“Did he say anything good?” I asked.
“Oh!” Muriel rolled her eyes. “He said I would be a millionaire in 2005.”
“Well, at least that’s positive.”
Muriel drained the rest of her water. “He’s a fucking fraud. I’ll tell you exactly what he said and you decide.” Cornelia and I sat cross-legged on the floor. Muriel leaned wearily against the cushions of the couch. “First we had an argument about the TV. His grandson or whatever he was, this three-year-old, was watching TV. I said please will you turn that off; I can’t concentrate on a reading if I have to listen to the TV. It took ten minutes of my reading to get the grandson to shut off the TV. And he only lowered it. But I didn’t argue. So then, after the address and everything that I had to write down, he takes my hand and squeezes it. He’s looking at my palm. You will be very rich lady in 2005, he says. But between now and 2005 you will have very hard times, tough times, bad luck. And he writes that down—hard times, tough times—next to my address. And I’m thinking, thanks a lot buddy. Oh, and he got my age totally wrong. He’s staring at me and he says, It seems to me you are very young girl, fifteen, sixteen years old. So I stare at him and I say, no, I’m thirty-four. And he says, What? Impossible. Then he asks me to write down my birthday, next to my birthplace and address. And I tell him, I’m not kidding; I’m thirty-four.” Muriel picked up the water glass to drink and then realized it was empty. She put it back on the coffee table. “Okay. So then he squeezes my hand again and he says, Your first love affair was failure. And I say, Well, I wouldn’t call it that. And he shrieks, But you are not with him! It was failure! And I shrug and say, Fine, if that’s what you want to call it, go ahead. And then he looks at my palm again and says, Your second love affair was failure. And I say, All right, if you insist. And then he says, And your third love affair! And he looks at me suspiciously and says, How many love affairs have you had? And I shrug and say, I don’t know. And he yells, You don’t know? And I say, No. And he says, How many? Three? Four? And so I say, Okay, three or four. And then he says, Did you sleep with them?” Muriel stared at us. “I mean, can you believe it? He asked me if I slept with them. And I said, That’s my business. And then he yelled even louder, Did you sleep with them? And I said, Okay, look, fine; I slept with them. And he screams, Why did you sleep with them? In India we do not sleep with people unless we are officially married! And I said, Look, buddy, this isn’t India.” Muriel stopped.
“And then what happened?” I prodded.
“I told him to change the subject. I was tired of it. So he went back to the bad luck theme. And I said, Okay, fine, so what can I do about this bad luck? And he said, Only one thing you can do. For one-hundred-fifty dollar I give you mantra. You say mantra and bad luck will be less. And I stood up and said, No thanks. I’ve paid you forty dollars already for fifteen minutes of garbage and I’m not going to pay you a hundred-fifty dollars more for another word. And he said, You do not like what I tell you? And I said, No. And then he said, I tell people the truth, whether they like it or not! I am one-hundred-percent accurate! And so I grabbed my bag and left.” Muriel took a deep breath.
I uncrossed my legs. Cornelia went to refill Muriel’s glass. “Wow,” I said.
Muriel nodded. “Wow is right.”
Cornelia returned with the filled glass. “Well,” said Muriel to Cornelia, “What do you think?”
Cornelia arranged herself on the floor. “I told you this doesn’t work.”
Muriel snorted. “Yes, but not because of me! This was him! He was a dud! A fraud!”
Cornelia shrugged. “This doesn’t work,” she repeated.
Muriel sighed and drank the water.
I crossed my legs again. “I think what Cornelia’s saying is that you can’t go in and expect to come out with a formula.” I stopped and frowned, trying to think. “It’s almost as though if you’re set up wrong, then it all comes out wrong. On the grand scale. You got a lot of garbage because the way you began, you weren’t meant to get a good result.” I looked at Muriel.
“I don’t know what you mean by formula,” Muriel argued. “I didn’t go there for a formula. I hardly even opened my mouth!”
