The Witching Hours, page 32
“Thank you for your straightforward honesty, Winkleman.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Campbell.”
I realized that, at some point, I’d shifted from participating in a fun game of pretend to sounding like I was a believer in the alternate reality of Mr. Rand Carmichael Winkleman, whom I judged to be delightfully nuts.
“How long have you been doing this, Winkleman?”
He froze mid step. “You continue to surprise, Ms. Campbell.”
“How so?”
He continued leading our tour at an ambling pace, presumably so that I’d have ample time to take it all in. The enormous smorgasbord of occupation and recreation prompted a thought about the gradual narrowing of one’s world. At one time I must have considered, however briefly, each of these pursuits. Had I, at one time, considered becoming a champion sharpshooter? Had I thought about being an astronaut? I smiled when my eyes landed on a judge’s gavel.
“Please share, Ms. Campbell. What, about the judge’s gavel, made you smile?”
I shook my head. “My mother liked to tell the story that, when I was in kindergarten, I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. Reportedly I said I either wanted to work at McDonalds or be a supreme court judge.” My recollection earned me the pleasure of one of Winkleman’s extraordinary eye twinkles. “See? Look how easy it is to answer questions. You ask me something. I answer.”
“Hmmm.”
“Yes. Hmmm. Why are you avoiding saying how long you’ve been at this?”
“That’s now two questions.”
“And two dodges.”
He chuckled. “A bargain is afoot.”
“It is?’”
“I’ll answer one of the two, but first. When I asked earlier if you wanted to be a supreme court judge, you said no quickly and emphatically.”
“That’s because I don’t want that. I just like that stupid story.”
“Alright. Which question would you like me to answer?”
Reasoning that perhaps if I chose my second question, I’d inadvertently get a bird’s eye view into the first, I chose number two. “Okay. Why are you avoiding telling me how long you’ve been a purveyor of dreams?”
He barked out a laugh at that. “Purveyor of dreams! I like that. Ms. Campbell, we should circle back for a second look at the writing section.”
I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to a halt. “Answer.” My demand was punctuated by a thunderclap that shook the building. The sound was immediately followed by pounding rain. I knew I couldn’t hear rain on the roof of a multistory building, but my mind was tricking me into thinking I could.
I turned to look at the windows in front of the store. Some people had stood at their threshold that morning debating whether the chance of rain warranted the trouble of carrying an umbrella and made the right choice. The street suddenly looked more like Paris than New York. Brightly colored umbrellas were everywhere. Red. Yellow. Blue polka dots. A clear, dome-style umbrella featuring the surprised yellow eyes of a black cat. I almost laughed out loud and made a mental note to look for an umbrella like that. Random things that make one laugh out loud are worthy of a few minutes of online safari.
Those who’d taken the umbrella challenge that morning and guessed wrong were already soaking wet. Hoodies simply don’t help. One woman stopped to peer in the shop window.
“She doesn’t see us,” Hodgins said.
I jerked my attention to him. “Why not?”
He shrugged. “The store isn’t here for her. She sees an empty space.”
It had been a full fifteen minutes since Winkleman had last said something preposterous, but this latest statement reminded me that I was conversing with a crazy man.
“Right.” Looking back toward the front of the store I saw that she’d gone, but I continued to stare at the street scene. Something about it made me wish I could paint one of those rainy-day watercolors with umbrellas. Maybe I’d consider that. A tow truck was pulling away with the cab rolling behind on its back wheels. The van had already been picked up, leaving no trace it had been there except for pieces of glass and bits of metal on the street.
“You owe me an answer.”
“Very well,” he said as he picked up our snail stroll. “Hard question. Easy answer,” he said. “This,” he waved his right hand at the store in grand fashion,” is here for you. Today and today alone. As am I. In short, it’s not about me.”
“Oh, you dog!” I said.
“I beg your pardon.” He sounded as if he might be genuinely offended.
“That is not an answer. I’ve been gypped.”
“First, it is an answer and a good one. Second, that’s pejorative and slurs are beneath you.”
I felt my head shaking in confusion. “What are we talking about?”
“Your use of the term ‘gypped’. Racist, isn’t it?”
“What? No.” I thought about it. “Well, um, I guess I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“I see.”
“Ooh. That sounded really judgy.”
“Is that an abbreviated way of saying judgmental?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m here to oversee an experiential reckoning. Not judge.”
“Maybe. But you leaked.”
“If that means what I think it means, I believe you are projecting your own feelings onto me.”
“Pop psych?” Perhaps from habit, I looked at my watch. People in the mixed media department at the museum would be wondering about me soon. “Excuse me. I need to let work know I’m out this morning.”
I held up one finger in the universally accepted gesture of hold on a minute. My call was answered by voicemail. “Oh hi.” Sniff. “It’s Mary Marie. I left without an umbrella and got soaked.” Small cough. “I’m heading back home to get dry and stay in with some chicken soup. See you tomorrow. Hopefully.”
