Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle

by Carlos Allende

  By then, Cora’s brother had already reached the telephone booth on Electric, just to find out that he had lost the coin in his hasty race. Unable to make the call, Kevin decided to turn west on Windward and continue all the way to the Gas House Café, on the Ocean Front Walk, to find John.

  The witch and the boy reached Windward Circle at the same time, Kevin running west on the northern side, in front of the Antler Hotel; the little woman walking her bike on the opposite side, heading east, towards the post office.

  It is a big roundabout. It used to fit a swimming lagoon. And it was dark and the fog had thickened. At first, the boy couldn’t make much of the figure walking a bicycle on the other side of the circle. But then he heard little Dorothy’s Angel cry and realized that the lump inside the bicycle basket was his nephew.

  “Stop!” Kevin yelled.

  It was he who stopped, however. The little witch jumped back on her waddling bike and started pedaling.

  “Stop!” the boy cried again. “Ma’am, please!” He ran across the circle. “Give back my sister’s baby!”

  The little woman turned around and headed North, still on Main Street. It wouldn’t be a smart thing to lead the boy towards the canals.

  Kevin followed her until the corner at Market. He was out of breath. His right foot was bleeding. He realized that he wouldn’t be able to catch her alone. And now he was just one block away from the beach. He decided to turn left and go find Lazybones John first at the Gas House Café.

  You must have guessed it by now, dear reader; John was no one else but John Porter, Russell’s roommate.

  13

  In which Miss Josie García gets involved

  By a happy coincidence, the poet and his girlfriend were also at the Gas House Café that night.

  Earlier, the loving couple had had a row caused by jealousy. A particularly irritating woman by the name of Eva, self-defined as a muse and aspiring actress, attempted to monopolize Russell every time they ran into her at the coffeehouse. Eva called herself Russell’s best friend—she was not!—appealing to the fact that it was she who introduced him to the bohemian life in Venice, and believed she had the right to cuddle amorously with Josie’s boyfriend right under her nose, as if he were her pet. Or she his lover.

  “Please don’t be jealous,” Eva said to Josie, after that night’s kiss—a louder, longer, and wetter kiss than usual. “I’m like his sister.”

  “She’s been hittin’ the jug,” Russell explained to his girlfriend with a flustered smile.

  You’re one to talk, Josie glowered at him. Russell looked more than well lubricated.

  “His youngest sister,” Eva clarified, rubbing the marks of red lipstick off Russell’s cheek with her thumb. Her eyes moved in a way that confirmed Russell’s words. “Much younger.”

  “You’re a teenager,” Russell joked.

  She looked like an all-American girl: tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, giggling at everybody’s commentary, but not in a silly way; she came across as smarter than that. Eva’s grin was that of a self-assured, daring person.

  Russell pulled out a chair and Eva joined them at their table. She wore an expensive angora sweater that caused Josie’s pupils to contract with hatred.

  Heather was there too, seated between the artist and his girlfriend.

  The two women’s friendship had flourished in that natural consequence to females: pain unites. One had a patient ear and the other a spacious 1956 Ford Fairlane, and didn’t mind driving the other.

  “Who’s the new gal?” Eva asked.

  Russell made the introductions.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Eva leaned her head back in a theatrical gesture.

  “Likewise,” Heather responded with a smile. Being referred to as a gal was a nice compliment. “I’ve heard a few things about you,” she added, offering a pack of cigarettes to Eva.

  Josie glared at her friend but Heather pretended not to notice.

  “What sorts?” Eva took a cigarette. She looked at Josie, again with a gesture appropriate of a dramatic performer.

  Heather took a deep drag before responding.

  “Compliments,” she too stole a quick look from her girlfriend. “All true—you are beautiful. Now I understand why Josie is so jealous.”

  “Jealous?” Eva pretended to be offended. “Of me?” She took a flask from inside her purse and, after a cautious look behind her shoulder, poured some liquor in Russell’s coffee mug. The artist welcomed her kindness with a grin. “Wet your tonsils,” Eva said and then poured some into Heather’s.

  Josie pulled her mug away before her turn came.

  “Oh, please—why on earth would you be jealous?” Eva asked. Before Josie had a chance to respond, she pursed her lips and blew a kiss to Russell.

  Josie flinched. Eva laughed.

  “You silly girl. You know I’m kidding, right? This cat is crazy about you.” She grabbed Russell’s chin. “He doesn’t like white chicks, anyways. You shouldn’t worry. Heather, it is your friend here who is the true beauty.”

  Heather chuckled. Josie tried her best to force a good face behind a sip of her coffee.

  “You are the one and only,” Russell whispered in her ear.

  Josie forced a grin, pretending to be flattered.

  She never felt uglier or more insecure than when around Eva. Eva was taller. Eva was blonde. Eva had pale, smooth skin, like a Max Factor model, and she moved in the elegant, graceful way common only to dancers. Even when she was drunk, she never lost it. Josie could hardly have one beer without bloating up like a globefish. Next to Eva, she felt ordinary and vulgar, ashamed of her short size and roundish figure, her dark skin, her untamed, curly hair and her stubby fingers. Eva had found Josie delicious, Russell insisted. She had expressed her admiration for the girl on every occasion. She never failed to praise the size of her eyes or her healthy skin color. Still, Josie felt threatened.

