The Witch (23 page)

“Has he been screwing around on you?” Anne asked, too avidly.

“No, that's not it.” Edie was indignant. But then, what about remarkablelady? And once you allowed yourself to doubt, everything began to unravel. If Milo wasn't Milo, what else might be false? She hid Jake Bialosky's card away in her copy of
The Foucault Reader
.

She knew she wasn't going to be able to stay away from Milo's computer. She was curiouser and curiouser. She was bitten and smitten. This time Edie went through his address book. There was no entry under Bialosky. But here was Edie, along with her old campus address. There were also a great many female names, but most of these were only first names, Suzanne or Maeve or Helena, with just a phone number attached. And here, although she had not been expecting it, was Ondaate, complete with phone, e-mail, and Manhattan address.

Reckless now, she dialed the number. It was answered on the third ring, surely by Ondaate herself. Who else would speak with that peculiar intonation, that combination of lilt and purr: “Halloo?”

Edie had not thought about what to say. “Oh, hi, you don't know me, but my name is Edie Baranoff.”

“Baranoff? What does the little patoot want from me?”

“Nothing, he doesn't even know I'm calling.”

“Who are you, Baranoff?” Suspicious now. “Some other family?”

“No, Milo and I got married.” Edie waited a beat. “Recently.”

“You want what, congratulations? Or advice? Or where I hid his Viagra? I did that. Hid it so he would not distress me.”

Edie decided to pretend this was humorous. “Oh ha ha. No, that's okay, I guess I just wanted to say hello, you know, ahead of time, in case we should ever see each other, around town.”

“If I am seeing Milo, I am running the other way. He is a terrible snob man. No one is ever good enough for him. He is always pick, pick, pick at me. I am too thin, too stupid, too foreign. He marries me just to tear me down! Hateful man! I have no time for this!”

“Wait, could I just ask you, do you know anything about him being married to another woman, a Canadian? A woman who died?”

“If she died it was because he bored her to death with his big talk. I have other problems, I am hanging up. I have cut off all my hair and now my head is very tiny. Goodbye.”

Edie was still at Milo's computer. The e-mail bell chimed. The message was from remarkablelady. Edie opened it. It was a picture of two enormous breasts, globe-sized and tipped with spreading brown nipples, distorted by the camera angle. The breasts were thrust forward and filled the entire screen, the body behind them invisible. Edie deleted the picture and shut the computer down. Milo was due back home the day after tomorrow.

He called from Sydney, where he had a night's layover, still jazzed up from his week of oratory and glad-handing and dining well. The conference had been a great success. Everyone said so. But of course he was looking forward to getting back home, he'd missed her so!

“I expect you'll be jet-lagged,” Edie said. “I'll try to let you sleep in when I get up. I have some job interviews the next morning.”

Milo said he must have misheard her. Something about interviews? “Yes,” Edie said. “I called around to a few of your friends.” She mentioned their well-connected names, the editors and columnists and producers who held the keys to so many kingdoms. “I'm hoping one of them can come up with something for me.”

There was the gravel sound of Milo clearing his throat. “I'm not sure this is such a good idea, sweetheart.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Well, when you get hired through the back door, so to speak, you enter the workplace with other people resenting that, you know, and that's a burden you don't want to have.”

Edie pretended to mishear him. “Yes, it's exciting, isn't it? The pay probably won't be much for an entry position, but there's tons of potential. You have a good flight!”

Milo arrived home late the next evening, cranky from travel and with bloodshot eyes. Right away he started in on the job search. “I really wish you hadn't made those calls. It could put me in a very awkward position. Conflicts of interest, that sort of thing.”

“But you said you were going to call them. And when you didn't get around to it, I thought I could do it myself and spare you the trouble.” This was not entirely untrue, only mostly.

“And what makes you think you have the qualifications to do the sort of high-end work we're talking about here? I'm sorry, my dear, but I believe you're confusing your very ordinary liberal arts education with the kind of advanced knowledge and sophistication these positions require.”

