Tess Rafferty's Blog

Just in time for the holidays, the 5th book in the Kat Kelly series, Dying to Go, is available in both paperback and ebook version!

Hell is other people…or more specifically other Americans. That’s what Kat Kelly realizes when she and her childhood friend, Adam, decide to rent an Italian villa and invite their friends from home to stay.

Kat’s dreams of languid “la dolce vita” days are soon dashed when she becomes an innkeeper to a cast of high-maintenance guests including a brash-talking, fast-driving stuntwoman; Adam’s boss who is boorish when he’s drinking— and when he’s not; the boss’s girlfriend who looks like a model, drinks like a sailor and seems oblivious to her boyfriend’s behavior; and a documentarian with a penchant for sad stories and an allergy to gluten, dairy, alcohol—pretty much all of Italy. To make it worse, it’s an unusually rainy spring in the Italian countryside, so they’re stuck in the house together—and Kat is dying to get out.

Fortunately for Kat, there’s always a dead body around the corner to break up the monotony. And when someone is found dead at the villa, all of the guests become suspects. So along with her partner in crime Sunny, and their husbands Mike and Nino, Kat sets about proving their innocence while uncovering the identity of the real killer—and enjoying her vacation, too.

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Need a get away…with murder? Escape into the Kat Kelly mystery series. Italy. Food. Wine. Murder. All books available now. And a 5th book coming out fall 2023!

I couldn’t be more thrilled and delighted to unveil the cover of my upcoming mystery, The Red, the Fed and the Dead. The photo was expertly captured by real-life husband, Chris McGuire and beautifully designed by Tony Puryear. This book finds Kat & Mike vacationing at an Italian castle during the rainy season and will make the perfect winter read with a glass of red wine or a hot beverage. Pre-order your ebook today! Paperback link coming soon!

“Marriage can be the death of you…”

So thinks Kat Kelly when she agrees to her husband Mike’s plan to return to Italy during the rainy season. Fortunately, they have plenty of red wine to take the chill off. After two days in the damp city of Bologna, known for its food, its university and its communist tendencies—a.k.a.“The red, the fed & the learned”—the couple meet up with friends Sunny and Nino at a Medieval castle in the Emilia-Romagna countryside. There they discover the acetaias that produce the thirty-year-old extra Vecchio balsamic vinegar; the dairies that make the world-famous Parmesan Reggiano; and, of course, more than one dead body.

So once again, Kat and Sunny go hunting for clues while also hunting for truffles, with an international cast of suspects that includes a Ghanaian-Italian professor; a Canadian food consultant with mysterious ties to the castle; an American tech millionaire-turned-winemaker; and two feuding Michelin-starred chefs who just happen to be brothers. Kat’s insatiable appetite for both food and answers leads her to uncover an old mystery that travels all the way back to the German occupation and the American Buffalo soldiers who liberated Italy, and to the economic boom and pop music explosion of the fifties and sixties.

Let’s pretend we’re in Italy! Buy a bottle of Chianti & start planning your charcuterie plate! Virtually invite a friend! I will be live streaming a virtual book signing on Thursday December 3rd at 6mpPT/9pmET. Jackie Kashian will be hosting a Q&A with myself and Chris McGuire, who took the amazing cover photo (and may also be the inspiration for “The Husband.”) He’ll share other photos with us, I’ll do a reading from the book and also share some exciting upcoming news as well as how you can get a personalized, signed postcard. Watch here on Facebook, or here on Twitter!

We often say, “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but…” Let me preface this by saying, “I know who needs to hear this and it’s all of us.”

Take care of yourself. Please. Get off the internet for long periods of time. Turn off C-Span or MSNBC. Don’t read every tweet. Don’t scroll absent-mindedly, feeding your rage as you go. We know things are terrible. It doesn’t make you irresponsible if you stop the emotional cutting for a day or a couple. It makes you smart and probably sane.

Things are only going to get worse as we approach 11/3. And after…Chissa? as they say in Italy. Who knows?

True story: After all the hopelessness and rage and despair and fear of the last 7 months, on top of that of the last 4 years, the week of October 12, 2020 said the proverbial, “Hold my beer.” Few images encompass all of our gravest fears and outrages of this sham administration like that of Amy Coney Barrett being rammed through a SCOTUS confirmation hearing run by unmasked men with COVID, less than 3 weeks before an election. She will be confirmed. We will lose Roe, and probably Marriage Equality. Voting rights are already gone. People have died for these rights.

Like you, I feel so much anger I don’t know what to do with it. And it’s not just this. It’s everything. I won’t say we shouldn’t feel it, because there is so much to be angry about. But by Friday, fingers poised to write a tweet or post expressing this anger, I realized I just couldn’t do it. I realized I didn’t have to express anger about everything, or anything, in this moment. I could be confident that I’m doing what I can to speak out, what I can to change things, but feeling that all the time wasn’t going to change it and certainly wasn’t good for me. Letting go of the need to express it, even for a few moments, was both welcome and necessary. I could walk away and phone bank. I could walk away and nap. I could walk away and do anything else. That small shift in thinking really helped my outlook.

Here’s another true story: This experience publishing Under the Tuscan Gun has been hard. I’ve been overwhelmed with a lot of feelings that I wasn’t prepared for; even when I’m filled with gratitude it’s a shockingly emotional combo of gratitude and impostor syndrome. As a writer I don’t know that I have ever felt this exposed. So much of our work either never sees the light of day or is said by someone else. But this is out there to be judged by more than just a studio’s development team and there is no talent to hide behind. It’s incredibly disconcerting and I was utterly unprepared for it. Conversely, there’s the fear that no one is going to see it, beyond my friends. Plus, I’m uncomfortable asking people for things; the incessant self-promotion is difficult, no matter how much I tell myself that closed mouths don’t get fed.

We are all dealing with the normal, or even abnormal, stressors of our regular lives on top of what the current events and pandemic are throwing at us. The combo of all of it is depleting.

So this past weekend I decided that I was going to try to fill myself up again. I got off the internet, off of all social media save the random food pic on IG. I told myself that what’s done is done with my book and that has to be OK. I decided to do some things that bring me joy and not judge myself if that was binge-watching a lot of procedurals. I tried to pretend that I was vacationing in a foreign country with crappy wifi. I made up a shrimp puff recipe. Why am I sharing my “To Don’t List” with you? Because you need to hear it. Yes, you. Step away. Find joy. Fill yourself up. It’s going to get worse before it gets better and it’s not healthy for any of us if we don’t.

(And if you haven’t already, please buy Under The Tuscan Gun. Available now in paperback & e-book!)

Like all sane Americans whose heads are full of critical thinking and hearts aren’t full of hate, my private moments are spent fantasizing about Joe Biden being declared the winner of the presidential election and us actually getting to the moment when he can be sworn in, banishing the current squatter in the Oval to the outposts of hell, and by hell I mean spending his remaining holidays with that grotesque Willie Wonka reboot he calls a family.

But it’s not enough to just hit the reset button on Democracy like it’s a computer we just turn on and off, telling ourselves it’s not going to crash again. The virus is still there and pretending that everything is fine just means that we’ll find ourselves right back in the same place we’ve spent the last 4 years: On the verge of having all of our work erased as our democracy faces the blue screen of death. Trump, and his collaborators in the Republican party (which at this point is all of the Republican party) have so egregiously and shamelessly violated and abused the rule of law and betrayed the people’s trust in our government, that they must be held fully and aggressively accountable by our criminal system, and our social and political systems as well.

Both Trump and every single last co-conspirator must be found guilty of the crimes they have perpetuated against the American people. No pardons, no deals. If someone looked the other way at a typo, they need to face the maximum penalty under Strunk & White. Any hint of leniency will not be in the best interest of the country. It will not help us to heal or move forward, and shame on any Democrat who dares to even try to sell that to us. Do you know what moving forward is? Holding criminals accountable and proving that someone still gives a damn about the rule of law. Do you know what won’t help us heal? Allowing privileged bad guys to get away with their crimes. Again.

