The Witches of Eastwick

'You too, Jane. Do it. Say it.'

Jane's hands were different from Sukie's, and from each other: the bow hand thick and soft, the fingering hand overdeveloped and with golden glazed calluses on the cruelly used tips.

Jane said the words, but in such a dead determined tone, just reading the notes as it were, that Alexandra warned, 'You must believe them. This is Jenny.'

It did not surprise Alexandra that for all her spite Jane should be the weak sister when it came to casting the spell; for magic is fuelled by love, not hate: hate wields scissors only and is impotent to weave the threads of sympathy whereby the mind and spirit move matter.

Jane repeated the formula, there in this ranch-house kitchen, with its picture window, spattered by hard­ened bird droppings, giving on a scrappy yard never­theless graced at this moment of the year with the glory of two dogwoods in bloom. The day's last sun­light gleamed like a background of precious metal worked in fine leaf between the drifting twists of the dark branches and the sprays, at the branches' ends, of four-petalled blossoms. A yellow plastic wading tub, exposed to the weather all winter and forever out­grown by Jane's children, rested at a slight tilt beneath one of the trees, holding a crescent of Filthy water that had been ice. The lawn was brown and tummocky yet misted by fresh green. The earth was still alive.

The voices of the other two recalled Alexandra to herself. 'You too, sweetie,' Jane told her harshly, handing her bubby back to her. 'Say the words.'

They were hateful, but on the other hand factual; Alexandra said them with calm conviction and hastily directed the spell to its close. 'Pins,' she told Jane. 'Needles. Even thumbtacks—are there some in your kids' rooms?'

'I hate to go in there, they'll start yammering for dinner.'

Alexandra said, 'Tell them five more minutes. We must finish up or it could—'

'It could what?' Sukie asked, frightened.

'It could backfire. It may yet. Like Ed's bomb. Those little round-headed map pins would be nice. Even paper clips, if we straighten them. But one good-sized needle is essential.' She did not explain, To pierce the heart. 'Also, Jane. A mirror.' For the magic did not occur in the three dimensions of matter but within the image matter generated in a mirror, the astral identity of mere mute things, an existence added on to existence.

'Sam left a shaving mirror I sometimes use to do my eyes.'

'Perfect. Hurry. I have to keep my mood or the elementals will dissipate.'

Off Jane flew again; Sukie at Alexandra's side tempted her, 'How about one more splash? I'm hav­ing just one more weak bourbon myself, before I face reality.'

'This is reality, I'm sorry to say. A half-splash, honey. A thimble of vodka and fill the rest up with tonic or 7 Up or faucet water or anything. Poor little Jenny.' As she carried the wax image up the six bat­tered steps from the kitchen into the living room, imperfections and asymmetries in her work cried out to her—one leg smaller than the other, the anatomy where hips and thighs and abdomen come together not really understood, the wax breasts too heavy. Whoever had made her think she was a sculptress? Darryl: it had been wicked of him.

Jane's hideous Doberman, released by some door she had opened along the upstairs hall, bounded into the living room, the claws of his feet scrabbling on the naked wood. His coat was an oily black, close and rippling and tricked out like some military uniform with orange boots and patches of the same color on his chest and muzzle and, in two round spots, above his eyes. Drooling, he stared up at Alexandra's cupped hands, thinking something to be eaten was held there. Even Randolph's nostrils were watering with appetite, and the folded insides of his aroused erect ears seemed extensions of ravenous intestines. 'Not for you,' Alex­andra told him sternly, and the dog's glassy black eyes looked polished, they were trying so hard to under­stand.

Sukie followed with the drinks; Jane hurried in with a two-sided shaving mirror on a wire stand, an ashtray full of multicolored tacks, and a pincushion in the form of a little cloth apple. The time was a few minutes to seven; at seven the television programs changed and the children would be demanding to be fed. The three women set the mirror up on Jane's coffee table, an imitation cobbler's bench abandoned by the mechanical engineer as he cleared out for Texas. Within the mirror's silver circle everything was mag­nified, stretched and out of focus at the edges, vivid and huge at the center. In turn the women held the doll before it, as at the hungry round mouth of another world, and stuck in pins-and thumbtacks. 'Aurai, Hanlii, Thamcii, Tilinos, Athamas, Zianor, Auonail,' Alexandra recited.

'Tzabaoth, Messiach, Emanuel, Elchim, Eibor, Yod, He, Vou, He!' Jane chanted in crisp sacrilege.

'Astachoth, Adonai, Agla, On, El, Tetragrammaton, Shema,' Sukie said, 'Ariston, Anaphaxeton, and then I forget what's next.'

Breasts and head, hips and belly, in the points went. Distant indistinct shots and cries drifted into their ears as the television program's violence climaxed. The simulacrum had taken on a festive encrusted look— the bristle of a campaign map, the fey gaudiness of a Pop Art hand grenade, a voodoo glitter. The shaving mirror swam with reflected color. Jane held up the long needle, of a size to work thick thread through suede. 'Who wants to poke this through the heart?'

'You may,' Alexandra said, gazing down to place a yellow-headed thumbtack symmetrical with another, as if this art were abstract. Though the neck and cheeks had been pierced, no one had dared thrust a pin into the eyes, which gazed expressionless or full of mourn­ful spirit, depending on how the shadows fell.

'Oh no, you don't shove it off on me,' Jane Smart said. 'It should be all of us, we should all three put a finger on it.'

Left hands intertwining like a nest of snakes, they pushed the needle through. The wax resisted, as if a lump of thicker substance were at its center. 'Die,' said one red mouth, and another, 'Take that!' before giggling overtook them. The needle eased through. Alexandra's index finger showed a blue mark about to bleed. 'Should have worn a thimble,' she said.

'Lexa, now what?' Sukie asked. She was panting, slightly.

A little hiss arose from Jane as she contemplated their strange achievement.

'We must seal the malignancy in,' Alexandra said. 'Jane, do you have Reynolds Wrap?'

The other two giggled again. They were scared, Alexandra realized. Why? Nature kills constandy, and we call her beautiful. Alexandra felt drugged, immo­bilized, huge like a queen ant or bee; the things of the world were