Magic Times

by Harvey Click

  Jason wanted to hit her, but he knew decent men didn’t hit women even when they deserved to be hit. He got up and marched straight toward Cosmo, his face burning with rage, but before he could get close enough to swing his fist Cosmo scurried away like a scared chipmunk.

  Chapter Six

  Jason kept marching and his face kept burning till he arrived at Drew’s apartment.

  “Who is it?” Drew called.

  “Jason.”

  The door opened. “Well, well,” Drew said. “You certainly visit at your own convenience, don’t you?”

  Jason stormed past him and paced around the living room, flexing his fists and making mean faces.

  “She hates me,” he said. “I love her and she hates me.”

  “Sit down, you’re making me nervous,” Drew said.

  Jason sat in the armchair and flexed his fists some more.

  “She’s knocked up with my baby, and she says I ain’t good ‘nough to raise it. She’s been letting some scrawny twerp paw ‘round at her tits and she don’t want them to be called tits no more.”

  “Yes, yes, I knew all this of course,” Drew said. “I knew she was pregnant and I knew you’d be right back here wanting my help. I told you so, remember? But I also recall that I specified ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I have a tight schedule, you know.”

  “How’d you know all that stuff?”

  “I told you, I drew up your chart. The odd thing about astrology and magic is that they actually work. I led you straight to Holly, didn’t I?”

  “You did that sure ‘nough. You know your magic spells all right I guess. Now I’m thinking maybe they’s something else you might could do.”

  “Yes, I knew you’d be wanting another favor. What is it this time?”

  “I dunno, it’s like I was thinking you might could mix me up a love potion or something like that.”

  Drew clapped his hands and laughed rather shrilly.

  “You young punks make me sick sometimes,” he said. “You think the whole world revolves around you. Well, I have news for you—you’re just one tiny insignificant molecule in the vast river of time.”

  He spun his chair in an angry circle and laughed a bit more.

  “I don’t see what’s so damn funny,” Jason said. “I love her and she hates me and now she’s knocked up with my baby. I don’t see nothing at all funny ‘bout that.”

  “Very well,” Drew said. “Love charms are difficult and tricky, but I’ve been successful in the past. They’re not cheap, however. You don’t have the money to afford such work. How much do you have?”

  “I got ‘bout thirty bucks and that’s it.” Jason knew he had more, but not much more, and he needed something to live on. “But I promise I’ll send you some more right quick when I can.”

  “Very well, my dear boy. I’m a sucker for young folks. Give me ten now and forty more within a week.”

  Jason got a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to him.

  “Now then, I believe you happen to owe me ten more. Yesterday you gave me forty dollars, and I said you’d owe me another ten once we found Holly. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Well, yeah, I mean we sorta found her I guess, but I still don’t know where she’s living, so I don’t think that hardly counts.”

  Drew held out his palm and cleared his throat noisily, so Jason reluctantly handed him another ten.

  “Well, that just ‘bout damn near cleans me out,” he said. “I don’t know what kinda flytrap hotel I can stay in for what I got left.”

  “I’ve taken care of that problem for you as well,” Drew said. “I just got off the phone with Rue Anne, and I’ve persuaded her to forgive and forget. Fortunately only a few books were damaged, and the valuable ones are all intact. She did say, however, that you burned a hole in her mattress with a marijuana cigarette. Is there any truth to that?”

  “I guess Mingo musta burned that hole. He was smoking pot up there like a house on fire. But I don’t know ‘bout staying with Rue. She slipped something in my ice tea and drugged me up, and I think she’s some kinda witch. Even Mingo says it ain’t safe.”

  “You’re quite mistaken. It’s true, as a student of mine for several years, Rue has been studying certain esoteric hermetic techniques, but her primary interest is the healing arts. If she ‘slipped something,’ as you put it, into your iced tea, I assure you it would have been purely medicinal, perhaps something to soothe your nerves. I’ve taught her a great deal about medicinal herbs, and now she grows them in her back yard. Rue Anne is actually quite a kind and sensitive woman, once you get to know her. I would say she’s a child of nature with natural healing talents.

