In part two of this episodic psychological thriller, Nicole Jeffords. convinced that healer, Victor Goodlove, who disappeared ten years earlier is buried under her studio, continues her search for him, contacting old patients all over Austin and dis...
Eddie's Romanian was so so. He'd started coming here for the summer twenty years ago when he'd had to change planes in the small city of Sibiu and decided to stay on for awhile, explore the enchantment of the forests and castles. Now he was going to retire here. In the pharmacy, which was extremely small, a woman in the queue turned to glance at us as we entered the shop. When her eyes fell on me, she grew very excited and began to talk rapidly, reaching out and taking my hand the moment I was close to her. She must have been eighty-five, small and stooped with snappy black eyes and hennaed hair. Her hand grasping mine was bony and tough. "What's she saying?" I asked Eddie.
When she heard my English she dropped my hand and stared. She was standing close enough for me to see white bristles on her chin.
Eddie attempted to talk to her. She remained excited, pointing at me and speaking in rapid gusts although clearly I wasn't the person she thought I was. Now everyone else in the store was staring. Behind the counter, the pharmacist watched us calmly.
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Sighisoara Pharmacy
"She says you're some sort of actress," Eddie told me with great amusement, "and that she used to love your films. She's sorry you retired. And she's sorry about the mess you got into."
"What mess?"
Eddie shrugged. "Maybe an affair. Or something with the government."
It was the lady's turn to go up to the counter. "Did she say who the actress was?" I asked.
"She was talking really fast. Maria something? It was hard to understand."
As the lady finished at the counter and turned to leave, she made a point of taking my hand again. "Ask the actress's name," I whispered to Eddie.
But the old lady's Romanian was too quick plus, according to Eddie, she had an odd sloppy pronunciation because of ill fitting dentures. He couldn't catch the name.
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Pharmacy lady
Now it was our turn at the counter. The pharmacist spoke a fairly decent English, but couldn't elucidate us on what had just happened. "These old people, you know... hung up on the past," was all she said. But she did study me carefully, interest heightened by the elderly lady's words. "There's a lady who comes in here sometimes to buy face creams. Actually she has her own line of manufacture, but I can't remember her name. You look like her." She turned to the shelf and removed a small box, which she handed to me. "This is what she buys," she said.
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I glanced at the box, and decided to buy it out of curiosity. When I saw Laura at lunch a little later, she told me it was a famous tried-and-true remedy that you can't buy in the US, as the FDA has refused, for years, to approve it. "How much did you pay?" she asked.
"About ten bucks."
"If you could even find that in the States it'd probably cost three hundred and fifty. This is a crazy place." She was right. Later, when George and I were wandering around and stopped to look at a particularly enticing view, we had another incident of someone mistaking me for the actress. Only this time the consequences reached further into my real life than I would have imagined.
