Catch 26: A Novel. Carol Prisant

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СКАЧАТЬ wondered?) “Not a pearly one, I suppose.”

      “Not remotely pearly. You were standing there this morning, in fact.”

      Frannie had to struggle to remember where she’d been this morning.

      “Oh, you mean The Hair House?” She pondered that for a moment. “You mean a beauty parlor is the door to Hell?”

      “We like to call it a portal.”

      “Who’s ‘we’?”

      “Those of us who own Hair House franchises.”

      “You mean there are more of you? Of them?”

      “I mean there are hundreds, all over the world.”

      “Oh my God!” she said, before catching herself. “Oh, I’m sorry!”

      “You don’t have to be sorry. God knows all about us. We suspect she sometimes sends us clients.”

      Was she having this conversation?

      Surreptitiously, she glanced at Randi’s fingers again. All ten were intact.

      “And who owns these places?”

      “Just ordinary women like us. Like you and me.” Randi paused. “Or maybe, more like me. Women who longed to look like movie stars or celebrities. Women who were born quite plain, some of them. Or disfigured. Women who’d grown sick and old. Women who were unhappy with themselves.”

      “And you are one of those?”

      “I was.”

      Was she actually taking this seriously? That had to have been a stupid magic trick and Randi, a crazy person. But somehow, she needed to hear more. So maybe she’d finish this drink. Or order another, because this drink had – oh, God – quenched that terrible finger.

      “So how does it work?” she asked, hoping to sound convincingly interested. She didn’t want to make this madwoman mad.

      “Well,” Randi began, looking pleased and settling in, “it’s fairly simple. In exchange for making us look like I do and/or making us immortal, Mrs. Andros, our founder, sets up a Hair House in a city that doesn’t have one. In return, we find her souls.”

      Really? Frannie thought. That easy?

      She studied Randi’s face in the half-light. The woman didn’t look delusional (whatever that looked like) and she’d explained the “arrangement” in such a casual way, as if she’d done it many times.

      “All of them want the makeover or the do-over, but not everyone wants the immortality thing. So we’ve learned to create ‘custom deals’,” she made quotation marks with her fingers. “Like what I did with those men tonight, for instance. Sexual power was a big part of my own personal deal.”

      Frannie was silent.

      “Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that, too? Have them just drool over you? Want you to the exclusion of everything – everything – else? Be blind to everything else but you? Blind to, oh … sports and religion and politics. And money? I’ve got to tell you, I just love it. I love it like napalm in the morning.”

      Frannie’s jaw dropped. What? Randi goes to movies?

      ‘I mean, if I want to get laid, of course, I only have to pull out my phone, but sometimes, a little thing like tonight …” She lit another cigarette. “You know, it’s especially exciting when they try to touch me.” She exhaled at the ceiling. “They regret it, you know. I’m hot.”

      She hooted, enjoying her pun.

      “Eons and eons have passed and, I’ll be honest. I’ve never gotten used to this thing! Almost makes you believe in Her.’ She looked toward the ceiling again, briefly.

      The velvet upholstery swished faintly as she slid a little closer.

      “Really. Be honest now. Wouldn’t you like to be Delilah, Frannie? Jezebel? Helen of Troy? Marilyn?” She took a deep, luxurious puff from another Marlboro and picked a shred of something off the tip of her tongue. “Although Helen wasn’t that terrific, actually.”

      Randi began reapplying her lipstick without even looking, and Frannie, who was beginning to think she was almost drunk enough to play along with all this, was momentarily envious. The thing seemed so deliciously … possible … just now.

      Although, down below the alcohol, below the cerebral, there was something terrible squirming on its belly. And sneering.

      Beside her, that husky voice dripped blandishments.

      “Stick with me, Frannie dear, and men will ache for you, weep for you. Women will envy you.” (Ah, she did read minds) “You’ll know power and earthly success. You’ll be ravishing. Desirable. You’ll possess all that you’ve secretly longed for.”

      Until this moment, Frannie could truthfully say she’d never craved physical beauty. And definitely not power. But here, in this moment, she sensed the tiniest yearning for both; a furtive tug of lust.

      She hoped it didn’t show.

      “And what do you want in exchange?” Frannie smiled. “My soul?”

      “Exactly.”

      She slid to the very end of the velvet seat. “You want me to agree to burn in eternal Hellfire?

      “Isn’t that the usual deal?”

      “Hellfire.” She repeated the word. And, shocking herself, she replied, “Give me a minute to think about it.”

      But instead, she was madly thinking: I am so incredibly drunk to be sitting here on a seedy gambling boat discussing selling my soul to a peculiar – no, crazy – hairdresser. Another minute to think? What was there to think about? This discussion was insane.

      Her skirt was uncomfortably caught between her thighs and she was mechanically pulling it free and pressing the wrinkles out when her eye was caught by the backs of her hands. Stanley was right. They were wrinkled and veinous and pocked with liver spots. And Randi’s repellent finger appeared in her mind just then, and as it appeared, the slot-machine bells pinged seductively, and then ebbed and faded away and vanished as something terrifying – something cold and sick – clicked on in her brain.

      This was real.

      Maybe.

      Frannie fought back.

      “You’re not really a ‘gatekeeper’, are you, Randi? That was a trick with the finger.”

      “Aren’t I?”

      “Well, okay.” Let’s be fair here, she thought. “Let’s say you are. But here’s the thing … I mean I believe in the soul, I think. I’m not sure, but I think I might. But I’ve never believed in Hell, really. So what I’m trying to say is …” Oh, God, Frannie thought, are we talking religion here? “I don’t think I believe in boiling pits of Hellfire or horned СКАЧАТЬ