Free The Witch of the Wood by Michael Aronovitz Page A

sitting at the edge of his bed, face flushed and long black curly hair tangled almost as badly as was her daughter’s.
    “I . . . I . . . want to . . .” she said. She touched her face, smoothed her skirt. She looked up at Rudy with guilt and wanting, face shiny with nervous anticipation. She had charcoal eyes, dark skin, a studded sliver cross resting on the left breast, and a red sash pulled tight around her waist. She was a Puerto Rican beauty named Ann-Marie, and her breath was high. She’d been a good girl all her life, hating the clichés about women of Spanish descent having big asses, fake fingernails, and the desire to pop babies out as if they were peanuts in a vending machine, but she loved flashy colors and she was going to flaunt them. Little Brianna was her sweet mistake, but the two of them were facing the world together. Ann-Marie worked as a hostess at the Howard Johnson’s on West Chester Pike by the motor parts store, and she was going to community college for business management. She was poor, but generally happy.
    “Cease,” Rudy muttered into his collar, and Wolfie’s sticky little bio of Ann-Marie stopped rubbing and droning on in his head. Ann-Marie folded her hands, sat up straight, and tried to explain.
    “We were taking a walk. My Brianna likes the way the sun sparkles off the reservoir, and he, your son, called to us. We came in. He promised . . . you.”
    She looked up at Rudy, eyes half-lidded.
    “I don’t know why, but I’ve dreamed of you, or a man like you.”
    “And I you,” Rudy said softly. And it was true. He’d always had a thing for the Spanish flair, but more importantly, he’d always possessed somewhat of a specific picture, partly in the back of his mind, somewhat in the forefront, of an “Ann-Marie,” personal and unique, sometimes with a little nick on one knee from when she must have fallen off a bike or a skateboard, or possibly some soft dark hair on her forearms that embarrassed her as a child yet she managed as an adult . . . some flaw that had made her human, and not some two-dimensional Macy’s advertisement. And even though it was probable that this Ann-Marie didn’t have a nick on her knee, it was clear as day she’d look sexy standing in a doorway, or lying back on his bed with all that hair fanned out behind her. It was as if he knew her and he didn’t, and it was rather exciting to fathom that for whatever reason, he fit her sexual profile as well.
    Rudy paused. Ordinarily, he would never talk to the hostess at Ho-Jo’s. Stare at her, yes. Fantasize about running his hands along the small of her back, the swell of her bosom, sure. But asking her out? Meeting her parents? Dealing with her crazy brother? Babysitting her kid while she went off to class? Driving out to the Interstate where her used clunker had broken down again? The thought would just never advance like that, not for most of us anyway, as we sat there “making appropriate plans” in the Ho-Jo’s booths we were anxious to vacate.
    So sad.
    We let our ideal partners wander off into the shadows of their cultures. Then we both disappeared. It was a class thing, and it was stupid.
    Rudy moved closer and knelt on the floor. He delicately pushed the hem of her dress up and almost gasped when he saw a small nick in the skin, left knee, a tiny indentation, long healed.
    “I’m a professor,” he whispered, looking up into her eyes. She moaned, and when he bent and kissed the imperfection she came right there on his bed. At the same moment, Wolfie made a playful whooping sound on the other side of the door to mask the sounds of it.
    For the sake of the daughter.
    And it was the second best sex Rudy Barnes had ever had in his life.
    Ann-Marie came out of the bedroom adjusting her dress, Rudy right behind her, running his hands through his thinning hair. She gathered up Brianna and turned back to Rudy, looking at him and the floor at the same time.
    “I don’t usually . . .”
    “I know,”