Uri Rogoza
Hannah, a Witch

«Life- it ain’t at all what people think»

Colonel Dan Mitchell, US Army, Retired Known to many Manhattanites As the homeless man with the nickname The American Hero.

Vince Sherman had always been an idiot. But tonight he out did himself.

“Un-fucking-believable!” he blurted out again for the umpteenth time, spilling his whisky on his expensive designer suit. “No, really, a witch, I swear! Looked like a scarecrow- skinny as a rail, dark eyes, dressed in tatters… And the main thing is I don’t even know what made me do it! I was driving on I-95 when, like an asshole, I decided to take a short cut. But then, if I didn’t I wouldn’t have seen what I saw! And I’m telling you – Un-fucking-believable!

The party was just beginning, so it was no wonder that the crowd gathering around Vince, who arrived either already drunk or stoned, and mostly likely both, was quite large. They all had their smug faces, haughty smiles, and impeccable suits… I knew some of the people standing around him, some I did not. As usual.

I was at the antique gallery of Richard Mills (who was the type who couldn’t stand it when anybody called him Dick or Richie), a thin blond gay man with sad eyes who moved to New York from London four years ago, and having opened his gallery immediately decided to use it to organize a “Men’s Club”, as he called it. Once a month he gathered the glitterati from show-biz, artists, gallery owners, and wealthy playboys, who never knew what to do with themselves. Her Majesty’s loyal subject dreamt of creating a comfortable homosexual haven for himself, but instead he had to endure crowds of boorish drunken men, who at the end of the evening, having had their fill of free booze and good times, would start calling their wives, girlfriends and mistresses to continue the fun.

“And you, Steve, what are you doing here?” I would have asked myself any other time. But tonight I knew exactly what I was doing at Richard Mills’ soiree. Everything was perfect. Everything was happening exactly as it was supposed to. Life had taken a wonderful a turn. The world was magical. It was an unfamiliar feeling, one of joyous trepidation.

I’d barely warmed a glass of rich whisky in my palm, and was putting it back on the tray when I first heard the words of the drunken, laughing Vince Sherman. Because so many people were not listening to his story, it was clear that it was really intended for only one person in the world. Me.

I had to hear it again, before Vince either became completely incoherent, or switched to his favorite subject- the joys of sex with hermaphroditic prostitutes.

Thankfully this hadn’t happened yet, and Vince was basking in the ironic attention of the other guests, still regaling them with his adventure. Once again. For the fifth or sixth time. I had already gotten the gist, as had everyone else standing around with drinks in their hands. Basically, Vince was on his way back to Manhattan from parts unknown when he decided to take a shortcut, exited I-95, and while driving through some little backwater town (Don’t forget the name! Don’t forget the name! I repeated to myself like a mantra) he crashed his Mercedes full speed into a pile of metal from some old tractor blade or something.

“Son of bitch! It was right in the middle of the road!” Vince explained to his listeners, his eyes bright with enthusiasm “A nasty pile of rusted metal! No, seriously! Right. In. The. Middle. Of. The. Road! And I was going 60! Un-fucking-believable!”

Whistleroad Town, if you believed Vince, was one armpit of a town. He had fallen into complete despair that he was forced to wait until morning to get help, when, for a few bucks, some local wino introduced him to the town’s only point of interest (I already knew I would never forget the name) – the local freak who could supposedly make miracles.

“The shack she lived in – Uncle Tom’s cabin had nothing on this place! Jesus Christ, what a dump!” Vince took a long swallow of whisky and his eyes glistened, but not in a good way- he had definitely taken something else besides alcohol tonight. “I went in. She apparently wasn’t sleeping, although it was 4 o’clock in the morning. Hoooweee, was she ugly! Beaten something fierce with the ugly stick! And how old – maybe 20, maybe 40, who the hell knows? And her name, fantastic – Han-nah!! I shat a brick when I heard it! So we spent a couple of hours together.”

