Petty Magic Read online

  “You will die in a labor camp,” I said.

  A long and icy silence. I wasn’t afraid of him, mind, but I hated to think of the mess he might cause if it came to a scuffle. I’d rather not waste my oomph on a thing like that.

  Finally he said in a low voice, “What must I do?”

  On the one hand, I was rather repulsed by his determination, his primal instinct. Most folks know right from easy, but they choose the latter every time.

  On the other hand, it took courage even to ask that question; he must have suspected my parlor might have been bugged or that I could have been an informant. That it was a risk he was willing to take indicated, perhaps, that he wasn’t altogether hopeless.

  I studied his face for a moment—the fear and uncertainty were breaking through the mask—and then consulted his heart line one more time. No, in all likelihood this man would never find the courage (or conviction) to join the resistance. It was only after the war was plainly lost that he would get up the gumption to cooperate with the Allies, thereby saving his own hide.

  “An opportunity will present itself. Remember this, for it may be several years yet.” I leaned back from the table and pushed back my chair, indicating the session was at an end. “You will recognize it, and you must take it. The risk will be worthwhile.”

  “But—but—how will I know? Tell me more!”

  I shook my head, and he drew out his wallet. This time, I couldn’t keep the disdain from my voice.

  “No amount of money will make the future any clearer,” I said as I strode to the door and opened it wide. “Good day.”

  HE WASN’T the last of them. Neverino’s friends in the Centaur network were thrilled when they heard a growing number of bureaucrats and military drones were coming to me for advice, and they instructed me to tell the men whatever they wanted to hear. The more it pleased them, the more likely they’d be to tell me things we could use. Most evenings I’d entertain one last caller, rarely the same agent twice, and this arrangement worked marvelously for well over a year. But after my run-in with the Gestapo one afternoon at the end of 1938, Neverino thought it would be safer if I left the country for a while. So I went home to Blackabbey for the winter covention and to plan what I would do next, and Neverino went to my flat in the Chausseestrasse one last time to pick up a few books and bits of clothing for me.

  He also found a bug stuck behind the radiator in the parlor. Lucky for him, the adhesive was still wet.

  Legerdemain

  11.

  She caught his eye in a net of bright glances …

  —Arnold Bennett, “Phantom”

  PERHAPS I don’t have Justin pegged after all, for nearly three weeks go by before he rings me. I’m not home, as it happens, nor is he when I return his call, and this goes on for a few weeks more. Our game of phone tag lasts so long that he eventually stops identifying himself, and all he says on the answering machine is “Bah! I wish you had a cell phone,” or “If a cow laughed would milk come out of its nose?” Every time I ring him back I have doubts this time he’ll return it—men have such short attention spans, after all.

  It’s a Tuesday evening and Morven and I are playing armchair Jeopardy, calling out the answers before Alex Trebek’s through reading the questions. I’m painting my nails and Morven is crocheting another receiving blanket. The telephone rings. Altering my voice requires only a little oomph, so that’s generally how I choose to answer it.

  “At last!” says Justin. “When can I see you?”

  “Whenever you like,” I reply, and Morven rolls her eyes.

  AT THE Blind Pig he starts a game of telling me all the places he’s been, and all the places he wants to go, and asking me if I’ve been there. Sure, I’ve been to Vienna and Rotterdam and Berlin, but I keep the details fuzzy, say I went backpacking—which, come to think of it, is more or less the truth. He asks me what my favorite movie is and I say Harold and Maude. He’s never seen it.

  “I’m a magician!”

  “Oh?”

  He plucks a Guinness beer mat off the bar and holds it up between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m going to make this disappear.”

  I fold my arms and raise my brows. “Go on, then.”

  Justin shifts the piece of cardboard so it covers his palm, held in place between his thumb and pinkie. Then he brings his other hand up and claps it against the beer mat, and when he lowers his hand the beer mat is gone. “Aha!”

  “That’s not magic.” I want to yawn but he might be insulted.

  “Sure it is.”

  “It’s an illusion. A different thing altogether.”

  “Not to put too fine a point on it.” He gives me a wry smile. “Where’s the beer mat?”

  I reach forward and dart a hand into the back pocket of his dungarees. “Ooh, you naughty girl!” he says as I produce said beer mat.

