The Witch and the Borscht Pearl (23 page)

“Cold?” asked Charlie.

“Bummed out over winter.”

“Winter’s not even here yet,” he said, the corners of his mouth trembling upward like they did when he was trying not to laugh at me.

I ignored it and asked if he knew who was playing tonight. I had my favorites, of course. Ray Alexander on the vibes was at the top of my list, but Pete Macaluso on the saxophone gives me goose bumps.

Juanita came up to us beaming. “Nice to see you guys! Want the wine list?” As if we’d answered, which we hadn’t, she whipped it out from behind her back and trotted away to fetch wine glasses.

In the seconds before her return, Charlie and I had zeroed in on a 1990 Rosemont Shiraz—an Australian red, good for a milkman’s budget, but tastes MUCH better.

She chanted off the specials and we made our choices.

“How’s Pearl doing?” Charlie asked me as we gave back the wine list.

The pillbox and invoice in Mrs. Risk’s possession came to mind and I shuddered. “Oh, Pearl looks okay, but Dr. Savoia’s sticking closer than underwear, and that scares me. I hope she’s taking care of herself but I’ll bet she isn’t. She’s weirdly upset and worried over Bella.”

“What’s that mean, ‘weirdly upset’?”

“Bella looks hard as stone. Why worry about her?” As I said that, I remembered how she’d pulled herself up the stairs practically hand over hand when she’d caught Mrs. Risk searching the desk drawers. “Well, okay, maybe Bella’s going through a lot, too. Nobody can decide if she really loved Solly or not, so I have no idea if she’s broken hearted. Seems pretty cool about it.”

I filled him in on most of our adventures since he’d ferried us to Solly’s house to see Bella, the night after Solly’s death.

He listened with one eyebrow lifted over those too-intelligent eyes. When I finished, all he said was, “What did you mean, Bella might not’ve loved Solly? She was going to marry him.”

“Don’t be so naive,” I said frostily.

“Nobody,” he said, “has ever accused me of being naive, my girl.”

“Then don’t be a romantic chump. She might’ve been attracted to him as a meal ticket. I bet that house is worth at least a million. It’s in East Hampton! Beachfront property!”

“Excuse the correction, but more likely it’s worth four million. Did he leave her anything else?”

“We find out tomorrow.”

Juanita came back to the table and announced, “Tonight will be Pete Macaluso on the saxophone.” She bounced away.

“That’s great!” I exclaimed.

Charlie propped his chin in his hand and leaned toward me. Charlie is hard to explain. Somehow, when you put all his unimpressive sounding parts together, he’s very good looking to women. To all women, if you gauge by his effect on the women in the village. I personally don’t think he’s as smart as Mrs. Risk does. She likes him a lot, in a brusque Den-mother way. He gives in to her something shameful, I think. Letting her use him, his truck, and his muscles practically at will. Strange friendships have formed around Mrs. Risk, though, so I guess this is just another of them.

Charlie kissed me once—well, he’s kissed me more than once, by now. But the particular kiss with a capital K that I’m referring to now was the first one, in front of my then-husband, Ike, in the middle of our fishmarket. Too shocked by the experience, I didn’t kiss him back that time. It was a pretty deadly kiss, both for Ike and for me. But I admit, like Mrs. Risk guessed, he possesses some skill in that area.

As if he’d picked up on my thoughts, he lifted my hand to his mouth, and much to my annoyance, began nipping softly at the tips of my fingers. I jerked my hand away.

“If you’re hungry, Juanita’ll be bringing the bread soon,” I snapped.

Charlie leaned back and said with an unjustified smugness, “Then I’ll wait.”

As promised, Juanita hustled back, bottle of wine wedged under her elbow, and deposited a basket of bread still fragrant from the oven onto the table. By the time we’d advanced through dinner to the coffee stage, the guys began assembling on the tiny stage in one corner of the room.

Again I longed for summer. Harrington’s opens an outside bar in summer, right on the water in front of his dock. The band plays from a balcony hanging over the tables. You should hear Pete’s saxophone on a warm night under the stars.

The quartet—a piano, bass, drums, and Pete—tuned up. The music started. There was still some Shiraz left, so I split the remainder with Charlie.

Two or three songs later, I came to with a start, realizing that the soft stroking I’d been practically purring under had been Charlie’s fingers on my cheek and throat, descending down my shoulder blades. I pulled back and sat up straight again.

