Wizard of the Pigeons

by Megan Lindholm

  “I always do.” He pushed mixed coins onto the counter to equal exactly fifty-seven cents. “I used to be a regular here, but the service got so bad I quit coming in. With people like you working here, maybe I’ll become a regular again.”

  For an instant a real person peered out of her eyes at him. He received a flash of gratitude. He smiled at her and let the tension out of her bunched shoulders. She served him steaming coffee in a heavy white mug. He let her forget him completely as she turned to her next customer.

  Wizard took his mug to the condiment counter. He helped himself to three packets of cream substitute and six packets of sugar, a plastic spoon, and four napkins. He sauntered casually over to the corner booth where the small girl and her brother pushed their food about on their plates as their parents lingered over coffee. He halted just short of intruding on them and allowed himself a few silent moments to make character adjustments. “Turning the facets of your personality until an appropriate one is face up” was how Cassie described it when she had taught him how. Prepared, he took the one more pace that put him within their space, and waited for the husband to look up. He did so quickly, his brown eyes narrowing. The muscles in his thick neck bunched as the man hiked his shoulder warningly, and set down his coffee mug to have his fists free.

  Very territorial. Wizard decided. He smiled ingratiatingly, cocking his head like a friendly pup.

  “Hi!” he ventured in an uncertain voice. He cleared his throat and shifted his feet awkwardly. A country twang invaded his voice. “I, uh, I hate to intrude, but I wonder if I could share your table. I’m waiting for my lady friend.”

  “Then wait at an empty table,” the man growled. His wife looked both apprehensive and intrigued.

  “Uh. I would, but, well, look, it’s like this. The first time I ever took her out, we wound up here, sitting at this table until three in the morning. Since then, we’ve always sat here whenever we come in. And well. today is kind of special. I think I’m going to, you know, ask her. I got the ring and the whole bit.” He patted his breast pocket with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. His soft voice was awed at his own boldness.

  The seated man was not moved. “Buzz off,” he growled, but his wife reached quickly to cover his hand with hers.

  “Come on, Ted, show a little sense of romance. What harm can it do? We’re nearly finished anyway.”

  “Well…” She squeezed his hand warmly as she smiled at him. Ted’s hackles went down. “I guess it’s okay.” Ted gave a snort of harsh laughter. “But maybe I’d be doing you a bigger favor if I refused. Look how they get, once you marry ‘em. Changing my mind before I can even decide. Yeah, sit!” Ted pointed commandingly at the end of the booth bench, and Wizard dropped into it obediently. He leaned his shopping bag carefully against the seat, and smiled with a shy tolerance at Ted’s rough joking.

  “Well, you know how it is, sir. I’ve been thinking it’s about time I took the step. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. I want to do this thing while I still got the time to get me some pretty babies like yours and be a daddy to them.” He spoke with a farm boy’s eloquence.

  “Hell, ain’t never too old for that, long as you find a woman young enough!” Ted laughed knowingly.

  “Yessir,” Wizard agreed, but he blushed and looked aside as he did so. Ted took pity on him. Poor sucker couldn’t keep his eyes off the door, let alone make conversation. “Eat up, kids. I want to be on the road before the traffic hits, and your mom still has three more places she wants to spend my money.”

  “Oh, Ted!” the woman protested, giving their visitor a sideways glance to assure him that women were not as bad as Ted painted them. The stranger smiled back at her with his eyes, his mouth scarcely moving. Then his eyes darted back to the door.

  Ted pushed his plate away. Leaning back into the booth seat, he lit a cigarette. “Finish your lunch, kids,” he repeated insistently, a trace of annoyance coming into his voice. “Clean up those plates.”

  The boy looked down at his hamburger in despair. It had been neatly cut into two halves for him. He had managed to eat most of one piece. “I’m full. Dad,” he said softly, as if fearful of being heard.

  His sister pushed her salad plate aside boldly. “Can’t we have dessert before we go?” she pleaded loudly.

  “No!” snapped Ted. “And you, Timmy, just dig into that food. It cost good money and I want it eaten. Now, not next week!”

  “I can’t!” Timmy despaired. “I’m full! If I eat anymore, I’m gonna throw up.”

