The Witch (20 page)

From different recesses of the cart, Milo produced a great number of foods, all of them unexpected, choice, novel, presented on frills of watercress or beds of rock salt, dishes made from oysters or eggs or almonds or apples, nothing Edie had thought she wanted, but which, once tasted, seemed to satisfy cravings she had not known she possessed.

Anne seemed happy enough filling her plate with the different offerings. And Milo, Edie was relieved to see, turned relaxed and host-like, fixing the beam of his attention on Anne, asking her about her children, her exercise program, the difficulties of parsing the real estate market in her area, the engaged and serious solicitousness Edie recognized from their many talks.

From time to time he smiled at Edie, as if to say, you see how good I am at this sort of thing, how I can turn it on at will, but you and I have moved beyond this, we have no need to make mere conversation. Edie's hand lay idle in her lap; Milo reached over to take it in his own.

“Isn't it funny,” Anne said, “that you and Edie should share so many interests. I mean, honestly, aren't you what they call a public intellectual?” Anne had not missed the hand-holding.

“Oh, but she's a private intellectual,” Milo said, and brought his other hand on top of Edie's to entirely envelop hers. She loved it that he refused to retreat or be ashamed, that he had the confidence of his age and station. She was so used to moody boys who spent more time sidling away than reaching out. Right then, her inner gyroscope began to tilt in Milo's direction.

They were still eating when, from a distant room, the sound of a telephone started up like a drill. Milo excused himself and left to answer it. When he came back a few minutes later, he had
changed into a dress shirt and tweed jacket. He was rather out of breath. “I hope you'll forgive me, but I have to go attend to some business, some business with my publisher. I won't be gone as much as an hour. Would you like to wait here for me? I want to take you both around the corner to a gallery . . . A friend of mine owns it . . . Amusing items he gets in from time to time. I thought you might enjoy . . . A thousand pardons. With your permission . . . ”

“Of course,” Edie said, since there was no way to respond otherwise. “We don't mind waiting.”

“Make yourself comfortable, do,” Milo said, and hurried off.

Anne and Edie looked at each other. “Maybe there was some kind of deadline,” Edie said.

“Maybe he's just a hinky guy.”

“This food is killer.”

“He knows how to order a meal,” Anne admitted. “Who cooked it all, elves?”

After a minute or two they stood and began to wander the room, examining the pictures and the furniture. There was quite a lot of everything: tapestries, silver-plated candlesticks, fringed curtains, small items in mother-of-pearl or quartz or jade, a pair of glazed blue ginger jars, bookends in the shape of horses' heads. “Clutter,” Anne pronounced.

“It's a particular aesthetic,” Edie said. She wondered why she was defending him. She owed him nothing. She was free to dislike his decorating taste if she chose. But she didn't want to dislike it. And even Anne allowed that it was all impressive and museum-like, and that being a public intellectual must pay pretty well.

For a moment they loitered at the door to the next room, then, giving in, set about exploring. The dining room looked as
if no one ever ate a meal there. A hall bathroom was utilitarian and disappointing. They peered into the kitchen, which was clean and empty and not particularly new. It was just like a man, Edie thought, not to care about a kitchen. They turned away and paused at the closed door of the study. Anne tried it but it was locked.

“Huh.” They looked at each other, considering. “I guess he figured we'd be snooping.”

“Let's go on back,” Edie said, not liking the idea of getting caught wandering the house. And for all they knew, the maid or butler or whoever had produced the food was somewhere on the premises.

When Milo returned, they were sitting where he'd left them, attempting to read some of the highbrow magazines available for browsing. (“No television,” Anne had pointed out.) Milo apologized again and said that publishers were so often this way, leaving everything until the last minute. He seemed more relaxed now that he'd attended to this chore. Edie imagined that there were all manner of high-stakes negotiations that went along with a book deal.