“ ‘So what tricks can you do, Miracle Lady?” I asked her. She said nothing. Then it dawned on me. I said, ‘Can you turn ten bucks into a hundred? Here take this’… So I go to take a ten out of my wallet, and she doesn’t even touch it, and I look again – a C note! A real 100 dollar bill! What the hell are you all laughing at? I’m telling you, it was unbelievable… So then, I’m telling you, listen to this, my wallet is black, right? Can you make it turn green? I take it out again – and it is green…”

The crowd, already warmed-up from the free booze, laughed raucously and derisively. “I’m telling you!” protested Vince, dropping his glass which shattered into a spray of sharp fragments. He awkwardly pulled a big worn and disgustingly green wallet out of his back pocket. “Look! I swear to Christ!”

But the other guests laughed even louder, for a moment drowning out the live music; in the depths of the studio a string trio invited by the aesthete Richard was performing something understated and beautiful.

“Fine, screw you, then! If you don’t believe me, then don’t!” an offended Vince grabbed another glass of whisky off a tray. “Morons! And do you know how it ended? Well, listen!… ‘Fine,’ so I say, ‘That’s enough. Thanks. But maybe you can conjure up a tow truck right now, ‘cause in this shitty Podunk town my cell doesn’t even work.’ So she just sits there for a second then says, ‘You don’t need a tow truck. I fixed your car.’ So I look outside- and I’ll be damned! There’s my baby- all in one piece, good as new. And what’s more- that fucking plow blade, the one I crashed into, is standing right there a couple of feet away, and it hadn’t even moved. So right there I started believing in her miracles… Big Time… I even got a little scared…”

“Time to lay off the drugs, Vince, my friend. No, no kidding. If you start having these bad trips, they’re not a good sign,” suggested someone I couldn’t see.

“You don’t believe me?” asked Sherman, but he already had calmed down, and took another swig of whisky. “Well, I guess that’s to be expected. I wouldn’t have believed it myself either.”

“And what’s she doing living in that shithole, anyway, this Hannah of yours? Huh? If she can do anything?” asked a flushed pig-faced man standing next to me, “Something here doesn’t add up?”

“You won’t believe it, but I asked her that myself! She lowered her eyes and spoke so softly, “I can’t ask for anything for myself. It is not allowed. I can only ask for others… Or else the gift will disappear… So at the end of the night I gave her a fiver. I thought she might make a fuss, say that it was too little, but she just lowered her eyes and said ‘Thank you’. I woke her up in the middle of the night, made her do some magic tricks, got a new car – and for only five bucks! And all she said was a pathetic ‘Thank you.’”

The crowd of listeners began to break up. Some were laughing; the majority already discussing something else, already having forgotten about the nonsense of Vince Sherman.

Except for me. I believed every word. I came here expecting a miracle, about which I had been forewarned. And it happened – I heard it, as soon as I entered the cozy, dimly-lit gallery. I had not even had time to take a sip of whisky. And now, I am going to keep it all to myself- it had been too long since I’d had any miracles in my life. Especially the good kind.

All that was left was to leave and not attract any attention. I moved closer to the door, and stopped by the window. Autumn in the Village was in all its splendor, and it was absolutely beautiful. It looked like a greeting card for a mysterious holiday which only a few people know about.

All of a sudden I felt the brush of a light, almost feminine hand. I turned around. The founder of the “Men’s Club” Richard Mills looked as he always did – in a silk shirt of an undeterminable color, narrow shoulders, with a shock of silky blond hair, thin fingers with an ideal manicure, puppy-dog eyes…

But Richard was much more pleasant than all of his guests – who were pushy and arrogant, drinking his whisky and breaking his glasses, swearing and shouting. I thought suddenly, “Why do you need all this? Manhattan is full of gay clubs where a refined man like Richard would find himself welcomed with open arms.