But that is not enough. Neither this man, nor his presidency, can ever be celebrated. We need to go full Angela Basset in a gif, throwing his golf clubs on the lawn before setting them on fire. We need a coven of witches to exorcise the evil spirits from the White House. We don’t just need to smudge the Oval Office; we need to replace the entire rose garden with sage plants and light them on fire nightly for a year. His portrait should not hang anywhere but in a Post Office listed under America’s Most Wanted. There should be no Presidential library (not a big loss as most of his fans don’t care to read) unless it’s to put everything he ever said in the fiction department.

There should be no commemorative coins, no decorative plates, no presidential spoons, save the one he tries to make into a shiv in prison. His robot in the Hall of Presidents should go the way of all the other offensive imagery glorifying racism and misogyny that has populated Disneyland throughout the years and he can be rebranded as a ghoul from the Haunted Mansion. His kids should be investigated and so financially ruined and socially shunned that we learn the real color of their hair when their roots grow out because they can’t so much as get an appointment at Supercuts.

He has obstructed justice. He has colluded with a foreign power. He has created his own secret army who have kidnapped and assaulted peaceful protesters and spread others with tear gas. He praises dictators and defends those who have put bounties on the head of American soldiers. He has been accused of sexually assaulting over 30 women. He has called for the execution of innocent Black men and called White supremacists “good people.” He has separated parents who sought our refuge from their children and then left those children to die unattended in squalor while forcibly sterilizing their mothers.  He’s a mass murderer who has killed almost 200k Americans with his cruel ignorance and soulless indifference.

He is our shame. And as such, he does not deserve a place in our history books except next to our other disgraces like slavery, internment camps and the massacre of indigenous people. And while we should erase his presidency, we should never erase his shame. Instead we need to confess to it, often. And we need to do a better job of confessing and atoning for these other shames as well, so that we never repeat them. We fail history when we don’t tell all of it, as evidenced by today’s story that nearly 2/3 of our own people under 40 don’t know fully understand or know about the horrors of the Holocaust. We need to own and tell this shame, so that we can actually heal these wounds instead of continuing to cover them up while they continue to fester and infect us all. That is the way to move forward.

Everything in my house is broken.

I have an AC that hasn’t worked since the end of April. Last week the vacuum cleaner broke. On Sunday it was the toilet’s turn. I dropped my phone and it stopped working. Then I fixed it and it started working. Then I got a new one and now neither work. After three hours of trying to deal with this with customer service, sweaty and in tears, the strap on my flip flip broke. Now in the grand scheme that flip flop is really small potatoes, however, they’re also kind of my only shoes. It’s 85-90 degrees in the house (See AC, above) so I’m not going to wear closed toed shoes and my only other summer options are heels. Am I going to become that person who wears high heel peep-toed mules as slippers and drinks martinis at 10am? I mean we knew it was headed this way; I just didn’t think it was going to get here this soon.

With every person I talk to- and I have logged tens of hours of customers service calls over the last 4 plus months- I have made an enormous effort to be patient and kind. I have repeated over and over and over, “I know this isn’t your fault. I’m sorry for my frustration.” I have even added, appropriate for our times, questions about their well-being. “Are you able to work from home? I’m glad. Please stay safe.” In one exchange, a woman told me about how her sister, a nurse, had contracted COVID by going on vacation and how she wasn’t taking any chances and what a challenge it was for her and her kids. I would marvel at the way we’re able to connect despite the most isolating of circumstances if ONLY MY SHIT WORKED.

I just want something to work.

I’ve also been placed on holds that no one ever returned for- once for an hour and once for an hour and half. I spent an hour being transferred between 3 people who couldn’t help me, promising that the next person would, only to be disconnected by the person who said she could help, necessitating that I start the process over, telling the whole story to another group of people who couldn’t help. I’ve been given conflicting information, wrong information, promised calls back that never came. By Wednesday of this week I was dissolving into tears after every call ended. By Thursday I was holding back tears during the calls and by Friday morning, I was just crying before breakfast. At one point I tried to take a break and do something positive- a small win- and switch out the old drawer pulls with the new ones I bought, only to find that when I got to the last two, they were chipped and crushed. I emailed the seller. I’ll let you know when I hear back*.

Because I’m a sentient person, capable of telling the difference between the Democratic party and the Hitler Fan Fiction that the Republicans have become, I can also recognize that my experience with various appliances and call centers is only mirroring the larger one we’ve been having with our own government. That this feeling that everything is broken and no one can help is how we’ve been waking up feeling for four years and that with COVID, election fraud and state sanctioned hate crimes like the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the paralyzing of Jacob Blake, it’s all just intensifying.

It doesn’t help that because of the pandemic we’re going through this largely alone. Or that we’re not, and some people are choosing to move about the world like a virus never happened. And that dichotomy really sums up the real conundrum: Those who want to help can’t and those who can won’t. I’ve seen this rub play out in my own personal and professional life over the years and it appears true on the grander scale. We wouldn’t feel helpless if help were possible. But the people who want to help us don’t control the Senate or the Oval or the media. The people who do control those things could actually help us, but they don’t want to. And so we sit there and watch as they violate the laws of this land with impunity and lie to the American people as they leave them to die- all while sitting alone in a house we haven’t left that may or may not have working plumbing and air conditioning.

I’ve heard anecdotal evidence from friends that everything is just busting in their own homes, creating a despair spiral. A service call for the fridge takes on a whole new level of aggravation when you don’t know if your industry has a future and why were you such a dummy that you didn’t go into a business that had a future, like crimein’ with the Trumps. That’s apparently a growth industry.  Our cries for help have become like our calls for service: There’s a backlog and no one is around to take our call. And so we have to try to fix it ourselves or just live with our own brokenness right now.

Like many people, I do really well with the former. When the vacuum cleaner broke, I turned it over and started triaging the problem. When I alleviated one problem, but it still didn’t work, I looked for another cause. Being analytical can be calming. There’s order to it and the promise of resolution. And that resolution can give you a sense of accomplishment, a win. And a win has been very hard to come by lately when most of us are either out of work or working in challenging situations; abandoning much-needed self-care because the current normal makes it difficult if not outright prohibits it; and there’s no end in sight to any of it and every day the political party in charge tells you that you don’t count, you don’t matter.

But on the other side of finding a solution are the situations that have none. With my phone there is a glitch that shouldn’t be happening and it is costing me money despite the fact that I did nothing wrong. It is not my fault, and yet not only can no one fix it, no one is willing to compensate me for it. With my AC, the amount of wrong and conflicting information I am being given continues to be staggering. I talk to a representative one day who calls a department for me and the next day when I ask another rep to follow up with said department, she tells they’re not allowed to call that department at all. It doesn’t make any sense. There are rules that I’m supposed to work within, but they change day to day and so I can never win.

And then this morning it hit: This is our government. This is gaslighting. However well-intentioned the various customer service reps I have spoken with may or may not be, one thing is being said, another one is being done, and when I ask about it, I’m being told none of it ever happened. There’s no order to this and no apparent resolution. And we desperately need a win. So the only recourse is to keep doing the same frustrating things we’ve been doing that haven’t been working. In my home it’s to keep calling customer service and hope that that call is finally the one that makes something happen. In our politics it’s to hope that if we keep phone banking, or text banking, or donating money or writing postcards, and yes, of course, vote, that Joe Biden will get elected. But we’ve been voting. And they keep cheating. And far too many people like their message of hate and bigotry and so they keep letting them. Can we win? I don’t know. There’s no order. We’ve tried fixing the broken parts, but the damn thing still won’t run right.

And so, we’re left with the second option: Living with the brokenness. This is what’s hard for most of us. Some days it can be easy to let it all go and other days we rail against the injustice of something that should work and doesn’t, like we’re Braveheart painting our face blue and crying, “Freedom!” I know I’m having a hard time living with the physical broken things because I’m feeling emotionally broken myself, because I need a win, or to at least feel like I have some control. I’m having a hard time because I am so distractingly frightened that our government is broken beyond repair and the overwhelming scope of what that means for all of us in the coming weeks and months. And to live in all of this brokenness feels like a failure: I didn’t do enough to fix it; what I did wasn’t good enough.

