“Oh! I can no believe. I can no believe!” Josefina patted Michael’s back to console him. “I don’t know how it happen. I swear. One minute I watchin’ wit the vacuum, the next she upchuck and poop on the stage. I tot she was going to sing like the Barbra Streisand or the Betty Miller lady. Everyone say Carolyn better.”
Michael slammed a hand onto the stair’s newel post. “I’m flying out to New York to see her.”
Terrence scuffed his slipper-feet over to the phone. “All right, I’ll call the car.”
“Josefina,” Michael asked, “would you be a peach and get my luggage?”
Dialing the phone, Terrence shook his head. “You’re already packed?”
“I’ve always got a bag packed for Carolyn. You know that…just in case.”
“Talk about having confidence in your best friend,” Terrence said. “I don’t know why she needs you all the time to pull her out of a mess.”
“Terrence, don’t be so insensitive,” Michael said, chastising his partner’s choice of words. “You…you don’t know all we’ve been through.” He watched Terrence talk to the car service. “God, I think she’s finally having a breakdown. But I can’t be there for her all the time.”
“I know…I know. You guys have a special bond,” Terrence said, with his hand over the phone.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Michael asked. “Isn’t there some client in the city you could see again? We haven’t been to New York in…” Michael looked to the ceiling and bit his lower lip.
“Two months?” Terrence answered for him.
“Three! That shopping spree in Midtown when I took Carolyn to get new shoes.”
“I can’t just up and leave.”
“Yeah, I know,” Michael said—more to himself, as Terrence finished the call. “The projects, the software, the business…Will!” he added, referring to Terrence’s business partner.
Terrence hung up the phone and pulled Michael closer. “Come here, you. I’m going to miss you. Josefina’s going to be mean to me while you’re gone.”
Michael laughed. “Oh, stop it, you big baby. C’mon. Come with me.”
Terrence nestled his head in the crook of Michael’s neck. “I have a meeting with Will in the morning. Getting back from New York by ten a.m. might be a bit difficult.”
“Will. Great. Anyway, I shouldn’t be long. Just a few days to comfort her.”
“Give her my love?”
“You bet. God, I still can’t believe—”
“Dese fuckin’ bags!” Josefina said from the upstairs hallway.
“Josefina! Josefina, honey? Are they too heavy?” Michael shouted up the stairway. His hand reached for Terrence.
“Get you spoiled ass up here and help me! Dese bags weigh a car-ton!”
“God, I love her.” Michael looked to Terrence.
“Well, why don’t you take her with you?”
Josefina dropped a bag with a loud thud. “I hear you! I no going New York! No way. No me gusta.” Josefina struggled with Michael’s carry-on, wrapped around her neck. With each step down the stairs, the scrape of her skirt rubbing against her nylons filled the foyer. “Too much wash…too much cook for Mr. Terrence.”
“Yes, we wouldn’t want to miss that.” Terrence rolled his eyes. “This morning’s blackened toast with egg equaled sheer perfection.”
“Mr. Terrence!”
Terrence stared at Michael. “Sorry, Josefina.”
“Mr. Chow come and cook for us.”
“Of course. We can hire help for the help,” Terrence said.
“Oh, shush!” Michael replied. “You know she’s got a bad back.”
“Oh, Mr. Michael, da car is pullin’ in da gates now,” she said, looking out the stair window.
Through the glass by the front door, a glare of lights cast along the wall.
“They got here fast,” Terrence said. “Sometimes it pays to be the VP of a major organization.”
Michael shook his head and muttered, “Please. You know I don’t like power trips.”
Terrence stammered, “Hey, I—”
Josefina dropped the luggage on the landing. “You no gonna help? I no gonna carry all this shit! Is too heavy!”
“Oh, Josefina. I forgot. Let me get that.” Michael darted up the stairs two at a time.
“You give Miss Carolyn my breast,” Josefina said.
“Your best, Josefina. Remember, your breasts are your boobies. Carolyn doesn’t want those.”
Josefina playfully hit Michael on the shoulder. “That’s for no coming to help me.” She hit him again. “And that’s for picking on my talk.”