“Hi Richard,” I shook his long thin fingers, “Everything is wonderful. As always. And the music is just sublime…”

“But what’s the point of it all if you are already leaving?” he sadly sighed, “You haven’t even had a drink… Lee isn’t coming, of course?”

“He’s working.” Or having a threesome with a beautiful blond and a gorgeous brunette I wanted to add, but thought better of it. The sad Brit might have thought that I was being vulgar, which I certainly did not want. There was enough uncivilized behavior at his party already without my adding to it.

“Yes, Lee is now a national treasure!” Mills smiled widely, “An American Michelangelo! Soon, no one will believe us that we used to know him, will they? By the way,” he almost hesitated, “A lot of people still think that you two are lovers…”

“Really? Who cares?” I found this very amusing, “Don’t even bother to convince them otherwise, Richard. In fact, it’s actually quite funny! In any case, the word ‘lover’ is from the word ‘love’, and I do love Lee like a brother. So in a sense you could say that they are right…”

“Oh, I like the way you put that- ‘from the word love’,” Richard’s charcoal eyes lowered even more, making him look even more like a sad puppy.

I could not wait to leave- a feeling of sorcery was pulsing through my veins like warm electricity – but Mills was still standing there next me, more as if he were just another guest, like me, than the host. Besides, I had the strange feeling that he wanted to say something more to me, but that he could not decide whether to do so or not. At least so it seemed.

“Stephen, my dear…” sighed Richard as he lowered those puppy-dog eyes, “You wouldn’t be offended if I tell you that I know something about your… your problems?”

“Problems?” I asked.

“I mean about work,” it was clear that the Englishman was uncomfortable, “You see, I have a good friend who also works in television… He is no longer young, but is very rich and powerful…”

“Great,” I thought to myself, “Typical…”

“And I mentioned you to him, just a word, without your permission, I know, my apologies…” Richard rambled on faster, as if afraid that I would not hear him out, or would punch him instead. “It’s just that he is a big fan of everything that you have done. He told me himself, and would never lie to me!… He would like to meet with you for a serious discussion. He is a very influential man in the TV world, really. I am very serious. And what’s more, he said that sorting out your issue with Paul is not a problem…”

My issue with Paul…

Paul Foxman, or “Paul the Couch” as he is also known – the son of a bitch! – was my boss, my curse and my slavemaster. He eclipsed my sunshine, poured poison in my morning coffee, he ruined my sex life!…

Then, snap!, just like that “your issue with Paul is not a problem…” It’s just that simple.

“So? You’ll meet with him?” Mills looked at me as if he was asking me for something rather than trying to do me an amazing favor.

To say that life is strange is to say nothing at all. Two hours ago, what the lovely English Richard Mills was offering would have made me the happiest I have been in the last four years. It would have been my salvation, a miracle of miracles, unbelievable and incredible. But at that moment the only thing pulsing through me, powerfully and incessant was “Hannah of Whistleroad Town, Hannah of Whistleroad Town…”

Compared to my absolute, blind faith in my miracle, Richard’s words seemed as empty as banal office gossip. “I don’t need to give you an answer right now, do I, Richard?” I put my palm on his thin adolescent shoulder, “Let’s discuss this another time, OK? But in any case, thank you. You are an amazing and wonderful man.”

“Even for a Brit,” Lee would have definitely added.

But of course I did not bother to add anything. I just smiled my good-bye and stepped toward the door – a luxurious oak door, which turned the lights of the “City That Never Sleeps” into a dazzling multi-colored kaleidoscope.

* * *

There are at least ten thousand reasons to live in New York. One of which is autumn. The particularly New York kind of autumn, when summer ends and takes its heat with it, but leaves a warmth behind, and the great city luxuriates in it, while at the same time still bustling along under the slowly falling leaves of hundred year old trees. The people, the buildings and the cars all know that this bliss is only a temporary one – that this tender time will end soon, to be replaced by freezing rain, slush, short and furious snowstorms, and then by the piercing icy wind evilly blowing in from the ocean until spring.

