The Illusionist (4 page)

So, I let Dean live with me, he had wormed his way into my heart.

I would see him sometimes at the Laundercenter when I went to wash my clothes. There, in the warm, damp atmosphere, condensation running in rivulets down the windows, the machines churning and rumbling, he would hold court. He would stand at the center of a group of girls, and regale them with stories, and perform his magic tricks, making his cards disappear and reappear, drawing quarters out from behind their ears, making his rubber bands jump from finger to finger, his hands moving as fast and smooth as water.

There were always girls hanging round Dean, young girls, thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. Like birds, chattering and flapping their wings in a ceaseless motion, their hair all puffed up because they'd just been to Trendsetters, which was next door to the Laundercenter, and there would be fresh blusher on their pale cheeks. And Dean would flirt with them and goof around, and smoke his cigarette so the smoke made his eyes squint in a manly way. Now and then, he'd interrupt himself to give change to customers, to sell little containers of Tide and fabric softener, all the time surrounded by his little girls.

But despite how strange Dean was, despite the crowd around him, the people at the Laundercenter didn't fire him, because he was so good at the job. He would help women customers carry
their laundry baskets out to their cars, and if the dryer was finished and a woman was still at Food Mart next door, he'd unload the clothes for her, and put them safely aside till she returned. If a customer was there for the first time, he would show them patiently how to run the machines. And he always had change. Plus, he was offering free entertainment to the customers with his magic tricks.

What did they know, I wondered? What did they really think of him? Maybe the younger girls just weren't old enough, wise enough, to see the truth about him, or to admit it to themselves. And maybe to them Dean really was a guy, only without a guy's strength and threat.

I never heard people say anything out loud to define him, though the older women would stare and smile at one another. Maybe people said nothing to me about him because they knew I was Dean's friend, and that he lived with me, and they figured I was weird too, and that we must be lovers or something—which we weren't.

The guys, they would drift toward him, and stand there watching his antics. Occasionally, they bought dope from him. I could see them holding themselves back, and sometimes I thought I could see this little gleam of fear in their eyes, fear and doubt.

Most nights after work, Dean would go to the Wooden Nickel, where he would do his magic tricks for whoever would watch. Sometimes the crowd would break away from the TV set or the jukebox to watch. Whoever did magic around there? Whoever did
anything
in Sparta? There was nothing to do except drink and hang out and go to your lousy job and have sex. Maybe people in Sparta—at first at least—wanted to preserve the mystery of Dean because it was more fun that way, he was something to do—like watching TV. Dean was entertainment for people's idle hours.

Girls would call for him on the phone. “Is Dean there?” they'd ask. Tiny little voices, voices like the tinkling of wind chimes.

“He's out,” I'd say, stifling a laugh.

Sometimes when they'd phone and hear my voice on the other end instead of his, they'd hang up. Or, if I said he'd be back soon, they'd call ten times in an hour to see if he had returned.

I ran interference for him. If I knew he was on a date, I didn't tell his callers. I'd just say he was at a friend's house or something. There were a lot of girls. Mostly little girls, younger than him. Sometimes they'd call up in groups, and you could hear the others in the background trying to keep quiet, shushing each other, giggling. Oh the tension, the terrible nervousness in that little voice at the other end of the phone! How they'd had to work themselves up to make these calls. They'd have gotten together in one of their houses in a group, in order to screw up the courage to phone him—they needed that mutual support.

Now, automatically, whenever the phone rang, I'd yell out, “Dean—yeewh!” because people hardly ever called for me.

The whole thing just made me laugh. And if I couldn't be one of his little girls, then I could watch it happen, and be entertained.

Jennifer, Maureen, Latasha, Megan, and a host of others—calling him up on the phone, loving him. Dean was like this game. And if you were young enough, scared enough, if you hadn't lost
it yet—your virginity, that is—then Dean was a nonscary way to go. He was small and skinny and his skin was soft and he didn't have a beard that scratched your face when he kissed you. And somehow, he could understand your body—for reasons maybe
you
couldn't quite understand yet. You had the illusion, somehow, that Dean wouldn't hurt you.

Sometimes the little girls would come for him personally. One day the doorbell rang, and there was little Stacy. Stacy was maybe thirteen, with big dark curly hair, and makeup carefully applied.

“Dean here?” Stacy asked, in her tiny little voice.

“Sorry, he's out.”

She sidled in, carrying her purple backpack, and as she passed close to me, I could smell the fresh shampoo on her hair. Her breasts underneath her pink cotton sweater were just little buds, and the bones in her face still had that undefined look of childhood.

Stacy glanced around the room, searching for him. I could feel her focused only on finding him, I recognized her child's secretiveness, her intentions encased like a bud in its petals.

“You know where he's at?” Stacy asked.

“I don't know.” But I knew exactly where he was. Out with Latasha, driving around in his truck somewhere.

“Can I wait here?” Her voice was so tiny it seemed to float across the air.

She sat down on the futon in front of the TV.
Ricki Lake
was on, with women who'd shaved their heads and become racists. The audience was in a rage, yelling and screaming at the women on the podium. “It's got to do with I'm proud of my race,” one of the women said, “proud of who I am . . .”

Stacy watches the television screen. Hardly moves there on the futon. As if she's scared that if she moves she'll bother me and I'll make her leave. Every now and then her hand goes absently to her full, dark hair, pats at it, in case
he
should suddenly walk in.

She is still, like a deer frozen at the edge of the road. The teenage girl's capacity to stay still, to wait in one spot for love! In those Greek myths we used to have in school, the maidens pined so much for the object of their love, or for their own reflections, that they grew rooted to the spot and became trees and hyacinths or rocks. No other category of human being is like the teenager in love, has that ability to wait, to wait motionless on doorsteps, in hallways, outside the classroom where the love object sits, or his place of work, for simply a glimpse of him.