Milo took them to the gallery he'd promised, and a couple of antique stores that looked a great deal like his own living room. He purchased gifts for each of them—he insisted!—a set of painted wooden blocks for Anne's children, a garnet necklace for Edie. They stopped for coffee at a delicatessen where Milo was well known, where little tables were squeezed up against the window, and they selected pastries from a glass case filled with spun sugar and cakes glazed in bitter chocolate and whipped cream swirled into architectural forms. Edie thought that she liked New York, at least this part of it, Milo's part.

He took them by cab back to their hotel. “So that you can
rest up before dinner. I hope you'll be in the mood for something rather special.” Edie watched the cab drive away, Milo's arm flung expansively across the back seat. She was going to have to make up her mind about a number of things.

“I'm not going to dinner,” Anne announced, once they were back in the room. “Tell him I have the vapors. Tell him I broke a tooth. I'd just be in the way.”

“Come on. He probably made reservations, the whole deal.”

“Well then you can have both the orchid corsages. The two of you broke the ice. You'll be fine by yourselves.”

Maybe they would, but Edie was anxious all over again. She put on her best outfit, a black dress, and a bra Anne loaned her. She fastened Milo's garnet necklace around her throat. “I just don't know,” she said, examining the mirror.

“You have to get used to the boobage. Trust me, it's a good look on you.”

“I guess.” She wasn't too sure about her new, aggressive chest. The garnets felt cold against her skin. They looked like a line of blood around her neck. But she was just being silly. For all her anticipation, she hadn't thought anything through. She didn't know whether she wanted to fall in love with Milo, or just have a dandy time in New York, or something in between. Well, she didn't have to decide yet. She only had to go to dinner.

Milo met her in the hotel lobby, and if he was particularly attentive to her cleavage, wasn't that the intention? Suddenly she imagined a time far into the future, when she and Milo would tell and retell the story of this day, how nervous she had been, how he would admit to being nervous also and doing his best to cover it up. And as if this had already come to pass, as if they already had the ease of long intimacy, Edie smiled and allowed herself to be admired, appraised, valued, like one of the
beautiful objects in Milo's apartment. For once she could set aside all the degrading effort of wanting to be liked, all her hopeful offerings-up of intelligence, sociability, willingness to be a good sport, all the things, in short, that made it difficult for anyone to ever really like you. She would simply shine.

She saw at once how right Anne had been not to come. Edie made Anne's regrets, Milo expressed his disappointment and solicitude, and then they could move on. Milo had a car waiting. He put his hand beneath her elbow as she stepped off the curb. The evening sky was the color of sherbet, a tender orange. They settled themselves in the back seat and Milo murmured, “This is exactly how I imagined it. Seeing you again, the pure tonic of you. You make me feel as if I've rediscovered spring.”

After that, who cared what they ate? Edie hardly paid attention, it might have been ostrich or hamburger. She and Milo sat next to each other in a banquette, much as they had weeks ago, but this time she was aware of the agreeable mass and heat of him, a man who, no matter what his age, might be said to still be in his prime. The maître d' and the chef both made a point of coming by their table. Different bottles of wine were served to them, each one more fragrant, heady, and rare than the last. Edie allowed them to fill her up, and then to spill over. “I am being seduced,” she thought airily. She could not recall anyone else ever bothering to do so.

In the car back to the hotel they kissed, enthusiastically if without much accuracy, and when Milo escorted her into the lobby and took his leave, he bent and kissed her hand. Edie felt like a film star or legendary trollop, a woman who might walk around naked beneath a fur coat.

Anne decided to go back to Philadelphia the following day. “Could I just point out, you really don't know the guy? I mean,
know know. It doesn't matter how much your souls sing to each other.”

“I don't know why you have to turn everything into a cheap joke,” Edie said. She was shaky from last night's wine and excess of feeling.

“He's not a normal person. And I don't mean that in a good way.”

“Because of course you know him so much better than I do,” Edie said nastily. But they made up before Anne left, and agreed that Edie would call when she was ready to make plans for Philadelphia.

