At Ninth Street and First Avenue, The Warlock steered them around a corner to the west, halting in front of a boutique. This was going to be risky; the stop wasn’t on their itinerary. The Warlock held the door open for Jem. A set of windchimes crafted from silvery pentacles tinkled a welcome. After counting to fifteen, I followed them up the steps to Enchantments, a witchcraft paraphernalia boutique.
I felt like I often do on museum trips when I latch on to the middle of a guided tour and eavesdrop on the docent’s lecture. The Warlock was giving Jem a rundown on the various kinds of candles, books, amulets, smudging wands, and other tricks and treats of the trade. I liked the way the store smelled . . . the faint aroma of wax blended with various essential oils I couldn’t identify. While I kept one eye on Jem and the Warlock, I busied myself by playing with various vials of scent, rubbing them into the pulse points on my wrists, as though I were considering a custom blend.
The Warlock approached a counter at the back of the store, where a pale brunette was smoothing oil over a thick green cylindrical candle. Then she rubbed it in multicolored glitter. Jem asked The Warlock what the glitter was for.
“Evening, Raven,” The Warlock said to the candle lady. “My friend here wants to know what the glitter’s for.” He turned to Jem. “The green is the money candle. Raven will carve certain totems into the candle and you burn it for seven days and pray over it for financial rewards.”
Raven didn’t look up from her work. “The glitter just makes it pretty,” she told Jem. “It’s the totems that are the key.”
Jem looked fascinated. I can’t remember when I’ve ever seen her so entranced by something, especially a world she’s been openly mocking for years. The Warlock noticed her expression and asked her if she wanted a candle. He gestured to a colorful array on a shelf to their left. “Each one carries a significance. Pink for love, red for passion, and so on.”
“Green for money,” Jem smiled.
The Warlock selected a grass-green candle and checked it for nicks and scratches before handing it to Raven, who had just completed the other customer’s money candle. “That’s $14.95,” she said. “Pay up front at the register. Did you notice we have the new Pre-Raphaelite Tarot cards in? You can ask Melora to show them to you. They’re right behind the counter next to the Harry Potter decks.”
Raven explained how the money candle worked. Jem told her that she wanted to win the million-dollar jackpot on Bad Date. To maximize the effect of the spell, she asked for Jem’s astrological sign, which she would carve into the candle, along with Bad Date’s logo.
“I never knew you were a Capricorn,” The Warlock said.
“It’s not on my résumé,” Jem replied tartly. Then she softened. “And someone told me I have a Pisces moon, so what does that mean?”
“It means that you’re a dreamer at heart.” The Warlock selected a red candle and handed it to Raven who was busy turning Jem’s money candle into a work of colorful sculpture. “Raven, carve Capricorn and Scorpio into this one for me, when you’re done.”
The shop was small enough for me to hear their conversation while I remained near the front of the store, now checking out the silver charms in the display case. Swiveling stand-alone racks partially obscured me from their view. In order to kill more time, I asked to look at the Pre-Raphaelite Tarot deck. Even though I have absolutely no idea how to read the cards, they were so pretty that I shelled out the fifteen dollars for the pack. I could always shellac them and make a découpage hatbox to give to Nell.
I realized that when Jem and the Warlock made their way to Melora the cashier with their candles, it would be nearly impossible for them not to notice me. I left the shop and stood by the curb, where I could continue to observe them. I pushed back my hat and removed a set of binoculars from the lined mesh-style purse I’d bought a day or two earlier on the street. I didn’t want to carry a handbag that would be all-too-familiar to Jem in case she looked in my direction.
