Witches in Flight (2 page)

Thelma waved from the front garden next door.
 
“How’s Bean this morning?”

Lizard still thought it was hilarious that Thea lived next door
to a real-life Thelma and Louise.
 
“He’s grumpy, so I’m taking him for a walk.”

“Smart.”
 
Thelma
nodded in approval.
 
“You must be
good with babies.
 
Enjoy your
walk—if you head left, you might run into Louise.
 
She ran to the store for beer and
applesauce.”

Only in Berkeley did seventy-year-old women run to the corner
store for beer.
 
The applesauce was
probably for Thea—apparently Bean liked applesauce milkies.
 
Which was way, way more than Lizard had
ever wanted to know about milk or breasts or infant dietary needs.

Lizard waved and headed left.
 
The more people on their route who had baby experience, the
better.
 

The street was oddly quiet, until she turned the corner and
drove the pram into Josh.
 
Literally.
 
“Nuts!
 
Crap. Sorry—this thing corners
worse than Freddie’s bus.
 
You
probably need a permit to drive it, or something.”
 
Jeebers.
 
She was
totally babbling.

Josh’s lips quirked as he juggled beer and groceries into one
hand and reached out with the other
 
to rub Bean’s belly.
 
“Got
him to sleep, did you?”

Holy crap, she had.
 
He looked so damned innocent all curled up like that.
 
“Is that why people take babies on
walks all the time?
 
Does it always
do this?”

“When they’re little, yeah—pretty much.”
 
Josh grinned.
 
“Want to walk me home?
 
You can protect me from the hordes of little-old-lady matchmakers.”

Yes.
 
No.
 
Dammit—why did being around him
make her feel so freaking weird lately?
 
She might not be white-picket-fence material, but he lived in her
neighborhood.
 
She could handle a casual
conversation on the sidewalk.

Josh was staring down at her quizzically.
 
Frack—conversations required
actually talking out loud.
 
Lizard shook
her head and tried to find her balance.
 
“The little old ladies all know I’m your realtor.”

“Sure.”
 
Josh
touched a gentle finger to Bean’s mohawk.
 
“But I’ll tell them that this is my long-lost love child and my heart
belongs to his mother.”

It would be so much easier if he wasn’t nice.
 
And funny.
 
And all googly-eyed over a baby with cute hair.
 

And she was falling down on that whole conversation thing
again.
 
Lizard tapped on his
beer.
 
“If you think that’ll work,
you’ve been drinking too much of this stuff.”
 
She was pretty sure every little old lady in the
neighborhood already recognized Bean on sight.
 
“But we’ll walk you home.”
 
It was a purely selfish move—Josh knew a crap-ton
about babies, so if Bean didn’t stay asleep, she’d have an expert two feet
away.

And he was probably the one person in Berkeley who didn’t know
she’d spouted poetry, which should put him on her safe-people-to-hang-out-with
list.
 
Everyone else was making her
really uncomfortable lately—she’d spent the last several days dodging
people who expected her to recite poetry just because they asked nicely.

The vibes she was picking up from his mind said his brain would
be totally gooey-baby the whole way home anyhow.
 
She didn’t hold it against him—Bean seemed to do that
to almost everybody.
 

And yeah—that was a whole crap-pile of justification for
spending two more blocks in the vicinity of a guy that was way, way out of her
league.
 
Lizard scowled and pushed
the pram a little faster.

Carefully.
 
No point
mowing down Louise, too.

~ ~ ~

Helga was positively giddy, the kind of effervescent bubbly most
people thought belonged to teenage girls.
 
Elsie sat, needles clicking, and listened while Marion and Jodi went
about the pleasurable business of digging Helga’s story out of her.

It was a nice change from the empty house she’d been facing
lately—but she had a plan for that.
 
Lizard couldn’t hide forever.

“So, wait—this is the old guy you met at Elsie’s spaghetti
breakfast, right?”
 
Jodi
sighed.
 
“I can’t believe I missed
that, but Sammy is a night owl.
 
He’s always sleeping in the morning.”

“My Joey did that,” said Marion from the rocking chair, a ball
of flaming orange yarn unrolling onto her needles.
 
“Awake in the wee hours and then slept until noon.”
 
She grinned at Jodi.
 
“You just wait until Sammy’s a teenager
and goes completely nocturnal.”

It sounded like they’d totally lost the initial thread of the conversation,
but Elsie was getting wiser.
 
Jodi
had a mind like a steel trap—it might wander through a conversation
fairly randomly, but she never forgot anything.
 
If you waited patiently, they’d circle round.
 
They always did.

Then again, Elsie was also learning it could be fun to be part
of the digging crew.
 

She looked over at Helga, currently the knitting picture of
innocence.
 
“This is the guy you
decided to use for flirting practice?”
 
She was darned sure Helga was also the author of that particular suggestion
in her Silly Jar—a suggestion that had started in her “impossible” pile
and was slowly inching toward the “maybe” pile.
 

Helga blushed.
 
“Well, I’ve always loved a good flirt, but Edric isn’t the kind of man
you can just flirt with and walk away.”

Flirting sounded a lot more complicated than mud volcanoes.

“Ooooh.
 
You’re
holding out on us.”
 
Jodi pointed
her knitting needles.
 
“Dish.
 
With Sammy up all night, my love life
is non-existent, so I have to live vicariously.”

