IGMS Issue 17 (5 page)

After a week with the Mustang, Brad had no doubts: the car was magic. He didn't have a clue how it worked, but no matter where he was going, he never arrived late if he drove the car. Somehow the car seemed to know where he was going and when he needed to be there.

His watch always showed him to be as late as he thought he was; but according to everyone else's clocks, he was always on time. Since his cell phone updated its time from the phone company network, it agreed with everyone else.

No wonder Uncle Fritz had never been late. Then, in a flash of insight, Brad realized what the curse was: he was living his life measured by the seconds on his watch, and they were ticking away faster than the rest of the world's.

He thought back to Uncle Fritz's funeral. Only fifty-eight years old, his uncle had looked twenty years older.

That won't happen to me, Brad decided. And the next morning he tried an experiment. He woke up early and drove off to his ten o'clock class at 9:40.

Without rushing, he arrived at the classroom a couple of minutes before the bell. His watch agreed with the wall clock.

If I only use the Mustang's power for emergencies, Brad thought, I can live a lot longer than Uncle Fritz. What a fool Uncle Fritz had been to waste so much of his life by leaving late to things. If he had just left on time, he would rarely have had to use the Mustang's magic to arrive on time.

Uncle Fritz really should have been a more responsible driver.

His cell phone's ring interrupted his studying. He didn't recognize the number. "Hello?"

"Brad, this is Denise's mom. She was driving home from work and . . ." Her voice broke. "I'm at the hospital with her. You'd better come down."

Brad's heart lurched as he stood and headed for the door. "How is she?"

"She's in a coma, but . . . the doctors say she could die at any time."

"I'll be there as soon as I can." He rushed down the steps, yanked open the Mustang's door, climbed in, and put the key in the ignition.

And froze.

The magic of the Mustang could get him to the hospital before Denise died, he was sure of that. But he didn't want to arrive just in time to see her die.

He had a sudden memory of Uncle Fritz in the car, the night he almost drove drunk. Uncle Fritz had patted the dashboard and said, "Good thing we happened to drive by. You could have been killed."

Had it really just been a coincidence that Uncle Fritz arrived just in time to stop him?

How powerful was the magic?

"Hey, baby," Brad said, patting the dashboard. "Let's go pick Denise up before she leaves work and take her out for a surprise romantic dinner."

"I must say, I like the new, prompt Brad," said Denise after the waiter took their orders.

Brad just grinned at her, grateful that she was here with him, alive. And he finally understood what Uncle Fritz meant by the curse: now that he had this power to save people he cared about from tragedy, he had the responsibility to use it.

I trust you will be a responsible driver
, the note had said. Brad would live up to that trust.

Denise let out an exaggerated sigh. "But I guess I can't say you'll be late for your own funeral any more."

"No," said Brad. "No, I'll be early."

The first time Steve saw the junkie - really saw her - she was on the fire escape outside his son Matt's room, sitting next to the bird feeders and looking like she was drowning in the rain. He crossed to the window and had a fleeting impression of a thin face beneath pale, draggled hair, and the flying tail of a long, dark coat. Then she took off, vanishing in a clatter of feet down the stairs, and Steve found himself with both hands pressed cold against the window, his breath fogging the glass.

"Dad?" said Matt. "What is it, Dad?"

Matt. Sitting up in bed with his sandy hair sticking out at all angles. He wore fuzzy, footie pajamas, and had a faded pillow case safety-pinned round his shoulders for a superhero cape. Matt was only five. Steve didn't want to scare him. He could see that the window was still locked; ran his fingers over the mechanism to be sure. He closed the curtains to shut out the rain, the junkie, and the night in one swift motion, and wiped his hands on his jeans.

"Thought I saw something in the bird feeders," he said. "Probably a sparrow."

"A really big sparrow? Or maybe it was a rat," said Matt, more intrigued than horrified.

That was part life in the city, where pigeons and rats, alley-cats and squirrels, were what passed for wildlife. Matt didn't get outside much these days. The room was littered with picture books and building blocks, with one corner entirely devoted to the dirty laundry Steve kept telling himself he needed to get to. A domino trail led from a Lego castle guarded by a stuffed dragon, back and forth to the mysterious shadow-world under the bed, and out into the hall.

There were binoculars on the night table next to the medicine bottles. Matt had decided that if he was stuck inside, he was going to watch birds through the windows. The bird-feeders had gone up the next day and drew plenty of visitors.

