The Illusionist (29 page)

I sat down at my usual place at the bar, underneath the Genny mermaid, and Carl caught sight of me. “Hey, Chrissie. Tonight's the last night. What time you taking off?”

“In the morning. Around eight.”

“Packed yet?”

“Don't have much to pack.”

He wiped the bar down with his white cotton towel. I noticed his muscular forearm, the red tattoo of the heart on it. Carl's eyes were crisp blue, his hair white and springy, his cheeks ruddy. He stopped to ring up a tab for a customer, then poured some drafts out. He walked back to my end of the bar.

“So, looking forward to it?”

“He fuckin' stole my savings bond,” I said to Carl. “Took it right out of my box by my bed. While he was living with me.”

“Your savings bond?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, how much was the thing worth?”

“Hundred dollars. I discovered it just now when I was packing.”

“I'm sorry,” Carl said.

Carl cleared some glasses from the bar top, stacked them in the sink. “Hundred dollars not worth much these days.”

“Yeah! But he stole from me. I asked him not to. I said to him, ‘Don't steal from me. Please!' ”

He considered my words. “Well, maybe to him it wasn't really stealing.”

“What do you mean? It wasn't his savings bond.”

“In his world, he probably felt you owed it to him.”

I sat a moment. He poured me a beer, didn't even ask me if I wanted one.

I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. “This place is just grief,” I said. “All it is is grief.” At that moment, I could not wrap my mind around the grief. Whenever I pictured the scene that day at Terry's, the bodies lying there, I made the thought go away. I knew I was doing it. I wondered if there would ever come a time when I could let myself think about it really.

“Everything about this place is sorrow, isn't it, Carl?”

“I don't know, it's home to me.”

“I hate it.”

“I'm sorry, Chrissie.”

“What do you like about it?”

“Oh, I dunno. I grew up here. I like the seasons. The river. Hunting season. It's home. There's a lot that's beautiful here.”

“What!”

“The river's beautiful. Sparta's beautiful.”

“Hah!” I said.

“One day you'll know. When you're an old lady you'll pine for it.”

“I don't know whether to cry, or to be angry at him because they're all gone,” I said. “I can't believe I'll never see him again as long as I live.” I looked up at Carl. “Carl, do you think he changed things?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, did what happen make people any better? Because what happened was so awful, will anything change?”

He shook his head. Then he looked at me, his white towel was poised on the countertop. And suddenly it seemed that there was only me and Carl now in the bar, and all the noise—the laughter and the music and the conversation had receded, and for a moment we were enveloped in a silence. Carl's bright blue eyes were sad and kind, the skin on his face was thick, middle-aged, his arms still had the power of his youth. And suddenly he seemed even older than he actually was, like a teacher or a father. “That's the mystery, Chrissie,” Carl said. Then he sighed. “That's the mystery, honey.”

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Copyright © 1997 by Dinitia Smith

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the Scribner edition as follows:

Smith, Dinitia.

The illusionist : a novel / Dinitia Smith.

p. cm.

I. Title.

PS3569.M526I43 1997

813'.54—dc21 97-22657

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ISBN: 978-0-6848-4819-8 (Pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3176-3 (eBook)