Wizard of the Pigeons

He stared at her pocket. His throat was closed tight, too tight for any words to pass.

‘’Oh, come on,“ she begged impatiently. ”Don’t be so shy.

Look, I know about guys like you. I’m not a kid. You don’t stink like a drunk, but you don’t shake like a junkie. I think you’re just temporarily down. Lady dumped you, maybe, or your job ran out. I mean, look at how you’re dressed. You’re not really a bum. All you need is to get thinking straight again and get back on the tracks. Just have a cup of coffee and keep me company while I eat; it’s no big deal. What do you say?“

He dragged his eyes away from her pocket and up to her face. Her front teeth nibbled appealingly at her lower lip, but he scarcely noticed. He mustn’t stare at her pocket. If he agreed and went with her, he might have a chance to get his bag back.

He could offer to take her coat, to hang it on a chair or something. A quick stab of his hand into her pocket and… No. He didn’t want to feel it for himself, didn’t want to stick his hand into an empty bag with a wrinkled paper bottom. Most of all he didn’t want to pull his hand out with nothing in it for the flock. He agonized again over how it could have happened.

But it was gone, his gift taken as abruptly as it had been bestowed. He had never known how he could feed the pigeons, and now he would never understand“ how he could not.

“Lunch, then?” Her cool fingers touched his wrist, numbing it. She snatched them back with a cry of dismay and gripped her own wrist. “Oh, look at the time‘ I hate it when I’m on afternoon shift. Just about the time I start to enjoy the day, I have to rush off to work. Look, I’m sony. I have to go now if I’m going to be on time, so I can’t take you to lunch.”

He stared up at her miserably as she rose. She looked deep into his eyes and misread them. “Hey, look. It’s not that way!

I wasn’t teasing you. Look, take this,“ she dug in a bottomless purse and came up with a folded green bill. ‘Take this, I mean it, and get a bite to eat. You really look like you need it. And meet me here, tomorrow, early, and we’ll talk and have breakfast. You can tell me all about yourself. Now, don’t shake your head at me. You take this.” Boldly she tucked it into the chest pocket of his jacket. Wizard felt strangely powerless before her insistence. “You eat something, you’ll feel better, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t look so surprised. That’s how I am.

I can never turn away from someone who really needs help.

And I can tell a lot about people Just by looking at them, maybe cause I been waiting tables for so long. Now you get something to eat. I mean it, now. See you later.“

She left him buried in the avalanche of her words. She looked back once as she hurried away to give him a friendly little wave and an admonishing shake of her finger that cautioned him to obey. It was all he could do to stare after her, totally unmanned.

When he looked away from her diminishing figure, the square looked unfamiliar. The light seemed dimmed, and his eyes would not focus as sharply as he wanted them to. Like waking from a nap you hadn’t known you’d taken. He blinked and felt the wetness of his lashes. Rain. It was raining very tiny drops, millions of them. like a determined mist condensing on him. Wizard sat in it for a long time, feeling the money in his breast pocket where she had jabbed it in, feeling the emptiness in his coat pocket where the popcorn bag had been. His birds were gone, abandoning him to seek shelter in treetops and on window ledges. He was alone in the gray rain, caught between numbness and a creeping cold. Just like bleeding to death, he thought to himself; once the shock takes away the pain, you just get colder and sleepier and dimmer. He turned his eyes down. His coat and slacks were dark and wet, but this time it was only rain. Only rain.

He dragged himself to his feet, forced himself to move. The square boasted a concrete monstrosity that passed for a rain shelter and benches. It was very big and stark, with the roof so high that the rain Mew in under it. Even in summer, its shade was too cool. The cleverly designed brass drinking fountain beside it squirted everyone in the face. The designer who had envisioned mothers and small children relaxing there was mistaken. Only street people did. Different cliches claimed different benches, sprawling or hunching on them as decreed by the weather. Hostile stares greeted intruders. Wizard walked past it. On one of the unsheltered benches a lone boy sat, trying to make fifteen years look like twenty. His black hair had been greased into spikes that were wilting in the rain. He reminded Wizard of a forlorn Statue of Liberty. He had scratched lightning strikes into his cheeks and etched fear behind his eyes.

He sat very still as Wizard walked up behind him. When he leaned over the back of his bench, the boy neither moved nor spoke.

“Go home, kid.” Wizard lifted the money from his pocket with the tips of his fingers and dropped it in the boy’s lap.

“Your mom threw out that guy that hurt you. She doesn’t show it by day, but at night she cries, and she lets your cat sleep on the pillow by her head. She keeps the porch light on, and there’s a box of chocolate mints in the freezer compartment of the fridge for you. She’s not such a bad old broad; besides, she loves you. Bus can take you as far as Auburn. You can hike the rest of the way. Go for it, kid.”

Wizard stepped away. The boy never looked at him. He just nodded, as if to himself, and picked up the money in his lap.

He rose a second later and headed for the bus stop. Wizard nodded after him, relieved. At least he had managed to get rid of the money. He tucked his bag more firmly under his arm.

He walked, through streets and weather too wet for walking, ignoring the buses. He walked away from his home and his territory, out past the King Dome, walked right out of the Ride Free Area and into the uncharted lands beyond. Restless and rootless, he drifted, turning aimlessly down any street that presented itself, wandering through areas of warehouses, offices, and old residential sections, wandering much farther than he would have imagined he could.

He stopped in a Thriftway grocery to ask if his wife had forgotten her spare keys there, on a keychain with a greendyed rabbit’s foot on it. She hadn’t, but while they looked, he had a free sample of Brim Decaffeinated Coffee and a heated Jeno’s Pizza Roll served by a smiling lady from a tin-foil-lined tray. There was a dime on the floor of a phone booth outside a convenience store. In the drugstore, they didn’t have his daughter’s asthma prescription on file, but they let him use the bathroom while they checked. He looked at the man in their mirror. The rain had helped, actually. He did look like a harassed father sent on a wild goose chase on a rainy day. Darn kid had left her prescription in her gym locker and someone had stolen it. Probably thought they could get high on it; you know kids these days. Well, he’d have to get the nurse to track the doctor down and phone it in again. Thanks, anyway, and back into the rain. Outside the Langendorf Bakery thrift store, a man with a farm pickup full of rotten produce and brown lettuce dropped two packets of tiger-tails as he was loading in three boxes of outdated baked goods. After he drove away, Wizard salvaged them and ate them as he walked. They were squished and stale; their sweetness made him long for rich black coffee, hot enough to bum their cloying taste away. He thought longingly of Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice, down on Virginia across from the market. Or better still, the Elliott Bay Cafe just under the book store; there was something about the old books on their shelves gazing down benignly on him as he sipped from a steaming mug. He wanted coffee and he needed home. He circled the block and turned his steps back.

The day was cooling and the rain had finally managed to soak through his clothes. He shivered. Walking was no longer enough to warm him, not even fast walking. The paper sack under his arm had started softening. Now he wished he had folded up the plastic shopping bag and stuffed it in his pocket.

He didn’t know what he would do if the tired seams of the bag gave way and the wizard things dropped out on the wet sidewalk. He snuggled it protectively against him and walked a little faster. Streetlamps began to come on, blossoming overhead against the gathering darkness.

He almost made it safely home. As the darkness and rain intensified, he broke into a wolf-trot, trusting to the night to keep him anonymous. His feet ate up the blocks, carrying him up Alaskan Way under the length of the viaduct. The highway and traffic overhead could not keep the rain off him, nor could their noise keep the thoughts from pelting down on his mind.

There was a hypnotic effect to the regular beat of his feet against the ground, the whoosh of traffic overhead and beside him, and the totally miserable weather. He could move himself doggedly along and keep his consciousness away from how acutely miserable he was. But he could not keep his thoughts from chewing at the edges of his mind, shredding his calm with a threat of gray Mir out there somewhere in the night, stabbing his soul with the loss of his popcorn bag. It was almost a relief when his quick ears picked up the sounds of a scuffle and a single, sharp cry.

Under the viaduct it was dark, making a Jest of the lights that lined Alaskan Way. This time of night, it should have been deserted. The noises were coming from the shadows behind a dumpster- Wizard felt the familiar unwelcome surge and was running the zigzag path before he was aware of it, his bag tucked tightly to him. As he passed the corner of the dumpster, he gave me bag a toss that carried it safely under it. His feet made no sound as he approached the struggle, and he gave no cry of warning.

He hit the tangled knot like a striking eagle. The boy dropped and skidded on the pavement, but the narrow man snaked away into the darkness. The old man on the ground gave another cry and tried to crawl away. Wizard ignored him. Damn, but he wished that me adult one had not escaped. Now he would have to worry about him coming from behind. But for now…

“Let me go, please, mister!” the boy wailed suddenly as the dead-faced man towered over him. He tried to scrabble away, but he was on his back, and his arms and legs refused to work properly when glowing blue eyes stared down at him.

Three kicks. To throat and belly and armpit, and then he could pursue the other black-clad man melting into OK night.

Or he could push his fingers down fast as a snap against the soft hollow of the boy’s throat, to crush the tiny fishlike bones within and flood blood all through the secret caverns of his flesh. Wizard smelled the pungent odor of urine as the scrabbling boy wet himself. Snatches of gray fog were drifting in off Elliott Bay and floating through the night. There was no solution so simple and beautiful as death. He could put him out and be done with him, never have to worry about this particular one again. No one would ever see what was going to happen here. The boy was like a cake waiting to be cut. “ god o god o god,” he was praying, sobbing and sniffling already, before Wizard had ever touched him. But now be touched and the boy squealed long. Wizard looked at the rag of shirt in his hand, marveling at how easily the cloth had torn. A tendril of fog passed between the boy-and himself, drifting like blood in water. The gray fog stank in his nostrils, worse than the urine, and he shook it from his nose.

For the first time he heard the old man’s repeated words.

“I’m all right. Let him go and help me. Please.” Wizard stared down at the boy. His eyes were squeezed shut and water from them was leaking down his cheeks. He felt suddenly and intensely sick.

“Get out of here, kid- Go!”

Wizard stood up, but the boy was gone even before he stepped back. He stared after his vanishing prey.

“Please. Please help me.”

The gray sheaf of hair that was supposed to be combed to cover the old man’s bald spot had draggled down one side of his head. His old brown sweater was muddied at the elbow and one knee of his gray pants was torn. Wizard raised him gently, smelling the unmistakable odor of fried chicken and fish clinging to him. “Are you hurt?”

“No. God be thanked, I’m not hurt. Boys today. Only a boy that was, did you see? I told them I didn’t have any money.

But they said they had watched me carrying a bag home every night, and they wanted the deposit. Deposit! Leftover chicken and fish from the restaurant for my cat. For that they put a knife to my throat.“

“So why did you tell me to let him go?” Wizard spoke softly, his voice a deeper nimble than the traffic overhead.

“So maybe it’s not that different, if he kills me over leftover chicken, or you kill him. Or maybe it’s the delicate ecological balance I was worrying about.” A quavery laugh shook the old man’s voice. “Look at it this way. I’ve just had the rare opportunity of seeing a fullgrown Mugger in its natural surroundings as it taught its young to stalk and attack its natural prey.

Think of what might have happened if you had killed it. Why, there might be a mother Mugger, and a whole liner of little baby Muggers at home in the den, waiting for those two to bring home their kill. Oh, God!“

The old man started shaking suddenly. Wizard helped him to the dumpster and he leaned against it until the belated adrenalin shudders had passed. He tried for another laugh, but it failed. “Or think what it could have done to you, if you had killed him. Or to me.”

“Would it be worse than what’s been done to you?” Wizard asked. He didn’t want to be speaking to him like this, especially not in this chilly soulless voice, but the words were swelling out of him like blood from a wound.

“I’m not hurt. Well, not much. It would be nothing to a man your age. Oh, I’ve bruises that won’t heal for a week, and a scrape that’s going to keep me awake all night. But if it hadn’t been for you. I might be headed for the hospital. Or the morgue. But you came along and stopped it. I’ll be fine.”

“Will you? And will you walk home with your kitchen scraps tomorrow night?”

For a moment the only sound other than the roar of traffic overhead was the labored pumping of me old man’s lungs.

“No. I guess I won’t be doing that anymore,” he admitted slowly. “I guess I’ll call a cab, or get me cook to drop me off on his way. No, I don’t suppose I’ll be walking home after work anymore.”

“Then that’s what they took from you tonight, old man. Not your money nor your life, not even your cold chicken. They took your private walk home of an evening, through the streets that should belong to you. You’ve been robbed and you don’t even know it.”

With a trembling hand the old man flipped his hair back into place and patted it down. He was over the worst of his fright now, and dignity was coming back to his voice.

“I know it, young man. I knew it before they had even knocked me down. But do you think it would be different if you had killed that boy? Then on the walk home at night I could look at this dumpster and say to myself, ”That’s where (hat young bastard died for trying to rob me.‘ I saw you- You weren’t going to rough him up or hold him for the cops. You were on the killing edge. Do you think I’d be thinking of punks and muggers as I walked up this street alone at night? No. I’d be winking of you. Good evening.“

There was strength in the old man. Rebuked, Wizard stepped back to let him pass. He didn’t even look back at Wizard as he continued his interrupted walk home. Shame, weariness, and cold flooded up through Wizard, rising like a cold dde??? from the pavement. He wished no one had seen him tonight.

He stooped to retrieve his bag from under the dumpster. From there his nose led him to the crumpled sack of cold chicken and fish fillets. The muggers had tossed it aside, untouched.

He claimed it and took a cold fillet to nibble as be walked.

Dark cold pressed against the back of his neck as be headed up South Jackson. Strips and rags of-fog drifted past him and tried to surround him. Gray as Mir. Wizard walked faster His heart was beating hard in his chest when he reached the mouth of his alley. He glanced furtively about, but he was alone.

A light toss of the wizard bag took it to the landing of the old fire escape. The chicken bag followed it. He bounced once or twice on the balls of his feet, trying to limber up muscles chilled stiff. He sprang, caught the old pipe, braced a foot lightly against the bricks, and pushed up until his hands could shift suddenly to the edge of the fire escape. He hauled himself up silently. Moments later he was sliding open the propped window, and then he was inside the outer chamber of his den.

He stumbled into the inner room where he slept. He was tired.

Too tired. Too tired to light his can of sterno and brew a hot cup of tea. Too tired to do anything but put his sodden wizard bag safely into his wardrobe box. He let his clothing fall to the floor around him. It was too wet and dirty to use again. Tomorrow he would redonate it to the Salvation Army.

He shivered as he pulled on his quilted long-Johns and a dry pair of socks. Black Thomas was nowhere to be seen or felt. He wished he were here to share the cold chicken. Wizard burrowed into his bedding, shivered himself into a warm ball, and then felt the growlings of an unappeased stomach. He reached out into the darkness to the chicken bag and found a thigh piece. His nose and ears were cold, but he didn’t want to pull the blankets over his head. He dropped the greasy bone beside the mattress for the cat and sat up to reach for a woolen cap from his wardrobe box.

It watched him. It gloated. Wizard stared back, but it didn’t go away. Because it was real. A cold separate from night slunk through his bones. Who was the prisoner and who was the guard? It had nearly had him tonight; it knew it, too. They both knew and sat staring at one another, knowing it together.

Wizard’s hand found the cap. Slowly he drew it to him and dragged it on over his ears. Ever so slowly he eased himself down, never taking his eyes from it. The closet door hung broken on one hinge. It would not be shut in again. It glowed faintly in the dark with a rotten, mildewed light. The accusing letters never blinked. MIR.

NINJA WOKE HIM an hour before dawn grayed the skies. Wizard never heard her light steps. What shocked him out of sleep was the thunderous clapping of wings as the pigeons fled for their lives. They thudded blindly into the walls of the dark room, calling pathetically to one another. He rolled from his mattress and leaped at a darker patch of moving night. Ninja gave a howl of dismay and released a flapping bird. Wizard gripped the big black cat by me scruff of her neck. “How did you get in here?” he demanded of her, but she only growled murderously in her throat. Tucking her under his arm, he gathered up last night’s chicken bones. He took Ninja into the next room and then dumped her unceremoniously outside the window of the fire escape. The bones followed- A piece of old plywood kept for just such occasions blocked the window and her reentry. Wizard went back to his den.

In the blackness he groped for his can of Stemo- Ninja growled and crunched bones outside the window. Inside, the pigeons rustled on their high shelves and cooed reassuringly to their mates. He set me Stemo inside the punctured coffee can that served as a light shield and stove. He stared through the dimness at the Sterno surface and focused his mind. Flames.

He sat still, recalling the perfect flickering details of a tongue of fire. He was still sleepy and it took longer than usual to bring the magic to bear. It came as dancing sparks that finally and suddenly coalesced into a single fat flame.

He shivered as he set the pan of rainwater over the mouth of the can. Little bits of light escaped from the holes in the can’s sides, spattering dots of light on the wall but not illuminating the room. He was grateful. He didn’t need tight to sense the hulking presence of the footlocker in its closet, ft crouched beside the half-fallen door like a gray predator awaiting unwariness. He herded his eyes and mind away from it and immersed himself in his routine.

As his tea brewed, he dug out a pair of corduroy pants and a Pendleton shirt. Mandarin Orange Spice was an herbal tea with no caffeine, but he spiked it heavily with pilfered sugar packets. The sweetness warmed him and calmed his shivering.

The last piece of cold chicken became his breakfast. A quick check of the fire escape revealed that Ninja had eaten and left.

He set his boots down by the window and opened the connecting door between the rooms for the pigeons. By ones and twos they fluttered past him and sought the dawn sky. Returning to his own room, he kindled a candle from his hoard and extinguished his precious supply of Stemo. Time to tidy up the den, he admonished himself as he slipped ninety-nine cents into his pants pocket.

Yesterday’s clothing went into a bag to be disposed of today.

He smoothed the crumpled sides of the wizard bag and set it carefully atop his wardrobe box. He shook and respread his blankets atop his thin mattress He tidied his books, bringing their spines even with the front of the shelf and carefully wiped out his tea mug. The crumpled wrappings from the cold fish and chicken were placed beside his boots for disposal in the dumpster. A glance out his window showed him that his darkness was still holding. He dug out his pocket mirror and shaved with me warm water from the kettle. He detested shaving without running water, but today he resolved to be fully prepared before he set foot out the window. He finished his cleanup with time to spare and extinguished the candle. The skies were Just beginning to lighten.

Secure and satisfied, he looked around his room. His gaze ran aground on the footlocker’s stark grayness. Its foreign presence mocked him, blowing away the homey comfort of his small den and meager possessions like an icy gale through a broken window. It turned his departure into a rout. He tied his boots, glanced back over his shoulder at it. and left laden with items to dispose of. As he exited, he propped the window for the pigeons.

He walked briskly, propelled by dread of the thing in his room. His mind sought refuge in a detailed schedule for his day. Everything would be planned, each step completed carefully, so that nothing might derail this day and make it a repeat of yesterday’s disaster. First, he would dispose of the soiled clothing. Then. coffee and food; he had eaten only sparsely yesterday, and his stomach was a growling burden. Then Cassie. He set his teeth tightly together as he imagined admitting to her the loss of the popcorn bag- Well, it couldn’t be helped.

The sooner he faced up to it, the sooner it would be remedied.

He refused to wonder if Cassie would be able to help him with it. Of course she could, he told himself firmly. Of course she could.

On Second Avenue, he left the bag of soiled clothes leaned up against the door of the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Someone else had left a bag there also, but it held only baby clothes.

He neatly refolded its top and placed it against the door.

