Chapter 14
“You’re early,” Tiffany says, as soon as I walk through the door. “You’ve always been so early to everything. It stresses people out, Mari. It wrinkles the forehead.”
“What?” Tiffany asks.
“Oh, nothing,” I say. “The eighties perms are just funny.”
“Truly,” Tiffany says, snapping a cape around my neck. “What a shame that your hair just naturally does that.”
She lifts a section of my hair, holds it up to the light, and lets it drop.
“When was your last professional cut?”
“Recently.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Within the last decade.”
“Sit,” she says, and points at the chair with a comb.
She works fast. She doesn’t ask me what I want done, and I don’t offer, because we both understand that’s not what this appointment is about. She talks the whole time, and I let her, because Hannah was right. This is where Tiffany holds court, and this court moves swiftly through its docket.
The Mayor asked whether Duncan’s robes could be dry-cleaned as a municipal expense, she tells me.
Ms. Pelham’s wig now attaches to her head with enough wire to receive radio.
A woman from ‘way out in New Hampshire’ called the salon asking whether Tiffany could get her tickets to the show, as if Shear Magic was the box office.
“And Vivian and Dana came in separate cars yesterday,” she says, folding a foil with a little flick.
“Can you believe it? Twelve years of marriage and they’re driving to the same place in two different vehicles.
That article did its damage, and whoever fed it to that website should be ashamed.
” She catches my eye in the mirror. “I mean it. You should print that.”
“I’m not sure it’ll fit.”
“Oh,” she says. “Did you hear about your cousin?”
“What about her?”
“Someone — I won’t say who, I protect my sources, I’m sure you respect that — someone saw her yesterday night at that farm-restaurant place over in Wilmington. In a corner booth. They couldn’t see who she was with. But she was laughing.”
“And?”
“Well, inquiring minds want to know. Who’s the man?”
“I have no idea,” I say. “I don’t keep track of her schedule. And who says there’s a man?”
“There’s always a man.” She points the brush at my reflection. “Nobody drives to Wilmington for the food. You drive to Wilmington so nobody watches you eat it.”
I decide that I won’t mention this to Pru, for the sake of her sanity, and when I fail to provide any good intel, Tiffany moves on to rumors about the Harvest Festival. It takes her until the last foil to get to where we both know this is going.
“So,” she says. “Any news about Damien?”
“He’s the same. Sleeping. Annabel checks on him twice a day.”
“Mm.” She folds the foil. “And does she… I mean, does anyone know anything yet? About what it was?”
“She’s working on it.”
“Because people are saying it was the curse, and other people are saying it was his heart, and Dorcas is telling everyone it was probably an allergy. Which, if I were Dorcas, I’d be careful about, since she was the one giving everyone pastries…
” She pauses. “But what does Annabel actually think it was?”
It’s the third time she’s asked me the same question in three different ways.
“Annabel inspected all the goblets,” I say. “All of them. Everything that was on the banquet table.”
“I thought Dana washed those,” she says. “She was stressing about ruining evidence.”
“She did, but it doesn’t matter. Washing fades a potion residue, but doesn’t erase it.
Annabel can pick up a cup and tell you everything that’s ever been in it.
Or at least she can try.” I watch her in the mirror.
“She couldn’t figure out what was in Damien’s goblet.
Something was in Pru’s, though, and she knows exactly what it was. ”
Tiffany drops a clip, then picks it up and sets it back on the cart, squaring it with the edge of the tray.
“Well,” she says. “Good. That’s good. Then you’ll catch whoever it was.” She checks the clock. “You need to process. Thirty-five minutes. There’s magazines.”
She puts me under the dryer, and while I sit under the hood with an eight-month-old issue of People, she sweeps the floor, which doesn’t look like it needs sweeping, and then rearranges a shelf of product that was already perfectly arranged.
Next comes the wash, and then the chair again. She takes up a round brush and gets exactly one pass through before her hand stops moving.
“Was whatever was in Pru’s cup—” she says. “Was it also in Damien? Can Annabel tell?”
I turn the chair so I’m looking at her instead of her reflection, but I don’t say anything. She holds out for about four more seconds.
“I bought it online,” she says. “The thing in Pru’s cup.
It was just a croak tonic. I ordered it from a website — Glamoury Dot Net, it’s a whole thing.
The tonic had a ton of reviews, everyone said it was safe.
People use them for auditions and custody hearings and whatever else, I don’t know.
It was eleven ninety-nine plus shipping and it came in a padded envelope, a little brown bottle.
I swear it’s not dangerous. It’s just like, a voice thing, it makes you hoarse for a little while, that’s all it does, that’s all it’s for—”
“Tiffany.”
“I put it in her cup when I went over for a muffin. My hands are fast, you know, and the whole idea was that she’d croak through her big scene and then I’d get to go on in her place, that was the whole plan, just a sore throat, it’s basically a spa treatment in reverse—”
“Tiffany.”
“—and then an hour later Damien was on the floor.” Her voice cracks.
“I’ve keep thinking I put a man in a coma with a twelve-dollar throat potion.
I haven’t slept. I’ve washed my hands so many times my cuticles look like Bert’s.
I’ve been trying to do the math on how long you go to prison for that.
It’s probably a lot of years. I looked it up on my phone at the pub so it wouldn’t be in my search history at home. ”
“I don’t think that’s how search history works.”
“I realize that now.”
“Breathe, Tiffany.”