“Tonight wasn’t such a strain, was it?” asked Charlie as he drained his cappuccino.

“Strain?” I asked.

“Yeah. The price of my services to Mrs. Risk the other night.”

“Oh. No. It’s been—” I searched for a neutral, but pleasant word. “Nice. It’s been nice.”

“Nice?” Charlie chewed over the word in distaste. “I hate that word.”

I’d known that.

Later, back at my place, the two of us wedged ourselves onto the three by three foot landing in front of my door while I stabbed my key at the keyhole. I was shivering too violently to hit my mark. Instead of going through my shop and having to fiddle with the alarm, we’d used the outside stairs to the third floor outdoor entrance to my living quarters. As the wind whipped across the Sound with Arctic vengeance, Charlie propped both his arms around me and against the door, and shielded my body with his. Presently he bent down and held his hand over mine to steady it. The key slid in and the lock snapped open.

I tried to straighten up but my body was trapped by his against the door. I eventually succeeded in twisting around within his embrace.

“Open the door,” he said.

“Nuh-uh.” My teeth were chattering.

“Open the door, Rachel. We’re freezing out here.”

“No man’s land,” I replied. His body was warm against mine. He rubbed up against me experimentally. Warm rivers of pleasure ran through me, but I tried to keep the feelings from my face.

“I’d say, from the way you feel against me right now, that maybe your brain is saying no, but your pulse is saying go for it.”

He kept his arms braced against the doorjamb behind me, but bent to nestle his warm lips against my throat. He kissed his way around my neck. I closed my eyes and enjoyed it. “You’re a warm-blooded woman, Rachel,” he said, his lips moving softly against my skin.

“I’m a mammal. Mrs. Risk says all mammals are warm blooded,” I murmured, my eyes still closed.

“Oh, Lord, yes, are you a mammal.” He slid his hands slowly over my body as if to confirm that. My temperature went up another five degrees and I arched my head back, nearly groaning aloud. A little voice in my mind laughed to be doing what I’d been so frequently—wrongly—accused of while married to Ike.

I said in a clinical tone of voice, “You’re good on a back porch. Is this what you deliver with your milk? No wonder the women get all gooey-eyed over you.”

Abruptly he stopped. I cracked my eyelids open and watched as his mouth crunched into a bad tempered, “Aaargh.” He turned and stomped down the stairs. I shook, twice as cold now that his warmth had been withdrawn. I leaned over the railing to watch him go.

At the bottom he turned to grin up at me. “I’m a patient man, Rachel. You’ll see. I’m going to amaze you. I’m going to convince you that I don’t fit into your twisted categories of rotten men. And then you’ll be sorry you wasted so much time falling in love with me.”

He strode back to his truck, which was parked on my side of Shore Drive, hands jammed into his pockets, his head hunched down against the freezing wind. Ah, November. The month of romance.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, WEDNESDAY
, was still cold but trying to be sunny as I drove to Mrs. Risk’s house. I arrived to find her cottage empty and a note pinned to the ledge of the window to the left of the door.

The ledge was semi-concealed behind a small piney-looking shrub, which you’d be forgiven for considering an inefficient hiding place. Two factors enter into this. One: although the villagers in this and surrounding burgs couch their belief that Mrs. Risk’s a witch in fond memories or not so fond, depending on the circumstances surrounding their acquaintance with her, most of them really believe it. And since Mrs. Risk has never been subtle about the fact that she doesn’t like uninvited visitors, few visit uninvited.

But just in case someone does, and that someone has unfriendly intentions, there’s factor number two: Her guard-bushes, which is what I call them. (I’ve no idea under what species, etc., this botanical wonder is classified.) They grow beneath her windows, pairs of them flank her front and back doors, and she’s not hasty about trimming them. If the rare, bold intruder would break into her house, or even just fish one of her notes out from behind this shrub, after sliding among these branches, he or she would be rewarded with an agonizing week’s worth of a ferociously itchy rash. Branded with a fiery, balloon shaped arm, leg, or whatever, the culprit would have to skip town or be easily found. I’d long ago learned the art of easing in and out without touching. They affect her not at all, of course, need you bother to wonder?

The note asked if I’d read this morning’s paper yet. Then it instructed me to do so as if I’d answered that, no, I hadn’t read it—which I hadn’t. Her omniscience made me laugh.

