Overlaying the piles of dirty clothing were the magazine clippings and pages of comic books which Steve used to make his 'things.' They had no other name. Steve's 'things' were varnished to his bedroom walls. Korea had supplied a surplus of the images Steve preferred in his 'things,' and by now the room was a palimpsest of screaming infants, wrecked jeeps, bloated dead in kapok jackets. Tanks rolled over muddy hills toward classrooms of dutiful Russian children (courtesy of Life). Mossy monsters from horror comics embraced starlets with death's-heads. Ridpath never entered his son's room anymore.
He dropped the briefcase beside his chair and sat heavily, wrenching his tie over his head without bothering to undo the knot. After he had dropped his jacket on the floor beside it, he reached for the telephone set on an otherwise empty shelf. Ridpath shouted, 'Turn it down, goddammit,' and waited a second. Then he shouted again, louder. 'For God's sake, turn it down!' The music diminished by an almost undetectable portion. He dialed the Thorpe number.
'Billy? Chester. Just got home. Thought maybe you should get the poop on the new boys. Look pretty good on the whole, but there are a few items I thought you'd want to know about. Sort of coordinate ourselves here. Okay? First off, we got one good, one real good football prospect, the Hogan kid. He might take a little watching in the classroom . . . No, nothing definite, just the impression I had. I don't want to prejudice you against the kid, Billy. Just keep him on a tight rein. He could be a real leader. Now for the bad news. We got one real lulu in the new intake. A kid named Brick, Dave Brick. Hair like a goddamned Zulu, more grease on it than I got in my car. You know what kind of attitude that means. I think we want to crack down on this kind of thing right away, or one bad apple like that could spoil the whole school. Plus that, there's a wiseacre named Sherman. The kid already lipped off, fooled around with his registration form . . . You getting these names?'
He wiped his face again and grimaced toward the stairs, How could a boy listen to that stuff all day long? 'One more. You remember our transfer from Andover, the orphan kid with the trust fund? Nightingale. He might of been a big mistake. I mean, Billy, maybe Andover was glad to get rid of him, that's what I mean. First of all, he looks wrong — like a little Greek. This Nightingale kid looks sneaky. . . . Well, hell, Billy, I can't help the way I see things, can I? And I was right, too. I caught him with a pack of cards — yeah, he had the cards out. In the library. Can you beat that? Said he was showing Flanagan a card trick. . . . Yeah, a card trick. Man. I confiscated the cards PDQ. I think the kid's some kind of future beatnik or something. . . . Well, I know you can't always tell that kind of thing, Billy. . . . Well, he did have those cards in his fist, big as you please, gave me a little tussle, too. . . . Well, I'd put him in the special file along with Brick, that's what I'm saying, Billy. . . . '
He listened to the telephone a moment, his face contracting into a tight, unwilling grimace. 'Sure, Steve'll be okay this year. You'll see a big change in him, now that he's a senior. They grow up pretty fast at that age.'
He hung up gratefully. 'Grow up' — was that what Steve had done? He did not want to talk to Billy Thorpe, who had two good-looking successful boys, about Steve. The less Thorpe thought about Steve Ridpath, the better.
Skeleton. God.
Ridpath shoved himself to his feet, knocking over the easeful of football plays, took a few aimless steps toward the stairs, then turned around and picked up the case, deciding to go down to his desk in the basement. He had to do some more thinking about the JV team before their first practice. When he walked out of the living room, he glanced into the kitchen and unexpectedly saw the gaunt, looming form of his son leaning over the sink. Steve was pressing his nose and lips against the window, smearing the glass. So he had somehow flickered down the stairs.
8
Universe
'I've only been here three days,' Del was saying, now positively sounding nervous, 'but I didn't want to just live out of suitcases, the way they're doing. I wanted to get my stuff set up.' There came a sound of scuffing feet. 'Well, what do you think?'
'Wow,' Tom said, not quite sure what he thought, except that wonder played a large part in it. In the dim light, he could not even see all of Del's things. On the wall behind the bed hung a huge star chart. The opposite wall was a frieze of faces — framed photographs. He recognized John Scarne from the photo on a book he owned, and Houdini, but the others were strangers to him. They were men with serious, considering, summing-up kinds of faces in which their theatricality appeared as an afterthought. Magicians. A skull grinned from a shelf at waist level beneath the photographs, and Del hopped around him to light a little candle within it. Then Tom saw all the books held upright by the skull. The middle of the room and the desk were crowded with the paraphernalia of magic tricks. He saw a glass ball on a length of velvet, a miniature guillotine, a top hat, various cabinets filigreed and lacquered with Chinese designs, a black silver-topped cane. Before the long windows, entirely covering them, a big green tank sent up streams of bubbles through a skittering population of fish. 'I don't believe it,' Tom breathed. 'I don't know where to start. Is all this stuff really yours?'
'Well, I didn't get it all at once,' Del said. 'Some of this stuff has been around for years — since I was about ten. That's when I got involved. Now I'm really involved. I think it's what I want to be.'
'A magician?' Tom asked, surprised.
'Yeah. Do you too?'
'I never thought about that. But I'll tell you one thing I just thought right now.'
Del lifted his head like a frightened doe.
'I think school is going to be a lot more interesting this year.'
Del beamed at him.
Bud Copeland brought them Cokes in tall frosted glasses with a lemon slice bumping the ice cubes, and for an hour the two boys prowled through Del's collection. In his eager, piping voice, the smaller boy explained to Tom the inner workings of tricks which had puzzled him for as long as he had been interested in magic. 'All these illusions are the flashy stuff, and no one will ever see how they work, but I really prefer close-up magic,' Del said. 'If you can do close-up card work, you can do anything. That's what my Uncle Cole says.' Del held up a finger, still in the dramatic persona he had put on with his top hat at the beginning of the tour. 'No. Not quite. He said you could do almost everything. He can do things you wouldn't believe, and he won't explain them to me. He says certain things are art, not just illusion, and because they're art they're real magic. And you can't explain them.' Del brought his finger down, having caught himself in a public mood at a private moment. 'Well, that's what he says, anyway. It's like he's full of secrets and information no one else knows about. He's kind of funny, and sometimes he can scare the crap out of you, but he's the best there is. Or I think so, anyway.' His face was that of a dark little dervish.
'Is he a magician?'
'The best. But he doesn't work like the others — in clubs and theaters and that.'
'Then where does he work?'
'At home. He does private shows. Well, they're not really shows. They're mainly for himself. It's hard to explain. Maybe someday you could meet him. Then you'd see.' Del sat on his bed, looking to Tom as if he were almost sorry he had said so much. Pride in his uncle seemed to be battling with other forces.