The trash went into the next dumpster. He walked another brisk two blocks, pumping his blood to dispel the last traces of sleepiness and apprehension. Coffee. That was what he needed to bum the night fears from his mind. The hot tea had warmed him, but it lacked caffeine and the rich brown taste with the bitter edge that let him know it was rooming. He jingled the emergency coins in his pocket and toyed with temptation. Elliott Bay Cafe. It should be open by now. The spirit of hot espresso plucked at his sleeve. With a sigh, he denied it. The coins would only cover coffee there, and it was a difficult place to cadge a meal. No, today was not a day for a fling. Today was a day to be very conscientious, to obey every rule and take every step with absolute correctness. Wizard wanted no part of days like yesterday.

He waited alone at the bus stop, taking comfort from his surroundings. It was his favorite bus stop, under an iron and glass Victorian pergola at First and Yesler. The Pergola, in Seattle. Since 1909, it had sheltered folk, first for trolleys and cable cars, now for the bus. A Tlingit totem pole shared its sidewalk island, and a bronze bust of Chief Sealth presided over the area. The drinking fountain offered facilities for people, horses, and dogs. When Wizard stood in this small triangular plot of history, he felt as if the spirit of Seattle flowed through him, backwards and forwards in time, with him as a sort of intelligent filter. This was his city, and he knew it as well as any. Much of his knowledge had been gained by following city tours at a discreet distance, or eavesdropping on the benches here as the guides went through their spiels. The details amused him. The totem pole was the second one to stand here. The first had been stolen from a tribal burial ground in 1899, but was lost to fire in 1938. When the city sent a five-thousand dollar check to pay for the carving of a new pole, the Tlingits had served their revenge cold and sweet. “Thanks for finally paying for the first one,” the cancelled check was endorsed.

“A new pole will cost you another five thousand.” Wizard grinned softly to himself at the thought of it. The bus thundered up in front of him in a belch of heat. The doors hissed open and the driver scowled down on him.

“This ain’t a flophouse,” he commented sourly as Wizard came up the steps. “So don’t even think about going to sleep in here.”

Wizard kept his aplomb. No bus driver had ever dared speak to him like that before, though he had heard similar comments made to derelicts on stormy days. He tried a jaunty smile. “The night was late, but not that late.”

“Surprised you knew it was daytime.” The driver didn’t wait for him to be seated, but jerked the bus back into traffic.

Wizard kept his balance and made for a seat near the back. As he stared out the window, he mentally reviewed his appearance.

He was shaven, washed, and tidily, if casually, attired. So why had the driver been able to pick him out as a resident of the streets? No matter how he puzzled over it, he could find no loophole, no crevice in his protective armor. He should have been immune to such hassles. He stooped to retie his bootlaces and to force himself to calmness. He refused to heed a little voice that warned of impending disaster. No doubt the driver had simply had a rough night of his own and had unerringly assumed that Wizard was a safe target. No matter He would not let it ruffle him. He sat up straight. A wave of illness swept over him.

Perhaps he had straightened up too fast, driving the blood from his brain. He closed his eyes to let it pass. A blacker darkness closed on him and Mir laughed. His mind was flooded with images, stark, terrifying, and disgusting. Like a series of slides, the women appeared and disappeared before him.

Knowing came, filled with sadness. They were real. Each slashed face, each savaged body had led a life and been part of a whole.

Mothers, sisters, friends, and lovers. Their deaths went on forever in the gaping holes left by their passing. Each a precious gear snatched from the clockwork of a family. Wizard forced his bile back down and tried to study them. The backdrops were not western Washington. He saw the red banks of a wide muddy river and trees he had no names for. Wizard lost count of how many faces passed before him. He wondered desperately what was happening to him. Had Mir trapped him forever in this dreadful Seeing? Would his comatose body be taken from me bus and placed on a narrow bed somewhere, so his mind could sink into the nightmares and never return? He set his teeth stubbornly as his magic took him deeper into horror.

No. The knife. He was suddenly aware of the knife. He jerked his eyes open to the daily reality of the bus, to men in overcoats and women chatting together. But the knife did not go away. This knife was a thing to be felt, not seen. The women had felt it with their bodies; he touched its cutting edge with his mind, felt with horror the traces of blood and skin worn into its wooden handle. Someone on the bus had it and was dreaming of using it again. Wizard started to rise, then forced himself to sit still and feel. He groped about in the swaying bus, and finally focused on a man, three seats in front of him.

He was a swarthy, heavyset man who flinched suddenly as if a pin had Jabbed him. As the bus eased into its next stop, Wizard located the knife. It was suspended by a leather thong around his neck. Beneath me man’s faded shirt, it nestled by his heart.

At the stop the man rose hastily, glancing about. Wizard suppressed a groan and stood up to follow him. What now? he asked of his magic, but, having shown him, it was silent. It was not. Wizard reflected, me same as a stranger pouring out his heart and the magic giving him the words of comfort to speak. The swarthy man hit the sidewalk and strode off with Wizard a timid shadow.

For two blocks he followed, debating a course of action.

The man glanced back once and Wizard cringed, but he was only checking a street sign. He sensed how secure the killer was, content in his invulnerability. A new territory and unalerted victims by the score. He slowed to watch a high school girl hurry past and Wizard felt ill.

Anger flared suddenly in him, searing him to determination.

The hot pain of it felt good. The knife. It had been given to him for a reason; he was suddenly sure the magic had shown it to him for a purpose. In some far place, Mir chuckled gleefully, but Wizard blocked him. He zoomed in on the knife, feeling the oiled grain of the hickory handle and the sleek steel of the blade. Steel. He felt deeper, sensing molecules in sleepy motion- He lost them when, in his concentration, he walked into a parking meter. The swarthy man glanced back again at his involuntary exclamation. Wizard felt himself noticed. Well, mere was no help for it. He thatched the man’s increased stride and went back to the knife. Little tiny molecules, drifting like particles of sand in lake water. Wizard stirred them. Faster they swirled. The temperature of the steel crept up a fraction of a degree. Wizard’s face hardened in a tight smile. So that was how. He set his mind on the metal and stirred frantically.

Sweat sprang out on his face and back. A headache crept up from the base of his skull and spread like a net over his head. He followed me dark killer through a red mist. Never had he felt such a strain as this magic demanded. He fueled it with his anger. The killer increased his pace and Wizard stumbled after him, narrowly dodging other pedestrians and always focused on the knife, the knife. He imagined it molten hot, dripping and scalding the man’s chest. His breath was coming dry in his throat and now the man was definitely fleeing. He glanced back frequently at Wizard’s set face. but was unwilling as yet to break into a full run.

Wizard felt a sudden drop in ability. He groped after the magic like a receiver seeking after a fading FM signal. Everything dimmed and slowed. He found it again, but thinner. He locked himself into it and fed it to the molecules in the knife.

Just a little more now and the killer would become aware of the knife’s heat against his skin. His own blade would sear his chest, the hot metal eating through his skin.

But the knife was cooling. The thread of the magic was too finely spun and Wizard was suddenly weary- Mir laughed. He would have to get closer to once again hasten the perpetual dance of me molecules in the steel. Wizard stepped up his pace. Hot and blind as a hound on me scent, he trailed the man into the deadend alley. The man and the magic stopped at the same instant. Wizard stood alone.

“Are you following me?” The man’s voice was low, almost melodic. His smile was ethereal as a blessing.

“Yes. I am.” Wizard spoke distractedly.‘He could see the swarthy man edging closer to him in the narrow alley, but he felt blinded. Bereft of his magic, the edges of the world dimmed and the colors all ran together in muddiness. He groped after the magic and me knife, but it was like trying to reach without arms. There was only an emptiness he scrabbled in, as gut wrenching as a missing step on a dark staircase. “The Knife!”

Wizard suddenly cried aloud, imploring the magic’s return. But it was deaf to him, the abandonment total. He sensed the loss fully in that instant, and it was so tearing a thing he could not focus on the more immediate problem of the smiling man lifting the loop of leather over his head.

As the man reached inside his shirt for the knife. Wizard moved. A training older than the magic took over, lessons learned more harshly and thoroughly. The man stepped into it.

Three fast kicks while Wizard’s upper body leaned away, beyond the knife’s leap. The first kick went to me man’s knee cap, the second two to his torso as he staggered in pain. His duck hands never ceased tearing at his shirt, trying to bring free the knife that would solidify his courage. Wizard gave him no time. His boot connected with the man’s floating ribs, pushing them in solidly against softer organs and wringing a gasping grunt from me man. “Never hit a man when he’s down; it’s always easier to kick him.” Was the quote Mir’s? There was no time to wonder.

“Drop it!” Wizard commanded in the same voice he might tell a dog to sit. “Drop it!”

But me swarthy man believed in the knife too strongly to surrender it. He gripped its hilt firmly, the blade pointed toward Wizard as he began a desperate roll that would take him back to his feet. But Wizard did not cringe from that shining point as all his other victims had. Nor did he try to fight the blade as a few desperate ones had. His attention was focused on me man behind the weapon. He stepped into me man’s range and shot out a kick that smashed into his shoulder, numbing his arm and sending me knife clattering onto the worn paving stones.

With an incoherent roar halfway between outrage and terror, me man staggered to his feet. Cold-eyed and gaunt as Dead, Wizard stepped over the knife, ready to close with him again.

Expert eyes searched for openings. The man’s eyes flickered from me fallen blade to his opponent, making a swift evaluation. He feinted at Wizard, then spun on his heel and fled from the alley, cradling his injured arm as be ran.

Two strides Wizard took after him and then halted, swaying on his feet. The winds of Mir’s triumphant laughter blasted him- Knifing realization ripped through him, disembowelling his strength so that he would have gone to his knees but for his frantic clutch at a dumpster. He leaned against its sticky side, breathing its foulness and trying to come to terms with his loss. He was emptied. What magic he had left after his loss of his popcorn bag had been burned away. He was a stick man now, flimsy and impotent. Gutted by his own anger. He stared at the fallen knife on the pavement, trying to tell himself that it was a fair trade. But the knife was nothing, and he knew it now. The knife was just an ordinary knife, such as could be found in the kitchen-ware section of any supermarket. The killer could replace it in less than an hour. Would replace it. For an instant he Knew it, but then that power faded, too- All systems down, he told himself, feeling the blackout in his soul. It was only half a step short of dying.

He rubbed at his eyes, and the terrible ache behind them was worse man any tears. “I’ve lived through this before,” he told himself sternly- “And I can do it again.” But he could not quite recall what loss had ever so grieved him. There was only the hopeless sense of deja vu, and the press of the Now, cold against his back. There were things he had to do. Best do them.

He drew closer to the knife and stared at it.

Evil had soaked into its wood and honed its metal. It was a fearsome thing, possessed of its own wicked lusts. He had sensed that on the bus. He knew it was true, he could remember the loathsome touch of its nastiness against his bare mind. But now he stooped and picked it up by its thong without a shudder.

Like a photograph in the hands of a blind man, its secrets were safe from him. Best give it to others less blind than he.

The alley dumpster yielded all he needed. He tore free a section of brown paper sack and wrapped the knife securely, folding in the ends of the paper to make a package. With a broken bit of crayon, he wrote POLICE as firmly as his shaking hands could manage. Composing himself, he ventured out upon the sidewalk once more. He dropped the package into the first mailbox he came to. There. It was gone, on its way to tattle on the killer, if he had left more prosaic traces of himself upon it. Wizard walked quickly on.

The sidewalks and streets were busier now, with the cafes and restaurants in the throes of the breakfast rush. He should have felt confident and brash; this was the best time of day to cadge a meal. But that other emptiness inside him had engulfed his hunger and made it trivial. Coffee, he tried to lure himself.

There was always coffee to think of; his shaking hands would feel steadier wrapped around a steaming mug. Waves of giddiness assailed him. He touched his own face and throat surreptitiously, trying to remember if he had taken the fever pills today. The thought swirled away from him, and he was annoyed to find himself patting at his face. What had he been needing?

Coffee.

At the door of the next cafe, he composed himself, running his hands over his wind-tousled hair and tucking in his shirt a little tighter. He pushed the door open and strolled in. As he stood in line, he scanned tables hopefully, looking for someone with food on a plate and showing signs of leaving. Luckily it was crowded enough that people were already sharing tables.

No one would fuss about a stranger sitting down. He fingered the coins in his pocket and studied the menu printed high on the wall.

“You.” He felt a hand on his arm and someone eased him out of his place in line. Wizard looked up at the man in trepidation. He didn’t know him. He was big and stem and determined.

“Sir?” Wizard managed with cold courtesy.

‘Try one of the missions on Second. Or the Bread of Life on Main. They do a coffee and donut thing there at noon.“

Wizard found he was being walked to the door. He knew his mouth was open, but he couldn’t get words out. He tried to pull the coins from his pocket, in a childish show of cash, but the man had too firm a grip on his arm. The grip tightened when he thought Wizard was trying to struggle. “Look. Don’t make a scene. I can’t have your kind in here, or I lose my regular trade. Here’s some change. Go get yourself some wine or whatever. But don’t come back here, and don’t try to panhandle my customers. Next time there won’t be a handout, just a cop. You’d better believe me.”

The man gave him a firm pat on the back that propelled him out the door. Wizard found himself back on the morning streets with a handful of pennies and three nickels, but no coffee. Worse, no confidence. His hands shook worse than ever as he stuffed the telltale coins into his pockets.

Two cafes later, he was still coffeeless. In one a hostess had refused to seat him. In the other, the manager had come from behind the till and suggested they have a little chat outside.

He’d given Wizard another quarter. He was carrying more money now than he ever had before, and he still couldn’t get a cup of coffee.

He dragged himself along the street. He felt colder and emptier than a lack of coffee could account for. Giddiness came and went, washing over him in surges. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something; what if last night’s fish had been spoiled? His body had begun a headache to protest caffeine withdrawal. He ignored it and walked, his hands pushed deep into his pockets, his fist gripping the money there. Money. He had withdrawn from the major economic system of this country a long time ago. He didn’t need their official federal confetti, or their Social Security, or their welfare, or their lousy Veteran’s Administration. Hell, that screwed-up Vets Ad was strictly a place for old men to get their prostate glands fixed or their ingrown toenails dug out. Go to them with a real problem and they shit on you. They were just a part of the whole shitty system. Well, they’d had all they were going to get out of this boy. Six years of his life shot to hell, not to mention. Not to mention.

Wizard had lost his train of thought. He looked about himself in some alarm as he come out of his brown study. How had he gotten off the main drag? There were no bus stops on this street. No cafes, either, just business offices: lawyers, accountants, and brokers. He had even lost his orientation. He walked for three more blocks before he figured out where he was. At me next intersection, he turned and headed back toward Western Avenue. His headache throbbed. He had to stop it so he could think. There were things he had best admit to himself and accept, but not without a cup of coffee.

He found a diner that consisted of a long counter and a row of stools. The windows were dirty, with old tape marks on‘ them Inside it smelted of grease. As he approached the counter he dragged his money from his pocket and held it before him like a talisman. He made it to the counter and claimed a stool.

A waitress grudgingly paused before him. She was forty and bursting from an aqua uniform with a line of greasy dirt at the collar. She looked at the money in his hand and demanded,

“What do you want?”

“Coffee.”

She nodded, clanked a saucer and empty cup onto the counter in front of him and hurried away. He stared after her, feeling old. So this was what he had come to. The magic had turned its back on him. Here he sat, no character, no hopes of breakfast, just coins for a cup of coffee. He felt dirty.

On her next trip past, the waitress dumped coffee into his cup, wrote his slip, took his money, gave him change and told him, “You get three refills. And I do keep track.” The whole transaction took her less than a minute. He gave a defeated nod. The coffee was old and black and acid. The cream in me little tin dispenser came out stringy and yellow. The sugar dispenser was stuck shut and she hadn’t given him a spoon.

The magic was gone. The top of the cup tasted bitter and the dregs were a sugary syrup in his mouth. She refilled his cup with more of the same and didn’t hear his request for a spoon.

A heavyset man on the stool next to him gave him a supercilious smile. “Going to sober up, huh? Well, her coffee would sober up Jack Daniels himself.”

“I haven’t been drunk.” Wizard spoke softly but clearly.

“No, me neither. Haven’t been sober, either.” The man laughed at his own witticism and went back to shoveling scrambled eggs. Wizard watched him fork a mound of egg onto a piece of toast and bite the whole thing off at once. The smell of the eggs and the sound of his mastication made Wizard’s stomach roll over. He took a deep drink of the bitter black coffee.

By his fourth cup, his headache had changed to a standard migraine. He drank down the last of the coffee, left a nickel tip and headed for the restroom. No mirror. No hot water, and the cold stayed on only if you held it. A blower instead of paper towels. Wizard patted his face lightly with wet fingertips and stared at the chipped plaster over the sink. On the wall was a condom vending machine. Someone had written on it,

“Don’t buy this gum, it tastes like rubber.” He wanted to find that funny, but couldn’t dredge up a smile. The magic was gone. He headed for the streets.

He didn’t know where to go. The more he thought about it, the more he hurt. He wandered into an alley and squatted beside a dumpster, out of the wind. If he had no magic, he wasn’t Wizard. If he wasn’t Wizard… A terrible combination of anger, bitter hurt, and bewilderment churned through his guts on a tide of acid coffee. Like a man helplessly slapping his pockets for a lost wallet. Wizard searched within himself for the subtle signs of the magic.

But all was silent inside him. Nothing. It was gone. Stubbornly, frantically, he tried to think of ways to test it. Nothing came to him. He stepped away from the dumpster, feeling a bit shaky in the legs. He was hollow now, light as a man made of straw. The wind off the bay nearly pushed him down. He hit Western Avenue and tromped down it, feeling the sidewalks slap back against his feet until his arches ached. He could hear the gulls crying on the bay like abandoned babies in bombed out places. The city stinks choked him. What the hell was he doing in a city anyway? He had always hated cities. He walked too fast, feeling his shin stick to him with sweat even as his ears stung with cold. He didn’t pause as he passed me market.

He didn’t want to face Euripides today. Cassie be could not even think of. He turned up Marion, driving himself on.

It was steep going. The first block or two didn’t bother him.

He distracted himself by watching the cars with manual shifts struggle to advance through the changing lights without rolling backwards into the cars behind them There were stoplights at the lip of each rise, and the cars clung there, snorting and then roaring forward when the lights changed. Wizard was glad he was on foot. The buildings along here were old, with ornate decorations, some weathered to near obscurity, but some preserved proudly. Past Third, past Fourth, past Fifth he climbed, his calves aching. On Sixth he was stopped by the great gash of Interstate 5. He leaned against a building, panting. For a moment he closed his eyes and let his head loll back against the wall. His throat was dry, his legs ached. He had to stop fleeing. He needed shelter, quiet, and a moment of thought without fear. He twitched his eyes open and stared around.

Across the roaring interstate in its bed, towers rose tall in me leaden sky. They were tipped with blue one shade deeper than aqua. He shivered in their grip, feeling their attraction.

Then he turned left and jogged down a block to the overpass on Madison. He turned right on Ninth, trotting on, unmindful of the stares of the passing drivers. His throat and mouth were parched from panting. The buildings here emanated cold pride.

He ignored them and moved on, drawn without thought.

On the sidewalk before the fortress he stopped. His bream cracked in his dry throat. The blue towers soared above him.

Concrete steps draped in trailing ivy rose before him. His eyes ascended first. On the front of the building, gold branches twined on a shining black backdrop around a benign figure, I AM THE VINE it Said, AND YOU ARE — WE BRANCHES St. James Cathedral. He crept up the steps, heart thundering. The cathedral doors were of plain brown wood. Sanctuary. For him?

They looked locked. He dared himself to push one, and it yielded to his cautious touch. He went in, out of the wind.

Silence and warmth filled the foyer, but it was a barren place. Posted notices of scheduled meetings said nothing to him. This was but a limbo between the outside world and that which lay beyond the inner doors. They were upholstered in leather with brass studs and prophesied wonders beyond. He coughed and pushed his way in.

