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.