Wish Club (4 page)

When they’d finished the rain chant, they were all acting so silly—laughing and giggling and falling on the couches—that Jill had assumed that was going to be the end of that. It was going to be one isolated, drunken night.

And then the power came back on.

Everyone stopped their giggling. They looked up at the lights with awe on their faces and wineglasses held frozen in midair.

“Oh, my.” Lindsay started hopping up and down. “Oh my God. Do you believe this? Do you believe it?”

“You honestly think we had something to do with this?” Gail looked at Lindsay with utter disbelief on her face.

“The rain stopped, too.” Mara, over at the window already, turned around to face them, holding the curtain back for everyone to see. “There’s no more rain.”

“Wow. I can’t believe this. This is so amazing. We did it! We really, really did it.” Lindsay was apoplectic.

“This is so neat.” Mara looked outside the window again, up at the sky, as if she were trying to make sure the rain had really stopped.

“Please. It was just a coincidence.” Jill tried to brush off the idea their spell had done it with a wave of her hand.

“A coincidence? It was
not.
” Lindsay sounded as if she were taking Jill’s doubt personally. “You can’t explain away the power coming on
and
the rain stopping right after we finished our spell as just a coincidence. You can’t. Just like with the candle, it was our spell. I know it was. It wasn’t a coincidence. There’s no other way to explain it.”

“Cold frontal passage,” Gail had said, before resolutely taking a sip of her wine.

Jill smiled, remembering Gail’s quip. Jill liked Gail. And she found herself liking her more and more lately, as Gail joined her in voicing anti-witchcraft opinions. Jill looked out over the city lights and took another drag off her cigarette. She cupped her opposite elbow with her free hand and exhaled an exaggerated cloud of smoke, most of it formed of steam as her warm breath hit the cold air. Jill pushed out her cigarette before it was finished, in the not-so-overflowing outside ashtray, before heading inside.

It reeked inside her apartment. Something stank—badly. Something was burning. Jill took a quick inventory of all the candles. No, she couldn’t see any smoke anywhere; there was just that god-awful burning smell. The oven! She walked over and opened the door and was hit with a blast of smoke and the greasy-diner smell of burning cheese.

“Damn it, Loma, could you just ever clean this sometimes?” The cheese that had slid from some long-ago frozen pizza was a smoking black crust on the bottom of her oven. Jill closed the door and turned it off, unable to use it now. She opened windows, hoping to get most of the smell out, then took the tray of mini quiches and slid them into the trash. She picked up some of the paper towels at the bottom of the garbage and stuffed them on top. If no one saw the little veggie quiches, they wouldn’t be missed.
That will teach me to take Martha Stewart’s name in vain.

Jill lit another cigarette (what difference could it make now?) and sat down on one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter. She crossed her perfectly shaped legs and sat smoking and drinking at the bar as though she were at one of her clubs, waiting for a pickup line just so she could rebuff it.

Her copy of this month’s book,
Only the Lonely,
her suggestion, was sitting out, and she paged through it, cigarette in hand, eventually landing at the inside of the back dust jacket. The perfectly coifed and airbrushed photo of the author smiled back at her.
What has she got to be so smug about? Anyone could write some dumb book about depressed single people. Anyone.
A fan was blowing the author’s hair back.
Why?
Jill took a final drag off her cigarette and closed the book.

She got up and started closing the windows. Jill wasn’t afraid of heights, but every now and then, when only a flimsy screen stood between her and a thirty-story drop, she would look down and feel the world start to spin beneath her. A quick glance at something solid—the skyline, her couch—would anchor her safely back in the room and the spinning sensation would stop. It was curious, she thought, and probably not a bad reaction. Human beings were never meant to live this high off the ground.

Chapter Four

Claudia
wrestled open the heavy glass door to Jill’s North Lake Shore Drive building and presented herself to the doorman, who remained seated behind his mahogany podium. He gave her what she considered to be a rude once-over before he slid his thumb and forefinger along his mustache slowly several times while looking down at some papers on his desk.

Pretty bold arrogance, Claudia thought, for someone oblivious to the irony of his own existence.

“Miss Trebelmeier is expecting you.” He pointed her to the elevators, seeming somehow surprised by this.

Claudia tried tossing her head when she said “Thank you,” as if to say, “of course Miss Trebelmeier is expecting me,” but all the action succeeded in accomplishing was to drop her glasses farther down her nose.

After an ear-popping elevator ride, Claudia stepped into Jill’s condo and was struck by two things: the amazing view of downtown, and the overpowering smell of burnt cheese.

As if it were merely a frame for the view, Jill’s home was spartanly decorated, with lots of white and a few pieces of expensive-looking artwork and furniture. Claudia hurried over to the kitchen counter and poured herself a glass of wine. Once again, she’d been the last to arrive.

Claudia took a sip of wine and gave the table a quick scan for whatever had made Jill’s condo smell like the Billy Goat. Not finding anything, she walked over to stand with Mara and Gail.

“I totally do not buy into the fact that they’re gay. No way,” Mara was saying.