  Ted’s move was so casual it had to be habit. His right hand, with the cigarette in it, stayed relaxed, but his left became a claw that seized Timmy’s narrow shoulder. It squeezed. “If I get that ‘throw-up’ bit one more time, you are going to regret it. I said eat, boy, and I meant it. Clean up that plate, or I’ll clean you up.”

  Cold tension rushed up from the children. The little girl made herself smaller. She took a carrot stick in both hands, like a chipmunk, and quickly nibbled it down. She refused to look at her father or brother. The boy Timmy had ceased trying to squirm away from Ted’s white-knuckled grip. He picked up his hamburger half and tried to finish it. His breath caught as he tried to chew, sounding like weeping, but no tears showed on his tight face.

  The woman’s face flushed with embarrassment, but Ted was too focused on his dominance to care if he caused a scene. The stranger was oblivious, anyway. His long narrow hand had fallen to the table, where he toyed with the candle in its scariet holder. He lifted it and swirled it gently, watching the flame gutter and leap as the wax washed around the wick.

  “It’s a very big hamburger for such a small boy.” The stranger did not speak in his self-effacing country twang. His tone made him an interloper at the table, drew Ted’s eyes to him and refocused his anger. Wizard’s eyes met his. Their stares locked.

  Wizard’s eyes blazed an unnatural electric blue. Abruptly he switched his gaze to Timmy. Ted’s startled gaze followed his.

  Wizard had continued to toy with the candle. The light from his candle faded, then leaped up with a white intensity. It became the only important light in the dimmed restaurant. It licked over the boy’s face, playing games with his features.

  His round child’s chin jutted into the firm jaw of a young man; his small nose lengthened; the brows on the ridges above his eyes thickened, and deepened the eyes themselves into a man’s angry stare. The anger and hurt in his face were not the emotions of a willful brat. Ted was looking into the eyes of a young man being forced to act against his own judgment and resenting it keenly. One day he would have to justify himself to that man.

  His hand dropped limply from his son’s shoulder.

  The candle flickered down, but Ted’s vision did not pass.

  How long since he had last looked at this boy? There had been a baby, like an annoying possession, and then a toddler, like an unruly domestic pet. They were gone. This was a small person. Someday he would have to confront him as an adult.

  Ted’s jaw gave a single quiver, then stiffened again. Wizard set the candle down on the table.

  “If you’re full, Tim, don’t eat the damn thing. But next time, tell me before I order it for you. It’ll save us both a hell of a lot of trouble.” Ted leaned forward angrily to grind out his cigarette on the untouched hamburger half. Wizard flinched slightly, but made no remark. The woman was looking from face to face in consternation. A message had passed, a change had been wrought; she knew it, but she also knew she had missed it. She began helping her daughter into her coat. She gave the stranger a long look from the comers of her eyes. He met it full face and nodded to acknowledge her uneasiness.

  Ted was moving to leave, almost fleeing. She rose and gathered her purse and bags. Nodding to the stranger, she managed, “Best of luck to both of you.”

  “And to you, also,” Wizard replied gravely. He watched them walk to the door, the girl holding her mother’s hand, the boy walking out of his father’s reach. They would need more than his l
uck wish. He gave a small sigh for them, and turned his attention to more immediate matters. Nina was busy taking orders; the aproned girl had just carried a tub of dirty dishes back to the dishroom. Wizard assembled his lunch.

  Only the top of Tim’s hamburger had been fouled. He discarded it and placed the rest on the woman’s plate beside the handful of crisply dark french fries she had rejected. Both the children had been served from the salad bar. Their two plates were a trove of broccoli spears, cauliflower florets, sweet pickles, and garbanzo beans. They had devoured the more prosaic radishes and carrot sticks, but left these adult-bestowed vegetables for him. Ted’s plate donated a wedge of garlic toast, one corner slightly sogged with spaghetti sauce, and two sprigs of parsley. Not a feast, he reflected, but certainly far from famine. And he needed it. The candle business had drained his reserve energies. It hadn’t been wise. If Cassie heard of it, she’d call him a meddler, even as her eyes sparkled with the fun of it.