It took his breath away. Had he been some European peasant viewing for the first time Christopher Wren’s cathedral the impact could not have been greater. There was too much to behold and all of it shimmered with majesty. He groped his way to the back pew and found himself genuflecting in a reaction that went beyond his memories. He entered the pew and knelt, too humbled to sit. Before and beside and above him the cathedral opened out in swelling glory. Fat pillars of red marble held up the lofty ceiling. The green carpet and brown wood of the pews yet managed to give a sylvan air to the vastness. Marching forward on either side of him were stained glass windows set high in the walls, and below them small shrines to individual saints. Little votive candles burned before the saints in many-hued holders like shining gems offered to God’s holy ones for their aid. His eyes followed me line of shrines forward to the front of the cathedral, where angels decked the main altar and hovered over it.

Slowly he became aware that the church was not empty.

There were folk gathered here and there for silent devotions, but what was their puniness to this immense repository of godliness? They paid him no attention, and, encouraged by this, he rose and began to cautiously explore. Each stained glass window was dedicated to someone. The brilliance of the daylight when it reached through the purple or yellow of the glass brought tears to his eyes. “In Memory of James and Mary German,” he read, and wondered if they knew their window scattered bits of colored light upon his upturned face.

He paused at the shrine dedicated to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Facts surged to me surface of his mind from some forgotten reservoir, broke like bubbles upon his thoughts. Mother Cabrini. A saint for Washington. In Seattle she had become a citizen in 1909, and worshiped in this very place. Canonized a 1949. she was the first United States citizen to be so honored. from his pocket he drew coins and pushed them into the donation slot. The book of paper thatches was tucked behind one of the candle holders. He lit a candle in a blue glass and knelt to watch it bum before the image of the homely woman in simple garb. He felt consoled by its light and let himself sink into a dream.

First Communion Day. His stiff collar chafed the back of his neck raw. He approached the altar beside a little girl in a white dress with crackling petticoats. She wore a veil over her shining hair and her eyes glowed as she turned them up to the crucifix. He had knelt beside her at the altar railing, the gold and white fence that separated the priest and the holy place from the commoners. He had put out his tongue and received on it the round Host. It was white and stiff and dry, tasting of sanctity. It stuck to the roof of his mouth as he rose and carefully walked back to his pew with the other First Communicants.

He knew it was unseemly to chew it, so he waited patiently until it dissolved into a soggy mass he could swallow whole.

And as it went down, an interior Goodness so real that it warmed him flooded his whole body, making a shiver up his back and tears in his eyes. Never had he felt so Chosen. Jesus Christ was in him and his soul burned with a white flame of purity.

He had tried to play it at home, to recapture that elusive feeling for himself. In the game he was the priest, with a roll of Necco Wafers, and two small sisters who would do anything to get them They knelt before him, wildflower crowned, and responded “amen” as be set the candy on their pink outstretched tongues. It was good, but it was not the same. Only in the church did that feeling touch him, and he longed for a white surplice and vestments of green and gold and purple, and people kneeling before him to be nurtured. The mystical chanting of the choir, the high Sanctus, Sanctus. Sanctus, like a joyous bird rising to heaven. He knew that someday he would stand before that altar, elevating the Host high, his sleeves falling back to bare his arms as the masses behind him bowed their beads and murmured, “my Lord and my God.”

He had become an altar boy, memorizing the mystical Latin responses with ease. He could still remember the tingle on his skin the first time he slipped the black and white robes of his office over his head. He had poured the water over the priest’s fingers from the tiny glass carafe trimmed in gold, had seen him shake the shining drops from his fingertips as he mimicked Pilate’s denial. The white cloth for the priest to dry his fingers on was always folded precisely over his arms, waiting to be mod. And, at exactly the right moment, he had rung the four golden bells fastened to a single handle, let their metal voices cry out in sweet precision at the elevation of the Host. That moment had always closed his throat and made his eyes sting with tears.

He felt a tap against his foot, heard a woman’s murmured “Excuse me.” Like a diver rising from deep water. Wizard took a deep breath of air and looked around him with fogged eyes.

The church was filling with people. There were small family groups, easily identified as they filled half a pew, mothers holding small babies, fathers trying to maintain manners among (rider children. There were old women, their white heads draped in lacy scarves, and older men who sat, eyes lowered and shoulders rounded as they spoke to God. Wizard rose from kneeling at the shrine. The Mass was about to begin.

He left. He looked back as the heavy doors swung closed behind him. The tall pipe organ in the back of the cathedral had begun to sound, and the people rose as one. He watched them sail away from him on a sea of peace, and then the doors closed between them. He pushed through the outer doors into the cold and wind. He stumbled going down the steps and nearly fell. He glanced back once at me golden vines on the front of the cathedral- Once, he had been a branch. Now he was defoliated.

He sniffed as he strode down the street, and then surprised aiselfby coughing. Once he had begun to cough, he couldn’t stop, as if he had loosened some sickness in the bottom of his lungs. He felt his face grow red and hot with the strain of it, for long moments he couldn’t draw in enough air to fill his lungs. He leaned against a building until his chest quit leaving, and then took in short, cautious breaths of the chill air. It had gotten colder while he was in the church. The brief November day was drawing to a close. He was glad of it, glad it was nearly done with. He was tired and suddenly weary. Sleepy was too gentle a word for what he felt. He wished he could just curl up on the sidewalk and sleep. Or in a doorway. There were those who did that, he knew, but he had never been one of them.

Or had he? He coughed again, not as strenuously this time, a racking cough nonetheless. He had walked in the cold ram yesterday, and then slept damp and chill. It was no wonder he had a cough. The only strange thing was that he hadn’t gotten it long before this. He brushed his hair back from his damp forehead, feeling the tenderness of old scar tissue JUSI back of his hairline He took his hand away from it and shoved it deep into his jacket pocket He hunched his shoulders against the evening and began the cold trek to a bus stop.

THE BUS RIDE did not warm him. When he disembarked in the general area of home, he was still deeply chilled. The city seesawed around him. His feet knew where to take him, but nothing looked familiar. He focused himself on the streets determinedly- He belonged here. He had worked a long time to belong here. He knew this place, knew every damn square foot of it. He knew more about Seattle than people that had lived here fifty years. It couldn’t turn its back on him now. He willed ft to be alive, in the frightening and invigorating way Cassie had opened him to. But the building's remained faceless, mere stone and mortar and wood and glass. When his magic had fled, it had taken all magic with it.

He stamped his feet a little harder on the sidewalks, to waken his numbed toes and stir the city beneath him. These sidewalks were hollow. He knew that. How many residents of Seattle knew that the sidewalks were hollow, with enough space beneath them for folk to walk around? Well, it was true. The hollow sidewalks came into being after the fire of 1889, as a wry indirect result of it.

After the great fire, when the whole damned downtown area burned in less than seven hours, the city decided to rebuild itself in bride. No more wood buildings to invite another tragedy like dial. And shortly after that, the city decided to raise the streets and suspend the plumbing mains under them. It was all (he fault of those newfangled flush toilets. They had worked fine, on an individual basis. Folks just piped the stuff out into the garden patch or over the property lines. But when there got to be a lot of them, and folks joined up to funnel the stuff into big pipes that went out into the bay, problems cropped up, The system worked just fine, as long as the tide was going out.

But when the tide came in, the sea paid back a dividend to all the residents in the lower parts of town. The easy solution was to raise the streets and put me plumbing mains under the new, higher streets. The sewage backup would be solved! But by the time the city got around to raising the streets, a lot of businesses had already constructed new buildings. So you had buildings that had their ground-floor store front windows eight to forty feet below street level. People had to climb up ladders to cross the streets. Horses fell from UK streets onto the sidewalks below. In 1891 alone, there were seventeen deaths due (o falls from the street to the sidewalks. It was not a good town to get drunk in.

So, of course, the city finally had to raise the sidewalks as well. This changed a lot of ground floor space into cellars.

That’s how the underground shopping began. For years the people of Seattle strolled along on the original sidewalks, their way lit by bottle-glass skylights set into the new sidewalks above. At first, me city had tried skylights made of thick clear glass. But young apprentices soon took to spending their lunch hours gazing up through me skylights at the passing ladies.

Some of the more obliging hookers wrote their prices on the bottoms of their shoes. Morality demanded that the skylights be made opaque.

“I ain’t interested!” The man walking in front of Wizard turned around and growled at him.

Wizard halted ort the sidewalk in confusion. He had been wandering, not watching where he was going, and talking out loud about (he history of Seattle like a weirdo. He shut his jaws firmly, clenching his teeth shut. They wanted to chatter against each other. He pulled his jacket closer around himself and hurried on, passing me man who had snarled at him. First and Yesler. Home was only a few blocks away.

As he entered Occidental Square, the pigeons rose and swirled over his head. A pang of loss jarred him. He had nothing for the hungry ones. He bowed his head and tried to hurry past them, but they refused to be ignored. Down they came like huge, dirty snowflakes, eddying around him, obscuring his — vision with their flicking wings. The snap of pinions stung his face as they fought for the privilege of alighting on him. They settled on his shoulders, a feathered yoke of responsibility. He shook them off, gently at first, then more violently, like a dog trying to shake off water. Their questioning coos became alarmed. One tried to land on his head, missed his perch, and Wizard felt small cold feet and claws scrabble down his cheek.

“Leave me alone!” he cried out, and as swiftly as the storm had come, it dispersed. He watched them scatter up to black tree limbs and desolation filled his soul.

Ashamed, he fled them, scurrying across the square to the Grand Central Arcade and the gas fireplace. He rattled facts in his head to hold his despair at bay. It dated from 1889, this ivy clad building, and it had been the Squire Latimer Building.

It boasted access to the old underground shopping. He squeezed his lips shut to keep from muttering to himself, but his wayward mind clutched at the distraction, hooking his identity to the city. He was losing his grip on both.

The sudden warmth of the mall made his nose start to drip.

He hurried to the men’s room for tissue. He plucked a handful of stiff leaves from the dispenser and scoured his nose with them. He stared blearily into the mirror. He looked like hell.

Like he had died and someone had reheated the body in a microwave. He smiled mirthlessly at himself, a death’s head grin. As he stuffed extra tissues into his pocket, his hand encountered coins. He fished them out and looked at (hem. A quarter, a dime, and a nickel. Forty cents. Worth virtually nothing in terms of food. Coffee was up to fifty cents a cup, and the ten-cent donut was a fragment of the past. But the coins were something to clutch as he strolled through the mall stores, seeking some sort of sustenance.

He made three circuits of the shops. He ventured up me stairs that had once led him to Cassie and safety. They stopped at street level and looked at him blankly. He pushed gently at the bare wall, feeling weak, tired, and sick. It turned him away and he returned to the underground stores.

He found a blacksmith working his forge and selling coathooks. He found greeting cards with cats on them, and crystals for sale, and jewelry, flowers, and an art gallery and rare books.

He found nothing edible for forty cents. And he felt no warmer.

The chill that swept through him in waves seemed to come from his bones, flowing from the chill ashes of his magic. It was an exhausting, shivering cold that wearied him into an icy sweat. He stumbled back up me stairs to the street level of the arcade and the gas fireplace. He had no trouble finding a seat near the flames; the shoppers were thinning as the stores began to close for the night.

Numbly he sat, trying to absorb warmth. His eyes fixed on a woman tending a vendor’s cart. It was a red popcorn stand, selling salted or caramel popcorn. The woman was scooping up her cooling wares with a shiny metal scoop and packing the popcorn into big plastic bags- Wizard stared at the placard on her cart until the words burned into his senses. Popcorn, eighty cents. Carmel Corn, sixty cents. Small, forty cents. The misspelling of caramel vexed him unreasonably. He wanted to demand that they change (he sign immediately. Then the final line hit him. Forty cents. Salt beckoned him.

The woman looked up at him in a bored but guarded way as she went on shoveling popcorn. “Can I help you?” she asked in a voice that indicated she didn’t want to.

“Popcorn.” Wizard was amazed at his croak. He tried to clear his throat and coughed instead as he brought the change out of his pocket and proffered it to her.

“It’s cold, you know. I’m just cleaning out the machine.”

“That’s okay. It’ll be fine.”

“I already counted out for the night.”

He tried to reply, but a chill hit him. He pulled his jacket closed across his chest. Her eyes narrowed, then relaxed into a guarded pity. Poor junkie. She snapped open a small bag and packed popcorn into it. She pushed it into his hand and dropped his coins in the till without counting them

Wizard took the bag awkwardly. She had stuffed it over full and. as he put his fingers in, a few kernels leaped out onto me floor. A man who had walked up beside him glared down at the popcorn on the floor as he commented loudly. “Arcade stores are getting ready to close now.” Wizard nodded without looking at him and headed toward the tall doors.

Outside, a gust of wind carried off the top layer of popcorn.

The darkening skies had banished the pigeons. No one would salvage the flurry white puffs until they were sodden and gray beneath the dawn. He was just as glad there were no birds to greet him. There wasn’t enough here for a tenth of his flock.

He stuffed a few kernels into his own mouth and immediately lost his appetite for more. A fit of shivering rattled him. He twisted the top of the bag to seal it and stuffed it into his pocket-

“So here you are,” she said.

He turned, needing Cassie. She smiled up at him and the depth of his misfortune engulfed him- He could only stare at her. Her face was turned up to his and raindrops misted her lashes. He realized belatedly that it was raining. Drops were darkening her blond hair. She was giving him a strange look, half-smile, half-frown.

“Don’t look so blank, honey. Lynda, remember? i told you to meet me here this morning, for breakfast. But I was late and I guess you gave up on me. So I felt just awful. But I figured, well, maybe he’ll be around there when I get off work tonight. So I came by here, and sure enough, (here you are coming out of the arcade.”

Her chatter went too fast for him. By the time he absorbed the meaning of one sentence, she was two sentences away. He groped to reply. “I wasn’t here this morning.” The words dragged past the rawness of his throat. Lynda didn’t appear to hear them. At the sound of his croak, her eyes went wide. She pressed her cold hand to his forehead and then me side of his neck.

“You’re burning up! Let’s get you out of this rain. Hey—

I know just the place; it’s a great little place, lots of really healthy food, you know, fiber and’vitamins and stuff that’s good for you. Come on, now.“

Her arm was through his and her hand gripped his jacket right above his elbow. She hurried him along with short quick steps that put his long legs off stride. She appeared not to notice as she chattered on about a customer who had left her tip in me bottom of his water glass, and another who had wanted her to go out with turn after work. “He smelted just awful, like mildewed cheese, you know what I mean.”

Her words pattered and splashed against him like the rain, drowning his thoughts. The streets were shiny, their wet pavement reflecting the streetlights. She hurried him across south Main and into the Union Trust Annex and down some stairs.

She paused for bream on me stairs and he murmured, “Back into underground Seattle.” Lynda frowned up at his non sequitur. He felt a tiny triumph. “Notice me rough brick work of me building fronts down here. These all used to be ground floors, and now they’re basements. Did I ever tell you the story of me fire of 1889? A carpenter’s apprentice let a pot of hot glue boil over. I teamed all about it at the Klondike Gold Rush Memorial National Park. Just down the street.”

“You don’t make any sense,” she told him earnestly. “Come on.”

She tugged at him and he followed her into City Picnics,

She didn’t pause to order at the counter, but took him straight to a table and parked him on a bench with her shopping bag and raincoat. Then she left him. He looked around dully. The-. tables were inlaid with genuine artificial wood. He didn’t like it, but had to admit it was well done. He put his hand against the honest brick of me wall, feeling its integrity.

Someone loomed over the table. He turned to look up at her. But it was a stranger who bent down to put her face close to his as she whispered.

“You dummy‘ If you had listened, you would understand.

War,“ she hissed, her breath vile, ”is a sin, and it has to be atoned for. Penance. That’s the only way out of it.“

That old accusation. Someone had beaten her recently. Her features were swollen and blue, her ragged hair caught back in a ratty old scarf. Her words accused and snagged on old scars. “I didn’t start the war,‘ he tried to explain. ”I didn’t want the war.“

“That doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “Listen to me. It’s not a sin you commit, fool. It’s a sin that happens to you. Passed on, like heredity and original sin. Like your mother’s dimples or syphilis. It might not have been yours to start with, but once you’ve got it, it’s yours. Are you going to let it infect you and eat up your whole life?”

“It wasn’t my war,” he insisted, begging her to say it was true. But she only smiled evilly.

“No? Then whose was it? Are you going to tell me it wasn’t a hell of a lot of fun, when it wasn’t just plain hell? Are you going to tell me that you’ll ever feel that alive again? Isn’t your life all the same now, day after day, beset by problems you’re not allowed to solve? Wasn’t it all simpler with a rifle in your hands?”

“What do you want of me?” he groaned.

“Get up. Come on. This one is your war, and yours alone.

Don’t run away from it. You have to fight.“

He stared up at her, shaking, trickles of sweat or rain funneling down his face. She was so ugly and so close. She kept leaning closer, leering at him with her puffy eyes and squashed mouth. She was making him want to hit her, just so she would go away.

“Excuse me!” Lynda’s voice was politely venomous. “We’re together.” She shouldered past the woman with the professional grace and balance of a waitress, to land food on the table before him. A huge sandwich like a torpedo for Wizard salad for herself, and two foaming mugs. “Michelob on tap!” she said with a flourish, and slid one over to him. She plumped down on the bench beside him, squeezing him up against the wall.

The old woman wandered off muttering. Lynda glared after her. “Jee-sus H. They ought to lock up some of the crazies in this town, you know what I mean? What was she saying to you?”

“I don’t remember.” He stared down at me food in front of him. The smell had flooded his mouth with saliva. He could think of nothing else.

“So eat!” Lynda laughed, seeing his stare. “I got you a Gobbler on sourdough. Hope you like everything in a turkey sandwich, ‘cause that’s what you got.”

Wizard ate ravenously, scarcely chewing, enjoying the scraping of large hunks of food moving down his throat. He washed it down with draughts of the cold beer whenever his mouth got too dry to chew. There was lettuce, tomatoes, onions, turkey and cheese, and me fragrant, chewy bread itself. He didn’t see Lynda as he ate, only becoming aware of her when she replaced his mug with a full one. He didn’t care for the beer, but drank it for the moisture. He recalled me taste, the slight bitterness. He seemed to remember that when be had been thirsty, they never let him have any, but there were too many times when there was too much of it and he had drunk beer until his belly sloshed. When that had been he could not be sure; there was only the unpleasant memory of thick cigarette smoke and too many people talking too loudly. His mind veered from the thought. He took a final swallow and stared in surprise at his empty plate.

“Hungry guy,” Lynda observed with maternal pride. “Finish off your beer. Bet you feel better now.”

Wizard checked. He was not sure himself that better was an accurate description. He felt heavy, logy as a sated wolf.

His neck did not seem as strong as usual. It took a small portion of his concentration to keep his head upright; it wanted to sag onto the table. Setting down his empty mug, he leaned heavily into the wall and sighed. The honesty of the bricks comforted him. He looked at the woman beside him very carefully. This was the second time she had fed him, yet she did not make him feel that he owed her anything. She was smiling at him, seeming glad of his attention. She had blue eyes and a straight. nose and abundant blond hair. Her mouth was too generous for contemporary beauty, but he found he liked it. Her hands, lying soft and empty on the table top, were small, but not well, J cared for. Working hands.

“What?” she asked softly.

“I am trying to figure you out,” he told her solemnly.:

‘There isn’t much,to figure out.“ She gave a deprecating little laugh. ”I’m just me. Just what you see. Maybe you think I want something from you, because of the way I’ve, well. almost picked you up. But that’s not how it is, really. I don’t like to be alone. That’s part of it. And I like helping people.

