The Witch of the Wood (2 page)

He ate spoonfuls of banana-strawberry miserably. He was a middle-aged man with a gurgling stomach and strategies to handle it just long enough so he could go back to a dark, sparsely furnished apartment. He had female students who idolized him and shared nothing with him in common. He had a broad circle of acquaintances more settled in the world, who had all made the better choices far earlier. All the women he knew had married doctors or lawyers or plumbers who had their own businesses or dentists or financial wizards or professors who had actually gone on and
earned
their Ph.D.s so after getting tenure they could afford a trip to the Caymans or a summer place in Cape May. And what did Rudy have to offer? His dry wit? His stoic ability to correct rambling sentences? A shitty apartment, a cheap car, and a health plan that didn’t even have reasonable co-pays?

Rudy crossed his legs the other way and took another spoonful of this foul, nasty, oversweet lady-paste. He swallowed silently, barely focusing on the dean behind the podium, talking about this new requirement from the state that made the university responsible for more out-of-class assignments to represent added seat time. The instructors had to come up with measurable proof in their syllabi, yes, and Rudy had to have some kind of meaningful companionship soon or he was going to just burst, or die, or more likely wither and finally blow off to some unnoticed corner like a curl of black ash.

“And now, to talk about updates and materials, I’ll sacrifice the stage here for Helen and April.”

There was a scatter of applause, and Rudy sat a bit straighter in his chair. Free look. Wouldn’t even have to cock his head. And she just
couldn’t
be as perfect as she’d seemed sitting behind the table. That would make all this absolutely unbearable. No. She had to have cankles or a severe case of bubble-ass or doughy flesh rolls sagging over her elbows, or maybe a big black mole on the back of her neck with a coarse hair growing out of it like the leg of a spider.

Movement to his left, and he kept his glance forward, letting her naturally enter his field of vision.

“Oh, my God,” he muttered. It was faint, barely a whisper, but the pants suit next to him shifted her position. She’d heard! The secret was out! Rudy Barnes had the hots for the materials lady! Call the papers, put it on Google!

She had a dancer’s body, lean and strong, and personality just bursting from all angles: the supple neck, the black feathery shawl across her shoulders, the hourglass waist, the yellow silk skirt with frays dangling just above the knee. It took all Rudy’s willpower to keep his mouth closed. She had strong-looking, shapely calves snugly covered by black leggings and finished off at the ends with high-heeled lace-up witch’s boots, clicking smartly up to the podium.

The other lady talked first. She was tall and spindly with odd, frizzy hair and a bit of a New York accent that she played up a bit, keeping it “real.” Something about mandatory attendance and snow cancellations. Rudy stared at April Orr, drowning himself in this bonus one-way face-time, studying every curve and hollow. He wanted to kiss her throat. He wanted to touch her and make her groan, make submission flash through those gorgeous, sparkling eyes.

April Orr approached the podium with shy confidence and spoke carefully, clearly, each word a fragile little portrait dancing on the air. By the time she was finished talking about the move the department had made between scholastic publishers because of delivery and bonus compu-lab materials, Rudy was almost in pain. She concluded to the spatter of applause and walked back down the aisle, eyes straight forward, measuring her steps, manufactured smile. Speaking in front of crowds made her nervous—oh, Rudy was dying!

The rest of the presentation was standard fare: a dean talking about a move toward more universal syllabi, one of the department chiefs gently chiding professors who were rumored to have lately succumbed to brash students asking for their four-hour class sessions to be cut shorter, a techie showing the newest icons leading to the latest files and fields that were going to make course layouts more expeditious (that is, if we didn’t all die of old age trying to remember all the passcodes and pathways), the usual. By the end of it all, Rudy was glazed and dull and deadened like everyone else in the room, and he just wanted to get the hell home. When the initial speaker suggested they all stick around and read one another’s nametags, Rudy gathered his effects and made a bee-line for the door.

