That mysterious woman wasn't living far. It was a twenty-minute walk from the third-story pad* I had been living in for a year and a half, that is, since I got back from the war in Europe (*pad means "flat", "apartment"). I found myself lucky to have made it back to America without any Nazi bullet in my skin. Life was going swell for me, but I was getting lonely and I was a bit awkward around people. I was having a hard time to fit in where I worked, but I was hardly the only war veteran who had trouble making the transition back to peace time.
Like all young men, I was eager to meet a nice girl, marry her and start making babies. Things were not going all that well in the girls department. I had returned to Olympic weightlifting and started again from where I had left in 1943. Now it was 1947. I was 23 years old, six feet tall, broad shouldered and really strong, with a full head of dark hair, but I was hopelessly shy around girls.
In France, my fellow GIs wouldn't believe how shy I was and how much prompting I needed to get in the sack with a sex-starved woman who was twenty years my senior.
And here I was in Philly. Single. Tall and decent-looking and wearing proper street clothes with a swell fedora hat, yet hopelessly single.
I was strolling on busy streets; it was early evening. There were a great many passing cars, and long rows of parked cars, most of them black, brown, green or dark blue. I recognized a beige Chevrolet sedan from 1940. The 1948 models had been out for sale for a month. In parks and alongside the avenues, the tree leaves were all ablaze with October's fiery oranges, reds and golds.
Throngs of pedestrians were out and about. Two men out of three wore a suit and a fedora hat, but no trench coat as the weather was very pleasant; all women wore a dress or a skirt and blouse with a jacket or open coat, and some sort of round hat, often adorned with some shiny bauble.
Their dresses covered their knees in all cases; I loved watching their stockinged lower legs and heel-shoed feet as they strolled by on the busy sidewalk under a dusk sky. Well, I loved watching broads altogether.
Women's hair were well groomed and usually worn around shoulder length and tied up in public. Men's hair was trimmed short; I saw no man with long hair. Nearly all of them were white folks.
Some hobos and street cleaners were there as well with battered plaid shirts and workman trousers or jeans and dirty shoes. Many of them were black men. I spotted young couples walking hand in hand. Policemen were patrolling afoot; they greeted the nicely dressed people and kept a suspicious eye on the not-so-well-dressed people. Cops were suspicious by trade.
As I reached Chestnut Street and passed the Horn & Hardart automat restaurant, I noticed a fine-looking brunette, perhaps 20 years old; nice dress, and a very stylish round hat. Her green hat perfectly suited her wavy, chestnut hair. Her wool cardigan was equally stylish and its color matched her hat and perfectly complemented her dusk pink dress. People dressed with style in Philadelphia. Perhaps she was from an Italian family, for she had a rather large nose, but her complexion was Irish-pale.
Was she looking my way? My heart began to race. I almost managed to say hello. I walked past her. Was she smiling? It seemed she was indeed looking at me. Two minutes later, I understood in a flash that I should have said "Good evening Miss! This is a mighty fine weather to take a stroll!" and something nice might have developed from there.
I rushed back to that spot in front of Horn & Hardart. Of course, she was gone. As usual, I had been too shy and slow. In such a big city, my chances of bumping into her again were next to zilch.
I went back and reached my destination—a small, second-story pad where lived a young woman who called herself an affordable witch and said over the phone she would help me for a small fee.
I knocked on her door, number 22.
"Come right in! It's unlocked!" said a wonderfully feminine, soprano voice, aloud, using an inviting tone.
I walked in. It felt like entering the home of a gypsy woman; it was dark-wooded and filled with a plethora of bizarre artifacts, small bottles and whatnots. She walked in the room. She was a blonde with long hair that streamed down to her lower back. I was surprised; from the way her living room was furnished and decorated, I was expecting a raven-haired fortune teller.
She wore a black gown, tightly adjusted under a thin belt at her waist, letting me make out her child-bearing hips and the medium-sized curves of her breasts. She smiled and offered me a glass of wine.
"I was expecting you! Normally, my door's locked, mind you, but, oh, I was still thinking it could be a robber, or perhaps two or three of them!"
As she spoke, she gently put her left hand above her left breast and almost caressed it while handing me my glass of wine. It was fine; just as fine as any wine I had drank in France or Germany. This girl had style! And sexy too.
Her gaze followed my gaze; the blonde witch smiled as she caught me looking at her boobs.
"I see that you found your way all right, Mister..."
"Oh... I'm Dean! And you..."
"I'm the Witch! I may be something less later on, but for now, Dean, I'm the Witch!" she said as she gracefully started to dance and whirl in her living room. I watched her as I drank my wine.
Then, as she whirled and danced and kept playfully smiling at me, the hem of her gown was freely waving at her ankles. I noticed she was barefoot. Oh, God! Her feet were really a treat to watch; I had a mighty hard-on as I kept looking at her dancing feet, the pitter-patter very dim on her forest-green carpet. The whiteness of her feet was bright against that carpet.
"I don't dance like that for all my clients!" she said, laughing. "I select them, my dear! This is only a sideline, a witchy sideline! I know a lot about you, perhaps more than you know yourself!"
As she spoke, I became petrified. My jaw dropped in utter astonishment. Her hair was raven black now! I couldn't have been mistaken; I positively remembered her hair when I first walked in—she was a blonde. Impossible!
She laughed.
"You like dark hair, don't you! And you like a girl's feet too!"