Magicians can do more by means of faith than physicians by the truth.

Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Enthusiasts (1585) pt.1, Fifth Dialogue

 

On Wednesday afternoon, Ellen D’Este met her best friend Sydney Greene for lunch at Wah Sing, a favorite Chinese restaurant of theirs in downtown Pearl River.  It was Ellen’s day off and she knew that something was up because when Sydney had called and asked her to meet him, he had said there was something he wanted to talk to her about -- in person.  Sydney holding off a discussion was as likely as Ellen drawing her eyeliner on straight while driving.  Something was definitely up.

Ellen didn’t have to wait long.  Seconds after the arrival of their steamed dumplings, Sydney held her gaze and blurted, “I want you to meet someone.”

“You’ve got a new fellow.  Well, I’ll be!” 

“No, no, not like that, though I certainly wouldn’t mind.”  He leaned back, pushed his yellow-framed glasses up his nose and measured his words.  “Would you come with me to meet someone on Saturday?”

Ellen cringed. “I’m not the blind date type, Syd.  Mike and I have separated, but that doesn’t mean I need help arranging my social life.”  Anger replaced regret as handsome Mike’s image popped into her mind. 

“Not meet, meet, silly.”  Sydney raised his hands in frustration.  “It’s Miss Wendy I want you to see.”  He picked up his chopsticks and poked nervously at his food.
   
“Miss Wendy?”  She tried to place the name.

He aimed a finger at her.  “Give me a chance to explain before you say anything.  I know I’ve told you about her before.”

Sydney’s words came at her in a torrent.  She narrowed her eyes, steeling herself for the onslaught. “Miss Wendy can make you a believer, Ellen.  She’ll show you that there’s something bigger than yourself.” He pointed a chopstick at her.  “Don’t look at me like that! She could make a difference in your life if you’d let her.  At no charge, too.  I know how you are about that. You have to come with me to see her Saturday!” 

Ellen rolled her eyes.  “I’ve heard this type of pitch so many times from you.”  No wonder he’d wanted to speak to her in person.  She’d have hung up on him if he’d dared to ask her on the telephone.

“This is different.” Sydney speared a pot sticker, driving the point of his chopstick into the heart of his dumpling.  “She’s different.  You’ve got to give her a chance.  She’s going to reveal things to you that you never realized were there.”  He leaned toward her and whispered, “She’ll make you believe in God.”

“Syd, the only revelation I’ve ever had on one of these spiritual jaunts is the sight of my VISA bill growing larger.  That happens every time we go on one of your excursions in search of meaning.  I can’t believe that this is what you wanted to ask me.”  She glowered at him and took a sip of beer.

A chomping Sydney met her gaze and leveled the now empty chopstick at her chest.  "You're coming with me, Miss Smarty Pants.  You need this as much as I do.  Something in us all cries out for people like Miss Wendy."

“Oh, please!  Spare me!”

Sydney shrugged and handed her several leaflets with a woman’s beaming face on them.  “You should read these before you go.”

A dour waitress delivered a steaming platter of moo shu pork and a stack of pancakes.  Wordlessly she rolled each of them a serving of the dish, folding the pancakes into neat rectangles.  The tiny woman placed the remaining ingredients on the table and left them to their next course.

“If I did agree to come with you Syd, it wouldn’t be for any reason you’d like.”

“All I care about is that you come and maybe hear something that will get through that wall of yours.”

“If I come it’ll be to prove that you’re wrong about her, wrong about all this bullshit that people keep feeding you.”

“You are such a broken record. Say you’ll come with me.”  He bit into his moo shu pork. 

“We’ve been having this discussion about what’s out there since first year of college.  That’s almost fifteen years.  I respect your opinion.  Honest.  Can’t we agree to disagree?  I thought we’d reached a truce.”

“I still think one day you’ll see the light.”

“You’re impossible.”

He leaned back in his chair.  “Will you come with me to see her?  Please?”

"Fine!  I'll come with you to Miss Wendy's."  She wanted to grab the words back as soon as they flew from her mouth. 

Sydney leaned over the table and hugged her in victory.  "You'll see.  No one tells you what matters better than Miss Wendy.  She's inspirational!" 

Ellen wiped her mouth with her napkin.  "I have to hand it to you, Syd.  It looks like you've finally found something larger than both of us." She pointed at the beaming face of Miss Wendy on the flyer; a huge beaming face.

