Dorothy Mcintosh - The Witch of Babylon

I was on the point of telling her to forget it when I realized I’d need a major favor from her, so I decided to go along with what she wanted.

“We’ll just do a short version because it’s late.”

“How did you figure out the rules? No one has ever found them for the game.”

“Trust me.” She gave me a lopsided smile and pushed the little pyramids toward me.

I shook them and let them spill onto the bar.

Diane leaned over and peered at the dice. “Okay, move four spaces.”

I took one of the playing pieces and placed it on the first space in the second row of three squares.

“You’re one short of landing on a rosette.”

“Is that bad?”

“You could say so. It’s a penalty space. It means to expect a secret communication; the news won’t be good.”

“Well, that’s appropriate for tonight.” I picked up the dice and threw them again.

Her face blanched.

“What is it? I thought you said there were no good or bad choices.”

“You threw six. You’ve missed another rosette and landed again on the eyes. One of the worst spaces.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It foretells betrayal and violent death.”

This gave me a jolt and for a minute words deserted me. Fortune-telling is a con, but coming after a day that had turned into a nightmare it didn’t take much to unsettle me.

“There is hope,” Diane said quickly. “The talisman of Sol is also associated with the space. Only the sign of the sun can save you.”

“From what?”

“It protects you from murder.”

This was getting bizarre. Surely she couldn’t know about Hal.

My expression must have betrayed my thoughts because she added, “I’m not making this up, if that’s what you think.”

I cast around for something to say: “So … why choose Sol? He’s a Roman god, not Mesopotamian.”

Diane seemed a bit miffed by my skepticism. “Sometimes you have to improvise.”

On the next throw one of the dice fell onto the floor on her side of the counter.

“That won’t count.” She bent down to pick it up. “I’m curious whether the love sign will turn up. Let’s see what it would have foretold. Together with the other die you’d have moved three more spaces. That position is kind of interesting. It would have meant ‘happiness follows sorrow.’ Kind of oblique. I’m not sure how to read it.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in here with anyone special.”

“I go out on dates and everything seems good, but they don’t call me back.”

She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. You’re the one who doesn’t call back. The last time you were in, two women actually offered me money to get your phone number, going on about how hot you were. So good-looking, they kept saying. It got totally boring having to listen to them. Then they bet which one would go home with you. It’s those dark eyes of yours. And your beard, I guess. It gives you kind of a European look.”

“So who did?”

“Go home with you? You can’t even remember, can you?” She shook her head and smiled flirtatiously.

Under ordinary circumstances I’d have thought about pursuing her. Tonight I could barely keep my act together. “Diane, I really appreciate the compliment but I’m stretched too thin right now. I don’t have the energy for this.” I gathered up the dice and playing pieces and put them back in the box.

“Fine.” She flattened her hands and pushed herself away in a huff. “Lighten up. You’re not helping yourself by taking everything so seriously.”

For a goth, this seemed an overreaction. She ignored me and got busy tidying up the drink glasses, wiping down the bar, and adding up the evening’s take. Every time she bent over, her hip-huggers slipped down far enough to reveal the crease at the rise of her buttocks.

Her remark about the beard was flattering. I kept it cropped close to my face and it did fit my professional image, but I’d grown it for an entirely different reason. To hide the firebrand birthmark on my jaw. A source of extreme embarrassment throughout my teens, shaped like a rough letter Q, it stood out on my face like an ugly scar.

It was 4 A.M. by the time the waiter, Stan, set the locks and left and Diane finished her tasks. From the doorway I gave the street another scan, trying to decide whether it was safe to go home. At the intersection of Thompson and Bleecker, I saw a silver Range Rover stopped at the curb. Could that be Eris?

I decided not to take the chance and offered to walk Diane to the Chase Bank on Broadway to make the night deposit. Over the last couple of hours the temperature had soared. People still roamed the streets, refugees from cramped apartments with no air conditioning. A guy stood with his back pressed against a store window, holding five pet rats on his forearm, two white, two brown, and one pinto. Their long, pink, naked tails dangled below his arm and twitched when he stroked them. His baseball cap sat upturned on the sidewalk.

“He’s always here at night,” Diane said. “He clears out in the morning because a hot dog vendor has a permit for this spot. People give him money to pet the rats.”

She put the brown envelope with the take from the till in the bank’s night deposit box and closed the drawer. I took her arm gently. I needed to ask her for the favor before she left.

“Diane, I’m wondering if you could help me out with something.”

“Sure, what?”

“I ran into a problem tonight. I had nothing to do with what went down, but I want to stay out of it. If anyone asks, could you say I showed up at Kenny’s around midnight?”

“If anyone asks ? Like who? The police?”

“It’s possible.”

“You swear you weren’t involved in this … problem?”

“I swear. Chances are no one will ask you anything anyway.”

“I guess it’s okay.”

“What about Stan?”

“Not to worry, he’s cool.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Hey Diane, thanks a lot.”

She flagged a cab and climbed in, blowing me a kiss as it drove off.

I lingered at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker, then I began walking the block to my building, and seeing club-goers still milling around, decided to take the risk. The doorman, Amir, on overnight duty this week, trotted over the minute I stepped into the lobby. “John! Did you leave town or something? It’s been ages since I’ve seen you.”

“I’ve been keeping my head down since the accident.”

He lowered his voice. “So terrible about your brother. A wonderful man.”

“He was. It’s hard for me to believe he’s gone. Amir, has anyone been around tonight asking about me?”

“A lady came to see you. She waited and waited. She must have asked me to call you a dozen times. I finally agreed to help her upstairs so she could knock on your door.”

“You what?”

Amir held up his hands, palms facing out. “What else could I do? She was frantic. She said she’d been trying to get hold of you for weeks.”

“She can be very persuasive, Amir. That was just an act. If you ever see her again, get her out of here. Don’t let her anywhere near me.”

“All right,” he said, obviously hurt that he’d gone overboard to be courteous to someone he thought was a friend of mine. “She was in a wheelchair. What else did you expect me to do?”

“A wheelchair? What did she look like?”

“Older. Dressed in black. A black jacket and long dress. Too hot for this kind of weather. One of those wheelchair-accessible vans dropped her off at the front door.”

He hadn’t been talking about Eris after all but rather Evelyn, our former housekeeper.