The Witch

by Jean Thompson

  He had such good friends! He was so grateful. But he wasn’t as optimistic as they were. First they had to find the shoe girl, which would be tricky enough. Then he had to convince her not to hate him.

  “That’s called courtship,” Lance the Pants told him. They had borrowed Dave D.’s van to transport the roses. “Courtship as in, paying court. Paying compliments. All those things you like about her. A compliment is gentlemanly, as in, ‘I love your perfume.’ Not, ‘Nice ass.’”

  “Maybe you should write this stuff down for me.”

  Lance was quiet, thinking, or maybe just driving. Lance looked like the good guy in a comic book. He had black shiny hair and a handsome, comic book face. Girls were always calling him up, inviting him to parties, barbecues, home-cooked meals. He danced so skillfully from one partner to the next, he let them down with such soft landings, that none of them seemed to have any hard feelings. He was a virtuoso. At the florist’s, he convinced the girl who took their order to loan them five gallon buckets and fill them with water to keep the bouquets fresh. He selected a perfect red rose, presented it to her, and promised he’d bring the buckets back tomorrow—say, around five o’clock?

  Now he said, “I don’t think you should use any canned lines, RB. You need to go with your strengths.”

  “Okay,” Royboy agreed. Then, “What are those?”

  “Sincerity. Authenticity. Singleness of purpose. You know, I kind of envy you.”

  “Come on.”

  “Everybody wants to find true love. Me too. Sure. You think I don’t get tired of chasing tail? It’s like the guy said, an expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” Lance had often found a working knowledge of the great poets useful. “But hey, this isn’t a game for you, it’s a quest for something life-changing. Transformative. The search for a soul mate. The yin to your yang. Here’s our first stop. Let’s get to work.”

  The door opened wide at the sight of Lance bearing roses. The girls exclaimed over him, and Royboy shuffled in behind. There were four or five and then six girls—they wouldn’t keep still and it threw his count off—and they all had shiny hair and delicate wrists and ankles, they all smelled of meadow breezes. Royboy found them all very agreeable. He didn’t think any of them was the shoe girl, but maybe that would be revealed more gradually. He took a seat in a corner and watched Lance the Pants do his thing.

  “Lance, that was just the best party.”

  “That’s because you were there, darlin’.”

  “Listen to you.”

  “I’m here to scatter rose petals at your feet.”

  “Hahaha.”

  “I love roses. I’m going to put mine in water.”

  “Sleep with one of them under your pillow, darlin’, and dream of me.”

  “Oh Lance. Hahaha.”

  One of the girls detached herself from the group and sat down next to Royboy. “Hi, I’m Shawna.”

  “Oh, hi. Roy.”

  She was wearing pink pajamas, the satiny kind, with nothing underneath. She seemed to have forgotten this. Royboy tried not looking. He clamped his thighs together. Shawna said, “You’re Lance’s roommate, right? I thought I saw you before. So what do you do?”

  “I help Mikey, uh, Mike, sometimes, at the Beverage Depot.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say about that. It didn’t sound like enough. “Mike, he lives with us. Me and Lance. And Dave D.”

  Shawna’s blue eyes opened a little wider to indicate that she found this interesting. Beneath the pink satin, her breasts shifted in slow motion. “So how long have you known Lance?”

  Royboy began to explain. Mikey was his oldest friend, from way back in the fourth grade. He did not tell her the whole fourth-grade story because well because. He knew Dave D. from seventh grade and Lance from ninth. They had all stuck together somehow. Best buds.

  “So . . .” All her questions began with a so. “Does Lance have a girlfriend? I mean a real girlfriend.”

  Could you have a fake girlfriend? Never mind. He allowed himself a glance at Shawna’s nest-like crotch, visible beneath the layer of filmy fabric. He saw where this line of questioning was going. You didn’t need an entire functioning brain for that. He said, “Lance is still out there looking for true love.”

  “Really?” The pinkness that was Shawna rolled and rippled beneath the pinkness of her pajamas. She sat with him awhile longer before she wandered away.

