Wizard of the Pigeons

by Megan Lindholm

  “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 his 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. Just imagine hanging Ignatius on a newborn baby. But Mitchell isn’t so bad. Do they call you Mitch?”

  “No.” He denied the name firmly, but Lynda was not listening. He thought for a moment that he heard evil gray laughter outside the window, but it was only the spattering of rain against the glass. It was falling in swift, large drops that rattled the old panes in their frames. Lynda ignored his denial. She was already opening the envelope and peering within.

  “It’s empty,” she pouted, and set it on the floor. On top of it she set two olive drab T-shirts with the sleeves ripped off.

  They filled Wizard with a nameless disgust. Then came a tumble of paperbacks, the bright colors of their covers chafed away by long confinement. Then a handful of photos in a plastic sandwich bag. Lynda slipped them out as casually as if they were hers. The old polaroid’s stuck together. Even from his place on the mattress., he could see their crumpled corners.

  “Who are these?” she demanded, sorting through them.

  “I don’t know.” He could scarcely be expected to know. He couldn’t see them from here. They could be photos of anyone, of anything. Anything at all, he told himself firmly.

  “Cute baby. Yours?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who’s the girl on the bicycle?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “An Oriental woman holding up a six-pack of beer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know much, do you?” Lynda teased gently. She set the pictures down on the pile. A pair of black-soled sandals joined them. “What’s in here?” Lynda held up a locked document box. Wizard looked at the flat gray box with the inscrutable keyhole. She shook it at him and something slid around inside, whispering unmentionable secrets.

  “Not aspirin,” said Wizard briefly.

  “Oh. Well, ex-cu-uuse me!” She laughed aloud at some joke he didn’t know and set the box atop the pile on the floor. It teetered there and then slid drunkenly to the floor. Wizard stared at it, half-expecting it to scuttle off into the darkness, but it kept still.

  “This looks gross! What’s this?” Lynda held it out at arm’s length for his inspection. The candle shone on it brightly with a merciless white light. A heavy piece of twine with something strung on it. Something small and brown and shriveled. Very far away, someone screamed out in the night.

  “It’s the cat’s foot,” Wizard admitted miserably.

  Lynda gave an abbreviated shriek as she dropped it. Then, with a suspicious glance at him, she picked up the candle and leaned over to inspect the object more closely. “It is not!” she exclaimed indignantly. “It’s got no fur and it’s flat and wrinkly. That is not a cat’s foot.”

  “It is,” Wizard insisted, knowing it was true. She ignored him, digging into the footlocker again. “Hey! Look at this! Not aspirin, but good enough, I’ll betcha. Kinda old, though. Maybe it’s not good anymore. Geez! Look at the buds there. Not a stem or a seed anywhere. You got some papers?”

  Wizard stared at her in mystification. She was holding a plastic sack of something. She shook it at him and it rattled like a shaman’s charm. “You got any rolling papers?” she demanded again, a shade of irritation in her voice. “Geez, you’re hard to talk to: you never say anything. Wait! Wait just a moment! Here’s the pipe, down in a corner where the light didn’t reach it. Okay, we are in mighty fine shape now.”

  She dug down into the footlocker and came up with an oddly carved little pipe. It was ivory and dirty orange, the color of old bones lying on red earth. The little face carved on the bowl had a pointy beard and squinchy little eyes. Wizard knew that face from somewhere. Somewhere nasty.

&nb
sp; Lynda was carefully packing the herb into the pipe bowl. She had put the pipe completely inside the bag and was loading it there, loath to let any particle spill. There was a childish glee to her actions and the little sideways glances she kept shooting at Wizard. He felt acutely uncomfortable. Threatened.

  Every muscle in his body tensed as she crossed the room to him. She squatted and then sank onto the thin mattress. beside him. Her thigh warmed his. Her perfume was stronger than the musk of frightened cat and sweat. Her presence pushed away the familiarity of the room.

  Her lighter flared a third time, scalding his naked eyes. She drew the flame down into the bowl of the pipe. She sucked at it, making embers glow in the tiny bowl. She held her breath and then released a stream of gray smoke that coiled around them like incense. Wizard had a sudden flash of the cathedral with its vaulted ceilings and lofty ideas. The squinchy eyes of the pipeman winked at him.

