Magic Street

Chapter 14

PLAYING POOL Mack had a cold dream that night, and it was Yolanda White's dream.

In the dream, Yo Yo rode a powerful horse across a prairie, with herds of cattle grazing in the shade of scattered trees or drinking from shallow streams. But the sky wasn't the shining blue of cowboy country, it was sick yellow and brown, like the worst day of smog all wrapped up in a dust storm.

In the dream Mack saw a mountain of bones, and perched on top of it a creature like a banana slug, it was so filthy and slimy and thick. Only after creeping and sliming around awhile on top of the pile of bones it unfolded a huge pair of wings like a moth and took off up into the smoky sky in search of more, because it was always hungry.

It was Yo Yo's job to stop it from eating her cattle.

The thing is, through that whole dream, Yo Yo wasn't alone. It drove Mack crazy because try as he might, he couldn't bend the dream, couldn't make the woman turn her head and see who it was riding with her. Sometimes Mack thought the other person was on the horse behind her, and sometimes he thought the other person was flying alongside like a bird, or running like a dog, always just out of sight.

Mack couldn't help but think: Maybe it's me.

Maybe she needs me and that's why I'm seeing this dream. Maybe her deep wish is not the death of the dragonslug. Maybe what she's wishing for is that invisible companion.

The girl rode up to the mountain of old bones, and the huge slug spread its wings and flew, and it was time to kill it or give up and let it devour the whole herd. Only then did she realize that she didn't have a gun or a spear or even so much as a rock to throw. Somehow she had lost her weapon—though in the dream Mack never noticed her having a weapon in the first place.

The flying slug was spiraling down at her, and then suddenly the bird or dog or man who was with her, he—or it—leapt at the monster. Always it was visible only out of the corner of her eye, so Mack couldn't see who it was or whether the monster killed it or whether it sank its teeth or a beak or a knife into the beast. Because just at the moment when Yo Yo was turning to look, the dream stopped.

It stopped, and not because Mack had been able to turn it into his own dream of the canyon. It just stopped.

But he remembered his dream, and realized that his dream and hers were alike. She had somebody beside her in her dream, and Mack had somebody beside him in his. Somebody you could never quite look at.

Each of us is in the other one's dream.

She needs me to kill that dragonslug. And I need her to... or do I? She's the one driving, if she's the person in my dream. She's the one who drives me into danger.

But in her dream she needs me. In her dream I'm the hero who slays the...

If it's me. If I'm the one who attacks that flying slug.

If I'm part of her wish, and her wish comes true, then it'll come true some ugly way, and do I want to be a part of that?

So he decided not to go up the street to her house today. Instead, though it was so early in the morning that it was still full dark, he got up and jogged down the street to Skinny House. If he woke Puck that was too damn bad. Puck was immortal—waking up early one morning wouldn't kill him.

He should have known Puck would be awake, racking up a game of pool on a table that nearly filled the living room. The other furniture was stacked up along one wall, and there was more of it than could have fit in the living room even without the pool table.

"Going into the moving and storage business?" Mack asked him.

"Quiet. This is a tricky shot."

"It's the break," said Mack.

Puck looked up at him, put a finger to his lips, then let fly with a sharp stroke of the cue.

The white ball struck at only the slightest angle from dead center on the front ball. All of them took off, four of them going directly into four different pockets. And after only another rebound or two, all the others but the eight ball and the cue ball were in the pockets. And the eight ball teetered on the edge.

"You distracted me," said Puck. "Ruined my shot."

Mack snorted. "Like a three-year-old. 'Look what you made me do.' "

"I don't use magic on shots like that," said Puck.

"Bullshit," said Mack.

"Not to an exorbitant degree, anyway," said Puck. "I've had a lot of practice."

"She's in my dream and it's not like the others," said Mack. "It's not her wish."

"You mind telling me who 'she' is?"

"Yolanda White. Yo Yo. Girl on a motorcycle, lives just below the drainage basin. She gave me a ride to school a couple of weeks ago."

"Stay away from women on motorcycles," said Puck. "They're usually bad for you."

"Why do I get her dream when it's not a wish?"

"Doesn't explain why I dreamed her dream."

"Backup," said Puck.

At first Mack thought he was giving him a command, and he took a step back.

Puck rolled his eyes. "Come on, Mack, you're not stupid. I mean you're like a backup device for a computer. She's storing copies of her most important dreams in your head."

"I don't mean to repeat myself, but bullshit."

"You asked me a question, I did my best to answer."

"That wasn't your best," said Mack. "You know what happens with those cold dreams is magic, and magic is something you know about."

"I don't always know what he's doing."

"Tell me what she's doing in my dreams."

"Maybe she's not doing anything," said Puck. "Maybe she doesn't even know you're having her dreams."

Something occurred to Mack. "What do you have to do with my dreams?"

"Think of me as being an appreciative audience. Front-row seat."

"You see my dreams?"

"I see you dreaming," said Puck.

