Wizard of the Pigeons (18 page)

Lynda was carefully packing the herb into the pipe bowl. She had put the pipe completely inside the bag and was loading it there, loath to let any particle spill. There was a childish glee to her actions and the little sideways glances she kept shooting at Wizard. He felt acutely uncomfortable. Threatened. Every muscle in his body tensed as she crossed the room to him. She squatted and then sank onto the thin mattress beside him. Her thigh warmed his. Her perfume was stronger than the musk of frightened cat and sweat. Her presence pushed away the familiarity of the room.

Her lighter flared a third time, scalding his naked eyes. She drew the flame down into the bowl of the pipe. She sucked at it, making embers glow in the tiny bowl. She held her breath and then released a stream of grey smoke that coiled around them like incense. Wizard had a sudden flash of the cathedral with its vaulted ceilings and lofty ideas. The squinchy eyes of the pipeman winked at him.

‘That's good,' she breathed into his ear. She gave a sigh that was part groan. ‘I haven't done this in so long. Your turn, baby.' She held the pipe in front of him. He stared into its mocking little face, making no move to take it. She shook it at him impatiently. ‘Hurry up, it'll go out.' She set the stem to his lips and looked deep into his eyes. Her eyes were grey in the dim light and immensely large. They spun like luminous pinwheels as she stared down into his soul. A tiny alarm bell rang unheeded in the back of his mind.

His breath caught and he coughed, acrid smoke spilling from his nostrils and lips. Lynda laughed delightedly and
compounded his difficulty by thumping his back. The room receded, fading into the darkness, then came back to press closely around him. He swung his eyes slowly, following the drifting walls. The pigeons were watching him. Their eyes were orange and gold and black as the candle flame touched them, tiny round eyes shining in the darkness. His flock. Their bills were sunk into their breast feathers, their wing plumes preened back smartly. Their little round orbs were carefully nonjudgemental. He would not find condemnation there.

His slow gaze wandered back to Lynda. She was breathing out, her warm breath and the smoke condensing in the chill air of the room. She leaned against him heavily with a throaty chuckle like the cooing of a fat grey pigeon. He looked down into her face, at her finely pored skin, the tiny lines in her lips where the colour of her lipstick was trapped and brightest. She held the pipe up. He looked at her through a thin streamer of drifting grey smoke. A sudden gust of wind and rain rattled his windows and pushed at the blanket.

‘No.' The awareness was like a cold hand on the back of his neck. It hadn't been Booth at all. This ridiculous woman who talked so much she hardly noticed his silence, this foolish bit of fluff with her make-believe problems and her petty plottings; she was dangerous. Would she have stood by while Booth beat him to a pulp, and then left with the victor? He didn't know. Worse, she probably didn't know herself. She had set every stage this evening. He had drifted along with her plans like a canoe in the current. Now he heard the laughter whisper of the rapids ahead. She could dash him to pieces with her smile. He hitched himself away from her touch, heedless that she
fell back onto his mattress. ‘No!' he repeated to the hand that reached up to wave the pipe lazily before him.

‘Whatsa matter, baby?' Lynda sat up languorously. She unbuttoned her raincoat and shrugged out of it so that it fell onto the mattress behind her. She smiled, her generous mouth opening too far, showing too many teeth. ‘This is good stuff. Not the best I've ever had, but not average. Too good to waste. Come on, it's just burning itself up. Take a hit before it goes out.'

The pipe came back to his lips. He pushed her hand away. ‘No. I want you to leave now. I'm tired and I'm sick. You'd best go.' His voice sounded petulant and childish, even to himself. Even though they were exactly what he needed to say, she responded to them as if he were eight years old.

‘No, baby. That's why I should stay. You need me. C'mon. Listen to Lynda, okay? She'll take care of you. C'mon.' She put the pipe back to her own lips, drawing steadily until the tiny coal shone bright and unwinking as a cat's eye. She held it in, making small throaty sounds of pleasure, then letting it stream slowly from her mouth. She fell against him, her body a warm weight, and pushed the pipe at his mouth insistently.

‘No. I don't want it.' He caught her wrist and held the pipe away. She smiled at him mischievously. Her other hand moved slowly, like smoke, to take the pipe from her captured hand. She took a short hit of it and then poked it at his lips, saying, ‘Come on, baby, it's nearly all gone. Loosen up a little. You take the last one. Better hurry now.'

