The Miser's Dream

by John Gaspard

  “I’m afraid I have no access to any part of the movie theater,” I continued, but she waved my words away with her highly manicured hand.

  “I know, I know. That Bad News Bears washout next door made it abundantly clear we’re not getting into Tyler’s booth.” She spit the words out, and it was evident she was still harboring a lot of anger from her encounter with Tracy.

  “She’s actually more of Hoosiers washout,” I corrected, and again she waved my words away.

  “Whatever,” she said, clearly already bored with the topic. “Here’s the thing,” she continued, her tone softening as she stepped toward the counter. “Tyler and me, we weren’t always on the best of terms. My therapist said we were codependent, but I think in reality we were just a pair of drugged up hotheads who couldn’t get along.”

  Her companion tugged at her sleeve. “Look,” he said with a big smile. “This place is full of magic stuff.”

  She pushed his arm away. “It’s a magic store, you dummy. What did you think you’d find in here? Tap shoes? Now shut your trap, Gunnar, I’m trying to talk here.”

  Gunnar lowered his eyes and slunk away, running his finger across the top of the counter as he moved toward a display of DVDs. A shamed five-year-old could not have executed a finer performance.

  “As I was saying,” Mrs. James continued, giving him one final look and a definitive roll of the eyes, “Tyler and me did have some good times, and I feel bad. About him being dead and all.”

  It struck me this was the first time since it happened that anyone had shown anything resembling grief about Tyler James’ murder.

  “Okay,” I began, not sure I had anything to add to this conversation.

  “I was just wondering,” she continued, her voice softening, “if you two ever talked or anything. And if my name came up. Maybe ever,” she added. Her brash exterior had faded away quickly, revealing a grieving woman just this side of crying, and doing her best to hold it back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “I actually never met Tyler.”

  I was going to continue my explanation, but our conversation was interrupted by a sudden question from across the room.

  “What’s this?” Gunnar asked. He was pointing to a fabric strip with a string loop which Harry had left out on the counter after a demonstration.

  “It’s an invisible dove harness,” I said absently, trying to keep my attention on the conversation with Mrs. James.

  “But…” he said, scratching the small patch of beard that called his chin home. “But I can see it.” He held up the fabric strip and had a sudden thought. “Oh, is it the dove that’s invisible?”

  “Sure, it’s the dove that’s invisible,” I agreed, turning back to Mrs. James. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Gunnar scanning the room slowly, looking for any indication of the imperceptible bird.

  “As I was saying,” I continued, “Tyler and I actually never met. I’d seen him at work, through the window, but that was all.”

  Mrs. James sighed deeply, leaning on the counter as if in need of a little support.

  “I see,” she said quietly. “So you two never had a chance to shoot the breeze. About me. Or any of his online sales opportunities?” The last was casually tossed out as a throwaway thought, but there was a glimmer in her watery eyes which gave her away.

  “No,” I said sharply, recognizing I was being conned, and not too expertly at that. “We never spoke.”

  She took out a handkerchief from a voluminous handbag and dapped at her eyes dramatically, but I think we both understood the show was, essentially, over.

  “That’s too bad,” she said, trying to deliver a sniffle and coming up short. “I think you two would have really hit it off.”

  “I’m sure we would have,” I said, putting as much ice in my voice as I could. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I need to get back to my inventory work.” This was true, however “start” would have been a more accurate verb.

  She gave me one more long look, then dropped the grieving widow act with the speed of a seasoned Las Vegas impressionist.

  “Come on, Gunnar,” she said, stuffing her unused handkerchief back into her purse and pulling out several sticks of gum. “We’ve got other fish to fry.” The sticks of gum were unwrapped and deposited into her mouth with well-practiced speed.

  She walked to the door and pulled it open, clearing her throat meaningfully. The sound produced a conditioned response from Gunnar, who dropped the magic wand he had been examining and made a beeline toward the door.

  “Careful,” he hissed, pushing her through the door and swinging it shut quickly as he gave the shop one last look. “You don’t want to let the dove out!”

  There was a quick slam of the door and they were gone.

  I’d like to say the next two hours were productive, inventory-wise, but that would be far from the truth. I’m not even sure I can honestly say I made a dent in the process. But somehow, five o’clock came around and I closed up the shop in anticipation of a planned dinner with Megan. I was steeling myself for the inevitable recitation of her experience with Quinton Moon the night before, vowing to keep my jealousy in check.

  I threw on my coat, shut off the lights and was locking the door and marveling at how warm it still was, even with the sun just about to dip below the horizon.

  “Hey, stranger,” said a familiar voice. “You coming or going?”

  I looked up and broke into a wide smile. Harry was walking toward me, holding a small bag of what I assumed were groceries.

  “I wasn’t sure if our paths would cross today,” he said, shifting the bag from one hand to the other.

  “I’ve been in and out,” I said.

