The Witches of Eastwick

'What about him?'

'What he was like.'

Sukie shrugged. 'Tender. Grateful. Shy. He drank too much but when he knew he was going to see me he would try not to, so he wouldn't be—stupid. You know. Sluggish.'

'Did he have a lot of girlfriends?'

'Oh no. I don't think so.' Sukie was offended. 'Just me, was my conceited impression. He loved your mother, you know. At least until she became so— obsessed.'

'Obsessed with what?'

'I'm sure you know better than I. With making the world a perfect place.'

'That's rather nice, isn't it, that she wanted it to be?'

'I suppose.' Sukie had never thought of it as nice, Felicia's public nagging: a spiteful ego trip, rather, with more than an added pinch of hysteria. Sukie did not appreciate being put on the defensive by this bland little ice maiden, who from the sound of her voice might be getting a cold. Sukie volunteered, 'You know, if you're single in a town like this you pretty much have to take what you can find.'

'No I don't know,' said Jennifer, but softly. 'But then I guess I don't know much about that sort of thing altogether.'

Meaning what? That she was a virgin? It was hard to know if the girl was empty or if her strange stillness manifested an exceptionally complete inner poise. 'Tell me about you,' Sukie said. 'You're going to become a doctor? Clyde was so proud of that.'

'Oh, but it's a fraud. I keep running out of money and flunking anatomy. It was the chemistry I liked. The technician job is really as far as I'm ever going to go. I'm stuck.'

Sukie told her, 'You should meet Darryl Van Home. He's trying to get us all unstuck.'

Jennifer unexpectedly smiled, her little flat nose whitening with the tension. Her front teeth were round as a child's. 'What a grand name,' she said. 'It sounds made up. Who is he?'

But she must, Sukie thought, have heard about our sabbats. The girl was difficult to see through; patches of an unnatural innocence, as though she had been skipped by life, blocked telepathy as lead blocks X-rays. 'Oh, a sort of eccentric youngish middle-aged man who's bought the old Lenox place. You know, the big brick mansion toward the beach.'

'The haunted plantation, we used to call that. I was fifteen when my parents moved here and really never got to know the area terribly well. There's an enormous amount to it, though it looks like nothing on the map.'

Insolent tropical Rebecca brought their coffee in Nemo's heavy white mugs, and the golden johnny-cakes; along with the pronounced warm fragrances of these there carried across the glazed table a spicy sour smell that Sukie linked to the waitress herself, her broad pelvis and heavy coffee-colored breasts, as she leaned over to set the mugs and plates in place. 'Is there anything wanting now of you ladies' happi­ness?' the waitress asked, looking down upon them from the great slopes of herself. Her head looked rather small and sinewy—her black hair done in corn rows of tight braids—upon the mass of her flesh.

'Is there any cream, Becca?' Sukie asked.

'I get you de one.' Putting down the little alumi­num pitcher, she told them, 'You can say 'cream' if you likes, milk is what dc boss puts in every mornin'.'

'Thank you, darling, I meant milk.' But for a little joke Sukie quickly said to herself the white spell Sator arepo tenet opera rotas, and the milk poured thick and yellow, cream. Curdled flecks rotated on the circular surface of her coffee. Johnnycake turned to buttery fragments in her mouth. Indian ghosts of cornmeal slipped through the forest of her tastebuds. She swal­lowed and said, of Van Home, 'He's nice. You'd like him, once you got over his manner.'

'What's wrong with his manner?'

Sukie wiped crumbs from her smiling lips. 'He comes on rough, but it's a put-on really. He's really no threat, anybody can manage Darryl. A couple of my girlfriends and I play tennis with him in this fan­tastic big canvas bubble he's put up. Do you play?'

Jennifer's round shoulders shrugged. 'A little. Mosdy at summer camp. And a bunch of us used to go use the U. of C. courts occasionally.'

'How long are you going to be around, before you go back to Chicago?'

Jennifer was watching the curds swirl in her own coffee. 'A while. It may take until summer to sell the house, and Chris has nothing much to do as it turns out and we get along easily; we always have. Maybe I won't go back. As I said, it wasn't working out that great at Michael Reese.'

'Were you having man trouble?'

'Oh no.' Her eyes lifted, displaying below her pale irises arcs of pure youthful white. 'Men don't seem all that interested in me.'

'But why not? If I may say so, you're lovely.'

The girl lowered her eyes. 'Isn't this funny milk? So thick and sweet. I wonder if it's gone bad.'

'No, I think you'll find it very fresh. You haven't eaten your johnnycake.'

'I nibbled at it. I never was that crazy about them, they're just fried dough.'

'That's why we Rhode Islanders like them. They come as they are. I'll finish yours if you don't want it.'

'I must do something wrong that men sense. I used to talk about it with my friends sometimes. My girl­friends.'

'A woman needs woman friends,' Sukie said com­placently.