Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

THE EXCHANGE Thomas F. Monteleone

Jim Holloway was on fire.

Burning with the inexhaustible fuel of youth, fired by the bellows of imagination. Actor, writer, magician, inventor—his ambitions and his dreams as scattered as the stars in a midnight sky. At the advanced age of fifteen, he’d somehow managed to drag the sense of wonder about the world from his earliest years into adolescence, and he attacked each morning with a need to do something special—that day, and every other to follow. Something new and different before nightfall.

Every day.

The kids in his high school mostly thought he was an odd duck, but he didn’t care. His sun-bright blond hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses gave him a striking, memorable appearance, but it was when he spoke that people tended to pay closer attention. Jim had a… a reverence in his voice when he talked about the world he perceived. His curiosity stretched from the magic life in a drop of water to the mysteries of Mars.

He’d realized that life was an endless quest, full of discovery and adventure, if he would only allow it to be so.

Alone in an unfamiliar city, he walked its avenues in search of the shop of none other than Maestro the Magician. Ads in the back pages of Amazing Stories promised miracles of illusion from an address in Providence, Rhode Island, and from that arcane location, Jim had received “The Secret of the Oriental Rings.” Because of a family trip, he now had the chance of a lifetime—to actually roam the shop’s shadowy aisles, to uncover its treasures firsthand.

Other than a January wind to drive him through the streets, he had no idea where he was going. The cold air cut through him like an assassin’s blade, but he didn’t care. It was 1937 and Jim Holloway was on an adventure!

Turning a corner, pulling the collar of his coat closer to his neck, he encountered a palace of dreams—the Majestic Theater on Washington Street. A massive statement of stone, like a temple from a forgotten age, its marquee spoke to Jim: THINGS TO COME. He’d seen the film when it premiered in Los Angeles, but encountering it here in this cold New England town made his pulse jump. Yes, he thought with a smile, there are certainly things to come—good things, wondrous and full of magic. He surged past the box office empowered by his endless optimism.

But things changed when he spotted the thin man.

At the far corner, a willowy figure struggled to step up onto the curb, then collapsed like a wind-beaten scarecrow. It happened so quickly, James reacted without thinking. He rushed along the sidewalk to where the man lay motionless, his pipe-stem legs folded beneath him at alarming angles.

“Are you all right?” said James, leaning down to touch the man’s bony shoulder.

“I… don’t know if that’s a valid question.” The man looked up with a dour expression. He could have been thirty or sixty—there was no way to tell under the shadowing brim of his fedora.

“Let me help you up.” Jim extended his hand, grabbed the man’s, and gently pulled, surprised at the lack of resistance. So light and frail he seemed, as if his bones were bird-hollow.

Slowly, the man rose, pausing to gather up a package he’d dropped.

“I’ll get that,” said Jim as he scooped up the brown-paper parcel secured with tape and string. One corner had torn open to reveal a sheaf of stationery full of tight penmanship.

Slowly, the man gained his feet, absently brushed his trousers. Jim noticed that although the man was wearing a shirt and tie, his topcoat appeared thin and worn—and beyond that, he felt an essential sadness about this man.

Sadness… as if just by touching him, Jim felt he knew this brittle man.

Finally standing on his own, the man reached out for the torn package. “Thank you. Thank you very much. I am suffering from the grippe, I fear, and it has left me weak.”

Jim managed a weak smile. “I’m not surprised—if it’s always this cold around here…”

The man looked down at him, his face narrow as a hatchet. “Obviously, you’re not from New England.”

“Nope… Los Angeles, California! It’s a boomtown, my father says.”

The man seemed not to be listening as he inspected the damage to his package. “I’ve got to mend this before I can mail it,” he muttered. He took a step down the sidewalk and paused as his ankle gave way.

Catching him by the elbow, Jim buoyed him up. “Hey, mister, I think I’d better help you.”

“Nonsense, I’m fine. The postal office is nearby. I’ll be fine.”

Jim shrugged. “Okay by me, but how about if I just walk along with you a little while.”

“Don’t you have a previous destination?” The man spoke in precise clipped tones, as if always aware of each word he chose. He had a formal bearing, as if he’d time-traveled from an earlier age.

“Not really. I’ve been trying to find a store. Maestro’s Magical Shop of Wonders—you heard of it?”

The man paused his slow and deliberate gait. “You’re a magician?”