Of course, the sign-in table had been long folded up and removed, so any chance of seeing April Orr again was gone. She’d probably left right after her speech, scooting back to a big house with cushy furniture, a roaring fireplace, two pedigree Labradors, and a kitchen with an island in the middle of it. If her husband wasn’t home, he’d certainly text a number of times through the evening, in the short break he was taking from performing a delicate heart surgery, or the multi-million-dollar merger he was burning the midnight oil to save, or the old, dusty law books he’d found that would crack the case of the century. No, Rudy hadn’t looked at her left hand, but there was no way on God’s green earth that a looker like April Orr could possibly have anything less than a boulder on her ring finger.

He got to the archway and looked out the window. The snow had turned to sleet coming down in a driving slant, so he put his stuff on the floor and dug in his bag for his umbrella. It was one of those short black four-dollar jobs, with one of the skeleton ribs busted under the hood.

“Super Fresh or Giant?” she said.

For a moment, it didn’t compute.

“Hmm?” Rudy said, still struggling with the stubborn spring locking clip. An arm linked with his and he stopped, caught a hint of perfume. He looked down and April Orr was right here, close up, touching him, and even though it was just a polite and perfunctory gesture, like shaking hands or waving hello, she was, in fact,
touching him
. She looked at the broken fixture.

“I’d say Super Fresh, the umbrella stand by the flowers and watermelons. Classy.” She looked at him directly then. “Walk me to my car? I left my umbrella in the trunk.”

Rudy paused for a moment, and someone who had just brushed past them opened the bay door. A sharp wind cut across the foyer, and April linked both of her hands around Rudy’s elbow now, snuggling in closer, stamping her pretty little black boots.

“Pretty please?”

“Yes. Of course,” Rudy said. He looked forward and nodded a bit, hating himself for the puritanical manner he’d adopted, but also knowing it was the best he had in the wardrobe. He was poor and book-smart, socially challenged and practiced in patriarchal politeness. Of course, chance favored his coming away from this empty-handed in reference to his instinctive fantasies, but at least he was going to walk her to her car properly.

Their footsteps made echoes on the stone floor, and out in the night the wind brought darts of sleet from the left, April’s side.

“Jesus Lord!” she said. Her fingers closed over Rudy’s, and he forfeited the umbrella. His arm went around her shoulder then, and she drew into him. Just like that.

“Smooth,” she said wryly, her step quickening with his.

“It was innocent, I assure you.”

“Then you used me as a wind-buffer, Rudy?”

He looked down into her face, the wind whipping her hair around, her smile still genuine.

“Never.”

She glanced off and nodded a bit to the right.

“I’m the black Volvo over there.”

They adjusted course, and it brought more of the icy wind to her back. She squealed a bit, snuggling in harder, her free hand going around his back now, and suddenly Rudy had the feeling he was being had. It was just too perfect, too easy. And it wasn’t only her lack of an umbrella, or the timing in the archway, or the goddamned direction of the wind. It was the way he had just been thinking about all he lacked in terms of clever wordplay and social maneuvering, and she’d somehow managed to make him look witty and suave. What was she feeding here, and the better question was why? Was there some kind of office pool going down, odds stacked upon how much of a fool she could make out of him? The wind changed, blasting in from the front for a second, and they bent into it. He fell then to internal argumentation, weighing the improbability of April Orr choosing him because of some credible need or attraction against the idea that she would actually profile him for a prank. And neither made sense. None of this did. Hell, maybe she really did just want a companion in the sleet, and this, coupled with the crinkling of her nose, the clever conversation, and the fact that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen made Rudy feel horribly lonely.

“This is me,” she said, releasing the umbrella that Rudy did his best to shield her with as she opened the door and tossed her purse on the seat. When she bent in and sat, her skirt rode up showing off an inch or two of thigh, and then there was a sudden “whap-whup” sound as Rudy’s umbrella pulled right out of his hand, a wounded bat flapping off on the knifing wind to the darkness of the lot.

“Shit,” he said, the sleet blasting him like wet shot. April got hit too, the open door a poor shield. She gave a short screech and shut it, but before Rudy could give a little wave and run off the other way with his free hand in his pocket, he heard the engine give nothing more than an audible “click.” The headlights flashed, then deadened. The door opened slowly.

“My battery is dead, Rudy. Can you drive me home? I don’t live far, just off campus.”