  “You want to see some real magic?” He nods. I pull out a pen and write “Eve Harbinger, 27 September” on the beer mat, then I place it back on the bar and cover it with the palm of my hand. I make a show of pressing my opposite forefinger to my nose—keeping my hand in plain view, you know. Then I bring my other palm down with a dramatic splat, just for effect, and when I remove my hand the beer mat has disappeared. Justin gives a hoot of admiration.

  “Search me, if you like.”

  “I’d like nothing better. Seeing as we’re still in public, though, can I just ask you where it is?”

  “You’ll find it eventually.”

  This is when he suggests we go back to the shop for a tour of the rear rooms, and of course I have to sneer.

  “This time it’s not a line, I swear,” he says. “Have you seen the new parlor?”

  FIVE MINUTES later we’re standing in the front room at Fawkes and Ibis, the dim overhead light throwing weird shadows off otherwise familiar objects. “It’s through here.” He parts another curtain, flips on the lights, and ushers me into a room I’ve never seen before.

  “So this is where all the books went.” The room is a sort of parlor-cum-library, with glassed-in mahogany bookcases along the far side. The walls are covered with flocked velvet wallpaper and crammed with clocks (all showing different times and ticking clamorously), black-and-white portraits, and door knockers of every imaginable shape. Above the light switch I see an engraving of a small boy in a Fauntleroy suit dangling by a rope from a hot air balloon, legs flailing as the basket bucks against his weight. Another engraving shows a zeppelin in flight over Lake Constance, the Swiss Alps reflected in the water.

  All at once I’m back sitting in a wicker chair with my nose pressed to the window; the zeppelin is passing over a Schloss surrounded by an evergreen forest, and we’re flying so low I can see a dark-clad figure moving briskly to and fro before an open window, the quick flick of a feather duster.

  I shake myself. “What did you say?”

  “I said, what’s the difference between a zeppelin and a blimp?”

  “A zeppelin has a rigid framework—a blimp doesn’t. And a blimp is smaller.” I pause. “What?”

  “Nothing. I mean—you’re smart.”

  I flash him an impish smile before I take off on a turn about the “parlor.” There are wedding tableaux and military portraits, photographs taken on picnics and holidays, but you’d never mistake this for a room in somebody’s home. No face appears more than once.

  There are two pieces of furniture in the room: a large round table topped with an ancient lace cloth and a red velvet chaise lounge flanked by Nouveau globe lights, the lamps held aloft by bronze nymphs. I sit on the chaise and lean over the arm to admire the craftsmanship of the lamps. “They’re from the old Tallinn opera house,” Justin says. “Fawkes went to the auction before they renovated it.”

  “Where is he now? Do you know?”

  “Budapest. The first shipment arrived yesterday—unpacked it this morning, lots of interesting stuff. And he sends us telegrams once a week. ‘Won’t have nothing to do with them Internets,’ ” he says, a
ffecting Fawkes’s gruff tone. Justin watches me as I survey the room. “You’re the only person I know our age who doesn’t have an e-mail address.” I have to turn away and pretend to examine a photograph on the wall so he can’t see me smile.

  There’s but one window, with sheer curtains the color of undiluted absinthe, beyond them an airshaft of dull gray brick. Door knockers and military portraits aside, the room reminds me of a house in Paris I knew long ago—a brothel, if you must know, though my business there had nothing to do with the hippity-dippity.

  “It was my idea to display the door knockers on the wall along with the pictures,” he says with obvious pride. I turn around and notice a deck of tarot cards laid out on the table—quite old, probably hand-painted.

  “There’s another room. Would you like to see?”

  In this next room a human form lurks in the darkness, and when Justin turns on the light I let out a gasp. The man wears a pinstriped waistcoat and his hands are curled around invisible bars. I recognize that face at once: the cleft chin, the rat’s-hair pencil moustache, and the insolent look—rather eerie on a man made of wax. “Dillinger!” I cry. “Hah!”

  “How’d you know who he was? I had to look him up on Wikipedia.”