‘I said no!' He caught the other wrist, gave it a shake that sent the pipe spinning away into the darkness. He
heard the thump of its bounce, saw a tiny shower of sparks and a glowing coal hit the floor. Within seconds it winked out. He drew his eyes back to Linda, making several efforts before they focused properly. It never takes much to stone you, does it? someone had laughed a long time ago. Laughed 'til it hurt him. A long time ago, he reminded himself.

He was confused to find that he still held both of Lynda's wrists. She was not struggling but was leaning into her captivity. She rested her face against his, her cheek pressing his cheek, her breath streaming past his ear. ‘You smell good,' she muttered, rubbing her cheek against his. ‘You smell wild. I am so damn tired of tame men. I like a man who has spirit and passion. Not like that damn Booth. No balls. I swear, he only hit me because he was too dumb to think of anything else to do. He couldn't handle me and he knew it. I was too much for him. But I like you. You tell me “no”. And you're quiet. But you do what you want to do. I like that in a man. I don't want to know every little thing about him; takes all the mystery away. And you feel just a little bit dangerous to me. I like a man with secrets and claws. I told that to my sister once. Damn bitch told me to go watch a vampire movie. She didn't understand. She's got a man like a fat poodle, curly black hair and all. But I've got a man here with secrets and silences. I like you, Mitch. I like you a lot.'

Her mouth wet his face, her tongue trailing lazily across his cheek to his mouth. The warmth fled from her touch, leaving a cold trail of saliva across his skin. He thought of silver slug tracks on sidewalks in the morning. She put her wet mouth against his, her lips moving as if to devour him.

‘Stop it!' His grip tightened on her wrists as he twisted his face away from hers. She laughed lightly and sagged against him. Something unhooked in his brain and his equilibrium went. He fell back on the mattress and she landed heavily atop him. She giggled at his game of reluctance. Her harnessed breasts nosed against his chest aggressively. She let her head loll forward on her neck so that the weight of her long hair fell across his face. He released her wrists and foundered beneath her, feeling trapped and entangled in her body. Lynda giggled again. The sound galvanized him.

‘Get off me!' He struggled madly, pushing her from him as he rolled away heedless of her tangled hair. She didn't care. She was laughing helplessly as she rolled across his mattress. He tried to sit up, but the directions of the room changed around him. He closed his eyes and it spun even faster.

‘Let me be on top,' Lynda begged, very close, her breath warming his face. He pulled back from her, slapping away the hands at his throat. Her busy fingers dropped to his belt. ‘I'll do all the work,' she offered, pulling his shirt-tail free. Ancient urges rolled down his spine to squirm in his belly and erupt unnervingly. Earlier today, his magic had been shut down, the switches thrown to plunge him into emptiness. Now Lynda was reactivating this other part of him, putting systems on-line whose flashes and thunderings he had stilled long ago. He groped within himself for control, but it was all set on override. His hands gripped her hips.

He squeezed his eyes tight shut, reaching for sanity and order. He found only her weight on his thighs, warm and solid.

‘I don't do this,' he said, but his voice sounded far off, even to himself. He wondered if Lynda could ever hear him as he tried to explain. ‘There are certain things denied to me. Things I must not do if I am to retain my controls and my magic.' Her hands were cold on his belly, sliding around under his shirt and up his chest. She pinched one of his nipples, hard. He divorced himself from the pain-pleasure. ‘I must not carry more than a dollar in change. I must not harm pigeons. I must listen to people and tell them the truth when I Know it. I must not harm pigeons…' He caught himself circling and tried to find his track again. He couldn't remember the other taboos. It didn't matter. She wasn't listening. Only their bodies were in the same room. He was just a warm prop for her in her fantasy game of seduction. He coughed and felt her fist grip him.

‘Feels ready to me,' she chuckled throatily. ‘Isn't it always the best, the first time with someone new? And stoned. It puts all the magic back into it.'