  “In any event, she’s keenly interested in painting your portrait. She considers you a true Adonis, and she wants to add your likeness to her collection. Besides, I know of no other place where you can get room and board for five dollars a night.”

  “I guess I might could let her draw a pitcher of me, but I ain’t drinking no more a her ice tea.”

  “Well then, that’s all nicely done and settled,” Drew said. “Now let’s see what we can do about your love charm. Fortunately you’ve found me on a most unusual day when I have no clients scheduled to interrupt us, so I’m thinking maybe I should extend to you a very rare privilege. But first perhaps you’d like a drink.”

  “I sure could use one.”

  Drew vanished into the kitchen and reappeared with a bottle of Heaven Hill and two small glasses.

  “Charming name, isn’t it?” he said. “Who hasn’t wanted to bask in the sun at some pastoral Arcadia called Heaven Hill?”

  He filled the glasses and handed one to Jason. “It’s like medicine to me—without it my bowels would be solid granite. Here’s to our friendship, which I predict shall be long and happy.”

  They clinked glasses and drank.

  “Ah, that’s much better!” Drew said. “I promised you a rare privilege, and now you shall have it.”

  Bringing the bottle with him, he wheeled himself to the door in the back of the room between the kitchen and the bathroom. He opened it and said, “Come in. This is my study. One might almost say this is my soul. I allow very few people inside.”

  Jason reluctantly followed him. A large table without chairs sat at the center, covered with books, tall stacks of paper, and an electric typewriter. More books filled shelves against all four walls. There was a large red cushion on the floor in one corner.

  “Ah, the sweet mysteries of philosophy, science, alchemy, goetia, and hermetic theurgy,” Drew said, indicating the bookshelves with a sweep of his arm. “But this, you see, is the most important book of them all”—and he pointed to the mess on the table. “My book.”

  “You write stories?” Jason asked.

  “Oh no, it’s not fiction!” Drew exclaimed with astonishment. “It’s philosophy. Indeed it’s much more than philosophy, it’s a scientific examination of the very fabric of reality. At one time many years ago I called it The Unbound, but I abandoned the title because even that expansive word is too feeble to suggest its scope. I suppose those old pages with that title are by now buried under fifty pounds of newer.”

  “Manure?” Jason asked with surprise.

  “Newer, newer!” Drew shouted. “What I’m trying to tell you is, the book keeps evolving over the years like a living species. Where it shall end up is anyone’s guess.”

  “I ain’t done much writing myself,” Jason said, “but I can spell pretty good.”

  “Allow me to explain to you the genesis of the project. Why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable on that nice cushion over there?”

  “Don’t feel like sitting.”

  “Sit down. There, that’s much better.”

  Drew poured himself another whiskey and stared at his stacks of paper for a long while without saying anything.

  “I could use another drop of that myself,” Jason said.

  “Very well, pour yourself one, then sit back down an
d quit interrupting me.”

  Drew didn’t seem to be paying any attention, so Jason filled his glass to the brim.

  “You see, it all happened one night in Colorado,” Drew said at last. “Well, actually it happened the next morning to be precise, but let’s begin with the night before. I was up on the top of a mountain, gazing off into the twilight over a deep, lovely valley. It seemed to me that amidst all that beauty I should be graced with a revelation. I shut my eyes and meditated and then stared out at the darkening mountains some more, but all I could think of was whether my Harley had enough gas to get me to a station in the morning.

  “Then it started to rain, a very cold rain, the kind that gets straight into your bones. I climbed into the tent with Marmalade, but the rain got worse and began to freeze in thick sheets on the outside of the tent, weighing it down so heavily I was afraid it might collapse upon us. The wind turned savage, and I was certain it would blow our tiny tent away if the ice didn’t destroy it first.

