They pursued their craft, taking the word witch as their own, not even aspiring to wizard, even at the risk of suffering. It sucked if they got sassy-barked but the rest of the time they got to conjure whatever they wished. For a gender so boastful, very odd that Western men relinquish their claim to the practice of magic, very odd that they wouldn’t yearn to be witches too.
Red Hook can turn into a carton of pastel cray-pas one hour before the sun goes down. The buildings are low enough, the water near enough, the sky wide and exposed, every kind of purple rises and stretches to pink. They come earlier and earlier, the purples, and with them a drop in temperature that makes night much more different from day than it used to be. I have to wear pants now. I’m surprised to find myself on the floor tonight, wearing pants. It does help to have the thin cushion of the cotton under me because the floor wood is so old and coated in grime. It’s good here in my home tonight. I can make tortellini better because I have my colander. Until now I’ve been tilting the lid and tilting the pot and I always lose a couple and steam myself.
It’s going to be okay, this solitude, this lovelessness, this schoollessness, this unstructure, this floating, this sinking. It’s going to suit me. I’m going to mire in it until I’m cooked. Then, you know, I’ll taste great. I just haven’t cooked long enough, Joan. I just haven’t been seasoned. Somewhere in my epicenter I am, I am, delicious. I’m going to lie alone on the floor here while the pinks stretch thin and darken (you asked if I had a home, you didn’t ask if I had a bed, which would have been easier to answer, because I don’t have a bed, who has a bed these days, you do) until one morning I wake up rested.
DRAGONS
Tom buzzed my intercom while I was still on the floor asleep in my pants. Mishti had given him my address, he said, and he wanted to see my “new situation.” The comforting thing about this basically uncomfortable visit was that if I had answered the door naked, it would have felt the same. The almost of it, which is the most irresistible part of anything, leads to a simple body yes or no and when it came to me and Tom the almost always asked itself and the no always reverberated. No! we silently shouted at each other, each time our genitals came near. Once that’s been answered, nothing is tantalizing. I noticed that the left side of my chin was crusted in dried drool as I unchained the door and that was fine too.
“Welcome.”
“Well Nell, look here, you’ve landed.”
“Have I?”
“I’d say.”
Sometimes we spoke in British accents to mock his forbears.
“You’ve even got a bathroom sink.”
I joined him in my minuscule bathroom, peered around his arm into the mirror, and removed the drool from my chin. It felt good to stand with him in such a small room, it felt like being held.
“I’ve got a sink in the kitchen too,” I said, “and a refrigerator.”
“You don’t say.”
“No dish soap yet.”
“Don’t get greedy.”
“No bath towels.”
“No bed?”
“No bed.”
Tom smiled and said, “Who has a bed these days?” and I could hear my own voice in his voice. We’d been very good friends. We’d shared a little lingo. The fact of there being no bed now was an additional comfort to us, as it removed even that opportunity for awkwardness. He walked around my castor bean pot to the windows.
“At least the view.”
“At most, really.”
“It took me a very long time to get here.”
“About as far as Litchfield.”
“Veronica sends condolences,” Tom joined his palms, “on our love.”
“My best to her.”
It was okay that Tom had come, but I didn’t know why he’d bothered. I lived, as he’d said, an hour and a half south of the Upper East Side in a neighborhood that didn’t have a single Pick-A-Bagel. He looked restless and weird and must have wanted something from someone.
“Have you ever met Joan’s mother?” Tom asked.
“There it is,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. No, I haven’t, she passed away, but I’ve met her father.”
“Where?” He seemed to want to ask, How? Why? When? Me too?
“You know they run a diner—”
“I didn’t know. I don’t know why you would think that I would know.”
“That Viand on 82nd, it’s near you. Her father is still behind the cake