As a Thief in the Night

by Chuck Crabbe

  "I love you too." She held him close for a second and kissed him on the cheek. "Okay, you'd better get going."

  They run through the hotel room door falling over one another and laughing. Pale light is provided by one small lamp. The two double beds are separated by a cheap nightstand with a remote control and a program guide on it. Art that says nothing hangs on the walls. Beds are claimed and drawers are searched. The only discovery made is the lonely, unopened gift of the Gideons. They check the channels of the television hoping to come across naked bodies in the midst of lewd acts. The screen flashes across their anxious faces as K.J. Kalafati quickly flips through the channels: nothing. They have already been blocked by hotel administration at the request of the teachers. The teachers! This possibility being exhausted, a wrestling match breaks out between all four boys. Standing on one bed they jump across the small space to the other, and then back again. In mid-air they collide, and arms and legs are tangled with one another as they writhe on the beds liberating the sheets and blankets from their appointed places. Profanity is used freely. All this must be done. And when the necessary mischief comes to an end, the other rooms can be visited and compared with their own. Plans of escape can be formulated. How will the teachers on night duty be avoided? How will the masking tape on the door be dealt with? How will they reach the girls' rooms?

  Then three days of nothing, nothing, nothing. The tour guides and teachers march them around in the heat to the Mayflower and the site of the Boston Tea Party and all the rest of it. With their schedules and routines they manage to suck the life out of history giving the students no hands-on experience, no opportunity for exploration, and only a stale story full of dead words.

  Sweating, following, getting on and off the bus, Ezra hates every minute of this once anticipated trip. He hates listening to how important it all is...was. He shifts in the seats they put him in and tries to find a comfortable position in which to wait out the torture.

  ...And as the guides and teachers lecture he seeks out her face amongst the crowd of his classmates. She catches him looking at her and laughs, or she looks back in the direction of the speaker and pretends she has not noticed him at all. Louise Salomé plays with his affections as a cat plays with a ball of string, and he is unraveling by the minute...

  Todd Booker who, wearing sunglasses and expensive sneakers, not to mention being almost a full two years into puberty, was taken as a genuine authority gave the forecast for the coming days. During dinner on the third day he announced that all the bullshit was finally over and that henceforth they would be doing the things they had come to Boston to do (whatever those might be: use your imagination, boys!).

  As predicted, they had almost the entire next afternoon as free time for shopping, followed by the Salem Witch Museum in the evening. And their last stop on Friday before heading home would be Cheers. Gord had always watched that television show in the evenings and was particularly fond of Carla's brashness. Something about the bar's entrance, only hinted at in the opening montage set to the popular song, had always interested Ezra.

  He was very careful in selecting what he would buy with the money he'd been given. A final decision as to what he would spend it on was put off until the last possible day, whereas many of the others had been impulsive, snatching something up quickly at one of the overpriced gift stores they had visited. Of the original hundred and fifty dollars he still had sixty-four dollars left. He'd spend perhaps fifteen or twenty on food for the next two days and the rest would go toward whatever treasure he finally settled on; and, if he could, he hoped to bring something back for his aunt and uncle.

  They always spent their free time in the same four block radius of downtown Boston, the boundaries within which they were permitted to travel having been drawn out clearly, and early, by their chaperones. In the small amount of time he'd had in the days previous he'd broken down the possibilities of his purchase to three items: the first was a heavy book of Marvel superheroes filled with penciled character sketches from the genesis and early life of each hero, the second was a Swiss Army Knife with scissors and a strange device the clerk had told him was a lock pick (I can buy a knife? Just like that?), and the last was a pair of Ocean Pacific sunglasses that were too big for his head. Ezra contemplated the pros and cons of each, and his hands itched at the idea of having one of the chosen items as his (strangely) private possession during the long ride home.