I know that sounds corny, but it really is true. When I saw you sitting alone on the bench with only pigeons for company, my;? heart just went out to you. I mean, at first I was really pissed at you for the way you took Boom’s breakfast, and let me get Ai the blame for it. But even right there in Duffy’s, I looked at you and couldn’t stay mad. The way you peeked around your newspaper, suddenly it just seemed so funny. Did you see Booth’s face when he tossed down my keys and his food was gone? Did you see him?“

Lynda began to giggle. Wizard watched her face, studying the sparkle that came into her eyes and made her girlish. There was something here for him, something warm. He caught at that thought and tried to find the sense in it, but he could no longer follow it.

She had his hand. He looked down in some surprise, wondering why he hadn’t noticed her touch before. Her hands were white in contrast to his. His were browned and bony with little gristly scars on his knuckles. The comparison made him feel strong. She squeezed his hand gently, and the touch was good.

“You haven’t told me a thing about yourself. And I’ve talked and talked about me, and I suddenly realize that I just bought dinner for a man, I don’t even know his name. So what’s your name?”

The simple question stopped him cold. He had not realized how much he had relaxed in her company until the iciness of her querying tightened his muscles. He searched her face for signs of treachery. Her blue eyes went wider at his grim expression and her smile lost its confidence. He took a deep breath to spill out some sort of an answer, but it came out as a racking cough. It didn’t stop. It tortured him, driving the air from his lungs, reddening his face and making tears roll from the comers of his eyes- He pushed against Lynda and then staggered to his feet, his hands on his knees as he bent to try and take in air. Other customers were looking up in dismay, and one man rose to ask her if her friend were choking. Wizard shook his head in an emphatic no. “Air,” he gasped. “Cold air.”

He shook Lynda’s grip from his sleeve and staggered out the door of City Picnics. In the hallway he headed for the stairs and clambered up them, still wheezing and hacking. The circle of his vision was narrowing, darkness closing in from the periphery. He got the door open and staggered out onto the sidewalk, to lean up against the building. His chest did not feel so compressed here. He began to take small, short breaths and men longer, deeper ones. His face was stilt cooling when Lynda dashed out the door, her head swiveling in all directions.

“There you are!” she exclaimed. She dropped her shopping bag and shrugged into her raincoat, gripping her purse strap with her teeth.“Are you all right?” she demanded as soon as her mouth was empty. “That was just awful! Everyone was so worried, but I said it was just a bronchial attack and grabbed my stuff and followed you. I could tell you didn’t want everyone making a big fuss over you. Now, are you okay?”

Wizard nodded slowly. He straightened from leaning on the building, and she instantly had his arm. She was strong, taking part of his weight whether he wanted her to or not. She began to steer him slowly down the sidewalk, talking all the while.

That was one good tiling about her. She talked so much that he had to say almost nothing at all. Now, why was that good? he wondered. He tuned into her monologue. “… Hot buttered rum. Or a hot toddy or Irish coffee- Something hot. I bet I know a good place for that It’ll cut that junk in your throat and make you feel better. Warm you up inside. Come on, it’s only a few blocks from here.”

Wizard found himself nodding as he leaned against her support. She fit neatly under his arm- A hooker walked past them, headed in the opposite direction. Her heels tacked clearly against the pavement as she strode along, heading for more heavily traveled streets. He had a brief impression of her short bright dress, the elegantly casual coiling of her hair upon her shoulders that was her only wrap against the cold November night, and her parted lips shining in the lamplight. Then her black empty eyes hit him with a bolt of sadness that staggered him back against the wall of the building. She turned her head as she passed, tearing him with the hooks of her smile. Her agony raced through him. For a second he felt sure that, had he been alone, she would have said something to him, and he would have Known something to tell her. But he wasn’t alone, and he didn’t Know, and she kept clipping along, her footsteps fading swiftly from his hearing. He rubbed his forehead and pushed the hair back from his face. Lynda was staring at him.

He had almost forgotten her.

“What was that?” she demanded, little lights dancing angrily in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” he managed. Then more words pushed up out of him, words he hadn’t consciously planned to say. “Lynda.

I have to go home now. Thank you for treating me so kindly. But.“

“Oh, no, you don’t.” She gripped his arm firmly and hauled him up beside her. “Some chippie walks past and gives you the eye, and you decide to drop me and give chase, huh?”‘

“No. No, not that way at all!”

“I know!” Her tone changed, and he stared at her, astonished. She had been joking with him. he realized giddily. Joking. “No, I knew you weren’t going after her- But I also know where you were going. What are you worried about? That they’ll run out of cots at the shelter? Forget that tonight. You’re with me now, and I plan to take good care of you. We’re going to take care of that cough and get you all straightened around.

You just wait and see. And trust me. I mean it now- Trust me. Come on.“

She dragged at him like a riptide. There was no resistance left in him. He pushed away his worries as she wrapped his arm around her. They walked, he paying no attention to where they were going.

Second Avenue South. It took a while for him to recognize it, lit up for the evening trade. Neon signs and streetlights and the headlights of passing cars gave more light to the barren streets than they got by day. The brightness of a beer advertisement in the night dazzled his eyes. But the place she chose for them was neither bright nor inviting. She trundled him past the Silver Dollar, Bogart’s, and the Columbus Tavern to draw him into a place whose name he didn’t notice.

The door was heavy, but she dragged him inside. Most of the interior space was devoted to pool tables with low, shaded lights dangling over the green felt. The men playing were working men. Regulars. It was obvious from a glance that he had entered their territory and they looked up from their games to stare at Wizard for longer than was polite. There was a long bar to the right, and to this Lynda steered him.

She hitched her tidy hips neatly onto a seat, but Wizard mounted the backless stool as if it were a strange animal. A confusion of odors assaulted him. He left his eyes rove over the back shelves of tall bottles. “Teddy!” Lynda called out. She was in command here, and enjoying it. “Let us have a couple of Irish coffees. In mugs; I hate those phony glass things. Seems quiet in here tonight.”

It seemed anything but quiet to Wizard. There was the clack and rumble of the pool games and a large-pored man on television was excitedly relating the events of a ball game, backed by a chorus of male voices laughing and swearing and muttering. Above it all was the high-pitched whisper of the television tube, harmonizing with the special pitch of the fluorescent lights over the pool tables. Like tiny twin drills the high sounds bored into Wizard’s ears and temples. And there was a third type of sound, for his ears only. Danger was screaming in here, pressing in all around him like a million tiny needles trying to pierce his flesh with their warnings’ Danger and trap and an exposed back and an idiot on point and a coward on drag, they all screamed, all demanding his attention at once. His eyes roamed the room, trying to find the source of his uneasiness, but found nothing. Only people, the same sort of people he moved among every day. Teddy was setting mugs before them then.

“So where’s Booth these days?” Teddy asked Lynda in a genially teasing voice.

“Not here, thank God!” she replied emphatically. Something whizzed past Wizard’s mind, some very important clue. He went-groping after it, but just as he nearly had it, Lynda shook his arm. “Come on, I want you to drink this. It’ll do you good.

Clear your chest so you can breathe. Try it, baby.“ She set an example, sipping from her mug as her eyes darted around the room. He wondered what she was watching for.

He picked up his own mug. The aroma of coffee rose like a benediction. He put it to his lips and drew in a mouthful.

The cream was sweet, the coffee strong and the whiskey bit pleasantly. Somehow he had not expected it. As he set down the mug he observed to Lynda, “There’s whiskey in my coffee.”

“I hope to God there is, at me prices Teddy charges. Drink it up. Make you feel warmer.”

Wizard nodded as he sipped again. A secret warmth was spreading out from his belly now.

“Listen,” Lynda said suddenly, standing up. “I gotta visit the little girl’s room. You sit tight and watch my stuff. Okay?”

Wizard nodded distractedly- He was experimenting with the coffee, sipping it and trying to sort out the electric shocks of me whiskey from the steady rush of the caffeine. He wrapped both hands around the mug, enjoying the heat against his chilled fingers. He glanced up to find Teddy watching him, a cruel smile hovering on his mouth. Then the smile went past Wizard and turned to a scowl. Wizard heard him growl softly to himself in puzzlement. He followed Teddy’s stare.

She was a stout woman, dressed all in black. Her white hair was up in a severe bun at the back of her neck. Her disapproving mouth was buttoned over her double chin. She wore her heavy black good coat and sensible black lace-up shoes. Her eyes were black, too, and piercing. They bored into Wizard, and her second chin trembled with the strength of her indignation.

She pushed past a pool player, spoiling his shot, and stepped up to within inches of Wizard. Her raspy voice cut through me noise of the bar like a radio signal cutting through static.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to yourself! Adding booze on top of everything else. You’re poisoning yourself! And what about the rest of us? After you go down, what happens to us?

You’ve got to pull out of this tailspin.“

“Stop bothering the customers, ma’am. This is no place for a lady like yourself. You could get into trouble here. Best you go home now.” Teddy had come out from behind the bar. He didn’t look as tall as he had when serving drinks. He tried to take the old woman’s arm, but she jerked away from him angrily. She glared at the attention she was getting and lifted her voice high.

“Alcohol is a poison. Poison, plain and simple. You can dilute it, you can flavor it, you can age it in oak casks, but it is still poison. You are ingesting poison with every sip you take and asking your body to deal with it. Your body has enough to deal with just surviving in this day and age, without your deliberately poisoning it. Some of us,” her eyes stabbed Wizard, “are less able to deal with the poisons of alcohol than others. Show yourself a man. Put down that evil drink and walk out of here. Take command of your life again!”

She shouted the last sentence as Teddy steered her toward (he door, her head swiveling on her neck to fling the message at him. “A poison!” she called as the door swung shut. “Poisonous bait in a trap for the unwary!”

He felt relieved when she was gone, yet, again, the uneasiness nibbled at him. He had missed another clue. He was sure mere was a hint at the reason for me nervousness that plagued him here. Yet it was not in the old woman’s words, which he accepted as absolute truth, but in Teddy’s. He knew he shouldn’t be here. He sipped at his coffee, weighing his bits of clues.

But just as they started to tumble into a pattern, he felt a bump of warm flesh and Lynda was back on the barstool behind him.

“Did you miss me?” she asked in a silky voice.

“No,” he replied distractedly, sipping at his drink.

“Oh, you!” Lynda gave him a friendly punch and took a healthy swallow of her drink. Her eyes flickered to Teddy, and then turned on her stool to face Wizard. Her knees were warm bumps against his thigh. She changed her face to a pout and her voice became childish as she complained, “I wish you’d talk to me more. Being out with you isn’t much different from being out alone. You act like we’re not even together. Is something wrong with me? Would you rather be alone?”

He looked at her very carefully. She sounded like a different woman than the Lynda who had fed him earlier. He wondered which question he was supposed to answer first. He had forgotten all about this kind of talking. It wasn’t like talking to Cassie or Sylvester or Euripides or Rasputin. They had things to say, important things said in deceptively simple words. Lynda had something to say, but she said everything except what she was trying to tell him. Her message to him was lost in her words, and he had no idea of how to reply.

He stared at her over the rim of his mug. The renewed warmth of the drink hit the walls of his body like waves against a breakwater. He tried for an instant to find power and focus his magic on her so he could understand what was Truth here.

But even as he groped in his darkened soul, he remembered the magic was gone. A wave of misery washed over him and he took a sip of coffee to counteract it. No wonder he could not find the right thing to say to her. He fell back on his old instincts, and picked through the bewildering array of things he could say to her for the most truthful one. She had stared at him through his long silence. Teddy was smirking as he polished a glass. Lynda’s face was pinker than Wizard had ever seen it.

“I have the feeling,” he said carefully, “that this is not the best place for us to be.” That was better. Speaking his thoughts did focus them, and she had gone from angry to rapt, leaning closer to hear his soft voice. Teddy no longer looked so amused.

“I can’t say what it is that bothers me, but this is not a good place for us.” Teddy’s words leaped into his mind and he mouthed them. “This is no place for a lady like yourself.”

Lynda was glowing in his words, her smile gone soft and gentle. Wizard felt very pleased with himself for an instant. and then the impact of his own words broke on him like a douse of cold water. This was no place for a lady. Not this bar.

This was a man’s bar, with a constant edge in the air. A certain type of man might bring his woman here, but not his lady. It was not a place for quiet talking, for the sharing of thoughts or companionable silences. It was a place for displays and competitions, challenges and threats. It was a place where misplaced men came to prod balls around a table, to drink and mutter angrily and helplessly at one another, and then to fight short, ugly fights. Not a place to bring a friend one valued. So why had Lynda brought him here? And who had brought her here before?

No answers to those questions, but a solution. Leave. He rose from his stool, feeling a strange rubberiness in his knees.

It passed and he took Lynda’s arm firmly. He was certain now of the danger here. She had tempted it, but she had fed him.

The least he could do was take her to a safer place.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice was a shade short of baby talk, her mouth a plump little pout. Charades for Teddy.

“Nothing, yet. But if you want to sit and talk with me, we have to find a place to talk where I don’t feel exposed. I like my back to a wall. When I’m with a lady, I tike to concentrate on the lady, not worry about someone behind me with a pool cue.” He listened to himself in surprise. So he did know how to do that kind of talking- It came out of his mouth too smoothly, too glibly, for it to be new talent. Even the words seemed practiced in their sentences. It poured out of him almost like a Knowing; almost.

“Well—but—let me finish my drink first, then.” She pulled gently away from him, and he saw her eyes dart to Teddy. She wanted him to notice this exchange, to see how Wizard had taken control and wanted to be alone with her. She wanted the other men in the room to see that she was desirable, that this man wanted her. He needed to follow that thought, but the sense of danger pressed against him, squeezing his mind to action. He coughed and, lifting the drink, drained it to clear his throat. The warmth spread through him anew.

“I think we should go someplace quieter, more private.”

These words came even more smoothly. Lynda turned in surprise and gave him a suddenly measuring look.

“Oh. I see. Well, keep your shirt on. The night is young; there’s no rush. Besides, I want to finish my drink.” She leaned to bump her shoulder gently against him, filling his nostrils with her scent. She was enjoying this. He wasn’t.

“I want to leave here now, and I want you to come with me,” he said bluntly. “I think you’d be stupid not to. You could get hurt.”

“Are you threatening her?” Danger spoke from behind him.

Wizard turned to it and found himself eye to eye with Booth.

The final tumbler clicked into place. From the rosy flush on Lynda’s face and the way she moistened her lips, he knew she had scored her hit. This was why she had brought him here, whether she knew it or not, to this place no man would bring a woman he cared about. Because this was Booth’s place, and this was where he had brought her. She had come here to be seen with a new man. To lay a fresh little sting on Booth’s pride in revenge for whatever he had done to her. Because she had known that Booth would come here, and the thought of their confrontation warmed her.

“I’m not threatening her.” Wizard spoke the useless words.

Lynda hitched closer on her barstool, and snugged her arm through his, keeping him on point. Perhaps she sensed he wanted to flee.

“Mind your own business. Booth,” she snapped.

“I am. Just because we’re not going together anymore doesn’t mean I want to see you get hurt. Look at this guy, Lynda!

Where the hell did you pick him up? I heard what he said to you. Don’t do anything stupid like leaving with him.“

Booth’s words were like lines in a play. Wizard knew this scene by heart, had watched it played out in a thousand settings, but never before had he been a principal in it. He tried to step clear, but Lynda clung to his arm.

“Get lost, Booth. I’ll go anywhere I want, with anyone I want.” Her voice was clear and carrying, filling the tavern and interrupting pool games. She had her audience. “You don’t own me. Not anymore. Mind your own business. You didn’t want to treat me nice when you had me, so leave me alone now. What could he do to me worse than what you did? Answer me that?” Lynda blazed at him gloriously, letting her lips go full and her breasts heave, letting him see all he had so carelessly thrown away. “Baby.” She had turned to Wizard now, changing her voice to intimacy, letting Booth see all he was shut away from. ‘Take me out of here. You were right. Let’s go someplace more private.“ She leveled her eyes at Booth once more and fired with deadly accuracy as she observed in a clear voice, ”It’s been a long time since I was with a man who knew how to treat a lady. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.“

Teddy the bartender had edged closer during the exchange.

Wizard wondered if he was keeping himself handy to prevent trouble or just to witness it. His eyes had a hard, dead glint in them, the look of a man who expects to watch a fight. He wouldn’t stop it. Wizard stiffened.

“If you’re coming with me, we’re leaving now,” he said to Lynda. His voice was cold, its edge cutting through all other sounds in the room. He kept his eyes on Booth as he stepped away from the bar and was amazed to find how easily Lynda came along with him, floating on his arm. Her purse and bag were on her other arm, and he knew that she had been ready for this move, had planned it just this way. As Wizard moved toward the door, she rode on his arm as regally as any queen.

Wizard didn’t need to look back to know that Teddy was smirking and Booth was glowering. He heard the impact of Booth’s fist on the bar, saw heads turning to watch their exit. It’s not over yet, warned a voice in the back of his skull, and he felt a quickening of excitement in his body, surging like pleasure.

It frightened him.

The woman was short and dark, with tightly curled hair and a nose like a Jewish elf. She was leaning against the wall of the building as Wizard and Lynda came out into the cool dark streets.

“Last chance to do anything smart tonight,” she announced as he came out the door. “Run like hell, buddy. If you don’t, forget it. Forget everything, because you are a babe in these woods and you are going to lose it all. Last chance.” She hitched herself up off the wall and strode off into the darkness. Lynda was adjusting her coat. If she had heard or seen the other woman, she gave no sign of it.

She flashed a smile up to Wizard in the darkness. “Well, where do you want to go now?” There was a bit of a challenge in her smile. Did she know what came next as clearly as he did?

“You choose the place,” he said, giving her a wolf-hard smile. He wondered if his teeth gleamed in the darkness. This was the part he had always loved best. Preparation. The rubberiness in his legs had been replaced with an old familiar springiness. Alertness coursed through his veins, making him more alive than his body could stand. Just like old times, someone whispered grayly. His readiness radiated off him, sending sparks of aggression into the night. “Lead the way,” he commanded. To her puzzlement he let go of her arm and gave her a gentle push to set her going. She would be on point, but it didn’t worry him, because he knew me attack would come from behind. He sauntered along, casual in the cold night.

Waiting.

After a hesitant glance back, Lynda led off. Wizard followed her, smelling her perfume as it drifted back to him, listening for the inevitable.

Booth was good. Wizard gave him that. Anyone else would have been surprised when the hard hand fell on his shoulder and spun him around. Anyone else would have hit the wall and been off-balance, would have been struggling to come back to his feet as Booth’s fist pinned him to the wall and the mocking words began. That was the scene Booth had planned. But when the hand spun Wizard, he went with it, not falling to one side but turning in a tight circle, using the momentum Booth had given him to plant his fist squarely in Booth’s belly. Booth doubled over, pushing his face into Wizard’s knee as it rose smartly to meet his nose. Wizard seized him by the ears and propelled him with vicious force into the side of the building.

As Booth started to slide down me bricks, Wizard delivered a kick to me side of his knee. He was out of practice; no clean snap of joint followed it. There had been remarkably little sound since it had begun. Wizard’s first blow had knocked the wind out of Booth, and his responses to what followed had been limited to piggish grunts, with me hint of a high squeal on each intake.

Only instants had passed- Now he lay on the ground and Wizard stood over him. waiting for a movement or a sound.

The sound came; the harsh noise of a man unused to tears but weeping with pain. Booth had not expected pain, had not been prepared to pay for his amusement. Wizard had felt him assessing him in the bar. Booth had not looked beyond the gaunt frame and cautious manner; he had read Wizard as a skinny and fearful target. He should have looked in my eyes. Wizard thought with satisfaction. Next time, he’ll know better.

A disturbing thought. Far better to make sure there wasn’t a next time. He knew of no more stupid mistake than to injure an enemy and leave him to brood and heal. When he came after Wizard the next time, he would be better prepared, with a knife or a small caliber pistol for luck. Better to eliminate next time now. Wizard glanced about as he considered quick, quiet ways. Lynda was standing like a stag at bay, her eyes huge but not disapproving. And if I had lost? he asked her silently. He could smell her excitement and the edges of her fear. It was happening so swiftly for them, and so slowly for him. He took a deep breath and tightened his guts for the finale.