‘All my magic is lost to me,' he corrected her. He was aware of his body's betrayal, but he scrambled frantically away from it, trying to keep the memories out, to block away the sensory input that stirred up such strong images from the past. All the forbidden and dangerous things came pressing out from the corners of his mind, to leer and snicker at him. There were so many things he could not bear, things severed from his life with the cold precision of a surgical scalpel. Now they came, one by one, to hook their claws back into his flesh, to press their sucking greedy mouths against his veins. He lost track of where and who he was. The thing he must not do became the thing he must do, a sightless appetite to appease before he could know peace again. The world was rocking with the
rhythm of a railroad train picking up speed. He was along for the ride, on the night express back to the black pit.

‘Mitchell,' sighed Lynda.

‘Yes,' he confessed.

Morning avalanched into his eyes when he opened them. Grey light was pouring through the window, drenching the mattress and tousled blankets and the cardboard and blanket from the window on the floor beside them. He stared out through the cracked pane at the dark silhouette of the building across the alley and the overcast sky above it. None of it was coming together. He groped vaguely after the tails of memories, but they scuttled back into corners. He pressed his palms to his eyes until two things came clear. He should phone home today. And check with the damn VA office again, to see if they'd straightened out the mess they'd made of his records.

Temporal continuity ripped suddenly, spilling him from its sling into chaos. This was no cheap motel room. His pants were not slung across a chair under a cheap painting by a bureau with a Gideon bible on it. He sat up, staring around. His brain bounced sickeningly against the top of his skull. He must have gone drinking last night. He knew he had to quit soon. He eased back down onto the flat and stinking mattress. A grey pigeon took sudden alarm and swooped into the next room. From one corner of the room, a scrawny black cat regarded him with flat eyes. A damn zoo. A wave of stress rose in Mitchell, pressing his
headache to the top of his skull. He was tired of mornings that started at the bottom. His whole body ached; his mouth tasted foul. Something very bad was going on here. He squeezed his eyes hard shut and tried to put his mind in order. What had he done yesterday? How had he gotten to today?

All that came to mind was phoning home. The number loomed large in his mind, spurring him. He hadn't called in a long time; he hated to call when all he could say was that he was still working on it. He had promised to get it all straightened out, once and for all. They were counting on him. He was going to make it right with all of them.

There was a phone booth in the train station, with a decent chair in it. He had used it so often he had memorized the graffiti. He leaned into the privacy of the booth, telling the operator to make it collect. The ringing sounded very far away. He couldn't identify the voice that said so softly, ‘Hello?'

‘Collect call from Mitch. Will you accept charges?'

He heard wind blowing in the receiver, that was all; as if all the miles of wire between him and home were taking a long and steady breath. The operator repeated, ‘There is a collect call from Mitch. Will you accept charges?'

‘I…wait a minute. Yes, I will. Go ahead, operator.'

‘Hello?' His own voice was so cautious he hardly recognized it himself.

‘Mitch?'

‘Yeah. I woulda called sooner, but this is such a fucked up mess, every time I go in there –'

‘Mitch. Wait a minute. Listen to me. Mitch. Just a sec.'

She took a ragged breath and he suddenly knew she
was weeping. Weeping on the other end of the line. Why? ‘Look, I gotta say these things. You don't want to hear them and I don't want to say them, but I gotta say them now, on the phone, while you're not looking at me. Listen.' She cleared her throat, but her voice still came out husky. ‘There's a lot of things. There's Benjy, for one. He's back to sleeping all night again. He's nearly back to how he was. He plays outside and his little friends come over again. And he seems so sunny and fine, it breaks my heart to think of how he was. He found one of his old plastic army men in the sandbox yesterday. He wouldn't touch it. He made me come out and get it and wrap it in a paper towel and throw it inside the trash can for him. After we did that, he asked when you were coming back. I told him I didn't know. He seemed worried by that, so I told him pretty soon. Then he got scared and wanted to sleep in my bed with me last night. Mitch, it's too much for him. Too many blow-ups in front of him, too many weird-outs. Too many times of you going away and coming back fine for a moment or two, and then a disaster. He's just a little boy, and it's too much for him. Do you know what I'm saying?'

‘Yeah.' The huskiness was in his voice now. ‘I do love him. You know I do. I love him and I love you and –'

‘Mitch. Don't. Listen to me. We've had all our good times. I waited for you. And you came back a stranger, but I stuck with you. I really thought we could make it all better again. I waited through the dope, I waited through the booze, and when I thought we were finally safe and I could have our baby…Damn. You've been gone a while, and I can see things clearer. It isn't going to get any better for us. And I can't pretend anymore.'