  When they were finally set free Ezra, Danny Hadron, Chad Lambda, and K.J. Kalafati decided that they would do their shopping before they ate lunch. Boston smelled like caramel corn to Ezra, and the sounds were those of street performers, the market places that most cities have erased in the name of progress, and the shouts of commerce. In front of an old building with huge pillars and big stone stairs a crowd had formed. The boys ducked around the columns and discovered that the building was a courthouse. At the bottom of the stairs a young magician with closely cropped black hair and light brown skin performed sleight of hand tricks. As he spoke deliberately to the crowd, which had formed a circle around him and had staggered itself upon the different levels of the courthouse steps, he seemed almost to be falling asleep. His heavy eyelids fell each time he paused to measure his words, which he did often and carefully, and in time it became clear to all who watched that the magician was not tired at all, but completely at ease, almost meditative. His body was thin and athletic; his limbs trim with discipline. The four boys watched for several minutes as he made the mundane items of everyday life vanish, pulled cards from the hands of strangers, sent the queen of hearts into the Great Beyond, and then summoned her back with hands that moved as smoothly as flowing water. Somehow he managed to remove a woman's ring then, without changing positions, slid it onto the hand of another woman standing right beside Danny Hadron. When he summoned the woman to the front of the crowd and showed her the ring on her finger she screamed in surprise, bent over at the waist, and covered her mouth with her hands. He smiled politely at the woman's reaction, then removed the ring from her shaking hand and returned it to its stunned owner.

  After a round of applause had faded he clasped his hands together, as if in prayer, and continued: "Okay...the next thing I need is money. That's all you need to have to be part of the next trick. You don't need talent or good looks or any of that, all you have to have is money." He looked over his audience with a hint of amused expectation, but the small crowd remained silent. "All of you want to hold on to your money, I guess. But I'm easy to please. All I need is a quarter. You got a quarter sir?" he asked a man, two rows back, who was a full head taller than anyone around him. The man's face, clear above the crowd, startled Ezra. His memory, making use of that automatic mechanism of comparison by which we make sense of things that appear to be familiar, immediately brought before him the face of Mr. Pentheus, his communion teacher from that fall. He had to look a second time, and closer, before he was sure it was not him. The man smiled uncomfortably above the crowd and pulled his tie away from his neck,

  "No, I'm sorry, I don't." Ezra examined his face closely, trying to discern what it was that made him look so much like Pentheus.

  "How about you back there? You look like a man with money in his pocket." K.J. elbowed him.

  "Ez, he means you!" his friend whispered. Ezra's head snapped away from the tall man back towards the magician, who raised his eyebrows and nodded at him.

  "Do you have a quarter, my friend?" Confused for a moment, Ezra quickly dug around inside his pockets and pulled out a coin.

  "Uh, yeah, I do," he said, craning his head above the crowd and raising his voice loud enough for the magician to hear him.

  "Good. Come up here and join me."

  Ezra made his way through the crowd to the magician, who was a smaller man than he had originally appeared to be.

  "May I?" he held out his hand to Ezra for the silver coin. Taking it from him with both hands, he proceeded to carefully examine it. "Is this a Canadian quarter?" Ezra nodded. "That's fine. Watch
it closely, please." The magician held the quarter in front of his face between his thumb and forefinger, stared at it intently, brought it to his mouth, and then bit off the top half of it. The crowd murmured and collectively leaned in closer. Ezra tilted his head in confusion and, as he reached forward for the coin, the magician took a quick, deep breath, and blew the top half of the coin back onto it.

  Ezra's eyes widened as if looking for an answer to the magic. The magician took his hand and put the coin back in it, and Ezra held the coin up to inspect it. "This can't be the same quarter," he said, looking down at the magician's hands to see if the real coin was concealed somewhere.

  "Is the quarter I gave you Canadian?" the magician asked, speaking loud enough for the rest of the crowd to hear.

  "Yeah..." Ezra drew out slowly, still looking it over.

  "And do you believe I keep a hidden supply of Canadian coins, just in case I happen to pull someone from your country out of my audience?" he asked politely. "Shall I repeat the magic for you?" Ezra nodded. "Then I'll need a different quarter." Ezra gave him one and the man repeated the trick again to a similar, but tempered, response from the crowd. "That's twice I've done it. If you like, I'll perform the same feat as many as twenty-eight more times, for a total of thirty. Young man, what is your name?"

  "Ezra."