But maybe the only trick to living with brokenness is to remind yourself of what is working and do those things. Does watching 8 hours of British Baking Show work for you right now? Can you create some order by vacuuming or feel a win if you wash a load of laundry? Can you escape in a vintage movie, a mystery novel, or feel like you’re solving a problem if you do a puzzle? Would you rather channel your anger by writing postcards or calling reps?

Sometimes we don’t know the answer, which only makes it harder, and sometimes the things that usually work for us stop. And so we’re just left in this spiral of discomfort. But I know distraction helps. The trick is allowing our brains to be tricked, being willing to tear our focus away from what’s broken to something mindless. Start small: A five minute project like loading the dishwasher. Putting on a comedy that you’ve seen a million times but love. The attraction of self-abuse for some who do it, is that the physicality of it puts you in your body and stops the incessant thoughts in your mind. It’s like your body’s director yelled, “Cut,” in the middle of a high intensity dance number and you can catch your breath and reset back to one. What we need is to find a way to yell, “Cut,” that’s not actually cutting. And some days it’s really not easy: We’re our own customer service rep without the answers, but we’re the only one picking up the call.

*The seller of the cabinet knobs got back to me within a few hours and is sending out replacements. So there’s something that worked this week.

Dear Men,

We get it. You don’t like us women very much. 

Before you tell me you have a mom (duh) or a wife or daughters (poor things) or that you grew up with sisters (whatever) just save it. I am truly tired of arguing with you about this. I am weary of being disappointed by “the good ones.” The bottom line is even your version of “like” feels a lot like hostility. If you were a friend, you’d be toxic. If you were a partner, this would be abusive. And so I have realized it’s time to move on from this relationship and move towards acceptance and that’s OK. Because it’s easier to realize you have never liked us and you’re never going to, than to think there’s a path forward, especially when we women have been expected to forge this path all on our own while you continue to tell us why our brush clearing skills suck. No, we’re always going to be the understudy for an actual man in your eyes. I’d rather go someplace where I can be the lead. 

You’ll have to forgive me for my bluntness, I know it makes me seem nasty and unlikeable, but it has. Been. A. Week! It has been a week, on top of a four years, on top of a lifetime for each and every one of us non-males, many of whom have had to deal with your bias and resentment a lot longer than I have. This week was the Democratic National Convention, an event that when held four years ago held so much hope and promise for so many women. We got to celebrate our first female Presidential candidate from a major party. Or at least we got to celebrate quietly. We were told that being too loud about it would seem like gloating to the white guy she walloped by 4 million votes and his fans, who used every vile, misogynistic tool in the book to tear her down, labeling her a “witch,” lying about her record, and calling us “cunts” for defending her. But in her we saw our own experiences: A woman who had worked hard her entire to life to become more qualified than the men also going for the same job, because she knew she had to be. 

And because we don’t get the luxury of dwelling, we threw our energy and support behind four other dynamic women running this year and silently seethed as you systematically told us what was wrong with each one of them, blind to the double standard you were judging them by. You called Kamala Harris a cop for being a prosecutor who put away child sex traffickers, as if you hadn’t criticized Hillary Clinton for defending a pedophile as a public defender. So what kind of lawyers are women allowed to be in your eyes? No lawyers? That seems really “woke.” 

But the good soldiers we are, we tell ourselves that Biden is a “good man,” swallow Anita Hill and Hyde, and celebrate (quietly) Kamala Harris’s historic nomination for Vice President. And we turn up for the party’s convention like our other marginalized siblings, to watch and cheer as always from the cheap seats, but with no lack of enthusiasm. We were crying by the Pledge of Allegiance, even though our alleged allegiance is with you, men who call our issues a distraction while showing us day after day how much you don’t like us and how you never will. We choked on the complete lack of respect the party showed us by inviting a Republican governor who defunded our healthcare to speak. Instead we chose to “go high” and give Michelle Obama a standing ovation alone in our own homes and throw virtual parties to watch a lineup that included bad-ass female trailblazers, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. We were never going to get justice that it wasn’t Hillary being nominated for a second term or that Sen. Harris wasn’t the one at the top of the ticket. But we had this to bring us joy and inspiration. 

But you couldn’t let us have that, could you?

While our eyes were glued to the grace and grit that Hillary Clinton was displaying on our televisions, Noah Schachtman, editor of The Daily Beast, tweeted “50 minutes of emotional fire, followed by a wet blanket,” in reference to her speech. This was the same day that MSNBC host Chris Hayes had the brilliant insight that Biden’s message “calm, steady, compassionate leadership representing a big tent of Americans spanning the left, center and center-right, isn’t really that different from Clinton’s 2016 message!” concluding that it’s the sexism, Stupid. Sexism that Hayes himself continuously promoted through all of 2016, perhaps most notoriously in the twitter equivalent of a gang bang when he, along with Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza and Crooked Media Editor-in-Chief Brian Beutler, declared that Trump was going to be to the left of Hillary and in fact already was!

This is why we can’t have nice things, like capable women leading our country, instead of con artists who’ve murdered nearly 200,000 of us with their cruel indifference and incompetence. Schachtman and Hayes and Lizza and Beutler are all “journalists.” They’re supposed to be unbiased and yet they clearly aren’t. They perpetuate the same double standard that Hayes has just discovered (Welcome, Chris! You’re the Christopher Columbus of feminism.) And the problem is, they control the narrative. Their stories, their commentaries, their bigotries and high fivin’ sick burns on social media perpetuate the story that the female candidates are lackluster, shrill, unlikeable, duplicitous, ambitious and unqualified and then call us “bad candidates” when we can’t win against that.  Men, when you are in charge and you refuse to check your own misogyny, it is the women who will always lose. And you seem to be OK with that, so again, I have to assume, you just don’t like us. Because why would you set up people you liked to fail? Who treats people they “like” like this?

And speaking of men who don’t take responsibility for their complicity in the Trump administration, two days before all of this, in celebration of the 100thanniversary of the 19thamendment granting some women (White ones) the right to vote, James “Living my Best Life” Comey, tweeted out a picture of himself in a tee shirt that read (and you’re going to love this) “Elect More Women.” I’ll wait while you stifle some more rage. These men and those like them are the deadbeat dads of women’s rights: They fucked us and they refuse to take responsibility for the result of it.  

Men, you have gaslit us all so much this week, I can still smell the fumes. In Kansas on Monday, 19 year old, won the Democratic primary for the state’s House of Representatives. Just a few years ago, Coleman circulated naked photos of a 13 year old girl when she refused to send him more, drove another one to a suicide attempt, and is considered a progressive candidate who promotes the platforms of Bernie Sanders. If this is the Democratic candidate, who are the Republicans running against him? The ghost of Ted Bundy? 

I don’t how it is women haven’t gone all Season 2 Episode 7 of Sex Education yet, although I did order a bat and some goggles from Amazon. All of my life I’ve had to hear how feminists hate men, and I’ve always said, “That’s not true.” But now I have to ask, “What have you ever done to make us like you?” Because all we have done is try to make ourselves more “likeable” for you and it’s never been good enough. Maybe it’s not us. Maybe it’s you. I’m being kind, using qualifying language because I’m told I sound too bitchy when I don’t. But there are no maybes about it. Yes. It is you. It is all fucking you.  

Dear Men, it’s not that we hate men, it’s just that we don’t find you that likeable. It’s your turn to thread that needle for the next hundred years or so. 

Signed,

A bunch of bad ass unlikeable, ambitious women

In the spirit of “Stop waiting,” I’ve decided to release of few chapter of my murder mystery, Under the Tuscan Gun. If you like it, let me know. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER 1

“I’ve killed Elin and put her body in the trunk of my car.”

Thus Sunny greets me when I arrive at the villa.

“That’s what it feels like,” she clarifies, “I have the run of this amazing house and she’s not even here.”