“Well, sorta. I mean, I want to be a real one someday!”

The man nodded. “Well, I have some sorrowful news for you, young man. There is no magical shop—”

“What?” Jim felt something ping in his heart. No shop? That just wasn’t possible! “What do you mean?”

The man sighed. “I have friends who are aficionados of illusion and theatrics. Maestro’s is a mail-order concern.”

“I don’t understand.” Jim couldn’t conceal the ache in his voice.

“No shop, just a warehouse where immigrants pack and ship the orders they get.”

“But the ads say—”

The man waved him off as they walked slowly toward the next intersection. “The ads, they are part of the illusion, so to speak. Do you think a famous performer such as Maestro would actually have the time, or the inclination, to be a shopkeeper?”

Jim noticed he’d intoned that last word as if he could have just as well have said leper.

“Nah, I guess you’re right.” Although he still supported the thin man with a deft touch at his elbow, Jim felt something sag within himself. He felt embarrassed when he replayed his oft-thought fantasy of actually meeting the great Maestro. Jeez, he felt like an idiot. But he also felt something far worse—a sense of terrible loss, of a dream dashed upon the rocks of a careless world. As Jim paced his companion, he fought the temptation to surrender to such defeat.

“We turn here,” said the man, indicating a left at the corner. “It’s not much farther.”

As they entered a street lined with giant oaks and shuttered Victorian homes, Jim was reminded of Green Town—his midwestern birthplace. He felt a flutter of memory that he would one day recognize as nostalgia, then tried to forget about the magic shop that never was.

Walking another block in silence, Jim listened to the man’s labored breath, punctuated by a series of greasy coughs. He carried his package against his chest as if it were a shield or a talisman, which fired Jim’s curiosity all the more. He had to know what secrets lay beneath the crinkled brown wrapper, and so he simply asked.

“It’s a partial manuscript,” said the man. “Part of a novel I’ve been badgered into starting.”

A smile widened on Jim’s full face. “Really? Are you a… writer?”

The man shrugged. “Of a sort. Although some such as that mountebank Tarkington would never think so…”

Jim had no idea what he was talking about, but he pushed on. “What do you write?”

For the first time since their encounter, the man enacted the suggestion of smile, a slight grin. “Articles on astronomy. Letters mostly. Lots of letters to lots of friends. But… I’ve done more than a handful of stories and novelettes for the shudder pulps.”

Jim almost grabbed him by his broomstick arm. “Stories? You write fiction? That’s what I want to do!”

“I thought you wanted to be a magician…”

“Well, that too! But I love Buck Rogers and H. G. Wells and Poe, and I can’t forget Burroughs…”

“You have… an energy,” said the man, pausing to look at Jim as though noticing him for the first time, “that I find familiar. What’s your name, boy?”

“James Holloway, but I like just plain Jim just fine.” He extended his hand as his mother had taught him to do.

“And I am Phillips Howard. I feel as though we may have been somehow fated to meet, just-plain-Jim.”

Their handshake was brief, but long enough for Jim to sense the weakness in Phillips’s grip. It was not that limp, dead fish that some people offered but an attempt at strength forever lost. Again, Jim felt overwhelmed by an essential sadness that seemed to radiate from this desiccated man who looked far older than his years.

After departing the post office, Jim suggested they go to the nearest coffee shop, and Phillips couldn’t hide his obvious surprise.

“Upon that, I have several questions. How are you to afford the extravagance? And are you not a bit young to be using caffeine?”

Jim smiled as they returned to the sidewalk. “Well, I’ve got the money I’d saved for Maestro’s, and I figured it was about time I started drinking coffee.”

Phillips regarded him for a moment, then nodded his head. “Very well then. There’s a café down this way. It is run by some Italians, but the coffee is good on a cold day like this.”

As they walked in silence, Jim wondered about a man who considered cups of coffee an outrageous expense. This stiff, spindly man—where did he live? How did he live? Jim couldn’t imagine him going home to a cheery family in one of the clapboard houses that lined these cozy streets. Was he really a writer, or was he just an older version of Jim? A dreamer of lives not yet, and maybe never, lived.

The coffee shop was not crowded, and Phillips selected a table by the window where thin sunlight promised additional comfort. There was a pleasant conversational drone of other patrons mixed with the accented cries of the staff. Jim liked the frenetic charm of the place and allowed the waiter to recommend cappuccino and biscotti for both of them.