  “As have I,” he said. “But I’ve been dying to talk to you. I didn’t get to hear about your gig last night. How did it go?”

  I realized a lot had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and so first I brought him up to speed on the untimely death of his favorite mystery author.

  After getting over the initial shock, he too immediately commented on how Clifford Thomas would have preferred his murder have a locked room element to it, which in this instance was sadly lacking.

  “The police think the two murders are connected?”

  “They’re operating under that assumption,” I said.

  “Hopefully that doesn’t steer them down the wrong path. Remember what Dai Vernon so famously said,” Harry added, pointing a finger at me for emphasis.

  The problem was, the great Dai Vernon had said so many things Harry quoted, it was often difficult to land on which bon mot was the one he currently had in mind.

  “Um, was it ‘Confusion is not magic?’”

  He shook his head. “No, of course not,” he said, instantly annoyed. “Truer words were never spoken, but that’s not what I’m referring to.”

  I took another shot. “‘Don’t make unimportant things important?’”

  He gave me a pained look. “Of course not.”

  I racked my brain. “Um, ‘If I could climax as many times as a Derek Dingle routine, I’d be a happy man?’”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, you’re not even trying,” he said with irritation. “It was, ‘The problem with magicians is they stop thinking too soon.’”

  “I thought Al Baker said that.”

  This made him pause for a second, and then he waved it away. “Regardless of who said it,” he snapped, “my point is, sometimes the police stop at the first right answer without looking a little further for a second, better, right answer.”

  I certainly couldn’t argue with that, and even if I could, years of this sort of back and forth with Harry had taught me there was little point in trying.

  “Be that as it may,” he continued, his mood brightening, “how was your gig last night?”

  I gave him a brief rundown
of my successful evening, purposefully leaving out any mention of the shameful costume. I instead focused on how well some of the old routines had gone over, thanks to the new insight gained by taking them apart and putting them back together.

  “Excellent,” he said with a warm laugh. “There’s nothing like putting some new life in the old act. It sounds like it was a good night for magicians all around last evening.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, I heard through the grapevine Quinton Moon put on a rather dazzling display at a corporate event. Knocked their socks off, they say.”

  “Did he?” I said flatly, but Harry took no notice of my tone.

  “He did indeed. Apparently the meeting planner said, in effect, that Quinton Moon ‘walks on water and glows in the dark.’ So sorry I missed the show,” he added, as he put his key in the lock and unlocked the door I had just secured.

  “Are you headed out?” he asked as he swung the door open.

  I didn’t have time to answer, though, because at that moment there was a sudden tremendous icy crash around my shoulders, and seconds later we were both lying flat on the sidewalk. I thought I heard some shouts and struggled to open my eyes. Then there was another cold, wet crash against my head and I blacked out.

  Chapter 19

  I must have been out for only a matter of seconds, but tracking time at that moment was not my first concern. I sat up quickly and instantly wished I hadn’t. Black spots darted back and forth in front of my eyes, while wet snow and ice were slipping behind my collar and sliding down my back. Clearly a huge chunk of ice and snow had plummeted off the roof.

  Despite the pain and confusion, the cold, wet sting of the snow produced a thought from out of the blue. This idea hit me as hard as the icy boulder which had plummeted off the roof, and then it instantly melted away, like the arctic trickle currently running down the back of my neck. I tried to remember the thought, which had seemed so bright and important for the brief second I had held it in my head. And now it was gone. I squinted up, not really knowing what I was looking for. And then I remembered Harry.

  He was next to me, lying sprawled on the sidewalk, one side of his face pressed against the cold, wet ground. Scattered around him were chunks of ice and snow, the remnants of what had hit us before slamming us into the sidewalk.

  My instinct was to roll him over, but I stopped myself, recognizing there could be some sort of spinal injury. I leaned in close and said his name, but got no response. However, he was breathing, which I took as a minimal good sign.

  I looked up to see a small crowd had gathered and people were asking me questions, but my head was so scrambled I couldn’t make sense of the words. I reflexively grabbed for my phone, but then the sound of an approaching siren told me someone in the crowd had already effectively handled that one detail for me.

  I looked back down at Harry. His eyelids were fluttering just a bit, and I noticed his hat had been knocked off. For some unknown reason I felt the intense and overpowering need to find his hat and tried to stand up, but my knees gave out and I went down again.

  I was conscious when the EMTs arrived, so as I saw them approach I gestured them toward Harry.

  “I’ll be okay, take care of him. I’ll be okay.”

  I sensed I was at least minimally correct in my assessment. My third attempt to sit up was far more successful than my first, and the black spots which floated in front of my eyes were diminishing to gray specks as my cognitive powers, such as they were, began to return.

  The idea which had burned so brightly after the snowy impact was still gone, but other than that my faculties seemed to be returning. Moments later I found myself sitting on the curb, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, as the way-too-young EMT shined a light in first one eye and then the other.

