Night Film(68)

“You were very lucky.”

She seemed pleased, tucking her hands inside the long white sleeves.

“It’s easy to be yourself in the dark. Ever noticed that? Guess we should probably get some sleep.” The bed shook as she hopped off and darted out of the room. “ ’Night, Woodward.”

“ ’Night, Bernstein.”





43


I closed the Vanity Fair article on my BlackBerry. It was after ten A.M., and we were in a taxi speeding down Avenue A.

I was actually reassured by the piece—published on the website early this morning. The reporter hadn’t made much headway in her investigation, thank Christ, and a Google search of news for Ashley Cordova revealed no other reporter had uncovered the critical lead, that Ashley had been admitted to Briarwood—which meant we were still ahead of the game. At least for now.

I made quick note of one odd detail: Ashley’s unexpected leave from Amherst during her freshman year.

“There it is,” Nora said suddenly, and the driver pulled over.

We’d turned down East Ninth Street, and Nora was indicating a narrow storefront sunken some five feet down from the sidewalk, a black front gate and a beat-up red metal awning, a single word painted across it in purple letters:





ENCHANTMENTS


On its website, Enchantments called itself New York City’s Oldest and Largest Witchcraft and Goddess Supply Store.

We climbed out of the cab, heading down front steps encrusted with dead leaves and cigarette butts, stepping inside.

Immediately, a tall, freckle-faced orange-haired kid moved out from behind the cash register, shouting, “Zero, come back here!”—Zero being a white Persian cat that had run toward the open door, though I closed the door before it could escape.

“Thanks, man,” said the kid.

There was an overpowering smell of incense, the ceiling low, narrow brick walls slanting inward like a corridor in an M. C. Escher print. They were lined with wooden shelves crammed with mystical knickknacks. In Enchantments it seemed all holy items were created equal. The store was arranged as if Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Vishnu—plus a couple of random pagans—had gotten together to hold a garage sale.

Mini witch cauldrons (in Tall, Grande, and Venti) were brazenly stacked next to Saint Francis, Mary, and a few Catholic saints. Beside them was a much-paged-through paperback on display, Jewish Kabbal Magic, which sat next to a Bible, which was beside tarot cards, sachets of potpourri called Luck & Happiness Ouanga Bags, a basket of carved wax crucifixes, ceramic frogs, and plastic vials of Holy Water (on sale for $5.95).

Apparently many New Yorkers had given up on shrinks and yoga and thought, Hell, let’s try magic, because the store was crowded. Toward the back, a group of thirtysomething women was swarming around a tall bookcase crammed with hundreds of colored candles, choosing them with a frantic intensity. A tired middle-aged man in a blue button-down—he looked alarmingly like my stockbroker—was carefully reading the directions on the back of a Ouija board.

I stepped around Nora and a solemn boy with stringy brown hair paging through a pamphlet—I glanced at the title over his shoulder: Guide to Planetary and Magical Significance—and walked over to the display case. Inside were silver necklaces, pendants, and charms carved with hieroglyphics and other symbols I didn’t recognize. Hanging from the ceiling above the cash register was a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, a pentagram—the symbol for Satanists, if I remembered correctly from my college days. Beyond that on the back wall were framed 8 × 10 black-and-white headshots of men and women who had the severe expressions and dead raisin eyes of serial killers—legendary witches and warlocks, no doubt.

A small faded handwritten sign was taped beside them.


We do not sell black magick

supplies, so don’t even ask.



The orange-haired kid who’d chased Zero to the back of the store shuffled over to us.

“Need some help?”

“Yes,” said Nora, setting a book she’d been leafing through—Signs, Symbols & Omens—back down on the stand. “We were hoping someone could help us identify some herbs and roots that we found in strange patterns in our friend’s room.”

He nodded, totally unsurprised, and pointed his thumb toward the back.

“Ask the witches on call,” he said. “They know everything.”

I hadn’t noticed it when we’d entered, but in the back of the store there was a wooden counter, a young Hispanic kid sitting behind it.

Nora and I made our way to him, filing around the women fussing over the colored candles. One with frizzy red hair was holding a purple, a yellow, an orange, and a green. “Should I get Saint Elijah and San Miguel, too?” she asked her friend.

“Don’t mess this up,” Nora whispered. “I know you don’t believe in this stuff, but it doesn’t mean you can be rude.”

“Me? What are you talking about?”

She shot me a look of warning before stepping behind a young woman quietly discussing something with the Hispanic kid. He was perched on a tall stool, industriously carving into a green candle with a large hunting knife.

He didn’t look like a witch—but that was probably the same dim observation as a neighbor telling the Evening News old Jimmy who lived in his mother’s basement and was rarely seen in daylight didn’t look like a homicidal maniac. This male witch had shaggy black hair and was wearing an army-green workman’s shirt, the kind popularized by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, giving him a sort of socialist tropical authority.