MAGIC (19 page)

“Oh that’s good,” Fats said. “That’s a humfucking-dinger of a notion—why don’t you just amble on up to the house and ask for a shovel—Peg would never think that was a strange request or anything—hell, everybody goes around here digging in the middle of the night.”

“Please don’t be sarcastic.”

“Just go get the goddam Postman and let me do the thinking, all right.”

“Anything,” Corky said, and he carefully propped Fats back into his overstuffed chair and then ran back out into the dark. It was getting colder, or maybe it had always been and he hadn’t noticed it earlier, but even with the sweater on he was shaking terribly. He hurried up the path and moved into the brush where the Postman was, only the Postman was gone …

When Corky had touched her nipples with his index finger and then gone out the door, at that moment Peg felt, no pun intended, snowed. The barrage of affection he had, no pun intended, laid down, well, it wasn’t the kind of thing you listened to every day.

And he meant it.

Didn’t he? Peg went into the main room and got the fire going, sat in front of it, stared. Well he would have to be some kind of creature from the black lagoon if he was lying, since the whole point to b.s.ing women was to
get
them to put out and he’d done most of his
after
the deed was done.

Twice.

And I don’t even feel guilty, she decided. I feel ter-
rific
. For years she had wondered about the aftereffects of unfaithfulness and to her horror, there weren’t any. You could have been doing this for years, she told herself. Would probably have been good for your complexion.

But leave her husband? Leave Duke? For a wandering magician she hadn’t seen in fifteen years? People just didn’t do things like that.

Why didn’t they?

Peg stretched out, watched the wood. They didn’t because a bird in the hand you could at least grab hold of and hang on. It was there. What if she decided okay, screw my life, I’ll zoom off into the wild blue etc. with Cork and it didn’t work out. Sure, he said they’d
go off alone, just the two of them, but eventually he’d have to go to work, there’d be agents like that old guy from the afternoon, and workouts with Fats getting their routine honed and tension and maybe he wouldn’t make it, it was the iceberg era for magicians nowadays, so she’d end up stranded someplace maybe with a miserable Corky and some slobby dummy staring down from the mantelpiece.

Stay where you are, sister, Peg decided. Maybe you’re forlorn, lost, unnoticed, but at least the man selling you tv dinners knows your name. And that means something.

Don’t ask what.

She got up and went to the self-help section of her library. There was a time when
The New You
was kind of a bible to her, but that was a while ago, when she was considering going back to college, commuting to Rockland maybe twice a week, but Duke had ridiculed the notion and she had to admit it, he was more than probably right.

The truth was, she decided all on her own, that she was limited. Not such a terrible thing. Better than being bright but cruel. Better than a lot of things.

Limited.

Limited.

She bored people eventually. Or she would if she hung around them long enough. Corky she’d bore too. Oh for now she might make him happy. He dreamed she was fifteen, and when she was fifteen she was, and she knew it, something, and as long as he kept that old image fresh, they’d be fine.

Otherwise, forget it. Forget it, forget leaving, forget it all, keed.

She took down
The New You
.

She went back to the fire and thumbed around until she got to the chapter on men. The particular subsection that came as close as any to her situation was called “Two Is Less Than Half as Much as One,” and the point of it was simply that when you were torn
you couldn’t give yourself to anybody the way. The New You wanted to. So what you had to do was make a list and add it up and make a choice. The book was very big on lists. You wrote your problems down, made script of your emotions, so you could judge them better. Lists of ten. And you put the lists side by side to compare. Peg got a large piece of scratch paper and on one half wrote CORKY in capital letters and on the other, DUKE. Then she scribbled down qualities. When she was done, she studied her work:

She was thumbing through to the List Analysis section when the phone rang. She got up and answered, knowing it was Duke, because when he was away on a selling trip or whatever, whenever he was coming home, he always called an hour before he got there, so if he was hungry she could have time to get something heated. “Finast Cabins,” she said.

“It’s the Duker on the horn.”

“Hi honey.”

“Be home in ’bout an hour.”

“Be waitin’.” She could hear the jukebox going in the background. Probably he was with a woman, more than probably he was drinking. Just to hear him lie she asked, “Where you calling from?”

“Your friendly Standard station.”

“Sell lots of cutlery?”

“Never doubt the Duker.”

“Never have, never will. Hungry for anything special?”

“Thaw me out some chicken, maybe. No, wait—you got any of those ham steak dinners?”

“Better’n that—how would you like a real steak dinner? I bought a couple today.”

“Gettin’ awful fancy in our old age.”

“They were on special and I just wanted to surprise you; you’ve been working hard enough, you deserve it.”

“Aren’t you the smart one?” he said, and they hung up.

Peg went back to the List Analysis. Being a new you meant change. But the trick was to know when to do it. Because, the book said, the reason we were unhappy and wanted change was because we made ourselves
unhappy on purpose, only we didn’t know it, and sometimes we made changes thinking we were making good changes only what we were really doing was making things that much worse, forcing the old you to stick around.

In a list of ten, if it was five-five or six-four, the advice: stay where you are. If it was seven-three: think hard about changing. Anything over seven-three the new you was calling and you had to go. Peg went back over her list, totaling it up.

Duke lost, nine-zero with one even, the first, she didn’t love, really love, either of them. My God, Peg realized, nothing’s supposed to be that high, the book doesn’t even have it listed. If something’s that onesided, you
changed
.

Go with Corky.

Leave with someone you haven’t seen for fifteen years and then for less than thirty-six hours.

Run away with someone who loves you.

Go with someone who remembers wnat you were.

Pray he never sees what you are.