  “Why, he’s infamous! Robbed loads of banks, always found a way to escape from jail. They called him the Jackrabbit for the way he leaped over bank counters. He was a real maniac—dipped his fingers in acid to erase the prints.” I laugh, remembering something else: “They say he sent Christmas cards to J. Edgar Hoover. To taunt him, you know.” Justin gives me a weird look, but I just shrug. “It was in all the papers.” Then he gives me an even weirder look and I know I’ve got to be more careful from here on out.

  He clears his throat. “I’m partial to this one, myself,” he says, and it’s only then I notice the room is full of wax mannequins, some famous, some creepy, some both. He’s touching the shoulder of a cancan girl with a ponderous bosom. Her froufy skirts are rather moth-eaten and the waxen flesh on her kick leg has partially melted to reveal the chicken-wire base underneath. For a few minutes I wander among hobos and courtesans, leaders of the free world and eighties rock stars with tight leather pants and bleached-blond mullets. “Gosh! How’d you get all these?”

  “They liquidated a waxworks earlier this year,” Justin says. “I wanted to bring your friend the bank robber up front, but Uncle Harry says we’ve got to keep them all back here. Says they frighten the children.” He takes me by the hand and pulls me past Ronald Reagan in effigy, parts another curtain, and leads me up a darkened staircase.

  I ALWAYS KNEW I’d look like a granny someday, but I swore I’d try my best not to smell like one.

  What causes this fusty smell so peculiar to geriatrics? Two vices, hypochondria and thrift: we no longer open the windows for fear of the sniffles, and we don’t run the air conditioner in favor of keeping the electricity bill down. Hence the miasma of Bengay, mothballs, talcum powder, and eau de toot in Emmet Fawkes’s apartment. In the sitting room are a pair of tweedy brown armchairs that would give off a puff of dust were anyone to sit in them, and when I dip my hand under a fringed lampshade I notice the fingernail clippings of improbable lengths scattered on the carpet under the end table. How can this apartment possibly belong to a man who’s spent his life in pursuit of beautiful things?

  But that’s not all, oh no: just you follow me into the bathroom! I stare, horror-struck, at the toilet seat cover of natty pea-green shag, which so uncannily matches the living room carpet, and the pile of pus-encrusted gauze on the floor under the sink. The window sash above the bathtub is painted shut—see?—though that’s almost pardonable given it opens onto the air shaft. Fawkes has always been a great one for gnomic epigrams: I don’t need exercise ’cause I’m on the cookie diet; everybody knows you can see the Eiffel Tower from any window in Paris; and the one I’m reminded of now: One’s bottom should never be dirtier than the soles of one’s shoes. With the tip of my finger I lift the lid on the toilet and find the seat as filthy as the rest of the place.

  Justin comes up behind me, and we lock eyes in the mirror above the sink. He rests his chin on my shoulder. “You and Marlene Dietrich are just about the only two women who can make utter disdain look totally sexy.”

  I’m surprised he’s even heard of Marlene Dietrich. A country without bordellos is like a house without bathrooms. I’d rather take a pee in the yard.

  He straightens up, still looking at me in the mirror as he runs a fingertip up and down my inner arm. Then he takes my hand and pulls me into the kitchen. “Can I make you a cup of something?”

  “Ehh … no, thank you. You haven’t cleaned at all since Fawkes left, have you?”

  “It’s easier just to not hang out here,” he replies, and I snort. “Hey, even if I were to pick up that nasty stuff on the bathroom floor, there’s still not much I can do with the place.”

  “You could do something about the smell. Maybe vacuum once in a while.”

  “Fawkes will be back in a month, and despite all appearances, he really is rather particular.”

  It isn’t just the filth that disconcerts me. That flowery fridge magnet, for instance: There is a special place in heaven for the mother of four little girls. Emmet Fawkes has never even married.

  He starts to kiss me then, and yes it’s lovely but the stink is unbearable, so I suggest we go back down to the shop and sit in the ersatz parlor. I can hear him opening and closing the kitchen cabinets as I go down the stairs, and as I arrange myself on the chaise lounge he comes down bearing a half-full bottle of crème de menthe and two freshly rinsed cordial glasses. “This is how little old ladies get drunk.” He fills each glass to the brim and sets the bottle on a stack of penny dreadfuls. “Maybe Fawkes does some entertaining up there after all. Will you have some?”