“Tell me about your stories,” said Jim. “Maybe I’ve read them already.”

Phillips looked off through the window as if seeking a reply somewhere in the distance. Then finally: “I doubt it. They appear infrequently and seem to be a strangely acquired taste.”

“What made you want to write?” Jim had never met anyone who’d actually written anything, much less been published. Imagining he might never have this chance again, he let loose his curiosity and his questions.

“I don’t think I had much choice in the matter. If you write, it is because you must. Does that make sense?”

“Sure! I feel that way all the time. I’ve been trying to write comics and draw them myself… when I’m not writing regular stories, that is. It’s like, well, like there’s the stuff of story all around us, and somebody’s got to recognize them, and then tell them, right?”

Phillips’s narrow face brightened for the briefest of instants. It was such an unnatural look for a man of such grim aspect that Jim almost laughed. “I’ve never heard the process explained exactly like that, but I think it certainly obtains.”

“You are so lucky,” said Jim. The sentiment just burst out of him, fueled by equal parts admiration and envy. “To see your name in print. I’d give anything to do that.”

“I already have… and I fear it’s not worth it.”

“What?” Jim was stunned.

“Have you never been admonished to be careful what you wish for?”

“I don’t think so. Besides, who cares? What you do is special—it’s magic is what it is!”

Phillips sipped from his large cup, savoring the rich brew as he paused to order his thoughts. “You use that word with great frequency.”

“What word?” Jim felt off balance, confused.

“Let me tell you something, Jim Holloway. You seem to be on some kind of frantic mission to… to capture lightning in a bottle. But just as there is no magic shop in Providence, there is no magic out in the world for the taking.”

“I don’t think I follow…” Jim let his voice trail off as Phillips leaned forward, his gray eyes focused on him.

“There’s only one place you’ll find any magic, and that’s in here.” Phillips tapped a fist lightly to his own concave chest. “And it’s a bit of a curse to be placed in charge of it.”

Jim’s expression must have belied his lack of comprehension. When he couldn’t find a proper reply, Phillips continued: “We are the only sad sorcerers you will ever know. Most of us only know one trick, and the true illusion is that we always believe we are the master of many.”

Jim wasn’t sure he understood any of what Phillips intended, but he was afraid to admit it. His companion was issuing some kind of strange warning, it seemed, but Jim was having none of that. Especially from another writer! Incredibly, he found himself getting upset with Phillips, who seemed to be growing insubstantial in the afternoon light, as if he might fade away like an unpleasant fog.

And so he said: “You sound—I don’t know—bitter? Or even angry.”

Phillips nodded as though he’d gotten the reaction he’d sought. “If I am guilty of those emotions, I assure you I have my reasons.”

“What possible reason could you have?”

“If you are observant, you already know I have neither means nor health. Although I tell myself I suffer from a common ailment, the lie does not banish the thing that is consuming me.”

And just like that, it made sense to Jim. He felt twice the fool. He’d believed his own lie—the greatest falsehood of adolescence—that he would live forever.

As he struggled for the appropriate response, he was shocked to hear himself talking—the words coming from a place where thoughts are replaced by feelings. “And you think your art has destroyed you?”

Phillips considered the question—one he’d most likely never been asked. Then: “I think that’s as accurate as it is perceptive.”

Jim beamed. “I think you’re wrong. I think that’s what gave you life, what gave you the only true pleasure we—how’d you put it?—‘sad sorcerers’ can have!”

Phillips again did his best imitation of a smile. “You are an unexpected palliative, young man. How could you possibly know already that creation is the true and only machinery of joy?”

Now it was Jim’s turn to pause. “I don’t think I did…”

Phillips leaned forward, touched the sleeve of Jim’s peacoat, then held up his hand. It was performed as though part of a ritual. “I think something important has happened this day. Irony is a powerful force, is it not? You came to this place in search of something you didn’t know you even needed. It is something I fear I’ve lost, and yet I am still able to give it to you. Does that make sense?”

Jim grinned his schoolboy grin. This time he understood perfectly. “I came here looking for one thing, but I found something else.”

“As did I.” Phillips nodded gravely. “The tragedy of life is not that men die, but rather that most allow their dreams to expire while they still live.”

Jim felt transformed by this exchange, as well as an odd connection to this strange, feeble man. Signaling the waiter to refill their cups, Jim felt himself smiling at the man he now considered a friend.

He was certain they still had much to discuss.