I uncrossed my legs and stretched them out. “Well, it sounds like you wanted certain answers. And maybe the real answer is that you have to find out the answers yourself.” I turned to Cornelia. “Is that right?”
Cornelia nodded. “Ya. This is not working.”
Muriel clacked the glass on the coffee table. “Why does she keep saying that?”
“Maybe it’s hard for Cornelia to explain in English,” I supplied.
Cornelia nodded. “For me nothing is working now. I am also in art,” she said, addressing Muriel. “In Germany, I am studying advertising. I am going to a famous school. Me, too, I want to be a good designer. But I know that if this is what I want, I will make me have that. Right now I should be here and learn English. I will get a much better job in Germany if I am good in English. So I am here in America to be better in English. Even though all I am doing is this babysitting.”
Muriel sighed. “Well, that’s admirable. Maybe I should babysit. But all I know right now is that I wasted forty dollars.” She stood up. “I mean, can you imagine? What if he gives this same ten-year baloney to everybody? Suppose he tells someone really vulnerable who believes him and goes out and commits suicide?”
I sighed. “I bet there are people who do believe him.”
Muriel left. “I know this wasn’t working,” said Cornelia.
“You were right,” I said. “Very right.”
Muriel called me the next evening. Cornelia was out babysitting.
“Are you okay after yesterday?” I asked.
“Oh, sure,” said Muriel. “I decided he was a quack. I’m not going to swallow a word of it.”
“Good.”
“In fact, things are going better already. I just got a huge assignment. For a catalog. I’m even worried it might be too big.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Muriel, “there’s a lot of piecemeal stuff. I should really subcontract that out. Get somebody to come in and paste it up.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I should probably run an ad.”
“Cornelia,” I said. “Use Cornelia.”
“What?” said Muriel.
“Cornelia. She’s ready-made. She did graphics. She can do paste-up.”
“Hmm,” said Muriel. “I don’t know.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Well …” Muriel paused. “She and I are … just … I don’t know.”
“She’s a cannonball,” I agreed.
“What bugs me,” said Muriel, “is that she thinks she’s so right.”
“Well,” I said, “a lot of the time she is.”
“And that bugs me,” said Muriel.
“She’s not very together, though. In real life, I mean.”
Muriel pondered. “You wouldn’t know it from the way she talks.”
“I like her,” I said. “You should give her a chance.”
“I don’t know,” said Muriel. “I’ll have to think about it.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Celery Queen
“So what’s going on with your triangle?” Steve prodded me at work.
“What triangle?”
“Well, you, the hang glider and the German.”
“There isn’t one,” I said. “He’s history.”
Steve flipped through a file skeptically. “Well, he certainly didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“He’s a wimp,” I said. “I can’t believe I was attracted to him.”
“He must have known how to do a few things right,” remarked Steve, making notes in the margins of some papers. He reached for an open bottle of seltzer. “So now what happens?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, who are you going out with?”
I put a law book back on the shelf. “No one.”
“Oh, come now,” said Steve. “You need some excitement for the holidays.”
“I don’t.”
“Have any plans for Christmas?” asked Steve.
“No.” I sat in one of his red velveteen client chairs. Cornelia and I still had no firm plans.
“Well, how’d you like to have Christmas with us? The two of you—you and the German. My cousin Rodney, the one I’ve told you about, will be there. You and he might hit it off.”
“Huh,” I grunted.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I considered for a minute. “I’m beginning to dislike all men.”
“Really?” Steve tore some sheets from a legal pad. “What about hammer men and pickaxe men?”
I sighed, annoyed. “What are you talking about?”
“Well,” said Steve, lining up the edges of the sheets in the hole puncher, “you said Awl Men. So I wanted to know, what do you think of Hammer Men and Pickaxe Men? Awl, the tool. Get it?”
“Very funny.”
“I think so.” Steve picked up a yellow highlighter. “I should write a self-help book. How to Handle Awl Men.”
I rose, reaching for a stack of files.
“Well, what do you think?” asked Steve. “Should I?”
“Should you what?”
“Write a book.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, I’ll need you to advise me.”
I grunted.
