Quoth the Raven(87)
Alice Elkinson looked down at the coat in her hand and then out the window, at Lenore circling way out over the campus someplace, circling widely and without regard for the darkening evening. Then she plunged her hands into the right-hand pocket of her coat to make sure her keys were there and headed for the door. At the last minute, the part of her she didn’t like resisted. There couldn’t possibly be a worse time to have to go hauling out to the Boardman Road. The resistance came and went in a flash, drowned by Chessey’s voice and a click on the phone.
Dial tone.
Going down the darkened corridors of Liberty Hall, it felt to Alice Elkinson that her life had disintegrated into something uncontrollable, into crises without number.
2
STANDING AT THE WINDOW in the living room of her apartment in Constitution House, Dr. Katherine Branch was also watching Lenore circle above campus, but unlike Alice Elkinson she wasn’t making a big deal out of it. In spite of her attraction to witchcraft and some of the more esoteric aspects of the women’s spirituality movement, Katherine Branch had never been a particularly fearful or even mildly superstitious woman. Halloween had never meant any more to her than a lot of nonsensical, intrinsically sexist fuss on campus. Technically, she was supposed to be out there now, leading the coven in a procession to King’s Scaffold. They had planned for weeks to hold an exorcism against light in front of the effigy before the bonfire was lit. Instead, she was standing here, still in jeans and turtleneck and sweater, holding two impossible arguments at once.
One of those arguments was with Vivi Wollman, who was sitting on the couch just as she had the other day, but not as she ought to be. Not only was Vivi not dressed for the coven, she wasn’t dressed for anything Katherine could make out. She was wearing a skirt and a pair of stockings not opaque enough to be called tights, but dark enough to look dirty. She had had her hair permed into tight little curls and her face plastered with paint. Katherine couldn’t decide if Vivi looked more like she’d done the plastering herself or gone into town to have herself made up by Babs DeMartin at the Belleville Beauty Palace. Whichever it was, the effect was unrelievedly awful. Vivi Wollman trying to look like a woman was worse than ludicrous.
The other argument was with Evie Westerman, who had rung up just about three minutes ago, while Katherine was telling Vivi to come to her senses. In some ways, the call had been a relief. It had at least distracted Katherine from the fact that she was failing miserably with Vivi, and was probably destined to go on failing. Christ only knew what had gotten into the stupid fool. Unfortunately, the call from Evie was not entirely a relief. Katherine had had Evie in her Principles of Feminism class Evie’s junior year, and Katherine had thought at the time that the girl had the capacity to turn herself into a world-class bitch. Well, now she had. Olympic quality.
“I am no longer willing,” Vivi Wollman was saying, “to ruin my career, my present and my future by the bloodsucking selfishness you’ve decided to label ‘feminism.’ ”
Vivi Wollman. Evie Westerman. The similarities in the names made Katherine’s head spin.
“Just a minute,” she said to Vivi. “I’m on the phone.”
“I don’t want to keep you on the phone,” Evie Westerman said. “I just want to say my piece and get off.”
“I wish you would say your piece,” Katherine said. “I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
Vivi had got up off the couch and started pacing. Her skirt fit badly. Every time she moved, the seams rode and twisted against her hips, the button placket at the back buckled.
“For Christ’s sake,” Katherine told her, “fix that thing, will you? You look like you’ve stuffed your underwear with mutated worms.”
Vivi came to a stop in the middle of the floor, threw her hair back—it didn’t work; that hair was permed stiff—and said, “I don’t know what it is you think you accomplish by insulting me, Katherine, but I’m telling you right now I’ve had it, I quit, and I’m not going to take any more.”
“If you weren’t going to take it anymore, you wouldn’t be here,” Katherine said. “Jesus Christ, Vivi, where do you think you’re going to go?”
“Vivian,” Vivi said. “That’s my name. Vivian.”
“What I’m talking about is you,” Evie Westerman said. “Yesterday. Up in the shed where they keep the tools for fixing cars. Up in the parking lot.”
Lenore had made her circuit and was coming back at Constitution House, cawing and cawing, screaming really. Katherine closed her eyes against the sight—it was amazing how distracting that damn bird could get—and tried to think. Vivi had gone into a full-force pace, back and forth, back and forth, practically bumping into the walls. She was working up a real head of steam. Katherine kept expecting to see smoke pour out of her ears, the way it did out of Sylvester the Cat’s when Tweetie Bird trounced him again.