"You mean get him? Or get back at him?"
"Whatever."
The woman's eyes were dancing with delight.
And then, abruptly, there was only a wasp sitting on the chair beside her. It walked around the fake leather for a few minutes, then flew out the door.
I'm losing my mind, thought Ruth.
She worried for a little while about a woman who turned into a wasp—or a wasp into a woman, whichever. And then she worried about depression so deep it led to hallucinations, and whether Prozac was really as good as people said it was.
And then she thought about what the woman said. Get him back. Get him back. And for the life of her she couldn't decide what she herself wanted. Revenge or reconciliation?
She walked along the street, looking for her car. Where had she parked? That's another sign I'm losing my mind, she thought. Lately I don't remember things like where I parked or whether I had breakfast. Just since he dumped me. The bastard. That bitch.
Sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall opposite her car, was a homeless woman. No, she was dirty and all, but she wasn't begging. She was selling. A little cloth was spread out before her, with weird little bags and corked vials and tiny jars stopped up with clay. Ruth stopped and looked at her wares.
The gypsy reached behind her and took out a small piece of paper. On it were written the words Get him back.
This was too weird. Especially because a moment later, the words on the paper changed into nothing but meaningless squiggles. The paper said nothing at all, or at least it wasn't an alphabet she had ever seen before. She must have hallucinated the words she read.
The gypsy held up a tiny bag and pointed to Ruth with her other hand.
"I don't want it," said Ruth.
The gypsy woman smiled. She had no teeth.
"This will make him love me?"
The gypsy woman thought for a moment, as if translating laboriously. Then she shook her head, set down the bag, and picked up a little clay-stopped jar.
"This one, then?" asked Ruth. "And he'll forget the bitch and love me?"
The gypsy nodded, grinning.
"How much?" I can't believe I'm asking. I can't believe I'm going to buy it.
But there she was, pulling her wallet out of her purse. "Hmm? How much?"
The gypsy just kept smiling.
Ruth pulled out a five. The gypsy didn't seem to respond at all. A ten? No. A twenty. What's happening to me?
The gypsy took the twenty. She looked dubious. Then she beamed at Ruth. She wasn't completely toothless. She had a couple of blackened molars.
"How do I use it?" asked Ruth. "I mean, do I wear it? Eat it? Drink it? Serve it to him?"
At this last phrase, the gypsy nodded vigorously.
"Right, like he and I are going to have a picnic," said Ruth. She felt cheated. But how stupid did she have to be, anyway? She was buying a love potion from a gypsy street vendor. All because a stranger in a beauty shop had told her to get him back? Ivan has driven me insane. Do I even want him to love me?
She was getting into her car, but at this thought she impulsively got back out. The gypsy woman cocked her head and looked quizzically at her.
Ruth pointed to the bag that the gypsy had first offered. "What does that do?"
The gypsy started scratching herself and cackling with laughter. Ruth wasn't sure whether this meant that Ivan would itch, that someone would tickle him, or that he would turn into a monkey, but in any event, it sounded promising.
Besides, nothing said she had to give it to Ivan. It might be more useful to give it to the shiksa bitch.
Again, she had to know—bake it into cookies? Dash it in his face?
The gypsy pantomimed eating.
"Just like the other one," said Ruth.
The gypsy nodded.
"The bag gets even, the jar gets him to love me."
The gypsy held out her hand. Ruth gave her another twenty. The gypsy shook her head. Ruth added another twenty. The gypsy tucked it down into her bosom, then gathered up the cloth, tied the top into a knot, and got up and walked away.
That's it? I'm the only customer of the day?
Or maybe when she gets sixty bucks from one sucker, she can go buy enough wine to stay drunk for a week.
I'm not going to use these. When would I have a chance? And considering I don't even know what I want. Maybe I should give him both. Or better yet, make both of them fall in love with me. Then it would be my turn to jilt him for the same woman! Now that would be ironic.
Maybe what I should have bought is a gun.
The moment she thought of it, it felt like poison in her mind. A gun! For him? For her? For me? What's happening to me? I don't want anybody dead. I just want my life to go on.
She dropped the little jar and the little sack into the trashbox she kept on the floor of her car. Sixty bucks down the drain, but that's cheaper than buying a new dress that I don't even take out of the bag when I get it home.
Baba Yaga
She was exhausted. If magic had been hard before, it was almost impossible now, so far from Bear's land. Baba Yaga hadn't realized how dependent she was on his power till she tried to do magic without it.
But nothing was going to stop her. She was days behind Ivan and Katerina, but it was easy enough to find them. The house was protected, though, and Baba Yaga was too weak to get through all the magic. It infuriated her to be stopped by a witch that ordinarily she could blow away with a puff of air. But she had to deal with the world the way she found it. Ivan and Katerina were inside the house. Baba Yaga was able to probe just enough to be certain that the marriage was not complete yet. But almost instantaneously, the curtains were flung open and there in the window stood a middle-aged woman, staring right at her.
I'm not supposed to be noticeable, thought Baba Yaga. And yet she knew where to look.
So maybe it would have taken more than a puff of air, she thought.
She turned away from the house, wondering what to do next.
Listen, that's what she'd do. She might not be able to work magic on anyone in that house without being noticed and blocked, but that witch couldn't prevent her from doing magic on herself.
It took hours to put it all together, and she had to make do with substitute herbs, but it worked well enough, a spell of hearing. After she had chewed the mixture into paste and then swallowed it, she sat in the darkness under a tree and began to focus the sounds as they rushed in upon her. People eating, doing dishes, cooking, arguing, listening to machines that talked. House after house. Baba Yaga tuned them out, turned them into nothing in her own mind. Until at last there was only the sound from one house left.
By the time the spell wore off, a couple of hours later, Baba Yaga knew only that there was a woman named Ruth to whom Ivan had been betrothed.
A jilted woman, thought Baba Yaga. I can use her.
Not knowing where she lived, Baba Yaga again had to use magic to find her. It took two days, searching for rage and pain. There was plenty of it to be found—what angry people these are!—but finally, after casting her net rather widely, she detected Ruth driving along the freeway. So quickly everyone moved! But now that she had Ruth's soul imprinted in her heart, Baba Yaga would always be able to find her.
Not speaking the language, Baba Yaga had to do the wasp trick, guiding the little pricker into the beauty parlor and then causing Ruth herself to imagine the woman and the words and the language to draw out of Ruth's turmoil of feelings about Ivan the ones that Baba Yaga figured would be most useful to her: The desire to have him back, and the desire to destroy him.
Then, on the sidewalk, Baba Yaga appeared in person, because this time it couldn't be hallucination, the potions had to be real. Sixty dollars? Baba Yaga wanted to laugh at the money. But she knew she had to take it, or Ruth wouldn't believe the potions had any value.