“Didi mau!” A small slender shadow, blacker than the night, raced between him and Booth, shrieking the old warning. The urgency of it hit Wizard, moving him automatically. He gripped Lynda by the upper arm and rushed her off, almost lifting her off her feet to thatch his long-legged stride. She trotted beside him, not questioning him. They fled two blocks and then he abruptly jerked her to a walk. He put his arm hastily around her and they sauntered along, not speaking. Her eyes darted, their whites visible all around the edges. The patrol car rounded the corner as they waited to cross the intersection. It turned left, back me way they had come. Wizard watched it from the corner of his vision, saw it pass the crumpled man on the sidewalk, then back up. They’d cheated him of his prey this time, but the next time…

“Let’s go in here.” Lynda’s voice shook. Fear? No. Suppressed glee. They were scarcely in the door of Maudie’s Corner before she began to shake. A titter of high laughter escaped her. She stilled it with her hand over her mouth, but her eyes were dancing as she looked up to Wizard. He met her look unsmiling and pushed his way into the bar.

It was a very narrow entryway. On his left were tiny two person tables up against the windows. There was room for one person to walk between them and the row of barstools at the long red bar. It was noisy in here, and male. A TV was blasting in the corner, accompanied by me pinging of an Eight Ball pinball machine. A cigarette machine was crowded up beside that. The wall behind the bar was decorated with framed photos of teams, mostly baseball. Wizard had no doubt that this was another of Booth’s hangouts. Will, he wouldn’t be in tonight.

It was as safe a place as any to hole up until the cops had finished with their assault victim.

He found a wall table with a cribbage board on it. He seated Lynda with a gesture and then sat down across-from her. Even in the darkened atmosphere of the tavern, she shone with excitement. Men looked at her. at him, and then looked away.

She shook off a shiver and leaned forward to cover his hands with hers.

“I never saw anything like that. Never! Well, on TV maybe, but never real like that. You know, so many times when Booth would rough me up, I’d dream about letting him know what it felt like. Tonight he knew it. Boy. he knew it good!” Her hands tightened on his; he felt her nails digging into his flesh.

She released him and pawed through her purse to slap a five dollar bill on the table. “Order us some drinks, baby. I’ve got to go to the little girl’s room again.” She suppressed another little shiver- Wizard sat silently, looking up at her. As she rose to leave the table, she stepped closer to him. Taking his face in both her hands, she tipped his eyes up to hers. “You arc some special kind of man. But I want you to know you didn’t have to do that for me. I didn’t expect you to protect me like that. No one ever did before.”

Wizard’s voice was hoarse. “I didn’t do it for you,” he croaked softly. Her eyes went puzzled. “I did it because I wanted to. Because it felt good to do it.”

Her hands went warmer on his face. She leaned down to press her mouth against his. “You arc some kind of man, aren’t you? Don’t go way, now- I’ll be right back.”

Her lips were cold on his mouth. They started a shiver that turned into a shaking as she walked away. A wave of heat followed it, and he coughed twice, achingly. He shook his head, feeling muffled, as if his brains were wrapped in a gray veil.

When he opened his eyes, his vision cleared, leaving him unshielded to the reality. His ribs and belly were sore from coughing. He rubbed his hands together, feeling the pain in his raw knuckles like an old, familiar sickness. He closed his eyes to it and saw Booth falling to the sidewalk. He opened them quickly, but the thud of full mugs on the bar was identical to the sound of his knee meeting Booth’s nose- Vertigo swept through him, driving him to his feet. He surged from me table, pushing past a couple of men coming in the narrow door. They parted to let him through. Down the street he saw the steady blip-blip of the ambulance’s lights. He leaned against the building, breathing in hard gasps of the cold air. “I’ve got to get home,” he said aloud, the sickness in his voice.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stiffened his arms to keep his back straight. He wanted to curl up and around the hurt inside him and lie very still until it passed. But he couldn’t.

He had to get back to the den before he could rest. The alcohol was making me blood pound in his face, and he couldn’t recapture his day. He tried to place himself in time. The cathedral seemed months ago. The incidents before that were ancient.

Was it only this morning the magic had abandoned him? Why?

The questions swirled about in his brain, eluding him. He had never been able to handle liquor; he should have left it alone.

Cassie was right; it was poison. “I've poisoned myself,” he muttered sadly and tottered on. He staggered toward the corner of a sidewalk that stretched eternally longer. “That woman was Cassie,” he admitted when he teetered on the edge of the gutter.

“And I knew it. But I didn’t. I swear I didn’t know her.”

A thin gray fog was stringing through the streets. He tried to rub it from his eyes, but it hung before him like ratty curtains, coloring all he viewed. It opened and closed mockingly around him and whispered soundlessly and mockingly in his ears. Half a block more to go, he told himself and staggered on. On South Jackson he turned into his alley mouth. The fog massed there, defying him. He plunged into it, to crash into Wee Bit O’lreland’s trash and then rebound into Great Winds Kite Shop dumpster. The brick wall caught him roughly. His fire escape was a black shadow overhead.

He craned his head back to look up at it. He gave a testing bounce on his legs. A wave of dizziness and nausea washed up from his belly and drowned him. Wizard took a deeper breath. “You can do anything you have to do,” he reminded himself sternly. He bent his knees deep, ignoring all the pain signals of his body. He concentrated only on the Jump, and sprang. His hands caught like claws on the old pipe. Its rust bit into his palms. He braced his foot against the bricks and pushed up. But his knees had gone rubbery again, and the muscles in his arms were like limp strings. He tightened his arms, straining to pull himself closer to the fire escape. He braced his foot again and gave a kick that let him release the pipe and grab for the edge of the fire escape. His hands caught.

He dangled from the edge of the fire escape. He knew what he must do; he had done it a thousand times. He had to chin himself up to the edge of the fire escape platform and slither onto it. But instead he hung there, like a shirt on a clothesline.

The cold black metal bit into his hands. His palms felt they must tear loose from the muscles and bones beneath them. He hung on doggedly, chewing pain. He could not make the quick hard pull that would jerk himself up to the edge. So he began the long slow tightening of muscles that would drag the full weight of his body up. His shoulder muscles creaked. Just a little farther, he promised himself, refusing to release his pent breath. A little more.

At the instant he knew that he must let go and drop to the pavement below, he felt two hands seize his ankles in a firm grip. Before he could kick free of them, they pushed up on his stiff legs, boosting him to the edge of the platform. He dragged himself up onto it and lay panting with his eyes shut. Waves of pastel light washed across the inside of his eyelids. His heart was slamming against his ribs and he couldn’t remember how to calm it. He had to let it run down as the cold air of the night washed against his sweating face.

“Hey!” The voice came from below. “Aren’t you going to give me a hand up?”

WIZARD ROLLED OUT of her way as she scrabbled up onto the platform. The aging iron landing groaned complainingly under the unaccustomed extra weight. Wizard sat up slowly to look at her. The climb had mussed her hair, but other than that she looked remarkably collected. She had clambered up the wall unaided. Now she brushed her hair back from her face and gave him a grin that was one part defiance to one part mischief.

“See? It’s not that easy to get rid of me. I should have known better than to leave you alone. Why’d you run out on me?”

“I don’t feel good.” Wizard didn’t want to talk, didn’t want her up here, didn’t want to do anything but crawl into an isolated place and curl up around the emptiness and sickness inside him. The magnitude of this disaster was such that he could not comprehend it. If only she would go away he could lie still and understand how awful it all was. Bent nearly double, he began his climb up the flight of metal steps. He heard her following. Well, let her. He couldn’t stop her. Silently he raised his window wider and wriggled inside. It was dark. but not so dark that he couldn’t make out his familiar path through the stacks of cardboard boxes stored in this room. He groped his way to the door of his den. There was a slight rustle from the roosting pigeons as he stepped through the door, but they settled again almost immediately. Behind him, Lynda had snagged her coat on the windowsill. She was muttering curses as she tugged at it, but he had no energy to hush her. He took four steps to his bed and dropped onto it. He could undress later.

Slowly he drew his knees up to his chest and tried to make his muscles go slack. His feet were horribly cold, but his fingers were too fuddled to manage the bootlaces. Best to just lie still for awhile. He heard a questioning mew; Black Thomas was on the pillow beside his head. He had narrowly missed him in the dark, and me big cat was not pleased with his carelessness.

Wizard set one apologetic hand on his dark, damp fur. Thomas gave a growl of pain and moved carefully closer to the warmth of Wizard’s body. He smelled like wet wool and clotted blood.

The two huddled together, snaring misery.

“Jesus H!” Lynda blotted the faint light from the doorway.

She seemed to fill the frame, looming over the room. He cringed deeper into his bed. “My God!” she went on. “I never imagined anything like this. What is that smell?”

She fumbled her way to the door and tried the light switch.

Nothing happened. She clicked it a few times and began to dig in her purse. Black Thomas was growling low at the intruder.

The pigeons huddled closer to one another on their shelves, cooing worriedly to one another. Wizard lay small and still, praying she would leave, praying this was just an evil dream.

Then she blasted them all with the flame of her cigarette lighter.

Wizard rolled to his knees, heedless of the pains that lanced through him and the nausea that swelled inside him. “Turn it down!” he hissed at her. “We’ll be seen!”

“Up here?” Lynda scoffed, but she whispered and adjusted the lighter to a smaller flame. “Look. don’t you have candles or something? I can’t see my way around in here.”

“Sit down and be quiet!”

“Where?” she demanded. He gestured furiously and she clunked and rumbled her way across the room to his mattress.

She lowered herself onto it with a snort of disgust and let the lighter go out. Wizard moved carefully through the darkness.

He found his candle and holder and set it on the floor. In the darkness he slipped to his entry window to put the plywood in place, and to his second window to make sure the blanket was tight. Soundlessly he moved back to me candle and knelt before it. He began the slow concentration of self, stealing his attention bit by bit from his aching body and tortured mind, and putting it toward a flame- His hands clutched one another to still their trembling- He slowed his breathing to quiet the demands of his body. The flame. He could see it, he could smell it. he could feel it, could sense its warmth. It was coming now, about to blossom on the wick, the perfect orange and yellow flame.

With a click and a hiss the flame appeared, searing his eyes and exploding new pain in his head. The candle flared and Lynda leaned back, taking her thumb off the lever of her lighter. ‘

In the glare of me little flame, he watched her slip her lighter back into her purse- Her candle flame dazzled his eyes. The flame in his mind was still there, focused, with nowhere to go.

It might be the last bit of magic left to him. Gradually it crumbled into bits inside him, falling like ash into the firepit of his soul. He sat on his heels, blinking away the black spots that danced before his eyes. Black Thomas moved up beside him to ask “Mrow?” Wizard put his hands on the cat’s rough fur, feeling the ribs beneath the layer of tough meat and muscle and feeling the life beneath that. It was strangely comforting to feel how strongly life beat in the rickety little body.

Lynda stooped and took the candle. She moved slowly around his small room with it. “Jesus H.” A few more steps. “My God!” She stooped to examine his small library on his homemade shelf. “I just don’t believe it.” She moved to the crate and inspected his slender stores of food. Then she rose and drifted back to him, exclaiming all the way. “I just don’t believe it, I never suspected that anyone could live like this I mean, I’ve seen bum’s beds under the overpass and people living under bridges and stuff, but never like this. It’s unreal!”

From her tone he knew she was not admiring his ingenuity at surviving, but disparaging his lack of success at it. He blinked and looked around his den. It had never seemed shabbier. The mattress. and blankets beneath him felt dank. There were spots of mold on the spines of his books and pigeon droppings spattered on me floor. He had never noticed them before. The cardboard box that held his wardrobe was softening and sagging at me comers. Even Black Thomas looked like a battered stuffed toy. As Lynda sank down beside them on the mattress., the cat uttered a warning growl. He did not like her. Wizard put a soothing hand on him, but the tensed muscles didn’t loosen.

Thomas focused his great yellow eyes on her and wished her all me evils the depths of his fuzzy little soul could imagine.

Wizard was shocked.

“You poor baby!” Lynda said sympathetically. Black Thomas increased slightly the pressure of his hand to hold him in place. and Thomas flattened his ears at her. “Is this your kitty?”

“No.” Black Thomas belonged solely to himself. Wizard increased slightly the pressure of his hand to hold him in place.

“I wouldn’t admit I owned him either. What a nasty looking animal. He doesn’t smell so good. either. What’s his name?”

“He had one of his paws cut off in an accident a few days ago,” Wizard hedged. At the mention of names. Black Thomas had extended one of his front paws and sunk the claws into Wizard’s thigh. He wanted no name-sharing with this intruder.

“What’s your name, kitty-kitty?” Lynda pressed, reaching across Wizard to try and touch the cat. Wizard hastily blocked her hand and held it firmly away from the cat. Black Thomas squirmed from under his grip and gimped disgustedly from the room into the darkened entry chamber.

“Call him Tripod,” Wizard suggested callously. If Thomas wanted to be rude, so could he. Lynda stared after the three legged cat in a sort of frozen horror and then began to giggle.

Wizard released his own rusty chuckle. Really, this wasn’t so bad. He wondered why he had never before admitted anyone to his den. Not even Cassie had been here. Cassie.

The name was like a talisman against the realities Lynda brought. Wizard stiffened in its spell. He dropped her hand and put both his cold hands against 4iis hot. dry face. The enormity of the day fell on him. He had broken the rules, his magic was gone, he was drunk and sick, his den was invaded, and he was helpless. He pressed his icy fingers against his temples and wished for a tourniquet he could bind around his temples and tighten and tighten until the pain went away. His head was so crowded with it, it was threatening to crack his skull and dribble down his face like blood.

“Headache, honey?” Lynda asked sympathetically. She began to dig yet again in her bottomless pit of a purse. Even in his pain. Wizard was tempted to make an outre request (Got a ham sandwich?) just to see what she could dredge up from in there. “I think I got some Tylenol or Bufferin or something in here. Dammit. No, I left it at work, in the bathroom. You got anything around here?”

Wizard shook his head in silent misery. It wasn’t a hurt that pills could take away. You could take enough pills to kill yourself and it wouldn’t touch this pain. Lynda had risen with the candle and was drifting around the room. She stopped by his food box, methodically shifted the items in it until she was certain it held only food, and then moved on. Wizard shut his eyes against the harshness of her candlelight. His own flames had always burned with a yellow softness and left a blessed dimness over the room. Hers burned white and harsh, showing every ball of dust, every cobweb and mouse dropping in every corner. It was searching and merciless as an illumination flare.

A sudden fear that the light of the candle would find him seized Wizard. He opened his eyes and stood, ignoring the scream in his skull. Too late.

The scene remained forever fixed in his memory, like a tinted illustration from an old book. The light from the candle frame limned Lynda in gold, setting off her silhouette from the darkness that crouched before her. She knelt in the maw of the closet, her hands curled in front of her breasts, her mouth slightly ajar with intent interest. The lid of the footlocker gaped open before her.

Wizard’s heart stopped. The pain inside his head became a roaring in his ears like a high wind rising. He expected to feel the air rush past his face, expected to be showered with dust and grit and bits of leaves. He sank to a crouch on his mattress.

Her voice cut through his internal distress.

“Is this yours?”

The unanswerable question. Whatever truths he had known about the trunk were hidden from him now, lost with the magic.

He heard himself evading- “It’s in my room, isn’t it?”

“Oh… yeah. Well, I thought someone else might have left it here. Well. Aspirin. Let’s see.”

It was apparent to Wizard that she was not really looking for aspirin. She began to lift items from the trunk and set them on the floor. The big manila envelope she raised looked nearly new, until he spotted a mildew stain on one corner. “Service Record. Mitchell Ignatius Reilly. Ignatius?” She raised a pitying eyebrow. “No wonder you didn’t want to tell me your name.

Just imagine hanging Ignatius on a newborn baby. But Mitchell isn’t so bad. Do they call you Mitch?“

“No.” He denied the name firmly, but Lynda was not listening. He thought for a moment that he heard evil gray laughter outside the window, but it was only the spattering of rain against the glass. It was falling in swift, large drops that rattled the old panes in their frames. Lynda ignored his denial. She was already opening the envelope and peering within.

“It’s empty,” she pouted, and set it on the floor. On top of it she set two olive drab T-shirts with the sleeves ripped off.

They filled Wizard with a nameless disgust. Then came a tumble of paperbacks, the bright colors of their covers chafed away by long confinement. Then a handful of photos in a plastic sandwich bag. Lynda slipped them out as casually as if they were hers. The old polaroid's stuck together. Even from his place on the mattress., he could see their crumpled corners.

“Who are these?” she demanded, sorting through them.

“I don’t know.” He could scarcely be expected to know. He couldn’t see them from here. They could be photos of anyone, of anything. Anything at all, he told himself firmly.

Cute baby. Yours?“

“I don’t know.”

“Who’s the girl on the bicycle?”

“I don’t know.”

“An Oriental woman holding up a six-pack of beer?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much, do you?” Lynda teased gently. She set the pictures down on the pile. A pair of black-soled sandals joined them. “What’s in here?” Lynda held up a locked document box. Wizard looked at the flat gray box with the inscrutable keyhole. She shook it at him and something slid around inside, whispering unmentionable secrets.

“Not aspirin,” said Wizard briefly-

“Oh. Well, ex-cu-uuse me!” She laughed aloud at some joke he didn’t know and set the box atop the pile on the floor. It teetered there and then slid drunkenly to the floor. Wizard stared at it, half-expecting it to scuttle off into the darkness, but it kept still.

“This looks gross! What’s this?” Lynda held it out at arm’s length for his inspection. The candle shone on it brightly with a merciless white light. A heavy piece of twine with something strung on it. Something small and brown and shriveled. Very far away, someone screamed out in the night-

“It’s the cat’s foot,” Wizard admitted miserably.

Lynda gave an abbreviated shriek as she dropped it. Then, with a suspicious glance at him, she picked up the candle and leaned over to inspect the object more closely. “It is not!” she exclaimed indignantly. “It’s got no fur and it’s flat and wrinkly.

That is not a cat’s foot.“

“It is,” Wizard insisted, knowing it was true. She ignored him, digging into the footlocker again. “Hey! Look at this! Not aspirin, but good enough, I’ll betcha. Kinda old, though. Maybe it’s not good anymore. Geez! Look at the buds there. Not a stem or a seed anywhere. You got some papers?”

Wizard stared at her in mystification. She was holding a plastic sack of something. She shook it at him and it rattled like a shaman’s charm. “You got any rolling papers?” she demanded again, a shade of irritation in her voice. “Geez, you’re hard to talk to: you never say anything. Wait! Wait just a moment! Here’s the pipe, down in a corner where the light didn’t reach it. Okay, we are in mighty fine shape now.” ‘

‘ She dug down into the footlocker and came up with an oddly carved little pipe. It was ivory and dirty orange, the color of old bones lying on red earth. The little face carved on the bowl had a pointy beard and squinchy little eyes. Wizard knew that face from somewhere. Somewhere nasty.

Lynda was carefully packing the herb into the pipe bowl.

She had put the pipe completely inside the bag and was loading it mere, loath to let any particle spill. There was a childish glee to her actions and the little sideways glances she kept shooting at Wizard. He felt acutely uncomfortable. Threatened.

Every muscle in his body tensed as she crossed the room to him. She squatted and then sank onto me thin mattress. beside him. Her thigh warmed his. Her perfume was stronger than the musk of frightened cat and sweat. Her presence pushed away the familiarity of the room.