‘No. Wait, please. I'll come home tonight. I can get this mess straightened out later. Baby, I'll come home tonight, we'll get my folks to babysit, and we'll go out and be alone together and talk. We can get it all talked out. And whatever you want me to do this time, I'll do it. I promise you. Whatever you think will make it work, whatever will be best for us all. I promise.' He could hear her crying now, little gulping noises as she strangled for air. He needed so badly to touch her. His eyes stung.

‘You promise.'

‘Yeah. I swear it. Please.'

‘Mitch…then don't come home. I won't be here. I can't be here anymore. You…you take care. I'm gonna drop your stuff off with your folks. They already know about it. I'm taking Benjy with me. Listen. I'm going to keep on loving you. I swear that. I always will. But I can't live with you, not anymore. I can't wait anymore for you to come back.'

‘I promise,' he said softly to the empty line. The electronic winds blew his words back to him.

‘I promise,' said the man in the beige shirt at the huge desk, ‘that we are doing everything we can to straighten this out. But we need your cooperation. Did you bring your records this time?'

Mitchell set the document box on the desk beside the computer. The man looked at it with obvious relief. ‘Great. At last. Now we can get somewhere. Got your discharge papers?'

‘In here.' Mitchell tapped the cold box with his fingernail. He didn't like the sound it made, like clods of dirt falling on a coffin. He stopped.

‘Let's have them, then.'

‘I lost the damn key. You got something we can jimmy it open with?'

The man at the desk looked disgusted again, and as tired as he had when Mitch had first come in. ‘No. That's not my department. Look, take the box to a locksmith and get it open. We aren't going to get anywhere without some papers to work from.'

Mitch rubbed his head, hating the man, wishing he could take his head and shove his face into his fucking little computer screen. He put his fists in his lap, out of the man's sight. ‘Look. Please. Did you check on what I told you last week? Did you run down my name and serial number? I mean, listen, isn't that what these little gizmos are for?' He tried to sound reasonable, admiring of the computer technology that had caused this whole fuckup.

‘Yes. And it came back the same. Mitchell Ignatius Reilly is listed as MIA. Missing in Action. He never came back from Viet Nam.'

Mitchell's fist hit the top of the desk in short, hard jolts, punctuating each syllable. ‘I am sitting right here. Ask my wife. Ask my folks.' The man's face went red and white. He began to rise. Mitchell hid his fists again. ‘Look. I'm sorry I did that. I know you're doing the best you can. Hey, did you check on that other thing I told you?'

The man settled back in his chair and looked at him in blank weariness. Mitchell wanted to punch his civil service mouth, to make him care. He controlled himself. He mastered it and held it down and strangled the impulse. He was in control of himself.

‘You know. There was a guy in my company, shipped over with me, Michael Ignace O'Reilly. Weirdest damn thing. His serial number was within a couple digits of
mine, they were always getting us mixed up, trying to give him my mail, that kind of shit. I shipped stateside before he did. Maybe he's the one MIA.'

‘Him.' The man at the desk looked harassed. ‘I'd almost forgotten why I ran a check on him. It didn't help. He's not MIA, he came out in a plastic bag.'

Cold panic squeezed Mitchell. ‘What? What are you trying to tell me, that I got a choice between MIA and dead? Look at me. I'm here, man. Take my fingerprints if you want. The Army has mine on record, I know. That'll prove I'm me. Go ahead, take them.'

‘Look.' For the first time, an edge of anger crept into the man's voice. ‘I know you want help. I'll even say that I can see you need help. But before we go to extremes like fingerprints, why don't we do what's simple? Go get that damn box opened! Get those papers to me and I'll have a fighting chance of getting this straightened out. Until then, I'm going to tell you to quit coming here. Every week I ask for your papers, and every week you have a different line. I can't do a damn thing without some papers. Give me a birth certificate, discharge papers, anything. Just go get those damn papers for me, or don't come back. Look, man, why don't you go to the state? There's a lot of agencies for people like you. They can help you. You need to get some help!'

The man stood up to call the words after him, but he didn't stop. He beat it out of there, leaving it all behind. MIA or dead. Great choice. Dammit, he was here, he was alive, he hadn't changed, but no one would accept him, not his wife, not the VA, he had no one. No one cared enough to help.

