His eyes rolled open of their own accord- Lynda lay atop him, her hair straggling across his face. Sleeping. Stoned or drunk, she had finally given up her attempts to arouse him. It gave him a perverse satisfaction to have defied her. Her body was heavy and lumpy, her perfume oppressive. He reached up to wipe her hair away from his nose and mouth. He shifted to heave her chin off his collarbone. She stiffened suddenly and wriggled to get her wrist up to her nose.

“Oh my god!” She peeled her body off his, letting the cold in to fill the places she had made warm. “Look at the time!” She shook her dress back down over her hips, tugged the hem straight. “It’s okay, baby. Don’t lay and worry about tonight. You were just tired, that’s all. I read about it in this book, says it’s normal, can happen to any guy when he’s tired, and being stoned might have made it worse. Promise me you‘’ aren’t going to get all depressed about it. I really don’t mind.

Really. Are you okay?“

He nodded, feeling the total hypocrite. He watched her scoop her pantyhose from the floor and ball them up to stuff them in her purse. She didn’t seem all that disappointed. Was her lust a game she played with herself as well; the wild and wanton woman who must always be eager?

“I’ve got to get up at six! If I don’t go now, I’ll be too beat to shower and wash my hair before bed. That’s another thing I bet you’ll like about my place: hot showers and clean bedding.

Look, I got the early shift tomorrow.“ She wipped a brush through her hair, sleeking it back from her face. ”But as soon as I’m off, I’ll come to pick you up. Just take the stuff you really want. Leave the rest of this shit here. One trip should do it. You want I should borrow my sister’s car?“

“No,” he replied absently. She sat down on the makeshift table to drag on her boots. He couldn’t even remember when she had taken them off.

“Right. Look, I’ll bring a suitcase for your clothes, put the rest in grocery bags, and we’ll take the bus. Oh, the cat. I can’t have pets in my place.”

“I don’t have any pets.” Black Thomas belonged to himself.

He’d been a resident of the building before Wizard moved in, and would be after he was gone. For an instant he worried about Ninja and the pigeons. A foolish worry; they’d all have to take care of themselves from now on.

“Good.” Lynda had rekindled the pipe and was taking a farewell hit from it. She waved it at him, but he shook his head. She shrugged, then regarded him more closely. Her boots thumped as she crossed the room to suddenly crouch down beside him. “Look. You look so worried about it. Don’t be.

So we didn’t make it tonight. It doesn’t change anything between us. You told me you were tired and cold and a little too stoned. I should have listened to you and not pushed it. I mean, hey, if a woman can say no when she’s too tired, why can’t a guy? So it’s not a big deal, okay? Not like a failure or anything Okay?“

He nodded wearily, wishing she were gone. All he wanted Was sleep. She rose then to snatch up me window blanket from the floor and snap it out over him. “Okay, then. Now don’t worry. Sleep tight, baby. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he echoed. Irrevocable commitment. She muffed the candle as she went and disappeared into the next room, closing the connecting door as softly as a burglar leaving the scene of a crime. He listened. There was the sliding of the window, then the thunk of her boots hitting the pavement. The city silence flowed back in as soon as she was gone. The traffic noises and far muffled voices of a sleeping city filled his ears.

The street lamp light seeped in around the cardboard and bathed his room in a dark gray wash. Gray light of the city burning up the night with cold, duty fire. It was hard to see me stars over Seattle at night. Too much light pollution and more every year. He wondered if the air pollution and the light pollution would ever meet in the middle. He imagined a city never night nor day, only a uniform grayness in the sky overhead. He envisioned gray people slipping through its streets, their voices swathed in fog, their clothing damp with gray mist. Gray as OK ceiling.

He stared up at it and suddenly fell horrible. Guilty. He had cheated and deceived Lynda by not performing tonight. But he hadn’t wanted to. Still, what must she be feeling now? Did she guess he did not find her desirable? But he did; it was only when she got close that he was repelled by her. She was an attractive woman, generous and willing. Only a crazy man would turn away from her. So what was wrong with him? He didn’t know. He just knew that he hadn’t wanted to be that close to her. So. Would it have hurt him to have given in to her needs, let her keep intact the image she had of herself?

But what about his own feelings, his desire to keep his body private from her? Weren’t they just as valid as hers? And if he had served her, like a cow brought to a random bull; what then would he be feeling? Would he be lying here, gazing at the ceiling and wishing he had not so shamefully deceived her?

His mind chased the questions and guilts in a hamster wheel of bad feelings. “No right answers,” he tried to console himself, and coughed. This was life back in the real world. The walls of it were closing in on him already. But this time tomorrow, he would be running through his own maze, back on the track with the rat race.

The ceiling was coming down on him. He blinked, willing the illusion away. No more playing games with my mind, he warned himself sternly. No magic, no Truth, no Knowing. No scary things in the closets waiting to get me. Kid stuff. Like being small and being afraid to close the bedroom curtains at night because you might accidentally look out the darkened window and see something. Never look in the bathroom mirror when you’re getting a drink of water in the middle of the night; you might see what is standing behind you. But he was an adult now, and back in the real world. He wasn’t going to play that kind of mental hide-and-seek anymore. He stared up at the gray ceiling, daring it to come closer.

It did.

It did not, he insisted to himself. He was just sleepy. That was true, he was tired, but now he found he could not close his eyes. For if he looked away from the ceiling, perhaps it would dare to come closer- Even with his eyes opened, he could see the grayness of his ceiling descending on him. Impossible. Summoning every ounce of courage he possessed, he extended his arm and hand straight up and touched… nothing.

“See,” he told himself aloud. “It’s an illusion.” He let his arm fall back to his side. He was warm and incredibly sleepy.

He closed his eyes and started to let consciousness slide away.

A pigeon fell to the floor with a soft thud. And another.

Wizard sat up. His face pushed up into dense gray smoke that choked him mercilessly. He fell back onto the mattress., into a cooler strata of air. His mind raced. The pipe! Where had Lynda left it?

He rolled onto his belly and gazed around wildly. There seemed to be no flames yet, but he was sure that when they came, it would be as a single flash, engulfing the room in an instant. He had only moments to get out.

His cracked window might offer fresh air, but no chance of escape. The fire escape was under the other window, in the next room. From his window it was a sheer four-story drop.

He began a wriggling belly-crawl to the connecting door. His seeking hand fell on a small feathered body. Its legs twitched against his palm. The cooler air near the floor was reviving it.

He became aware of other thuds as more pigeons fell, overcome by smoke and fumes. He wondered where Black Thomas and Ninja were. But they were smart animals, smart enough to leave a burning building. Weren’t they? Not like the stupid goddamned pigeons that couldn’t take care of themselves. Stupid, useless, shitty birds. He scooped up another body from the floor. His burden made crawling difficult. He crept on. The floor was getting warmer. And when he finally reached the connecting door that should have led to escape, he found the wood of it nearly too hot to touch. It must have started in there, somehow. He thought of the stacked cardboard boxes. He heard helpless flutterings on the floor behind him, felt soft pinions brush his bare legs.