I was involved in the creation of a special section on the Aesopica, commonly known as Aesop’s Fables. I’d been instrumental in assembling a collection of related art and we were now engaged in pairing narrated stories with their artistic interpretation. Visitors to the museum would be able to stand in front of a painting or relief, push an information button and listen to that particular fable through headphones acquired at check in. Each of the stories had been read by a celebrity whose voice was recognizable. I expected the exhibit to be very popular, especially with families.
I ended the call and slipped my phone back in my pocket. When I looked up, there was no question in my mind that I read judgment on Winkleman’s face.
“What?”
“Contrary to conclusions reached by those given to assumption, I’m not a mind reader. If you have a question, I’ll need more than ‘what’?”
“You were giving me a you’ve-been-bad look.”
“I don’t have a you’ve-been-bad look.”
“You do. And that was it.”
“Again. Projection.”
“Look. I don’t think projection means what you think it means.”
“I’m comfortably certain that I’m using the term correctly.”
“Well, you’re not. And I should know, at the end of his illness, Freud had an afternoon in the store.”
I felt my face light up and reveled in the consternation Winkleman felt when he realized I’d tripped him up. “Winkleman,” I sing-songed provocatively. “Wasn’t that like just before World War II?”
“Ms. Campbell,” he said after making a visible adjustment of composure. “It’s your day. Far be it for me to want to argue with the interpretations you choose to put on psychological theories. For the sake of moving along, let’s agree you are right.”
I gave that little speech the weight it deserved. In other words, I ignored it. “You think I shouldn’t have lied to work about being sick.” He looked away as if he was determined to avoid being put in the position of answering honestly. “I guess I could’ve said, I can’t come today because I’m busy with the strange overseer of a charming, but bizarre store that doesn’t exist and I’m being given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do anything. That’s right. Anything. Until I’m satisfied with the experience. I could be rich. Smart. Talented. Powerful. Famous. No, not famous. Legendary. Furthermore, I could choose to be anything anywhere anytime. Even an NFL linebacker.” Pause. “You think they might have a problem with my excuse for not coming in today?”
Winkleman screwed up his mouth. “Not that I was being judgmental. Because I was not. But you do make a good point.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
“Young lady, sarcasm is beneath you.”
I laughed. “Don’t think you can needle me with the ‘young lady’ thing. I refuse to object to being called either young or lady and refuse to accept that it means diminished status in your eyes. I would aspire to youth, but that’s ridiculous. I do aspire to being a lady. My mother told me that a lady always does the kindest thing in the kindest way. While I may aspire to being a lady, I fall woefully short because the fact is that sarcasm is not beneath me. I love sarcasm. I thrive on sarcasm. I don’t know how I would navigate life in the absence of sarcasm. I wouldn’t have survived my sham of a marriage without sarcasm. There’s no doubt I’d be in the looney bin.” The gilded birdcage elevator caught my attention from the corner of my eye and caused me to suck in a little gasp as I looked around. “Uh oh.”
Winkleman chuckled and shook his head. “Delightfully unpredictable.”
For the first time, I was confronting my part in this. “Winkleman. Tell me the truth. Am I hallucinating?”
“Oh, my dear, no. From the depth of my assurance, you are not. Although this,” he held out his arms as if embracing the entire store and its contents, “is only for you, it is also quite real and material. As am I. There is little doubt you’re of sound mind.”
“On the one hand that’s a relief. On the other, wouldn’t I be likely to conjure an hallucinatory companion who’d say just that?”
With a shake of his head, he countered. “No. Such a figment of imagination would be more likely to say there is no doubt you’re of sound mind, leaving little room for conjecture.”
“Except that my hallucination would know to take that into account. My hallucination saw The Princess Bride.”
“I saw that movie.”
“So did everybody else.”
“Unfortunately, the only way I could persuade you conclusively that you’re in command of your faculties would deprive you of your gift.”
“Meaning what?”
He shrugged. “You’re not under any obligation to believe anything I say or accept anything you see. You could satisfy your skepticism right now by walking out into the rain. In the event you choose to do so, the instant drops begin to pelt your umbrella, you’ll hear the pop and feel the slight vibration in the handle. You’ll experience the rise in humidity and know for certain you are sane. You’ll turn around to run back inside and inform me that I am real. But alas. What you’d find, when you attempted to return, would be an empty storefront where wonder resided temporarily and closed shop. And you’d have walked away from a prize sought by many and obtained by few. All because the process of maturation has completely robbed you of the little girl who imagined there was a muffin man who lived on Drury Lane.”
I looked toward the door. Was it tempting to do what he said? Just walk out? No. Not really. Without conscious buy in, at some point I’d committed to seeing this through. The thought crossed my mind that insanity might sometimes be fun for the afflicted. But that was neither here nor there. As fantastic as the morning had proved to be, I didn’t really suspect that I’d lost it.
Winkleman was standing with his arms crossed, waiting patiently while I attempted to resolve my own neuroses.
“Was there?” I cocked my head. He looked confused and I realized the question was shorthand. “I mean was there a muffin man who lived on Drury Lane?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. You carry the underlayment of that experience either way. It’s part of who you are, but consider that it’s been buried too deeply.