I peered through the binoculars. Melora was showing Jem some of the jewelry in the front case. I had admired it myself. The shop had just gotten them in— terrific amber pieces and ancient scarabs purportedly dating from the days of Cleopatra. I saw Jem’s face light up when Melora showed her one of the scarabs. Jem is a huge fan of all things Cleopatra. I could see that my roommate, a woman who ordinarily wears very simple and elegant modern gold jewelry, was suckered. She drew her wallet from her purse, but The Warlock stopped her, and placing his hand on hers, guided it back into her handbag. He removed a Gold Card from his billfold and handed it to Melora, who wrapped their candles in clouds of purple tissue paper and placed them in separate shopping bags. The Warlock asked Jem a question that I obviously couldn’t hear. Then Jem smiled at him—actually smiled—and he gently brought the charm around her neck and fastened the clasp. I shoved the binoculars back in my purse and had crossed to the opposite side of the street before they finished descending the steps from the store to the pavement.
I followed a safe distance behind Jem as she and The Warlock headed uptown to Pywacket. Jem looked like she had forgotten she wasn’t supposed to be having fun. Then something strange happened. Jem stopped suddenly, grabbed the wrought-iron fence railing outside a brownstone and sat on the grubby stoop. She removed her right shoe and rubbed her foot. I heard her telling The Warlock that she’d gotten a sudden cramp and didn’t think she could make it to the restaurant. Was she testing him, I wondered. If she bailed on him now, she wouldn’t exactly have a tale of woe to share on Bad Date this Sunday. What could she say? That after seven years, she finally agreed to go out with this guy who took her to an eccentric little witchcraft shop and bought her jewelry? I think not.
The Warlock knelt on the sidewalk and started to check out Jem’s aching instep. What a communications department chair at a community college knew about orthopedics was anyone’s guess; the guy probably had a foot fetish. At any rate, he certainly was solicitous. He wiggled her foot around, ascertained that she hadn’t broken anything—if I know Jem, she’d realized the date was going too well and had to do something about it—and he somehow managed to convince her to put her shoe back on and get into a taxi with him. Give Round One to The Warlock.
I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. I hailed the next passing hack and said something I’ve been longing to utter for over thirty years. “Follow that cab!” I commanded my driver.
Whew! Thank God The Warlock had convinced Jem to go to Pywacket after all. The hostess escorted me to a table from which I could have just the view I needed. I handed her a crisp twenty-dollar bill. Then I messed up the opposite side of my deuce so it would look like I wasn’t dining alone.
The restaurant was very romantic and so dark that I could barely see the menu, let alone Jem and The Warlock. It was illuminated entirely by candlelight. Votives dotted the cozy tables; tapers dripped from medieval circular iron chandeliers that would have been right at home in Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood. The menu items bore Gothic-sounding names like bare breasts (grilled boneless chicken) with blood orange sauce and a sinfully rich flourless chocolate cake they called Nevermore.
Jem, obviously sensing that this dinner might go too well, complained that the cozy corner table was too dark to see either her menu or her meal. She flagged down the hostess and made an embarrassing scene, hoping, I suppose, that The Warlock would be mortified that his date had suddenly morphed into a latter day Joan Crawford. However, the hostess apologetically told Jem that there was no other table they could move to, so my line of vision luckily remained intact. I’ve mentioned before that when Jem gets really angry, she gets quiet. Therefore, these histrionics had to be an act. But The Warlock, unlike his white shirt, was unruffled. He got up from his seat and stood behind her chair with a votive candle, aiming it right at her menu so she could see every item clearly.
I smiled. Jem had just lost Round Two. There was nothing The Warlock, who seemed to have the very soul and manners of a perfect gentleman, had done so fa
r to ruin the evening. So Jem had to do it for him. When their bottle of red wine came to the table, Jem managed to knock over The Warlock’s goblet, so that the wine spilled all over his white shirt and brown velvet frock coat. While she pretended to be solicitous of both his feelings and his haberdashery—even to the point of telling him that she wouldn’t be at all shocked if he didn’t want to walk out on their dinner then and there—I heard The Warlock tell her that his jacket was Scotchgarded and he had a half dozen similar shirts in his closet. He ordered them in bulk, he said, laughing.
Round Three to The Warlock as well.