"Hah, hah." Sydney wrapped himself another moo shu pork.  He took a large bite and chewed with his eyes closed, savoring his food.       

“Didn’t you tell me once that she weighs four hundred pounds or something like that?”  She toyed with the last of her dumplings.

Syd waved at her dismissively.  “She knows what matters.  That’s what counts.  I adore listening to her.”  He smiled mischievously.  “And I’d adore hearing about your massage clients too if you’d be willing to spill.  You must hear and see some incredible things in your job.  Touching all those men … ”

She shook her head.  “Give it a rest, Syd.  What happens on my table is confidential, otherwise no one would be willing to hire me.”

He sniffed.  “You are such a goody two shoes.”  Suddenly, Sydney let out a yell and dropped his neatly wrapped pork onto his plate.  "Oh God, oh God, oh God!" A look of horror spread over his face, which went from white to green in a matter of fascinating seconds.

"What the heck is wrong?" Ellen looked around the almost empty restaurant.  The few patrons in the place shot nervous glances in their direction.

Sydney squirmed in his seat and moaned.  He pointed at his plate and Ellen studied it.  There, amidst the pork and egg and bits of shredded vegetables, wiggled an unmistakable cockroach.

“Hell, Syd, you’ve seen your share of roaches.  You going soft on me?”

The insect backed out of the wrapper onto the porcelain plate and it was then that Ellen saw Sydney's great cause for distress.  A cockroach was disgusting enough to find in your food.  This was half a cockroach.   

Sydney raced in the direction of the stairs leading to the bathroom, and Ellen did what any higher life form would do.  She reached for the fried noodles bowl and heard a satisfying crunch as she smashed it into the table, flattening for all time the revolting insect.

"You and your progeny be damned.  That's one less of you to survive the nuclear holocaust."

When Sydney returned from the bathroom pale and shaking Ellen pushed a cup of tea toward him.  “It might settle your stomach.”

"We're leaving. Hurry, hurry."

"Fine with me.  Wah Sing’s food was pretty crummy today even without the roach.  I’m glad I never got to the moo shu."

"You'll come with me, Saturday, won't you?"

"I've said I would."

"Please, Ellen.  I want you to hear her, so no last minute cancellations, no emergency massages."

"I'm tired of hearing about this damn fat seer.  Why the hell is she so fat anyway?  Can’t she see her future and what’ll happen to her if she keeps on stuffing herself?"

“I’ll meet you outside.”  He dropped a twenty on the table.  “I can’t bear to be in here any longer.”  Sydney turned and headed for the door, his yellow scarf pressed to his lips.

                         

Two nights later, driving home from her last massage appointment of the day, Ellen was in a foul mood. Besides having her own roster of clients, Ellen filled in as a part-time therapist at Sea Spa on the Upper East Side on Fridays.  Swedish massage, hot stone massage, you name it, she could stroke limbs any way a client wanted.  Today, she had lived to regret agreeing to stay on for one last hour to help out with a customer who had shown up without an appointment; one Mr. Hirohito. 

Mr. Hirohito, despite his name, was a tall, blue-eyed, blonde fellow with oily skin and a German accent, who continually made strange sucking noises as Ellen stroked his back.  It was bad enough that she didn’t want to touch people since Mike left; bad enough that she had been having trouble giving decent massages to anyone who remotely reminded her of Mike, and that meant anyone male, but Mr. Hirohito’s bizarre antics beneath her hands, his twitching of his shoulder blades, his restless legs that kicked up every few seconds, and that odd sucking noise he made, caused her to forget everything she had learned about dealing with an overstressed client.  She knew she was screwing up royally, pressing too hard on his spine, forgetting what parts of his body she had worked, never finding her rhythm.  Not that he seemed to notice. At one point he had jumped off the table, letting his towel fall to the ground. 

Afraid of what he might do, or ask her to do; (a request for a Happy Ending came to mind) she’d blinked and then not averted her gaze.  “Mr. Hirohito, please,” she’d said, handing him his towel which he wrapped around himself.  He’d paced around the room, carrying on about the Patriot Act and how unfair it was that he had to be fingerprinted when he visited this country, his eyes darting around as though he expected a federal agent to bust in on them.  Then he had settled back onto the table where she resumed her work, and he resumed his sucking noises.  At least he had tipped her well, forty dollars for a hundred buck massage.  She’d earned it and she’d never been so glad to place a bottle of water on a client’s table and leave.  She was taking a vacation for the next two weeks and did she ever need it.    

