“It’s interactive,” Crystal said, smiling proudly.
“Wow,” Maye said as she nodded slowly.
“If you’d like to buy some, I can come to your house and do a show,” Crystal offered as she squirted what looked like a star of spray cheese onto her Triscuit. “You can invite all of your friends, and you get the dragon as a hostess gift.”
“Well,” Maye started, finally glad for her status as loner. “It’s a shame I don’t have any. When I get some, I’ll let you know.”
“Great!” Crystal clapped, and then paused. “How about we begin our meeting! As you all know, we have a new member, Maye. Welcome. I hope you all liked the book this month, and if you all want to make a mental list of books you’d like the club to read in the upcoming months, Maye, we can talk about that afterward.”
“That would be great,” Maye replied excitedly. “I have a couple of ideas.”
“Well, let’s talk about the book we did read!” Crystal exclaimed, and the five women reached for their books. Maye bent down, grabbed the copy of Practical Magic from the side pocket of her purse, and put it on her lap. When she looked up, she scanned the room and did not see Nicole Kidman. Or Sandra Bullock. Or Proserpine holding a pomegranate. She didn’t see any of that. In fact, the book cover that the rest of the club had was a deep blue with no illustration aside from a large pentagram. And in the title, magic was indeed spelled with a k.
And instead of the words on the cover reading “Now a major motion picture!” theirs said, Complete Book of Witchcraft.
“Um,” Maye said, and she scratched her head, which had suddenly begun to itch as she was engulfed by anxiety and the primal instinct to flee. “I didn’t see that one at the store.”
“Nicole Kidman is a Wiccan?” Star said from under her helmet as she squinted at the cover of Maye’s book. “I thought she was in that weird cult with John Travolta.”
“I guess I read a different book,” Maye said and tried to laugh. “I read the wrong book. I’m sorry. I think I should go.”
“Oh, don’t worry about the book,” Crystal said as she leaned over and patted Maye on the knee reassuringly. “That’s silly. The book is just a portion of what brings us together. We have some fun things planned for the evening. Have you ever danced around a bonfire? There’s nothing as spine-tingling as prancing around flames as the shadows lick your bare skin! It’s exhilarating. You would look like a fairy goddess if we just brushed a little bit of glitter across your face.”
“I’m not very good at dancing or cavorting,” Maye stuttered. “Bonfire, Macarena, that cowboy achy-breaky dance, I really can’t even skip. It would just end up disrespecting you and your whole…um, book coven.”
“You get to pick a new craft name,” Star, otherwise known as Tiffani in her Fred Meyer life, said.
“And then we get to give you a bath,” said Glinda, whose disability checks bore the name Lou Ann. “And then the glitter.”
“We will need a lock of your hair,” added Raven, who had a Blockbuster employee badge with BETH etched into the plastic settled at the bottom of her purse. “We can take it from the back. You can’t even notice mine, and Glinda took a huge chunk.”
“You were squirming,” Glinda protested.
“I am ticklish,” Raven replied sternly.
“I’m not ticklish,” Star interrupted in a huff. “And I still have to wear my helmet. What if my mom thought someone at school did it and asked my principal? What would I do then? She thinks I’m unloading an extra truckload of beets right now!”
“Thank you for the Triscuits, Crystal,” Maye said as she picked up her purse and stood, her corduroy skirt a virtual trap for six different types of cat hair. “But I really should go. You’re not going to try to put me in an oven, are you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Crystal replied. “You’re far too big, and besides, my gas just got shut off.”
Then Crystal stood up, too, and for a moment Maye was alarmed that the sparkly woman in her corset was going to cast some sort of spell that either would leave Maye paralyzed and unable to move or scream while four strange minimum-wage workers in velvet gave her an unwanted and unneeded bath or would transform her into a crow and she’d have to fly home and try to communicate to Charlie through caws and pecks that he was now married to someone who had the ability to shit on his head.
But Crystal didn’t do that. She didn’t wiggle her nose, break out a magic staff, or throw a ball of fire at Maye. Instead, she looked at Maye with her shimmery face that from a distance looked not so much like it was sprinkled with glitter as it did like she had stood over a deep fryer for an entire shift and said softly, “Thank you for coming. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought we were on the same page.”
