Hex and the Single Girl (5 page)

Maybe Daphne hated women, thought Emma.

“Speaking of advertising,” said Emma. “Victor, were you aware that Daphne is responsible for the SlimBurn diet pill ads?”

Victor froze. “The ones with Marcie Skimmer?” he asked.

Marcie Skimmer was an old acquaintance of Victor’s, a model he’d worked with long ago, before Marcie got big—

figuratively and literally. As the gossip pages reported it, the model fell into a depression a year ago, gained a ton of weight. Then she did the SlimBurn ads, after which point she had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide by consuming ten pounds of Death-by-Chocolate cake. Marcie believed one could eat her way into a diabetic coma.

Miraculously, she survived and went to some kind of rehab sanitarium upstate. Emma found the whole story sad but logical. When one’s worth is based on appearance, depression and self-destruction was a given.

Daphne cheerily asked Victor, “Oh, do you know Marcie?” He nodded. She said, “We have a mutual friend.”

“You call her a
friend?
” he asked. “You had Marcie pose in a bikini, on all fours, among a herd of Holsteins in a muddy field!”

“With the caption, ’Time to get off the farm’?” said Daphne proudly. “We moved half a million units of SlimBurn pills the week that ad appeared. But that was nothing compared to sales after the follow-up ads.”

The follow-up shots were Marcie flying above Broadway like a float in a parade with the caption, “Time to come back down to Earth?” The third in the series: Marcia in a blue bikini, photo-shopped among a pod of whales in the ocean with the caption, “Time to get on dry land?”

Victor said, “You humiliated her.”

“She was paid millions,” said Daphne. “And that’s a lot of Death-by-Chocolate cake.”

Emma gasped. Daphne’s insensitivity was galling. This was a woman capable of love? Her heart was as hard and

black as onyx. William deserved better. Or not. He could be just as horrible as Daphne. For all Emma knew, they deserved each other.

Daphne, meanwhile, peeled off her jacket, unhooked her bra, kicked off her boots and pulled off her pants. Standing tall and proud in a black vinyl thong, she asked, “Are you ready?”

Victor feasted his eyes. He couldn’t help himself. He squeaked, “Ready.”

“Everything that happens here is confidential,” she said to him.

“Emma and I have been working together for ten years,” he said. “She can vouch for me.”

“I vouch,” said Emma, her own jaw in the dropped position at the sight of Daphne’s lean body.

The client said, “Emma, you can go now.”

What? She was being kicked out? “You want me to leave?” she asked. “But what about my emotional services?

Clients in the past have always relied on me heavily during the shoots. To help them pick outfits and backdrops. Being photographed in lingerie makes most women feel vulnerable. They wanted the handholding. The soft shoulder.

Encouragement.”

“Do I look vulnerable to you?” asked Daphne, her arms akimbo.

She looked like she could chew metal, thought Emma. “I’m sure you’ll be wonderful,” she relented. Daphne was a client, after all. And Emma was in the client pleasing business. “I’ll take off then.”

“Thanks for stopping by.”

So she had the day off. Emma should be glad for the free time to rest her hangover. She should be relieved not to have to button a corset or say “you don’t look fat” ten thousand times. She should be happy. But she felt excluded.

Unwanted. Again.

“This is good. It’s perfect. I’ll have extra time to study up on William Dearborn,” said Emma with forced brightness. “I want to be as prepared as I can possibly be. My cases are my life! I live to serve! One bit of advice, before I go.”

“What?” asked the client (impatiently).

“Don’t forget to smile.”

Chapter 6

T
he bank manager, seated behind his desk in his glass-walled cubical, wore a bow tie. Emma hadn’t dealt with this guy before. She was passed around among the managers. None of them wanted to deal with her twice. She sat across the desk, in the hot seat, at Citibank, conveniently located across Sixth Avenue from her apartment building. Emma had cried here. And pleaded shamelessly for extensions. Ah, the memories, she reflected nostalgically.

“Ms. Hutch,” said the talking bow tie. “I’ve heard about you from my colleagues.” He reached a hand across the desk.

“I’m Mr. Cannery. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

While he click-clacked on the keyboard, Emma sized him up. Would he be nice or use her to take out his anger at every person who’d done him wrong? Bank managers, as a whole, seemed particularly spiteful.