However, its fleeting nature does not diminish the wonder of autumn. On the contrary, it gives it a bittersweet sadness that infuses everything with more beauty and tenderness.

From my old wrought iron balcony, something I don’t think that I have bragged about yet, I have a view of Central Park. Not all of it, of course, just the narrow sliver that runs into West 86th Street. But it is enough to be able to go out with my morning coffee to admire the huge rusty canopy of foliage, among which burn spots of pure gold or piercing blood-red, like the seeds of a pomegranate.

Of course, it gets dark early and the beauty is hidden again until morning, but left behind are the smells of the dying grass and the dried leaves. The bouquet of my city’s autumn wine. Even now, leaving Mills’ gallery I don’t feel cold. There is an unusual warmth in the evening air, so I decide not to take a cab and to walk instead, even though I know that it will take a long time to get back home.

In the last few days I started going out without any real purpose. Just to feel like a part of the miracle called the fall.

These days even cops didn’t seem menacing. As if they were familiar Manhattan ghosts, guarding warm autumn, soaked in the smell of fallen leaves and eternity.

looked up at Lee’s house as I was passing by. A muted light shone in the windows. He was working- of course he was working- so as it turned out I did not lie to nice, kind Richard Mills. For a second I was seized by doubt, and I desperately wanted to go see Lee and tell him about everything, but I reigned myself in. With friends like Lee, you need to go to them with the proof of a real miracle and not with some half baked story from a drunk like Vince Sherman.

“So… Whistleroad Town, her name is Hannah…” I repeated to myself one more time, just in case, although I knew that I could never forget either her name, or the name of the town- even if I wanted to.

I marched on remembering that day, which began like any other. People were passing by, young and old, happy and sad, black and white. But none of them knew my secret. If I had tried to tell them, they would have all thought that I was just another one of the crazies, who roam the streets of New York by the thousands. But I wasn’t crazy at all. I was just an average 27-year old guy named Stephen Wright, for whom everything had been going great, and then turned sour. A guy who would have ended up in the gutter, or slit his wrists, if it weren’t for his friend Andy Lee, an amazing artist and the greatest person in the world. But New York is a thick, worn, old book, filled with a million stories like mine, and striding up the Avenue of the Americas towards home, I could only tell the story of everything that had happened to only one person- me.

Actually, today in and of itself had been nothing special, and was no different from yesterday or the day before. Well more accurately, it would not have been any different if, while walking along Central Park on my way to the “Men’s Club” I had not been accosted by the “American Hero” – one of our local celebrities, an old homeless man with long hair, a ruddy face and a surprisingly lively look in his young blue-grey eyes. The American Hero was an integral part of our neighborhood, as much of a fixture as the corner bakery or the newsstand next to it.

In the last few years they had tried to clean up this side of the park and had placed some of the homeless in shelters, and just moved the rest on to somewhere else, but the American Hero never left (there were rumors that the cops were afraid of him, but this was just typical urban legend bullshit).

Sometimes he might disappear somewhere for a day or two, but he always returned, sitting by the curb every morning on an old wooden crate intently watching the crowd as it passed by. Every so often he would spot someone and shout, “Hey mister! Come on over here and let me rub your button for luck!…”

The strangers almost always just walked on past, taking him for just another street-corner crazy.

“Idiots!…” the locals all whispered after them. There were legends about what happened if you let the Hero “rub your button for luck.” This magic ritual was responsible for romantic conquests, curing disease, improving careers, and so much more. Of course, when I moved into my one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side six years ago as a young, cocky executive on the rise I considered all this just silly superstition. I dismissed it for a long time. Until I realized that I believed in him, just the same as all the others. My belief strengthened even more as my life, which had taken off like a rocket and was exciting and wonderful, suddenly turned to crap – life’s losers always believe in miracles more than the winners. Even if it is just because they have nothing else to believe in…

I knew the American Hero. I’d bought him a hotdog a few times, a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of bourbon… Just as many others had done. But not once in the six or so years that I lived in the neighborhood did I ever hear his magic phrase. So today I almost did not turn around when I heard his voice.

