Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle

by Carlos Allende

  “But that’s your new nickname. We chose it last night, after you said yes—didn’t we, Nihar? We’re engaged.”

  “Not anymore!” Josie replied. “You can’t expect me to marry you, you pervert! Not after what I saw last night. You’re a freak! Just the idea… You’re sick and revolting!”

  Perhaps those weren’t the right choice of words to break a commitment. Richard lowered his eyebrows.

  “And who the fuck do you think you are to question my decisions?” Richard stuck the wedding dress back in the closet. The veins in his forehead seemed about to explode. “Who the fuck, you little tramp?”

  “Richard,” his friend tried to calm him down, but Richard shook away his hand.

  “You’re no better than me,” he said to Josie.

  “You sleep with other men,” Josie said.

  “So do you, you Mexican rural trash.”

  “What? How dare you?”

  “No. How dare you! How dare you embarrass me in front of my friend? He’s a doctor, I told you!”

  “He is a sick pervert sodomite just like you are. You two are disgusting!”

  Richard crossed the room and silenced the girl with a resounding slap.

  “You can’t judge us, you little slut. You are no one to judge us. Only gays can judge,” he raised a finger. “We are mightier and wiser, and way more beautiful. We are better than you. And I judge you to be of very poor taste and highly inappropriate for my house. Get out.”

  “You can’t force me out.”

  “Of course I can. This is my house. OUT!”

  Josie looked into Richard’s friend’s eyes for help, but Nihar chose to look away, too embarrassed by the scene he had been forced to watch. Richard grabbed the girl by an arm and dragged her out of the room.

  “You’re hurting me… I need my stuff,” the girl said with a broken voice.

  Richard went back into the room, snatched the girl’s purse from the vanity table and threw it at her. Then, realizing that Josie wore an expensive-looking bed jacket that used to be Lina’s, he forced her out of it with a yank.

  “You came with nothing and you leave with nothing.”

  “But I don’t have my shoes on,” Josie cried, covering herself with her arms, afraid that Richard would remove her pajamas as well.

  “You have one minute to get them.”

  Josie reentered the room and looked around for her shoes.

  The doctor offered her a pair he found by the bed.

  “Those aren’t hers,” Richard hollered from the door.

  Josie found her shoes. She put them on and walked out of the room. Richard grabbed her by one arm and pulled her downstairs.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  The vampire didn’t care to respond. Once at the entrance, he opened the door (covering his eyes first, with a dramatic gesture), pushed the girl out, and closed the door with a slam.

  And thus, once again, Josie found herself homeless.

  She decided to take a cab back to Venice.

  “Is everything all right, miss?” The driver asked.

  The girl shook her head. She couldn’t stop crying.

  “Just drive, please.”

  Where could she go now, she wondered. She couldn’t go back to the Grand Hotel. Even if she could, Russell might no longer be there. She could try crashing at John’s pad, but then there would be four. Five with that stupid baby. That would be far too many. The best thing she could do, she sniveled, was to swallow her pride, go back to the house on the Linnie Canal, tell Eva she had to blow, apologize to her landladies, and get back her old bedroom. She could start over. Maybe she could ask for an advance at work and pay her overdue rent? Maybe they had already forgotten—

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” the driver asked again.

  “I said, ‘drive, please,’” Josie responded with a harsh tone. “I have no need for your pity.”

  She immediately regretted being rude. She had exactly fifty-two cents in her purse. She would have to play the hold-here-a-minute-for-me game, and the number one rule of that game was to be nice to the driver.

  In the meantime, Mr. Oakenforest had decided to explain his charade to the little woman over breakfast, which, he insisted, they needed to take in the garden. Such a beautiful day, with a few clouds scattered against an intensely blue sky, was not to be wasted. They pulled out a table and sat right by the water.

