Wizard of the Pigeons (17 page)

‘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 girls' 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 are 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 are 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 to 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 grey 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 the 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 the 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 grey fog was stringing through the streets. He tried to rub it from his eyes, but it hung before him like
ratty curtains, colouring 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'Ireland's trash and then rebound into the 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 ageing 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 his 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 the 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, sharing 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 fumbled 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 the 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 the 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 her 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 bums' 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 mould on the spines of his books and pigeon droppings spattered on the floor. He had never noticed them before. The cardboard box that held his wardrobe was softening and sagging at the corners. 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 the evils the depths of his fuzzy little soul could imagine. Wizard was shocked.

‘You poor baby!' Lynda said sympathetically. 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, he could be. 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 his 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 outrè 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 screaming in his skull. Too late.

The scene remained forever fixed on his memory, like a tinted illustration from an old book. The light from the candle flame 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 grey 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 colours of the 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 polaroids 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 grey 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 shrivelled. 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's 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 colour 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.