At exactly five feet tall, I doubt that Sunny could murder anyone, let alone stick the body in a trunk, although her husband may beg to differ. As it is, she has to stand on tiptoes just to hug my husband, Mike, and I “Ciao!” and we are no giants, being half Irish with mothers who smoked during pregnancy. We are slowly taking in the view from the “house” which is situated on an old, hillside olive grove. Overlooked by the medieval hill town of Capalbio, whose crenellated walls and stone castle looms above, Elin’s villa sits above the vineyards of the Maremma, which loom below.  The green and gold slopes of clay and grapes and earth eventually dissolve right into the sea a few kilometers away. It was every stunning photo you’ve ever seen of the hills and valleys of Tuscany, plusa beach, in case you were wondering how Tuscany could get anymore amazing.

Oh, and there was a pool.

A few weeks earlier when she had called us with an amazing offer – one that had words in it like “Tuscan apartment” and “free” – we hoped for the best but also tried to manage our expectations. Accommodations in Italy, even in the best of circumstances, were not without their quirks whether it’s a toilet that bellows like a sea otter giving birth every time you flush it- but is nevertheless on a vineyard with a view of all of Campania; a mattress that has two sagging depressions exactly where the people should lay in a Roman suite overlooking the Pantheon; or a tub in a suite on Venice’s Grand Canal that comes to a ‘V’ in the middle so that when you stand in the shower you have to place one foot in front of the other like you’re on a balance beam.  We accepted the offer immediately for two reasons: number one, I have never not loved every moment in Italy, no matter how rustic and quirky the accommodations were, and number two, it was free. I lied. There was also a third reason: The Husband and I were running away.

We called it vacation. And according to our tickets, we would be returning. But we had packed our bags and headed to LAX feeling like fugitives escaping a pack of police dogs – if fugitives absconded in Town Cars. A little over halfway through the calendar year and we had had enough. We were jobless, childless and after some recent dinner party drama, damn near friendless, too. It was fight or flight. The entertainment business was all about the fight and I decided that I had had enough of that which left me one option that I gladly took – along with a quarter Xanax and ¾ of a bottle of Aglianico consumed in the business class cabin of Alitalia. (I recommend putting all purchases on a credit card with a decent miles program. If you’re going to run away from your problems, you should do it in comfort. What are we: Hobos riding the rails?) I was going to do a face plant into every vat of wine, bucket of gelato and trough of pasta I came across and if I was unfortunate enough to live through it, then I’d figure out the rest of my life after that.

Sunny took us on a truncated tour of the place she was calling home for the summer, because we were smacking right into the lunch hour and the lunch hour is sacrosanct. The Husband hates to miss lunch. If you do not arrive where you are going in Italy in time to order lunch, you are shit out of luck, as they say in America. The restaurants are then closed until the dinner hour and you have to find a less formal bar or café at which to order something small: a panino or a slice of pizza.  Although, to be fair, Italy being what it is you can often be blown away by something as mediocre as the panini you get at the Autogrill along the Autostrada, although I’m sure real Italians wouldn’t agree. But take my word for it: Compared to the GMO road kill we’re used to at rest stops across America, it’s ambrosia.

She quickly showed us the main house. A formal dining room opened onto a living room, behind which was the kitchen. It was beautifully appointed; appliances, furnishings, décor- everything was elegant and modern. Nevertheless, the home had a warmth, as if real people lived there. A row of jackets hung above a pile of sneakers and boots near the front door. The shelves were overflowing with books along with a few pictures of Elin, her super model looks in very un-super model settings: camping, painting, cooking with friends. The most glamorous photo was from her wedding a few years before, and even that had a casual beauty to it. Elin was in a simple white silk slip dress standing in what looked to be the Capalbio town square, next to what I assumed was her husband and our “landlord” for the next week, Silvio. He was shorter than his wife, who was, after all, a model and wearing heels, with thick, wavy, dark hair. But when I looked closer I saw that his face, while handsome, was scarred on the lower half. The flesh across his jaw and neck was puckered and dimpled a raw pink in contrast to his olive skin. I guessed that they were from burns, but Sunny had never mentioned any incidents or fires in all the times she had talked about the couple. I was dying to know; a dramatic backstory is something I have an insatiable curiosity for. If someone mentions a rock bottom I need to know how hard was the rock and how far was the bottom. Nevertheless, the first four minutes I was a guest in his home didn’t seem like the right time to start prying into my host’s secrets. I told myself I could ask Sunny later as I admired the picture one last time. Silvio’s confidence, I observed, was not at all marred by the scarred flesh on the lower half. He smiled broadly. They looked happy.

Sunny took us to the kitchen, which was very important because that’s the place where we chill our wine. When it finally cooled off at night we would switch to red, but it was July and currently 98 degrees during the day with near ninety percent humidity. White wine would be required and lots of it. We had brought a few bottles of Gavi that we had picked up at an enoteca in Rome before driving up that morning and they were quickly taken out of our hands by a friendly older woman who introduced herself to us as Tina, before efficiently disposing of the bottles into a state of the art wine fridge.

Sunny explained to us on the way out, “Tina does the cooking and cleaning. Her husband, Rennato, takes care of the grounds, the pool, the olives.”

We walked across the driveway and slightly down the hill to where it had been terraced to accommodate an infinity pool on the edge of the hillside. To the right of the pool was a large guest house, with two doors opening up onto the poolside, and two more around the back.

“So we’re staying at a villa for free – with two full time staff members?” I asked.

“Three. The butler arrives from Rome later this week. He always travels with Silvio.”

“They have a butler?” I couldn’t believe it.  “Does he ring the dressing gong?”

Sunny laughed and explained, “It’s not all Downton Abbeyand Remains of the Day. He’s in charge of everything that happens in the house: overseeing the staff, scheduling repairs and maintenance, keeping Silvio’s schedule and making sure he has everything he needs whether it’s his dry cleaning or the car serviced. He’s like a personal assistant except he doesn’t really want to be an actor.”

My ever-frugal husband raised a salient point. “Why are they paying people to be here if they’re not even here?”

“There’s a circus in town,” Sunny replied as if that should explain everything.

I meant to ask her to elaborate but we had just arrived at our apartment in the guest house: An airy bedroom with an en suite bath and private balcony overlooking the vineyards and hillside below.  Our excitement took precedence over investigating Sunny’s cryptic answer. Besides, it was after noon in Italy, perhaps she’d already been drinking. And speaking of drinking, I was feeling parched. Sunny handed us the key to the room and instructed us to put on our bathing suits and get ready to leave. We were having lunch at the beach.

Mike immediately started sorting through his cash and gadgets, trying to figure out which of the highly steal-able possessions he should take with him to someplace they could get stolen.  The Husband was a technophile and quite the amateur photographer, as well. On this trip alone, we were traveling with a laptop, a removable hard drive, an iPad, 2 iphones, an applewatch, one Canon 5D camera, numerous lenses, and a GoPro on a selfie stick. He considered it traveling light that he had left the tripod at home, although he had managed to pack something called a “monopod,” and made sure he could turn his phone into a wireless hotspot “just in case.” Next to all that, my 2ndgeneration Kindle looked like a rotary phone – or an actual book.  He looked at his gear and furrowed his brow like a kid who just realized he can’t take all his stuffed animals to the sleepover with him and had to make some hard choices.  He looked at Sunny, “What should I do with my camera and wallet? Leave them here?”

“They’ll be safe there,” she nonchalantly assured us, “We’re going to the beach club. Elin has a cabana rented for the summer.”

Mike and I looked at each other and smiled. This was exceeding even our “hope for the best” scenarios. I grabbed a wide brimmed hat, threw on a fake Pucci caftan, and walked to the car feeling like a vintage Italian movie star, or at least non-vintage Euro trash.

The feeling didn’t lessen when, an hour later, we were sitting on the beach, under a large canopy, eating linguini with bottarga and clams and ordering our second bottle of Vermentino.

“Marco! Put your penis away!” Sunny yelled in English to her youngest son.

It should be explained here why Sunny was called Sunny. As a child, or so the story goes, Claire Sullivan had a bossy and often abrasive disposition and a string of swear words to go along with it, picked up no doubt at the construction sites her contractor father would have to take her around to after she got kicked out of one kindergarten or pre-school or another, and he had to check in on his crews. When reporting on their youngest daughter to each other at the end of the night, one of her parents would always refer to her sarcastically as “Sunny.” “Sunny” told Sister Mary Alice that if she was going to Heaven, then she’d rather go to hell to get away from her bad breath. “Sunny” asked her grandmother if she was going to leave her any money when she died, and if not, then why did she have to be nice to her.