"You have anything to do with the way they sometimes come true?"

"I don't have the power to make wishes come true."

"That wasn't what I asked."

Puck sent the cue ball into the eight ball with such force that it struck the back of a corner pocket and flew straight back out, zipped across the table, and dropped into the opposite corner pocket.

"That is such crap," said Mack. "Why is that even fun, when you can make it go wherever you want?"

"I'm trying to entertain you," said Puck. He snapped his fingers, and the balls all flew up as if the pockets were spitting them out. They hit the table and rolled back into a triangle at the opposite end from where they had been before the break.

"Is it working?" Puck broke again. The balls flew around the table and, when they finally came to rest, they were back in their original order, except that the cue ball was where the eight ball had been, in the midst of the triangle, and the eight ball was now in the cue ball's position on the opposite dot.

"How long were you doing this before I got here?" asked Mack.

"None of this stuff was here until you slid into the yard a few minutes ago," said Puck. "When you're not around, I just hang on a hook in the closet like your pants."

"You're the one who makes them come true," said Mack. "The dreams, I mean."

"Am not," said Puck. "He is."

"But you... you bend them."

Puck shrugged. "Believe what you want."

"What does her dream mean? And mine?"

"Can't tell you less I know what the dreams are."

"You know all my dreams."

"I know the dreams that come from other people's wishes," said Puck. "But I don't see her dreams, nor yours either. Weren't wishes anyway, right?"

Mack knew that if he told Puck the dreams, there was a danger he'd meddle with them or make something out of them. At the same time, Mack had to know what that business was with the flying slug, and who it was sitting beside him in his own plunge through the flash flood in the canyon. He finally decided to tell him Yo Yo's dream, but not his own. It made him feel disloyal and hypocritical.

Puck listened with interest and, Mack suspected, amusement. He was silent for a good long while after Mack finished telling the dream. "What a dangerous girl she is," he finally said.

"Dangerous to who?" said Mack.

"She can't do anything without you," said Puck.

"That's what the dream means?"

Puck smiled. "It's the truth, whether the dream means anything or not."

"She's the one gave me a ride."

"Tell you what," said Puck. "I'll tell you the absolute truth. If you stay with her and help her, you'll have a thrilling time, but you'll end up dead."

"Of course, you'll end up dead anyway," said Puck. "Being mortal and therefore built to break."

"You got broke up pretty bad a few years ago, as I remember."

"Never let yourself get pecked and picked up and dropped by birds when you're about an inch and a half high."

"If it comes up, I'll keep that in mind."

"Did I ever thank you for finding me?" asked Puck.

"No," said Mack. "But I never expected you to."

"Good thing, cause I'm not going to. You did me no favor."

"You called out to me, man. That's the only way I found you."

"Did not," said Puck. "That would be pathetic."

"You called my name and I heard your voice come from the bushes and that's how I found you."

A smile crossed his face. "Well, isn't that sweet."

"What's sweet?"

The smile left his face. "It wasn't me who called you."

"Who, then?"

"Must have been the Queen."

"The one in that floating mason jar?"

"She's the only Queen," said Puck. "All others are sloppy imitations, not worthy of the name."

"Titania. Mab."

"Only fools and mortals would try to contain her in a name," said Puck. "She is my lady."

"Not according to Shakespeare," said Mack. "You were Oberon's buddy and you put that potion in her eyes so she fell in love with the ass-faced guy."

"Ass-faced." Puck got a real kick out of that. In the midst of a great heaving laugh, he broke again. This time the balls bounced all over and every single one of them came to rest flush against one of the sides, so the middle of the table was completely clear.

Puck proceeded to hit the balls in numerical order, putting each one into a pocket without touching any of the other balls.

"Wasn't Shakespeare right?" asked Mack.

"Shakespeare knew about me and making mortals fall in love," said Puck. "Had nothing to do with a potion, but he never forgave me for getting him married to Anne Hathaway. She was seven years older than him and her eyes were cocked. And for three years I had him so silly with love for her that he thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She was pregnant when he married her, but what nobody knows is that he had to beg her to marry him."

"She didn't want him?"

"She thought he was making fun of her."

"So what happened when the potion wore off in three years?" asked Mack.

"It wasn't a potion, I told you. And it didn't wear off. I got tired of it. It wasn't amusing anymore.

So I set him free."

"He woke up one morning and—"

"It wasn't morning. He had just come home from a day's work at his father's glove shop and she was putting the twins to bed and he swept her up in a fond embrace and kissed her all over her face, and right in the middle of that I gave him back to himself." Puck sighed. "He didn't get the joke. I don't like assholes who got no sense of humor."

"You're such a bastard," said Mack.

"You'd know."

"I'm an abandoned child," said Mack. "But I didn't mean that kind of bastard anyway."

Puck smiled maliciously. "I amuse myself by watching a perpetual TV series called 'Messing with the Mortals.' I'm the host."

"What did he do?"