  They visited a half dozen more girl-houses. It was pretty much the same story. The girls got the roses and Lance got the girls. It was a little depressing, even though Lance tried to cheer him up. “It’s only the low-hanging fruit of flirtation. Shooting the breezy breeze. Chitchat love.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lance was just being nice. There had been no sign of the shoe girl, but Royboy also seemed to have dodged the other girl who was mad at him. So he guessed he was breaking even, though it didn’t feel like it.

  “How we doing on roses?” Lance asked, and Royboy checked out the back of the van.

  “Low,” he reported. “Down to about an eighth of a tank.”

  “All right, let’s say, one more stop. This hasn’t been a total waste of time, now, has it? We’re getting you out and about. Increasing your social visibility. Providing practice in the conversational arts.”

  “I don’t have any conversational arts.”

  Lance didn’t bother arguing with him. “So you’re the nonverbal type. Strong and silent and solvent. That’s not nothing. Grab that bucket, would you? We might as well do one big rose dump.”

  They parked the van in front of what looked like the girl equivalent of their own rented house. A little shabby and saggy, like their own, but with better curtains and no old newspapers on the porch. Lance rang the bell and ran through a list of names under his breath: “Alexa, Alissa, Amber, Andrea . . .” The door opened and a girl with a round face looked out. “Angela! How’s the party girl?”

  Lance stepped through the open door and held the roses out. Angela didn’t take them. She sniffed, a long, soggy sound. “Are those because of Mr. Whipple?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Mr. Whipple died. Our cat.” She regarded the roses bleakly. “He wasn’t even sick or anything.” She sniffed again, her nose turning pink.

  “Aw honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “We took him to the emergency vet and they gave him some fluids and shots and all, but his kidneys shut down. We had him since he was a little, little kitten.”

  “That is so sad. Poor kitty.” Lance, recalibrating, all sympathy. Royboy tried to look sad as well.

  “We still have all his toys. His catnip mouse. His furry bunny.”

  Lance offered the roses again. “Why don’t you take these to cheer you up. Is anybody else home?”

  “Yeah.” She called up the stairs. “Lance and some guy are here.” She blinked moistly at the roses. “These are pretty. We could make a little wreath or something for him.”

  “You could,” Lance said, giving Royboy a look that meant they wouldn’t be staying long.

  Two more girls came down the staircase, both of them looking subdued, bleakly mourning. Royboy gave Lance a discreet shake of the head. Nope. Nope. “Hey Lance,” one of them said. “The cat died. It sucks.”

  “I know. But I bet there’s some other little kitty out there right now who’s waiting for you to bring him home and love him. Or her.”

  “That’s a nice thought, I guess.” Both the girls plopped down on the couch next to each other and stared at them. “Did you want a beer or something?”

  “I think we’re out of beer,” the second girl said.

  “We don’t really need anything,” Lance said. “I can see you aren’t up for company right now.”

  Angela came back in then, with the roses crowded into a too-small jar. “This was all I could find.”

  One o
f the girls on the couch said, “Did you bring these? What’s the occasion?”

  Lance said, “Oh, it’s just something Roy and I thought—”

  The girls interrupted, galvanized. “Roy? He’s Roy?”

  “The Roy?”

  All three of them were looking at him in a not-friendly way, like he was the one who killed their cat. Royboy shook his head at Lance: No clue. “I don’t think I’m The Roy,” he said.

  “Buddy, you better hope you’re not.”

  Lance said, “Maybe we could back this up a little. What’s my bud here been up to? He’s sort of cloudy on the details.” Royboy nodded, trying to look humble and at the same time injured at being unjustly accused of whatever it was he did.

  The girls weren’t having any of it. “He has some nerve, showing up here. What’s he trying to do to her, pretend it was all some big joke? It’s not like she gets out much.”

  “Through no fault of her own,” another girl said, loyally. “Men just don’t make the effort with her.”