“According to my screen,” Mr. Cannery said, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses, “you’ve been in arrears for two months. Unless you pay what you owe, in full, plus fines, within ten days, we will be forced to…”

“I’ve got five thousand dollars,” she said. “In cash.”

Mr. Cannery said, “In cash?” He got a bit twitchy, edged forward on this chair, face flushed. Emma removed the bills from her purse slowly, tantalizingly. Mr. Cannery started to glow, a thin layer of expectation on his face. Emma could smell his salty excitement. Apparently, she thought, one woman’s mortgage payment was another man’s porn.

She held out the wad of bills. Mr. Cannery, fingers shaking, breath short, reached for it. Emma snatched it back.

“Not so fast,” she said. “This covers what I owe on the mortgage—and then some.”

“Not exactly,” he said, “You’re short on the minimum balance in your checking account.”

She said, “That can’t be right. Let me see.” She leaned across his desk.

He said, “You’re not permitted to look at the computer!”

She sat back down, wondering if he had her account info on screen or sexy photos of dollar bills in lingerie. “I need some walking around money.”

“You have three hundred to spare,” he said. “I advise you to spend it wisely.”

Emma said, “I was going to blow it on luxury items, like food and heat.” Then she counted out bills and forked over forty-seven hundred dollars.

He wrote her a deposit slip, and printed out an updated mortgage statement. She stood up to leave. Mr. Cannery said,

“Remember, you have another payment to make on November first. According to my screen, you’ve used up your last extension. If you can’t pay on the first, the bank will take possession of your property. You do not want to be in arrears again, Ms. Hutch.”

“You bet I don’t,” she said. “Way too cramped.”

Daphne had given her two weeks; Mr. Cannery had given her just over one. No matter how she sliced it, Emma was cut to the financial bare bones.

To make herself feel a little bit less anxious, Emma ducked into the 14th Street Barnes & Noble and bought the Wilco CD,
A Ghost Is Born.
Halloween was fast approaching—her favorite holiday. She could buy herself a little seasonal ghostly cheer. Back on Sixth, she inhaled the afternoon air, crisp as a cracker. On a whim, she headed east, toward Washington Square Park. She could buy some pot there. That might help her free-floating dread. Plus, Emma had always found comfort in the park’s concentric rings around the center fountain, like Dante’s circles of hell.

Washington Square Park (and hell?) was dotted with junkies, dealers, sleeping homeless people, street musicians, rollerbladers, artists, prophets, and hot dog stands. To Emma, it smelled and looked like home. She’d spent much of her high school years in this asphalt “park,” finding kinship among the outcasts and freaks of Greenwich Village.

Emma stayed local for college, graduating from NYU. As soon as she could, she bought an apartment in the

neighborhood—the Waverly Place one-bedroom she was holding onto by a thread.

Her parents were supportive of the purchase (they’d lived just a few blocks away). Her mother
felt
the apartment would be a good emotional and financial investment. And when Emma’s mother
felt
something, she was always right.

She died two years after making that prediction. Emma often wondered—especially now, on the brink of ruin—if her Mom’s forecast had been long term, or only as far as she would live to see.

Emma walked quickly and purposefully, hugging the lip of the park’s innermost circle, the round fountain in the middle. Loiterers were perched on the edge of the fountain in pairs, trios, quartets. She nodded at anyone who caught her eye, hoping someone would try to sell her pot. But then she got another offer.

“Palm reading, five dollars,” said a woman perched on the northern curve of the fountain. She was a tiny middle-aged black woman in blue jeans and a blue hoodie that had the words “Above Average” stenciled on the sleeves. Hair in cornrows, her face was intricately wrinkled.

Emma slowed, vaguely intrigued by the offer. For all her heightened senses and telegraphopathy, Emma had no

intuition or precognition. She didn’t
feel
things the way her mother had. She’d never studied palmistry or Tarot, preferring to keep her focus earth bound, as she was.

The woman said quickly, “For you, three dollars.”

“Deal,” said Emma, sitting on the fountain edge and holding out her right hand. The woman stretched the skin to make the white lines turn red.

Running a finger across the middle of her palm, the woman said, “This is the life line. It’s very long. You’ll live to be eighty-nine years old.”

“It says eighty-nine?”

“Yes,” she said. “This is your creativity line. You are a creative person with a big imagination.”

“Really,” said Emma.

“This is your head line. You are highly intelligent.”