  “You’re taking good care of my Russell, aren’t you, Josie?” Eva asked, clinging to the young man’s arm as if he were a puppy. “He is my boychick. I will be terribly mad at you if ever you hurt him.”

  She looked American, all quick words and smiles and dressed in the latest fashion, but upon closer observation, there was something in her voice, something in the way she rolled her r’s in words like “hurt” and “very” that revealed a subtle accent, and something in the way she moved, with an affected elegance, that let slip her non-American origin. There was an indescribable sadness in her eyes, too, a strange look of bitterness and pity when she looked around, despite her ear-to-ear grin, as if she was about to say goodbye any moment, that made Josie feel uneasy.

  Eva was Polish. A Holocaust survivor relocated to Venice.

  “You better be careful and do as Eva says,” was Russell’s response to Josie’s look of disappointment. “I have no doubt she will make you pay if you mistreat me. Eva loves me.”

  “Of course I do,” Eva hugged him. “You are my baby boy and I am your sister.”

  More than once Josie had fallen onto her bed in a river of tears because of a wonderful evening ruined by Eva.

  She wouldn’t show her discomfort in front of Russell, however. She waited until Heather invited her to go to the bathroom to verbalize her anger.

  “‘I’m like your little sister,’” she mimicked Eva. “That stupid kike! I wish she’d die. I hate her!”

  “She is a little too skinny,” Heather twisted her face in disgust.

  “She’s a walking skeleton!” Josie roared. “She’s a monster. I hate her. I wish she had died in the ovens!”

  Heather agreed. And the few minutes she allowed Josie to vent her loathing for the Polish girl were well appreciated.

  “It’s good to know I have you as a friend,” Josie thanked her.

  But shortly after they returned to the table, Heather’s love life came into t
he conversation, and Eva had a few kind words for her.

  “Your story is so sad,” she said, covering her mouth with her fingertips. “I don’t know what to say. You are such a beautiful woman, you’re still young—how old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine,” Heather lied.

  “Twenty-nine? So unfair and so sad!”

  And, just as with everyone else who seemed to care when they listened to her sad story of treason, love and deception, Heather made of Eva her new best friend.

  “My life is so horrible,” Heather brushed a tear off her face with a deep snort. She popped a candy into her mouth, and offered another cigarette to Eva. “Will’s wife is double his age. She is ancient—but she’s rich. I call her ‘abuela.’ She buys him everything he wants. Absolutely everything. She bought him a car. She bought him a motorcycle. She took him and his friends to Acapulco, and she’s taking them to Hawaii for Christmas. How could he not want to be with her? Before knowing her, he was just a freaking dealer. She gives him all he never had. But, you know what?” she interrupted herself with a long sob, forcing Eva to lean over to better hear what was about to come: “He loves me. He truly does. He told me that he’s leaving her and coming back to me—he’s just not ready.”

  She turned to Josie. “I told you all this, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” the girl muttered.

  “Several times,” Russell laughed.

  Heather laughed too, and then turned back to Eva. “Every morning I say to myself, Heather Jennifer, you are a Wildfeuer. You have to fight. You have a son. You have to be strong, for the sake of your son.”

  “You’re a mother?” asked Eva in surprise.

  “Of the most beautiful child,” Heather cracked the candy in her mouth. “Tyler is such a good boy.” She pulled a photograph out of her purse. “His eyes are huge. He is so handsome. And his eyelashes—I wish I had those! I tell him, ‘Mamma is going to pluck your eyelashes one by one while you’re asleep.’ He gets all mad. He’s such a heartthrob.”

  “He is,” said Eva, holding the picture. “How old is he now?”

  “He turned eight last April.”

  “Where is he?

  “He’s at home—I hope,” Heather chortled. She pulled a compact from her purse to check on her makeup. “He must be sleeping. Or watching television. He is a good kid, but he’s a bit of a rebel about his bed time.”

  “What was his name again?” Eva asked.

  “Tyler.” Heather powdered her nose. “Tyler James Brian Wildfeuer.”

  “I want to meet him!”

  “You can come with us to the beach tomorrow.” Heather put the compact and the photograph back in her purse. “Josie and I are going, and I promised him I’d take him with us this time. Do you want to go?”

  “I’d love to!”

  Josie’s only sign of disapproval was another flinch. She smiled. Inside, she was burning.

  She excused herself from the table with the pretext of needing a coffee refill. Heather and Eva continued talking. Noticing some unnatural stiffness in her smile, Russell followed his girlfriend to the counter.

  “Are you okay?” he asked with a timid smile.

  “I’m fine,” Josie responded. “I’m just not talking to you.”

  “What did I do now?”

  Josie didn’t respond. She finished her cup and looked in the other direction.

  “Tom,” she called the man behind the bar. “Build me a drink.”

  The waiter placed a finger before his lips to hush her.