“Is it the same thing?” she says. “Did I do this to him?”
“No,” I say. “It’s not in him. Annabel is certain.
She read Damien’s breath the night he collapsed and she’s read him every day since.
There’s no sign of croak tonic. Whatever took him out has a completely different signature, and your bottle had nothing to do with any of it.
He never drank from Pru’s cup. Neither did she. ”
Tiffany sits down, puts both hands over her face, and cries. It goes on for a while, loud and ugly and entirely un-performative, which for Tiffany may be a first. I get up, cape and all, and bring her a box of tissues from beside the register.
“I dosed my own understudy assignment,” she says eventually, into the tissue. “With a tonic from a website that came up on Google. How stupid am I?”
“Why buy it at all?” I ask. “You’re a witch, Tiffany. You come from generations of witches. Why is there a website involved? Why not brew it yourself?”
“Brew?” she laughs. “I can’t brew. Nobody in my family has ever brewed anything stronger than coffee, and half the time the coffee is bad. Illusion is our thing. Grandma could make a bad perm look like a Vogue ad. You think this face is all moisturizer?”
For a second, the light catches her wrong, or maybe it really is an illusion and it falters slightly, and all the sudden there are lines at her mouth and a tiredness under her eyes that I’ve never seen on her face, then the light or whatever it is rights itself and her face is her face again, perfectly smooth and finished.
“Half the women in this town walk out of here with a little more than a blowout,” she says. “Nobody’s ever complained. But a potion? An actual potion, in an actual bottle, that does an actual thing to an actual body? I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Where did you hear about the website?”
“Everyone’s heard of it.” She blows her nose. “It’s not some secret. It comes up in the town Facebook group sometimes. It’s got a whole section for” —she makes a vague gesture at her own face— “maintenance.”
“Who’s everyone, Tiffany?”
“Ask anyone,” she shrugs. “I told Skye about it, when she came in for her facial. Girl talk. And she said she’d already heard of it. I said ‘Glamoury’ and she nodded before I finished the word. Lots of people have heard of it, Mari. Lots of people.”
“Okay,” I say. “I believe you.”
“Are you going to tell everyone?”
“No, you are. Tonight, before rehearsal. You tell Vivian and you tell Pru. Do you still have the bottle?”
“It’s in the trash, out back. Pickup hasn’t—”
“Go get it. Don’t wash it. Annabel will want to read it.”
She nods.
“What if I don’t tell them?” she asks, sniffling. “Can’t you do it for me? I just want to hide.”
“It’d be better if it came from you. You’re great with an audience.”
She laughs, despite everything, and then she stands up, pointing me back into the chair.
“Sit back down,” she says. “You have wet hair, Marigold, and I haven’t even cut it yet. You’re not walking down Main Street half-finished on my watch. I confessed to a crime today. My salon reputation is all I have left.”
“Fine, but—”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m not going to give you bangs. My mother owes you an apology for those.”
* * *
Tiffany walks into the Community Center with the brown potion bottle in a zip-lock. She asks Vivian if she can take the stage, and tells the story straight through, holding the freezer bag up so everyone can see the bottle. Nobody heckles. The people of Duskboro love a public confession.
When she finishes, Vivian stands up from the front row.
“Thank you for telling us yourself,” Vivian says.
“You will, of course, be stripped of the understudy role. You’ll keep Third Witch, though, as long as Pru doesn’t object, because I need three witches, and because you’re good in the role, but you’ll never again be alone with a prop, a cup, or a costume in this building. Dana will see to it.”
“Who covers me, then? If something happens?” Pru asks from her seat.
“Moonbeam will hold the book, if it comes to that.”
“Then nobody in this company will so much as breathe near Prudence until we open,” Englebert says, and there’s a ripple of quiet laughter.
“You’ll pay Annabel’s consulting fee for the goblet analysis,” Pru says, looking up at Tiffany. “I’ve seen her rates. They’re fair.”
“And that’s it? That’s all you’re going to do to me?”
“I’ll leave the rest to management.”
Englebert, seeing this as his cue, rises, stretches, and ascends to the stage in two jumps.
“TIFFANY REAGAN,” he says, projecting to his greatest ability.
“You have offended against the play itself. Prudence may forgive you, and the various legal apparatuses that vaguely govern this town will never hear of your indiscretions, but the play keeps its own accounts. There is a very old procedure for those who bring harm upon a production from within its own company, and this troupe has been rehearsing it in that parking lot, all summer.” He sits, looking up at her.
“You will go out those doors. You will turn three times. You will adhere to the ritual, and this time, it will be meant.”
“Englebert,” Vivian starts, “she didn’t say the name—”
“The ritual is not about the name,” Englebert says, without turning his head. “It is about respect.”
Tiffany hops down from the stage and walks up the center aisle with the whole company watching.
Everyone rushes to the lobby to watch through the windows.
The automatic floodlight over the doors comes on.
She turns once, twice, then three times, her arms out for balance.
She spits into the hedge, says a word that carries through the doors and makes Hannah cover Emma’s ears a full second too late, and then knocks to be let back in.
Pru opens the door.
“Well, come in,” she says. “It’s chilly out, and you’re on cue at eight.”
“Let the record reflect,” Englebert says, “that that was the finest performance of her career. There wasn’t a false note in it.”
“It wasn’t a performance, Englebert.”
“Exactly, Marigold. That is precisely what I said.”