“We’ll be partners. You can be the co-author.”
I turned to leave. “Very funny.”
Steve grinned. “Am I an Awl Man?”
“Don’t ask me,” I said over my shoulder. “Ask your wife.”
“And what should I say?” laughed Steve. “Leslie Kovalsky said there are people called Awl Men and I should ask you if I’m one.”
I snorted.
“Is that right?” pressed Steve.
“Okay.” I turned back to face him, hugging the files. I could play this game, too. “Ask her,” I said, “if you’re like the Tin Woodman. Ask her if when she gets very close to you it’s like she’s this big magnet and the screws that hold you together threaten to come whizzing out. Ask her if it’s as though you feel the screws loosening and your chest falling apart and it all makes you want to run away.”
“Sounds pretty bad.” Steve raised his eyebrows. “Is that the Awl Man?”
“Yes.” I turned with the files and headed for the door.
On Christmas Eve I got my period. It began with the usual cramps. I popped three Advils with apple juice and lay down with my hot-water bottle on the black couch. Cornelia was at some kind of German students’ reunion. I didn’t know why she would want to be there; were the Germans going to be less syoo-perficial than the Americans who had invited her to their homes? Both Steve and Paul Reiter had invited Cornelia and me for Christmas dinner. I had already been to the Reiters’, so I opted this time for Steve’s. Cornelia had shrugged when I told her. I assumed she was needing distance.
I lay on the couch all of Christmas Eve. If I had gone home, dropping from the wintry-gray northeastern sky, my running shoes tied to my hand luggage and my coat belt trailing as I hugged everyone, I would have been, at this very moment, staring into the bowels of a man-sized fire. Christmas had always been the fire. My aunt and uncle had a stone farmhouse with a pebbled driveway and a giant, drafty barn. New rooms and wings had been added to the house, but the living room was still the original stone. Cool and faintly moss-smelling, it lay deep within the hillside, two huge steps plunging it far into the ground. And in this earthy cavern the fire roared, a great blazing mouth in which, centuries ago, life was fanned and stirred. As children, we would stand in our pajamas in front of the flames, watching them lunge into the chimney. The fire was the raging of a monster, a singeing and crackling that melted and purged, all of us drawing close for its annual effect.
And now, on my couch, there was no fire. Nothing to burn, nothing to sluice, nothing to clean. The people I grew up with were many miles away. I hugged my hot-water bottle closer and reached for the phone. It was nine-fifteen our time, twelve-fifteen theirs. I would let it ring no more than twice.
I got Claudia, my cousin.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s me. Leslie. Are you still awake?”
“Of course,” said Claudia. “I’m in the middle of Scrabble.”
I grinned. “With who?”
“Chuck,” said Claudia flatly. I grinned again. Chuck was Claudia’s boyfriend and I knew he hated Scrabble. “Let’s ask Leslie,” Claudia said suddenly. I heard Chuck mumble something in the background. “Chuck put an s on guilt,” explained Claudia. “To make guilts. I overruled it. There’s no such thing as guilts, Leslie, is there?”
I thought for a minute. “Guilts? In the plural? I don’t know, Claudia. I’ve never used it. I mean, what would you say—‘He had many guilts?’”
“See!” Claudia crowed to Chuck. “I told you it doesn’t exist!”
“Don’t go by me,” I cut in. “I really don’t know. Did you look in the dictionary?”
“It didn’t help,” said Claudia. “Anyway, Chuck says he doesn’t care. That’s the trouble—Chuck doesn’t care enough about this game.”
“Well,” I said, shifting the hot-water bottle, “then he’s no fun to play with. Are my mom and dad there?”
“They’re asleep,” said Claudia.
“I thought they would be.” I felt sad. Not available, Leslie, sang an echo. You’ll have a lovely, lovely Christmas on your own.
“Aren’t you doing anything tonight?” asked Claudia.
I shifted again on the couch. “I have cramps.”
“Oh,” Claudia laughed. “Well, tomorrow you can tan them away. We’re looking at a sky that’s pouring snow.”
