Asimov's SF, January 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  We met every month for two years. Then his dad got transferred to the north side, they moved, and he wound up in my school district. We became inseparable. We played on the same teams, read the same books, lusted after the same girls, and while we didn't go to Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders once a month any more, we remembered to go once each year to celebrate our meeting.

  World War II broke out just about the time we graduated from high school. We both enlisted the same day, but I wound up in Europe and Maury spent the next three and a half years in the Pacific. He was at Tarawa and Okinawa, I was in Italy and the Battle of the Bulge, neither of us ever caught a bullet or a social disease, and when we got out we decided to go into business together.

  Truth is, we went into a lot of businesses together, one after the other. Never went broke, never got ahead. We'd try one for a couple of years, then decide it wasn't going to make us rich, sell out or close up, start another, and so on. We owned a drugstore, a pizzeria, a delivery service, a hardware store, even a record shop. The record shop was the only one that ever made a decent profit, but by then rock and roll had replaced real music and we couldn't stand the sound of it, so we sold out once again.

  And then one day we turned around, and we were a pair of eighty-two-year-old widowers. I'd lost my first wife to cancer, my second to a stroke. Maury's wife was killed in a car accident, he lost a son in Vietnam and a daughter to drugs. We were living on our Social Security checks, which weren't much. Maury's arthritis was getting worse every month; there were days he couldn't drag himself out of bed, days he found it too painful to walk. With me it was a bunch of things—I'd lost a lung to cancer, I had prostate problems, an artificial hip, a few other ailments, none of them fatal, but they'd started to add up—and with no one around to care for either of us we decided it was time to move into an assisted-living facility. We chose the Hector McPherson Home, not because the service was any better, and certainly not for the food, but because they had a small apartment with two bedrooms, and we could keep each other company. Besides, no one else wanted to listen to us. Most people would talk about Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise. Us, we'd talk about Citation and the Bambino, Mae West and Bogart and Lefty Grove. They'd pin pictures of Pam Anderson and Paris Hilton on their walls; we'd remember pin-ups of Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth in our barracks.

  We moved in a couple of years before the millennium, and we were reasonably content. I suppose some of the others thought we were gay, though straight or gay I don't know what they thought a couple of ninety-year-old geezers could do when the lights were out. We didn't figure to see much of the future, so we talked about the past. We'd talk about JFK and Nixon, and about Nashua and Swaps. We'd talk about Sugar Ray Robinson and Jersey Joe Walcott, about the ones who lived and the ones—there were so many of them, like Marilyn and James Dean and Brian Piccolo—who didn't.

  And sooner or later the conversation would come around to Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders, where we'd met so many years ago.

  “What a place it was!” said Maury. “You know, I really believed that he could perform magic."

  “Ah, come on, Maury,” I said. “He sold tricks. Every one of them had a gimmick. You always bought one, and he always showed you how it worked."

  “I didn't say you or I could do magic,” replied Maury. “I said I thought he could."

  “You're turning into a senile old man,” I told him.

  “And you're turning into a grouchy old one,” he shot back. “Hell, I was a kid. My whole life, the whole world was ahead of me, a billion possibilities. Why shouldn't I believe in magic?"

  “He never called himself a magician,” I said. “I think the term is illusionist."

  “He never called himself anything,” said Maury stubbornly. “But he could make a parrot vanish, or turn it back into an egg, and when I was eleven years old that was magic enough for me."

  “He was good, wasn't he?” I said. “I wonder why we never saw him on TV or in the movies."

  “If your film lab can make Superman fly or send the Millennium Falcon out at light speeds, what do you need a real magician for?"

  “He wasn't a real magician,” I said.

  “He was real enough for you and me,” said Maury. “We kept going back, didn't we?"

  “Until we outgrew him."

  “I never outgrew him,” insisted Maury. “Life just kept getting more and more complicated, and I had other things to do."

  “Hell,” I said, “maybe we should have hired him to entertain at the pizza joint. We might not have gone broke quite so fast."

  “He wouldn't have done it."

  “How do you know?"

  “He was a connoisseur, not a performer,” said Maury with conviction.

  “Too bad,” I said. “Maybe he could have magicked the customers into spending more money."

  “He probably could have, if he'd wanted to,” said Maury. “I don't think he gave much of a damn about money. Why would he take half an hour out of his Saturday and show us a couple of dozen tricks, just to get us to spend a quarter or a half dollar?"

  Maury was like that. He'd get going on a subject, something he remembered from thirty or fifty or seventy years ago, and he'd just go on and on and on.

  “Give it a rest,” I said irritably. “He's probably been dead for half a century."

  “So what? He's the reason we met."

  “Yeah, Wall Street would have tanked if it weren't for Gold and Silver."

  “What's the matter with you?” he said. “You didn't used to be like this."

  “I didn't used to need my own private oxygen supply,” I said. “I didn't used to have to go the bathroom every hour. I didn't used to need a cane. I didn't used to do a lot of things I do now."

  “Grump,” he muttered. “You're an old grump."

  “And are you a young one?” I said. “I seem to remember ninety candles on your birthday cake. Damned near set the place on fire."

