Hex - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Page 0,59

and missed. The nontoxic material world felt hopelessly blunt and soft around its edges. I went home to dig up my castor beans.

TOM

While I was walking home Tom called me to apologize; I told him to try souping vegetables up in yogurt. He kept saying “I mean it” and I kept saying “crinkled carrots.” He kept saying “I’m not even sure where to start” and I kept saying “just put them right in the pot with whichever drained noodle you prefer.” After a long time he said he would try the yogurt. I asked if he regretted abandoning Joan. He asked if I regretted Joan’s abandoning me. I told him she abandoned herself. We’re the same. So he asked if I regretted abandoning Joan. I told him I abandoned me. He had enough of that and asked me how Mishti was doing. I said, “Pretty bad.” He said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

I said, “Did you know that while you were boning Joan, Barry was boning Mishti?”

I was in the mood for love.

“I did know that. Joan was very proud of that arrangement.”

I thought of the six of us, turned and turned around, and wondered who the seventh was, some distant minister only now climbing over the horizon to wreck us.

“Mishti will be okay, she’s naturally phenomenal,” I said, because I’m a very bad wingman.

“Mishti’s the only one of us I respect,” he said. “What the Jesus was Carlo thinking? How does anyone choose—what did he even choose?”

I wanted to follow up on that but first I had to ask why he didn’t respect Joan.

“Joan liked to look at me,” he said. “She found me mildly entertaining. Her name for me was Dope. Her idea of me was Statue Come to Life. I showed up at her door like a stripper. She didn’t respect me either.”

“Mishti loves your mind,” I found myself saying.

“Mishti is the only mind I know.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Mishti’s pretty magnificent, isn’t she,” Tom said, a little more softly.

Hildegard I should have said right then To Queens with you! Fill your heart with gladness! I should have put on my father’s mother’s yenta shawl and played matchmaker, confessed every reciprocity, set the thing up, facilitated a union. But I am a wretched, minor, bloodless thing, bloodless the same as Joan, and I’d never met Nana Esther, and I’d eaten only yogurt, and I had something awful I wanted to do that afternoon and could no more feed my best friend to my ex than I could feed myself a roast chicken.

“Are you okay, Nell,” he said.

“I have a bed,” I said. “I have beans.”

MISHTI

First signs of my narcissus, scilla, glory-of-the-snow, bupleurum, larkspur. I stood in my own doorway, proud. Every bleakness had been replaced by periwinkle, byzantium, heliotrope, mauve, tea green, reseda green, mantis, and the Hooker’s green that’s halfway between Prussian blue and Gamboge yellow. My buzzer rang. That morning I’d finally convinced Mishti to leave the couch and come over but I never thought she’d actually do it, and now I didn’t want the interruption or the witness. Mishti climbed the stairs. I thought, She’ll understand. I thought, She’ll even help me. I tied my hair back so as to be fully available. But then she came in crying and I found myself saying to her, “Look, everywhere, pigheaded life!” The plastic planters at our feet sang dwarf hymns to victory. I wished I could prefer creation to destruction after all. I wished there were no Barrys provoking violence in our otherwise Eden.

I told her most of the flowers were purely good, only the castor was poison. I told her she herself was our prime blossom. I told her I had an idea about using the castor poison after all, an idea about Barry, a kind of terrible idea. She walked farther into the apartment with an increasingly crazed gleam of inspiration in her eyes. Finally she sat on the floor, leaning back against the castor pot.

“Don’t move,” I said, “I have refreshments.”

I went into the kitchen and had forgotten where I’d stored the new and unusual snacks I’d purchased for her visit. My kitchen stared at me dumbly, unaccustomed to containing anything. After a round through all cabinets, I found my Mary’s Gone Crackers, my ladyfingers, my king-size Reese’s, and a knife to cut both the peanut butter cup and a little goat cheese called Sonnet. I felt indisputably abundant.

“Please,” I said, placing the cutting board at her feet, “it’s all right, we’re disgusting but