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-