  “That’s good,” she breathed into his ear. She gave a sigh that was part groan. “I haven’t done this in so long. Your turn, baby.” She held the pipe in front of him. He stared into its mocking little face, making no move to take it. She shook it at him impatiently. “Hurry up, it’ll go out.” She set the stem to his lips and looked deep into his eyes. Her eyes were gray in the dim light and immensely large. They spun like luminous pinwheels as she stared down into his soul. A tiny alarm bell rang unheeded in the back of his mind.

  His breath caught and he coughed, acrid smoke spilling from his nostrils and lips. Lynda laughed delightedly and compounded his difficulty by thumping his back. The room receded, fading into the darkness, then came back to press closely around him. He swung his eyes slowly, following the drifting walls. The pigeons were watching him. Their eyes were orange and gold and black as the candle flame touched them, tiny round eyes shining in the darkness. His flock. Their bills were sunk into their breast feathers, their wing plumes preened back smartly. Their little round orbs were carefully nonjudgmental. He would not find condemnation there.

  His slow gaze wandered back to Lynda. She was breathing out, her warm breath and the smoke condensing in the chill air of the room. She leaned against him heavily with a throaty chuckle like the cooing of a fat gray pigeon. He looked down into her face, at her finely pored skin, the tiny individual hairs of her carefully groomed eyebrows, at the tiny lines in her lips where the color of her lipstick was trapped and brightest. She held the pipe up. He looked at her through a thin streamer of drifting gray smoke. A sudden gust of wind and rain rattled his windows and pushed at the blanket.

  “No.” The awareness was like a cold hand on the back of his neck. It hadn’t been Booth at all. This ridiculous woman who talked so much she hardly noticed his silence, this foolish bit of fluff with her make-believe problems and her petty plottings; she was dangerous. Would she have stood by while Booth beat him to a pulp, and then left with the victor? He didn’t know. Worse, she probably didn’t know herself. She had set every stage this evening. He had drifted along with her plans like a canoe in the current. Now he heard the laughing whisper of the rapids ahead. She could dash him to pieces with her smile. He hitched himself away from her touch, heedless that she fell back onto his mattress.“No!” he repeated to the hand that reached up to wave the pipe lazily before him.

  “Whatsa matter, baby?” Lynda sat up languorously. She unbuttoned her raincoat and shrugged out of it so that it fell onto the mattress. behind her. She smiled, her generous mouth opening too far, showing too many teeth. “This is good stuff. Not the best I’ve ever had, but not average. Too good to waste. Come on, it’s just burning itself up. Take a hit before it goes out.”

  The pipe came back to his lips. He pushed her hand away.

  “No. I want you to leave now. I’m tired and I’m sick. You’d best go.” His words sounded petulant and childish, even to himself. Even though they were exactly what he needed to say.

  She responded to them as if he were eight years old.

  “No, baby. That’s why I should stay. You need me. C’mon. Listen to Lynda, okay? She’ll take care of you. C’mon.” She put the pipe back to her own lips, drawing steadily until the tiny coal shone bright and unwinking as a cat’s eye. She held it in, making small throaty sounds of pleasure, then letting it stream slowly from her mouth She fell against him, her body a warm weight, and pushed the pipe at his mouth insistently.

  “No. I don’t want it.” He caught her wrist and held the pipe away. She smiled at him mischievously. Her other hand moved slowly, like smoke, to take the pipe from her captured hand.

  She took a short hit of it and then poked it at his lips, saying, “Come on, baby, it’s nearly all gone. Loosen up a little. You take the last one. Better hurry now.”

  “I said no!” He caught the other wrist, gave it a shake that sent the pipe spinning away into the darkness. He heard the thump of its bounce, saw a tiny shower of sparks and a glowing coal hit the floor. Within seconds it winked out. He drew his eyes back to Lynda, making several efforts before they focused property. It never takes much to stone you, does it? someone had laughed a long time ago. Laughed ‘til it hurt him. A long time ago, he reminded himself.

  He was confused to find that he still held both of Lynda’s wrists. She was not struggling but was leaning into her captivity.