They stared at each other. Milo rubbed at his eyes, inflaming them further. “I don't want to talk about this anymore, I'm too tired right now. But I don't think I can sleep yet. I might catch up on e-mail. It was so difficult to get Internet access.”

Did Edie imagine that he gave her a particularly searching look when he mentioned e-mail? But that was nonsense; he'd been halfway around the world when she'd done her snooping. Edie said solicitous things about the wearying effects of crossing so many time zones. She went to bed but she couldn't sleep either. The two of them had entered some new phase. Milo might not be exactly who he said he was, or who she had believed him
to be. But then, it was possible that she was not the person she had believed herself to be all this while.

By the next day, when she looked at Milo's study, he had nailed new and sturdier pieces of wood trim around the door frame.

She went out and got herself a job in the office of a company that developed television shows for different cable outlets, shows that featured makeovers and competitive weight-loss derbies and battling families, all her old trashy favorites. She had missed watching television. Her job was “production assistant,” and it involved a lot of fetching things and answering phones. The office was a hectic place where business was transacted at top volume. Edie would make herself indispensable. She saw that right away. She would learn the ropes and anticipate needs. She would unpack some of her old hanging-out clothes, jeans and T-shirts and boots so that she'd look like everyone else there. Milo would hate it.

And he did. “I can't imagine what you were thinking. These are vulgar people who make a vulgar product. I can't be associated with any of this.”

Edie said that he was not associated with it. “I'm not using Baranoff. I'm on the payroll as Edie Gordon. And you never have to watch any of the shows.”

“Why couldn't you work somewhere more”—Milo raised his hands and let them fall to his sides—“suitable?”

“You told me I was too badly educated and commonplace to do anything important,” Edie reminded him.

“I didn't mean you should do something ridiculous! Why do you need to work anyway, don't I provide for you?”

“Now Milo, please don't be prehistoric. Oh! I forgot to tell you, your son Jake stopped by while you were gone.”

“Jacob? What did he want?”

“Just saying hello, I expect. He didn't stay long. He seems like a very nice young man. And good-looking! Takes after you.”

Milo gnawed on his bottom lip, considering her. His eyes looked even worse today, puffy and with drooping, blood-red rims. At least he'd stopped going on about her job. Edie said, “Would you like me to call the pharmacy and see if they have any kind of salve, you know, cream they could send over? In case you picked up an infection.”

“What are you saying? What infection?” He tried to stare her down but he was too bleary.

“Your eyes, silly. Conjunctivitis. Very contagious. Try not to rub them. I can call and they'll run right over with some medicine. The kinds of services you can get in New York! It's really . . .” Edie paused. “. . . remarkable.”

Milo went to the eye doctor, who diagnosed an infection and prescribed antibiotics and a green eyeshade that made him look like an irradiated frog. He sat in the main room and brooded, unable to read or write. Edie suggested books on tape, or voice-recognition software, or even a television, but Milo would have none of it. She was glad she had a reason to leave.

It was her second full day of work. She had a blast. Already she could tell who among her fellow employees would become her friends, who would be a pain in the ass, how she'd navigate among them. There would be opportunities, possibilities. She would prosper.

She was walking home, enjoying the mild chill in the air, the blue and lengthening shadows, the preposterous fall fashions in the boutique windows. As she approached the apartment building, she saw Amparo standing outside, dressed in her old furry coat and clutching a number of plastic bags. Her tragic monkey
face registered distress. Edie hurried up to her. “Amparo, what's the matter?”

The old woman's hands clutched at Edie's sleeve. “Quitting.”

“What happened, is Mr. Baranoff all right? Amparo?”

She only shook her head and pressed a small key into Edie's hands. “Secret,” she said, then scuttled away toward the subway and disappeared underground.