“Sunny,” it should surprise no one, became a stand up comic.

That’s what she was doing when we met her in Los Angeles over a decade ago in a laundry mat that a mutual friend was running an open mic in. (They can’t all be Carnegie Hall.) Thirty five people had shown up to put their names in a hat, hoping to get picked for one of the twenty-some four minute spots. And if you’ve ever done your laundry in a laundry mat (which is most of us at one point or another) then you know how the only thing that could make it worse would be having to listen to twenty plus comics try out their new material while dryers buzz, clothes tumble, and homeless people come in looking for spare quarters, displaying far more dignity than those of us who came to LA to be somebody and ended up begging for laughs at a fluff and fold.

Fortunately Sunny shared the same dark sense of humor about the business that we did and lived within walking distance ,which proved to be very convenient whether we were drowning our sorrows over the latest career disappointment late into the night at one of our apartments, or splitting a cab we couldn’t afford to a party on the Sunset Strip that Sunny had gotten us on the guest list for. Even then she was good at making friends who could invite her to desirable places and we drank through a large portion of our twenties on the expense account of one agent or another who Sunny had befriended.

Together we survived the Cosmo, the Bellini, and the Apple-tini crazes. We wore strappy heels, which Sunny always painted my toes for, the both of us being too poor to afford pedicures and me being a disaster with a nail polish brush. We did ridiculous things like the time we flirted with the guys cleaning the closed bakery at two in the morning because we were drunk and wanted a cookie, and somewhere in England there’s footage of interviews with us at the Standard hotel, shot by a guy claiming to be making a documentary. Growing up one of seven kids, Sunny already had three sisters, but I had none. Sunny was the closest thing I had. We worked in stand up comedy, a male dominated industry where you had to act like a guy or it was seen as a sign of being “other” and no one wanted that. It was nice to have another woman you could be a woman around and who understood what you were going through whether it was existential angst about your life’s goals or just needing gravy fries at three am.

Eventually Mike and I became television writers. But Sunny got an even bigger break: She got out.  She met a sommelier from Rome, fell in love, moved to Italy and had two kids, one of whom never had on pants. To be fair, he was only 5, but I don’t know at what point these things become inappropriate. I mean, I know that at 15 you can’t pull down your pants in public. But I don’t know what the exact cut off for the penis is, so to speak. (And scusa me, for putting that image in your head.) This was the same country where young girls only wore bathing suit bottoms and some not so very young girls, as well. I once saw three women, approximately 18 years old, get off a yacht only in bikini bottoms, and then all have a drink in the hotel bar before getting back on the yacht. Surely some penis in certain social situations was probably no big deal.

With penises put back in pants and lunch being cleared away, talk turned to dinner. Sunny’s husband, Nino, was driving up from Rome and would be joining us. The waitress brought the check and handing it to Sunny said, “Ecco lo, Signora Corini.”

“No,” Sunny corrected her, “Siamo gli ospiti di Signora Corini.”

The waitress apologized and took away our cash. It appeared the money of Signora Corini’s guests was just as good. Only on her way back to the main building I saw a man stop her and point to us. He was a thin man, early forties, with black hair that was pulled back into a ponytail. He was attractive, I suppose, but I immediately got a bad feeling from him and not because it was the new millennium and he was still wearing a ponytail in his forties. Maybe it was because he caught me looking at him and for the brief, accidental moment when we locked eyes, his weren’t friendly. The waitress looked back at us, then said something to him and continued on to the kitchen.

“Sunny? Are you sure it’s OK if we’re here?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

“I just thought I saw a man pointing at us…”

“We’re Americans. Everyone’s pointing at us,” she dismissed my concern. “It’s totally cool. Elin has guests all the time.”

“Where is Elin?” The Husband asked.

For the last few years Sunny had been talking about the elusive Elin but we had yet to see her in person. As I said, Sunny had a wonderful gift for meeting people. In LA it was because she was always outgoing and forthright, saying whatever was on her mind in such a way that people immediately felt like they knew her. Honesty in Los Angeles is as rare as an atheist in Oklahoma and people were both amused by her and relieved to not have to decipher a lot of bullshit. In Italy, however, her openness was an even bigger gift among the many ex-pats from a variety of countries who all spoke English and were all having one issue or another adjusting to life in Rome. Sunny stubbornly insisted on celebrating the Fourth of July and asking for milk in her coffee after lunch, two things that just weren’t done.

She and Elin met in an English speaking yoga class. (Sunny required a lot of Namaste to balance out all of that opinionated behavior.) Elin had just moved to Rome and knew no one. She’d been a model from a very young age and it wasn’t the type of business that was conducive to making a lot of quality, lifelong, female friends. I mean, sure, she knew who to call if she needed speed, but certainly no one who would go out and eat carbs and gelato with her.

“Elin is with some friends up north, in the Lakes region. It is so much more civilized up there.” I looked at our cabana with table service, the sparkling blue sea and the white shoreline dotted by matching beach umbrellas and wondered how it could get more civilized than this. “She originally told me she’d be here, but I guess her plans changed at the last minute. She’s supposed to be back by the end of the week but I’ve been texting her to confirm and I haven’t heard anything back which isn’t like her.”

Sunny’s concern was only betrayed by the two grooves that formed between her eyebrows as she said this. The Husband, being a husband and therefore totally oblivious to any subtlety expressed by a woman, paid no attention and instead raised his glass. “To Elin. Who was thoughtful enough to invite us and then thoughtful enough to not be here.” Sunny’s concerned look immediately vanished and we all laughed and drained our glasses.

“Scusa mi, Signora.”

Suddenly Ponytail was standing right next to us as if he had just transported himself there or we were too buzzed to notice him coming. He addressed Sunny in Italian, “I am looking for my friend, Elin.”

I heard Sunny explain to him in Italian that Elin was away, or at least that’s what I think she said. To be honest, I can speak Italian, but understanding what gets spit back at me is another matter. And that’s before two bottles of wine.

Ponytail’s outfit was impressive, especially given the humidity. He was wearing a white linen shirt that looked like it had just been pressed and not like he’d been pitting out in it all morning like the rest of us had. He had on a pair of deep green, flat front pants that would look ridiculous on anyone who wasn’t Italian. They were slightly cuffed above a pair of light brown driving mocs.

God I love this country! No cargo shorts and Adidas shower shoes for these guys.

He made his good byes to Sunny in Italian and took off, but my gaze followed him, as if I wanted to make sure he was leaving and I saw him look back at us more than once, as if he wanted to get a look at us one last time without our noticing.

Of course, all of this suspicion may have just been the wine talking.

Mike had already taken his camera out and started fiddling with it while Sunny was talking to the man, but I was still curious, “Who was that?”

“He says he’s a photographer friend of Elin’s and that he needs to speak to her. He even went so far as to say it was urgent. Said his name was Pietro Romano.”

Despite the heat, I shuddered in my chair. “He creeped me out.”

“That’s just the ponytail,” Sunny said.

Having now eaten a large pasta lunch and drank my share of two bottles of wine, I was ready to swim and I stripped off the caftan and headed to the sea. The water was surprisingly warm. Having grown accustomed to the brisker temps of the Italian seaside over the last couple of years I had actually grown to prefer the refreshing quality of the cooler water, especially in this heat. But this water was practically air temperature. Even The Husband couldn’t complain about this.

Despite it’s warmth, or maybe because of it, the water had a soothing quality and I was soon out past where my feet could touch the bottom, looking at the dramatic silhouette of the peninsula and the surrounding islands just to the north. I flipped over onto my back and just stared up, my body rising and falling as the waves came in.

“There are worse things than to drown in Tuscany,” I thought as I allowed the current to take me further out into the Tyrrenhian Sea. I hadn’t been this happy in nearly a year and if it all ended right now with my belly full of linguini with clams and bottarga it was a much nicer end than sitting in Los Angeles traffic.

Because there areworse things than to drown in Tuscany; you could be murdered there.

I was bitterly jealous of a young fictional boy whose story is supposed to make people happy.