  “Come on, Nate,” he said. “These are supposed to be our golden years. Try not to be so damned grouchy."

  “My golden years were a quarter of a century ago—and everything hurt then too."

  “You think you're the only one who ever got old?” he demanded. “I'm not even going to be able to walk from my wheelchair to my goddamned bed in another month—but I'm not sitting around just waiting to die!"

  So I got his daily harangue about how we shouldn't be spectators at the pageant of life, that we should be participants, and like always I tried not to laugh at the thought of him and his wheelchair and me with my metal hip and my oxygen bottle participating in anything. I mean, hell, half the time his hands were too sore even to move a checker across the board, and there were days, more and more often, when I considered just throwing my oxygen out the window and ending it all.

  He calmed down after awhile, like he always did, and we started talking about who you'd rather have watching your back in Tombstone, John Wayne or Gary Cooper. Probably Clint Eastwood could have handled them both, but he was one of the new kids, so we never even considered him.

  “I'm sorry I lost my temper before,” said Maury. He was always saying that, and he always meant it. It wasn't his fault he was so riddled with arthritis that he had to blow up every now and then.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Thanks."

  “Of course,” I continued, “if I'd have known what a pain in the ass you'd be to live with, I'd have had Alastair Baffle turn you into a horned toad all those years ago."

  “At least I could have gone on the road with him. Sylvia's notion of a vacation was a shopping trip to Evanston."

  “He didn't go on the road,” I said. “He was always there."

  “I wonder if he still is."

  “Come on, Maury, he wasn't a young man back when we were going there. He'd be, I don't know, maybe 125 or 130 now."

  “I know, I know,” he said. “Still, I wonder if the shop is still there."

 
“After seventy-five years?” I said.

  “We stopped by to tell him we were going into the service, don't you remember?” said Maury.

  “Okay, so it was open seventy-two years ago. Big difference."

  “Nate, I'm going to spend the rest of my life in this fucking building. I'd like to go out one last time."

  “So go."

  “And the one thing I'd most like to see is Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders."

  “I'd like to see Babe Ruth call his shot against the Cubs,” I said. “We're both of us doomed to be disappointed."

  “Babe Ruth's dead and buried. Maybe the shop is still open. Maybe his kid or his grandkid is running it. Where's your sense of adventure?"

  “I'm a ninety-two-year-old man with one lung and one hip,” I replied. “Just getting up in the morning is adventure enough."

  “Well, I'm going to go,” he said. “If I wait another week I won't be able to move out of this fucking chair, so I'm going tomorrow morning."

  “To find a shop that probably hasn't been in business for sixty years or more,” I said. “You're losing it, Maury."

  “If I am, maybe Alastair Baffle's is where I'll find it."

  The nurses came by to check on us then, and after they left we watched a wrestling match on TV. Wrestling has changed a lot since the days of Verne Gagne and Strangler Lewis. Nobody used wrestling holds anymore. They fought with chairs and tables, and a third party was always racing into the ring to coldcock whoever he was up against on next week's card. After awhile I got sick of it, as I always do, and went to bed.

  When I got up I figured Maury had forgotten all about his idiot plan to go downtown and hunt for the magic shop, but he'd already shaved and gotten dressed. When he saw I was awake, he wheeled his chair over to my bed.

  “Jake, do you mind if I take along a couple of your Percosets, just in case?"

  “No, of course you can take them,” I said, swinging my feet tenderly to the floor. “Hell, we might as well take the whole bottle."

  "We?" he repeated.

  “You don't think I'd let you go alone, do you?"

  “I was afraid you might,” he admitted.

  “What kind of friend would I be if I did that?"

  “The grouchy kind."

  “I'm just grouchy because I don't know what's out there anymore,” I said. “Maybe it's time for each of us to take a last look."

  “Thanks, Nate."

  “By the way, are we allowed to leave the place?"

  “I never thought of that,” he admitted.

  “Maybe we should sneak out now, while they're all busy preparing morning meds and breakfast."

  He nodded, popped a Percoset and a couple of his own pain pills, and got up out of his wheelchair.

  “Here,” I said, handing him my cane and going to my closet for my spare. “Let's go down the back stairs and out into the alley. They'll all be working at the front of the place."

  And that's what we did.

  “Where the hell's the subway from here?” asked Maury when we'd made it to a corner.

  “I don't know,” I admitted. “I think we're far enough out that we'll want the El."

  “I don't see any elevated stations or tracks,” he said, looking around.

  “I don't see anything that looks like a subway station either,” I said.

  “So what'll we do?” asked Maury. “I'm not going back, not after I've only traveled half a block."

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my battered old leather wallet. “How many more trips out are we going to take?” I said. “What the hell am I saving it for?"

  He grinned and flagged down a passing cab. It took us a couple of minutes to get into it—we're neither of us as spry as we used to be—but we finally got seated and told the cabbie, who looked like he'd been born anywhere but here, to take us to the Palmer House.

  “You're sure you don't want to stop for some breakfast first?” I asked Maury as we drove through the Near North Side.