Michael smiled. “I’ll tell Carolyn you said hello.” He hugged her.
“Now get you ass out to the car! You no gonna keep him waiting.” She pushed off his hug and followed him down the stairs.
“Okay, girls. Time for me to go.” Michael grabbed hold of Terrence one last time and squeezed his butt. “I think I’ll miss you most of all.”
“Gentlemen, no in front of this beautiful Guatemalan lady.”
Terrence pinched Michael’s butt. The phone dropped from his hand and crashed to the floor. Its piercing dial tone echoed throughout the foyer.
Josefina stood, shaking her head. “I no gonna fix you telephone.” She looked down at it as it began to beep.
Michael and Terrence kissed.
Josefina tapped her foot on the floor. “’Ello?” She cleared her throat. “Mr. Driver waiting.”
Stepping back from their embrace, Terrence put a hand through his thinning hair while Michael smiled coyly.
“You gonna make a love on da floor?” she asked, her foot continuing to tap. “Les get going!”
Michael huffed. “Okay. Okay.”
Josefina went to the door. “You tell Miss Carolyn not a good song.”
“Poor Carolyn, she’s such a mess.”
“That’s an understatement,” Terrence said.
Michael elbowed him and walked over to Josefina. “I’ll miss you, Josefina.” He grabbed the carry-on still slung around her neck, pecked her cheek and headed for the door.
She waved him on. “Go! Mr. Driver.”
“You have your cell phone?” Terrence asked.
Michael held it up to Terrence, blew kisses to both, and left.
As Michael stepped onto the stone porch, the driver greeted him coming up the stairs. The door closed.
“Evening, Mr. Coligliano.” The driver nodded, and a shadow from the brim of his cap fell across his eyes. “Another trip to see Ms. Sohier?”
“How’d you guess?”
The driver smiled, took Michael’s luggage and headed toward the black sedan, which had its motor running and trunk open.
“Please hang up, and try your call again,” and a few Spanish expletives rang out from within the house.
Witch Way
In a strip mall just a few miles from downtown Salem, Massachusetts, Rebecca Farney tossed her dyed-black hair away from her pale face. She fretted with a bunch of Matchbox cars that had fallen off metal pegs and onto the bottom of the display case. “I bet Loni Hodge’s witches don’t slum around at Wal-dor for a living,” she muttered to herself.
She stapled the ripped tops of the packages and slid them back onto the hooks. What kid would want a toy burnt-sienna 1987 Plymouth? She continued to staple and hang, noticing how the packages of the ugliest cars seemed to need the most repairs. The oldest merchandise always did.
“Fuck!” She clanked the Swingline, opened it to find it out of staples, walked back to the register and threw open the drawer. Its contents rolled forward, and she took out a fresh box.
Over the loudspeaker, the store manager squawked in her all-too-cheery voice. “Clerk from Toys to the service desk, please. Toys to the service desk. Thank you.”
“What the fuck?” She slammed the drawer; its innards thumped toward the back.
“Nice language,” she heard a shopper say from the bike aisle to her right.
&n
bsp; I’ll show you some fancy language, bitch. I’ll put a spell on your moral ass.
Unconcerned about offending a customer, Rebecca headed for the front of the store. After all, Ms. Greenfield’s calls were more important than some miniature Dodge Omni being marked on clearance—or even a goody-two-shoe bicyclist, for that matter. She pocketed the car in her smock and brushed a lint ball from the earth-toned rainbow—the store’s logo—just above her left breast pocket.
Why can’t I be in a cool department like music or electronics? she thought as she looked at a mess of Barbie dolls that had been pulled from their boxes. Kids.
She walked past Stationery and art supplies. The oil she’d painted at home came to mind. Her deep, dark works always had a signature burst of purples and blacks, evoking a mix of her favorite artists, Pollock and Warhol. Perhaps I could steal a bottle of metallic silver. That would finish it off nicely.
