your name was not magic, but I am. I can often read the future … and do certain other things. Someday soon, you may find you require such a person. I am living at the Consort under the name of Serpentina.” Without waiting for him to reply, she shut the door of the Cadillac and turned away.
Sixteen twenty-three, where she had told McAlister to drop her, was not her destination. When his car was out of sight, she walked down the driveway to the street, then down the street, stepping carefully to keep her high- heeled boots off the worst patches of ice.
Even now, in the dead of winter, it was an attractive neighborhood. All the houses were large, and most were white. They were sufficiently separated that there was no clash of architectures; each seemed set among its own groves and lawns as though it were intended to be remote and its neighbors were present merely by accident. Clumps of birch thrust pale arms through the snow, hollies and blue spruce spoke of Christmas almost a month past, Christmas now almost infinitely remote at the distant end of the year.
Moving among all this in her dark furs, her fringed black dress and black boots, the witch seemed as out of place as some tropical animal, large-eyed and slender-legged, a bit of the city blown far from its gritty streets and bright windows by the winter winds. She might have been the sister of a notorious gangster (not his wife or mistress, since such men favor florid blonds). She might have been the sister of a nun. Once a green Mercedes passed her, cracking the ice, crunching snow. She waved to the man and woman inside as though she knew them, and they, thinking that perhaps, that certainly somewhere, they knew her, waved in return.
When she had walked about three-quarters of a mile, the open lawns on one side of the street gave way to a stone wall eight feet high. She followed it for another hundred yards, and at last reached an iron gate. There was a pushbutton beside it, but it was a long time, ten minutes at least, before a dark man in a buffalo jacket pulled it back.
“Hello, Pete,” she said.
“Hello yourself, Marie,” Pete answered as she stepped inside. “How you doing?”
“All right.”
“Nice coat. You walk?” He shut the gate again and locked it with a heavy steel bar.
“Friend gave me a lift.”
“Ah, you got a
“I haven’t got any boyfriend, Pete. You crazy?”
“That’s the idea,” Pete said. “Don’t tell anybody. He’ll beat you black and blue.”
When they reached the door of the white brick house, he opened it for her but did not go in with her. The foyer was dark and musty; the drapes were drawn, and there was a smell of cooking, of much coffee and of ham. After a moment, a handsome, sallow woman pushed aside a curtain. There was a red kerchief knotted around her head, and she wore gold earrings and three gold chains.
“I knew you’d come,” she said. “I saw it.”
The witch nodded.
“You don’t believe me, huh? I did. I been tellin’ everybody for weeks. You ask the King.”
“I believe you, Rose.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Is he upstairs?”
“No, I’ll show you. Someday you and me are goin’ to be friends, Marie. If the King asks, tell him I was real nice to you, okay? He likes you. He talks about you. This way—” She motioned the other down a dark hall. “Maybe once a week. For him, that’s a lot.”
The door was closed. When the woman in the red kerchief opened it, she released a new smell, of woodsmoke and cigars.
The room itself was bright and cold. There were seven wide windows—four in one wall and three in another— and their blinds were up and their curtains drawn back. One window was half open. A big fire blazed in a big, fieldstone fireplace, watched by a big old man in a dark blue suit.
“Hello,” the witch said. “How are you?”
His eyes never left the fire. “Is that the way to talk to me? I am the King.”
“Should I talk like the
“Our people say King. Here you are one of us.”
Her voice fell. “Always, King.”
Perhaps he had not heard. A poker with cruel hooks stood beside the fireplace. He picked it up and stirred the fire.
“I have something for you, King. A gift.” She held out the fifty dollars McAlister had given her; then, when he still did not turn to look at her, walked across the room to him and laid the money gently in his lap.
He glanced down. “Bah! Tens, twenties. Today they get you nothing! Paper! Just paper.” He wadded up the bills, rolled his big hands back and forth, flung crumpled green paper into the fire.
“Yes, King.”
For the first time he turned to look at her. “You’re cold in here, Marie?”
“I’m comfortable, King. I have my coat on.”
“When I was a boy, we used to move around more. We had trucks. When I was very little, there were still a few wagons, even. We used to camp every night. Open air. Open fire.”
