That was why he quit and joined a company that would treat him with respect and put on his plays.

So you see, I did him a favor. I started him on his great career by making him fall in love with an unlovable woman."

"And broke her heart when he left her," said Mack.

"She had three good years of a husband who was completely devoted to her," said Puck.

"That's two years and fifty weeks more than most wives get."

"He wouldn't have been an actor without your little prank?"

"Oh, he would have been," said Puck. "He was part-timing with a company when he met Anne."

He really couldn't see that he had caused any harm. "So you postponed his career."

"I postponed his acting career," said Puck. "It was loving Anne Hathaway that made a bad poet of him. And the ridicule he got for those poems that made him a great playwright."

And now Mack understood something. "You're the one who twists the dreams."

"Twists? What are you talking about?"

"Tamika dreams of swimming and you put her inside a waterbed."

"I woke her father up, didn't I? Not my fault if he took so long figuring out where she was and getting her out."

"And what about Deacon Landry and Juanettia Post? It was his wish, not hers, and why did you have to make them get found on the floor right in the middle of the sanctuary?" next. And you have to admit it was funny."

"They both had to move away, and it broke up his marriage."

"I didn't make up the wish."

"You made them get caught."

"Man has no business wishing for a woman ain't his wife," said Puck.

"Oh, now you're Mr. Morality."

"He was a deacon," said Puck. "He judged other people. I thought it was fair."

"But in the real world, without this magic, he wouldn't have done anything about it."

"So I showed who he really was."

"Having a wish in your heart, a man can't help that," said Mack. "He's only a bad man if he acts on it."

"Well, there you are. This beautiful woman suddenly offered him what he had no right to have.

Nobody made him take it."

"So it was all his fault."

"I set them up. They knock themselves down."

"So you're the judge."

"They judge themselves."

"You make me sick."

"You're so sanctimonious," said Puck. "Come on, admit it, you think it's funny, too. You're only making yourself angry cause you think you ought to."

"These people are my friends," said Mack.

"You were a little boy then, Mack," said Puck.

"I mean the people in this place. My neighborhood. All of them."

"You think so?" said Puck. "There are no friends. There is no love. Just hunger and illusion. You hunger till you get the illusion of being fed, but you feel empty again in a moment and then all your love and desire go somewhere else, to someone else. You don't love these people, you just need to belong and these are the people who happened to be close by."

"You told me to tell you the truth," said Puck.

"You love things to be ugly."

"I like things to be entertaining," said Puck. "You have no idea how boring it gets, living forever."

"So if this furniture and this pool table didn't appear until I showed up, how were you entertaining yourself before I got here?"

"I was planning my shots," said Puck.

"You never tell the truth about anything."

"I never lie," said Puck.

"That was a lie," said Mack.

"Believe what you want," said Puck. "Mortals always do."

"What are you doing here?" demanded Mack. "Why are you hanging around in my neighborhood? Why don't you go and have your fun at somebody else's expense?"

Puck shook his head. "You think I picked this place?"

"Who did, then?"

"He did," said Puck.

"Doesn't mean you have to stay."

Puck stood upright and threw the pool cue at Mack. It hovered in the air, the tip right against Mack's chest, as if it were a spear aimed at his heart. "I'm his slave, you fool, not his buddy. And now not even that. Not even his slave. His prisoner."

"This is a jail?"

Puck shook his head. "Go away. I'm tired of pool, anyway. Like you said, it's no challenge."

"No wonder Professor Williams wanted to kill you."

"Oh, do you want to, too? Get in line," said Puck. "You got to give Will Shakespeare credit for this: He didn't hate me. He understood."

"Yeah, right, you got no choice."

It was clear the conversation was over. Mack left.

Chapter 15

YO YO

Ceese Tucker heard about it from his mother, who got it from Ura Lee Smitcher, who was about out of her mind she was so angry and worried about that motorcycle mama giving rides to her boy Mack. "Corrupting a minor is still a crime in this state," said Ceese's mama as he ate his supper.

"That's what I told Ura Lee and that's what I'm telling you. Now you go arrest that woman."

"Mama," said Ceese, "I'm eating."

"Oh, so you intend to be one of those fat cops with your belly hanging down over your belt.

One of those cops that watches criminals do whatever they want but he too fat and lazy to do anything."

"Mama, giving a ride to a seventeen-year-old boy who's late for school is not going to get that woman convicted of anything in any court, and if I arrested her it would make me look like an idiot and I'm still on probation, so all that would happen is I might get dropped from the LAPD and your motorcycle mama would still be at large."

"Ain't that just like the law. Never does a thing to help black people."

"Just think about it for a minute, Mama."

"You saying I don't think less you tell me to?"

"Mama, if a white cop came and arrested a black woman for giving a ride to a high school boy, you'd be first in line to call that racial profiling or harassment or some such thing."

"You ain't a white cop," said Mama.

"The law's the law," said Ceese. "And my job is one I want to keep."

"I remember my daddy telling me," said Mama, "that back in the South, somebody got out of line, he come home and find his house on fire or burned right down to the ground. That generally worked to give him the idea his neighbors wanted him to move out."

"Now that is a crime, Mama, and a serious one. Burning somebody's house down. I hope I never hear you or anybody else in this neighborhood talking like that. Because now if something did happen to her house, I'd be obstructing justice not to tell them what you said."

"It didn't turn me white, it turned me into a cop. I'm a good cop, Mama, and that means I don't just go arresting somebody because their neighbors don't like her. And it also means that when a real crime is committed, I will see to it that the perpetrators are arrested and tried."

"So having you here makes that hoochie mama safe to prey on the young boys of our neighborhood and makes it unsafe for us to do a single thing about it."

"That's right, Mama. Now you got somebody to blame—me. Feel better?"

"I'm just sorry I fixed you supper. Breakfast tomorrow I ought to make you eat cold cornflakes.

Ought to make you sit on the back porch to eat them."

"Mama, I love you, but you worry me sometimes."

Ceese was worried about more than Mama threatening not to fix him a good breakfast. No shortage of fast-food places with good egg-and-biscuit breakfasts before he had to eat cornflakes.

And come to think of it, cornflakes weren't bad, either.

What worried him was a woman on a motorcycle taking special note of Mack Street. The memories came flooding back, of that woman in black leather and a motorcycle helmet who stood there on the landing of the stairs in the hospital and urged him—no, made him want—to throw baby Mack down and end his life on the concrete at the bottom.

She wanted him dead, and now she's giving him rides on a very dangerous machine. Without a helmet.