With the service desk in sight and no sign of a waiting customer, she sighed. She half expected to see someone like Crazy Coupon Clarice standing beside the glow of the orange Formica counter, ready to complain about the latest action figure in an all-out-battle return. Like two weeks ago, when she showed up with a competitor’s flyer and demanded the difference in price for a can of Play-Doh she’d purchased a year back—plus, she wanted to use an expired coupon.
Instead of a refund, Ms. Greenfield, the store manager, pursed her lips to one side and glared that look she gave when Rebecca did something wrong.
Great, what does she want to write me up for this time?
Ms. Greenfield held out the phone.
Rebecca took the receiver. Thoughts of nuns from St. John’s school—parading about in habits and carrying yardsticks for reprimanding—came to mind as Ms. Greenfield stood there looking so mighty. Rebecca stifled a laugh as she visualized the sisters dancing to the Britney Spears song playing overhead. “Toys,” she said in monotone and immediately recognized the voice on the other end. “Berniece!”
Ms. Greenfield, standing high atop the customer-service desk pulpit, hitched her brow—just like Sister Mary Margaret—and glared down on Rebecca. What a witch. She must have known the call to be personal, which explained the reason for having her come up front to take it instead of transferring it.
“Uh, yeah…Miss Berniece”—Rebecca cleared her throat—“regarding your grandson’s layaway.”
“What? I ain’t got no layaway!” Berniece, her roommate, said. “Becca, it’s me! Bernie!”
Rebecca turned her back to Ms. Greenfield and mumbled, “I know.”
Berniece paused. “Oh.”
“You can come in anytime and PICK UP YOUR LAYAWAY!”
“Hmm,” Berniece said. “Okay, I get the picture.”
Cupping her hand over the phone, Rebecca hurried, “I’ll call you from my cell.” She turned around and hung up the phone.
Ms. Greenfield put down the Wal-dor newsletter: Store 39 Opening in Scarborough, read the headline.
Rebecca flashed her a smile and meandered back to Toys.
From the register drawer, she grabbed her cell phone—despite the store’s policy against using them—and went on her break.
Berniece Fagar—Rebecca’s woman-of-color roommate and friend—owned an occult shop named Red Vanilla just a few blocks from Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables. In Rebecca’s spare time, she’d try to help out at Bernie’s store, but being there just meant less time focusing on her art or witchcraft.
As she walked to the break room, she imagined Berniece, with her large buttocks hung over the sides of her stool, waiting for tourists to come in to buy a postcard, her eyes teetering between the phone and the wall clock with its picture of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha in Bewitched taped to its faceplate, expecting Rebecca’s return call.
A dollar to one of her donuts, she’s going to tell me she’s short on her portion of the electric bill.
Looking out the two-way mirror and onto the store below, Rebecca listened to Berniece’s lead-up. Berniece took forever to get to the point. The solitude of the employee lunchroom during unscheduled break times provided her the anonymity a call required.
While Berniece droned on, Rebecca checked out the shoppers below. A woman pulled her sweatpants out from the crevices of her fat butt cheeks. Rebecca chuckled. The mirror offered the only good thing about working at Wal-dor. “On a Saturday night, the real Salem loons come out,” she’d told Berniece. “To hell with the Tuft’s health plan. That mirror’s the best perk.”
Rebecca pinched her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder and lit a cigarette. “Berniece, it’s my job. I can’t drop everything every time you call.” She inhaled, and let out a puff toward the This Is a Smoke-Free Environment sign on the wall.
Berniece sighed. “Well, I’m helping us. This is important.”
“Yeah, well, so ain’t this week’s toy markdown. I need a paycheck to afford our rent. Besides which, did you go down to Steve’s Market and pay the light bill?”
“Don’t worry about that right now. I’ve got good news for ya,” Berniece said.
With cigarette dangling from lips, Rebecca reached for her coffee on a shelf beside the mirror. “Better be.”
“Well…” Berniece cleared her throat, as if getting ready to announce something big, “Loni Hodge left Red Vanilla ’bout twenty minutes ago.”
“Yeah?” The metal folding chair Rebecca sat in creaked as she leaned her feet against the wall. “Is she comparison shopping again?”
“Becky, she asked us to be in Sunday’s séance on the Common!”