Elsie giggled.
 
It
was a strange world where Helga had a steamier life than twenty-something Jodi.
 
Or thirty-something Elsie, for
that matter—and she didn’t have a night-owl baby as an excuse, only her
own basic ineptitude.

“It’s just been a couple of coffee dates,” said Helga, cheeks
still glowing pink.
 
“And one trip
to the old-fashioned milkshake place down the street.
 
You have to appreciate a man who loves a good
double-chocolate shake.”
 
She
winked at Jodi.
 
“We shared a
glass.
 
Two straws, though—a
lady has to have her standards, even on the third date.”

“I don’t know,” said Marion, still rocking.
 
“In my day, sharing a milkshake was
pretty brazen.
 
Has he kissed you
yet?”

“No.”
 
Helga paused
a beat.
 
“But I kissed him.
 
He’s a bit shy.”

In the midst of the good-natured whoops and giggles, Elsie
realized something.
 
She was
jealous.
 
Of an old woman’s
milkshake-and-kisses date.
 
And she
didn’t have the foggiest clue how to go about remedying that.

She needed a plan.
 
The newly bold Elsie Giannotto needed a purpose—but she also
needed a life, the kind that didn’t leave her jealous of a seventy-something-year-old
woman.
 

So she rocked some more, soaking up easy friendship.
 
And she thought.

~ ~ ~

Lauren moaned as strong fingers pushed into a particularly tight
spot between her shoulder blades.
 
It always amazed her that Kathy, five-foot-nothing of massage therapist,
had hands that felt like they belonged to Boris, ex-Olympic wrestler.

The guy who looked like Boris was working on Nat.
 
He specialized in pregnancy
massage—just another case of appearances bearing little attachment to
reality.
 
When you worked in real
estate, that was a useful reminder.
 
Lauren looked over at her friend, whose mind was even more of a serene
puddle than usual.
 
“Feel good?”

“Mmmphfft.”
 
Nat
lifted up slightly out of the neck cradle, and then lowered back down when
Boris protested.
 
“Totally
heavenly, thanks.
 
Jamie tries, but
he just doesn’t find all those weird little places pregnancy messes up.”

Lauren was pretty sure she didn’t want to know what a baby could
do to a body that had started off as a yoga pretzel—it didn’t bode well
for the rest of womankind.
 
“We can
come back as often as you want.”
 
She’d take any excuse for feeling like melted chocolate. “We deserve it
for all the early mornings and late nights we’ve been putting in as WitchLight
mentors lately.”

Nat giggled.
 
“You
know we don’t need to justify this, right?
 
Grown women are allowed to do nice things for
themselves.”
 
She yawned.
 
“And Elsie’s great flying adventure
wasn’t that early.”

Said the woman who got up regularly to teach a 6 a.m. yoga
class.
 
“Right.”
 
The yawns were contagious.
 
“It was pretty spectacular,
though.
 
I think more than one
person in the crowd was tempted to get up there with her.”
 
And some, including one four-year-old,
didn’t need a trapeze to do it.
 
Uncle Jamie had been pretty busy keeping Aervyn’s feet in contact with
the ground.

“I wonder what she’ll do with it?”
 
Nat sounded more contemplative now.
 
“That kind of opening creates space.”

Lauren’s hips still hurt from the last time Nat had gone about
creating space.
 
“Maybe she’ll need
a massage too.”

“Not a bad idea, but I was thinking more about her mental
opening.
 
She’s spent a lot of time
in the last weeks learning who Elsie Giannotto
isn’t
.
 
Now she has
this beautiful piece of who she
is
,
or at least who she might be.”

Now Lauren was the one who was contemplatively curious.
 
She sighed as Kathy’s hands started
smoothing out the kinks in the back of her neck.
 
“And what do you think the piece is?
 
Being brave?
 
Or vulnerable, maybe?”
 

“Some of all of that.”
 
Nat was silent a long moment. “But mostly, I think she learned the power
of feeling oriented.
 
That she is
at her most wonderful when she has a direction.
 
A compass.”
 

It took Lauren a moment to twig to the wistful note in her best
friend’s voice.
 
“You want her to
come back.”
 

“Yeah.”
 
Nat
sighed.
 
“I miss my intern.”

“So tell her that.”
 
As soon as she said it, Lauren knew that was the wrong answer.
 
“Never mind.
 
That’s advice for my intern, not yours.”
 
Lizard needed the possibilities spelled
out to believe them.
 
For Elsie, it
would just be another kind of pressure—and Nat would only want a choice freely
given.

Lauren tried not to squirm under Kathy’s relentless
fingers.
 
Maybe she had a ray of
hope to offer up in the meantime.
 
“Lizard’s considering coming to a class.
 
Says it might be good to know more about what you
offer.
 
Lots of clients are looking
for things like yoga in their neighborhood.”

Nat laughed, delighted.
 
“At the risk of repeating myself, tell her that grown women are allowed
to do nice things for themselves.
 
We don’t need an excuse.”

Ha.
 
Given how
cranky her intern had been since poetry night, Lauren wasn’t looking to be the
deliverer of unwelcome messages.
 
“Maybe you can smooth out a few of her prickles.”

“She did that herself,” said Nat quietly.
 
“That poem was an anthem to setting
your prickles aside.
 
It’s just
going to take her a little while to feel safe staying in the new world she
drew.”