“Well, I thought so, too, but yours has a…pentagram on it. Thank you very much for having me over,” Maye replied. “I hope the bonfire is fun. It seems a little cold to be dancing out there…with nothing on.”
“Oh,” Crystal said, laughing slightly. “We stick to the rules. Even though this is coat season, we are in all of nature’s glory underneath.”
“How about just a little glitter? I have purple and silver…” Star called out a second before Maye shut the front door behind her and started walking to her car. As she drove away, she noticed one particularly large bumper sticker on Crystal’s car that she hadn’t seen before. SORRY I MISSED CHURCH, it proclaimed in red letters, I WAS BUSY PRACTICING WITCHCRAFT AND BECOMING A LESBIAN.
6
Cows Are Pretty
The phone was ringing when Maye got home, and she just managed to unlock the door and get to it before the answering machine picked up.
“Oh, I’m so glad I caught you,” her friend Kate said into the other end of the phone. “I didn’t want to leave a message.”
“What’s up?” Maye asked, now completely perked up after spending an unexpected and alarming evening in the company of witches, eating the chief witch’s Triscuits. “Are you wondering what to bring? Well, dress warmly, it’s getting pretty cold here, but it will be a nice break from Phoenix. I can’t believe you’ll be here on Friday!”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Kate said. “I have to go to Wisconsin. My mom is going to have surgery—it’s just a gallbladder thing, strictly routine, nothing serious—but I need to be there, she’s going to need help. I’m so sorry. Being there will use up all of my vacation time, so I won’t be able to come a little later, either. Are you mad? I’m so sorry.”
“No, of course I’m not mad,” Maye replied, her happiness fading as quickly as it had arrived. “I hope your mom is okay. I’m sure she’ll be fine. You completely need to be there, I fully understand. Is Sara still coming?”
“I don’t think so; there have been some complications with the restaurant,” Kate answered. “Contractors are flaky, everything is behind schedule, she’s a nervous wreck. I was going to make her go anyway, but now that I can’t go, I doubt she’ll take the trip by herself. I really am sorry.”
“Please don’t be sorry,” Maye said. “I’m the one who moved away. You need to be with your mom. That’s the most important thing.”
Mickey came over and leaned against Maye’s leg as she hung up the phone. He nudged her hand, looked up at her, and whined, his speckled face offering up as much consolation as he could.
“‘Did you ever know that you’re my hero?’” Maye sang melodramatically to him.
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” Mickey responded.
“You’re the woooooooooo beneath my wings, Mickey,” she said, laughing as he panted.
Outside the bookstore, Maye parked her car, put the money in the meter, and with the movie-cover version of Practical Magic in one hand and her receipt in the other, headed inside to return the book, thankful that she hadn’t taken the time to reread it.
And ask Bonnie out on a coffee date. Her friends weren’t coming to visit, her book cult meeting had almost read like an Edgar Allan Poe short story, with Maye as the vic
tim, and she had nothing to lose. Maye was absolutely friendless, with no prospects and fewer options for finding any. She was determined not to spend her life in Spaulding watching from across the street as two old friends, arm in arm, admired an orchid. She wanted to be one of those friends.
She pushed open the door, and with a whoosh the cold air swirled in around her and the covers of the magazines nearest the door fluttered. Immediately she saw Bonnie, who was behind the register writing something down, so she put the book on the counter and said, “I’d like to exchange this book for The Idiot’s Guide to the Phone Sex Worker Industry, please.”
“Excuse me?” Bonnie said as her head shot up. She saw Maye and laughed.
“If you don’t have a copy of that, I’ll take The Jackass’s Guide to Making Friends Without Having to Join a Book Club Coven,” Maye joked.
“No!” Bonnie said incredulously. “You’re kidding. That’s crazy! The book club was a coven?”