Watching Harry Potter for the umpteenth time, I was in awe of how 11 year old Harry was being thrown this lifeline: F inding out he was magical. And I was jealous. Now granted, I wasn’t forced to live in a cupboard under the stairs as a child. I didn’t have a price on my head from the world’s darkest wizard or noble parents who died resisting an evil dictator (in my scenario mine actually voted for him.) But at 11, Harry Potter has his whole life to turn it around. He doesn’t need magic at 11. He needs magic at 40, when he doesn’t have his whole life to turn it around because this is his life, the results of the choices he made that he can’t take back, and if he’s lucky he’s only halfway through it. Or maybe if he’s unlucky he’s only halfway through it. I really don’t know sometimes.

I poured myself some more wine.

I was, as they say, “between jobs.” Although I was calling it “freelance.”

I was also, as they never say, “between friends.” Although they didn’t know it yet.

Or maybe it was just that I needed a little excitement. I needed something to feel different. Something that felt different that wasn’t awful, that is. When did this start happening that every change that happened to you was a bad one? Pay cuts and layoffs, and businesses failing, relationships failing, friends growing apart, friends getting sick. People dying. Democracy dying. High heels making my knees hurt.

I may have been, as the doctors call it, clinically depressed. Or I just may have been, as I like to call it, aware of the absolute fucking futility of my life and everyone else’s and how it’s all just bullshit because the world is just an amalgamation of shootings and injustices and disease and corruption.

I mean the doctors should really be concerned with the people who aren’t depressed, don’t you think?

“Maybe you should try meditating?” my estranged husband said to me. That was Dan’s solution to everything: Meditation. Not that it ever worked for him. If it had, he wouldn’t be my “estranged husband” and we wouldn’t be sitting across from each other at our local wine bar trying to have a date night.  “I just saw a Groupon,” he added.

“You want to fix this with a Groupon?”

“No, I’d like to fix this with medication, if we’re voting.”

I shot him a look.

“Or with sex.”

I shrugged. It was the best offer I was going to get tonight, and one that I knew would work, unlike these exercises our therapist had us doing to try to “hear each other.”

“All right,” I downed the rest of my wine. “Just so long as you understand that’s only a temporary fix.  The world’s still a toilet, even if I have an orgasm.”

“Noted.”

We went back to the house we used to share together, where I now lived alone while he was staying in a friend’s guest house until we “figured things out.” It was only supposed to be a few months but we were already into the second month and no closer to figuring out anything. Pretty much all we knew for sure was that we still liked having sex together and while I recognize how rare that is, I’m not sure you should build a marriage on it. I’m also not sure you shouldn’tbuild a marriage on it. Some days I’m not even sure you should bother to build a marriage at all.

Like I said, possiblyclinically depressed.

There are a lot of reasons a marriage doesn’t work, but our many reasons can be distilled down to the whole issue of depression and medication. He wants me to take it because he doesn’t want me to be depressed. He just wants it to go away like magic. Whereas I want someone I can talk to about it. Someone to whom I can say, “Sometimes I fear the future is just a howling void sucking us all in to its gaping maw of nothingness and spitting us back out 30 years from now when it’s all too late,” and have them tell me they get it and that it’s all going to be OK. And thenwe have sex. Because really none of it –  the depression, the fear, the howling void, the gaping maw, the nothingness – none of it is as bad as feeling that you’re alone in all of it. That you have no one to share your fears with or that you do, but they don’t care to hear it.

Of course, I will forgive a lot if someone can get me off.

Afterwards, as I was walking my husband to his own door, I saw a postcard on the floor where one of the cats had just claimed it as theirs. “Did you bring that in with you?” I asked him.

“Nope. You must have brought it in with the mail.”

I knew I hadn’t. It wasn’t like me to just drop junk mail on the floor and then not pick it up. It was just like him, however. But one of the things we’d been learning for one hundred and fifty dollars an hour was to not say these things. So, I kissed Dan good bye before wrestling the cat for it.

“You have the best toys money can buy,” I reasoned with her. Although I’m not sure what’s less reasonable, talking to a cat or expecting her to understand the value of a dollar. Maybe someday she’d talk back and have the answer for me.

I looked at the postcard.

FULL CIRCLE PILATES. THE WORLD IS A WRECK, BUT YOUR KNEES DON’T HAVE TO BE.

So now my junk mail was calling me old. Maybe that was the real reason I was jealous of Harry Potter: Not for his magic, but for his youth. And with that I threw the postcard away and went to bed.

***

I woke up the next morning at the crack of eight, determined to get started on my freelance life. In my previous one I had been a food consultant. You know the seven dollar package of fresh ravioli with the kale in it? That was me. I told my bosses, “Everyone in America is going nuts about kale. They have no idea it’s just a tougher spinach. If we put that in pasta they’ll totally forget about the gluten and carbs.” And I was right. I was so right, about kale and other things, that sales for the company took off and they were bought out by some food conglomerate that makes fish sticks and diabetes. I was laid off with a mediocre package that has almost run out and replaced with a twenty-eight year old guy with an MBA and a dislike for the smell of cooking food.

Now I was trying to parlay my experience into freelance food and restaurant writing. But while I was the big idea “let’s use kale” person, I wasn’t a write one hundred queries a day person, which is really what you need to be in order to make a living as a freelance food blogger. By 8:25 I had given up and left the house.

I opened the door only to find another postcard for the same pilates studio tucked inside the door jamb. These fitness people were persistent, which is why their abs probably looked better than mine. And also probably why they’d be a much more successful food blogger, too.

Justifying my lack of a work ethic by telling myself that a walk to the new coffee shop was both research and exercise, I headed off down the street with my ear buds and my French language podcast. Dan and I had been planning a food tour of France before I got laid off and wondered if I still wanted to be married. But continuing to learn the language kept me focused on a goal. I was going to still learn French because I was going to take that trip. If Dan and I didn’t go together, I would just go on my own. That is if I had any money left after losing my job and getting divorced and I wasn’t forced to move back home at 40. Continuing with the podcasts also helped thoughts like that from entering my head and ruining my day.

My other strategy was texting my friend with cancer.

Lori and I had worked together years ago at a PR company when I was her assistant and she was the person who made people willing to say “molecular gastronomy.” She brought me with her when she moved to in-house marketing for a high-end food import company and then helped me move over to development when I realized I had more passion for ingredients than algorithms. I owed her my career even if it was something of a shambles at the moment. That part wasn’t her fault.

We were down to two catch up dinners a year now and it was at the last one, as she moved her food around her plate and only ordered one glass of wine that she barely drank, that she confessed she had just started chemo. When I was feeling sorry for myself, I liked to remember that things could be much worse and that I wasn’t the only one who might feel alone right now.

JUST CHECKING IN. HOW ARE YOU FEELING? DO YOU NEED ANYTHING?

It could be a few days before I heard back, depending on where she was with her treatment. So I continued on my way, listening to the story of Jacques and his sœur, Celeste, and how they wanted un chien pour Nöel. It was strangely calming which was good because I was about to feel very un-calm.

“Hi, Jane!”

I had reached the new coffee shop, rather un-inspiredly named Le Chat Noir, when I heard the familiar voice call my name. Priscilla Emerson stood in front of me, holding her monogrammed Louis Vuitton handbag with the fake gross grain ribbon painted down the middle, the answer to the question “How do you make an already ugly purse even uglier?” Priscilla was one of the friends Dan got in the separation, although she didn’t know that yet.

“How are you?” she asked, stressing the “are” the way that therapists and people who pretend to be your friend do.

“Great! You?” I asked in the way that people who don’t want to be your friend do.

Priscilla and her husband, Taber, (yes, that’s his first name) were one of our couple friends. Despite being somewhat superficial, they were also a lot of fun, although they got less so after having kids and insisting on telling you A. how you just didn’t understand how difficult it was to be a parent and B. that you really should do it! But being somewhat superficial, they enjoyed having a live-in nanny and therefore were always up for dinner out or the occasional weekend getaway, which made up for the being less fun. It was on one of these weekends away that I learned the hard way that while Priscilla was always up for enumerating the many faults of Taber (not one of which was ever that his name was Taber) the same courtesy didn’t extend to me after we had been drinking margaritas in the sun all day and I told her I was thinking about leaving Dan because I didn’t think he loved me and wondered if he ever did. It was bad enough that she dismissed it and told me I would be crazy to leave someone like Dan. But a week later when I was trying to find my phone by calling it from Dan’s, I happened to see a text she had sent him, asking him if I was OK because I had seemed “unhinged” the weekend before.