  “I was once an assistant to a Cambridge professor, that’s completely true,” the fairy grinned bitterly, squeezing a wedge of lemon into his cup. Dark streams of mascara ran down his cheeks. “And I did meet the real Buer once, at a party. I exchanged a few words with him—what about? I don’t remember. It is not easy to keep track of things when you have lived thousands of years in an underground palace. I never read Rosa’s letter. My man-secretary did. He told me just last spring about the dress he sent her. ‘Such an expensive dress for such a young girl,’ I said. Hector explained to me that Rosa wasn’t a little girl anymore; Rosa had grown old. ‘I missed all of her birthdays!’ He told me then that your mother had died, and I shed a tear. Then I heard this joke going around about you trying to get yourself a familiar—we fairies know everything,” he took a sip of his tea. “There are much easier ways, love, let me tell you. Nonetheless, I was amazed, completely amazed at your perseverance.” He forced a smile, attempting to stop a new burst of tears. “I feel like a villain telling you all this. I stopped throwing galas at the castle. ‘How long has it been since the last time we were in America?’ I asked Hector, one morning. He had no idea. It was about time to come back. We made a plan: I would pretend to be a demon and…the rest you know it. I’m not a fiend. I am a fairy. Although I think of myself more like an angel. I don’t hurt people. I help them. I couldn’t live another thousand years knowing that my American goddaughter and her beloved sisters were old and decrepit, could I? Renewed youth was going to be my gift. For the three of you, don’t take me wrong, not just for Rosa. I was just trying to teach you a lesson. I learned to like you. I never expected this to end badly.”

  The little woman couldn’t cry. Her eyes had run dry.

  “I think you have talent,” Gillespie continued. “To teach yourself magic. At your age! I could have helped, but I wanted to know how far you could go. You thoroughly satisfied my curiosity.” He lifted his cup. “The mind can achieve what the heart desires. I gave you the recipe, but you made the soup all by yourself. That’s such a big accomplishment. And that, my dearest, is my true gift to you: knowledge. The knowledge that you are the master of your own destiny. Self-confidence, if you will. The power of knowing that you can. Looks aren’t everything. It is love that makes the world go round. You are a strong, self-confident, powerful, magical woman—never forget that. You can be whatever you set your mind to. You can be a queen if you want. You can be a senator. You can be an astronaut, or an actress. You can win an Academy Award! Can you imagine? Me, escorting you down the red carpet. It’s never too late, my love, and after what happened today, nothing can tear us apart. Now, you have some cleaning to do, and—”

  “Help!” a cry interrupted Gillespie’s soliloquy.

  “What in the world?”

  “Help me, please!”

  The fairy raised his head up. He saw Josie coming down the sidewalk, screaming, and a big man with a wrench in his hand chasing her closely.

  “Come back, you thief!”

  The man was the taxi driver.

  Gillespie made himself invisible.

  “Miss,” Josie said to the little woman. “Help me. That man is going to kill me!”

  The little woman didn’t move. She couldn’t. Josie ran around the table, saw the knife that Victoria had used to stab her sister lying on the grass, picked it up and, standing behind the little woman’s chair, raised it menacingly towards the driver.

  “Step back!�
�� Josie told him. “One more step and I will kill you. I swear to God I will kill you. I’m not afraid. I’ve killed before,” she lied, to give a dramatic effect to her cry, “and I will kill again, if you make me.”

  “You better drop that knife, Miss García,” she heard a voice call out behind her.

  Josie looked over her shoulder. Detective Parson and his companion, Inspector Henry, stood at the porch, pointing their guns at her. They had decided to pay a visit to the old sisters that morning, and find out once and for all who had been driving Heather’s car the day after she had been murdered. They had entered the house through the kitchen door, which the little woman had left wide open, saw blood on the floor, and then heard the girl bragging about committing murder while she held a knife against what it seemed was a defenseless little old woman.

  The taxi driver saw the guns before the guns saw him and decided to leave the scene.