  “Her who? What? Guys! I mean, you’re not actually guys, sorry.” Royboy tried laughing this off. Ha ha. “Who?” he asked again.

  “Laura. Don’t tell me you don’t even remember her name. Laura, your fiancée? Of course the getting married part was a little over-the-top.”

  “I am going to marry her. I just don’t remember that much about her.”

  “So not funny,” remarked one girl, shaking her head.

  “Did she hit me the other night? I mean, I’m sure I deserved it.”

  “That happen to you a lot? Getting punched out? Yes, she hit you.”

  Royboy was relieved. He was at least in the right house. “I remember her hitting me. The other stuff, not so much.”

  “The old ‘I was way drunk’ excuse,” sneered another girl. “Not very original.”

  “I don’t remember if I was way drunk.”

  Lance said, “See, Roy has some brain issues.”

  “Now that is original.”

  “Seriously. It’s like amnesia, but in small doses.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The result of getting smashed up by a car when he was a kid.”

  The girls looked at one another, wondering if they were getting scammed, or were required instead to feel bad on his behalf. One of them said, “Should he be out walking around loose? Allowed to reproduce?”

  Royboy said, “That’s a little harsh.”

  Lance tried again. “See, he’s looking for the girl of his dreams. He found her but he lost her because he had one of his memory lapses.”

  “Well she sure remembers him.”

  Who? Who? Royboy was about to say, when the front door opened and all three girls began making furious motions with their hands, pinching and cutting at the air. What the? A girl with her dark hair in pigtails stood in the entry. It was her! The shoe girl! Waves of rainbow-colored love pulsed from Royboy’s inner core.

  The shoe girl scowled at Roy. “Hey,” he said. “Nice to see you again.” He thought she looked pretty, even if her expression was not so friendly. She looked like a little brown bird would look if you turned it into a girl.

  “She can’t hear you,” Angela said, scooping and swooping with her arms and hands. The shoe girl did the same, looking agitated. “She says, ‘Did he have sex with the,’ I think she called her, the witch. Or maybe it was the other thing.”

  “No! But did we, I mean, her and me . . .”

  “This is such an unusual situation,” Lance remarked.

  Angela said, “She wants her shoe back. You were sleeping on top of it and she couldn’t wake you up.”

  “Oh, sure.” Royboy nodded. “Not a problem. But why did she run off?”

  Angela relayed this. The shoe girl spoke. She had a deaf voice, a little rusty. “I was afraid.” Then she reverted back to sign language, which Angela translated as, “Embarrassed.”

  “Overwhelmed, maybe,” Lance suggested, “by Roy’s powerful love vibe, and his proposal of marriage, which was heartfelt but perhaps premature.”

  Once this was translated, the girl nodded. Roy said, “Ask her if she wants to get married.”

  “Baby steps, Roy. Baby steps.”

  Laura! The name rang like a doorbell, and from somewhere in a back hallway, Royboy’s memory roused itself to answer. “We talked about stuff! I know we did, how did we do that? Hey, Laura!” He stooped to peer into her face. She looked wary. Confused. Well, so was he.

  Royboy straightened again. Stepped up to the plate. “Lance, help me out here.”

  “What Roy means is, she made him breathe a new air. He’s a changed man. He’s smitten. Something like that?”

  “Yeah,” Royboy said. “Go on.” Angela was translating as fast as she could, whipping the fingers of both hands into lines, circles, shapes.

  “How can we understand these things? Two separate souls, circulating around each other like electrons around the nucleus of an atom.”

  “Not electrons,” Royboy objected.

  “Two incomplete halves made whole. Finding each other against all odds. Is it destiny? Enchantment? Scientists fail to find explanations. Poets keep trying. Our boy here, he might suffer from a small, hardly noticeable intellectual deficiency. But his heart is an off-the-charts genius. Did we mention he has a little money?”

  Royboy turned to Angela. “Teach me some of the whaddyacallit. Signs. How do you say ‘Hello’?”

  “It’s like a salute,” Angela said. “Hand up to the forehead. That’s it.”