“I wish I was kidding,” Maye said. “They wanted to give me a bath and then cut off chunks of my hair. They were a bunch of witches. I mean, they were nice little witches, but they didn’t look as fun to hang out with as the ones on Charmed. There was also talk of dancing naked under their North Face coats around a bonfire. I guess it’s hard being a naked bonfire cavorter this far above the equator. Excessive body hair can only keep you so warm. Thank goodness I escaped with the minor casualty of my skirt being swallowed by cat fur, but my soul is still mine.”
“Oh, you’re lucky,” Bonnie commented. “I once went to a block party but first had to watch an hour-long demonstration on how to compost responsibly by my hippie neighbors. A fight broke out about whether a bin or a tumbler was the most effective way, and the bin advocate threw a brick of soy cheese at the tumbler enthusiast, who then tried to stab the bin advocate with a stick of burning incense, but no one got hurt because it was all ash. Then someone claimed that the hamburgers really were hamburgers and not bean burgers, tears were shed, someone else got banished from the drum circle, I ended up with hummus in my hair, and my head smelled like a sphere of garlic for days.”
“Wow, that sounds amazing,” Maye commented. “Which one of the dueling composters lived in a rainbow house?”
“They both did, one on either side of the street, which I think caused the competition in the first place,” Bonnie said as she picked up the receipt and typed the item number into the cash register. “Well, let’s get this copy of Practical Magic off your hands. I guess they were reading Practical Magick: The Complete Book of Witchcraft, huh?”
“Blue book, giant pentagram on the cover?” Maye asked.
“That’s the one,” Bonnie laughed. “Bibbity bobbity boo.”
“We should have lunch sometime,” Maye blurted out.
“I would love to, but I don’t eat lunch,” Bonnie explained, and Maye instantly felt stupid for asking for a friend date, for even entertaining the thought of forging a possible Mary/Rhoda connection. Maye smiled and nodded, pretending that she understood, but she was embarrassed and hurt and she wanted to leave. “We don’t have enough staff to cover lunches, and I’m the only full-time person,” Bonnie continued. “But…there’s always dinner. Whaddya say? There’s a new Spanish-style place I’d like to try out, very chichi. Which is not exactly my style, but I’d like to see what Spaulding chichi is. It may just mean cloth napkins and soap in the bathroom.”
“I’d love to, that sounds great,” Maye said, grateful to be redeemed. “I’ll call my plumber and get the okay.” Bonnie looked puzzled. “Trust me on this one, I know you were a food critic, but he’s never wrong,” Maye told her.
“How about Friday?” Bonnie asked. “Depending on what the plumber and his crystal plunger say.”
“Perfect,” Maye agreed. Charlie had a faculty dinner to entertain a visiting professor on Friday, and dinner with Bonnie would kind of take the sting out of not seeing Kate and Sara that day. “That would be great.”
It couldn’t have worked out better if Maye had cast a spell herself.
Maye had just walked out of the bookstore with a dinner date and three new books hidden in her purse when she ran into a crowd of people chattering and laughing on the sidewalk between her car and the vegetarian salad-only restaurant, Let Us, next door. She got out her keys and wove between as many people as she could to get to her car, but it was like trying to fight your way through the crowd on a day that free rain barrels were being given out. “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” she chanted repeatedly, and she’d gotten as far as the driver’s side door when a round of cheers suddenly erupted and the people in front of her began to move and the people behind her began to push. She tried not to panic as she was moved along with the herd, holding on to her purse and reassuring herself that she was not going to get trampled to death outside of a bookstore and a salad-only restaurant. She might get a Teva imprint on her forehead, or tire tracks on her torso, but she told herself that she refused to die in a spontaneous lettuce stampede at the feet of Spaulding’s vegetarians.
“You look startled,” the graying older man next to her said as he took her elbow and gave her a cheery, full smile. “They did open the doors rather quickly. I’ll help you in!”
“Why are there so many people?” Maye asked him as she was jousted about and tried to follow his lead.
“Oh, it’s gonna be a big night,” he replied, and helped her through the door.
Once inside, Maye found an empty spot near a back wall and hovered there for a bit, curious as to what the commotion was all about. The crowd settled into the chairs around the dining tables, and the friendly man who had helped her in stood at the front of the room and called for everyone’s attention.
“Here,” a woman at a table not far from Maye whispered. “There’s a chair over here! Come sit with us!”
