Free The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating by Carole Radziwill Page A

himself out. She woke up to a jar of pickle juice by her bed.

 
    9
    Sasha was appalled, naturally, when she found out Claire had gone to Beatrice. She hadn’t been consulted, no one had pleaded she come along, she hadn’t been asked for her post-reading dissection. In the classic chic of her uptown sitting room, she scoffed.
    “First, Claire, you never answer your phone, so people are worried about you. Second, everyone thinks you’re hiding because maybe you’ve run out of money. Third, no one goes to Beatrice anymore—she’s a carnival act. She hustles tourists, she hands her card out at the Empire State Building.”
    “I’m not hiding, I have money, and Beatrice said I would meet a lot of men … charlatans or something, but not have love. I think it was just because I brought socks instead of a picture.”
    “No one sees a psychic anymore, is all I’m saying.”
    “She seemed to know what she was doing.”
    “I just wish you’d talked to me, honey. Ethan doesn’t know everything; I have someone, too.”
    She handed Claire a black card with white print. It smelled of musk oil.
    “This is Eve, she’s my botanomanist. She saged Thom’s office and the apartment after that little thing with his personal assistant —the most ironic title ever—and our energy completely changed. But that’s not her forte, she’s the real thing. She’s not a kook.”
    “How did your energy change?”
    “The apartment is turmoil-free now,” she said, though her smile wobbled. “Go ahead, take a deep breath, you’ll smell it.”
    Claire took a breath and nodded, though she smelled neither turmoil nor calm.
    Sasha took a long, deep breath, too, and waved her arms through the air. “The lack of tension is palpable. Anyway, her first husband died, so she was a widow once. She’s perfect.”
    Ethan said divination. He said soothsayers and seers. How could one botanomanist hurt?
    *   *   *
    E VE LIVED AND herbed in a railroad-style apartment in Brooklyn. It had a markedly different feel than Beatrice’s stark uptown space. She was a small, thick woman. Squat was the word Charlie would have used. She answered the door in a black pantsuit with a bright Hermès scarf on her head and, after “Hello,” had little to say. She gestured for Claire to follow her and walked down a long hallway into a large, open room. There were comfortable chairs around a table and there was an orange bowl set out on top. A furry white cat curled up in the window like a pom-pom.
    She filled the bowl with rosemary stalks and a handful of sage leaves, then lit the strange little pile with a white lighter adorned with the face of Ringo Starr. “Do you like the Beatles?” Claire asked.
    “Not especially,” Eve replied. “It was a gift.”
    She added cannabis leaves to the fire, and the space took on a completely different feel. The smoke blurred the shapes in the room. Claire sat down across from a red Rothko that hung on the wall—unsigned, a knockoff—and wondered if all art is ultimately fake.
    Eve moved the rubble around with a cocktail stirrer.
    “A friend of mine,” Claire began.
    Eve put a hand up and shook her head. “Not yet. Don’t speak. What I see is that what was once a carefully structured life for you has come loose; it’s why you’re here. The thread has unraveled, the hem has come apart, and you’re not a seamstress.”
    Claire nodded her head in agreement. She was definitely not a seamstress.
    “You need help to smooth the ends. It’s definition you lack, and proper nutrition.”
    Eve unfavorably appraised the small body sitting across from her, and Claire was uncomfortably aware of the few pounds, yes, that she’d lost since returning from Texas to find Charlie dead.
    “Well, I eat, it’s just that … I’m a slight woman, I’m small-boned—”
    Eve’s hand, again, rose up and she went on. “The masses are shocked, you’ll learn, if you haven’t discovered it already,” she said, while still