  He ate without haste, but he did not dawdle. He had to remember that he was the man who had arrived late for a lunch date. No reason to rush. In the course of his meal, he refilled his mug four times, feeling with pleasure the hot rush of caffeine that restored him. During his fifth and final cup, he neatly stacked the dishes out of the way. He drew his newspaper from his shopping bag, folded it to the want ads and studied it with no interest. He had possessed the paper for several days now. It was beginning to look a little worn; best replace it today. So essential a prop was not to be neglected.

  As he gazed unseeing at the dense black type, he reviewed his morning. The Celestial Seasonings Sampler was the high point today. He had found the box of tea bags in the dumpster in the alley behind the health food store. The corner of the box was crushed, but the tea bags were intact in their brightly colored envelopes. The same dumpster had yielded four Sweet and Innocent honey candy suckers, smashed, but still in their wrappers. In a dumpster four blocks away, he had found two packets of tall candles, each broken in several places, but still quite useful. An excellent morning. The magic was flowing today, and the light was still before him.

  Wizard drained his mug and set it on the table. With a sigh he folded his paper and slipped it once more into his shopping bag. The bag itself was on exceptionally good one, of stout plastic and solid green, except for the slogan, SEATTLE, THE EMERALD CITY. It, too, had come to him just this morning.

  Rising, he glanced around the place and left his best wishes upon it.

  He paused at the pay phone on the way out, to put the receiver to his ear, then hit the coin return and check the chute.

  Nothing. Well, he could not complain. Magic was not what it once had been. It was spread thinner these days; one had to use it as it came, and never quite trust all one’s weight to it.

  Nor lose faith in it.

  He stepped back into October and the blueness of the day fell on him and wrapped him. The brightness of it pushed his eyes down and to one side, to show him a glint between the tire of a parked car and the curb. He stooped for a shining silver quarter. Now, two more of these, and a dime, and he could have his evening coffee in Elliott Bay Cafe, under the bookstore. He slipped it into his shirt pocket. He took two steps, then suddenly halted. He slapped his pocket, and then stuck his fingers inside it and felt around. The tarot card was gone. Worry squirmed inside him. He banished it. The magic was running right today, and he was Wizard, and all of the Metro Ride Free Zone was his domain. He believed he would find two more quarters and a dime today.

  A sidewalk evangelist with a fistful of pamphlets caught at his arm. “Sir, do you know the price of salvation in Seattle today?” He flapped his flyers in Wizard’s face.

  “No.” Wizard replied honestly. “But the price of survival is the price of a cup of coffee.” He pulled free effortlessly of the staring man, and strolled toward the bus stop.

  RASPUTIN SUNNED HIMSELF on the bench. making October look like June. He was wearing sandals, and between the leather straps his big feet were as scuffed and gray as an elephant’s hide. His blue denims were raggedy at the cuffs, and the sleeves of his sweatshirt had been cut off unevenly. His eyes were closed, his head nodding gently to the rhythm of his music, one long-fingered hand keeping graceful time. Black and Satisfied, Wizard titled him. Blending in with the bench squatters like a pit bull in a pack of fox hounds. The benches near him were conspicuously empty of loiterers. Wizard shook his head over him as he sat down at the other end of the bench.

  Rasputin didn’t stir. Reaching into a pocket. Wizard drew out a crumpled sack of popcorn fragments. He leaned forward to scatter a handful. Rasputin shifted slightly at the fluttering sound of pigeon wings as a dozen or so birds came immediately to the feed.

  “Don’t let them damn pests be shitting on me,” he warned Wizard laconically.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. Don’t you think you should carry a radio or something?”

  “What for? So folks would quit looking for my headphones? Ain’t my fault they can’t hear the real music. They too busy covering it up with their own noises.”

  Wizard nodded and threw another handful of popcorn. Rasputin’s hand danced lazily on the back of the bench. Muscles played smoothly under his sleek skin, sunlight played smoothly over it. The day arched above them, and Wizard could have dreamed with his eyes open. Instead, he asked, “So what brings you to Pioneer Square?”

  “My feet, mostly.” Rasputin grinned feebly. “I’m looking for Cassie. Got a present for her. New jump rope song. Heard it just the other day.”

  Wizard nodded sagely. He knew Cassie collected jump rope songs and clapping rhymes. “Let’s hear it.”