  "Ezra, do you have thirty silver coins in your pockets?" The boy felt absent-mindedly around the front of his pants.

  "No, sorry, I don't."

  "Well then, I'll give you back over to your friends in hopes that one day you are fortunate enough to carry that much money around with you. Thank you for your help." The magician took his hand in both of his, shook it, bowed slightly, and sent him on his way.

  Ezra watched the last ten minutes of the magician's act without speaking.

  After they left it was on to the business of deciding what each would buy. Chad Lambda had had his heart set on a pair of samurai swords, one long and one short, that were being sold, along with a cherry red display rack, in an almost impossibly cluttered store perched just above the comic shop where Ezra's Marvel Heroes book was for sale. Fully believing in his ability to wield such weapons, Lambda had marched right up to the clerk and produced the exact number of American dollars, without taking tax into account, necessary to obtain the so-called "messengers of death". The clerk looked at Lambda, adjusted his thick glasses, and then sternly pronounced that he could not buy the swords because he was not eighteen years of age. To add to this humiliation, he told them to leave his store and never come back.

  Full of disbelief the boys sat on a bench in front of the store and discussed the obvious injustice. Lisa Penny, walking alone and wearing shorts that earlier in the year had caused a scandal, approached them and then stopped at an odd distance. "Ezra, come over here for a minute. I need to talk to you about something," she said with an air of secrecy that women, and even girls, are able to make into something erotic. She motioned him away from the other boys. Unsure why he had been called, he leaned against the side of a bus shelter. Coyly, she moved closer to him. "Lou's upset, Ezra; she's crying."

  "Why? What's the matter?"

  "It's a necklace that she wants. Her parents didn't send her with much money. All the other girls have bought jewelry for themselves, and she can't buy a single piece." She looked at him shyly and shrugged. "You know, I saw the way the two of you were sitting on the bus together. I thought maybe you could buy it for her."

  Ezra looked at her tentatively, immediately under the pressure of her suggestion. "How much is it?" he asked quietly, so the other boys wouldn't hear him.

  "About sixty. Not too much..." Her voice rose happily: "Come on, I'll show you where it is." She quickly took him by the arm and led him down the street. "We'll meet you back at the bus!" she called to the other boys, who just shrugged and continued their lament over the samurai swords.

  Including sales tax the necklace came to sixty-two dollars, leaving him with only two dollars. Back on the bus, when he gave it to her, in a silver cardboard box, she screamed with delight, jumped up and wrapped her arms around his neck. His hands shook and sweated as he tried over and over again to fasten the clasp at the back of her neck. Lisa Penny stood beside him: "Here, let me," and she did it on the first try. Ezra smiled at her, looking for recognition for the selfless gift he had given, and communion with her as the only other one who knew how great his sacrifice had been. But Lisa only looked back at him blankly, raised her eyebrows as if to say: "Why are you looking at me?" and sat down without another word. He sat back down, a little confused, but forgot as soon as he saw her looking at her reflection in the bus window while adjusting the necklace. "I love it," she said beaming at him.

  With only two dollars left for the next two days he did not eat lunch. Instead, he bought some sesame snacks and nibbled on them throughout the day. He told his friends that he had a stomach ache and wasn't hungry, when in fact, by the time evening came around, his stomach had begun to hurt from hunger. On his final night in Boston Ezra entered the Salem Witch Museum with an empty belly.

  After accusations were made, after it had been ascertained that certain women had in fact been visited by the devil and had been asked to perform deeds on behalf of the Prince of Darkness, such as the baking of urine cakes and the murders of the servants of God, it was decided by the righteous right hand of Our Lord (personified by the local church and legal authorities) that those women so moved by the spirit of Lucifer should be put to death. It was also decided that in death their souls would suffer a degree of punishment that could never even be glimpsed or conceived of while their corrupt essence remained imprisoned in the flesh that had been its servant. So, while Ezra and the other children watched on, another group of bodies prepared to be added to that uncountable mass that is the result of believing metaphor to be fact, and believing God to be so limited as we are. Yes, those women would hang until they were dead, and their souls would be cast into infinite, unimaginable fields of fire where they would have the privilege of mingling their screams of terror and unending agony with their damned brothers and sisters—all of them burning, burning, burning. One by one the women were marched up the steps to the gallows. Each had her head placed in the noose and each had it tightened around her neck. Each was asked if there was anything she would like to confess, and when she declined, the trapdoor was opened and the sorceress disappeared beneath the stage.