“Lucky you,” I said.
“Didn’t you want to come back this year?”
“I couldn’t. My car got stolen. My plane fare got snitched by my insurance deductible.”
“Your parents would have sent you a ticket!”
The water bottle sloshed as I turned it over. “I didn’t want them to.”
“Well,” said Claudia. “Call us tomorrow. In the morning. That way you can talk to everyone.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Bye, Leslie,” whispered Claudia. “Merry Christmas.”
I refilled the hot-water bottle. The Advil was working like a charm. I turned out the light. Lovely Christmas. I felt sad, but it was good to be alone. I thought about the Unicorn on the beach among the rocks. Had he been a mirage? I had checked the beach religiously but he was never there. His card had no phone number, no P.O. box, nothing. The Love Doctor was the only thing it said. I had set it in the plastic tray with my barrettes so that I would see it and remember to keep looking for him.
The cramps and questions faded and I dozed. I dreamed of the Unicorn. We were at my aunt’s and uncle’s in New Jersey on Christmas Eve. The Unicorn was a there as a stowaway. I kept him in a walk-in closet. Relatives ate and drank and scurried around the house. I crept into the closet and talked to the Unicorn. Where’s Leslie? Where’s Leslie? everyone was saying. The fire roared downstairs. My parents clambered up to my room. It was now the house I grew up in and I was in my room. Who’s here? my father thundered. There’s someone in this room. My mother stood behind him, wringing her hands. No one, Daddy, I said brightly. There’s no one here. Only me. The Unicorn stayed hidden in the shadows of my clothes.
Come downstairs, Leslie, commanded my father. When are you coming downstairs? I opened my mouth to answer. Soon, boomed the Unicorn from the shadows. Soon. My father started. He peered into the darkness where I stood. What was that, Leslie? What was that sound? My heart was pounding madly. The closet door clicked as the Unicorn pulled it closed.
I sat up sharply on the couch. I was awake now, and I heard it again. The latch of the side gate. Someone had come through and was creeping around the house. I froze, immobile, on the cushions. It was dark in t
he room. There was no way he could see me. I was afraid to look in any direction except at the blackness in front of me.
There was a rustling at the French doors and someone twisted the knob. I went weak. The footsteps crept along the side of the house back to the gate. Who was it? Terror closed off my throat. Then, suddenly, and I will never know how it changed, I was furious. I bounded from the couch and leapt to the side window. He was crouching, sneaking, bent low on his way to the gate.
“Kevin!” I screamed.
The figure rose. It was Geoff.
I was livid. I threw open the front door. “What are you doing here!”
Geoff faced me. “I was dropping off some presents.”
“Go away! We don’t want your presents!”
Geoff looked helpless. I was in a T-shirt and my underwear. He offered me the plastic bags in his hand.
“Take those away!” I shouted. “I told you, we don’t want your presents!”
“All right,” said Geoff icily. “I’ll take yours. But I’m leaving Cornelia’s.”
“Not here!” I shouted.
“Fine.” Geoff gave me a final freezing look and pattered down the concrete stairs.
I shut the door. I held the mini-blinds apart at the front window and watched him open the door of Cornelia’s car. She had left the Ghia and gotten a ride with someone else. I could see him putting the bag on the seat. He shuffled around in the car for a minute and then carefully closed the door. The pickup engine whined as he pulled away.
Christmas was a big dinner at Steve’s, paper streamers strung from the dining-room chandelier to the corners of the ceiling, baby’s-breath tinsel draped on the streamers, mistletoe tied over the doorways and a tiny sprig on the baby itself. Cornelia had opted for church and the beach. I brought a pocketful of tampons and two bottles of champagne.
“Thank you, Leslie!” cried Steve’s wife, Nancy, as she let me in.
The cousin was there, the Rodney that Steve had told me about. He was looking at me from his post near the empty silver tray that awaited the turkey. Steve didn’t waste a minute. He wheeled me over to Rodney, smiling wickedly in my direction from the left half of his face, the other half turned affably to Rodney.
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