With the possible exception of Jem, no one was more surprised than I at how well this was going. Jem’s plan was that dinner with The Warlock was going to be hell on earth, but I’ve never seen her as happy and as animated as she’d been for the past couple of hours. She practically glowed from within. In all the time I’ve known Jem, she’s never been able to connect romantically with anyone and her chemistry with The Warlock was, well, magical. I refused to let her sabotage this chance for happiness. So I called over our waiter and asked him to deliver a bottle of Jem’s favorite champagne to her table. When it arrived, she was nonplused. I heard her ask The Warlock how he could possibly have known how much she loved Bollinger.
The Warlock watched Jem melt and just smiled cryptically at her, which gave her the impression that he really cared. The truth, of course, was that he was entirely clueless as to how that bottle of Bollinger got to his table. He probably figured his red candle was working already and he hadn’t even lit it yet.
I’d instructed the staff to add the bottle to my tab, and unfortunately, the waiter whispered something to The Warlock and pointed in my direction. When I saw what was happening, I rose and made a beeline for the ladies’ room. If Jem and her date saw anything, they caught a miniskirted blonde heading to the opposite side of the restaurant. When I tried to return to my seat, I saw that Jem had angled her chair so that she would have a good view of my table. Knowing her as well as I do, she wasn’t about to rest until she learned why the waiter had gestured toward my table. Where’s a potted plant when you need one? I stationed myself behind a pillar, and peered through the darkness of the restaurant like a film noir detective, but I began to feel just a tad obvious. I didn’t want the evening to turn into something out of a Pink Panther movie instead. So I sought out the waiter and told him I was going over to the bar and asked him to bring my tab over there, where I could more easily blend with the other minglers.
I paid my bill, left Pywacket, and stationed myself outside the restaurant. God knows what I must have looked like to passersby with the binoculars pressed to my eyes, as I tried to scope out Jem and The Warlock through the glare of plate glass and the duskiness of the ambiance inside. After about half a minute— and when I saw the rare beat cop heading down the street—I decided it was time to move along.
On the way home, I wondered how the rest of the evening would transpire for the two of them. I hadn’t been able to hear what they’d been discussing all through dinner, but I can say that they certainly never ran out of topics. From my vantage point behind the Pywacket pillar, it seemed to me that after a slice of the Nevermore cake and white chocolate–dipped strawberries to complement the champagne, not only was the dinner a great success for Cupid, The Warlock, and Liz Pemberley, but I would be shocked if it didn’t lead to a second date. It just goes to show you that if you give someone half a chance, hellish expectations might turn out to be downright heavenly.
18/
Blonde Attack
By the time Jem got home, I was sitting on the couch making another stab at last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine crossword puzzle, with half an eye on the video Nell was glued to. She’d finally bought her own copy of Notting Hill, after renting it so many times our local Blockbuster started asking her if she wanted “the usual” every time she set foot inside the store.
“Nell, do you spell gecko with a ck or with two ks?” I asked her.
“I don’t spell ‘gecko’ at all,” she answered. “Words with icky scales, pebbled skin, or more than four legs aren’t in my vocabulary. Shhhhhh, we’re getting to the good part. Where she says she’s just a girl asking a boy to love her.” She wrapped herself more tightly in the granny square afghan, as though it were an embrace. “I’m loving this blanket by the way, Liz. I know I told you this when you gave it to me, but I think it’s one of the best Christmas presents I ever got. I mean you made it all my favorite colors and everything. Even my sorority colors are in here. It’s so much more thoughtful than something store-bought.”
“I’m glad you’re still so happy with it. It’s always such a roll of the dice when you make something for someone with your own hands. I mean, what if you work really hard to surprise them with something you think they’ll find truly special . . . and they end up hating it?”
Nell wiggled her fingers through the gaps in the granny squares. “No one could hate anything you did, Liz.”
I have a terrible feeling that might not be entirely true.