“Hey, Stevie-boy!” the old bum croaked at my back, “What’s your problem? You hard of hearing, or you ain’t got no buttons?”

I froze, then I slowly turned around and made my way over to the Hero (when and why he got that nickname no one really knew).

He was sitting down on a creaky old wooden crate and looking up at me. There wasn’t a glint of anything special or magical in his gaze, but my heart starting pounding just the same.

“Where’s the fire?” he grumbled unhappily, “Don’t worry, you won’t be late… Come on over here for a sec. Come closer, don’t make me get up.”

I was in a suit, so not having buttons wasn’t an issue. The American Hero indifferently rubbed one of my buttons with a strong, dirty finger and smacked his lips with satisfaction.

“You think it’s time?” I asked, smiling unevenly.

“As if you don’t know!” croaked the homeless Hero, lighting up an old cigarette and releasing a toxic cloud of smoke. “Oh, it’s time all right. I’m tired of watching you suffer…”

“And… how do you know that I am, well ‘suffering’, as you put it?”

I never complained about my life to the Hero, about that I’m sure.

‘I just see, is all,” shrugged the homeless man, “Life, it ain’t at all like people think, Stevie-boy. Remember that. Not at all. There’s so much more to it! Oh boy, and when it really hits rock bottom, that’s when the real miracles happen!”

“Listen, how come no one else can see what you do?

“How come pigs can’t see the sky? Because that’s how they live, with their faces in the dirt. And that is how people live their lives, noses to the grindstone, don’t notice what’s going on around them… OK, forget it, go, find your fortune!”

He smiled at me, with a mouth full of big strong teeth, like a horse.

* * *

On the way home I was planning to head off to Whistleroad Town straight away, but once I opened the door and saw the clock I understood that autumn had played one of its tricks on me- despite the warmth it was already ten thirty, and unlike that idiot Vince, I did not plan to go looking for my Hannah in the middle of the night.

But I did not feel like going to sleep no matter what I tried. I undressed, took a shower, turned on the TV for some background noise, but sleep just would not come. No chance- not today. They say that days like today come once in a lifetime, and certainly not to everyone. Although truly, I still did not fully comprehend what had actually happened to me, or what would happen to me, but it was not important- I literally felt pushed along by a powerful unseen current full of energy and joy. I did not feel anything even close to a doubt. Only the waiting was unbearable.

The idea to go find the American Hero came to me out of the blue, by itself, and a second later I felt like there was no way that I could not go. I had a bottle of whisky that was standing on the piano and been there for ages. The fridge was empty, so I decided that I would buy a couple of hot kebabs from the bakery on the corner- it was generally open all night. Quickly putting on some jeans and sneakers, I threw on a sweater over my t-shirt and grabbed the bottle and stuffed it in an old wrinkled paper bag and again ventured out into the cool autumn night.

The bakery was open. The young Lebanese guy behind the counter handed me a big, hot bag which smelled delicious and made me instantly ravenous. I took it and hurried off to the Park.

I did not have to search for the American Hero for long. To avoid any hassle from the cops he made his camp in an overgrown ravine close to the edge of the park. A roaring fire in an old oil drum cast a crimson light onto the thick but fading bushes. Standing close by was an old tent, so perfectly long and straight, that it reminded me of a picture from a textbook about the Civil War.

When I stepped out of the darkness into a patch of light the Hero was not startled or surprised. His lips faintly curled into a smile, a quizzical look in his eye.

“So, can’t sleep? It figures… Hang on, what’s that smell? It’s not a kebab is it? Excellent! Give it here!”