  Royboy saluted. He watched Laura’s hand waver, then slowly, slowly come up to return his greeting. Hello. Hello. Destiny? Enchantment? Magic? Mistake? Shall we dance?

  CANDY

  Her mother liked to stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout up at her. Her mother had knee problems from being totally gross and fat and she didn’t climb stairs unless she had to. “Janice! Jan-ice!”

  Janice let her mother go on for a while, then she opened the bedroom door and looked out. “What?”

  “Don’t what me. Turn that noise off, nobody wants to hear it. I need you to take Nana’s supper to her. You are not wearing that. I don’t care. You turn right around and put on a real shirt.”

  Janice took her time. When she got downstairs, her mother gave her one of her looks. “What?” Janice said again.

  “What do you do up there all day anyway?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, you can do nothing downstairs.”

  Janice didn’t bother answering. Her mother didn’t really want her hanging around downstairs where they’d have to put up with each other. She was just being her usual hag self. Janice went into the kitchen and sniffed at the plastic container on the counter. Dark beads of moisture bubbled up under the plastic lid. “What’s this?”

  “Chicken and noodles.”

  “It looks like dead worms.”

  “Nice. It’s your supper too.”

  “I don’t want any, I’m on a diet.”

  “You don’t need to be on any diet, you need to not eat chips and soda and all that greasy crap. Go ahead, don’t believe me, someday you’ll wake up with three or four extra inches on your hips and wonder how they got there. Now heat this up on the top of the stove with a little water, put it in a bowl for her, and make sure she’s eating. Then come straight home.”

  Only her mother would make chicken and noodles when it was a hundred degrees outside. Her mother was the last one to be talking about what to eat. Her butt was as big as a garbage truck.

  Her mother tied a plastic bag tight around the plastic container, then put it in another plastic bag. You could have shot the thing out of a cannon and still been able to eat it. She flapped her mouth some more as Janice was leaving, about how Janice wasn’t as smart as she thought she was and it was all going to catch up with her som
eday and Janice said, “Yeah, sure.” Her mother made it sound like she’d be glad if something really horrible happened, just so she could say she was right.

  Janice opened the kitchen door and went down the back outside stairs. Their tenant in the basement apartment, Mr. Grotius, had his air conditioner blasting. He was probably sitting right in front of it in his old-man underwear. It was the hottest part of the day. Nana always ate her dinner way too early. The sky was flat and gray with heat, like another sidewalk reflected overhead. It was only June and already Janice was bored with summer.

  Once she’d reached the alley and turned the corner, Janice took off her cotton shirt and tied it around her waist. Her mother wouldn’t let her wear tank tops outside the house, which was so ignorant. Janice texted Marilee to meet her at the A&W and Marilee texted back OK. It wasn’t like there was some big hurry to get to Nana’s. Nana didn’t think about eating until you put the food right in front of her.

  Janice got to the A&W first and stood in line to get a root beer float. She sat down with it at a table in the front so she could see Marilee coming. The cool inside air made her bare arms prickle. The vinyl seat was cold too and she hiked up the legs of her shorts so the skin of her thighs was right up against the cold surface. She shifted her weight from one side to another, experimentally.

  “What are you doing?”

  Marilee had come in without her noticing. “Nothing,” Janice said, getting busy with her root beer float.

  “Well it looked extra queer. I don’t know what I want. Split some fries?”

  Janice said maybe she’d have a few, and Marilee got up to order. There was nobody interesting in the place. Like anybody interesting lived in the whole stupid town.

  Marilee came back with the fries on a tray. She’d already squirted ketchup all over them.

  “I don’t want ketchup,” Janice said.

  “Then get your own.”

  “You could of just put the ketchup on the side.”

  “Big honking frigging deal,” Marilee said, picking up a fry and wagging it. They were best friends, but they were the kind of friends who had a lot of fights over stupid things when really it was all about who was hotter, Janice or Marilee. Marilee had prettier hair, straight and blond, but Janice was further along in the boobs department.