Catch 26: A Novel. Carol Prisant

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СКАЧАТЬ addition, I’m guessing, just guessing now, that Frannie Turner loves movies.”

      Of course she’d know that.

      “Or what about your own film studio? You could be a director, Frannie Lean! Frannie Hitchcock. Plumper, but so incredibly cool. Wait. Even better … a movie star! Worshiped! Adored! Having – what’s that line? – ‘A billion shop girls ape you, a billion farmhands rape you?’ ” Randi squinted at Frannie’s face and frowned. “Maybe not.”

      ‘Okay, then, want to write the next Ulysses? Be a painter, perhaps? Some kind of avant-garde sculptor who suspends dead CEOs in formaldehyde. Now, that’d be a leap! And wait. Then you could sell them to live CEOs and hedge-fund guys for millions.” Randi mused. “I don’t see you as a rock star, though. More like an opera star, I think. Or how about this? The first female quarterback!”

      Randi was so excited she lit a third cigarette, unwrapped a piece of gum and put both in her mouth at once.

      “You’re getting the idea now, right?”

      Beside her, Frannie, a dumpy old doe in the headlights, mutely nodded.

      “Is it sinking in now that I can give you anything you’ve ever desired, Frannie? Anything. You can have, be, or do anything you want in this world. As long as you’re ours in the next.”

      Frannie turned away from her probing gaze to watch a young couple strolling past their booth, the boy riffling a handful of crisp bills.

      “So, you know,” she heard him say, “I thought I’d buy myself a headband.”

      The girl seemed delighted.

      “You’d have to own it, though,” she said. “Like, you’d have to own the eighties-ness of it.”

      Her partner stopped moving, his eyes widening at Randi. The money spilled out of his hand.

      “What? I missed that,” he said to the girl, as he knelt to gather his cash.

      Randi waited silently until they’d passed.

      “See? That’s my thing. I can turn it off, turn it on – at will.”

      And if it weren’t for the confusion filling her mind and the really unpleasant smell filling her nostrils (was Randi passing gas?) Frannie thought she’d could probably sit here all night, enjoying her pleasant little buzz and this fabulous nut, who was trying to woo her with a fantasy. She could be whatever she wanted to be. Sure. Miss Make-Yourself-Over-right-now, she thought.

      Her sales pitch complete, Randi relaxed into the velvety booth, stretched one perfect arm along its top and flashed her phosphorescent teeth at nothing.

      That pungent odor again. Frannie grabbed at her handbag, felt around for tissues and finding none – nor a used handkerchief either – she snapped it shut. Surreptitiously pinching her nostrils, she sat back as well. To think about fame. About money. About this stench. And success. And her soul.

      Randi was promising her beauty and youth. But they weren’t what she’d really sell her soul for.

      Randi hadn’t even touched on it. Why?

      Abruptly, she picked up her glass and downed the dregs. They tasted, just faintly, of char.

      Well, Randi, she thought, there were occasional advantages to being a sixty-six-year-old movie buff. After all, she’d seen The Devil and Daniel Webster, plus a lot of old Vincent Price, and she knew – knew beyond doubt – that no one made this particular deal without having a major something in writing. And that was why, if she was going to play along at all – and she was more and more tempted to (Tempted! Ha!) – this would need to be a legitimate business deal. With a contract.

      So she’d do it, she decided. Why not? She’d ask for a formal contract. In writing. With a loophole, of course. Because deals with the Devil always had a loophole in them, didn’t they? And while she actually didn’t believe in Hell, or in devils, or, most of the time, in souls – what if this was really real and she was wrong?

      Randi had shut her eyes and was nibbling her thumb.

      “Randi, I need to know, I mean, okay, let’s say there really are these portals and let’s say – though I may be drunk right now, or at home in bed dreaming this – you’re an emissary, in fact, for Mrs. Anders …”

      “Andros,” Randi interrupted her, annoyed.

      “Anyway, if I decide to do this, this, um, deal, can I ask for anything I want? And can we put it on paper? I mean I know there’s no court on earth that could challenge a thing like this, but if there really are deals with the Devil, Randi, and if all this hasn’t bubbled up from the Hell of my non-early- Alzheimer’s brain, then well.… there could be a heaven, too, couldn’t there?”

      Her companion, truly irritated now, it seemed, looked up at the smoke-heavy ceiling and rolled her eyes. But Frannie plowed on. “Still, heaven does like to write things down, doesn’t it. I mean, take Moses and the tablets, right? So I’d like to do that, too.”

      All complacency and charm suddenly, Randi folded her hands on the tabletop again. No nail polish, Frannie saw, but lots of lipstick, still. All juicy and red, as well, and with hair unmussed and cheeks as peachy as a child’s.

      “Tablets? You want tablets, Frannie dear? What – exactly – do you have in mind?”

      “Okay.” Frannie was encouraged by that “dear.” She grew almost articulate for the first time tonight. Nothing remotely like a suburban St. Louis housewife or a frightened old woman with nothing to lose but nothing to live for either.

      “So,” she began, “I’m sixty-six and old, as both of us have pointed out, and recently, well, that’s been getting, shall I say, hard? And yet, in my long – granted, dull – life, I’ve experienced a few of the things that people think make most people happy, but have found that, in fact, they don’t. I’ve also learned that no matter what you have or who you are, everybody’s crazy, and everybody’s hurt. That’s just the way life and things are.

      “So here I am, crazy and hurt and not a saint and really unhappy, if I’m honest, and all those accomplishments you’ve been offering, they’re incredibly tempting. And I’m truly appreciative, Randi. I am.” (Would she ever get over being Miss Manners?) “But I think they’re too rich for me. Kind of like lobster, these days. Perhaps if I were younger; perhaps if I were a man. But I’m an elderly woman. And I know exactly what I’d sell myself for. You know it, too. You’ve known it all along.”

      No reaction from Randi, who seemed to be eyeing another waitress. Frannie began to feel she’d been talking to herself. Quite possibly, she had.

      “So. A child, Randi. That’s my price. And if I’m allowed to ask for two things,” still no acknowledgment, “well, then, I’d want the reciprocal love of a wonderful man. That’s all. Although I guess I’d probably have to be younger for both – and beautiful, too, because beautiful would make the man part easier, right?”

      She’d been trying to sound nonchalant, but couldn’t quite carry it off. Her voice broke slightly.

      “If you can offer me that, we have a deal,” she said very softly now. “A bargain. СКАЧАТЬ