  “Marmalade was exhausted by a long day of riding and slept through the dreadful wind and freezing rain like a baby, her soft breasts pressed against my back, but I didn’t sleep. I was never so terrified before in my entire life. I desperately wanted out of that tiny, dark, racking tent, but the storm raged like Armageddon and there was no safe place to go. The tent was heavy with ice and so was my blood.

  “It was awful. I was an atheist at the time, but I prayed for safety and prayed for morning. I prayed, ‘though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil,’ and I prayed, ‘I shall take refuge in the tent of the Lord.’

  “Somehow I made it through the night, and so did the tent. The morning was bitterly cold, but the freezing rain had stopped and the wind had died down enough that I could gently ease the Harley down the ice-covered mountain road, praying fervently every slippery foot of the way that we wouldn’t slide off a cliff.

  “That’s when it hit me, in one huge rush, while we were inching our way down the icy mountain road. I’ve been trying to put it into words ever since.”

  Drew paused with a stern expression long enough to regain the attention of Jason, who had been on the verge of nodding off.

  “That’s when it hit me, my revelation. It struck me like a meteor. I realized that the universe is immensely big and immensely old. In fact, something has always existed in some form or another because there’s no such thing as nothing—no big bang pops out of nothing. And I thought, for God’s sake, if this little fist-sized ball of snot thinks”—tapping his round skull—“then what must that do”—making an expansive circle with outstretched arms. “For God’s sake, I thought, how presumptuous to imagine that this”—tapping his head again—“is smarter than all of that out there, all of that foreverness.

  “There is a God, I thought. And at the very instant of this revelation, my Harley ran out of gas and I had to walk five miles down an icy mountain road to get some more.”

  He let out a shrill laugh. “Don’t you get it, Jason? Five cold slippery miles I had to walk, or it may have even been eight.”

  “Hmm,” Jason said, nodding his head solemnly, though he had no idea what the story was supposed to mean.

  “Of course, that was nothing compared to what the old tyrant had up his sleeve for me,” Drew added with something of a snarl.

  “You think maybe you could get started working on that love charm now?” Jason asked.

  “Very well. God knows you could use a little charm. First I’ll need some information. Though I saw Holly myself, I need to know how she appears to you. Describe her eyes, for example.”

  “Sorta like honey color I guess.”

  “Good. That’s very useful.” Drew scribbled a note and said, “Now describe her personality.”

  “Sweet as honey sometimes—but right now more sour, like vinegar.”

  “Very good. Now I need to know something secret about you, something that even Holly doesn’t know. A favorite childhood toy, for example, or maybe a childhood nickname.”

  “My ma useta call me Jasper when I was real little. Nobody else ever did.”

  Drew froze, his pen poised motionless in midair.

  “Did you say Jasper?”

  “Yep.”

  Drew was silent for a while. Then he said, “I suppose I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Well then, this is enough to go on. You just sit still while I work on this.”

  Jason tried to sit still while Drew scribbled, but sitting still was impossible. He stared at the books on the shelves, thinking if he was going to have to go to college to make Holly happy, then he’d better learn how to like books. After a while he got up, a bit dizzy from the whiskey, and quietly gave them a closer examination, though their thick spines made his head ache.

  All those words, millions and millions of words jammed together like one of Drew’s stupid stories, but going on and on and never ending. How could anyone read all these damn things?

  He noticed a title on one of the book spines—The Story of O—and he wondered why anyone would sit around writing a whole book about zero, about absolutely nothing at all.

  But then Drew was very smart, despite his stupid stories, and no doubt it was these books that had made him smart, and Jason decided he was going to read enough books to become very smart himself so Holly wouldn’t ever insult him again. They would sit around happily in their nice cheerful apartment reading big thick books while their baby slumbered in its crib, and occasionally they’d smile or chuckle at the smart things they were reading in the pages.