Her hand was saluted across her forehead, eyes batting, and the cold rain made lovely, running beads down her cheeks. Her dress was damp-darkened now, that beautiful leg offering its long shape all the way up to the hip.

“Of course,” he said.

She somehow made it seem graceful, getting back out of her car and pushing her wet skirt between her knees as the wind threatened to blow it up over her head. When she took her place again beneath Rudy’s arm, both were soaked, his coat shiny with it, strands of her black hair plastered to her cheeks. They hunched together then into the wind of the storm and hurried to Rudy’s Toyota. Once inside, soaked to the bone, April Orr scooched on over and cuddled up next to him, and by this time Rudy had stopped questioning this about her. She was cold, that was all. He was a body. Available. She was simply charming enough to be able to borrow these moments for her own comforts, no questions asked, no string attached. Some people just “had it.” April Orr was one of them, and it was almost ungentlemanly to suspect there was more to it than that.

Rudy concentrated on his driving, peering through the smear the wipers left on the windshield and navigating the dark road unfolding before them. Sleet swarmed in from the left and made odd rainbows in the dull blare of the headlights. April was wet and warm and close and she smelled good. She guided him to the right off the main road, and two lefts back in toward the thickest part of the wood. There, in a culvert, was a white house with a river running to the side of it and a walking bridge. Rudy pulled up into the drive, put it in park, and turned toward her. She brought her palms to his face.

“Thank you, Rudy,” she said. Then she bent in and pressed her lips to his. It wasn’t long enough to be considered what the kids called “first base” when he was growing up, but it was no peck either. There was audible suction on the release, and they looked at each other.

“April . . .” he managed.

“Do you want to come in for a minute,” she said. “To get warm?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“I was being rhetorical.”

She put her palm on the chest of his wet coat.

“Then come in just for a minute. I’ll make you a cup of hot chocolate.”

“But you hardly know me,” he said, wanting immediately to kick himself for the gentle scolding, the fatherly tone he’d adopted, the role he just couldn’t help but fall into time and again.

She looked at him with big, serious eyes.

“Then you won’t come in?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Good,” she said, brightening, reaching for the door. “It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”

Rudy paused. Hadn’t he just thought that, or something like it, something with similar wording just a minute or so before? What on earth was going on here? As if chiding him for pausing, she wasn’t even waiting for him to be her weather-guard at this point, and he got out quickly, awkwardly, following her silhouette to the front door, the surrounding trees covering the sky in scattered patterns thick enough to fend off the sleet to relative intermittence. April opened the door and pushed into the foyer, then bending up an ankle to the back of her thigh to remove her boot. Of course, she was a bit off-balance and used Rudy’s shoulder for support; he got there with perfect timing, his or hers, undeterminable. Oh, they were in rhythm, to be sure, and Rudy played the mimic, kicking off his wet shoes, removing his coat, and putting it on the hook next to hers, his scarf right there by her shawl. There was a towel on a hook, and she used it first, brusque and brisk. When she was done, she gave a little pout and pose, funny, because her hair had frizzed a bit. Then, the nose crinkle and shrug Rudy had fallen in love with back at the sign in table, and she handed over the damp towel.

“Dry off and come on in, Rudy. I’ll put on the hot chocolate.”

She flicked a light and walked off toward the back kitchen area, and Rudy took a step or two into the living room, rubbing the towel across the top of his head, then his face, drawing in a breath, smelling her. He was actually tempted to pocket the towel, and while on one level this bothered him because it was so akin to stealing underwear out of a drawer, it more deeply disturbed him that even considering this symbolic action confirmed his assuredness that he wasn’t going to get to experience her fragrance close up in a more personal way. It was an admission of failure before failure, and while he despised himself for it, he was always the fundamental realist. April Orr was friendly, kind, maybe some kind of weird philanthropist when it came to wallflowers like Rudy Barnes, drawing them out by the hand and making them feel some kind of worth. But she wasn’t going to fuck him, not now, not tomorrow, and Rudy knew better than to think that by some strange bend of fortune this plot was going to twist. He’d just been around too long to believe in miracles.