She felt better once Milo called, and they spoke in a way that was both shyer and more conspiratorial. It was as if something had already been decided between them. Edie took a cab to Milo's apartment. He met her at the door and they kissed, this time with more expertise. “I can't stop thinking about you,” Milo murmured. It was one more new experience for Edie, hearing such a thing from a man. The pale wart in his eyebrow winked at her, but she ignored it.

As before, there was a meal waiting for them: wine, tiny quail stuffed with orzo and capers, and clouds of meringue. Everything delicate and frankly aphrodisiac. Not a normal person? She thought she could get used to not normal. They picked the little birds apart bone by bone, drank their fill. Milo said, “How right it feels to have you here. It's as if we've already done this a thousand times.”

“Yes, it is.” By now it was not surprising to her when Milo said things she had already told herself. They were that in sync. Had she already told him that she loved cherries? Or had he simply intuited it? Nothing was not fated.

“I feel so absurdly, perfectly contented. I'm afraid someone will come and steal it all away.”

“No one's going to steal me from you,” Edie said, surprising herself with this declaration. It was as if Milo's grand speaking style was rubbing off on her.

“How can you be so sure? You're young, how can you possibly know your own heart? Let alone want anything to do with such a leaky old, battle-scarred creature as myself. How can I ever make you happy?” In sudden, alarming fashion, he pitched himself forward until his head rested in Edie's lap.

Edie did not believe that two years away from thirty was exactly young. She could have told Milo that none of her previous age-appropriate boyfriends had made her happy for more than fleeting moments, nor had they considered her happiness as something for which they took responsibility. Hadn't she done all the things that were recommended for a blissful, partnered life? The dating, the putting herself out there. The cultivation of hobbies, talents, opinions that were meant to make her interesting and enticing. None of this had produced any splendid results. Why shouldn't she take this other, unexpected path? Give herself over to forces greater than herself, to mystery, to magic, to love! Milo's shiny head in her lap might have been a crystal ball. She raised one hand to stroke it . . .

. . . And just then, in a mirror on the far side of the room, she caught a glimpse of something. She gave a little yelp.

Milo raised himself up. “What? What's the matter?”

“I saw, I don't know what it was. This
face.
” In fact she was unsure if she had seen the front or the back of a head, it was that disturbing. She had an impression of something that looked like the inside of a baseball after the cover has been torn off.

“Oh, that's just Amparo. The maid. Perfectly discreet. Please, pay her no mind.”

“There's someone else here?” Edie struggled with the thought. But Milo's warm breath was in her ear, his hands making their discreet explorations. This was no time for balkiness.

On this occasion, she did get to see the bedroom.

She did not go to Philadelphia. She only returned to the midwestern college town to pack up her belongings and arrange for a substitute to teach the last weeks of her classes. Her roommate said, “I don't understand. You're running away with Milo Baranoff? Is this, like, a performance piece or something?”

Her sister Anne was more somber. “What kind of life do you think you'll have with him? What do you expect you'll do all day?”

“I can help him with his work. Read things, take notes. Schedule his appearances. Oh come on. You think that's worse than grading freshman comp papers? Anyway, I can always get some kind of a job.” As Edie spoke, this future job took on form and shape in her mind. It would be somewhere smart and fast-paced and she would share an office with interesting, oddball people. She would come home and tell Milo about them.

“Don't feel you have to marry him. In fact you probably shouldn't.”

That made Edie sore. Her married sister had made Edie's state of single blessedness a matter of solicitous concern. “We haven't discussed it,” Edie said, although they had.

“And how did the one wife die?”

“She had cancer! He never talks about her, it's too painful.”

“You know in all the piles of stuff in those rooms, I never saw one photograph. Not the wives, the kids, nothing.”

“I expect he keeps them in albums. Is that the worst thing you can say about him, he doesn't display family photos?”

“Okay, look, I'm not that far away. Call if you need anything.”

“I'll come visit sometime soon,” Edie promised, full of good intentions. She was relieved to have gotten off this easily.