Ellen’s cell phone rang, jolting her out of her reverie.  She adjusted her headphone and steered her Jeep into the left lane as the voice of her best friend crackled over the line.  

"Elly belly, it's Sydney.  Where are you?"

"I’m in rush hour traffic on the West Side Highway."  She accelerated into an opening in the right lane.   

"I'm at The Blue Dog.  Happy hour." 

Ellen knew the place, an occasional noisy hangout of Sydney's. Shouts and music in the background crowded the space with Sydney's voice.  Traffic picked up speed and she kept up with the car in front of her.

"Drive over and I'll buy you a drink."

"No can do, Syd."

"Why not?" She could see his chiseled face topped with his trademark yellow glasses, full lips pressed to the mouthpiece as he chided her.  "You're finished rubbing and poking people for a few days so why not take a few pokes at some of the patrons here?  Maybe you'll get lucky and get poked yourself."  Ice cubes tinkled and she heard him swallow.

"You know I always go to St. Sebastian's group on Friday nights.  And I don't rub and poke people.  I'm a personal massage therapist.  A damn good one, I might add."  She didn’t mention her encounter with Mr. Hirohito or that lately she felt so burned out that she dreaded the thought of massaging anything but her own aching feet.  Ellen hit her brake as the car to her left cut her off.  Damn Connecticut blue flash. 

"You're never going to meet anyone.  Crummy job for that.  Crummier support group."

"It'd be unprofessional of me to take up with a client, and I don't go to St. Sebastian's to meet men."

"Well, neither do I.  Who would?"

"You used to go with me not that long ago."

"Ancient history.  I'm through with that whiny bunch.    But The Blue Dog on the other hand has potential.  Oh my, it certainly does."

"For you maybe."

"For you too, from what I see here tonight."

The phone crackled loudly and Ellen strained to hear her friend whose next words were almost lost in static.

“Enjoy your wallowing women, sweetie.  And say hi to Max for me.  I do miss that chubby little cad.  We should all go out one night.”  He chuckled.  He was referring to Max Randall, one of the few other males in the St. Sebastian’s group who had befriended her and Sydney at a meeting one night.  “I wanted to remind you that I'll pick you up tomorrow morning.  At 7 am sharp we're off to the fabulous Miss Wendy."

Ellen groaned.  "Hey, maybe I can take a rain check?  For tomorrow?"

"What the heck do you mean?  You promised!"

"Syd … I don't think this is a good idea."  She bit her lip. How was she ever going to extract herself from this commitment? 

"Miss Wendy will be the best thing that ever happened to you.  She’s a prophet for our times!"

"I've got so much to do tomorrow."  What a pathetic attempt at lying. 

"Dress warmly, it's supposed to be chilly.  You're fading.  Wish me luck tonight!"  Kissing noises rang in her ear.

"I pity the other fellow," she called, but there was no answer.  The line had gone as dead as Ellen's hopes of getting out of her Saturday rendezvous.  Ellen chuckled thinking about Sydney at the Blue Dog, an upscale mostly gay bar in Piermont.  Wherever Syd parked his Versace clad butt, they were sure to remember him.  She had liked it when he attended St. Sebastian's with her when she first started out. That was months ago, when Mike had left her for her now ex-best girl friend Amanda.  The church had become a source of solace and healing.  She was grateful for the group’s acceptance of her, though she wasn’t sure what she was doing there again after many years without the church in her life.  No one had minded her confusion over her beliefs, so she had brought Sydney along.  But it had been too disconcerting for Syd to be the lone gay in the room, not to mention the only Jew, and several of the more conservative members of the group were less than welcoming.  Syd had come along less and less frequently, even though she and Max had encouraged him to stick it out.  Now he listened intently each week as Ellen caught him up on the doings of the divorced and separated.  And now he had caught her up in his latest spiritual foray.  Her stomach sank.

Ellen pounded her steering wheel with her fist.  "Dammit, Sydney.”  All the things she should have said to Sydney flashed into her mind.  She could have said she wasn't feeling well, or that a repairman was scheduled that morning, so sorry I can't make it.  Coulda, shoulda, woulda.  Now she was scheduled to spend time listening to Miss Wendy tell her what matters.  Nothing she’d read in Sydney’s pamphlets had dislodged her belief that spending time with Miss Wendy would be a waste of her Saturday.

