Hex and the Single Girl by Valerie Frankel Read Free Book Online Page A

“No thank you,” and then, to Emma, “I need to speak to you. It’s important.”
    “Are you okay?” She didn’t look okay. Susan had been Emma’s least demanding client. If one could call her a client.
    The man in question asked Susan out before Emma got the chance to work on him.
    “I was cutting through the park toward your place when I saw you here.”
    “Kismet,” said Emma, standing, putting her arm around Susan’s petite shoulder.
    “Where’s my money?” said Above Average.
    Emma took out her wallet. Her smallest bill was a twenty. “Can you make change?” she asked.
    “Do I look like a cashier?”
    Emma gave her a twenty. Mr. Cannery would disapprove. She and Susan headed west to Waverly Place.
    “It’s so good to see you, and I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,” said Emma. “I’ve been laying low.”
    “Why?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”
    Money. Men. Fear of imminent death. “Nothing I can’t handle,” said Emma. “You look good, by the way.”
    Susan was dressed, as usual, conservatively, in a blue pleated skirt and a similar (but not matching) blazer. She wore nude stockings and low-heeled pumps that accentuated the tight balls of muscle in her tiny calves. No makeup. Her light brown hair was pulled into a swingy ponytail. With her cute little figure and patrician skin and teeth, Susan could do natural.
    “Jeff left me,” blurted Susan, chin suddenly aquiver. “He came over last night and said he quit his job and wanted to quit seeing me, too.”
    “Good riddance,” said Emma.
    Even though she never got close enough to touch him, Emma had done preliminary research on Jeff Bragg, including long-distance observation. Emma didn’t need superior farsightedness to see, at twenty feet or two inches, that Jeff was a jerk.
    “He’s the best boyfriend I’ve ever had,” choked out Susan.
    “The best boyfriend you ever had liked to spit on the sidewalk,” said Emma. “He was a bad tipper.”
    Susan said, “When he touches me, it feels like every cell in my body opens to him. As if he enters me on a molecular level. He told me”—she drew a ragged breath—“he told me that my neck smells like vanilla ice cream.”
    Susan started sobbing on the corner of Waverly and Sixth, right in front of Citibank. Emma hugged her, patted her back, and stroked her hair. She was secretly glad to be needed by someone, to be sought out for help. This felt familiar, comfortable. She was a hand to hold. A shoulder to lean on. Emma inhaled with pleasure, picking up Susan’s scent. Jeff was right about one thing. Susan did smell like vanilla ice cream.
    Interrupting their moment, a man on the sidewalk said, “Jesus might bring you comfort.”
    Emma glanced at him. Dark hair, wiry two-day stubble. Yellow T-shirt stretched over a chubby gut, short legs in jeans, around forty, droopy nose and chin. She said, “Bug off.”
    “Have a blessed day!” he said earnestly in return, and redirected his attention to other sinners on the street. Over Susan’s shoulder, Emma watched him pass pamphlets. His yellow T-shirt had a Star of David with the words “Jews for Jesus” stenciled across it.
    Victor was right. No one paid attention to religion pamphleteers. Emma gave Susan a squeeze and let her go. She approached the Jew for Jesus. “I’d like to buy a T-shirt,” she said.
    The man said, “Sorry. I don’t have any here. But I’m having a thousand made. Come back in a few days and I’d be happy to sell you one.”
    “I’ll give you twenty bucks for the shirt you’re wearing. And a stack of flyers.”
    “I’m planning to sell the shirts for ten. It’d be making a hefty profit if I sold this one for twenty. Jesus wouldn’t want me to take advantage. That wouldn’t be very Christian of me.”
    “Fifty bucks for the shirt, right now, take it or leave it.” Emma reached into her pocket for her wad, and peeled a fifty off the top.
    Just as she was showing it to the Jew for Jesus, Mr.