The apartment door slammed shut, rattling the framed prints that hung on the foyer walls. “Nell, you better dip into your trust fund and buy yourself a damn good explanation!”
Nell turned around to look at Jem. “It was only $9.95,” she said, gesturing to the videotape box. “If you rent it three times, it already costs more than that.”
“I’m not talking about the fucking video and you know it, Nell. You’re one of the smartest women I know, so don’t pretend to have a ‘blonde attack’ on me now.” Jem marched through the living room, stopped the VCR, ejected the tape, and flung it at Nell’s feet. “Why the hell did you do it?”
Nell clutched her precious videotape to her chest. “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not kidding. I don’t.”
Jem paced the room like a caged panther. “Okay. If you want to derive the satisfaction of hearing the whole damn sordid thing from my own lips, I’ll make you happy.”
“What happened at dinner?” Nell asked ingenuously.
“You know what happened, Nell. If anyone knows, it’s you!”
“Then what did happen?” I asked. “Didn’t the date go poorly?”
Jem lit a cigarette. She knows we decided that the entire apartment was a smoke-free zone. Nell was afraid to say anything about it. I didn’t want to say anything until I heard Jem’s version of the story.
“Where’s an effing ashtray in this dump?” Jem demanded.
I opened a drawer in our breakfront and extracted one for her, a pretty porcelain square. I’d liberated it from Claridges hotel some years ago on a trip to London.
Her video removed, Nell devoted her entire focus to Jem. “So was The Warlock as creepy as you expected him to be?”
“His name is Carl,” Jem snapped at her. “And he’s an absolutely fucking terrific guy.”
I pretended this was news. “What?”
“I couldn’t shake him,” Jem told us. “I tried to pull a diva number and he didn’t let me get away with it. He was just so nice about everything. He didn’t lose his temper, didn’t patronize me . . . and he didn’t act like a doormat either. It was like he was waiting patiently, maturely, for me to run out of steam. I hate him,” she wailed, stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray.
Nell looked puzzled. “I’m missing something here. I thought you knew you were going to hate him. And that was supposed to be the best thing about it; it was why you picked him in the first place. So your date would suck.”
“Exactly,” Jem said, dissolving into tears. “But he didn’t suck. He’s sweet and fascinating and generous. The date was wonderful and we’re going out again next week! No thanks to you, Nell.”
I closed the magazine and let it rest on my lap. “What does Nell have to do with The Warlock—I mean Carl—being a nice guy?”
Jem leveled an accusing finger at Nell. “Ask her. She knows. She was there. She sent a bottle of Bolly over to our table.”
>
Nell looked stunned. “Wait a New York minute, Jem. You think I spied on your dinner date? I’ve been here watching Notting Hill for hours!”
“She’s seen it straight through twice already, trust me,” I offered, trying to be helpful with Nell’s alibi— well, the truth, actually. I wanted to clear Nell’s good name, but I wasn’t ready to confess my culpability until I’d figured out how to deal with Jem’s inevitable attendant wrath.
“Hold on, Liz,” Nell said, looking at me. “You weren’t home until I was a quarter of the way through my second screening.” She and Jem looked at each other. Then they looked at me.
“What?”
“Where were you this evening?” Jem leveled her gaze at me.
“I had to work late.”
“Something doesn’t add up,” Nell said.
I felt my stomach churning. “Couldn’t it have been a coincidence that Carl ordered your favorite champagne, of how ever many sparkling wines there were on the menu?”
“Carl didn’t order the champagne. It just showed up, and the waiter whispered something to him and pointed to someone behind me. By the time I could turn around in my chair, all I saw was Nell walking toward the ladies’ room.”
“Or someone who looked like Nell,” I added. “You mean blonde and beautiful?”
“And leggy. Only Nell wears skirts so short a hooker mistakes them for tube tops.”
“Jem, that’s so unfair!” Nell protested. “My leather mini is a Dolce & Gabbana.”
Reality Check Page 14