  She rested her face against his, her cheek pressing his cheek, her breath streaming past his ear. “You smell good,” she muttered, rubbing her cheek against his. “You smell wild. I am so damn tired of tame men. I like a man who has spirit and passion. Not like that damn Booth. No balls. I swear, he only hit me because he was too dumb to think of anything else to do. He couldn’t handle me and he knew it. I was too much for him. But I like you. You tell me ‘no’. And you’re quiet. But you do what you want to do. I like that in a man. I don’t want to know every little thing about him; takes all the mystery away. And you feel just a little bit dangerous to me. I like a man with secrets and claws. I told that to my sister once. Damn bitch told me to go watch a vampire movie. She didn’t understand. She’s got a man like a fat poodle, curly black hair and all. But I’ve got a man here with secrets and silences. I like you, Mitch. I like you a lot.”

  Her mouth wet his face, her tongue trailing lazily across his cheek to his mouth. The warmth fled from her touch, leaving a cold trail of saliva across his skin. He thought of silver slug tracks on sidewalks in the morning. She put her wet mouth against his, her lips moving as if to devour him.

  “Stop it!” His grip tightened on her wrists as he twisted his face away from hers. She laughed lightly and sagged against him. Something unhooked in his brain and his equilibrium went. He fell back on the mattress. and she landed heavily atop him. She giggled at his game of reluctance. Her harnessed breasts nosed against his chest aggressively. She let her head loll forward on her neck so that the weight of her long hair fell across his face. He released her wrists and foundered beneath her, feeling trapped and entangled in her body. Lynda giggled again. The sound galvanized him.

  “Get off me!” He struggled madly, pushing her from him as he rolled away heedless of her tangled hair. She didn’t care. She was laughing helplessly as she rolled across his mattress.

  He tried to sit up, but the directions of the room changed around him. He closed his eyes and it spun even faster.

  “Let me be on top,” Lynda begged, very close, her breath warming his face. He pulled back from her, slapped away the hands at his throat. Her busy fingers dropped to his belt. “I’ll do all the work,” she offered, pulling his shirttail free. Ancient urges rolled down his spine to squirm in his belly and erupt unnervingly. Earlier today, his magic had been shut down, the switches thrown to plunge him into emptiness. Now Lynda was reactivating this other part of him, putting systems on-line whose flashes and thunderings he had stilled long ago. He groped within himself for control, but it was all set on override.

  His hands gripped her hips. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, reaching for sanity and order. He found only her weight on his thighs,
warm and solid.

  “I don’t do this,” he said, but his voice sounded far off, even to himself. He wondered if Lynda could even hear him as he tried to explain. “There are certain things denied to me. Things I must not do if I am to retain my controls and my magic.” Her hands were cold on his belly, sliding around under his shirt and up his chest. She pinched one of his nipples, hard.

  He divorced himself from the pain-pleasure. “I must not carry more than a dollar in change. I must not harm pigeons. I must listen to people and tell them the Truth when I Know it. I must not harm pigeons…” He caught himself circling and tried to find his track again. He couldn’t remember the other taboos.

  It didn’t matter. She wasn’t listening. Only their bodies were in the same room. He was just a warm prop for her in her fantasy game of seduction. He coughed and felt her fist grip him.

  “Feels ready to me,” she chuckled throatily. “Isn’t it always the best. the first time with someone new? And stoned. It puts all the magic back into it.”

  “All my magic is lost to me,” he corrected her. He was aware of his body’s betrayal, but he scrambled frantically away from it, trying to keep the memories out, to block away the sensory input that stirred up such strong images from the past.

  All the forbidden and dangerous things came pressing out from the corners of his mind, to leer and snicker at him. There were so many things he could not bear, things severed from his life with the cold precision of a surgical scalpel. Now they came, one by one, to hook their claws back into his flesh, to press their sucking greedy mouths against his veins. He lost track of where and who he was. The thing he must not do became the thing he must do, a sightless appetite to appease before he could know peace again. The world was rocking with the rhythm of a railroad train picking up speed. He was along for the ride, on the night express back to the black pit.

  “Mitchell,” sighed Lynda.

  “Yes,” he confessed.

  MORNING AVALANCHED INTO HIS EYES when he opened them.