‘Dad?'

‘Mitch? That you, son? You still up in Seattle?'

‘Yeah, Dad. Dad, I'm having a hell of a time. Nothing is going right.'

‘Well, you just stick with it. You'll get it all straightened out. I'd call Mother to the phone, but she's gone to get her hair done. Mary dropped some boxes here. You know about that?'

‘Yeah. Yeah, she told me. Dad, what am I going to do? I'm losing it all.'

‘Son, you just stay right there until you get it all sorted out. I'm sure you'll be just fine. Say, did you catch the game last night? Did you believe that last play? Who would call a play like that? If I were the owner of that team, I'd take that coach and –'

‘Dad! Dad, listen to me. I want to come home. I got to come home. Can you wire me some money?'

‘Well, Mitch, I just don't think that's a good idea. Now, look, there's no sense in running away from this thing. You're up there, you may as well get it all sorted out before you come home. You know you brought this on yourself, acting so wild. If you hadn't punched out those guys in the local office, maybe they could have cleared it up for you here. But as it is, you've got them all stirred up and they aren't going to do a thing for you. So you got to go through the Seattle office. You just tough it out and I'm sure you'll be all right.'

‘Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right.'

‘I know I am. Now Mitch, I'm not going to tell Mother you called. This thing with Mary has her flying around the ceiling as it is, and she'd just get all upset all over again. So I want you to sit down and write her a nice note tonight and mail it off to her. She's been upset enough about Mary
taking little Benjy away, and her stomach is acting up, so don't write anything that will get her worked up. Okay?'

‘Is she going to be all right?'

‘Yes, she's going to be fine, as long as she stays calm. Don't you give her any more reasons to be crying over you. Now, you do like I told you, and get better, and then you give me a call and let me know when you're coming home. I know things look pretty dark right now, but you've got to untangle them one knot at a time. Take care of the VA mess, get the help you need, and when you get finished with that, we can worry about what's next.'

‘Yeah. Dad? Dad, I've got to talk to you. When I called Mary –'

‘Son, I'd love to talk with you about that, but I can't. Phone bill has been crazy with you always calling collect. I shouldn't have accepted this one. So I've got to hang up now. Remember what I said. Take the problems one at a time. Get straight with the VA and get some help. Then we can worry about Mary and the rest of it. I got to go now. You write your mom a nice note tonight, okay?'

‘Yeah. Dad?'

‘Good-bye, Son.'

The bright sunlight through the window woke Wizard. Even in his sleep, it had been making his eyes water. He rolled silently from his bed, cursing the hangover and the weariness that had made him sleep in. He surveyed the damage. The den was a wreck. He dressed slowly, in silence, trying to move his head as little as possible. He wanted to lie down again, but forced himself to set his room to rights. He walked very carefully, setting his feet where the floorboards creaked the least. Black
Thomas watched him as he shook and smoothed the blankets. They smelled like Lynda. She had left her mark everywhere. Thomas noticed it when he came over to lie on the mattress. He sniffed and growled softly before he settled, his raw stump hovering away from his body. When he had arranged himself, Wizard lowered himself carefully beside the cat and inspected the wound.

‘Looks like it will heal, my friend.' Wizard touched it with his eyes only, moving his pounding head to see it from all angles. ‘That was a foolish move you made, and I'm afraid you've paid dearly for it.'

Black Thomas opened his red mouth wide in a meow of disdain. Wizard was forced to nod, humiliated. ‘I didn't say you were the only one who did stupid things. I'll have to pay for mine as well. I've got to find Cassie today. I've got to get this whole mess straightened out.'

Moving with ponderous care, he tidied the rest of the room, taking no satisfaction in it. There was more shabbiness than he had ever noticed before. What Lynda's eyes had touched seemed to have changed overnight. The cosiness of his retreat had turned to squalor, the privacy to isolation. He picked up the little pipe from the floor and dropped it into the footlocker on top of the bag of weed. He stared for a long time at the other things she had stacked on the floor. Daylight made them all real. Finally he brought himself to touch them, to stack them back inside the footlocker. But when he tried to stop the lid, he found the hinges racked. There was no shutting them away anymore.