Her lighter flared a third time, scalding his naked eyes. She drew the flame down into the bowl of the pipe. She sucked at it, making embers glow in me tiny bowl. She held her bream and then released a stream of gray smoke that coiled around them like incense. Wizard had a sudden flash of the cathedral with its vaulted ceilings and lofty ideas. The squinchy’eyes of the pipeman winked at him.

“That’s good,” she breathed into his ear. She gave a sigh that was part groan. “I haven’t done this in so long. Your nun, baby.” She held the pipe in front of him. He stared into its mocking little face, making no move to take it. She shook it at him impatiently. “Hurry up, it’ll go out.” She set the stem to his lips and looked deep into his eyes. Her eyes were gray in the dim light and immensely large. They spun like luminous pinwheels as she stared down into his soul. A tiny alarm bell rang unheeded in the back of his mind.

His bream caught and he coughed, acrid smoke spilling from his nostrils and lips. Lynda laughed delightedly and compounded his difficulty by thumping his back. The room receded, fading into the darkness, then came back to press closely around him. He swung his eyes slowly, following the drifting walls. The pigeons were watching him. Their eyes were orange and gold and black as me candle flame touched them, tiny round eyes shining in the darkness. His flock. Their bills were sunk into their breast feathers, their wing plumes preened back smartly. Their little round orbs were carefully nonjudgmental.

He would not find condemnation there.

His slow gaze wandered back to Lynda. She was breathing out, her warm breath and the smoke condensing in the chill air of me room. She leaned against him heavily with a throaty chuckle like the cooing of a fat gray pigeon. He looked down into her face, at her finely pored skin, the tiny individual hairs of her carefully groomed eyebrows, at the tiny lines in her lips where the color of her lipstick was trapped and brightest. She held the pipe up. He looked at her through a thin streamer of drifting gray smoke. A sudden gust of wind and rain rattled his windows and pushed at the blanket-

“No.” The awareness was like a cold hand on me back of his neck. It hadn’t been Booth at all. This ridiculous woman who talked so much she hardly noticed his silence, this foolish bit of fluff with her make-believe problems and her petty plottings; she was dangerous. Would she have stood by while Booth beat him to a pulp, and then left with the victor? He didn’t know. Worse, she probably didn’t know herself. She had set every stage this evening. He had drifted along with her plans like a canoe in me current. Now he heard the laughing whisper of the rapids ahead. She could dash him to pieces with her smile. He hitched himself away from her touch, heedless that she fell back onto his mattress.“No!” he repeated to the hand that reached up to wave the pipe lazily before him.

“Whatsa matter, baby?” Lynda sat up languorously. She unbuttoned her raincoat and shrugged out of it so that it fell onto the mattress. behind her. She smiled, her generous mouth opening too far, showing too many teeth. “This is good stuff.

Not the best I’ve ever had, but not average. Too good to waste.

Come on, it’s Just burning itself up. Take a hit before it goes out.“

The pipe came back to his lips. He pushed her hand away.

“No. I want you to leave now. I’m tired and I’m sick. You’d best go.” His words sounded petulant and childish, even to himself. Even though they were exactly what he needed to say.

She responded to them as if he were eight years old.

“No, baby. That’s why I should stay. You need me. C’mon.

Listen to Lynda, okay? She’ll take care of you. C’mon.“ She put the pipe back to her own lips, drawing steadily until the tiny coal shone bright and unwinking as a cat’s eye. She held it in, making small throaty sounds of pleasure, then letting it stream slowly from her mouth She fell against him, her body a warm weight, and pushed the pipe at his mouth insistently.

“No. I don’t want it.‘ He caught her wrist and held the pipe away. She smiled at him mischievously. Her other hand moved slowly, like smoke, to take the pipe from her captured hand.

She took a short hit of it and then poked it at his lips, saying,

“Come on, baby, it’s nearly all gone. Loosen up a little. You take the last one. Better hurry now.”

“I said no‘” He caught the other wrist, gave it a shake that sent the pipe spinning away into the darkness. He heard the thump of its bounce, saw a tiny shower of sparks and a glowing coal hit the floor. Within seconds it winked out. He drew his eyes back to Lynda, making several efforts before they focused property. It never takes much to stone you, does it? someone had laughed a long time ago. Laughed ’til it hurt him. A long time ago, he reminded himself.

He was confused to find that he still held both of Lynda’s wrists. She was not struggling but was leaning into her captivity.

She rested her face against his, her cheek pressing his cheek, her breath streaming past his ear. “You smell good,” she muttered, rubbing her cheek against his. “You smell wild. I am so damn tired of tame men. I like a man who has spirit and passion.

Not like that damn Booth. No balls. I swear, he only hit me because he was too dumb to think of anything else to do. He couldn’t handle me and he knew it. I was too much for him.

But I like you. You tell me no‘. And you’re quiet. But you do what you want to do. I like that in a man. I don’t want to know every little thing about him; takes all the mystery away.

And you feel just a little bit dangerous to me. I like a man with secrets and claws. I told that to my sister once. Damn bitch told me to go watch a vampire movie. She didn’t understand. She’s got a man like a fat poodle, curly black hair and all. But I’ve got a man here with secrets and silences. I like you, Mitch. I like you a lot.“

Her mouth wet his face, her tongue trailing lazily across his cheek to his mouth. The warmth fled from her touch, leaving a cold trail of saliva across his skin. He thought of silver slug tracks on sidewalks in the morning. She put her wet mouth against his, her lips moving as if to devour him.

“Stop it!” His grip tightened on her wrists as he twisted his face away from hers. She laughed lightly and sagged against him. Something unhooked in his brain and his equilibrium went. He fell back on the mattress. and she landed heavily atop him. She giggled at his game of reluctance. Her harnessed breasts nosed against his chest aggressively. She let her head loll forward on her neck so that the weight of her long hair fell across his face. He released her wrists and foundered beneath her, feeling trapped and entangled in her body. Lynda giggled again. The sound galvanized him.

“Get off me!” He struggled madly, pushing her from him as he rolled away heedless of her tangled hair. She didn’t care.

She was laughing helplessly as she rolled across his mattress.

He tried to sit up, but the directions of the room changed around him. He closed his eyes and it spun even faster.

“Let me be on top,” Lynda begged, very close, her breath warming his face. He pulled back from her, slapped away the hands at his throat. Her busy fingers dropped to his belt. “I’ll do all the work,” she offered, pulling his shirttail free. Ancient urges rolled down his spine to squirm in his belly and erupt unnervingly. Earlier today, his magic had been shut down, the switches thrown to plunge him into emptiness. Now Lynda was reactivating this other part of him, putting systems on-line whose flashes and thunderings he had stilled long ago. He groped within himself for control, but it was all set on override.

His hands gripped her hips.

He squeezed his eyes tight shut, reaching for sanity and order. He found only her weight on his thighs, warm and solid.

“I don’t do this,” he said, but his voice sounded far off, even to himself. He wondered if Lynda could even hear him as he tried to explain. “There are certain things denied to me.

Things I must not do if I am to retain my controls and my magic.“ Her hands were cold on his belly, sliding around under his shirt and up his chest. She pinched one of his nipples, hard.

He divorced himself from the pain-pleasure. “I must not carry more than a dollar in change. I must not harm pigeons. I must listen to people and tell them the Truth when I Know it. I must not harm pigeons…” He caught himself circling and tried to find his track again. He couldn’t remember the other taboos.

It didn’t matter She wasn’t listening. Only their bodies were in the same room. He was just a warm prop for her in her fantasy game of seduction. He coughed and felt her fist grip him.

“Feels ready to me,” she chuckled throatily. “Isn’t it always the best. the first time with someone new? And stoned. It puts all the magic back into it.”

“All my magic is lost to me,” he corrected her. He was aware of his body’s betrayal, but he scrambled frantically away from it. trying to keep the memories out, to block away the sensory input that stirred up such strong images from the past.

All the forbidden and dangerous things came pressing out from the comers of his mind, to leer and snicker at him. There were so many things he could not bear, things severed from his life with the cold precision of a surgical scalpel. Now they came, one by one, to hook their claws back into his flesh, to press then“ sucking greedy mouths against his veins. He lost track of where and who he was. The thing he must not do became the thing he must do, a sightless appetite to appease before he could know peace again. The world was rocking with the rhythm of a railroad train picking up speed. He was along for the ride, on the night express back to the black pit.

“Mitchell,” sighed Lynda.

“Yes,” he confessed.

MORNING AVALANCHED INTO HIS EYES when he opened them.

Gray light was pouring through the window, drenching the mattress. and tousled blankets and the cardboard and blanket from the window on the floor beside them. He stared out through the cracked pane at the dark silhouette of the building across the alley and the overcast sky above it. None of it was coming together. He groped vaguely after the tails of memories, but they scuttled back into corners. He pressed his palms to his eyes until two things came clear. He should phone home today.

And check with the damn VA office again, to see if they’d straightened out the mess they’d made of his records.

Tempofa! continuity ripped suddenly, spilling him from its sling into chaos. This was no cheap motel room. His pants were not slung across a chair under a cheap painting by a bureau with a Gideon bible on it. He sat up, staring around. His brain bounced sickeningly against the top of his skull. He must have gone drinking last night. He knew he had to quit soon. He eased back down onto the flat and stinking mattress. A gray pigeon took sudden alarm and swooped into the next room.

From one corner of the room, a scrawny black cat regarded him with flat eyes. A damn zoo. A wave of stress rose in Mitchell, (Messing his headache to the top of his skull. He was tired of mornings that started at the bottom. His whole body ached; his mouth tasted foul. Something very bad was going on here. He squeezed his eyes hard shut and tried to put his mind in order. What had he done yesterday? How had he gotten to today?

All that came to mind was phoning home. The number loomed large in his mind, spurring him. He hadn’t called in a long time; he hated to call when all he could say was that he was still working on it. He had promised to get it all straightened out, once and for all. They were counting on him. He was going to make it right with all of them.

There was a phone booth in me train station, with a decent chair in it. He had used it so often he had memorized me graffiti. He leaned into the privacy of the booth, telling the operator to make it collect. The ringing sounded very far away.

He couldn’t identify the voice that said so softly, “Hello?”

“Collect call from Mitch. Will you accept charges?”

He heard wind blowing in me receiver, that was all; as if all me miles of wire between him and home were taking a long and steady breath. The operator repeated, “There is a collect call from Mitch. Will you accept charges?”

“I… wait a minute. Yes, I will. Go ahead, operator.”

“Hello?” His own voice was so cautious he hardly recognized it himself.

“Mitch?”

“Yeah. I woulda called sooner, but this is such a fucked up mess, every time I go in Acre—”

“Mitch. Wait a minute. Listen to me, Mitch. Just a sec.”

She took a ragged breath and he suddenly knew she was weeping. Weeping on the other end of the line. Why? “Look, I gotta say these things. You don’t want to hear them and I don’t want to say them, but I gotta say them now, on the phone, while you’re not looking at me. Listen.” She cleared her throat, but her voice still came out husky. “There’s a lot of things.

There’s Benjy, for one. He’s back to sleeping alt night again.

He’s nearly back to how he was. He plays outside and his little friends come over again. And he seems so sunny and fine, it breaks my heart to think, of how he was. He found one of his old plastic army men in the sandbox yesterday. He wouldn’t touch it. He made me come out and get it and wrap it in a paper towel and throw it inside the trash can for him. After we did that, he asked when you were coming back. I told him I didn’t know. He seemed worried by that, so i told him pretty soon. Then he got scared and wanted to sleep in my bed with me last night. Mitch, it’s too much for him. Too many blowups in front of him, too many weird-outs. Too many times of you going away and coming back fine for a month or two, and men a disaster. He’s just a little boy, and it’s too much for him.

Do you know what I’m saying?“

“Yeah.” The huskiness was in his voice now. “I do love him. You know I do. I love him and I love you and—”

“Mitch. Don’t. Listen to me. We’ve had all our good times.

I waited for you. And you came back a stranger, but I stuck with you. I really thought we could make it all better again. I waited through the dope, I waited through the booze, and when I thought we were finally safe and I could have our baby…

Damn. You’ve been gone a while, and I can see things clearer.

It isn’t going to get any better for us. And I can’t pretend anymore.“

“No. Wait, please. I’ll come home tonight. I can get this mess straightened out later. Baby, I’ll come home tonight, we’ll get my folks to babysit, and we’ll go out and be alone together and talk. We can get it all talked out. And whatever you want me to do this time, I’ll do it. I promise you. Whatever you think will make it work, whatever will be best for us all. I promise.” He could hear her crying now, little gulping noises as she strangled for air. He needed so badly to touch her. His eyes stung.

“You promise.”

“Yeah. I swear it. Please.”

“Mitch… then don’t come home. I won’t be here. I can’t be here anymore. You… you take care. I’m gonna drop your stuff off with your folks. They already know about it. I’m taking Benjy with me. Listen. I’m going to keep on loving you. I swear that. I always will. But I can’t live with you, not anymore. I can’t wait anymore for you to come back.”

“I promise,” he said softly to the empty line- The electronic winds blew his words back to him.

“I promise.” said the man in the beige shirt at the huge desk, “that we are doing everything we can to straighten this out. But we need your cooperation. Did you bring your records this time?”

Mitchell set the document box on the desk beside the computer. The man looked at it with obvious relief. “Great. At last. Now we can get somewhere. Got your discharge papers?”

“Hi here.” Mitchell tapped the cold box with his fingernail.

He didn’t like the sound it made, like clods of dirt falling on a coffin. He stopped.

“Let’s have them, then.”

“I lost the damn key. You got something we can jimmy it open with?”

The man at the desk looked disgusted again, and as tired as be had when Mitch had first come in. “No. That’s not my department. Look, take the box to a locksmith and get it open.

We aren’t going to get anywhere without some papers to work from.“

Mitch rubbed his head, hating the man, wishing he could take his bead and shove his face into his fucking little computer screen. He put his fists in his lap, out of the man’s sight. “Look.

Please. Did you check on what I told you last week? Did you run down my name and serial number? I mean, listen, isn’t that what these little gizmos are for?“ He tried to sound reasonable, admiring of the computer technology that had caused this whole fuckup.

“Yes. And it came back the same- Mitchell Ignatius Reilly is listed as MIA- Missing in Action. He never came back from Viet Nam.”

Mitchell’s fist hit the top of the desk in short, hard jolts, punctuating each syllable. “I am sitting right here. Ask my wife. Ask my folks.” The man’s face went red and white. He began to rise. Mitchell hid his fists again. “Look. I’m sorry I did that. I know you’re doing the best you can. Hey, did you check on that other tiling I told you?”

The man settled back in his chair and looked at him in blank weariness. Mitchell wanted to punch his civil service mouth, to make him care. He controlled himself. He mastered it and held it down and strangled the impulse. He was in control of himself.

“You know. There was a guy in my company, shipped over with me, Michael Ignace O’Reilly- Weirdest damn thing. His serial number was within a couple digits of mine, they were always getting us mixed up, trying to give him my mail, that kind of shit. I shipped stateside before he did. Maybe he’s the one MIA.”

“Him.” The man at the desk looked harassed. “I’d almost forgotten why I ran a check on him. It didn’t help. He’s not MIA, he came out in a plastic bag.”

Cold panic squeezed Mitchell. “What? What are you trying to tell me. that I got a choice between MIA and dead? Look at me. I’m here, man. Take my fingerprints if you want. The Army has mine on record, I know. That’ll prove I’m me. Go ahead, take them.”

“Look.” For the first time, an edge of anger crept into the man’s voice. “I know you want help. I’ll even say that I can see you need help. But before we go to extremes like fingerprints, why don’t we do what’s simple? Go get that damn box opened! Get those papers to me and I’ll have a fighting chance of getting this straightened out. Until then, I’m going to tell you to quit coming here. Every week I ask for your papers, and every week you have a different line. I can’t do a damn thing without some papers. Give me a birth certificate, discharge papers, anything. Just go get those damn papers for me, or don’t come back. Look, man, why don’t you go to the state?

There’s a lot of agencies for people like you. They can help you. You need to get some help!“

The man stood up to call the words after him, but he didn’t stop. He beat it out of there, leaving it all behind. MIA or dead. Great choice. Dammit, he was here, he was alive, he hadn’t changed, but no one would accept him, not his wife, not the VA, he had no one. No one cared enough to help.

“Dad?”

“Mitch? That you, son? You still up in Seattle?”

“Yeah, Dad. Dad, I’m having a-hell of a time. Nothing is going right.”

“Well, you just stick with it. You’ll get it all straightened out. I’d call Mother to the phone, but she’s gone to get her hair done. Mary dropped some boxes here. You know about that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, she told me. Dad, what am I going to do?

I’m losing it all.“

“Son, you just stay right there until you get it all sorted out.

I’m sure you’ll be just fine. Say, did you catch the game last night? Did you believe that last play? Who would call a play like that? If I were the owner of that team, I’d take that coach and—“

“Dad! Dad, listen to me. I want to come home. I got to come home. Can you wire me some money?”

“Well, Mitch, I just don’t think that’s a good idea. Now, look, there’s no sense in running away from this thing. You’re up there, you may as well get it all sorted out before you come home. You know you brought this on yourself, acting so wild.

If you hadn’t punched out those guys in the local office, maybe they could have cleared it up for you here. But as it is, you’ve got them all stirred up and they aren’t going to do a thing for you. So you got to go through the Seattle office. You just tough it out and I’m sure you’ll be all right.“

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“I know I am. Now Mitch, I’m not going to tell Mother you called. This thing with Mary has her flying around the ceiling as it is, and she’d just get all upset all over again. So I want you to sit down and write her a nice note tonight and mail it off to her. She’s been upset enough about Mary taking little Benjy away, and her stomach is acting up, so don’t‘write anything that will get her worked up. Okay?”

“Is she going to be all right?”

“Yes, she’s going to be fine, as long as she stays calm.

Don’t you give her any more reasons to be crying over you.

Now, you do like I told you, and get better, and then you give me a call and let me know when you’re coming home. I know things look pretty dark right now, but you’ve got to untangle them one knot at a time. Take care of the VA mess, get the help you need, and when you get finished with that, we can worry about what’s next.“

“Yeah. Dad? Dad, I’ve got to talk to you. When I called Mary—”

“Son, I’d love to talk with you about that, but I can’t. Phone bill has been crazy with you always calling collect. I shouldn’t have accepted this one. So I’ve got to hang up now. Remember what I said. Take the problems one at a time. Get straight with the VA and get some help. Then we can worry about Mary and me rest of it. I got to go now. You write your mom a nice note tonight, okay?”

“Yeah. Dad?”

“Good-bye, Son.”

The bright sunlight through the window woke Wizard. Even in his sleep, it had been making his eyes water. He rolled silently from his bed, cursing the hangover and the weariness that had made him sleep in. He surveyed the damage. The den was a wreck. He dressed slowly, in silence, trying to move his head as little as possible. He wanted to lie down again, but forced himself to set his room to rights. He walked very carefully, setting his feet where the floorboards creaked the least.

Black Thomas watched him as he shook and smoothed the blankets. They smelled like Lynda. She had left her mark everywhere. Thomas noticed it when he came over to lie on the mattress. He sniffed and growled softly before he settled. his raw stump hovering away from his body. When he had arranged himself. Wizard lowered himself carefully beside the cat and inspected the wound.

“Looks like it will heal, my friend.” Wizard touched it with his eyes only, moving his pounding head to see it from all angles. “That was a foolish move you made, and I’m afraid you’ve paid dearly for it.”

Black Thomas opened his red mouth wide in a meow of disdain. Wizard was forced to nod, humiliated. “I didn’t say you were the only one who did stupid things. I’ll have to pay for mine as well. I’ve got to find Cassie today. I’ve got to get this whole mess straightened out.”

