“I keep forgetting,” I said to no one in particular. “Which gear am I supposed to put this thing in?”
We were trying to make it over the pass but not making much
progress: we were being passed by sixteen-wheelers, station wagons, sport utility vehicles, and campers filled with retired Wisconsins.
Neither Frank nor Liv had any idea which gear was best suited for uphill driving, but Frank, the hitchhiker we’d picked up outside of a Basque restaurant in Bakersfield, did his best to help me out.
The result was a horrible rumbling sound.
“That doesn’t sound good, Melanie,” said Liv from the back seat.
“No, Liv,” I agreed, “it does not sound good at all.”
. . .
As we crept over the hill, Frank kept shifting in his seat; he was trying to make room for his over-sized feet.
“Sorry about the mess,” I said.
There were books all over the floor including The Birth Order Book;
a copy of The Atlantic Monthly from October 1914; volume two of Las
aventuras de Don quixote; The Cat In the Hat; two S.E. Hinton novels;
and a collection of magic spells. Of course, Frank had to go straight for
the book of spells.
“Oh, god!” I muttered, as he flipped through the pages and turned to
the index.
Liv was much more pleased than I by Frank’s discovery.
“This book is yours?” asked Frank.
“Yes.”
“You're a witch?”
I nodded. "That's right. I’m a witch.”
“You don't look like a witch.”
“What does a witch look like?”
“Well, witches are supposed to be old,” he said. “And . . . green.”
I turned to him quickly and explained what I thought everybody
knew by now: “Frank, only bad witches are ugly.”
“You're not bad?”
“Not that bad.”
He smiled slightly and adjusted his seat. “I'm glad you’re not bad.”
“Everybody's glad,” agreed Liv, and then for a while none of us said
a word.
. . .
But Frank didn't turn out to be as willing as I'd previously hoped to
let the subject drop. He was feeding carrots through the seat to Azrael,
who sat in her cage on the back seat next to Liv, and caressing the cross
around his neck. Liv, true to form, was trying to get me into trouble.
“Ask Melanie if she's ever cast an evil spell,” she whispered to
Frank.
He dropped his carrot and turned toward me.
“Have you ever cast an evil spell?” he asked.
“Put a curse on anyone, you mean?” I thought about it for a while.
“Only once,” I said finally. That didn’t count the curse I was just in the process of dreaming
up for Liv.
“Did it work?” asked Frank. He was touchingly naive.
“I think it did, yes.”
“Ask Melanie about nocturnal emissions,” said Liv.
Frank turned with inquiring eyes.
“It's the succubi,” I explained slowly, “they collect human semen
released during, as Liv puts it, ‘nocturnal emissions’; with the semen
they fashion themselves the bodies they’d been denied.”
“Bodies?” He sounded slightly disgusted.
“Female bodies,” added Liv.
“Then they go out into the world seducing males. At bars and stuff.
They like to steal semen.”
“Sometimes they sprout male genitalia, don't they, Melanie?”
“Yes they do, Liv. Yes they do.”
“Bodies of semen?” repeated Frank. He sounded pretty bad, like
he was going to throw up or something. Probably it was the altitude
and the winding roads.
I added quickly: “That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”
He nodded but didn't say a word. I think he was praying; I think he
was making a vow never to hitchhike again.
I tried to get him to talk a bit about birth order but he wasn't interested.