As I’ve stated, my mental state may be up for debate. But you don’t do that. I would never text Taber and call his wife names. Because Taber, despite the many faults his wife likes to list, is still her husband and would tell me to go fuck myself. But Dan just never responded. I suppose it was better than agreeing with her, but still every once in awhile it would be nice if one’s partner would tell one’s nemesis to go fuck themselves. Quite honestly, it’s better than jewelry.

I must have tuned out Priscilla, who missed the rhetorical cue that I was only interested in a one word answer to how she was doing, because the next thing I knew a skinny guy on a skateboard who looked too old for a skateboard stopped in front of us. He handed us each a postcard before skating off to who knows where; Hopefully to get a car because up close he looked about thirty and was too old to be riding a skateboard around town.

Priscilla carefully threw hers in the recycling side of the trashcan, incensed. “I wish they’d stop creating more trash like this. My children need to live on this planet!”

I rolled my eyes which was the perfect angle at which to read the postcard.

FULL CIRCLE PILATES. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? START TODAY! FREE CLASS!

I would have loved to start anything today that wasn’t more of Priscilla’s story, but she kept going anyway. “As I was saying, have you heard of Reggio Emilia?”

“The cheese region?”

“No, the educational style. Well, anyway, there’s a pre-school here but the waiting list is a thousand dollars just to get on it…”

Just then my phone rang. I would have answered it even if it was the IRS – the real one, not the fake one that calls you as part of a scam – but luckily it was Lori and I didn’t have to make such a sacrifice.

“I’m sorry, Priscilla, I have to take this. Take care,” were the ten most beautiful words I had ever spoken in the English language.

“Lori!” I answered, “Is everything OK?”

“I didn’t mean to alarm you, Kid! Everything is fine. Pretty good even. So good I feel like getting out, but with the painkillers I still can’t drive. Are you busy?”

***

“Are you kidding me?”

Lori and I were standing outside of the Full Circle Pilates studio.

“What? You think an old broad on chemo can’t exercise?” In her mid-fifties, Lori still had a full head of dark hair that, while thinning due to recent events, was still styled in a precision bob. Her now slightly sallow complexion was perked up by the latest shade of red lipstick from Chanel, which matched her recent manicure. She may talk like a 1950’s loan shark, but she looked like anything but an old broad.

“No. It’s just that they’ve been practically stalking me. I received three flyers from them in the last 12 hours.”

“Sounds like good PR,” she winked. “Come in! My treat!”

“Thank you, but no need.” I held up my most recent flyer for the free class.

As soon as we went through the door, a bell dinged and suddenly a half dozen eyes were on us, breaking into warm smiles. I started to smile back until I realized the warm welcome wasn’t for me.

“Lori!” the women chorused.

Three women got up to swarm Lori with hugs and greetings of, “How are you feeling?” I sat down on the bench, watching as Lori lit up at the reunion. A tall, late forties-ish, African American woman with a closely cropped head of bleached blonde hair cradled Lori’s face in her hands and I’d swear she got some of her color back. An energetic older woman – she looked over 70 – with the gravelly voice of a whiskey-fueled, sapphic poet came over with a basket.

“I made you a great anti-oxidant shake. It’s all organic, I grew it myself. That chemo is going to kill your immune system. Also, there’s some pot to help with the nausea. I also grew that myself.”

“She’s also sampling some now, judging by the smell of her,” said a third woman, in the aloof tone your friend’s mom who doesn’t like you uses. She looked to be in her early sixties, with a honey blond helmet of hair on loan from the Junior League.

The first woman laughed. “Vicki probably got high last week. She just hasn’t washed that shirt yet.”

But the older woman, Vicki, just cackled, “You’re both right!”

Lori laughed with them and even the Junior League woman cracked a smile before adding, “Seriously, though. I asked my son about some new treatments and he sent me some information that I printed out.”

It made me happy to see Lori had such a support system here. It also made me realize how she kept wearing those mini-skirts into her fifties.

As everyone continued to circle around Lori, I was left to myself. I didn’t know anybody so participation was awkward. Plus, it felt like it would have taken something away from the attention she was getting to have to introduce me at that moment. So I sat on a bench in the back of the studio, checking emails, which took all of five seconds because there were no new emails. Or texts. Or even instagram likes. It occurred to me that our phones are the 21stcentury version of a message in a bottle. We’re all adrift on our own islands, sending out missives to see if anyone else exists and hears us.

“You must be Jane!”

A fourth woman had come from an office in the back. She appeared to be in her fifties, with a head of frizzy brown hair, and a smile that seemed genuine, probably because it reached her dark eyes. She put a hand on my shoulder, and this is going to sound ridiculous, but I never wanted it to leave. It was like everything I was missing was in that connection. “I’m Carla. I’ve heard SO much about you!  I couldn’t wait to meet you!” she beamed.

“How are you?” she said in a way that people say when they’re not trying to make a big deal about it, they just actually want to know.

And so, I burst into tears.

***

I’m happy to say the rest of the class wasn’t like that.

I apologized profusely, feeling like an idiot, especially in a room with a person with cancer who had every reason to burst into tears but wasn’t. But everyone assured me, “That’s just Carla. She has that effect on people.”

Melinda, who I learned was the African American woman, pointed to the blonde and added, “She even got Samantha to tear up once. It almost rusted her.”

“I told you, that was seasonal allergies,” Samantha responded dryly. Which, apparently, was how she did everything.

After that, class started and I was so glad for the distraction, I would have run a marathon to take everyone’s minds off my breakdown. But I was more surprised to find that it took mymind off of my breakdown –  and everything else –  too. As Carla moved us through the exercises I needed a lot of focus to do them correctly, and I found I couldn’t think about anything else if I wanted to do them right. I also found that when I did it right, I felt a connection to my body that prevented me from spending too much time in my head.

I told Carla all of this when class ended and she asked me how I liked it.

“That’s why getting laid is so great,” Melinda said matter-of-factly. And I realized she was right. It was exactly what I was doing with Dan to take my mind off of things.

“Not just getting laid, but masturbation, too,” Carla pointed out.

Lori laughed and looked at me, “You’re about to get Carla’s lecture on self-love.”

“I love my self plenty,” Melinda stated. “And I love being with women sometimes, too. But sometimes you just need a penis. Preferably a big one.”

“Not since I was in my twenties,” Vicki shot back.

“You never use a dildo?” Melinda wanted to know.

But before Vicki could answer, Samantha shook her Talbot’s catalogue head and in her composed voice asked, “Honestly, Melinda, what is it with you and big dicks?”

Melinda shot back, “If you have to ask…”

As everyone laughed, Carla turned towards me, “So, Jane, are you joining us tomorrow?”

***

I went every day for the rest of the week. Lori couldn’t make it, I think that first class had taken more out of her than she had let on, but the other women were always there, along with a few others who came in and out. It was nice having somewhere to be every day and people who were happy to see me when I got there. Plus, it took my mind off things for an hour and when I left, I felt like I had accomplished something. It had been a long time since I had felt that.

I was thinking about all of this when I was once again sitting across from Dan for our twice-weekly pre-cursor to sex date. He had asked what was new and I had thought to tell him, but was worried if I tried he wouldn’t understand and I didn’t feel like the rejection.

After a week of toning, however, I was starting to like how I looked in lingerie better, and I found I had more of a strut in my step when we got back to my/our place.

“You seem different tonight,” he remarked as we lay in bed later.

“How so?”

“I don’t know. Just different.”

My husband is a journalist. He uses words for a living. And yet when it comes to me, he comes up short. I wanted him to use them for me. Tell me what you see. Am I happier, more confident, less preoccupied? Do you find me interesting, well-read, loyal? Just something so that I could feel like he understands me as well as he understands the affect deregulation has on the stock market. But when I press him, he just shuts down. He doesn’t even try and I want him to try. For me.