  So we pass the next hour finishing off the crème de menthe in the cold green glow of the opera lights. We talk of this and that, and at some point we pause in our revelry and regard each other in silence—and it occurs to me now that I cannot sleep with him tonight. I could lie here for hours just feasting on his face, but I can’t let this be the only night for it.

  The moment passes, and I giggle when I find myself maneuvered between boy and sofa.

  “What? Oh, that. That’s not mine,” he said.

  “Not yours?”

  “It would appear that whoever wore these trousers last left a boner in them.”

  I throw back my head over the upholstered arm and my hair brushes the floor, but as I laugh I feel that warning tingle starting in my toes and fingertips. He kisses my throat, and I wonder how much longer I can possibly last.

  “I’m sorry, Justin, but I have to go home now.”

  He takes my earlobe between his teeth. “No, you don’t.”

  “I’m afraid I do.”

  “I don’t know why you always have to rush off,” he sighs. “Feels like I’m dating Cinderella.”

  If I’d known how long it would be before I saw him again, I would have stayed a little later.

  WHO KNEW you could drink too much crème de menthe? The following morning I am doubled up over the toilet bowl, and Morven is holding back what’s left of my hair. Beldames aren’t supposed to get hangovers, but this is what happens when you’ve used up all your oomph. “You’re getting a bit old for this,” says my sister.

  “Truer words were never spoken.” I catch a whiff of my own dragon breath and retch again.

  Morven wants to return to Cat’s Hollow and she knows Helena will show me no mercy, so she poofs us both home and I spend the rest of the day in bed. When I fall asleep I toss and turn, dreaming I’m locked inside Fawkes’s apartment.

  Not that my place is much better, I’ll admit. Layers of sooty tea-rose wallpaper furl at the seams, and too many paint jobs have obscured the intricate patterns on the pressed-tin ceilings. Long, long ago, before this building was a tenement, it was the home of a merchant prince.

  But the place is as clean as we
can make it, it smells nice because I always have fresh flowers on the dresser, and I usually leave the windows open. (Cats from the neighborhood dip in from time to time, and if they catch a mouse I reward them with a saucer of milk. Cat’s Hollow warrants the name, being so near the fish markets.) As an added precaution against the dreaded must-and-fust, I burn patchouli incense in a little brass censer Fawkes brought back from Bombay.

  I CAN’T EVEN recall the moment I realized I’d lost track of how many men I’d slept with. I sure as heck can’t remember all their faces, much less their names. As I say, you get so greedy, and at some point it simply doesn’t matter anymore.

  Sometimes I lie awake at night listing all the men I’d have done the business with, given the chance. Wilfred Owen is always first; ashamed as I am to admit it, there’s something undeniably arousing about a brilliant young man robbed of his prime. Owen was killed in the Great War, but there are plenty more poets who perished of consumption, which is almost as romantic. Oh yes, the Pre-Raphaelites, the metaphysical poets, the transcendentalists and the revolutionaries, the folksingers and the puppeteers and the actors who could make you bawl without uttering a single word. The astronomers and the sculptors, the social reformers and the satirists, the Irish playwrights and the French mimes. As for the Germans, I knew (socially and biblically) so many of them in gay Berlin that I have their names on a separate list.

  Over time I have learned that you cannot love a man for his accomplishments, as his abilities are all too often responsible for the most repulsive aspects of his character. Such truths matter nothing on these flights of fancy, of course, and it matters little if the man, the real man, had rotten teeth and a nubby willie. My list is shorter than it could be, though, believe it or not. I may not be all that picky, but I draw the line at the clap.

  THREE NIGHTS later the phone rings at two thirty in the morning. The machine clicks on, and when I hear “Hi, Eve” I scramble out of bed and into the sitting room. “I have some bad news” is what he says next, and I freeze. “Fawkes has had a heart attack. He’s in a hospital in Budapest. I’ve told Uncle Harry I’ll go over for him.” I grip the back of an armchair to keep myself upright as his voice fills the darkened room. “I don’t have any idea how long I’ll be gone, but … well, I just wanted you to know that I’ll be thinking of you, and I hope I can see you again when I get back. Good-bye, Eve, and take care.”