  If anything were ever going to happen between them, if she were ever going to let him kiss her, it would be during their last night at the hotel. Before going back to their rooms though, they stopped at an Italian restaurant for dinner. All were planning to pay for the buffet that had been prepared for them, but Ezra, with his stomach and his pockets empty, pretended to be sick again so that the sacrifice he had made would remain hidden. He was not sure why it had to remain so, but the thought of disclosing what he had done filled him with shame. Telling his teachers that he thought he would be better off if he lay down, he waited on the empty bus while the others went in to eat. Lying across two seats, with his legs stretching across the aisle, he thought about how the night would go and listened to his stomach growl. In an effort to forget about his hunger he put his Walkman headphones on, but the batteries were dead. He calculated how many hours it would be before they were home and he'd be able to eat again. Eighteen before they were back at the school, and maybe one more before he got home. He thought about what Elsie might have in the fridge. Elsie and Uncle Gord: a few times since he'd been gone he had begun to miss them, but his thoughts now fell so obsessively on her that no one else was able to occupy the foreground of his mind, unless he willed them there, and then, once his will grew tired, the picture faded and she was back.

  She would probably be in her thin cotton pajama pants again tonight. Two nights before, he had seen her sitting against the wall in the hallway. Louise had been wearing an oversized Espirit t-shirt that she had stretched out over the thin legs she held close to her chest. The lower half of h
er body hidden inside the scarlet cocoon of this shirt, she spoke to the friends that invariably surrounded her. He wondered if she was wearing anything underneath it. He sat across from her pretending to carry on a conversation with someone else, stealing hopeful, indiscrete glances when he could. Finally she had been pushed over onto her side by one of her friends, and her legs had, in an attempt to keep her balance, sprung out from under her shirt. Her skin's tender color eased itself into the almost transparent softness of the cotton. The thin material clung to her legs in places and hung loose in others. Ezra could see the outline of her underwear pressing against the smooth, worn material. He imagined running one finger along the inside of the waistband, his fingertip dragging along the thin cotton, his nail and the back of his finger traveling along her warm flesh.

  "Ezra?" he heard someone call out from the front of the bus. He used the seat to pull himself up and saw Mrs. Simon, his English teacher, looking at him.

  "I'm right here," he said a little groggy. He had nearly drifted off. Mrs. Simon wore small designer eyeglasses with circular frames and lenses that always seemed to catch reflections in such a way that her eyes were obscured.

  "How are you feeling now?"

  "I'm okay. I think I just need to lie down for a while longer." His face flushed. Long ago he had realized that he had no talent for lying—unless he believed the lies to be true.

  "Are you sure you don't want to come in and eat something? I have some money I could give you if you need it."

  "I really don't think I can eat, Mrs. Simon." His stomach stabbed at him in protest. "Maybe later."

  "Okay then. We'll be inside for a while longer if you change your mind. Ben Johnson is running tonight, you know. We're going to stick around until his race is over." She hopped down the bus steps and the double doors closed behind her.

  He watched to make sure she went back inside the restaurant and then lay back down, hidden behind the seat. Elsie had always taught him to raise his legs up to his chest when his stomach hurt, and so, feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion, he pulled his legs into himself and gathered his hands just under his chin. Even when this did not offer him any relief, his eyes grew heavy again, and he began to fall asleep. It had been a long, warm day. Just after he lost track of his awareness, he shifted his weight forward, and slipped off the front of the seats. Waking with a start, he threw his arms out in front of him and braced himself against the floor before he hit it. Taking a moment to understand what had happened, Ezra took a deep breath, hoisted his body back up, and wiped the floor grit off his hands. He pulled his legs up to his chest again, pushed his back snugly against the seat, and slowly drifted back into sleep.