Lynda stooped and took the candle. She moved slowly around his small room with it. “Jesus H.” A few more steps. “My God!” She stooped to examine his small library on his homemade shelf. “I just don’t believe it.” She moved to the crate and inspected his slender stores of food. Then she rose and drifted back to him, exclaiming all the way. “I just don’t believe it, I never suspected that anyone could live like this I mean, I’ve seen bum’s beds under the overpass and people living under bridges and stuff, but never like this. It’s unreal!”
From her tone he knew she was not admiring his ingenuity at surviving, but disparaging his lack of success at it. He blinked and looked around his den. It had never seemed shabbier. The mattress. and blankets beneath him felt dank. There were spots of mold on the spines of his books and pigeon droppings spattered on me floor. He had never noticed them before. The cardboard box that held his wardrobe was softening and sagging at me comers. Even Black Thomas looked like a battered stuffed toy. As Lynda sank down beside them on the mattress., the cat uttered a warning growl. He did not like her. Wizard put a soothing hand on him, but the tensed muscles didn’t loosen.
Thomas focused his great yellow eyes on her and wished her all me evils the depths of his fuzzy little soul could imagine.
Wizard was shocked.
“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 4iis 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-