The Witches of Eastwick

Eastwick ennui. And he's taken Chris Gabriel with him.'

'Chris?'

'You were right in the first place. He was one of those.'

'But he—'

'Some of them can. But it isn't real to them. They don't bring to it the illusions that normal men do.'

Har, liar, diable, diable, saute ici, saute la. There she had been, Alexandra remembered, a year ago, moon­ing over that mansion from a distance, then worrying about her thighs looking too fat and white when she had to wade. 'Well,' she said now. 'Weren't we silly?'

''Naive' is the way I'd rather put it. How could we not be, living in a ridiculous backwater like this? Why are we here, did you ever ask yourself that? Because our husbands planted us here, and we like dumb dai­sies just stay.'

'So you think it was little Chris—'

'All along. Obviously. He married Jenny just to cinch his hold. I could kill them both, frankly.' 'Oh Jane, don't even say it.'

'And her money, of course. He needed that pathetic little money she got from the house to keep his cred­itors at bay. And now there's all the hospital bills. Bob says it's a terrible mess, the bank is hearing from everybody because they're stuck with the mortgage on the Lenox place. He did admit there may be just enough equity if they can find the right developers; the place would be ideal for condominiums, if they can get it by the Planning Board. Bob thinks Herbie Prinz might be persuadable; he takes these expensive winter vacations.'

'But did he leave all his laboratory behind? The paint that would make solar energy—'

'Lexa, don't you understand? There was never anything there. We imagined him.'

'But the pianos. And the art.'

'We have no idea how much of that was paid for. Obviously there are some assets. But a lot of that art surely has depreciated dreadfully; I mean, really, stuffed penguins spattered with car paint —'

'He loved it,' Alexandra said, still loyal. 'He didn't fake that, I'm sure. He was an artist, and he wanted to give us all an artistic experience. And he did. Look at your music, all that Brahms you used to play with him until your awful Doberman ate your cello and you began to talk just like some unctuous banker.'

'You're being very stupid,' Jane said sharply, and hung up. It was just as well, for words had begun to stick in Alexandra's throat, the croakiness of tears aching to flow.

Sukie called within the hour, the last gasp of their old solidarity. But all she could seem to say was 'Oh my God. That little wimp Chris. I never heard him put two words together.'

'I think he wanted to love us,' Alexandra said, able to speak only of Darryl Van Home, 'but he just didn't have it in him.'

'Do you think he wanted to love Jenny?'

'It could be, because she looked so much like Chris.'

'He was a model husband.'

'That could have been irony of a sort.'

'I've been wondering, Lexa, he must have known what we were doing to Jenny, is it possible—'

'Go on. Say it.'

'We were doing his will by, you know—'

'Killing her,' Alexandra supplied.

'Yes,' said Sukie. 'Because he wanted her out of the way once he had her legally and everything was different.'

Alexandra tried to think; it had been ages since she had felt her mind stretch itself, a luxurious feeling, almost muscular, probing those impalpable tunnels of the possible and the probable. 'I really doubt,' she decided, 'that Darryl was ever organized in that way. He had to improvise on situations others created, and couldn't look very far ahead.' As Alexandra talked, she saw him clearer and clearer—felt him from the inside, his caverns and seams and empty places. She had projected her spirit into a place of echoing des­olation. 'He couldn't create, he had no powers of his own that way, all he could do was release what was already there in others. Even us: we had the coven before he came to town, and our powers such as they are. I think,' she told Sukie, 'he wanted to be a woman, like he said, but he wasn't even that.'

'Even,' Sukie echoed, critically.

'Well it is miserable a lot of time. It honestly is.' Again, those sticks in the throat, the gateway of tears. But this sensation, like that resistant one of trying to think again, was somehow hopeful, a stiff beginning. She was ceasing to drift.

'This might make you feel a little better,' Sukie told her. 'There's a good chance Jenny wasn't so sorry to die. Rebecca has been doing a lot of talking down at Nemo's, now that Fidel has run off with the other two, and she says some of the goings-on over there after we left would really curl your hair. Apparently it was no secret from Jenny what Chris and Darryl were up to, at least once she was safely married.'

'Poor little soul,' Alexandra said. 'I guess she was one of those perfectly lovely people the world for some reason never Finds any use for.' Nature in her wisdom puts them to sleep.

'Even Fidel was offended, Rebecca says,' Sukie was saying, 'but when she begged him to stay and live with her he told her he didn't want to be a lobsterman or a floor boy over at Dataprobe, and there was noth­ing else the people around here would let a spic like him do. Rebecca's heartbroken.'