“Won’t argue there,” nodded Emma, who was willing to bet (more than three dollars) that every sucker who submitted to a reading would live to be eighty-nine, was creative, and intelligent.

“This is your heart line,” said Above Average.

Now she’ll tell me I’m destined to find my true love very soon, thought Emma.

“Your heart line is all criss-crossed,” she said, peering into Emma’s palm, “like it’s X-ed out.”

Emma’s romantic misery was plainly evident, even to street hustlers. The word “alone” might as well be tattooed on her forehead. She’d never find a man to love her. He didn’t exist. The idea of him was just one more fantasy rolling around in her warped brain.

“Whoa!” said Above Average suddenly.

“What?” asked Emma.

“I pressed on your heart line, and a picture popped into my head. I saw a man. A famous man,” said Above Average, excitedly. “Hold on to your sunglasses, sister. It was William Dearborn! You lucky bitch. He’s hot!”

Emma swallowed hard. Not again. Dearborn’s image was oozing out of her like slime.

Besides which, was there anyone in New York who
didn’t
love William Dearborn?

The palm reader shouted, “I have the sight!”

“Oh, God,” said Emma, cringing. Other people around the fountain were looking.

“You and William Dearborn! I’ve got to tell everyone, so when it happens, I’m on the record. What’s your name?”

demanded Above Average.

“Her name is Emma Hutch,” said a female voice over her shoulder. Emma spun round to see who’d spoken.

“Susan Knight,” said Emma warmly. A former client. They hadn’t talked in months.

“I’ve got the sight!” said Above Average to the universe. To Susan, she asked, “Read your palm? Twenty bucks.”

“I thought it was three,” said Emma.

“My price just went up.”

Susan said, “No thank you,” and then, to Emma, “I need to speak to you. It’s important.”

“Are you okay?” She didn’t look okay. Susan had been Emma’s least demanding client. If one could call her a client.

The man in question asked Susan out before Emma got the chance to work on him.

“I was cutting through the park toward your place when I saw you here.”

“Kismet,” said Emma, standing, putting her arm around Susan’s petite shoulder.

“Where’s my money?” said Above Average.

Emma took out her wallet. Her smallest bill was a twenty. “Can you make change?” she asked.

“Do I look like a cashier?”

Emma gave her a twenty. Mr. Cannery would disapprove. She and Susan headed west to Waverly Place.

“It’s so good to see you, and I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,” said Emma. “I’ve been laying low.”

“Why?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

Money. Men. Fear of imminent death. “Nothing I can’t handle,” said Emma. “You look good, by the way.”

Susan was dressed, as usual, conservatively, in a blue pleated skirt and a similar (but not matching) blazer. She wore nude stockings and low-heeled pumps that accentuated the tight balls of muscle in her tiny calves. No makeup. Her light brown hair was pulled into a swingy ponytail. With her cute little figure and patrician skin and teeth, Susan could do natural.

“Jeff left me,” blurted Susan, chin suddenly aquiver. “He came over last night and said he quit his job and wanted to quit seeing me, too.”

“Good riddance,” said Emma.

Even though she never got close enough to touch him, Emma had done preliminary research on Jeff Bragg, including long-distance observation. Emma didn’t need superior farsightedness to see, at twenty feet or two inches, that Jeff was a jerk.

“He’s the best boyfriend I’ve ever had,” choked out Susan.

“The best boyfriend you ever had liked to spit on the sidewalk,” said Emma. “He was a bad tipper.”

Susan said, “When he touches me, it feels like every cell in my body opens to him. As if he enters me on a molecular level. He told me”—she drew a ragged breath—“he told me that my neck smells like vanilla ice cream.”

Susan started sobbing on the corner of Waverly and Sixth, right in front of Citibank. Emma hugged her, patted her back, and stroked her hair. She was secretly glad to be needed by someone, to be sought out for help. This felt familiar, comfortable. She was a hand to hold. A shoulder to lean on. Emma inhaled with pleasure, picking up Susan’s scent. Jeff was right about one thing. Susan did smell like vanilla ice cream.

Interrupting their moment, a man on the sidewalk said, “Jesus might bring you comfort.”

Emma glanced at him. Dark hair, wiry two-day stubble. Yellow T-shirt stretched over a chubby gut, short legs in jeans, around forty, droopy nose and chin. She said, “Bug off.”