“Would you care for a break?” he asked pointing to a soda fountain off to the side that I hadn’t noticed before. “Coke float? Banana split?”
“Winkleman.”
“Hmmm?”
“Has that been here the whole time?”
“The soda fountain? No. It came when called.”
“Who did the calling? You or me?”
“Why you did, my dear. You must’ve had a passing thought about a pleasant experience with a soda fountain.”
To the best of my ability, I rewound the whir of noise that had paraded past my consciousness for the past couple of minutes. I may have recalled a day when my mother took me to my first piano lesson. I didn’t like the teacher and insisted I didn’t want to learn piano.
Mom took me to a small family-owned pharmacy in an older part of town. It had a soda fountain much like the one I was looking at. We had chicken salad sandwiches on toast with lettuce and tomato and I had a chocolate malt to go with it. I’d be hard pressed to name a more memorable lunch. She assured me that she wasn’t going to force me to learn piano. After all, it had been my idea.
“So, the store, um, reconfigures itself?”
He nodded, looking around proudly. “All the time. It never gets old because it never stays the same.”
“I see.”
“Unlikely,” he said as he began walking toward the soda fountain.
I wondered if that was a dig. Did Winkleman think I’m slow?
“So, I could order anything I want?”
“At your service. The more detail the better.”
“I’ll have a brownie with two scoops of Starbucks Jamocha Almond Fudge ice cream on top and Hershey’s syrup on top of that.”
I was secretly pleased when I saw him hesitate slightly. “Are you really going to eat that?”
I looked at my watch. “I know it’s early, but I had a light breakfast and I plan to skip lunch. It would be worth skipping dinner as well. So yeah. If you can produce what I’m holding in my mind, I can eat it.”
Not only did he recreate my vision exactly, but he served it in a thick green glass bowl with a Wallace Rose Point sterling spoon exactly like the kind my grandmother had. I smiled knowing the ice cream would make the spoon cold and enhance the experience.
“You really do know everything about me, Winkleman.”
“Just the good stuff.”
“Really? I wish I only knew the good stuff.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I don’t?”
“The good stuff makes you charming. The other stuff makes you strong, resilient, and interesting.”
“Well. When you put it that way…”
“It clarifies perspective.”
“Yes. It does.” After taking a bite of ooey gooey death by chocolate, I said, “Winkleman, this is even better than I imagined.” He smiled and leaned against the marble counter behind him. “Don’t you want to join me?” He gave my concoction a dubious look. “You don’t have to eat this. You could have something different.”
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll have apple pie with a thick piece of melted cheddar cheese on top.”
I suspected I gave him a look of near horror. He laughed softly. “To each their own?”
“Sure,” I agreed, vowing not to look if he actually intended to eat pie with melted cheese. He sat down next to me on a red leather swivel stool. “You seem wise, Winkleman. Has this always been your job, or did you have another occupation before you worked, um, here?”
“Trying to squeeze more info out of me, are you? Here’s a question for you. Have you always been so inquisitive about other people?”
“First, I wouldn’t call it a squeeze. Just friendly conversation. You have me at a disadvantage since, as you’ve said repeatedly, you know everything about me.”
“Before accepting my current post as caretaker of the Curious Goods store, I was engaged in a wide variety of ways to make a living or, as you put it, occupy myself. One of my fondest memories is that of being a teacher.”
“I can see how that would suit you. Did you teach children or older students?”
“At the time, society was different because life was harder. My students were young adults, but more mature than their contemporaries are today.”
“I see. Was that here? In New York?”
With a soft laugh, Winkleman said, “Your curiosity borders on prying.”
“That depends entirely on how you look at it. You could see it simply as having an interest in you.”
“Why are you so interested in me, Ms. Campbell? Most of my customers are much more interested in what I can do for them.”
I shrugged. “Everything about you suggests a past worth hearing. You know I have a professional as well as personal interest in the fantastic. So, you shouldn’t be surprised that I want to hear your story. That and…”
“And what? Go on.”
“I suppose you’ve caught me at a moment in my life when I’m both excited and content.”
“Ah!” He clapped his hands once. “You’re likely onto something. You’ve already taken steps to supply your own need for new or different experience. Again. Brava. Still, I’m here and this,” once again he waved at the offerings,” is available to you. Consider it a bonus.”
Looking over my shoulder while allowing my tastebuds to fully blossom around jamocha almond fudge ice cream, I nodded, swallowed, and said, “Okay.”
“A gift for the girl who has everything,” Winkleman said as if he wasn’t expecting to be heard.
“Woman.”
“What?” he asked absently.
“A gift for the woman who has everything.”
“Ah, yes.” He chuckled. “Sometimes I forget the preferred language of the times.”
“No harm. No foul. So do I.”
“Instead, of talking about me. Let’s discuss some of the things you’ve seen so far that were interesting to you.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m not still more interested in you, but when it started raining and the street filled with umbrellas?”