Rebecca let the chair fall, stood, and nearly hit her head on the sloped ceiling. “What!” For years, she and Berniece had been seeking a way into the leagues of Loni Hodge, the official Salem witch.
Berniece giggled. “She asked!”
Rebecca flicked her cigarette ashes onto the floor. “Don’t be kidding me, Bernie!” She took a drag.
“I ain’t shittin’ ya!” Berniece clapped. “She came into my shop and invited me and a guest.”
“No fucking way!” Rebecca threw her cigarette to the floor and stamped it out.
“No way would I be messing w’cha you on this shit, Becky!”
Red Vanilla’s door chimes clanged. “Oh well,” Berniece said. “Mother and her chubby kid just went running out the store.”
“Berniece, do you know what this means?” Rebecca paused.
“That chubby kid running out? It a sign?”
“No! Loni asking us to a séance, silly.”
“Um-hum.”
Rebecca leaned against the two-way mirror. “We’re finally going to be real Salem witches.”
Getting Lost
In a heavily air-conditioned lounge at LaGuardia, Carolyn waited for Michael. She sat at a barstool and wore a dark-blue nylon running suit, tortoiseshell reading glasses, a green Red Sox baseball cap, and a pair of running shoes. She hoped no one would recognize her from her mishap only hours ago.
Oddly for a performer, Carolyn Sohier preferred the comfort behind the limelight. Earning a decent living singing backup and touting the virtues of Chrysler automobiles on television suited her fine.
If her father, Jim Sohier, were still alive, Carolyn knew he would be proud of her attempt toward stardom—picking up where he left off. Rolling Stone once summed him up as: “a talented San Francisco rock musician from the sixties who’d frequented with the likes of Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix. Sohier never quite made it to the big leagues, and like his colleagues met an early demise to drugs and alcohol.”
“Must’ve gotten that great voice from your dad,” her mom would say as she would drag her to the next kiddie talent show. “Lord knows, it ain’t from me. I can’t sing a note worth a tune.”
Across the airport bar, a man with a Yankees hat eyed her. “Boston, huh?”
She smirked and looked away to avoid any conversation.
As it helped her get into a role, she’d sometimes go out in public, playing
the part of a character. This time, she made it all up and impersonated an affluent suburban-Boston mother, waiting for her husband to arrive so they could go to their summer place on Long Island. Right now, being someone else besides Carolyn Sohier suited her fine.
Hopefully, this character can contain her bowels. While her vomiting had taken center stage—even making the rounds on The Late Night Leer Show—she suffered more embarrassment about soiling herself.
After Michael’s call from the car, on his way to Sea-Tac, Carolyn insisted on meeting him at the airport. Despite being able to get to her apartment on his own—even having a spare key—Carolyn welcomed the diversion.
She fiddled with the flip top of her cell phone. A full glass of pinot grigio perspired into a red cocktail napkin, and she watched tiny waves of wine crest inside the glass as planes thundered overhead. The alcohol and an accompanying glass of water grew warmer while the hour passed. She took a nibble from the cracker-and-nut mix, and looked at her watch.
Another plane rumbled.
Carolyn took off her baseball cap and combed her fingers through her hair. The familiar scent of her shampoo reminded her of a television commercial she once did. Perhaps I’m a part-time hair model, she thought, regarding her role. She looked around, picturing the bar as a set, and shook her head in disgust. Modeling would be too glamorous. It didn’t fit.
The bartender winked.
She looked down. God, I hope he doesn’t recognize me.
She twirled the cubic zirconia rock on her finger and reached for her cell phone. “Lucille?” she said, continuing to play the role.
Good enough name for my maid. Let’s place this in Oyster Bay. “Lucille, honey, can you make sure the kids get up early for camp?”
She looked back over at the bartender. I shouldn’t have worn the Red Sox cap. It sticks out.
“Yes, Lucille. I’m at LaGuardia, waiting for the plane to Barbados.”
Barbados?
“Yes, you can let the dog out. Just make sure he doesn’t get into my prize roses. We need to clip some for the Wellesley house.”
How do I come up with these things?
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