She said Pearl had picked her up, wanting her company during the reading of Solly’s will. I was to phone her at Bella’s no later than eleven to make plans. As a postscript, she noted that I was to remember that we each make our own world. I suppose that’s more original than ‘have a nice day.’

I replaced the note, back to front to show her I’d read it, and left. On the way home I picked up today’s paper at the deli.

Back in my shop, I brewed up a pot of tea—the regular kind, I don’t stock the exotic stuff she has. I pulled my stool out from under some crepe-paper turkeys. Perched on it, I leaned back against the sink, propped my feet on the worktable, and set about rifling the newspaper, because obviously something was in there to be found.

It couldn’t be the articles that I was getting used to seeing, rehashing Pearl’s, Bella’s, and Solly’s life—and death. My attention wandered as I scanned the rest. The Lubavitchers—an ultra orthodox Jewish sect—were petitioning the Governor’s office for something to do with getting along better with their black neighbors in Crown Heights. Ann Landers assured a woman that if she dumped the current boyfriend, she’d surely find one who wouldn’t strip her of her paycheck every week and she should thank her lucky stars he wouldn’t marry her. Coach handbags were on sale at Macy’s for a price I couldn’t even read without cringing. And so on.

I yawned. A physical memory of Charlie’s hands on my body flashed through me in a millisecond of pleasure that left me aching. It’s said that men think about sex every six seconds. I stifled the heat that rose within me. What about women?

How had Charlie controlled himself so fast when he’d caught that my reaction to his lovemaking wasn’t anything more than pure animal lust? Not that I would’ve slept with him—okay, at least not at my house.

My place is just that: my place. To enter it is to violate my privacy. In truer terms, it would be like violating me. Not even Mrs. Risk, who’s the closest friend I’ve ever had, has stepped foot into my house.

My house is the first and only thing that’s ever been mine. After Ike’s death, I’d filled it only with what I loved, not caring about decorating or tradition. On my income, it left the place pretty bare, but what was there, was private. Except you already know about my oversized bath tub.

As for sex, humans were created with sex as the main driving force in their lives, don’t give me that mouthwashed bull about the different drives of men and women. Even cars are sold with sex. Pete’s saxophone is the horniest horn I ever met. We all live our lives managing our longing for sex, or if you were brought up on the hidebound version, repressing our longing for sex. So do I go around sleeping with every male I meet? It’s a rare man I’d share a drinking glass with, let alone my body. That’s the catch. Charlie? Well, I’ve gotten to know Charlie in the last two years.

I jerked myself out of my daydreams and returned to the paper. If I wasn’t careful, I’d waste the whole morning, and stacks of work waited.

On page three I found it. I’d been distracted by the Lubavitchers and had missed it on the first pass. Cemetery vandalized, second time in a row. Same grave. Poor Solly. Too missed, too popular to let rest in peace? Somehow I doubted that that was the problem.

With a sigh, I dug through the dried strawflowers to pull out the telephone. I gave Solly’s/Bella’s house a ring and made arrangements to meet Mrs. Risk after my shop closed.

I pulled my list of orders over in front of me and set to work lining the baskets that would eventually hold pre-ordered Thanksgiving centerpieces (less grand than Bart Peacock’s, of course) of mums, ivy, and whatever else my customers desired. The live flowers would be inserted at the latest minute possible next Wednesday all day until late, through Thursday morning, in coordination with the delivery schedule Daniel and I both would execute. Turkey day was a week from tomorrow. Pearl’s night would arrive two days after that.

“You want to do what?” exclaimed Charlie. His body half rose out of Mrs. Risk’s chair.

“I called our friend at the cemetery,” Mrs. Risk began again patiently.

I interrupted irritably, “Since when is he our friend? We just talked to him for a few minutes. Why do you have to make friends with everybody you meet?”

“He who?” asked Charlie.

“The guy at the cemetery. The caretaker, or whatever he is.”

“Mr. Pollak. He’s the grounds attendant,” she corrected me.

“The chief gravedigger,” I said to Charlie, giggling.

“I’m not spending the night out at any cemetery,” said Charlie. “That’s crazy. In this weather we’d catch pneumonia, anyway, even if it wasn’t a creepy thing to do.” He wrinkled his nose as if he already smelled the rotted flesh in the freshly turned earth.