Witch Water (7 page)

Where am I?

So much for sipping his drink; what remained
went down in a gulp. When he looked back up, his eyes found the
mirror again; in the reflection, behind his shoulder, he saw a face
disappear. Had someone been standing behind the bar entrance,
peeking in? Fanshawe thought so, and he turned.

It looked like Mr. Baxter,
he
thought.

But why would Mr. Baxter be frowning into
his own bar?

No one stood in the entrance when Fanshawe
turned. A shadow fluttered, or seemed to. “Mr. Bax—” he began, but
then shrugged it off.

“I’m back.”

He traversed on his stool to find Abbie
hanging up towels. “I forgot to ask. Would you like to see a
menu?”

“No,” Fanshawe said good-naturedly. “I want
you to finish saying what you were saying about Jacob Wraxall.”

She opened a menu before him. “The
Lexington-Concord soup is out of this world, or try the Valley
Forge Pan-Seared Crabcakes. I’ve never had better, and I’m not just
saying that ’cos my father owns the place.”

Fanshawe closed the menu.
What does
Valley Forge have to do with a friggin’ crabcake?
“It all
sounds great, Abbie, but all I want is for you to finish what you
were saying.”

She was a fragrant dervish behind the bar.
Now her back was to him again, but she returned an instant later,
to place a third Witch Blood Shooter before him.

Fanshawe laughed to himself. “Trying to make
me forget the topic won’t work.”

She grinned. “What topic is that, Stew?” and
the she turned again, to lean over a reach-in. Fanshawe’s next
words were lost; he was staring at her rump in the tight jeans.

He took a deep breath and looked away.
“Jacob Wraxall’s room. Incest.”

“Hmm?”

“The tone of your voice implied that things
other
than incest took place in that room.
Worse
things.”

The act was over. She leaned again the
service bar, facing him, and pursed her lips. “You really want to
know, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s gross, Stew. It’s lousy bar talk.”

“I
love
 lousy bar talk—I’m from
Manhattan.”

She slumped. “I just told you that Wraxall
and his daughter had incestuous relations well into Wraxall’s
seventies. It’s not that hard to figure out.”

He thought back to the grim portrait in the
other room; in it, Wraxall appeared to be in his fifties while
Evanore looked more like late-teens.
And the old warlock was
doing it till his seventies… That’s a long time for a guy to be
hobknobbing with his daughter.

Then—
Moron!
—the answer snapped into
his mind. It dismayed him how someone so instantaneously analytical
could be so thick-witted when it came to the plainly obvious.

“They had…children?” he said more than
asked.

“How did you ever guess?” she shrilled,
amused, then the amusement leveled off to stolidness. “They had a
lot of babies.”

“Well, then, what happened to the family
line?”

The amusement drained fully. “The Wraxall
family line died when Wraxall himself died, in 1675.”

Fanshawe leaned forward, piqued. Suddenly,
this morbid curiosity overpowered his attraction. “What do you
mean? If the line died with him, then what happened…,” and the rest
of his query melted like wax on a hearth.

“What happened to all those babies?” She
crossed her arms just under her breasts and in a voice almost
gravel-rough said, “Nobody knew for sure until after Jacob’s death,
when they found his diary but…from time to time over the years,
Evanore would disappear. So when the townsfolk asked Jacob where
she was, he’d say she was traveling.”

“I’m not scoring high marks for
perceptiveness today, but I’ll take a wild guess and say she
probably wasn’t really traveling.”

“No. She wasn’t. She was in the house the
whole time for…
nine months
at a time, if you catch my
drift.”

“So none of the townspeople would ever know
she was pregnant,” Fanshawe reflected. Then the rest kicked in.
“Oh, don’t tell me—”

“Right again, Stew. Evanore wasn’t
traveling, she was pregnant, with babies sired by her own father,
but the babies were never seen by anyone, ever. Not to spoil your
night completely but—hey—you asked.”

“That I did.” He knew he had the rest, but
he needed to hear her say it. For this, he merely looked at her in
morose beseechment.

“It wasn’t cats Jacob was sacrificing for
his occult rituals.”

Fanshawe downed his drink as he went pale at
the bar. “On that note…could I have another shot, please?”