I gave him the bag of kebabs and the bottle, and dragged another wooden crate, identical to the one the American Hero sat on, over to the fire. He had already taken an enormous bite of the kebab and made a significant dent in the bottle as well.

“You gonna join me?” he asked.

“You bet. I’m starving.”

“Then here you go,” he said as he handed back the bag with the intoxicatingly fragrant Arabian sandwich.

“How ‘bout a swig?”

“No thanks, I’ve got to be up at the crack of dawn.”

“So what?” remarked the Hero, “One sip of whisky won’t kill you, believe me… Don’t worry, you’ll be up tomorrow morning and off like a shot!”

I obediently pressed the bottle to my lips. I immediately felt a glowing warmth inside me, although to that point I had not even felt cold. The kebab was delicious. The fire crackled comfortingly. The planets had aligned.

Suddenly, sitting there in the woods, I came to the realization that wolves (and in general all animals) must be so much freer and happier than people, who were forced to look out at the world through the tiny windows of their stuffy little rooms and hardly experienced the wonders of the nature around them.

We sat in silence for a minute or two. I was the first to break it.

“Thanks for giving me this day, Hero. Thank you for the miracle.”

“Miracle?!” the old bum tore himself away from the bottle, turning toward me with a surprised look on his face, “What the hell do mean ‘miracle’? Who do you think I am, Mother Teresa? Here have another drink, it’ll help clear your mind…”

He reached the bottle out toward me, and I took a large swallow. Then, not taking my eyes off the fire blazing in the barrel, a second…

“A miracle!” angrily muttered the American Hero, “The hell you say!…”

And so we continued to converse with our mouths stuffed with kebabs and bourbon, but somehow managed to understand each other perfectly.

“I rubbed your button for luck! Get it, for luck!? And luck and miracles are different things, Stevie-boy. Completely different, don’t mix ‘em up…”

I thought of Annie and felt a pang in my heart, as if I had been stabbed by a long, twisted thorn.

“I’m afraid that just ‘luck’ won’t be enough for me Hero, I need a miracle…”

“Don’t give a shit what you need!” he said, finishing the last bite of the kebab. He scooted his creaking old crate closer to the fire, and threw the bag from the food into the barrel. “Sorry, but I don’t work miracles. And, in general, I would advise you to stay well away from them. Now ‘luck,’ that’s a different story altogether, Lady Luck has never caused anyone any trouble. Give me a drink, would ya…”

“Here,” I said handing him the bottle, “And how is a ‘miracle’ any different from ‘luck?’”

The American Hero took his time to answer. First he took a long pull on the bottle, and slowly screwed the cap back on, and then he lit up a cigarette from a wrinkled old pack and took a long drag with discernable pleasure.

“Well, at the very least, for a miracle you have to pay a very high price,” he said, at last, slowly and thoughtfully.

I felt the effect of the whisky, even though I had only drunk a little, just a few sips. In addition, following my thoughts about Annie, a tidal wave of memories and emotions came crashing down, somehow penetrating the thick forest cover around me. The main emotion I felt was anger- anger at the whole world. Then all at once my anger dissipated and I felt like a little child- unjustly wronged and thrown into a world of strange adults, who were evil and unfair. I was not even surprised to find tears in my eyes, for at that moment I was seven, not twenty-seven, so to cry was not even the least bit shameful.

The American Hero just sat there smoking silently, staring into the fire.

“Why don’t you ever talk about yourself, Hero?” I asked him praying that he would not notice my tears.

“What’s the point?” he said not even turning around. “God already knows the whole story, and everyone else has enough of their own problems…”

“If you want, I can tell you my life story?” I offered, sniffing my nose.

“No, I don’t want,” sighed the Hero, “but you are going to tell it to me anyway, so you might as well get started…” and wistfully threw his cigarette butt into the fiery barrel.

