with an old friend eating prime rib and a buttered potato. The magical footage switches, and she sees and hears him telling his wife that their taxable income is one amount. It immediately jumps, as if directed by some cameraman in the sky, to Mr. Brookings reviewing the final document with his tax attorney. The numbers don’t match.

World-class liar, she thinks.
 

She sees a string of seemingly innocuous lies pour from his lips. He pretends to have won at golf when he lost. He claims he went to the gym when he didn’t. He even, and this makes her chuckle, pretends to have outrun a dog that came at him the street. First, there was no dog. Second, he did no running.

“What’s your story, Mr. Brookings,” she says to the card, “to have to lie so much?”

Josie spends the next hour preparing her mixture. After cooking the material on a burner, she waits for the patina to emerge. Her ability to affect human behavior (especially male behavior) comes from her grandmother, who was a powerful witch with a curious understanding of male witches. She knew how to whip rogue men into shape, and she passed on her techniques to her granddaughter. Josie has certainly come up with her own spells, but most of the simple ones have already been detailed by witches like her grandmother.
 

Dealing with a liar is simple.
 

She smashes the dime-sized material into dust with a marble pestle, stuffs it into a pewter thimble, plugs that with a wine-stained cork, and sticks it in her pocket.

A simple toss into the air in Mr. Brooking’s vicinity and the spell will be cast. He’ll find himself unable to tell a lie. His tongue will no longer be under his control. What happens next will be quite entertaining to watch.

Now, let’s go set a trap, she tells herself.

She pauses as her eye catches the mini-refrigerator sitting in the far corner. She walks to it on light steps, almost as if she approaches a shrine. She opens it and spots the hollow crystal shard no bigger than a pinky. Inside, a liquid sparkling like blue champagne swirls inside.
 

The love potion that Josie brewed years ago was her grandmother’s final gift. Josie was supposed to toss it out, but she kept it. Through her entire adolescence it’s sat here, unused, even as Lennox chose Stella over her. Josie would never use it on him, not in a million years. The last thing she wants is a false love. She wants him to come to her with sincerity in his eyes, not the wide saucers of an ensorcelled man.

She closes the door, straightens with a sigh, and tells herself to forget it even exists.

* * *

She finds Mr. Brookings on the first floor’s north wing. This part of the house has only been shut up for a year and still gets dusted every now and again. He’s in the billiard room that no one uses any more. Two tables dominate the large chamber. He’s setting up one. The room’s high ceilings have a few cob webs in them but the two tables are clean. She never was one much for pool and rarely spent much time over here. Mr. Jenkins seems to like it … maybe he was a good player once … probably not. She swats dust from her nose. She tiptoes on the thick carpet until she stands behind him.

She retrieves her thimble and tosses the contents into the air. They settle on him without him knowing.

“Hey,” she says.

“Well aren’t you a Silent Sally,” he says as he turns, pool cue in hand.

“You any good?” she asks, hoping to catch him in a lie.

“I’m alright.”

He racks the balls and sets up his shot. He aims like he knows how to use the stick.

“You ever play any big names?” she asks.

He pauses, as if he has to think about it to remember.

He looks down the line of the cue. “Yep, I sure have. There was this one time …”

She hears him suck in a deep breath, as if he might take a dive underwater. He even drops the cue and grabs his belly. She watches his confusion as the spell begins its work. A few more seconds and Mr. Brookings opens his mouth to sing in a keening falsetto:

“I’m a big liar, yes, I am. I’m a big liar. Bippty, bippty, bam. Liar, liar, liar, pants on fire. I’m a big liar, as flat as a tire.” He puts his hands to his mouth, his eyes wide in bewilderment. He can’t help himself from sucking in another breath. His feet began to move in a silly, old man’s jig, and he continues to sing even though he’s trying to bite his hand.
 

“Mr. Brookings,” Josie says, as the embarrassing performance continues, “you’re here because you like to tell lies. Most of them are white lies, sure, but some aren’t. That bit about your taxes is a problem. You should tell your wife the truth. How this works is that any time you try to fib, you won’t be able to. Do you understand?”

He nods, continuing to sing. He glares at her with the sort of fear and hatred that men once had for women like her—except there is no real fight in him. He knows when he’s beat, obviously. The song and dance continue, as they will for the next fifteen minutes.

“You understand what I did to you, and what I am, so you know this is real and works. Think of me and this therapy as a way to save your marriage.”

She smiles as he dances for the exit, hands on mouth, as if nothing else in the world matters but escaping.

Could be an easy case, she thinks, and hopes.

Stella Spivey appears in the doorway. She’s wearing linen slacks that probably came from Nordstrom’s or somewhere fancy, an open silk blouse with pink paisley’s, and garish gold bracelets that encircle her forearms. Josie feels instant jealousy she looks so good.
 

“There you are,” Stella says as if they’re the best of friends. “I’ve been looking all over for you. This house is huge.”

“It’s easy to get lost.”

“How may floors?”

“Four, plus the basement levels. The top two floors are closed. Only a bit of the basement is in use.”

“Shame, I bet this was the place to be when it was built.”

Josie nods, considering sharing some of the history but deciding not to. Stella Spivey is the enemy, as sure as she is standing there. For some reason her husband came running to Josie in his time of need. Stella has to be the guilty one.
 

“Have you spoken to Lennox this morning?” she asks.

“I did.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That you two are having problems.”

Stella wanders into the billiard room and looks around, nodding with appreciation but careful not to get dust on her clothes. “My father was a pool player, a good one. I never cared for it much.” She runs a nailed finger along the green felt-like, worsted-wool top. “What do you think you can do for my husband?”