Apprehensive now, Edie hurried upstairs. Milo was just where she'd left him, installed in his chair with a litter of Kleenex, coffee cups, and empty plates surrounding him. “What happened with Amparo, what did you do to her?” Edie demanded.

“How telling,” Milo said, “that you assume I did something to
her
. A number of small but valuable objects are missing. She removed them and sold them for profit. I can think of no other explanation.”

“What objects, what's missing? How can you keep track of everything, you're practically a hoarder.”

“Women,” said Milo wisely, “will always steal. It makes no difference how generous you are to them. They aren't happy unless they can sneak around behind your back and pick your bones. I know what this job business is all about. You're seeing someone, another man.”

Edie stiffened. “That's preposterous.”

“Is it, now. You think because I'm stuck here, I don't know what goes on.” The green eyeshade wagged at her.

“Ridiculous.”

“You married me for my money. Now you think you can frisk around, kicking up your heels.”

“I married you because you asked me to! What's the matter with you, are you having side effects from those pills?”

“This all has to do,” Milo said, aiming his gaze just to the right of where she was standing, “with your pitiful need for validation. Your lack of any real rigor or discipline.”

Edie gaped at him. “Incredible.”

“I used to believe you were merely young and unformed. Now, strange as it is to say so at the moment, I see more clearly. There's something insipid about you, my dear. Something that feels the need to attach itself to more established personalities and ingratiate yourself. So who is he? Now that you've sucked me dry, who's your next victim?”

Edie was steadying herself now after her first shock. “I don't believe anybody thinks of you as a victim, Milo. I certainly don't.”

“Some greasy actor? Cameraman?” His jowls shook with rage.

“That is . . .” she gathered her nerve, “. . . an absolutely puerile thought process.”

If Milo had a reaction to this, she couldn't read his eyes behind the green shade. He said, “Use caution, my dear. I am not without resources. The wounded animal is the most dangerous.”

This alarmed her, but she took care not to show it. “I think you're simply in a foul mood from sitting around all day and eating the wrong things. If you're constipated, it's your own fault.”

Edie went to her bookshelf and retrieved the card with Jake Bialosky's phone number. Milo was still in the living room; she could hear him coughing and fretting. Milo was keeping his study locked these days, even while he was home. Edie fit the key Amparo had given her into the lock. She let herself in and set the dead bolt. For extra protection, she propped a chair beneath the doorknob.

She used her cell phone to call Jake Bialosky. She reached his voice mail and he leapt into her ear, sudden and immediate, as if he were in the room. Edie stumbled over her message. “Hi, ah, this is Edie, ah, we met last week, how are you? Could you give me a call as soon as you get this? Your father's having some kind of a fit.”

She hung up and listened for noises in the hallway, but the apartment was quiet. Her heart beat and beat. Had Milo gone crazy? Or maybe he had always been crazy. She switched on his computer. Its screen brightened. He had received a new e-mail, this one from someone with a camera held between her knees.

A light shone from beneath the door, then a darkness moved back and forth along it. Milo. He rattled the doorknob. “What's the meaning of this?”

“I need a little me time, Milo.”

“Open this door.” He threw his weight against it, but the lock held. “What's the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Aside from being, you know, insipid and pitiful and all that.”

A pause while he regrouped and sugared his voice. “Sweetheart?” He spoke into the door's crack. “Can't we just talk? I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me. You're right, it must be that medicine, I'm having a reaction.” He paused. Edie kept silent. “You know I don't believe any of those things I said, how could I?”

“Which things, exactly, did you not mean?” She was clicking through the onscreen desktop, but these were mostly the files for his boring books.

“I was feeling sorry for myself. I don't even remember. Please open the door.”

“I think I'll stay in here, thanks.”

“I shouldn't have accused you of infidelity.” He tried the doorknob again. The chair wobbled. “Although you do like attention, don't you? You make this particular face when we're out in public, this ‘Please gratify me with an admiring glance' expression. Let me in and I'll show you what it looks like.”