“Quiet.” he warned softly.

She mis-heard him. “I said, did you hear about that murder down near the ferry dock?”

He stopped moving, his fingers clinging to the waistband of his pants. “Knife,” he said dully.

“Yeah, that one. You heard, huh? But they don’t put it all in the papers. A real mess. Only seventeen, they say. Some little girt playing hooker. Will, you can’t say she didn’t ask for it. Do you have any salt?”

“No!” He suddenly hated her, her callous, shallow attitude.

A woman had died this day. Died of a knife because he hadn’t been able to summon the magic to prevent it. Behind him, she went right on making domestic noises, rustling through his possessions with a calm assumption of domain. Why don’t I get angry? he wondered. Why don’t I turn and yell at her to leave, to get out of my life and leave me alone? Because I am tired and sick, he excused himself. From the back corner of his mind came the voice of the girl on the bus. “Because it’s easier to let her do as she wishes, easier to let her take command and responsibility. You coward!”

“Because I am tired of being alone‘” He defended himself aloud. He had inadvertently injected the words into one of Lynda’s rare silences.

“Me, too, baby. Well, we aren’t alone anymore, arc we?

Here, put on your robe and come eat.“

He hadn’t realized how close she was. The warm dark cloth cascaded over his head and down his shoulders. He found himself shrugging into it, protesting as she tugged the collar down over his head, “I don’t have a robe.”

“Then what’s this?” she asked him indulgently. >

Wizard looked down. The shimmering dark cloth fell to his bare feet. Stars and crescent moons shone in the dim room, sparkled in the light of the candle on the food crate. His wizardly robe draped his chilled body. He froze, waiting. It warmed him. That was all. He smoothed his hands down me front of it, waiting for some tingle of power. Nothing. He squeezed his stinging eyes shut. Where had his mind been, and for bow long? What had he really expected of a discarded Hallowe’en costume? He felt Lynda draping his shoulders with the cloak.

He raised his hands to tie the silver tassels at his throat. He did not want her to step in front of him and see his face. His mind fumbled back through his life. He had been in this den for, well, he had seen the stores below him extend their hours for Christmas shoppers twice. And before that? There had been another den. The location was hazy in his mind now, but he remembered the smell of boiling cabbage and rice wafting up from a restaurant below. And before that? His sleeping roll tucked up under an overpass or bridge; he recalled vividly the rumble of the night traffic and the stretch-flash of passing headlights. Years as lost and wasted as fresh rain falling on oily city streets.

His life struggled to join hands with itself. He plucked up two reference points. This was 1983, fast approaching 1984.

He had turned twenty in 1969, on his first tour in Nam. Thirty five years old, he guessed. He hadn’t thought of his age in a long time, hadn’t related his personal span to the days and weeks flowing past him. Half of the three-score and ten due him were gone. Half.

Lynda giggled. He turned slowly to face her and she gave a high scream of laughter. His face didn’t change, so she slapped him lightly on the cheek. “Old sourpuss. Well, you got to admit you look funny. I should have guessed from the hat. Well, never mind. At least it’s warm and dry and comfy. Even if we did miss Hallowe’en. Oh, baby!” She pushed into him suddenly, her face diving for his, her lips writhing against his mouth. Her sturdy arms enfolded him and trapped him against her body. She nuzzled his neck and then jerked back her face to look at him. “You look just like a sad little kid. Cold and wet and living in this hole. But we are going to change all that.

Look, I got to thinking today. There’s plenty of room at my place. It doesn’t look like you have that much stuff. Tomorrow, after work, I bet I could come up here and have you packed in half an hour. Hell, from the look of it, we could leave most of it here and not take a loss. You could stay with me, get rid of that cough, get your head straight, and men you could look for work- Or sign up for unemployment or welfare or something, Honey, I look at you and I can see you weren’t made for this kind of life. You’re the steady, reliable type. I don’t know why or how you came to this and I won’t be nosy and ask. But I think it’s time you got out of it. Back to reality.

Now come and eat.“

“You never give me a chance to talk.” It was coming more easily. More and more often, the words came out of his mouth as soon as he thought of them.

Lynda was not impressed. “What’s to say? Who in his right mind would choose to stay here when he could move in with me? Now come and eat, baby, before it gets cold.”

He trailed after her to the makeshift table, the wizard robes wafting around his ankles. He stopped at his wardrobe box to pull a pair of socks on over his bare feet. He was warmer, but still shivering.

The food was in styrofoam trays on the table, still sealed.

White styrofoam cups with lids squatted next to them- There were white paper napkins and thick plastic utensils. He could not remember when he had ever dined so formally within his own den.

“Hope you like oriental rood,” she announced and snapped open his dinner. He looked down at finely sliced vegetables swimming in a clear sauce, at slices of meat artfully arranged and cubes of tofu. Lynda was opening a little square paper bucket of rice. She scooped a double mound of it onto the lid of his container. There was a tiny cup of mustard and another of shoyu. The hot rice steamed. Lynda pried me lid off his cup for him- “Green tea,” she informed him. “I always have it with this kind of rood. Puts me in the right mood.”

The tea was still scalding hot. Wizard sipped at his noisily and then attacked the food. The heat of it alone was comforting to his abused body. The skillfully blended textures and flavors nearly went unnoticed in his drive to fill his belly with something solid and nourishing. Lynda silently replenished his mound of rice from the container. When his cup was empty and the food nearly gone, she produced a short, stout bottle with a flourish. “Plum wine!” Her eyebrows leaped at him- She poured, and as the liquid filled his cup, the bouquet of it saluted his nostrils. Memories of hot orchard summers drifted back to him.

When her cup was filled, they drank together.

He took his in a series of tiny sips, letting each moment of taste flow and ebb over his tongue. When his shivering finally ceased, he sighed and let the tensions go out of his shoulders and back- “It’s good, isn’t it?” she asked, breaking into his reverie. He nodded slowly and felt his own smile break free.

She returned it, and began to busily stack up the disposable dishes and flatware. Wizard let her. She left the bottle of wine on the table at his elbow. He refilled his cup. He slowly sipped wine and stared into the candle flame. It was a long, still flame, steady and unflickered by any wind. The dazzling of its light reminded him of sunlight on the bright surface of a mirror pond. If you looked at it one way, it could dazzle your eyes and blind you. But if you tilted your head and half closed your eyes, you could see your reflection in the black water. Like a darker self looking up, mocking. And the more you looked, the less it looked like you. Until, finally, if you stared at it long enough, it didn’t look like you at all, or anyone else.

“Well, he don’t look like no wizard to me!”

Rasputin did a slow gyrating turn in his dance to his own unheard music. Wizard stared at him in awe. Cassie had dragged him up here, making him walk for blocks past me border of the Ride Free area. They stood now on a sidewalk in the midst of the Seattle Center. Grassy hillocks and imposing buildings were everywhere, along with ducks and fountains and the Pacific Science Center and the terminal of the monorail. He was dazzled and confused by it all, and especially by the lofty spire of the Space Needle. Cassie had told him all about the World’s Fair days here in 1962 as she had hurried him along. He had been bored at first by her recital of facts and numbers but soon had become engrossed in the bits of city history she spewed out so casually. Yet she had not brought him here to view the Space Needle or the Fun Forest Amusement Park or even the ducks. She had brought him here to present him to Rasputin.