  “You’re too loud,” the bartender mouthed, and then offered her a cup that he had just filled up with red wine behind the counter. “It’s on the house,” he added, with a wink.

  Josie thanked him with a dimpled smile. Without devoting a single glance to her boyfriend, who still waited for a word behind her, she turned her attention to the other side of the room, away from the table where Eva and Heather were still engaged in conversation.

  A man walked to the middle of the room holding over his head a tape recorder.

  “Funky Blues for All Squares, Creeps, and Cornballs,” the man announced, and pressed the play button.

  There would be no live poetry reading that night at the Gas House.

  Josie rested an elbow on the bar, pretending to be interested. The man holding the tape recorder was Mr. Larry Lipton, the coffeehouse’s spokesman and self-proclaimed leader of the Beat movement in Venice.

  “Are you mad at me?” Russell asked after a minute.

  Still no response. She was not going to give in so easily.

  Russell did, however. He didn’t feel too well that night. He and John had spent the day drinking cough syrup laced with morphine, watching the tourists stroll down the boardwalk from the terrace of the Grand Hotel, sketching ideas for a poem, arguing with other artists about the meaning of life, and he was tired. He felt dizzy and lightheaded, unwilling to participate in a fight that he knew he would inevitably lose. Thus, when he saw a little black boy in his pajamas—our brave little Kevin—arguing with a red-headed giant by the door, Mr. Eric “Big Daddy” Nord, the six-foot-seven-inch-tall official greeter of the coffeehouse, the scene struck him as so surreal, like an allegory of white man’s oppression of people of color, he thought he should get closer and see whether the little fella was real or a product of his imagination. He stumbled across the room towards the entry.

  “I’ll never forgive you,” Josie grumbled, but Russell couldn’t hear her anymore.

  “But I’m looking for someone!” Kevin pleaded to the red giant.

  “And I said that you cannot come in. Get out,” Big Daddy pushed the boy. “This place is not for children.”

  Russell gave a stern look at the giant and followed the boy outside. The cool salty air felt like he had suddenly taken a dip in the ocean, so he stayed next to the door.

  “What’s your name, fella?” he asked the boy.

  “Kevin.” The boy’s face was covered in tears.

  “Who are you looking for?”

  “John. He’s a musician.”

  “John Porter?” Russell stuttered. “The bull-fiddle player?”

  The boy didn’t have any idea what a bull-fiddle was.

  “The double bass?” Russell hummed, pretending to pluck the strings of an invisible instrument. “Tum-tum-tum-tum-tum?”

  Kevin bobbed his head up and down.

  “He’s here tonight.” Russell rubbed the side of his face. “We live together. John Porter, right? I just don’t know where he is. He wasn’t inside. Have you seen John?” he opened the door and asked Big Daddy. The giant shrugged. “Why are you looking for John?” he asked the kid.

  “A woman stole my sister’s baby,” Kevin sobbed. “My sister sent me to get him.”

  “What? A woman?”

  “Ms. Cummings.”

  “What Ms. Cummings?” Big Daddy interrupted, having overhead their conversation from the inside. “Is she white?”

  The boy nodded.

  “A stuffy lady that looks like a horse?”

  The boy nodded again.

  “And why did she take your sister’s baby?”

  “She said we shouldn’t have the baby ’cuz Cora ain’t married and ’cuz the baby doesn’t have a dad. She said it would be better if she gave the baby up for adoption.”

  “Adoption? To whom?” Despite his rather ferocious figure, Big Daddy had a weakness for the helpless.

  Kevin shrugged. “John’s the father, my sister told my mom.”

  “John? Why, this sounds like the work of the Civic Union!” the giant exploded.

  He had kept the door ajar and his loud voice, together with the music coming from inside the coffeehouse, resulted in complaints from a neighbor:

  “It’s half past midnight!” yelled Ms. Cummings’ friend, Mr. Roberts, the cheesemaker,
from a building across the street. “People want to sleep!”

  “You!” Big Daddy left the door and walked to the middle of the street, pointing his finger at Mr. Robert’s window. “You and your hateful bigotry. You and your square-world ideas. You stole that baby!”

  “What are you talking about?” Mr. Roberts asked in surprise.

  “You are an accomplice in a crime!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Another crime of your hateful, intolerant, prejudiced, homophobic, RACIST CIVIC UNION!”

  “What does the Union have to do with this?” Mr. Robert replied. “What are you talking about? I’m only asking you to cut off the n—”

  “Hypocrite!”

  “What?”

  “Criminal!”

  “Oh, shut up. There’s no other criminal here but you. You must be intoxicated!”

  Big Daddy had been drinking, yes, but that explained only half of his rant against the Civic Union. Thanks to the intervention of this newly formed homeowners association, of which Mr. Roberts happened to be the president and our dear Ms. Cummings the first secretary, the police had ruled that poetry couldn’t be read aloud at the Gas House Café without an entertainment license. Hence, the taped poem from Mr. Lipton.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, you monster,” Big Daddy continued. “You know well what I am talking about. You know well what you have done, you sanctimonious child-kidnapper!”