  “The Palmer House is still in business,” said Maury, “or the cabbie would have asked us where it was, or what we were talking about. And if Chicago's most elegant hotel is still in business, it's got to have a restaurant or two on the premises."

  “Yeah, it makes sense,” I agreed.

  “And that way the trip won't be a total waste if the shop is gone."

  “Ah, come on, Maury. I'm happy to see the city one last time, but you don't really think the shop is still there, do you?"

  “Even if it's not, this is where Gold and Silver met and became a lifelong team,” he said. “What's wrong with seeing the beginning one more time before we reach the end?"

  “Hell, if you'd put it that way last night we'd never have had an argument."

  “Come on, Nate,” he said. “We always argue.” Suddenly he smiled. “That's probably what's kept us together so long. Neither of us will ever admit the other got the best of him."

  I didn't answer, but I had a feeling he was right.

  Traffic started getting really heavy, downtown heavy, Loop heavy, and we crawled along, getting maybe a block a minute if the lights were with us, less if they weren't. But finally we pulled up to the door of the Palmer House. My eyes aren't sharp enough to read a meter any longer, so I just kept shoving bills at the cabbie, and when he smiled too much I took the last one back and we hobbled into the hotel.

  “Hasn't changed much,” I noted.

  “Look at all the gilt,” said Maury. “It shines just the way it did seventy-five years ago."

  “You know,” I said, “I swear I remember that big leather chair."

  “Me too,” he said. “I'm starting to get excited. Maybe it is still here."

  “There's only one way to find out,” I said, indicating the escalator.

  We waited until no one else wanted to use it—we're not too quick or steady on our feet even on good days—and then rode up to the mezzanine level.

  “Off to the right,” said Maury.

  “I know."

  We walked past a row of stores, mostly selling jewelry and women's clothing, and then we came to the shop—but it wasn't Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders anymore. There were twenty pairs of women's shoes displayed in the window, and hundreds more inside.

  “May I help you?” said a well-dressed young saleswoman as we stood in the doorway, seeing not what was there now but what used to be there.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “If you're looking for the formal wear shop, it's down in the gallery."

  “Formal wear?” said Maury.

  “They used to be here until about six years ago."

  “You'd be surprised at what used to be here,” he replied sadly. Then he turned to me. “Let's go."

  “How are you holding up?” I asked as we approached the escalator.

  “I'm okay,” he said. Then: “So I'm a foolish old man. At least I know for sure now that it's gone."

  “Too bad,” I said. “I could have used a little half-hour magic show."

  We rode down to the main floor, and then the pain got too much for Maury and he had to sit down. Naturally he chose the big leather chair, which meant I was probably going to need help pulling him up out of it.

  He popped a couple of pain pills, then grimaced, and asked for a hand up. I was already wheezing and sucking oxygen, so I asked an old white-haired guard to help.

  “Thanks,” said Maury when we'd pulled him to his feet.

  “Happy to be of service,” said the guard. “Can I direct you anywhere?"

  “I sure as hell doubt it,” I said. “We came down here looking for a shop that probably hasn't been in business for the last fifty or sixty years."

  “It was a silly notion,” said Maury. “It was my fault."

  “What were you looking for?"

  “Makes no difference,” said Maury. “It's not here."

  “Stores move. Maybe I can help you."

  “This one was before even your time,” I said.
r />   “It must have been some shop to bring you two back after all these years,” said the guard.

  “It was,” said Maury. “It was a little magic store where we met for the first time."

  “Owned by a fellow with a really odd name?” asked the guard.

  “Alastair Baffle,” said Maury.

  “That's the one."

  “You've heard of it?” said Maury eagerly. “Is there a photo of it around here somewhere?"

  “Why settle for a photo when you can visit the real thing?” asked the guard.

  “It's still in business?” I said disbelievingly.

  “Yeah. It's moved around a lot. Last I heard it was just south of the Loop on State Street, right near where I used to go to watch the burlesque shows when I was a callow young man.” He smiled and winked at us. “Now I'm a dirty old one."

  “And you're sure it's Alastair Baffle's?” asked Maury.

  “You don't forget a name like that."

  “Thanks!” said Maury, shaking the guard's hand. “You don't know how much this means to me."

  “Have fun,” said the guard. “Every now and then I go looking for my boyhood too, though it's more likely to be found at a shuttered comic book store, or maybe over at Soldier Field."

  I knew what he meant. The Bears were still playing at Wrigley Field back then, but half the fathers in Chicago taught their kids to drive in the Soldier Field parking lot on weekends.

  We trudged out the door and walked over to State Street. Then Maury had to stop and grab a lamppost for support.

  “Nate,” he said, “I hate to ask, but do you have enough cash for another cab ride? We've got to be five or six blocks away, and I don't think I can make it that far."

  “Yeah, I've got it. How bad are the legs?"

  “Pretty bad,” he admitted, leaning against the lamppost.

  I flagged down a Yellow cab—I don't think they have Checkers anymore—and had it take us slowly down the street. Maury kept his nose practically pressed against the right-hand window.

  “Damn it, Nate!” he muttered as we passed the block where the Follies and the Rialto burlesque theatres used to be. “It's not here! The old bastard lied to us!"