Moving with ponderous care, he tidied the rest of the room, taking no satisfaction in it. There was more shabbiness than he had ever noticed before. What Lynda’s eyes had touched seemed to have changed overnight. The coziness of his retreat had turned to squalor, the privacy to isolation. He picked up the little pipe from me floor and dropped it into the footlocker on top of the bag of weed. He stared for a long time at me other things she had stacked on the floor. Daylight made them all real. Finally he brought himself to touch them, to stack them back inside the footlocker. But when he tried to drop the lid, he found the hinges racked. There was no shutting them away anymore.

He ate bread sticks and packages of crackers from his food supply. He thought of a cup of hot sweet coffee to wash them down. His hangover vetoed it. Why had he gone drinking with her? How could he have ever forgotten what the mornings after were inevitably like? He straightened the books on his shelves, moving always with a sleepy caution. He shook and refolded his clothes- He set the wizard bag carefully atop the folded garments, not daring to look inside the bag. He had betrayed them. He wouldn’t look at them and wonder what he had lost.

When he had done and redone his small chores, he lay down on his mattress. by the cat and stared around his tiny room. The pigeons had all left for the day. This time of year no young ones shrilled from the nests. No babies to handle, no setting parents to feed. The well worn paperbacks on the shelves were stale. He flipped through a Zane Grey, remembering every line of dialogue. It wouldn’t do. He rolled over. staring out the sunstricken window. That was one thing he hadn’t done yet. He didn’t think it prudent to take up his cardboard and blanket again. Not yet. Wait until night when movement in a darkened upper story would not be noticed. He wondered vaguely why Lynda had taken them down. Or if she had. It-must have happened after he passed out.

His body stank. Sitting still, trying not to think, he became aware of his own smell. Cleaning up was something to do, a chore to keep his mind busy- There was fresh rainwater in the coffee can on the fire escape. He scanned the alley before reaching out the window for it. He made a ritual out of his sponge bath, occupying himself with it for as long as he could.

He heated the water over his Stemo can and slowly sponged his body as he shivered standing on a threadbare towel. He was thinner than he remembered being. He rubbed at a spot on his chest for some moments before recognizing the hickey she had left. He re-dressed slowly.

The events of the night before came back to him slowly, as elusive as last week’s fragmentary dreams. He moved back through them slowly, flinching at every stop. But when he came to the image of Booth crumpling down the wall, it was more than he could stand. He rose to pace his room with catsoft steps. Twice he went to the window. On the mild trip, he took his boots with him. He surveyed the alley, then slid up the window and stepped out onto the fire escape. Black Thomas raised a sleepy head from where he sunbathed on the mattress.

He gave a warning growl and lay back to sleep.

Wizard had given up all pretense at blending. Shaving in the minors of the stainless steel restroom near the fire station was something he did for his own comfort. He still didn’t recognize the man in me mirror. He wondered what to do with himself today. He refused to try buying coffee again. He could no longer feed the pigeons. If he went to Occidental Paric, Lynda would find him. At the market he would have to face Euripides, at the Seattle Center he would have to deal with Rasputin. For long moments it seemed as if his future was made up solely of the things he could not do. Then he thought of the Waterfall Gardens.

It was just across the street. It was a walled and private place, an oasis of shade trees and flowing water in the middle of the city. This time of year, it was usually empty. The gardens were a tiny, waited-off area, no larger than a vacant building site. In summer, people enjoyed its cool shade and the rising mist off the splashing water. In Seattle’s winter, shade and rising mist were in the public domain. No one went seeking them. Wizard sat at a little round table, watching the running water and trying to comfort himself with facts. The park was a memorial to the original headquarters of the United Parcel Service, which had been built on this site in 1907, convenient to Occidental Avenue and the whorehouses. That was how it had begun, with a handful of messengers whose chief customers were the brothels. He tried to picture it, and smiled vaguely at the running water.

“Does every little thing have to be spelled out for you?”

Wizard jumped at the woman’s voice and spun, expecting to find Lynda rampant. Instead, it was a stout little black woman, her hair lacquered into an unnatural set of waves. Her dress was too long, but her very old shoes were well cared for. She had on a blue cloth coat, not long enough to cover her dress.

She sniffed disgustedly as she stared at Wizard. As she sat down at his table, he immediately rose.

“Where are you going? Don’t walk out on me, you dummy!

We’ve got things to say. Hey! Don’t try to run away from it, because it won’t work. It’s right on your heels now!“

He moved off rapidly, routed from the Waterfall Gardens.

He had no magic to comfort them; why wouldn’t they leave — him alone? Away from the protective walls, the wind blew cold and stiff. It crept up his sleeve to chill his wrists, it stiffened his spine with achings. He coughed and it made his head pound.

He had to find shelter, warm shelter, away from strange people talking to him. The bus.

The driver glared at him, but had to let him board. It was the Ride Free area. Wizard shivered his way to a seat in the rear, away from the doors that opened and closed to admit a gust of wind at every stop. He would ride it clear to Battery Street, then jump off and get back on a southbound one. He sat rubbing his hands and staring at his raw knuckles. For a moment he couldn’t remember how he had skinned them. Booth.

Oh, God! His mind teetered dizzily between Wizard and Mitchell.

The bus jerked and swayed from stop to stop. It had begun to rain, at first gently, then determinedly. The passengers on the bus increased, most of them damp, a few shaking drops from umbrellas as they boarded. Yet the bus was not full when a young man came down the aisle and took a seat beside him.

Wizard slid over and leaned into the side of the bus, staring at the water drops on the window but heedless of the scenery beyond. He was so engrossed in his own misery that the soft ‘ voice of the man surprised him. He spoke in less than a whisper, his eyes fixed on the front window of the bus, his hands toying with a key chain.

“I think she’s going to say we’re through.”!

Wizard’s body clenched. Mitchell receded. A tremble passed through him from head to foot. The magic was hovering, asking him to listen and balance with it, demanding that he give of himself what he could to those whose instincts sought him out.

He began to sweat. It was here, and he had nothing to give, no Knowing, nothing to trade for these confidences. He had to force his shivering mind to focus on the words.

“She said we had to separate, just until she knew her own mind. She said she knew she still loved me, but that she needed space to figure out how our lives fit together- So I told her okay. What else could I say? I respect her. I didn’t many her to keep her at home in a box and take her out and look at now and then. Her independence was one of the things that made me love her. I didn’t want our marriage to change that. So I said okay, and I moved in with a buddy for a while, and I tried to give her some space. I’d call her in the morning, and at night, and then she said that it made her feel like I was checking up on her all the time. I wasn’t. I just wanted to hear her talk, hear her say she loved me and that I could come home soon.

So I only called her twice a week alter that. She talks to me, but I can tell she doesn’t miss me. She likes being on her own again. She even comes out and says it, that she likes getting up alone and grabbing a quick breakfast and heading to work.

And after work she can shop and eat out, or come home and watch TV, and she never has to worry if it fits in with anyone else’s plans. She never has to hurry to be on time to meet me for lunch, or find a movie we both want to see, or wait to use the bathroom. She doesn’t miss me. And she doesn’t need me.

So what I ask myself is, can you love someone if you don’t need them? And is she happy and fine all on her own, or is there someone else? Can it be she doesn’t need anyone, least of all me?“

The bus lurched into the next stop. Wizard waited nervously, but nothing came to him. Whatever comfort he was supposed to give this man was not appearing. The magic’hovered just out of his reach. He steeled himself and leaped for it blindly.

“Love and need are two separate things,” he murmured softly. “A mother does not need her children, yet she loves them. Need may even destroy love. What have you been doing with your own life while she has been finding hers again? Are you still the man she loved, the man with his own interests and life, or are you standing in the wings, waiting for her to take responsibility for your happiness? Perhaps you should find your own life and resume it, so she can approach you without fear of being consumed by you. Your terrible need for her…”

The man was rising, getting off at this stop, without waiting to hear what Wizard was saying to him. Such a thing had never happened before, and Wizard gaped after him, reeling defiled and useless. The bus lunged and roared on through its route.

He sat in silent misery. It began to get steamy inside from the cargo of warm, damp humans. The seat beside Wizard sagged with weight, and he turned to find that a slender Polynesian woman had settled in beside him. He turned away from her and stared out the window.

A manicured finger jabbed him in the ribs. “Pay attention!” she hissed. He knew that accent, but couldn’t place it. It was from the bad times. “I’ve got you cornered now, and you are going to listen. So quit playing stupid with me. It’s right in front of your nose, and you won’t see it. There is no time left for me to be subtle and let you learn at your own pace. When you are irrational, you are vulnerable. And another thing: You substitute tears for action. You want to know what is wrong with you? You found out, a long time ago, that it is much easier not to care. You pretended a distance between yourself and others until it became real. You stopped hurting when people you loved got hurt. You threw your pain away. There is a part of you that fears pain and wants to go back to that numbness. But that is where your enemy is waiting for you.

He will attack, you with yourself.“

She was rambling, he didn’t know about what, but he did know he had nothing to give her. He didn’t want to hear her secrets and her hurts. He had no balm for them. “Beg pardon?”

In a flash of self-preservation. Wizard turned an icy stare upon the little woman. “Were you addressing me?”

She did not waver. “Yes!” she hissed. Another jab of the finger. “Pay attention. You are throwing away your weapons because you think defeat would be easier. You do not wish to take responsibility for yourself. You like to fumble and limp and be helped along. Winning would change all that. So you choose to forget that you are involved in a battle. You have turned your exposed back to your enemy. When you are defeated, you will say, ‘There was never a war.’”

Politics were the last things on his mind today. He did not want to think back to that time. He spoke very softly. “You must understand. I have nothing useful to tell you. Beg pardon.

This is my stop.“ Wizard dragged at the cord over the window, standing at the same moment. He clambered over her multitude of parcels to reach me aisle. He stood swaying by the doors, until the driver could find a place to pull over.

There was no sanctuary for him today, he decided as he slogged down the pavement. The rain spattered him for two blocks, then he crossed me street and caught a southbound bus.

The early dusk of winter was already claiming the sky. He felt relieved. He could go home. One advantage to sleeping in, he told himself, was that it made the whole day shorter. Less to deal with. The bus was crowded with early commuters. He stood for several blocks and then slipped into a seat beside a young student with her lap full of textbooks. She gave him a shy look and turned to her window. Wizard breathed a sigh of relief and sagged back in the seat.

The student fidgeted next to him. She flipped open one of her books on her lap and began to study. Her lips moved as she read softly to herself. Wizard closed his eyes and let his mind blank out. It was as close as he had come to peace today.

The girl’s sub-auditory murmurings were as pleasant a sound as water running over stones. He let it be a mantra for him. floating on BK brushing sound. He began to make out words here and there. He listened carelessly.

“Only a fool is presumptuous enough to attempt to judge the relative merits of me different realities. Better to let them blend in a potpourri of life. Who can suavely deny that there are poets in our asylums and killers on our streets? We may never hear the sweetest songs because we were unwilling to accept a new scale. This reality that we treasure and call sanity may be the purest form of torment to those we try to impose it upon.”

A philosophy course. Wizard decided. The thought irritated him. He shifted slightly to put his ears out of range of her soft mutter.

Her nails dug suddenly into his wrist. “All right!” she hissed angrily. “All right. I give up on you- Go throw yourself right back into it. But I’ll give you one last gift, no a story or clue, but a question. If it was such a good deal, why did you leave it in the first place? What overbalanced your scales?”

It scared the hell out of him. He dragged free of her, leaving shreds of his skin under her fingernails. He stood up, staggering as the bus leaned into its stop. He pushed hurriedly past a fat man struggling to rise from his seat and was the first person down the steps. He fled.

The storm rallied as he emerged from the bus. From a monotonous gray pattering it became a downpour of leaden streamers. In less than a block, he was drenched. His coat dragged on his shoulders; his wet pant cuffs slapped his ankles.

Hunger was asserting itself too, harmonizing with the residue of his hangover. His pace slowed to a trudge.

Streetlamps began to blossom in the dark. They dispelled me night, but not the rain that assailed him. His hair was plastered to his skull, and the scars on his scalp ached abominably. He passed brightly lit store windows where pilgrims and turkeys vied with Christmas trees for seasonal charm. The rest of me sidewalk traffic wore raincoats or carried umbrellas.

They rushed past Wizard like lemmings, almost unaware of his passage. He watched their smooth plastic faces and tried to find some kinship with them. There was none. They were immune to misery such as his. They had homes, jobs, families, all arranged neatly in hourly slots of life. Not one of them, he told himself, was going home to a three-legged cat or a damp room haunted by a footlocker. No waitresses climbed through their windows. They would push open doors to warm apartments, to loving embraces and children playing cars on the carpet. He would climb through a dirty window into darkness and pigeons shitting down the walls. When had he made that choice?

Occidental Square was in bloom. Crews had worked all day stringing the lines of small white lightbulbs through the bare branches of the trees. Now they shone through the night, a spring of white blossoms in the November rain. Wizard turned up his face to look at them, me rain streaking down his cheeks.

For a few moments he was eased by the beauty. Then something rolled over inside him, and he saw only bare bulbs on electrical wires, artificial and silly among the wet black branches.

He made a stop at the arcade to use the restroom. He drank cold water from his cupped hands and stared at himself in the mirror. His face had crossed the fine line between gaunt and cadaverous. His eyes were swollen and baggy above his hollow cheeks. A twentieth-century Grim Reaper stared out at him.

He did not wonder at the looks he drew as he left the arcade.

He took the pedestrian walkway that had once been a block of Occidental Avenue South. A tourist information booth sprouted up out of the bricks in front of him. But it offered no answers to any of his questions. He knew the booth had once been an elegant elevator car in some building. But the scrap of information fluttered away from his mind. He couldn’t remember which old building it had come from. Suddenly it seemed less than trivial. He trudged on to the corner of Jackson and Occidental.

Across the intersection from him stood the building that housed his life. He stared at it. Wee Bit O’lreland’s windows were brightly lit and decorated for the season. It only made the rest of it drearier. The inevitable black fire escape twined up the front of the building. Great Winds Kites had one of its creations dangling from the lowest landing of it. The rain was ‘ battering the gay and fragile thing. He nearly yielded to the impulse to run and tap on their window and remind them of its plight. The energy for such a rescue drained from him. It seemed only natural that all things bright and airy should end up sodden and battered.

Faded white lettering gave a name to his home. The Washington Shoe Manufacturing Company- It hadn’t been that for years, but back in 1890, it had held the business to go with the name. The sign would still be there long after he was gone.

He was a passing bit of biological noise in the city, with no real place in its petrous existence. He could no longer see the faces in the brickwork, feel the underlying life in the crouching buildings. The facts and continuity he grasped at had no connection to him, any more than the scorching moth could claim the laurels of General Electric. He had tried to become part of Seattle, to blend with the streets and buildings. He'd failed.

Such a ridiculous quest. Why should he persist now in so fruitless a task? When all was said and done, what did he signify, with his listening attitude and his ridiculous ministry to the pigeons?

He crossed against the lights and turned into his alley. Framed by the blackness of buildings, the King Dome glittered at the far end of the alley chute like a sagging faery toadstool. He tried to imagine himself down there, at whatever sports event was filling it tonight, cussing about parking his car, hurrying the family along to the game. Would he carry a little banner to wave and know all the team statistics? Would he tie himself into that as he had tied himself into the city? The brightness of the lights against the darkness made his eyes water until it shimmered like an underwater scene. Would it make any difference? There weren’t many wizards left in the world, Cassie had said. Now he knew why.

His alley was as empty as his soul. He crouched beneath his fire escape and sprang. With weary expertise he hauled himself up and climbed to his fourth floor window. Crouching, he eased his window up.

A warm odor of food and hot candle wax flowed out to greet him. Wizard froze, not breathing, becoming part of the night. Then, soundless as any shadow, he eased into the room and slipped to his doorway. A yellow light spilled from his den, its source a candlestump burning on one of the pigeons’ shelves. The birds had retreated from it and were eyeing it nervously. The cardboard had been propped in the window with his books. In the darkest corner where his mattress. was, something sat up. Its single glowing eye bored into him-

“You KEPT ME WAITING,” Lynda said petulantly. “Where have you been?” She dropped her cigarette on his floor and ground it out with her boot heel. Wizard came the rest of the way into the room, wondering if he were relieved that it was only Lynda.

She caught him before he was halfway across the room, engulfing him in an embrace. She released him just as quickly, with a loud squeak.

“You are soaking wet and as cold as a fish! And listen to that cough! Now, you get out of those wet things right now.

It’s a good thing I decided to meet you here. I brought us some food, and a little something that will warm you right to your toes. I wanted to get you some clothes today, but I didn’t know the sizes. Now I wish I had guessed. Look at you. I mean it now, get those wet clothes off!“

“Sshh!” he cautioned her frantically. The stores downstairs are still open. They start staying open later this time of year.

Don’t talk loudly and don’t thump around like that. Take your boots off.“

“Oh, baloney! They’re two floors below us. And if they’re open for business, they’ll be playing music and listening to customers. You worry too much. Now, are you going to take off those wet things or do you want me to take them off for your‘

She must have taken the line from a movie. He stared at her. She stood hip-snot, her fists tightly resting on her thighs.

He wondered what actress she was imitating. Her tone was maternal, her stance sexually threatening. He shivered in his wet clothing.

“I’ll take them off myself,” he said slowly. She would have taken any other reply as a challenge or invitation. With grave dignity be turned his back cm her and slowly began to unbutton his shirt with chilled fingers.

“Aaw, rats!” Mock salacious disappointment was in her exclamation.“Well, if you won’t let me help, I’ll just get us something to eat over here. Let me know if you decide you want help.”

He listened to her dragging things about. He glanced over his shoulder to see her turning his food box on its side for a table. Like a little girl playing house. He went back to staring at the walls. He pulled his soaked t-shirt off over his head. His wet hair draggled down the back of his neck, chilling him. She was still chattering at him, her voice not lowered at all. Her boots clumped with every stop.

“Quiet.” he warned softly.

She mis-heard him. “I said, did you hear about that murder down near the ferry dock?”

He stopped moving, his fingers clinging to the waistband of his pants. “Knife,” he said dully.

“Yeah, that one. You heard, huh? But they don’t put it all in the papers. A real mess. Only seventeen, they say. Some little girt playing hooker. Will, you can’t say she didn’t ask for it. Do you have any salt?”

“No!” He suddenly hated her, her callous, shallow attitude.

A woman had died this day. Died of a knife because he hadn’t been able to summon the magic to prevent it. Behind him, she went right on making domestic noises, rustling through his possessions with a calm assumption of domain. Why don’t I get angry? he wondered. Why don’t I turn and yell at her to leave, to get out of my life and leave me alone? Because I am tired and sick, he excused himself. From the back corner of his mind came the voice of the girl on the bus. “Because it’s easier to let her do as she wishes, easier to let her take command and responsibility. You coward!”

“Because I am tired of being alone‘” He defended himself aloud. He had inadvertently injected the words into one of Lynda’s rare silences.

“Me, too, baby. Well, we aren’t alone anymore, arc we?

Here, put on your robe and come eat.“

He hadn’t realized how close she was. The warm dark cloth cascaded over his head and down his shoulders. He found himself shrugging into it, protesting as she tugged the collar down over his head, “I don’t have a robe.”

“Then what’s this?” she asked him indulgently. >

Wizard looked down. The shimmering dark cloth fell to his bare feet. Stars and crescent moons shone in the dim room, sparkled in the light of the candle on the food crate. His wizardly robe draped his chilled body. He froze, waiting. It warmed him. That was all. He smoothed his hands down me front of it, waiting for some tingle of power. Nothing. He squeezed his stinging eyes shut. Where had his mind been, and for bow long? What had he really expected of a discarded Hallowe’en costume? He felt Lynda draping his shoulders with the cloak.

