Wizard slid over and leaned into the side of the bus, staring at the water drops on the window but heedless of the scenery beyond. He was so engrossed in his own misery that the soft ‘ voice of the man surprised him. He spoke in less than a whisper, his eyes fixed on the front window of the bus, his hands toying with a key chain.

“I think she’s going to say we’re through.”!

Wizard’s body clenched. Mitchell receded. A tremble passed through him from head to foot. The magic was hovering, asking him to listen and balance with it, demanding that he give of himself what he could to those whose instincts sought him out.

He began to sweat. It was here, and he had nothing to give, no Knowing, nothing to trade for these confidences. He had to force his shivering mind to focus on the words.

“She said we had to separate, just until she knew her own mind. She said she knew she still loved me, but that she needed space to figure out how our lives fit together- So I told her okay. What else could I say? I respect her. I didn’t many her to keep her at home in a box and take her out and look at now and then. Her independence was one of the things that made me love her. I didn’t want our marriage to change that. So I said okay, and I moved in with a buddy for a while, and I tried to give her some space. I’d call her in the morning, and at night, and then she said that it made her feel like I was checking up on her all the time. I wasn’t. I just wanted to hear her talk, hear her say she loved me and that I could come home soon.

So I only called her twice a week alter that. She talks to me, but I can tell she doesn’t miss me. She likes being on her own again. She even comes out and says it, that she likes getting up alone and grabbing a quick breakfast and heading to work.

And after work she can shop and eat out, or come home and watch TV, and she never has to worry if it fits in with anyone else’s plans. She never has to hurry to be on time to meet me for lunch, or find a movie we both want to see, or wait to use the bathroom. She doesn’t miss me. And she doesn’t need me.

So what I ask myself is, can you love someone if you don’t need them? And is she happy and fine all on her own, or is there someone else? Can it be she doesn’t need anyone, least of all me?“

The bus lurched into the next stop. Wizard waited nervously, but nothing came to him. Whatever comfort he was supposed to give this man was not appearing. The magic’hovered just out of his reach. He steeled himself and leaped for it blindly.

“Love and need are two separate things,” he murmured softly. “A mother does not need her children, yet she loves them. Need may even destroy love. What have you been doing with your own life while she has been finding hers again? Are you still the man she loved, the man with his own interests and life, or are you standing in the wings, waiting for her to take responsibility for your happiness? Perhaps you should find your own life and resume it, so she can approach you without fear of being consumed by you. Your terrible need for her…”

The man was rising, getting off at this stop, without waiting to hear what Wizard was saying to him. Such a thing had never happened before, and Wizard gaped after him, reeling defiled and useless. The bus lunged and roared on through its route.

He sat in silent misery. It began to get steamy inside from the cargo of warm, damp humans. The seat beside Wizard sagged with weight, and he turned to find that a slender Polynesian woman had settled in beside him. He turned away from her and stared out the window.

A manicured finger jabbed him in the ribs. “Pay attention!” she hissed. He knew that accent, but couldn’t place it. It was from the bad times. “I’ve got you cornered now, and you are going to listen. So quit playing stupid with me. It’s right in front of your nose, and you won’t see it. There is no time left for me to be subtle and let you learn at your own pace. When you are irrational, you are vulnerable. And another thing: You substitute tears for action. You want to know what is wrong with you? You found out, a long time ago, that it is much easier not to care. You pretended a distance between yourself and others until it became real. You stopped hurting when people you loved got hurt. You threw your pain away. There is a part of you that fears pain and wants to go back to that numbness. But that is where your enemy is waiting for you.

He will attack, you with yourself.“

She was rambling, he didn’t know about what, but he did know he had nothing to give her. He didn’t want to hear her secrets and her hurts. He had no balm for them. “Beg pardon?”

In a flash of self-preservation. Wizard turned an icy stare upon the little woman. “Were you addressing me?”

She did not waver. “Yes!” she hissed. Another jab of the finger. “Pay attention. You are throwing away your weapons because you think defeat would be easier. You do not wish to take responsibility for yourself. You like to fumble and limp and be helped along. Winning would change all that. So you choose to forget that you are involved in a battle. You have turned your exposed back to your enemy. When you are defeated, you will say, ‘There was never a war.’”

Politics were the last things on his mind today. He did not want to think back to that time. He spoke very softly. “You must understand. I have nothing useful to tell you. Beg pardon.

This is my stop.“ Wizard dragged at the cord over the window, standing at the same moment. He clambered over her multitude of parcels to reach me aisle. He stood swaying by the doors, until the driver could find a place to pull over.

There was no sanctuary for him today, he decided as he slogged down the pavement. The rain spattered him for two blocks, then he crossed me street and caught a southbound bus.

The early dusk of winter was already claiming the sky. He felt relieved. He could go home. One advantage to sleeping in, he told himself, was that it made the whole day shorter. Less to deal with. The bus was crowded with early commuters. He stood for several blocks and then slipped into a seat beside a young student with her lap full of textbooks. She gave him a shy look and turned to her window. Wizard breathed a sigh of relief and sagged back in the seat.

The student fidgeted next to him. She flipped open one of her books on her lap and began to study. Her lips moved as she read softly to herself. Wizard closed his eyes and let his mind blank out. It was as close as he had come to peace today.

The girl’s sub-auditory murmurings were as pleasant a sound as water running over stones. He let it be a mantra for him. floating on BK brushing sound. He began to make out words here and there. He listened carelessly.

“Only a fool is presumptuous enough to attempt to judge the relative merits of me different realities. Better to let them blend in a potpourri of life. Who can suavely deny that there are poets in our asylums and killers on our streets? We may never hear the sweetest songs because we were unwilling to accept a new scale. This reality that we treasure and call sanity may be the purest form of torment to those we try to impose it upon.”

A philosophy course. Wizard decided. The thought irritated him. He shifted slightly to put his ears out of range of her soft mutter.

Her nails dug suddenly into his wrist. “All right!” she hissed angrily. “All right. I give up on you- Go throw yourself right back into it. But I’ll give you one last gift, no a story or clue, but a question. If it was such a good deal, why did you leave it in the first place? What overbalanced your scales?”

It scared the hell out of him. He dragged free of her, leaving shreds of his skin under her fingernails. He stood up, staggering as the bus leaned into its stop. He pushed hurriedly past a fat man struggling to rise from his seat and was the first person down the steps. He fled.