Unnamed Journal Volume 4, Issue 2 | Page 21

Witch, Please “Okay. I’ll take any info you have on her: address, SSN, anything to track her down.” She nodded, and flipping through a rolodex like a secretary in an old movie, procured for me the information I needed. She wrote it down on an index card with a blue ballpoint and gave it to me. Her handwriting was neat and pleasing to the eye. I put he card in my jacked pocket and smiled at her. “So how’s the brew this season?” I said. “It’s all right. The strength is good, anyway.” She allowed herself to smile for the first time since I’d seen her. “Do you want some?” “You could pay me in that, if you wanted to.” She smirked. “How about I write you a check?” “How about cash? And you can pay me after. I’ll just take a flagon of your finest, and be on my way.” Five minutes later, I was staggering back to the bus, singing a song I’d forgotten, generally at peace with the cosmos. * * * This Gany person was not at all hard to track down. She’d been living in the same address for a few years, a split- level just on the edge of the exurbs, for some time. Her yard was well-kept and the belladonna pretty. I sat in a rented grey Hyundai and watched her actions for a few days, got a sense of her routine. She was a morning person, her and the minister, commuting together in a sensible blue Chevy Malibu, and they arrived together as well. He drove and she wore a scarf around her hair like a photograph from fifty years ago. I chuckled as I wonder if that was an ironic affectation or a genuine attempt to fit in. Among witches, neither could be ruled out. They love to display their uniqueness, and they’re generally clueless about what other humans do an understand. Each of these feeds the other, really. On the third day they stepped out of the Malibu and walked around the begonias along the walk past the belladonna and found me sitting on their porch like I owned the place. “Good evening,” I said. She said nothing. He said “Can I help you?” I looked at him with his chocolate-brown button-down shirt and his khaki pants and sensible shoes and his stamped-metal cross, just too small to be garish, hanging on his chest, and I pitied him deeply. “No,” I said. “I’m here to help you.” “Help me with what?” “I’m sorry, I misspoke. Not you, Reverend.” And then I gave Gany a look right through her oversized oval sunglasses. “I don’t know you,” she said. “No, but I promise you’ve heard of me. Engilda has, anyway.”