He raised his hands to tie the silver tassels at his throat. He did not want her to step in front of him and see his face. His mind fumbled back through his life. He had been in this den for, well, he had seen the stores below him extend their hours for Christmas shoppers twice. And before that? There had been another den. The location was hazy in his mind now, but he remembered the smell of boiling cabbage and rice wafting up from a restaurant below. And before that? His sleeping roll tucked up under an overpass or bridge; he recalled vividly the rumble of the night traffic and the stretch-flash of passing headlights. Years as lost and wasted as fresh rain falling on oily city streets.

His life struggled to join hands with itself. He plucked up two reference points. This was 1983, fast approaching 1984.

He had turned twenty in 1969, on his first tour in Nam. Thirty five years old, he guessed. He hadn’t thought of his age in a long time, hadn’t related his personal span to the days and weeks flowing past him. Half of the three-score and ten due him were gone. Half.

Lynda giggled. He turned slowly to face her and she gave a high scream of laughter. His face didn’t change, so she slapped him lightly on the cheek. “Old sourpuss. Well, you got to admit you look funny. I should have guessed from the hat. Well, never mind. At least it’s warm and dry and comfy. Even if we did miss Hallowe’en. Oh, baby!” She pushed into him suddenly, her face diving for his, her lips writhing against his mouth. Her sturdy arms enfolded him and trapped him against her body. She nuzzled his neck and then jerked back her face to look at him. “You look just like a sad little kid. Cold and wet and living in this hole. But we are going to change all that.

Look, I got to thinking today. There’s plenty of room at my place. It doesn’t look like you have that much stuff. Tomorrow, after work, I bet I could come up here and have you packed in half an hour. Hell, from the look of it, we could leave most of it here and not take a loss. You could stay with me, get rid of that cough, get your head straight, and men you could look for work- Or sign up for unemployment or welfare or something, Honey, I look at you and I can see you weren’t made for this kind of life. You’re the steady, reliable type. I don’t know why or how you came to this and I won’t be nosy and ask. But I think it’s time you got out of it. Back to reality.

Now come and eat.“

“You never give me a chance to talk.” It was coming more easily. More and more often, the words came out of his mouth as soon as he thought of them.

Lynda was not impressed. “What’s to say? Who in his right mind would choose to stay here when he could move in with me? Now come and eat, baby, before it gets cold.”

He trailed after her to the makeshift table, the wizard robes wafting around his ankles. He stopped at his wardrobe box to pull a pair of socks on over his bare feet. He was warmer, but still shivering.

The food was in styrofoam trays on the table, still sealed.

White styrofoam cups with lids squatted next to them- There were white paper napkins and thick plastic utensils. He could not remember when he had ever dined so formally within his own den.

“Hope you like oriental rood,” she announced and snapped open his dinner. He looked down at finely sliced vegetables swimming in a clear sauce, at slices of meat artfully arranged and cubes of tofu. Lynda was opening a little square paper bucket of rice. She scooped a double mound of it onto the lid of his container. There was a tiny cup of mustard and another of shoyu. The hot rice steamed. Lynda pried me lid off his cup for him- “Green tea,” she informed him. “I always have it with this kind of rood. Puts me in the right mood.”

The tea was still scalding hot. Wizard sipped at his noisily and then attacked the food. The heat of it alone was comforting to his abused body. The skillfully blended textures and flavors nearly went unnoticed in his drive to fill his belly with something solid and nourishing. Lynda silently replenished his mound of rice from the container. When his cup was empty and the food nearly gone, she produced a short, stout bottle with a flourish. “Plum wine!” Her eyebrows leaped at him- She poured, and as the liquid filled his cup, the bouquet of it saluted his nostrils. Memories of hot orchard summers drifted back to him.

When her cup was filled, they drank together.

He took his in a series of tiny sips, letting each moment of taste flow and ebb over his tongue. When his shivering finally ceased, he sighed and let the tensions go out of his shoulders and back- “It’s good, isn’t it?” she asked, breaking into his reverie. He nodded slowly and felt his own smile break free.

She returned it, and began to busily stack up the disposable dishes and flatware. Wizard let her. She left the bottle of wine on the table at his elbow. He refilled his cup. He slowly sipped wine and stared into the candle flame. It was a long, still flame, steady and unflickered by any wind. The dazzling of its light reminded him of sunlight on the bright surface of a mirror pond. If you looked at it one way, it could dazzle your eyes and blind you. But if you tilted your head and half closed your eyes, you could see your reflection in the black water. Like a darker self looking up, mocking. And the more you looked, the less it looked like you. Until, finally, if you stared at it long enough, it didn’t look like you at all, or anyone else.

“Well, he don’t look like no wizard to me!”

Rasputin did a slow gyrating turn in his dance to his own unheard music. Wizard stared at him in awe. Cassie had dragged him up here, making him walk for blocks past me border of the Ride Free area. They stood now on a sidewalk in the midst of the Seattle Center. Grassy hillocks and imposing buildings were everywhere, along with ducks and fountains and the Pacific Science Center and the terminal of the monorail. He was dazzled and confused by it all, and especially by the lofty spire of the Space Needle. Cassie had told him all about the World’s Fair days here in 1962 as she had hurried him along. He had been bored at first by her recital of facts and numbers but soon had become engrossed in the bits of city history she spewed out so casually. Yet she had not brought him here to view the Space Needle or the Fun Forest Amusement Park or even the ducks. She had brought him here to present him to Rasputin.

And Rasputin doubted him. Wizard did not doubt Rasputin.

He was as impressive as the Space Needle. He was close to seven feet tall, and as black and shiny as anthracite coal. Not content with his natural stature, he had increased it by dusting his afro and painting his nails with glitter. Dangling earrings swung heavily from his earlobe. He wore a sleeveless shirt in the sweat of July, and his arms were wound with snakes of silver and eels of copper. His pants were raggedly cut-off Levis, and little chains of bells decked his ankles. His huge feet were bare and he danced. He danced always, every second. Even when he stood still to talk to Cassie, some tiny movement of wrist or ankle or neck or finger kept the dance intact, one continuous flow of motion. Wizard marveled.

“Nope. Don’t look like no wizard, don’t act like no wizard, don’t even smell like no wizard.” Rasputin made the litany a part of his dance.

“There’s wizardry and wizardry,” snapped Cassie. “A fountain doesn’t look like a still pool, but they’re both water.”

“And I am the fountain!” laughed Rasputin in a voice as deep as the sea, but brown. “Leaping and splashing and flashing. You gonna tell me that you’re the still pool, shining back a reflection, soft and green and slimy on the bottom. You gonna tell me that? Are you a wizard, man?”

Rasputin’s eyes were not brown- They were black, blacker than his skin, and they crackled. Wizard flinched from their spark. “I’m not sure yet,” he said softly. “Cassie says I am. I don’t much feel like it- I’m not looking for power.”

“Aho!” Rasputin leaped and whirled. “Not looking for power.

Then you are starting at the right place, man. ‘Cause the magic doesn’t give power, it takes it. And it can’t make you strong, but it can find your strength. Can find your weaknesses, too.

Sounds doubtful, Cassie, but maybe you got one this time. Let me see his hands.“

Wizard held out his hands, palms up, to Rasputin. Rasputin slipped his large pinky-black palms under Wizard’s hands, moving them slowly and carefully as he studied them. Wizard’s hands became a part of Rasputin’s dance as he manipulated him. Slowly his own hands became strangers to him under Rasputin’s scrutiny. They looked like pale fish. His fingers were long and thin, but the joints were large, like knots in skinny twigs. Odd little scars on the backs of his hands were like little landmarks in strange terrain. Suddenly Rasputin’s hands flashed from under Wizard’s to slap his palms with a loud clap.

“He’s got the hands, man. The man’s got the hands. Got the power in his hands. Power-handed man. He’s got the power in his hands, and in his eyes he got the Nam.” He had danced a shuffle-footed, hip-wriggling dance all around Wizard during his chant. But at me last line he stopped and stood still as his black eyes waltzed right into Wizard’s soul. “And in his eyes he got the Nam, man,” he whispered. Wizard stood steady.

The afternoon was hot and still around them, the blue sky cupping them under its sweaty palm, holding in the secrets Rasputin whispered.

“Know why there ain’t been so many wizards, lately? Know why? I got a theory, brother. Got myself an idea about that.

Back in the Middle Ages, them Dark Ages, they got plagues and battles and poverty and tyrants as far as the eye can see.

Know what else they got? Wizards. That’s what makes us, man. Gotta take a man with nothing else left; then you can make a wizard out of the leftovers. That what you got to have to make a wizard. They got the Black Death, and we got the Nam. But one part of my theory I don’t got done yet. Maybe we’re all wizards, see, but you got to have a Nam to wake it up. Like a catalyst, see. And maybe we all came back wizards, but only a few of us crazy enough to know it. Or maybe only a few of us can be wizards, but it don’t develop without a Nam. Like steel. We got hard in the fire, and wizardry is the cutting edge we put on ourselves. Other guys melt, other guys don’t even feel the flames. Not us. We feel the flames and we hurt until we’re hard. And we come back and we cool down, and then—wizards! What you think. Wizard?“

“I don’t know,” Wizard replied foolishly.

Rasputin danced away in disgust. “So you got a wizard, Cassie- You got an I-Don’t-Know Wizard. What the hell good is that kind? What does he do?”

“He feeds the’pigeons,” Cassie retorted. “People know they can talk to him, and he listens to them. The Truth comes out of him. And sometimes he Knows. Isn’t that enough?”

“What do you do?” Wizard, made bold by Cassie’s defense of him, dared to ask.

“I dance!” Rasputin retorted loftily. “And that’s enough, the way I dance. While I dance, I keep the bogey-man away. You got a bogey-man, I-Don’t-Know Wizard?”

Wizard shivered. “There’s something gray,” he confessed, and the summer air turned cold-

“Sounds about right. Well, what you gotta do is this. You got to feed the pigeons. Pigeons sacred to you now, hear me?

Never harm a pigeon. And you got to listen to people that come up and start talking to you. Can’t turn away when what they say hurts- You got to tell them what they need to know. And you got to speak me Truth inside you. And when you Know, you got to admit you Know. Got to balance the magic, I-Don’t know Wizard. Got to give away more than you get, all the time. If you don’t, that gray thing going to get you. And if that happens, don’t yell, well, Rasputin didn’t warn you. Now get him out of here, Cassie. I got to dance.“

They watched him leaping and whirling away. flashing black and silver in the sunlight. “Is dancing all he does?” Wizard had asked Cassie naively.

“Yeah.” she said mockingly. “All he does is Dance. And look at derelicts and find out if they’re wizards or not. And give wizards the rules of their magic. And keep the bogey-man away from the Seattle Center. Come on. Wizard.”

He trailed at her heels as they moved on the paths between the hillocks of grass. She stopped at a bench that overlooked water and ducks. She dropped into it gratefully and he copied her.

“Well?” she demanded suddenly. “What did you think of him?”

Wizard shrugged. “What I think of Rasputin is that what I think of him makes no difference at all. It’s like asking what I think of Mount St. Helens. It’s there, and it’s a hell of a lot bigger than me.”

Cassie laughed softly. “I never thought of him quite that way before, but you’re right. What I really meant was, what did you think about his theory on wizards?”

“Just what I said. I don’t know.”

“And you don’t want to make any guesses, do you? Well, I do. I have my own ideas on it. Think about this for a minute.

Think about the threads of color in a tapestry. When you need a bit of silver, for the shine on a river or the snow on a mountain top, you bring the silver threads up to the surface where they can be seen. Or if you need gold for the sheen on a princess’s hair. or the spark in a unicorn’s eyes, you bring that thread up.

But it’s not like the threads come and go. It’s more like they’re seen and unseen.“

He gave another shrug. He could tell she was getting into one of her obtuse moods. It was all going to be stories and parables for the rest of the day. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Cassie laughed wryly. “Rasputin named you well. Well, that’s how I think of us. And another thing. Imagine these special threads, silver and gold, say. The tapestry weaver doesn’t need them often. Maybe they’re hardly ever used together, but there they are, running along together behind the tapestry, and sometimes coming out on the front together to light up a mountain or deck the princesses’ robes. Think of what it would be like for those threads. Do you suppose they miss one another white they’re apart? And when they come together in the tapestry, do you suppose they’d remember the times before when they’d been woven together?”

She had lost him again. “Do you suppose,” he asked, “that we could scrounge some lunch? I’m starving.”

“I suppose,” she had laughed easily, but her eyes searched his with a hunger that was not for food.

Wizard opened his eyes and stared down at the pipe in his hand. He held his throat shut against the hot smoke and passed the pipe to Lynda. “You are feeling fine,” she told him. “I can tell by your eyes. Isn’t it funny. Mitch? When we get stoned, I talk even more and you get even quieter. I don’t think you’ve said a word since you finished the wine. Are you still in there?”

“I don’t know.” He gave her a sad and foolish smile. The I-Don’t-Know Wizard. That was him- He watched her drawing on the pipe and holding it down and then whistling smoke. She passed it back to him and rose languidly.

He was still holding his hit when she flapped the hat in front of him. “Put it on,” she demanded with a giggle. “I’ve just got to see you in the complete outfit. When I first saw the hat in the bag, I didn’t realize it went with the robe and cloak.

Let’s see it on.“

He set the pipe down on the table. He took the midnight hat from her hands and gazed in melancholy at its bent tip. “I don’t think I want to,” he said softly. Just looking at it filled him with the sadness of opportunities lost. “Put it away,” he requested, and handed it back to Lynda.

“Oh, come on‘” she urged, and before he could protest any more, she set it atop his head. He cringed his eyes shut. expecting the flash of magic and the tingle of power against his skull. Still expecting it. Fool. He heard only Lynda’s drawnout giggling. He opened his eyes to her.

“It’s perfect,” she gasped. “Oh, geez, it’s perfect. You really do look like a wizard. I never would have believed it. But with the robe and the cloak and the hat, I mean, your eyes have that mystic look, that kind of sad and weary look you see in old fairytale books about kindly wizards. It would be even better if you had a beard and mustache. But even without them, you really got the looks for it. Come on. sorcerer, work me some magic. Draw me one of them pentagon things and summon a demon. Do me a magic trick. Got any rabbits in that hat?”

“That’s a magician, not a wizard,” he told her, trying to smile with her. “And they’re pentagrams, not pentagons.” He tried to bring the words out lightly. But the skin of his face was stiff with dread, and a chill had invaded him when she spoke so lightly of summoning demons. His required no summoning. They lurked always, chill on the back of his neck.

Would he ever feel warm again?

“Oh, come on, magic man,” she pleaded in a voice gone husky. “Do a trick for me.” She paused infinitesimally. “Or turn a trick with me.” She giggled suggestively. “I shouldn’t tell you this, I really shouldn’t.” She dropped down beside him and put her hand on his knee as she lowered her voice to a naughty whisper. “You’ll think I’m kinky or something. But that outfit kind of turns me on. It makes you look so strange and wild somehow. And just now, when J looked at you, I remembered that you had nothing on underneath it. And I felt this kind of a tickly shiver that began you-know-where. You know, I always wondered why men were turned on when they found out a woman didn’t have a bra or panties on. Now I know. It’s the thought of you just being kind of loose and reachable under there.” Her hand dropped to his ankle and began to creep up under the robe.

Wizard flowed to his feet. He removed the cap from his head and let it drop with a thump upon the table. His newfound verbal skills rescued him. “Don’t you think you’re asking a bit much of me? You feed me a big meal after I’ve been cold and wet all day, pour a bottle of wine down me and men get me stoned. About all I’m ready for is eight hours of sleep.”

“Oh, you!” Lynda rebuked him, but she looked more tantalized than refused.

Wizard stood looking slowly around the room. He felt a lucidity upon him, an awareness that had been missing for a long time. He could not remember what had so engrossed him that he had been blind to his own life passing. Things were going to be easier now. What had he been thinking of, to try and live like this? For what? He was letting it go now, with relief. He was moving in with Lynda, flowing back into the stream of reality. She’d help him. He’d get some clothes, sleep in a bed at night, find a job…

“Lynda, what kind of a job should I look for?” ‘

She shrugged lightly. “What did you use to do?I‘

“I was a sniper.‘ The words came quickly, without any thought. They extinguished me flames of change that had burned so brightly just an instant before. But Lynda laughed.

“No, dummy. Before the army.”

“I was a kid.” Those words came heavily. Truth was on him, he thought to himself, and then tried to chase the phrase away. No magic about it. It was simply true and he had said it.

“Well, baby, hate to tell you this, but there’s no money in being a kid these days. I haven’t seen any Help Wanted: Sniper ads, either.”

“Neither did I. ”A jacket of ice squeezed his soul. The scene leaped up in his mind, as bright as the flame. He was signing the papers, nodding as the recruiter reminded him that he couldn’t guarantee he’d get the engineering training, but that there was a good chance of it. No more money to finish college, so what the hell. Such a deal. So he hadn’t ever built a bridge or a road. He’d blown up a few. He’d learned things in the military he’d never have learned anywhere else. And he had been good at them. Damn good. Better than anyone else in his outfit.

He’d gone places no one else would go. Eyes like an owl, nose like a wolf, walking sorter than a spider in the night. He’d been so damn good. And proud of it; they’d all been proud of him. Until he came home.

The high was evaporating. He looked for the pipe, but it was out. He waggled it at Lynda, who took it and began to fill it for him. He watched impatiently as she lit it and drew on the weed to glow. But when she smiled and handed it to him, he just stared down into the bowl. “It’s not here,” he said softly.

“What isn’t, baby?”

“Peace. Love. Freedom. Bullshit. There’s nothing in here but burning leaves.”

“Buds, baby. That makes all the difference.” She took it back from him and sucked the smoke into her lungs. She swayed slightly as she exhaled and gave him a softly unfocused smile.

“Hey, magic man,” she said huskily. He looked at her. “Hey,” she repeated low. “Come here.”

She advanced on him and embraced him. He stood cold within her arms, suddenly wondering why he had been so passive as to allow her into his life this way. He hadn’t been looking for this type of involvement, still didn’t feel ready for it. Didn’t want it, he admitted reluctantly. So why go along with it? Because the lady wasn’t taking a polite no for an answer. She bumped against him and he staggered back a step.

She was not a dainty woman. It was like being nudged by a cow. The edge of the mattress. brushed his ankles. ‘Take me down, magic man,“ she whispered urgently, rubbing against him.

“Not right now.” Games. She was playing a romance game, with him as a prop; he was playing a delaying game. She had fed him and stoned him and wanted her due. But he needed to think carefully right now, not be a toy for someone else’s passion. Couldn’t she see that? Was she so oblivious to his moods?

“Don’t fight it, baby. Go with it. I’ll make you feel good.”

Her wandering hand groped through the robe. His pulse quickened in spite of himself.

“No!” he growled, feeling the sudden high rush of anger.

Strength coursed through him and his frustrations focused on her. He gripped her wrist tightly, putting a turn on it. The pain put a slight twist at the corner of her smile.

“Do it, baby,” she whispered. “Hurt me a little and love me a lot. Show me your claws, magic man. Make me do what you want. Make it wild and new for me.”

“Stop it!” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Stop it now!”

She was the one summoning the demons that could destroy him. The instant he released her, she reached for him again, her mouth wide with laughter. He seized her shoulders and shook her violently, her head snapping on her neck, her long hair whipping with the motion. Self-disgust stopped him. He dropped her onto the mattress. and turned aside from her. She shook the hair from her face and peered up at him. He felt his own nails rake his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so damn sorry, and always sorry. But it’s always there, right behind me, reaching for the controls. I don’t know what brings it out. But you’re not safe with me. I want you to go. Now.”

Her face was flushed, her mouth wet. She took a gasping breath. “Rough doesn’t have to be bad, baby.” She licked her mouth, “if you’re so sony, prove it.” Reaching up, she caught at his hand and dragged him down. His heart was beating thunderously in his chest and his legs felt rubbery. He couldn’t get the air down to the bottom of his lungs. He sagged onto the mattress. beside her.