She stepped on the accelerator and caught up to the car in front of her, which was being driven by an elderly gentleman in a baseball cap.  The brim of his cap barely cleared the steering wheel.  He had to be close to ninety.  She wasn’t sure if she should be impressed or appalled, but she decided to give him a lot of room and she fell back a couple more car lengths.

What matters, indeed. She rolled down the window and let the cool fall air stream into the cab of her Jeep, irritated at more than what had happened with Sydney.  The longer she spoke to someone the more malleable she became, until the reasons for her original refusal evaporated like a puddle in the sun.  Then she found herself agreeing to do something she never intended, something like visiting a four hundred-fifty pound prophet named Miss Wendy on a Saturday just because she didn't want to say no to her best friend.

Ellen's heart beat rapidly, adrenaline searing across her chest.  Her intestines began an uncomfortable churning and she forced air into her lungs.  She hated this feeling.  It was the same as when she'd fallen through the ice at Goodman's pond as a kid, and for a few seconds hadn't known which way was up.  Back then, after a few panicky moments that hung like an eternity, she'd been able to right herself, find the surface, gulp air and climb out of the pond, thanks to Uncle Harry who'd thrown a jacket to her, Ellen grabbing a sleeve, Uncle Harry hauling her up and out of the freezing water like a huge fish.  She'd sputtered and coughed, Uncle Harry slinging her over his shoulder, like the sacks of mail he carried at the Clarkstown Post Office, only this sack was a pink snowsuit dripping bay water, ice forming around the white fur trim as he raced home with his delivery.

Lately, the feeling that she was under water recurred at odd times, like now, driving home.  Though the highway rolled straight ahead of her the way it did every time she drove this route, she was confused, not sure which way to go or where she was.  Even if she did surface there would be no Uncle Harry to rescue her.  She was stuck in a horrible frozen place, running out of air, cold seeping through every pore, nothing mattering, all because of Mike.  She shuddered.

Mike.  Soon to be Ellen's ex.  The X.

Ellen gripped the steering wheel so tightly her hands ached.  She let out her breath and felt her blood begin to surge, concentrating on the road ahead.  God, how she hated him. 

The old guy in the baseball cap moved into the far right lane.  Something bitter rose in her throat and she swerved into the left lane of the West Side Highway passing him by.  She forced herself to focus on her surroundings, willing them to become familiar.  If she made it onto the George Washington Bridge within the next five minutes she'd have smooth sailing on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, the good old PIP.  Be home to Suffern in a half an hour and able to make it to Saint Sebastian's in time for the beginning of the 7:30 gripe-and-tell meeting.  Piece of cake.  She hit the gas and exited for the bridge.

The bridge was lit up and Ellen glanced to her left, taking in the skyline.  She still wasn't used to not seeing the twin towers looming like giants in the distance.  This shortened skyline was the skyline of her early childhood, a dimly recollected, happy time in her life.  But rather than it being a comforting memory it was jarring, disconcerting, a reminder of what was and what had been destroyed. 

She pulled off to the right and moved easily onto the Palisades Parkway.  The top deck of the G-dub was great for that approach to the PIP, unlike the lower level, which since September 11 always felt threatening.  The lower level did still have its draws, such as the affable Greek Red Oak Diner in otherwise definitely-worth-missing downtown Fort Lee, but unless the diner was a post theater destination, she avoided the lower level at all times.  Funny how the mind does that, tells you if you take the upper level you'll be safe, as though it would make a difference which level you were on were they to blow the bridge to dust.  The upper level, now there was a fine illusion of safety.

Dusk fell and she switched on her lights.  Out of habit, she glanced in her rear view mirror.  Since her teen years, when she had heard about the PIP ghost, she always checked for her.  According to the legend, a little old lady would appear in your back seat as you drove the PIP through Jersey north to New York.  Lately, Ellen wouldn't mind finding anyone back there so much did she long for companionship.  The pain and anger still surfaced regularly, no matter what she did, no matter how busy she made herself.  She gulped air.  And now she was going to spend her Saturday with a four hundred-fifty pound spiritualist.  Oh God.