Limited.

And don’t you dare
ever
grow old.

More confused than ever, Peg put the book back, got out Johnny Mathis’ Greatest Hits, had the record all cleaned and the needle in place before she realized her blunder.

Without even grabbing a coat, she ran out the door. And down along the path toward his cabin, hurrying through the trees, not stopping until she heard Corky crying out, “
No closer
,” and why was he standing off the path in the bushes, sounding that way.

“Corky, listen—”

“—go on back up to the house, please—”

“—Duke called.”

“Tell me later, Peg, huh?”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m just trying to get my head on straight, nothing’s the matter.”

Peg took a step back, away from him.

He moved out onto the path. “I’ll come on up in a while.”

“We don’t have a while.”

“What’s so goddam important about your husband calling?”

“I didn’t tell him you were here.”

“So?”

“He’s going to know why. The second he gets here and finds out, he’s going to catch on—I told him there was steak and he thought
that
was funny, I could tell from what he said, and there’s Scotch and French wine and he’s going to know what we did, Corky, and I’m afraid.”

“You’ll get sick, standing around without a coat—get back to the house, it’s cold.”

“Why are you acting so funny?”

“How am I acting?”

“Why were you wandering around outside if it’s so cold?”

“I had some thinking to do.”

“About me?”

“No. I swear.”

“If it is, say so—we’ve got to be honest with each other, Corky—I don’t like what’s happening all of a sudden—I don’t know what I’m getting into.”

“Hey …” He put his arm around her. “Come on. Let me walk you back.”

“He’s going to know.”

“You’re just making trouble for yourself.”

“I can’t hide it. It’s going to show all over my face.”

“Not if you don’t let it.”

“You were thinking about me outside, weren’t you—you were having seconds thoughts.”

“Not about you.”

“Tell me. I never did anything unfaithful before, Corky—I’m not very confident just now—” and then her voice got strident again—“that’s
Duke’s
sweater. If he sees you in that, he’ll know what we did.”

Corky started rubbing her shoulders. “If he sees us in bed, he’ll have a good chance of knowing; otherwise, it’s kind of circumstantial. The way you’re going on, if the sun comes up tomorrow, he’ll know what we did. If the tides go out, he’ll catch on. God forbid the stars should come out.”

They were by the front door now. “You think I can lie my way through?”

“You did great with the Postman.”

She nodded. “I did, that’s right.”

“Everything’s okay then?”

“You wouldn’t feel like maybe coming in for a nightcap or coffee or anything?”

“I don’t think it’s too smart for me to be up here in case he comes early. My God, if he saw us having Yuban together, he’d be sure to catch onto what we did.”

“You making fun?”

“Little maybe.”

“Deserved.” She looked at him. “But, see, I never acted like a whore before.”

“Look on the bright side,” Corky told her. “At least you don’t feel guilty about it.”

Peg started laughing. She moved into his arms and he held her until it came from down in the brush, the terrible scream of the cat. “Don’t be frightened, it’s just a bird.”

Without meaning to shake his head, Corky shook his head: the cat had found the Postman.

“Wanna bet?”

Corky blinked. “Bet?”

“You were shaking your head I was wrong when I said it’s a bird. I’ll betcha I’m right—c’mon, I’ll prove it.” She took a step down the path.

Corky pulled her to a halt.

Peg looked at him.

“Go inside, Peg.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“You want to know the truth, I don’t think it’s very smart for us to be seen together. I think if he sees us together, we might not be able to pull it off.”

“You’re scared too then?”

“I’d love for you to show me Sherlock’s bird, but I think our cause would be better served if you went inside and did whatever you ordinarily do when your husband comes home.”

“Christ,” Peg said, “the list. I wrote some things down on a piece of paper, I didn’t throw it out yet. It wouldn’t be so hot if he saw them.”

“I think we both have things we have to do, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Let’s do them then.” He opened the door for her, she slipped inside, he closed the door.

Then he broke into a wild run down the path, a mistake because he tripped on the goddam roots, fell headlong, didn’t care, got up again, ran on. When he reached the area he stopped, looking around, trying to
figure out where the cat scream had come from, turned around and around on the path, staring at the woods and brush and then he saw the cat’s eyes glowing and he plunged toward them and the night was dark, but when he got there he could see the animal sitting on the Postman who lay facedown and still. Corky looked back to where the assault had been and it was amazing he’d been almost dead, the Postman, but he was like Rasputin, when they tried to kill Rasputin he kept popping back from death on them, almost but not quite taking the final plunge and the Postman had been tough like that too, at his age and with what he’d taken, he’d somehow been able to crawl, what, twenty yards through the thick brush, maybe more.

Corky came close to the body but the cat didn’t like that. He kept sitting on the Postman, perched there ready to spring, his claws digging into the back of the Postman’s tan overcoat. Corky knelt down and the cat snapped—it was his toy, this body, it belonged to him and he was going to drag it somewhere and devour it like the dark birds—he stared at Corky, eyes insanely bright, hissing, and for a moment Corky wondered if it would be safe to reach for the Postman but when he tried the cat jumped at his hand, he knew it wasn’t so he grabbed blindly for a stick, swung it at the animal, missed, but the cat at least was ten feet away now. Corky grabbed the Postman’s feet, dragged him quickly back to the cabin with the cat tracking them all the bloody way.

The blood was going to be a problem and he asked Fats about it once he was back inside.

“You’re just going to have to beat everyone else up in the morning,” Fats said. “You’re rising with the dawn, schmucko, and doing your best to cover up. Need I say your best has only got to be perfect? Where’s the Postman now?”