"To me? What could he do? And as for Anne Hathaway, Will was such a nice boy. He couldn't stand to be with her—she repulsed him physically, and he was filled with loathing for how he had been used. Very resentful. But there was no getting out of the marriage—in those days you just had to hope for a dose of smallpox or a bad childbirth to get you out of an unpleasant coupling—and besides, he knew it wasn't her fault, so why should he punish her for loving the only man who had ever wooed her?"

"You so understanding."

"Freud and Jung and you, masters of the mind."

"So Will Shakestaffe got himself taken on as a substitute in a traveling company that had a lead actor die suddenly, so they had to reshuffle all the roles. He showed them some of the sonnets he had written for his beloved wife and they mocked him for being such a bad writer—and it's true, nobody does their best poems when the love is artificial. The only one he ever allowed to be published was the one that punned on Anne's last name—'hate away' for 'Hathaway.' So he had to show them he was a good writer by rewriting some speeches and adding lines to his own bit parts. It really pissed off the big boys in the company, because he was getting laughs and tears for tiny parts, but the audience loved his rewrites and the partners weren't stupid. They had him rewrite the leading actors'

speeches, too, until they had some plays that were more Shakespeare than the original writers' work.

And they nicknamed him Shake-scene."

"So they accepted him."

"He hated the nickname," said Puck. "And they wouldn't even look at his first complete script.

That was why he quit and joined a company that would treat him with respect and put on his plays.

So you see, I did him a favor. I started him on his great career by making him fall in love with an unlovable woman."

"And broke her heart when he left her," said Mack.

"She had three good years of a husband who was completely devoted to her," said Puck.

"That's two years and fifty weeks more than most wives get."

"He wouldn't have been an actor without your little prank?"

"Oh, he would have been," said Puck. "He was part-timing with a company when he met Anne."

He really couldn't see that he had caused any harm. "So you postponed his career."

"I postponed his acting career," said Puck. "It was loving Anne Hathaway that made a bad poet of him. And the ridicule he got for those poems that made him a great playwright."

And now Mack understood something. "You're the one who twists the dreams."

"Twists? What are you talking about?"

"Tamika dreams of swimming and you put her inside a waterbed."

"I woke her father up, didn't I? Not my fault if he took so long figuring out where she was and getting her out."

"And what about Deacon Landry and Juanettia Post? It was his wish, not hers, and why did you have to make them get found on the floor right in the middle of the sanctuary?" next. And you have to admit it was funny."

"They both had to move away, and it broke up his marriage."

"I didn't make up the wish."

"You made them get caught."

"Man has no business wishing for a woman ain't his wife," said Puck.

"Oh, now you're Mr. Morality."

"He was a deacon," said Puck. "He judged other people. I thought it was fair."

"But in the real world, without this magic, he wouldn't have done anything about it."

"So I showed who he really was."

"Having a wish in your heart, a man can't help that," said Mack. "He's only a bad man if he acts on it."

"Well, there you are. This beautiful woman suddenly offered him what he had no right to have.

Nobody made him take it."

"So it was all his fault."

"I set them up. They knock themselves down."

"So you're the judge."

"They judge themselves."

"You make me sick."

"You're so sanctimonious," said Puck. "Come on, admit it, you think it's funny, too. You're only making yourself angry cause you think you ought to."

"These people are my friends," said Mack.

"You were a little boy then, Mack," said Puck.

"I mean the people in this place. My neighborhood. All of them."

"You think so?" said Puck. "There are no friends. There is no love. Just hunger and illusion. You hunger till you get the illusion of being fed, but you feel empty again in a moment and then all your love and desire go somewhere else, to someone else. You don't love these people, you just need to belong and these are the people who happened to be close by."

"You told me to tell you the truth," said Puck.

"You love things to be ugly."

"I like things to be entertaining," said Puck. "You have no idea how boring it gets, living forever."

"So if this furniture and this pool table didn't appear until I showed up, how were you entertaining yourself before I got here?"

"I was planning my shots," said Puck.

"You never tell the truth about anything."

"I never lie," said Puck.

"That was a lie," said Mack.

"Believe what you want," said Puck. "Mortals always do."

"What are you doing here?" demanded Mack. "Why are you hanging around in my neighborhood? Why don't you go and have your fun at somebody else's expense?"

Puck shook his head. "You think I picked this place?"

"Who did, then?"

"He did," said Puck.

"Doesn't mean you have to stay."

Puck stood upright and threw the pool cue at Mack. It hovered in the air, the tip right against Mack's chest, as if it were a spear aimed at his heart. "I'm his slave, you fool, not his buddy. And now not even that. Not even his slave. His prisoner."

"This is a jail?"

Puck shook his head. "Go away. I'm tired of pool, anyway. Like you said, it's no challenge."

"No wonder Professor Williams wanted to kill you."

"Oh, do you want to, too? Get in line," said Puck. "You got to give Will Shakespeare credit for this: He didn't hate me. He understood."

"Yeah, right, you got no choice."

It was clear the conversation was over. Mack left.