“I don’t know,” Gail answered. “There might be some truth to it.” Gail’s hair was gelled and stylized tonight, slicked back on her head. She wore slim-cut black slacks and a green silk blouse. With her height and model’s figure, she looked like someone who
belonged
in Jill’s apartment.

“They were married for five years. They had three kids,” Mara argued.

“Three
adopted
kids,” Gail said. “Why didn’t they have any of their own kids?”

“Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe she didn’t want to ruin her figure. She is a movie star after all.”

“Hollywood gossip?” Lindsay came up to join them. “Is this what we’re discussing?” She rolled her eyes upward. “I can’t believe it’s come to this. Tabloids at Book Club.”

“Sorry, dear girl.” Gail spoke without moving her jaw, using the affected, not quite British accent of the very rich. “I didn’t mean to offend you with such banal topics. What say we move on to more stimulating subject matter—the stock market, perhaps?”

Lindsay tilted her chin up and rolled her eyes again. The brave face. But Claudia could tell that Gail’s Thurston Howell impression had struck a nerve. It was weird, Claudia thought, how uncomfortable Lindsay was with her money. All the other rich people Claudia knew—like Jill, for instance—didn’t seem to mind flaunting it, but Lindsay, more often than not, acted ashamed of it, as if she thought it somehow made her less of a person.

“I honestly don’t know what’s more dull, the tabloids or the stock market,” Lindsay said.

“Oh, definitely the stock market.” Mara looked as if she couldn’t believe anyone could possibly think otherwise. “I think the tabloids are fun.” She giggled. “Oh dear, I can’t believe I admitted to that.” She pressed her lips together into a flat smile and thrust her chin forward. “What if I said I only read them at the grocery check-out?”

“Nope.” Jill had come over from the kitchen to join them, martini in hand.

“Too late,” Gail said.

“Our opinion of you is ruined forever,” Claudia added.

“Hey, how’s Tippy?” Gail put her hand on her hip. “You know I think about him every time I look at my coffee table. There’s a stain on it from that Christmas tree candle. John was very suspicious of that melted green blob.”

Mara hesitated, as if for effect, then said, “He’s cured.”

It was like a scene from a soap opera, where everyone stops talking at once and the music gets switched off.

All of the women stared at Mara.

“You are kidding me.” Gail ran a hand through her hair, apparently forgetting she had slicked it back.

“No. Honest. I was at the vet this morning, and he said he’d never seen anything like it in his practice. He said he’d heard about cases where the diabetes goes into remission, but he’d never actually had it happen to one of his patients.”

“Oh my Goddess.” Lindsay looked around the room, methodically making eye contact with everyone.

Here we go,
Claudia thought.

“Look at what we’ve done. Will you think about what we’ve done?” Lindsay closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and shook her head with an ecstatic shiver, then smiled. She opened her eyes. “Ladies, I think we’re on to something here.”

“What is it you think we’re on to?” Gail’s hair stuck together in a big clump on one side.

“Witchcraft! The power of women in a group! The power to work magic!” Lindsay held her arms straight in front of her, palms up, and moved them in a circle, gesturing around the room, her eyes wide.

Jill rolled her eyes at Lindsay’s theatrics. “I know that’s what this may look like, but I think there’s still the possibility of coincidence.”

“Yeah,” Gail gestured at Mara. “She said her vet had heard of this happening before…” She paused. “I just have a hard time imagining…It could still be…”

It sounded like Gail was having a hard time convincing herself. She stopped talking and looked down at the ground, crossing her arms over the front of her silk shirt. She started to kick a little path against the nap of the carpet with the pointed toe of her shoe.

Claudia watched the narrow line in the carpet darken under Gail’s foot. No cold front would explain this.

“I’m with Lindsay,” Mara said. “I think we have magic in this group. We stopped the rain and now we healed Tippy.”

“Don’t forget the candle.” Lindsay bounced in place. “We put out that candle with our chant.” She hunched her shoulders up and shivered her head again, her blonde curls bouncing. “Oh, just imagine the possibilities.”

“For what?” Gail asked. “Getting jobs with the fire department?”

Lindsay’s shoulders dropped. She glared at Gail, her happy expression completely deflated.

Claudia decided to step in. “Here’s the thing, guys. I don’t think we know
what
we’re doing. We just stumbled into something. If what we did do was really magic, then I think we just got incredibly lucky.”

“I think we got lucky too. I’m not denying that.” Lindsay stopped all her bouncing and hand waving and held very still, her voice quiet. “But imagine what we could accomplish if we did our homework—if we prepared. Think about it. We could heal sick people or help poor people. We could help someone find true love, the meaning of life—whatever. Maybe we could even remove cellulite from our butts.” Lindsay laughed, an uncharacteristic Mara-like giggle.

Gail gave Lindsay a
whoa
gesture. “I don’t think we should let ourselves get so carried away. I don’t like that this whole thing started in a bad way. Under the influence of alcohol and a rotten novel. Those chants and spells—they came from a work of fiction, for Pete’s sake. It’s probably not even real witchcraft.

