LITMIR.BIZ

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interest in helping her secure Jonathan Hale’s affection and desire. Jonathan nearly met Cameron’s prerequisite for a man ready for marriage. Though he was employed and wasn’t an alcoholic, Mary Anne doubted he’d ever had therapy, something Cameron insisted all males required. Cameron herself also wanted a man who didn’t need to reproduce, who was willing to adopt. “There are plenty of children in the world,” Cameron would say. “Children who need good homes.”

      The truth, Mary Anne knew, was that Cameron had watched her own sister go through an agonizing labor, which concluded with a cesarean section. She had told Mary Anne, “Never. I will never…”

      Mary Anne liked the idea of having children. No, she wanted children. This fact had given her dreams about Jonathan an extra edge of desperation. “What’s the last-ditch idea?” she asked Cameron.

      Cameron’s brown eyes gleamed, looking almost black. “A love potion.”

      This suggestion was soooo Cameron. You would think, Mary Anne often reflected, that a woman who heard heinous stories of domestic abuse, rape and what-have-you every day, would have surgically removed every last romantic cell in her body. Cameron claimed that this was the case. It just wasn’t. And whenever Cameron did become romantic, it was things like this…

      The fortune teller at the state fair, who’d told Cameron she would marry a dark-haired brown-eyed man; the astrologer who said Cameron would become united with her soul mate through “unconventional means.” Chain letters with the message, “You will meet the love of your life within five days of sending this to five people. Do not break the chain!” And, no, Mary Anne was not exempt from Cameron’s bizarre schemes.

      She forced skepticism to the forefront as she confronted her cousin. “Supposing that such a thing worked—which it won’t. How are you proposing to obtain it?”

      “Paul’s mom,” Cameron said simply. “The hippie midwife…?”

      Paul was what Cameron had instead of a boyfriend—well, she also had a dog, Mary Anne knew. Paul Cureux was a childhood friend who was totally allergic to the idea of commitment—though Mary Anne had pointed out that he did have dark hair and brown eyes. Since Cameron was hypercritical of nearly every man she met, she and Paul had made some sort of agreement to give other people the impression that they were a couple. Then Cameron wouldn’t have to deal with being pursued by men who’d never had therapy—Paul hadn’t, either—and Paul wouldn’t have to elude women who wanted to marry him and have his children. It was an arrangement Mary Anne had never understood, especially since Paul—who usually had weekend gigs playing guitar and singing folk music that must have made every woman who heard him know she was alive—seemed to enjoy making women fall in love with him. Mary Anne had once asked her cousin, “Do you have a thing for him?”

      “I have a thing for no man,” Cameron had replied. “Except the god.”

      She did not mean Paul Cureux. Mary Anne did not think the man to whom Cameron referred was even remotely divine—and neither did she think his psychological house was in the immaculate order Cameron believed it to be. Now, she said, “Paul’s mother makes love potions?”

      “Yes. Don’t you remember? The radio station did that interview with her.”

      Mary Anne didn’t remember. She said, “No,” but she didn’t mean that she didn’t remember. She only meant that she wasn’t ready to try anything so silly.

      Cameron shrugged. “Your choice. I don’t see being single as problematic, but you do. And you’ve liked this guy for years, though he’d probably make you miserable.”

      Mary Anne resented the last comment. She knew Cameron found Jonathan Hale far less appealing than she did, but she hated Cameron’s insistence that there was a worm in the apple.

      Mary Anne simply shook her head. “I have work to do.”

      Cameron stood up, shaking back her two long braids. “Back to the mines. If you do stop by the radio station, give my regards to the deity.”

      “I don’t speak to that man if I can help it.”

      When Cameron was gone, Mary Anne sat down in her cubicle and tried to read her piece on the Harvest Tea. She needed to edit it and complete the society page by ten tonight. Her title at the paper was associate editor, and in practice it meant she did a bit of everything. She edited sections on society and the arts, and she covered news and features as they arose.

      Barbara Rollins, President of the St. Luke’s Catholic Church Altar Society, provided a light sponge cake…

      The Harvest Tea just could not compete with the calamity of Jonathan Hale’s engagement. Though Jonathan always treated Mary Anne respectfully, he didn’t seem to notice her as a woman. Which might be appropriate in someone else’s boyfriend. Which he was.

      Maybe Cameron was right. Maybe it was worth trying one last insane thing before it was too late. The love potion wouldn’t work. Mary Anne did remember the interview with Clare Cureux, though Cameron was wrong about the focus. Jonathan Hale’s focus had been rural health-care providers. Mary Anne, herself, had heard him give a firm negative to the questions of Graham Corbett, Logan’s insufferable radio talk-show host, who believed he’d single-handedly put Logan County, West Virginia, on the map. Jonathan had said, “She did not mention the love potions, and I didn’t ask.”

      A love potion was a ridiculous idea. But Mary Anne wondered if she could find a pretext for dropping in at the radio station. Are they really engaged? Maybe the rumor was false. She thought for a minute, then rose from her desk, pulling on her gray wool blazer and slinging her leather handbag over a shoulder. Hurrying past the office of the editor in chief, she gave him a wave, glad he was on the phone and couldn’t ask where the hell she thought she was going. No need to fabricate a meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

      She hurried down the stairs of the brick building and outside. Fall was in the air, the smell of dried leaves, a brisk wind, no more sweltering summer days that made her hair limp. She stepped to the curb, looked both ways and waited for a pickup truck to pass before running across Main Street in front of an approaching stream of cars. She passed the soda fountain and hurried into the historic brick structure next door, the Embassy Building, which housed WLGN.

      Don’t let it be true, she thought again. Maybe Cameron had the wrong information about Jonathan and Angie.

      As she reached the radio station’s glass door, a man swung it open to hold it for her.

      Mary Anne felt a rush of distaste, which she hoped showed on her face.

      The man who had opened it stood six feet tall and wore his gold-streaked brown hair on the long side, so that it curled around his collar, waving back from his forehead. Frequently, people mistook him for the actor John Corbett, but Graham Corbett was not even related. Dr. Graham Corbett. Doctor as in Ph.D., not M.D. Though she knew he did see clients two days a week for counseling, Mary Anne still found Graham Corbett’s use of Doctor before his name to be just one more affectation. No doubt if he ever learned that Cameron referred to him as a deity, he’d build a temple in his own honor.

      “Ah,” he said, “the woman with an ass made for radio.”

      Mary Anne paused to give him a smile of sweet acidity. “And I thought you were the ass made for radio.”

      “My angel,” he said, “how is the life of the has-been beauty editor and hard-biting reporter of local fashion shows?”

      “I can’t wait till someone writes the unauthorized biography,” she said, “of you.” It lacked the power of her previous comeback, and she knew better than to respond to Graham Corbett at all. She should have remembered that his show was on this afternoon and that he always arrived a half hour early, punctual as a Rolex. Without waiting for his reaction, she stepped past him and into the station. Through the glass window of the recording studio, she could see Jonathan Hale interviewing a coal miner who had black lung disease and silicosis. Mary Anne had heard Jonathan talking about the feature only the day before. He was the station manager, but Logan

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