Now the light in the room is waning, and the TV casts a blue reflection on her face. We watch the television together for a while. And then I say, “Isn't Dean kind of old for you?”

“No,” says Stacy.

“What
is
it about him?” I ask.

At first she doesn't react. And then, suddenly, she loses her cool. She sticks her lower lip out, the big round blue eyes fill with tears. “He's not like other guys,” she says. “He's just so—nice,” she whispers.

She bends her face down into her hands, her long dark fragrant hair like a veil around her head now. “I just
love
him,” she says. And suddenly she's all pathetic, the black eye makeup smudged on her cheeks and her tears have washed away all the blusher, and there is the little girl underneath, with her full child's face.

He never does come home that night, and eventually, I make her leave. I tell her she has to, because her mother will be worried. I know she would stay all night if I let her.

*  *  *

I wondered if he made love to them. I wondered how he did it. If he used his hands. His tongue. For just a second in my mind, a picture formed. But then—I stopped the thought. Didn't want to picture it, wanted to keep those thoughts away.

I was overweight, but not fat. I had never had a man of my own. That need just hadn't woken up in me, yet, whatever it was. I was the big girl with the heavy walk, everybody's buddy. Nobody's
lover. I was quiet and I did not intrude. I just hung back and listened. I read my books, my mysteries and my romances, and people left me alone, and I survived.

But, sometimes at night, as Dean lay in the other room on the futon, I did dream about him. Then, the movements in my body would wake me up, as if the bones in my pelvis had softened, and they were rippling outward and then pulling together again. And when I woke up, I could never remember the dreams, except for little flashes. Those flashes were of just a moment, his face close to mine, his green eyes, my arms around him. But that was all I could ever remember, and when I woke up and I let the morning in, the images would dissolve immediately. And as the day wore on, and I tried to remember the dream, I couldn't remember any of it. Which was probably a good thing.

*  *  *

One night, after Dean had been with me awhile, when he wasn't home, the phone rang, and there was a woman's voice on the other end of the line. “Dean Lily there?” the woman asked. She sounded older, her voice was husky, sweet.

“He's not here.”

A pause. “When
will
he be home?”

“I don't know. Want to leave a message?”

Another silence. Then, “Where is this I'm calling?”

“Who is this?” I asked. I could hear her breathing at the other end. “Who are you?”

“I'm an old friend of Dean's. This is the five-one-eight area code,” she said. “This is New York State?”

“Yeah.”

“I've been looking for him. . . . Are you his friend?”

“Yes.”

“His
girl
friend?” the woman asked.

“No. Are you?”

“I was. . . .” A hesitation. “So—is he just living there?”

“Kind of.”

She was silent for a moment on the other end. “I gotta tell you,” she said. “Watch out for him. Watch out for Dean.”

“Why?”

“He stole from me. He stole a hundred fifty dollars. He was living with me and my little girl—and—” I heard her sniff at the other end. “On top of everything—I come home and I find he's stolen from me! He lives in my house for three months, and he's like a—parent to my little girl!”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“I trusted him. And my little girl loved him. I don't even care about the money—a hundred and fifty dollars, except for what it means. It means he just—he just didn't care about us. And I want my money back.” She paused, her voice was muffled, like she was crying. “I guess he's got someone else now?” she said.

“I don't know,” I lied.

“But he's living there with you, and you say you're not his girlfriend?” She was begging for information now. When people are in love, I realized, information is like food to a starving person. And the person who's got the information has the power, by withholding it, then doling it out, bit by bit.

I heard a child cry in the background. “Oops, I gotta go,” the woman said.

“Want to leave a message?”

“No—I'll call back. I want my money. . . . Oh boy, she's at the cat again! I gotta go.”

I hung up the phone.

What was his secret? What was
her
secret that had made this woman turn to him, boy that he was?

It was late afternoon, and very still. The light was failing, the radiator hissed. Outside, the street was busy with shoppers, and I could hear the clatter of footsteps on the sidewalk beneath my window.

I looked around the room. I had left my wallet and my keys thrown down heedlessly on the Formica table. Everything seemed
exposed now in the still air of the apartment. And suddenly I felt vulnerable.

I kept everything valuable I had in a green fireproof box by my bed—my Social Security card, my birth certificate, the $100 savings bond my dad gave me for graduation. That savings bond was like my insurance, in case I ever lost my job, it was a symbol, something my dad had given me to show he cared.

The green box lay on the floor by my mattress, and I went into the bedroom now, and opened it. The envelope from the Bureau of the Public Debt lay there.

The savings bond was still tucked inside it. He wouldn't steal from
me.
It was the law of the jungle, you don't shit where you eat. You don't steal from the person you live with, who you depend on.

That night I lay in bed waiting for him to come home. Washington Street grew quiet, except for the occasional car driving past at high speed, a whoosh of sound, kids screaming out the windows, the sounds swelling and then receding.

Around 2
A.M.,
I heard the key turn in the lock. The floor-boards creaked. The toilet flushed. Then, silence.

I lay there, listening in the dark. Who was he? A bird person. A brother and sister both. A creature who could change his shape at will, fill any form you wanted.

I sat up in bed, and went quietly into the other room. I could see the mound of his body on the futon. He lay on his stomach, his hand wedged up underneath the pillow. The street lamp outside the window shone in on him. He seemed fast asleep.

“Dean, you asleep?”

“Yeah.” I could tell by his voice he nearly was. His revels had exhausted him, whatever they were.

“You got a phone call,” I said.

He didn't open his eyes. “Yeah,” he mumbled, his voice muffled in the pillow.

“A lady. A woman.”

“Yeah.” Still, he didn't open his eyes.