  “Detective Parson!” cried Josie. “Thank God you’re…”

  “I said drop the knife, sweetie,” the detective responded, releasing the lock from his gun. “Step away from the old lady.”

  Josie let the knife go.

  “Detective, it’s me who needs help!”

  “Put your hands up where I can see them.”

  Parson bobbed his head to Henry, who stepped down to handcuff the girl.

  “You sure do need help, you wacko. We were too late to save those poor girls, but fortunately not too late to save this poor lady.”

  “What girls?”

  “So beautiful and so ruthless. Those two,” Parson pointed at the two corpses floating in the canal. “What a fool I was, misled by your lies.”

  Josie noticed the bodies for the first time and let out a scream of horror.

  “Change the disk, kiddo,” Parson interrupted her. “We caught you right when you were trying to get rid of your last witness. It’s all clear to me now. You stole that baby. Then you killed your friend Heather. It was you who drove the car the next day. Then you killed Miss Barnett. With these two, that makes a total of four murders. Who else have you killed? Am I going to find another one in your room? Where are the two sisters? Did you kill them too?”

  “What sisters?” Josie asked, shaking.

  “Parson,” Henry interrupted. “I think we need to call an ambulance.”

  The little woman had sunk in her seat with her head lolling to one side, and a thread of drool dripping from her mouth. It had been too many emotions for one day. She had just had a stroke.

  Mr. Parson looked at Josie. “You’re going to get fried for this.”

  25

  In which we wrap up and we say good night

  Richard was horrified when, a day later, he learned from the newspapers that Miss Josie García had been arrested. He got all flustered. He left everything behind and, despite Mrs. Coenegrachts’ best advice, flew to the police station mad with anguish, mad with grief, mad like Madame de Sérisy when she broke the iron bar with her bare hands upon learning that her beloved Lucien had perished… Richard had always wanted to do something just as romantic. Josie was, after all, a friend, and for a friend, he was willing to forgive the unforgivable.

  “The fingers of one hand are not enough to count the people I have forgiven!” he said to officer that patted him before he was authorized entrance.

  In spite of being a millionaire and a vampire, it is not often that he encountered excitement.

  Josie looked so lost behind bars. Her hair was all tangled, like a bird’s nest. Richard expected to see a roach come down her neck at any moment. It truly was an unpleasant surprise to see her without any makeup. She had been crying nonstop for twenty-four hours. And she smelled. Like urine and garlic. There’s nothing romantic about being in jail, Richard thought, disappointed. The place was dirty, cold and depressing. And Josie looked so frail, so withered, and so finished, the vampire began to wonder whether it had been a good idea to go see her after all. “But you shouldn’t tell your friends when you visit them in jail that they look ugly,” he said later, to his housekeeper. “That’s quite un-American and, being a German, I always make my best effort to fit in.”

  “You look great,” the millionaire said to Josie, trying to cheer up the girl. “Considering the circumstances.”

  And the circumstances were dire: five murders.

  “You have to help me!” Josie cried.

  “Of course,” Richard responded.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “That’s not a question.”

  “You have to tell them that I spent the weekend at your place.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Please!”

  The thing is that Richard had secrets. Secrets that he didn’t want to reveal. Secrets that he had been keeping for centuries, and looking at the cold concrete table, the dirty tiles covering the wall, the fluorescent lamps, the utterly unattractive people talking to even less attractive people—some didn’t even have teeth!—he realized that he didn’t want to help Josie anymore.

  He had a very comfortable lifestyle, as comfortable as it can be for a vampire. It would have been stupid to risk it for the benefit of a backseat bunny.

  And it’s not that he didn’t care. He did. He felt sorry for the poor girl. He wished that none of this had happened. He wished that he hadn’t lost his patience and kicked her out of his house the previous morning. It’s just that he couldn’t get involved. It would have been too much hassle. Return to that place, see those horrible people again. The Gas House was one thing, they were all bohemians and artists, but he really didn’t feel that comfortable in racially integrated places such as a detention center.