Most days, Steve came home from work and Matt had some story or other about a rare crested blue jay or pigeon sighting. Leah, the sitter had a copy of the
Birds of America
, and Steve tried to throw as many birds as he could into bedtime stories. Matt could go on about feathers and beaks, nests and eggs for hours on end.

Steve thought of it as a good luck charm. Since the bird feeders had gone up, Matt had started responding to the medication. He had energy now, enough to be restless and cranky, to be bouncing off the walls. He'd broken a lamp playing catch with himself against the wall. He'd found a screwdriver and taken apart the toaster. Steve ate his bread untoasted in the morning and didn't complain. Anything, anything was better than relapse.

Before he'd gotten sick, Matt hadn't been a bird lover. Digging in the dirt, yes. Climbing trees, yes. Dinosaurs, dragons, bugs and blasters, yes and yes. But then they'd found the tumor and given up the house with the yard, given up a hundred other things, so they could come here, where the experts were supposed to make things miraculously better. Instead of miracles, they had had bills and emergency room visits, and an endless wait to see if this round of chemo would take. And now, after all this time, the birds.

Matt's mother, Sharon, had loved birds.

"Where was I?" Steve sat down at the bedside chair and picked up the storybook again, unopened.

"Was it a rat, Dad?" asked Matt. "Or just a bird?"

"Neither," said Steve. "I just thought I saw something, and it turned out not to have wings
or
a tail. Where was I?"

He raised his eyebrows. Matt grinned.

"The skeleton was sitting on the Emperor's chest," said Matt. "Going to grind his bones, or squish him to death." He rubbed his hands together in ghoulish glee.

Steve grinned back at him. "Right," he said. "Half-dead Emperor, giant spooky skeleton, and then who should come to save him but . . . the nightingale."

"In a rocket ship!" said Matt.

"Of course," said Steve. They both made special effects noises, and Steve figured it was just as well that old Hans Christian Andersen wasn't within earshot to hear the addition of the battle scene in the Emperor's bedroom with light sabers and laser cannon while the nightingale sang her love song.

Finally Matt's night-time meds kicked in. He fell asleep, and Steve tucked him in.

Lights out - and Steve saw a figure silhouetted by the streetlight against the curtain. A vague and slender misery. A person-shape, sharp and clear, of someone huddled up against the glass, listening. Steve crossed the room and reached for the curtain. But then he abruptly turned around again and left Matt alone and breathing softly, deeply in the dark.

In the morning, it greatly disturbed him that he hadn't opened the curtain again. While Matt was in the bathroom, Steve went out onto the fire escape. He was half-relieved and half-annoyed to discover how hard it was to wrestle the window open. On the plus side, it meant nobody was coming in without wrestling too and making hell all noise in the bargain. Still, it pissed him off.

He was wondering whether Matt could wrangle them on his own if there ever was a fire when he began to poke half-heartedly around the fire escape. But whoever had been out there last night hadn't left anything incriminating behind. No cigarette butts or crusty needles. Just rain -- a steady drizzle onto the slick, white-painted metal grating of the landing and the rattling stairs. Only wind, and the concrete-and-damp-oil smell of a city in the thaw.

He did call the landlord and the super, both of whom insisted that the fire escape was for getting out of the building, not into it. Steve checked it for himself on the way to work. He went around the building, never mind the rain, which by then had turned from a drizzle to a torrential downpour. Back behind the dumpsters, the fire escape came to an end -- at the second story. There was a drop-down ladder, but it was secured in the up position. The only way onto it was from the roof. Or from inside the building . . . That was Steve's next thought, as he sat at work, unable to concentrate on anything else. He knew, just knew, that junkie had been there before. A glimpse of her on the run had not been enough to show him any clear details, but the thought of her sitting on the fire escape had set off a frisson of memory, dozens of other glancing hints of presence -- hair, hand, coat, foot -- that might have been the same, or might simply have been a dream. It was enough that Steve was sure he'd know her if he saw her again.

"Somebody's been sitting on my fire escape!" he said to himself in the car, laughing with a new appreciation for Papa Bear and his family's plight. All this over what was probably nothing -- some neighbor's kid sneaking out to party with friends on a school night, for all he knew.

When he got home, Matt was drawing pictures of birds -- brown and blue blobs with wings, most of them. Matt was hungry, so they had macaroni and cheese for dinner, and hot dogs, too. Matt ate maybe three bites of each, and, feeling guilty for being such a bad dad as to feed his sick kid junk food, Steve tried everything including bribery to get him to eat a handful of grapes for their token nutrition.