««—»»

Fanshawe spent the next hour avoiding all
conversion relative to Jacob Wraxall, witchcraft, warlocks, and the
like. Instead he made small talk, which was much nicer, and unique
because only then did it occur to him that he hadn’t sat in a bar
in a long time, much less talked to a woman who wasn’t either his
wife or someone connected to one of his businesses. He learned that
Abbie had grown up in Haver-Towne, had attended a local community
college for a certificate in hotel management, and, after spending
a year in Nashua—”I thought I’d test the water in a small city
before plunging headfirst into a big one, like New York”—she’d
opted out of a shot at the glitzy metropolitan hotel bizz and
decided to stay right where she was at. “I’ve never been much of a
carrot-chaser,” she’d said. “A lot of people spend their whole
lives wanting things they don’t need.” Why leave when she was happy
here? “Better to help run my father’s place, which he’ll pass on to
me some day.” In truth, she’d never even been to New York, and had
never felt a desire to see it or any other big metropolis.
“Slow-paced, peaceful, no rat-race—I know myself enough to realize
that’s the only kind of life I really want to live,” she’d said.
“So what if the money’s crummy?” His fetishist’s attraction
notwithstanding, Fanshawe discovered that not only did he admire
her for her polar-opposite ideals, but he envied her.
Look what
lots of money and the big city did for me,
he thought.
I’m a
super-rich clinical pervert in recovery. I lost my marriage and
even went to jail. What a great guy, huh? What a winner.
He
knew she’d be disgusted to know the truth. Billionaire or not, her
father would throw him out of the hotel.

But he also learned that not only was she
unmarried now, she’d
never
been married. No kids. She’d had
a few inert flings in Nashua, but the only serious relationships
she’d had had been with local men who’d turned out to be “a bunch
of crud-heads and moochers who didn’t want to work a job.” Instead,
she’d accepted her slow-paced, simple life in her home town,
figuring “whatever happens, happens, and whatever that might be,
it’s a great life and a beautiful world.”

Fanshawe could see in her eyes that she
meant it. There was something shockingly refreshing about that.

But what am I really thinking?

He didn’t know. He felt weird in a way he
couldn’t identify. Perhaps it was the alcohol—he rarely drank, and
the only reason he was doing it here was because of the
circumstance.
This is the first time I’ve been away from people
in—damn—I can’t remember when.
His professional life involved
his being constantly surrounded by underlings or other financial
whizzes. His front office bosses had objected to no end when he’d
told them he was going off on a long vacation by himself, as though
he were some volatile political figure with enemies around every
corner waiting to pick him off. His personal manager, Arthur
Middoth, had practically had a panic attack. “Stew, please, a guy
like you can’t just drop everything and go for a road trip. Lemme
get’cha our best driver and a good vehicle,” the man had suggested
with some angst in his voice. “I have a car, Artie, a bunch of
them, and I don’t need a driver. I want to go by myself—that’s the
whole idea.” Artie pushed his fingers worriedly through his hair,
even though he didn’t have much. “Well then lemme send a couple of
our guys in a second car.” “A couple of
our guys?
” Fanshawe
laughed. “I’m not a mafia don, Artie. I just need to get away for a
while, six months, maybe a year,” and then he’d added, “Period.”
What could any of them say? Fanshawe owned them in a sense.
Nevertheless, he felt skewed now, his insides diced up and shuffled
around like something in a wok.
First time out of the office and
I don’t know which end is up.
Then he looked back at Abbie.

He wanted to say something but couldn’t.
Their eyes locked, and several moments passed, but those several
moments seemed to Fanshawe like full minutes.

Abbie grinned again. The grin couldn’t have
been more full of a joy of life. “What?”

Fanshawe felt like someone speaking in a
cavern. “Can-can I take you out to dinner when you get off
work?”

Her pause seemed like shock. “I can’t. I
have to close tonight; we stay open till two when we have a
convention.”