  “How’s Harry?” I said, involuntarily squinting into the light.

  “He’s doing fine. We’ve got him immobilized and his vital signs look good.”

  “Is he conscious?”

  A momentary hesitation on her part, and then her professional tone returned in full. “Not currently, but his vital signs look good. We’re going to get him into the ambulance and then get one for you.”

  I shook my head and regretted it immediately. “I want to ride with Harry. I can sit up. I can sit up in back.”

  She gave me a long look. “You’re not going to hurl in the back of my wagon, are you?”

  I almost shook my head, then wisely thought better of it. “I promise to be hurl-free for the duration of the ride.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Let us get him situated first.”

  She got up and I turned and watched as they lifted Harry—strapped to a backboard—to the stretcher and then into the ambulance. The EMT assisted me to my feet and we were making the short walk from the curb to the ambulance when I heard a short scream. The crowd that had gathered turned in the direction of the sound and then parted.

  A woman with blood running down her face had stumbled out of the theater and was staggering toward us.

  It took me a moment to recognize it was Tracy.

  The triage personnel in the ER determined Harry was their first priority, followed by Tracy, with me bringing up a distant third. So distant, in fact, that after a quick assessment, my treatment took place in the waiting room and consisted of two ibuprofen for my pain and a cold compress for the bump on my head. In their defense, we weren’t the only emergency in the ER that evening, with people of all sizes, sicknesses, and injuries streaming in at a dizzying pace.

  The doctor who looked me over asked me to stay for at least an hour, so he could give me another quick check before I took off. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere without Harry and asked him when I could get in to see him. His answer as he walked away was authoritative and diplomatic and boiled down to the medical version of “when we say you can.”

  A vibration in my pocket reminded me that the room was plastered with signs instructing me to turn off my cell phone. I snuck a peek and saw it was a text from Megan.

  What’s going on? Heard there was an accident!

  I shielded the phone from prying eyes and composed a short, non-hysterical text to the effect that Harry and I were in the ER and I would call when they let me out. I had barely hit send when a message came buzzing back at me.

  On my way.

  There is probably no more helpless feeling than sitting in the waiting room of the ER while someone you love is behind a locked door marked “Staff Only.”

  Staring at it intently seemed to have no perceptible effect, so I eventually gave up on that and spent the next twenty minutes going through a really old Reader’s Digest. After not chuckling once at Life in These United States—which I’m sure was more a function of my mood than a reflection on the level of humor found in the anecdotes—I tried improving myself with the featured article, I Am Joe’s Pancreas.

  But after reading the sentence about how the pancreas contained features of two different glands—endocrine and exocrine—for the fifth time and still not understanding it, I shut the magazine and snuck another look at my phone.

  “You know, I count five signs which explicitly state you’re not supposed to be using your phone here in the ER.”

  I looked up to see Deirdre. “What are you gonna do, arrest me?”

  “No, but I know people.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “When two ambulances and a squad car are called to the address of a recent murder, you’d be amazed at how quickly word gets around.”

  “Why a squad car?” And then I remembered Tracy’s bleeding head. I’d been so dazed, I hadn’t even stopped to consider why she had been bleeding. “What happened to Tracy?”

  “Fred’s talking to her right now. Seems she was jumped by someone in the theater. She said she saw the door to the roof had been opened and when she went to investi
gate, she got hit on the head.”

  “Someone was on the theater’s roof?”

  “Perhaps. Or they were using that as an access point to the roof next door.”

  I considered the implications of this. “So the ice and snow that fell on Harry and me, that might have been on purpose?”

  Deirdre shrugged with classic non-commitment. “We’re looking into it. What’s the word on Harry?”

  “They’re not telling me, and the more they don’t tell me, the more worried I get.”

  She pursed her lips, then patted my shoulder affectionately, which made me even more concerned. “Let me go rattle some cages and see what I can find out.”

  I started to get up, but her comforting hand shifted to a firm, commanding one, pushing me back down into my chair. “You stay here and talk to your friends. I’ll get a full report.”

  “What friends?”

  But she was gone. I watched Deirdre move through the crowded waiting room and then realized she hadn’t been sarcastic. I did recognize faces in the crowd.

  I recognized Megan, and behind her was Franny, both weaving their way through the huddled masses. I broke into a smile and then saw that right behind them was Quinton Moon. My smile faded and was instantly replaced with a fake one, which I hoped no one could tell from the real thing.

  “Eli, what happened?” Megan pulled back the cold compress to check my head.

  “How’s Harry?” Franny looked from me to the reception desk and then back to me. “Are they stonewalling?”

  “Deirdre’s gone to get some answers. I have no idea. He was hit on the head, we both were, by some ice and snow that slid off the roof. He was unconscious. I don’t know,” I said. “They haven’t told me. Deirdre’s gone to find out.” I recognized I had started to repeat myself.