  Rasputin shook his head slowly in a graceful counterpoint to the dance of his hand. A passerby slowed down to watch him, then scurried on. “No way, man. Not going to repeat it here. Sounded new, and real potent in a way I don’t like. Gonna tell it to Cassie, but I’m not going to spread it around. Won’t catch me fooling with magic not mine to do.” Rasputin’s words took on the cadence of his concealed dance, becoming near a chant. Wizard had known him to speak in endless rhymes, or fall into the steady stamp of iambic pentameter when the muse took him. But today he broke out of it abruptly, the rhythm of his hand suddenly changing. A grin spread over his face slowly as he gestured across the square to where a woman in a yellow raincoat had just emerged from a shop.

  “See her? Walking like rain trickling down a window glass? She makes loves in a waltz rhythm.” A black hand waltzed on its fingertips on the bench between them. Wizard glanced from it to the tall, graceful woman crossing the square.

  “That doesn’t seem possible,” he observed after a perusal of her swinging stride.

  “The best things in this life are the ones that aren’t possible, my friend. ‘Sides, would I lie to you? You don’t believe me, you just go ask her. Just walk right on up and say, ’My friend Rasputin says you can make a man’s eyes roll back in his head while your thighs play the Rippling River Waltz.‘ You go ask her.”

  “No thanks,” Wizard chuckled softly. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Don’t have to, man. She’s one generous lady. Picked me up off the bus one rainy night, took me home and taught me to waltz horizontal. Kept me all night, fed me breakfast, and put me out with her cat when she left for work. Best night of my life.”

  “You never went back?”

  “Some things don’t play well the second time around; only a fool takes a chance at ruining a perfect memory. ‘Sides, I wasn’t invited. Kinda lady she is, she does all the asking. All a man can say to her is ’yes, please and ‘thank you kindly.’ That’s all.”

  Wizard shifted uncomfortably on the bench. This kind of talk made him uneasy, stirring places in him better left dormant.

  “So you’re looking for Cassie,” he commented inanely, looking for a safer topic.

  Rasputin gave a brief snort of laughter. “Did I say that? Stupid way to put it. No sense looking for her. No, I’m just waiting to be found. She’ll know I got
something for her, and she’ll come to find me. Don’t you know that about her by now? Think on it. You ever been looking for Cassie and found her? No. Just about the time you give up looking and sit down someplace, who finds you? Cassie. Ain’t that right?”

  “Yeah.” He chuckled slightly at the truth of it. “So what you been doing lately?”

  “I just told you. Getting laid, and listening to jump rope songs in the park. How ‘bout you?”

  Wizard shrugged. “Not much of anything. Little magics, mostly. Told a crying kid where he’d lost his lunch money. Went to visit Sylvester. Saw an old man hurting on a street corner. Asked him the time, the way to Pike Place Market, and talked about the weather until he had changed his mind about stepping in front of the next bus. Was standing in front of the Salvation Army Store and a man drove up and handed me a trenchcoat and a pair of boots. Boots didn’t fit, so I donated them. Trenchcoat did, so I kept it. Listened to a battered woman on the public dock until she talked herself into going to a shelter instead of going home. Listened to an old man whose daughter wanted him to put his sixteen-year-old dog to sleep. Told him ‘Bullshit!’ Old dog sat and wagged his tail at me all through it. That’s about all.”

  Rasputin was grinning and shaking his head slowly. “What a life! How do you do it. Wizard?”

  “I don’t know,” the other man replied in a soft, naive voice, and they both laughed together as at an old joke.

  “I mean,” Rasputin’s voice was thick and mellow as warm honey, “how you keep going? Look how skinny you getting lately! Bet Cassie don’t appreciate that in the sack; be like sleeping with a pile of kindling.”

  Wizard shot Rasputin a suddenly chill look. “I don’t sleep with Cassie.”

  The big man wasn’t taking any hints. “No, I wouldn’t either. No time for sleeping with something that warm and soft up against you. You don’t know how many times Euripides and I sat howling at the moon for her. Then you come along, and she falls into your lap. Her eyes get all warm when they touch you. First time she brought you to me, I saw it. Oh, oh, I say to myself, here come Cassie, mixing business with pleasure. Now you telling me, oh, no, ain’t really nothing between us. You sure you wouldn’t be telling me a lie?” An easy, teasing question.