That’s awfully nice, Maye thought to herself as she smiled back and took the seat.
“Welcome, everyone, welcome,” the friendly man said. “I heard we have some new members among us tonight, so I will introduce myself; I’m Bob, your Vegging Out facilitator. I’d like to open tonight’s meeting with a joke. How many vegans does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“Two,” the audience responded en chorus. “One to change it and one to check for animal ingredients!”
They all laughed.
“Okay,” Bob conceded, laughing heartily. “How ’bout this one: How many vegetarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
The crowd was quiet except for some murmuring. The man looked pleased.
“I don’t know!” he shouted. “But where do you get your protein?”
The audience bubbled over with hearty laughter. Even Maye cracked a smile.
Vegetarians, she thought. Hmmmm. They seem nice and welcoming, pretty normal except for the sandal-sock combo in the winter. Vegetarians would be kind and gentle. No one here wants to bathe me. So far. They have a sense of humor about themselves—that’s always a very good sign. You don’t have to pick a vegetarian name, like Patty Pea or Tommy Tomato. This could be good. This is good. This could work.
Aside from the fact that Maye was not a vegetarian. Not that she didn’t want to be, not that she didn’t find it admirable, she just found the menu rather…limiting. For Maye, cabbage parmesan really couldn’t take the place of chicken parmesan. A zucchini strip couldn’t really compare to a New York strip. Mashed potatoes and gravy just wouldn’t team up with buttermilk-fried tomatoes as it would with buttermilk-fried chicken. On Thanksgiving, she didn’t want a slice of preformed soybean loaf snuggled up next to her cranberry sauce. And tofu balls would never be the same as meatballs, no matter what anybody said. Maye had attempted to eat a vegetarian hot dog once, and it was akin to biting into a rolled-out tube of Play-Doh. She frankly did not care that it was intestine casing that gave real hot dogs a little pop! on the bite; the limp, flaccid tofu dog seemed much more deceased that any Nathan’s dog she had ever gobbled up.
Could she give up meat?
she asked herself silently. Could she, if it meant gaining friends? She didn’t eat meat every day anyway, maybe only every other day. She loved macaroni and cheese. Could she do it? Plus, cows are pretty, she reminded herself.
“Let me remind you all that the potluck dinner is next weekend, so please sign up for the vegetable that you are going to honor in your dish so that all of our vegetable friends may be represented,” Bob continued.
Maye tried very hard to ignore that.
Then someone read a poem about a cucumber (Maye tried to ignore that, too), people discussed how they were going to celebrate National Soup Month, which was in January (ignore), the treasurer announced that the Vegging Out cookbooks were at the printers and would be delivered by the next meeting.
“And now,” Bob announced, “is the moment we’ve all been waiting for! Thank you all for being so patient. After a count and recount, it is officially announced that the…drumroll, please…” Someone at one of the front tables, most likely one of Bonnie’s dueling drum-circling neighbors, strummed his hands on the table to accelerate the excitement. “The vegetable of the month IS…”—he smiled as he tore open the envelope—“a BEET! It’s a BEET!”
Half of the club clapped and cheered, while the other half scowled and grumbled.
“Why does the beet get it?” a woman with waist-length gray hair said as she stubbornly crossed her arms. “Beets are the unsexiest vegetable you can find! They’re hairy, bumpy, and dirty, like my ex-husband!”
“Beets are beautiful,” a woman in a poncho said. “They come in purple, pink, and white. How can anything purple and pink be ugly?”
“Well, there was Boris Yeltsin’s nose…” a man from the back tossed in. He received a collective chuckle.
“And the inside of a sweet potato is the color of a tequila sunrise,” the first woman bickered. “I was really campaigning for the sweet potato. I just don’t feel like it’s gotten its due respect. You can bake it, mash it, fry it, it’s the chameleon of the winter, and it gets confused with its evil twin, the yam. It’s versatile, it’s fresh; the sweet potato is the new asparagus. I’m telling you. I read it in Herbivore Today. I just want to be ahead of the curve before everyone starts doing the sweet potato. We need to jump on this NOW.”
There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - v4 Page 9