  All alone on the top of the bookcase was a tall painted china figurine of a woman with long golden hair dancing in a flimsy white garment. Something about her—maybe her slim, sexy figure and her small, pointed breasts—captivated Jason, and he reached up to touch her. Her smile, painted with the most delicate red line, didn’t flicker as she tumbled to the floor.

  “Dear God!” Drew roared, and in flash of spokes he was there to stare at the pieces. “You’ve destroyed her! There’s no way to repair her now, nothing to be done.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jason said. “I didn’t hardly touch her.”

  “Get out of here! Go to the living room and sit down there and don’t move even a single damned muscle until I’m finished. This room is my book, it’s my very soul, and I was grossly deluded to invite you into it. You have no understanding of what’s in here, no appreciation for the magic, the substance, the solemnity. For you it’s just another playroom to romp around in like a demented baboon.”

  Jason went to the living room and sat very still in the armchair. Breaking Drew’s figurine had made him feel even more miserable, and he resolved he would search through some stores to see if he could find another china piece to replace it. Maybe a cute dog or cat or an angel with wings or something like that.

  Before long, though, his spirits began to lighten. Drew had proven his skills by finding Holly, and if he was just as skillful with love charms then very soon Holly’s tune was going to change. Jason began to imagine what it would be like with Holly hopelessly in love with him. Maybe he’d give a bit of her own back to her, just to teach her a lesson. He imagined the expression on her lovesick face if he told her, “Yeah, maybe you got the genes for brain-power, but your ass is way too fat.”

  It seemed to be taking a long time to put the spell together, and Jason was finding it difficult to sit still. After half an hour or so, Drew emerged from his study to visit the bathroom, then went right back to his study and slammed the door. He started singing “Blueberry Hill,” a bit off key Jason thought, and when the song was done he started singing it again.

  Finally he came out and said, “Very well, now listen closely. You’ll have to pick up a jar of honey and a bottle of vinegar. You want honey that matches the color of Holly’s eyes as closely as possible. There’s a health food store down the street that carries many varieties, so you should be able to find a pretty good match. They also carry natural unfiltered apple cider vinegar, and that’s the
kind you want, something with no chemical additives.”

  He handed Jason a square of pink construction paper. “This is your amulet. Be careful with it. Try not to tear it or otherwise damage it by any of the other methods for which you seem to have such a talent.”

  There was a diamond drawn inside another diamond with some sort of silver ink, and around the diamonds were drawings of a flower, an hourglass, a scythe, and some other stuff.

  “You’ll place this within the room but out of eyesight when you perform the ritual,” Drew said.

  Next he handed Jason a sheet of ordinary paper with gibberish printed on it:

  NADES SURADIS MANINER

  HOLLY

  JOY SPELL HAR

  “The names at the top are the powers you’ll call on. Say them after me until you can pronounce them correctly.”

  This took a while, but eventually Drew was satisfied.

  “Very well. First you will say the three names, then you’ll say Holly’s name, then you’ll say ‘joy spell har.’ All of this must be pronounced very clearly in a loud voice. Then you’ll repeat all the above and then repeat it all again. That means a total of three times, in case your skills in arithmetic are as deficient as certain other skills seem to be. Will you remember all this, or must I write it down?”

  “I’ll remember. What does ‘joy spell har’ mean?”

  “The words are an anagram of Holly’s name and your secret name. Because you know Holly’s name but she doesn’t know your secret name, this will give you power over her.”

  “What’s an anagram?”

  Drew sighed. “It means I’ve made three words by scrambling all the letters of her name with all the letters of your secret name. Scrambling your names together means that you and she will be inextricably entwined. She won’t be able to untangle herself from you unless she discovers your secret name.”

  “That makes sense I guess.”

  “I’m so glad it does. The ritual should probably be performed in Rue Anne’s bathtub, just so you don’t make a mess on her floor. You’ll want to wait until she’s gone, of course, but that shouldn’t be difficult because she likes to go out and prowl at night.