"Did he even have a sister?" Jilly asked.
A black Cadillac pulled up to the curb beside us before I could answer. There were three Hispanic boys in it, and for a moment I thought it was LaDonna's brother Pipo and a couple of his pals. But then the driver leaned out the window to give Jilly a leer and I realized I didn't recognize any of them.
"Hey, puta," he said. "Looking for a little of that kickin' action?"
Homeboys in a hot car, out for a joy ride. The oldest wasn't even fourteen. Jilly didn't hesitate. She cocked back her foot and kicked the Cadillac's door hard enough to make a dent.
"In your dreams," she told him.
If it had been anybody else, those homies would've been out of the car and all over us. We're all small women; Jilly's about my height, and I'm just topping five feet. We don't exactly look formidable. But this was Jilly, and the homie at the wheel saw something in her face that made him put the pedal to the floor and peel off.
The incident depressed all three of us. When we got to my apartment, I asked them in, but they just wanted to go home. I didn't blame them. I watched them go on off down the street, but sat down on the porch instead of going inside.
I knew I wasn't going to sleep because I started thinking about what a raw deal women always seem to get, and that always keeps me up. Even Titania in the play— sure, she and Oberon made up, but it was on his terms. Titania never even realized the crap he had put her through before their "reconciliation."
A Midsummer Night's Dream definitely hadn't been written by a woman.
3
A funny thing happened to me a few years ago. I caught a glimpse of the strange world that lies on the other side of the curtain we've all agreed is reality. Or at least I think I did.
The historical version of what happened is pretty straightforward: I met a street person— the old man on the bicycle that everybody calls the Conjure Man— and he got me to take an acorn from the big old tree that used to grow behind the library at Butler U. He had me nurture it over the winter, then plant it in Fitzhenry Park near the statue of the poet, Joshua Stanhold.
The version he tells is that he's this immortal who diminishes as the years go by, which is why he's only our height now. He was supposed to leave our world when its magic went away, but he got left behind. The tree that came down behind the library was a Tree of Tales, a repository of stories without which wonder is diminished in our world. The one I grew from an acorn and planted in the Silenus Gardens is supposed to be its replacement.
My version... I don't really know what my version is. There was something strange about the whole affair, I'll grant you that. And that little sapling I planted— it's already the size of a ten-year-old oak. Jilly told me she was talking to a botanist who was quite amazed at its appearance there. Seems that kind of oak isn't native to North America, and he was surprised to find it growing in the middle of the park that way.
"The only other one I've ever seen in the city," he told Jilly, "used to grow behind the Smithers Library, but they cut it down."
I haven't seen John— that's the Conjure Man's real name, John Windle. I haven't seen him for a while now. I like to think that he's finally made it home to wherever home is. Behind the curtain, I suppose. But I still go out to the tree and tell it stories— all kinds of stories. Happy ones, sad ones. Gossip. News. Just whatever comes to mind.
I'm not even sure why; I just do.
4
I'm not as brave— or maybe as foolish— as Jilly is. She doesn't seem to know the meaning of fear. She'll go anywhere, at any time of the day or night, and she never seems to get hurt. Like what happened earlier tonight. If I'd been on my own, or just with. Sophie, when that car pulled up, who knows how it would have ended up? Not pleasant, that's for sure.
So I'm not nearly so bold— except when I'm on my bike. It's sort of like a talisman for me. It's nothing special, just an old ten-speed, but it gets me around. Sometimes I think I should become, one of those messengers that wheel through the traffic on their mountain bikes, whistle between their lips, ready to let out a shrill blast if anybody gets in their way.
You think you're immortal, covering ground faster than anyone can walk, you're not all locked up inside some motorized box that's spewing noxious fumes into the air. You feel as natural as a bird, or a deer, racing through your concrete forest. Maybe that's where John got that feeling from; riding through town on his bike, free as the wind, when all the other street people are just sort of shuffling along, gaze to the ground.
I started a poem about it once, but I couldn't get the words to fit the vision. That's been happening to me all too often this summer. Oh, who'm I kidding? Wordless pretty well sums me up these days, I look at the work I've had published, and I can't even imagine what it was like to write those verses, little say believe that it was me who did it.
Feeling sorry for myself is the one thing I have gotten good at lately. It's not a feeling I like. I hate the way it leaves me with this overpowering sense of being ineffectual. Worthless.
When I start getting into that kind of mood, I usually get on my bike and just ride. Which is how I found myself in Fitzhenry Park a few hours after Sophie and Jilly left me at my apartment.
I laid my bike down under the young Tree of Tales and sprawled on the grass beside it. I could see a handful of stars, looking up through the tree's boughs, but my mind was back in the Standish, listening to Puck warn Oberon of the coming dawn I drifted off to the remembered sound of his voice.
5
Puck breaks off and looks at me. The play has faded, the hall is gone. It's just the two of us, alone in some copsy wood, as far from the city as the word orange is from a true rhyme.
"And who are you?" he says.
I make no reply. I'm too fascinated by his transformation. Falling asleep, the voice I heard, the face I imagined, was that of the actor from the Standish whom I'd seen earlier in the night. But he's gone along with the city and everything familiar. This Puck is more compelling still. I can't take my gaze from him. He has a beauty that no actor could replicate, but he's more inhuman, too. It's hard to say where the man ends and the animal begins. I think of Pan; I think of fauns.
"Your hair," he says, "is like moonlight, gracing your fair shoulders."
Maybe I should be thinking of satyrs. Legendary being or not, this is a come-on if ever I heard one.
"It's dyed," I tell him.
"But it looks so full of life."
"I mean, I color it. I'm not a natural blonde."
"And your eyes?" he asks. "Is that tempest of dream-starved color dyed as well?"
I have to admit, he's got a way about him. I don't know if I should assume "dream-starved" to be a compliment exactly, but the sound of his voice makes me wish he'd just take me in his arms. Maybe this is what they mean by fairy enchantment. I've only known him for the better part of a couple of minutes, and already he's got me feeling all warm and tingly inside. There's a musky odor in the air and my heartbeat has found a new, quicker rhythm.
It's a tough call, but I tell my libido to take five.
"What do you mean by 'dream-starved?' " I ask him.
He sits back on his furry haunches and the sexual charge that's built up between us eases somewhat.
"I see a storm in your soul," he says, "held at bay by a grey cloud of uncomfortable reason."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask.
But I know. I know exactly what he's talking about: how everything that ever made me happy seems to have been washed away. I smile, but there's no light behind the smile. I laugh, but the sound is hollow. I don't know how it happened, but it all went away. I do have a storm inside me, but it can't seem to get out and I don't know how to help it. All I do know is that I don't want to feel like a robot anymore, like I took a walk-on bit as a zombie for some B-movie only to find that I can't shake the part once my scene's in the can.