“Oh.” He’d had no previous idea that he was
going to ask her out.
Idiot. What was I thinking? I’m fifteen
years older than her probably, maybe twenty. I’m the OPPOSITE of
her.
He struggled for something to say next, but then—

An uproar poured into the bar with no
warning; Fanshawe turned, startled.
The professors,
he
realized. At once the bar was filled with mostly long-haired,
bearded men ranging from their fifties to their seventies. Where
earlier they’d been wearing suits, now they wore jeans and
T-shirts, and the T-shirts were all emblazoned with prints of dour
faces, presumably philosophers. The men lined up at the bar,
ordering drinks in chaos, waving dollars bills in their hands.
They’re like spring-breakers,
 Fanshawe thought,
only…old
. But one thing he didn’t like was loud
groups
.

And he was embarrassed. Abbie had turned him
down.

Part of himself was oddly impressed, because
she already knew he was rich. But still…

It was past ten already, and his fatigue
from the long drive was taking its toll. “This is a little rowdy
for me,” he tried to tell her.

“Huh?” She was juggling bottles for
squawking customers, pouring two drinks at once. “Not to be born is
best!” someone howled; then someone responded, “Sophocles!”

“I’ve got to go,” he attempted again. “Can
you just put my drinks on my room bill?”

“They were on the house,” she raised her
voice over the revel, smiling as she was now operating several bar
taps simultaneously.

Fanshawe got nudged by a bearded gray-hair
whose T-shirt read TRANSCEND YOURSELF! and showed a print of St.
Augustine. “Pardon my Dasein,” the man said, then barked to Abbie.
“A Witch’s Moon Lager, please!”
Pardon my WHAT?
Fanshawe
wondered, aggravated. He left twenty on the bar as a tip, looked
once more to Abbie, and saw that she was swamped with demanding
customers. “See ya later,” he spoke up, waving, then slipped out of
his seat. She hadn’t heard him.
I can’t even say goodnight to
her it’s so damn crowded. How can somebody as successful as me have
karma this bad?
As he was shouldering his way out, he noticed
two attractive women chatting with some of the professors,
long-legged, vivaciously breasted. Their eyes glittered in a mild
buzz. It took a moment to realize he’d seen them before, but in
running apparel, not evening dresses.
Harvard and Yale,
he
recognized. Tan legs shined; the slopes of their breasts visible in
their gowns seemed to flash at him. What flashed next was the image
of them nearly naked as they lay hidden on the hillock; but he
pulled away, just as some drunk yelled, “The human self is the only
thing that can be known and therefore verified!” and someone
responded “Bullshit! There is no objective basis for truth!”

This is some weird
party,
 Fanshawe thought. Finally, he broke out of the
crowd under the bar transom, almost desperate now to flee the
sudden tide of raucous drinkers. He turned toward the elevator, but
before he could stride away—

“Wha—”

A hand grabbed his arm with some insistence;
he turned around to see that Abbie had trotted after him. Her face
was beaming as more drunk professors shouted objections behind her.
“I’ll be right there!” she yelled to them, then turned back to
Fanshawe. “You didn’t give me time to finish before all those old
eggheads barged in. Day after tomorrow, I get off at seven. There’s
a great Thai place on the next block.”

Fanshawe was subtly rocked. She hadn’t
turned him down after all. “That’s great. Seven o’clock it is, day
after tomorrow.”

“So it’s a date. Just meet me here.”

“Sure thing, Abbie, but I hope I see you
before then.”

“So do I,” she said, then seemed surprised
she’d said it so abruptly. “But where are you going now?”

“It’s late; I’m bushed from the long drive.
And after four Witch-Blood shooters? I
definitely
need to go
to bed.”

Her grin amplified. “Not going to the
graveyard?”

The graveyard…
“At night? Are you
kidding?”

From the bar, the professors were banging
their fists on the bartop, yelling “Barkeep! Barkeep! Barkeep!” in
unison.

“You better get back in there,” he advised.
“I think the professors are about to riot.”

“Good idea.” Her hand slid down his arm, an
inconsequential contact, yet Fanshawe felt electric. “See ya! Oh,
and remind me to tell you about the Gazing Ball.”

“The what?”

But Abbie was already bulling her way back
into the bar. The professors began to applaud.

I hope she’s got earplugs,
Fanshawe
regarded.
And…what did she say? Gazing Ball?
But as he
waited at the elevator, he realized he was brimming; she’d agreed
to go out with him. The elevator took him up, and he saw his own
smile warped in the stainless steel siding.