Page 9 of Potion Sickness

On a table, between the water pitcher and a basket of rolls, sits Englebert.

He insisted on coming. His reasoning, delivered from the passenger seat of my car in the parking lot of the Community Center, was threefold: first, that as a senior member of the production leadership, his absence from a function that so many of the company are attending would be noted and would damage morale; second, that Rupert had once, in the course of his research, described the Wardwell family portraiture as ‘some of the finest in the country,’ which Englebert considered to be a compliment of the highest order (despite not personally being depicted in any portraiture at all, much to his chagrin); and third, that we were leaving straight from rehearsal anyway and he was already in the car.

“You were not already in the car,” I’d said. “You ran to the car.”

“I proceeded to the car at a leisurely pace.”

The Hearth & Stone has no policy on familiars because such a policy would be unenforceable and everyone knows it. The bartender took a single look at Englebert, set a saucer of cream at the end of the bar without comment, and went back to the taps.

“It’s real cream,” the bartender called over her shoulder. “We’re not barbarians.”

“I made no such accusation.”

“You were about to.”

He has since forgiven the establishment entirely and is now holding court over the sliced garnishes.

Bert has migrated to the dartboard. He isn’t playing darts, but rather just standing near the darts, narrating the history of the board itself to a cornered Cody, the teenage technical director, who is looking at me over Bert’s shoulder, his expression that of someone signaling desperately from a sinking ship.

“Cody,” I say. “I think Dana was looking for you.”

He’s gone before I finish the sentence.

“Nice kid,” Bert says, watching him go. “His great-grandfather wired half this street, you know. Badly, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“Bert,” I say. I haven’t seen him in a month or so, since his wife’s funeral. I’d meant to stop by the Historical Society a dozen times but never actually made it. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know.” He looks into his beer, then back up. “Martha never liked this pub. She said the lighting makes everyone look suspicious. She only came here twice a year — St. Patrick’s Day and whenever the Historical Society team won the annual trivia night at the Community Center, which was most years, because Tom Parker always ceded the history questions to me, and Martha handled geography.” He smiles. “She could name every county in Ireland. We never went. She just liked knowing them.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t come by.”

“You’ve come by plenty in your life, Marigold. You get a summer off.” He waves a hand at the room. “Besides, I’ve had Rupert. Four months of somebody who wants to hear about the 1911 boundary dispute. Do you know what that’s like, for a man like me? I’d have paid him.” He leans in. “Don’t tell him that. He’d have taken it. Graduate students are poor.”

Across the room, Rupert has been trapped by Mayor Blackwood, who appears to be pitching himself as a primary source. Rupert is nodding and, either out of politeness or true academic integrity, is actually taking notes.

“He’s promised to send me the manuscript chapter by chapter,” Bert says. “For fact-checking.”

Bert seems to be doing well enough, which is all you can ask of someone who recently lost their wife of sixty-something years.

“Come by when you feel up to it,” he says. “I’ve got a folder with your name on it. Literally. Rupert left copies of everything he found about the Wardwells. There’s a photograph of your grandmother at the 1962 Harvest Festival.”

“What’s she doing in it?”

“Complaining, I presume,” Bert says.

* * *

Damien, predictably, arrived at the party approximately fifteen minutes after everyone else.

He’s been working the room ever since, moving toward Pru one person at a time. He’s currently two chairs away and closing in. Pru has her wine in one hand and her phone in the other, focused on the screen like she’s reviewing a deposition, which, knowing Pru, she might actually be doing, at nine at night, at a party.

“Prudie.” He’s made it. He turns the chair beside her around and sits on it backwards, forearms on the chair back.

“Dorcas was sitting there.”

“Dorcas is at the bar.”

“She’ll be back. She left her phone.”