“It’s all been sort of a fun diversion, you know, kind of like the Victorians and their Ouija boards and table-tipping, but I don’t think I want to take it any farther. I don’t want to get involved in the formation of some sort of amateur coven.”

“Who said anything about covens?” Mara said.

“Well, isn’t that what you’re talking about?” Jill’s fingertips had ceased all capillary action and pressed white into her martini glass. “That’s what it sounds like—you want to turn Book Club into a coven.”

“Oh please, that’s just a little too…that’s just so
Rosemary’s Baby,
” Mara said.

“Coven is wrong anyway.” Lindsay shook her head, already acting the expert. “It’s called a ‘circle.’ That’s what the Wiccans would call it, ‘circle,’ and I think it’s a lovely idea, getting together and working magic to help one another. I think it’s just lovely.”

“‘Circle’ is what the
who
would call it?” Jill asked.

“The Wiccans. The modern-day witches. I read about them in my book. They get together and form circles to work magic. Just like we did.”

Convincing Lindsay not to pursue this witchcraft thing was going to prove impossible, Claudia knew from experience. Especially now that she could see in Lindsay’s eyes a look that suggested she was already dreaming about her new size-six, cellulite-free butt.

“Who else thinks we should keep going? Who else thinks we should pursue this newfound power—raise your hands.” Lindsay raised her hand high.

“Can’t we just think about it for a while?” Claudia asked.

“Why? What’s to think about? You either believe or you don’t believe. You’re either for us or against us.”

“You can count me in.” Mara raised her hand.

Claudia looked at her friends as if she hardly recognized them. Why was it she always managed to feel backed into outrageous situations in Lindsay’s presence? Now her Book Club was voting on whether or not they would become witches. At least it would be a democratic coven. She shook her head and put her hand up slowly, holding it at about shoulder height, watching it move to the vertical as if it were something unattached to her.

Gail was looking off to one side, her arms still crossed over her chest. She tilted her head up and inhaled. “God, I don’t know, you guys. This just goes against my better judgment.” She exhaled, looking back toward her friends. She paused for a few moments, then raised her right hand up without uncrossing her arms.

They all looked at Jill, the lone holdout. “Do I have to decide right this minute?” She looked a little panicked, her eyes darting from person to person, her mouth slightly parted. “I really don’t like it—the idea of witchcraft. I was raised Catholic. I just get a bad feeling about all this.”

“One of the primary beliefs of Wicca,” Lindsay offered, “is that there are many different paths, and just because you follow Wicca doesn’t mean you can’t still be Catholic.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Jill said. “It’s just that most Catholics aren’t that understanding.”

Lindsay had been holding her hand up the entire time. She finally took it down. “Well. I guess there isn’t any
real
reason anyone needs to decide right this minute.”

“I hate to be the party pooper,” Jill said. “I guess maybe if you weren’t raised Catholic, then you wouldn’t understand.” She looked around at them as if she were trying to see if anyone else might “understand,” but no one spoke up.

“I guess there’s no real reason we need to have everyone on board,” Lindsay began. “I suppose just those of us who were truly interested in pursuing it could, well…be the ones to pursue it, you know, separately.” She looked pointedly at Mara.

Jill glared at Lindsay for a moment before she abruptly turned around. She stood in front of the dining room table and started fussing with the food, rearranging platters and dusting crumbs off the tablecloth.

The silence was weird. Awkward. They usually made so much noise when they got together.

Was this going to be the end? Claudia thought. Would they split up over this? Because of some homespun spells and a freshly healed cat named Tippy? What an ignominious way for her book club to die. She would not let this happen. She loved this group so much. They were her friends, her best friends. Outwardly she knew they must look like any other book group, a bunch of thirty-something women who got together to socialize and talk about books. But Claudia had a sense of what this group really meant to each of them. She’d practically grown up with Lindsay, had spent college with Gail, and even though she hadn’t known Jill and Mara during any formative years, she’d learned enough about them during the past several to know each of them shared one thing in common: a sense that Book Club was the one place they
really
fit in, where they fit perfectly. It was a place where they all could just be themselves. And Claudia wasn’t about to sit back and watch that come to an end.

But which way to go? It would be cool to be able to cast spells and heal people. But then again, this was
witchcraft
they were talking about. What if her school found out? Their neighbors? Would they understand—or be understandably afraid?
You’re either for us or against us.
Claudia looked at Lindsay and Mara, the pro-Wicca juggernaut on one side of the room—and at Jill, her back still to them, dead set against it, on the other.

“You know, Jill, I don’t think this thing is as sinister as you seem to think.” Claudia kept her voice soft, as gentle as she could. “I think it’s more along the lines of that slumber party finger-lifting thing, you know, ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board,’ where as a group you have a power, an energy to do cool things you can’t do all on your own. If we really did heal Tippy, it might be a shame if we never tried to see what else we could do. Maybe it will be like Lindsay says, we could really make some great changes. Changes for good.”

Jill had stopped her fussing and was standing very still. But she hadn’t turned around.