But tonight I didn’t want to think about that. I rolled over, straddling him. “Well, if you can’t tell me, you’re just going to have to show me.”

***

The next morning, Lori called. She was feeling better and wanted to know if I’d give her a ride to class. But despite her assurances that she was up for it, I grew concerned when I picked her up and she seemed to be missing a lot more hair than last time.

She sensed my worry. “I know. And I’m losing my fucking eyelashes, too, and you know they were always one of my top five things to be vain about. On the bright side, I can probably stop shaving my legs.” When all I could manage was a weak laugh she added, “I promise you, it looks worse than it is.”

But I didn’t believe her and I was glad when we got to the studio and it was just the same group of us who had been there the first time. And they knew something was different, too. Vicki had brought a hat for Lori. “I knitted it with really soft cashmere so it won’t scratch your head. It’s going to start getting colder, and that’s going to happen quicker for you.”

Melinda touched her own nearly-bald head. “I have my clippers in the car if you just want to be done. Trust me, you will never go back once you do. It’s so no fuss.”

Samantha didn’t even look up from her magazine as she handed Lori a card. “They do Lady Gaga’s wigs. I already called and they said they’d give you a thirty percent discount.”

Carla just hugged her. “I’ve been wanting to do this all week!”  Lori rested her head on Carla’s shoulder as she allowed herself to be folded into her arms. She smiled at first, but the longer Carla held on the more Lori’s expression changed. At first she just looked tired, but then a look of fear passed over her face. It was so real, I turned to look behind me, thinking something must be happening there but nothing was. And when I turned back her face slowly contorted to one of rage. She was angry. Finally, she smiled, but it was a weary one.

Lori broke the embrace. “Thanks. That was a lot.”

Carla stroked what was left of Lori’s hair. “I know you hate to do it, but you have to flush it out. It’s no good for your healing and no good for what we’re doing here.” Carla herself seemed wilted by the experience and Vicki handed her a bottle of water and she drank like she was trying to avoid a hangover in the morning.

“Are you sure you’re up to class, Lori?” I had to ask.

“You know what, Doll, I’m not. So, we’re going to skip class today.” She looked at the other four women and they all nodded in agreement. “And instead get down to business. Kid, you’re a witch.”

I waited for the punch line. I was a witch because…I made a bitchy comment about our old boss on the way here…? When she didn’t elaborate I finally asked, “Is this because I wouldn’t let you get McDonald’s on the way over?”

But before she could answer, Vicki turned her grizzled voice on her, “You tried to eat McDonald’s!? Do you know how that fucks with your immune system?I”

“It’s the only thing I can keep down,” Lori protested.

But Vicki wouldn’t hear it. “Are you even trying the pot?”

It was Samantha who cut to the chase. “Jane, she means you’re a witch in the paranormal sense of the word.”

I still didn’t get the joke. To be fair, they were all older than me. Maybe this was funny to them. I laughed to be polite and then turned to Lori.

“Do you want me to run you home if you’re not feeling well?”

But Lori didn’t respond to me. “Samantha? A little help? I don’t have it in me for the back and forth.”

And just then Samantha sat very still and got very quiet. She took a few deep breaths and I felt a breeze tickle my neck as it rushed past my ear and tousled my hair. She spoke quietly to herself, mumbling a lot of “Mm-hm’s” and “Okays,” before saying, “Jesus, you have an answer for everything. No wonder you and your husband are separated.” I was taken aback by the comment. Not only did I find the criticism unfair, but I didn’t remember telling them I was separated. But before I could say anything her eyes snapped open and she looked directly at me. And in her detached WASP voice she said, “Honestly, Jane. All you do is complain how lucky Harry Potter is and then when someone tells you you’re a witch, you fight them on it.”

I had never admitted that to anyone. Now they had my attention.

Melinda walked over to Samantha and put her hands around her forehead. Samantha smiled in gratitude. “Thank you, Dear. Just a little top off would be great. I had a bagel for breakfast so it didn’t take too much out of me.”

Lori explained, “Welcome to the Full Circle coven. Each one of us here draws on an element for our powers. As you just saw, Samantha specializes in air and powers of the mind. She just read your future to figure out the fastest way to convince you we weren’t fucking around. Melinda uses fire energy. She’s a source of power.”

“And sexual energy,” Melinda added proudly. “Vicki works with Earth energy in the physical world. Manifesting things from the ground with her hands.”

“You mean she grows pot,” I said.

“I sculpt, too,” Vicki grinned. “Knit. Do woodworking. Make teas. Your basic lesbian arts.”

“And Carla is our water energy. She’s a conduit for emotions, dreams, visions.”

“That would explain why she made me cry the first time I met her.” Everyone smiled at the memory. I sighed. “And also why she uses all the emojis in her texts.”

Carla grinned. “I do!”

Samantha just shook her head. “I keep telling her we are losing the written language with that shit.”

I turned around looking at all the women. “So that’s four elements. What do you do?” I asked Lori. “What’s the Fifth Element? Besides a Sci Fi movie I’ve never seen.”

“Ether. Spirit. I’m the binding element that connects us all to each other and the other worlds. I’m like the internet.” She paused for a moment and I wasn’t sure if she was tired or if what she was trying to say was just difficult. Finally, she spoke. “We’re all not going to be around forever.”

At that, the other women all looked down sadly, no doubt thinking the same thing I was: Loriwasn’t going to be around forever. But Lori kept going. “When we find a suitable candidate we like to take on an intern, so we have someone to replace us when necessary. And you, Kid, are a witch.”

I still didn’t believe what any of them were saying. This had to be a joke; a way for them to cheer Lori up. Sure, Samantha had just read my mind, but there was an explanation for that. I was having a psychotic break. Priscilla was right: I was unhinged! It was a lot more likely that I was hallucinating all of this, than witches actually existed.  And what I believed even less than witches existing was that I could be one. “But it’s not like I ever make anything happen with my mind,” I protested.

“It would be weird if you did,” Vicki muttered.

“Shouldn’t I be like 11 when you tell me this?”

“Oh, who wants to train an 11 year old?” Samantha dismissed me. “My son has two and they’re annoying as fuck.”

“Besides,” Melinda said, “Witches don’t fully come into their power until their late 30’s or early 40’s.”

“What power is that?” I joked, “The power to be invisible to men?”

“Don’t dismiss that as a useful tool,” Lori smiled.

I realized if this was a psychotic break it was a lot better than my non-psychotic break reality so I decided to just play along. “So, what happens now?”

Carla was the first to answer. “You’ll continue your training here with us. But you’ll also intern with a different one of us each week. You’ll shadow us, learn what we do and how our powers fit into our lives. That way we can get an idea for what your strengths are and you can see what you gravitate towards.” When I nodded, Carla asked, “Any questions?”

“Are we still going to do pilates? Because I’m starting to see my abs again.”

***

A forty-year old intern. Suddenly I was in a bad Anne Hathaway movie.

I drove Lori home shortly thereafter and it was a pretty silent drive. Finally, she asked, “How are you doing with…everything?”

I didn’t know what to think. I mean, I had decided to just go with it, but surely that meant I actually was crazy, right? One thing was certain: my husband was going to insist on medication now. Which is why I couldn’t tell him.

“Well,” I finally answered, “Whatever ‘spirit’ or ‘ether’ are they clearly don’t give you psychic capabilities or you wouldn’t have needed to ask that.”

She laughed hard and loud and then so did I and soon we were at her house. As our laughter finally petered out a bigger thought occurred to me.

“Wait, so the cancer…then you’re going to be OK. Right? You guys can fix this!” It was the most positive I had felt about anything in the last several months. It reminded me of what it was to have hope.

But Lori just smiled and shook her head. “Oh, Kiddo, no. It doesn’t work like that.”

And suddenly I was no longer jealous of Harry Potter, but of myself a few minutes ago. I was jealous of the woman who believed in magic and thought it could solve everything. Instead I was the woman who now had the power of magic, but still couldn’t fix anything.