  Rescuing Josie from rotting in prison just didn’t seem a romantic idea anymore.

  Before he left, he promised the girl that he would get her a lawyer. The best in town, he said. He would spare no expense until he saw her out of there. No matter how much it cost. And that he would visit her every day, “or at least every Sunday,” he joked. That made the girl laugh a little.

  “I had to say that, Hilde. What else do you say in these situations? But the moment I stepped into that place I knew it would be the last time I saw Josie.”

  “You could still call a lawyer, couldn’t you?”

  He could. He knew one very good, very well dressed, Italian—or was he English?—good old Mr. Denny. But, why bother?

  “The girl is just riffraff, Hilde. I would have to go to court and testify in her favor. I’d rather not. Anyway, I think I’m done with Los Angeles for this year. Let’s go back to Europe, shall we?”

  He was mailed a court summons. Jeremy stayed behind to take care of the house and he forwarded all the mail to Richard’s place in London; but Richard never opened anything that looked remotely official. What for? Life was too short to focus on the sad things.

  “It is life’s banalities that make one’s happiness—milk in the tea, lard in your vegetables—not the memories. The brain creates the memories.”

  He continued his double life, as a millionaire and a vampire, making friends, throwing parties, subsisting from the life essence of other people, until one day he received a visiting card from an old acquaintance.

  “Mr. Gillespie Oakenforest!” he read aloud to his housekeeper.

  Mrs. Coenegrachts bobbed her head.

  “The corner is turned up, did you notice?” she added.

  It was. That meant that Mr. Oakenforest had delivered the card in person.

  “He seemed like a very nice person,” was the opinion of his new wife, Lola.

  Twenty years before, Richard would have ripped the card to pieces. Ten years earlier, he would have sent an assassin. One month before, he would have flushed it down the toilet. But that day, Richard was in a splendidly good mood. He had forgotten about the bitter, yet delicate taste of pure English meat, his preference while in the Isles to
feed from the eaters of curry, but the night before he had had this young gentleman, a student from Reading at his table—so delicious! This man’s youth, his paleness, his eagerness to try the forbidden, it all made Richard reminisce of days of yore. His blood tasted like a garden of Brussels sprouts, like dark beer and freshly made butter. Of course he would make the time to see Mr. Oakenforest!

  There had been something between those two, it must be said. An incident the precise circumstances of which are irrelevant for the continuance of this story, but which had obscured what otherwise could have been a long and prosperous friendship between a living corpse and a spirit.

  “Sixty years of animus is enough, isn’t it?” Richard said to the two women. “As hard as it is to make friends, especially when you’re a foreigner, one must put a limit on the length of his disagreements.”

  “Nobody leaves visiting cards anymore, you silly,” he whispered into the fairy’s ear a day later, after exchanging kisses

  “What do you leave now?” Gillespie asked.

  “Your business card. With a telephone number.”

  Gillespie laughed. He did not have a telephone. Ridiculous! What would he use it for, when it’s easier to travel through a mirror? He laughed with that bogus, high-pitched laughter that used to make Richard so angry. “It isn’t funny,” Richard used to yell at him, his face red with violent anger. He wasn’t mad at him this time, though. Gillespie looked so young and so beautiful. Richard didn’t feel ashamed to recognize it.

  The tea house where he had chosen to meet was a handsome one, too. The furniture’s dark wood contrasted against the gold and cerise wall paper. It became Gillespie’s skin. It made him shine. His curls looked fuller and longer. The red of his lips more intense.

  They talked of everything and of nothing. The traffic in London, the smog, mini-skirts—how much they despised them—Andy Warhol’s soup can. Even the Kennedys. Nothing was said about why they hadn’t been on speaking terms for over six decades.

  Gillespie ordered tea and a plum cake, which he ate with his long fingers.