* * *

I was born in Benningville, Oklahoma. This sounds crazy even to me now, but that is the God’s honest truth. The funniest thing is that I never felt unhappy in this little town of identical houses with white picket fences. Childhood doesn’t know that somewhere, a thousand miles away, there is another world, so it is happy with what it has.

For his whole life – from the day he graduated high school until the day he died, my father worked as a mechanic at the electric power substation. My mother sent him off to work every day with a tender smile and a big sandwich in a rough brown paper bag.

Benningville was the kind of town where everyone knew each other and would say “hello” when they passed each other on the streets. Until I was ten I called Sheriff Powell “Uncle Jack,” just like all the other kids. Nobody locked their doors. On Sunday mornings it was a ghost town – everyone was at church, even the sheriff and his deputies, fat Doctor Butler and his nurses too.

By a unanimous decision of the City Council we had no cable TV, we just had eight, as I remember them now, of the most boring and conservative TV channels in the entire United States of America. Computers were only allowed to be used in school during Computer Science lessons.

There was no crime in Benningville (I personally can’t remember even one fight, except for a few dust-ups between the kids on the school playground). No one cheated on their husbands or wives. No one ever voted against Mayor Daniel Sutton, a kind, thin man who rode to work on his bicycle.

On the weekend every back yard had a barbeque, and the whole town smelled of grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. The Fourth of July and Christmas were celebrated with such dogmatic fervor year after year that everyone was afraid to change anything and make a fatal mistake.

The whole town turned out for every one of the high school’s basketball games and I remember that the people who lived nearby would bring their own chairs so that no one would have to stand.

All the weddings and the funerals also looked the same. People in Benningville only died of old age. They only married once. No one ever got divorced.

I don’t even remember that anyone had a strange name. My father was called John, and my mother Marsha. In my class we had 4 Johnsons, 3 Jacksons, 3 Browns and 2 Wrights (including me).

So that is how it was – in this little place on our great big planet, where the electrical mechanic John Wright and his wife, the homemaker Marsha, bestowed the gift of life upon me.

Now matured by the barbed insults of the world, I understood that only childhood could paint my town with the patriarchal and sunny colors of America in the 1960s. And that in Benningville, just like anywhere else, there were probably fights and affairs, divorces and robberies, some people, mostly likely, were into drugs, others were into porn and didn’t care less about church services on Sunday. Nevertheless, it remained in my memory as a ridiculous and theatrical little patch of Earth, on which people were born only to grow up, get married, have children, mow the lawn, and die.

But, oh how I remember the day that the whole world changed! It was Friday. Honking loudly and crazily, a sparkling automobile without a top screeched to a halt outside of our house. Out of it climbed a shapely woman with a shock of fiery red hair, who stretched out and cracked her back, then reached out her hand and flicked her thin black cigarette with a golden tip right into the middle of the road (I was aghast – (I froze – if in Benningville we sometimes saw women who smoked, they did it much differently – usually off to the side, quietly, and a bit shy.) Her jeans were stretched so tightly over her legs that she looked like she was naked. The spiked heels on her fire-engine red pumps were as long as pencils. Huge dark glasses hid her eyes. Her nails were long and the same shade of red as her shoes.

Walking over to me, she bent down and slid her glasses down to the end of her nose revealing enormous green eyes, like a magical cat from a fairy-tale. She smelled amazing.

“Is that you, Stephen, you little punk?” asked the stranger in a hoarse laugh, “Eat all your vegetables – chicks love tall guys, got it?”

And that’s how Annie entered in my life. She was my father’s prodigal younger sister, the black sheep of the family, the skeleton in the closet of our respectable home, and the bane of Benningville. She was 16 when she left home, and hadn’t returned until this moment (she was 25 now). No wonder I didn’t know anything about her! Coming back from the neighbor’s, my mother almost fainted when she saw Annie. And she had absolutely no idea what to talk with her about until my father got home from work, and he didn’t know what to talk with her about either.

But it wasn’t a problem – Annie talked enough for all three of them. Having poured herself practically half a glass of whisky and smoking her beautiful cigarettes, she cheerfully told them about how she lived in New York, that she was married for the second time (“his name is Rodriguez, a gangster for sure, and a jealous bastard, but, boy, is he loaded!!)

In just one evening this eleven year-old heard a hundred times more swear words than I had in my entire life up to that point. Finally my mother, white as a sheet, came to her senses and quietly gasped with difficulty, “Stevie, sweetheart, go to your room…”

“Come on, really, what’s the big deal Marsha?” protested Annie, “It’s the weekend tomorrow! Let the kid hang out with us for a while, he might learn something!…”

Of course I listened to my mother, got up, wished everyone good-night, and went to my room. But I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. I just tossed and turned. I was afraid that my father would throw his “indecent” sister out of the house, and tomorrow when I woke up, that fantastic otherworldly automobile would no longer be sparkling in front of our house.

But I was wrong. At the end of the day, my father was as afraid of Annie as I was. In a different way, of course, but not any less.

I know that Annie was sent to me from heaven. In order for me to become who I was meant to be. So that I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life working as a shift mechanic at the electric substation of Benningville – the town of white picket fences and eight television stations.

I only called her “aunt” two times – the first was at the table on the evening of the day she arrived.

When I called her “Aunt Annie” the next day, she sauntered over to me, sunk her taloned claw into my shoulder and said:

“You know what Stephen Wright? If you ever call me “Aunt” again I’m going to tear your skinny little ass off and feed it to the crows! You’re making me feel like an old granny, you got it, you little shit?”

I swallowed, frightened, but nevertheless I didn’t hold my tongue:

“You can’t be an old granny. You’re so young…”

Annie smiled crookedly, “Well, that’s already a little bit better. You’re improving before my eyes…”

And that’s how Annie appeared in my life. She stayed for two weeks, then she came back again after a couple of months. Then again… And she did it only for my sake. I knew it, I felt it. And she didn’t hide it.

I told Annie everything. She had the answer to any question and advice for any situation. With a generous sprinkling of strong language, she happily, and in an unassuming way, did what neither my mother or father could, nor could my school teachers or friends – she told me what this wonderful and boundless life was really about – about Good and about Evil, about money and sex, about success and failure… In a word – about Everything!

She taught me how to drive her car – a blood-red Mercedes convertible. Before I met Ann I knew, of course, that there were other cars besides just American and Japanese. However, the villains with their manly red faces and the saviors of the world who defeated them mercilessly crashed their Aston Martins and Maserattis in a different cinematic dimension, which disappeared, as expected, erased by the credits crawling across the screen, and the real world, to which I was sentenced, moved around in Fords and Toyotas, as simple, reliable and faceless as their owners.

“Remember Stevie, real men only drive cars with a stick shift!” Annie succinctly explained as always, “because only driving a stick makes you feel like you are in control of your whole life! Automatics are for losers and back-seat drivers who are afraid to take the wheel themselves. Look here! You push on the clutch… First, second, third, fourth, fifth… Got it?”

I didn’t understand it at all. I had never even sat in a car with a “stick shift.” But in a week I was flying over the surrounding roads, screaming through intersections and leaving black tire marks on the asphalt.

“You’re doing great!” encouraged Annie. “You are going to be a big success in life… I’m sure of it…”

On my thirteenth birthday my father reluctantly allowed me to go visit Annie in New York (which was good, because I wasn’t taking “No” for an answer). By this time she had already managed to divorce the mysterious Rodriguez, and get married and divorced again.

The city just amazed me. It was so much better than my wildest dreams. It was the City of Cities, the Center of the World.

So many different cars from all over the world crawled and raced through its streets.

Its televisions had over one hundred channels, and every one showed sin with abandon, Good and Evil locked in their eternal conflict…

On my birthday Annie got me a call girl. She was expensive, very young, delicate and skilful.

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