by Kim Fielding
“I don’t. Entertain, I mean. If I’m going to meet someone, we go out.”
“Why?”
Abe leaned back with a grin. “My father trained as a psychoanalyst under Dr. Freud, and you’re sounding a lot like him.”
As Abe expected, Donne snorted, drank some scotch, and stopped his questioning about Abe’s social habits. But his eyes remained full of questions; perhaps that was as necessary to his vocation as manual skill was to Abe’s. “Why did you become a magician? And don’t tell me it’s because of the bloody veil.” He waved a hand dismissively.
“It wasn’t. It was my father’s influence, actually. After we immigrated, he couldn’t psychoanalyze anymore. He was a streetcar conductor instead. But he used to hypnotize people—mostly for fun—and he’d lecture me about the hidden actions of the mind. He and my mother hoped this would steer me toward a career as a physician. I preferred the stage.” His father had died bitter with disappointment, and Abe’s mother had never forgiven him.
“And the séances?”
“A natural extension, and an easy way to earn money.” And then, because Donne was still silently denying the truth, Abe leaned toward him. “The veil is real, though. But I very rarely encounter spirits during my séances.”
The fog in Donne’s eyes hardened to ice. “You’re not fooling me.”
“And you’re not fooling yourself. Isn’t that why you returned—because you know I spoke with Birdie?”
“I returned because I’m trying to solve two murders!” His voice grew loud and his usually pale complexion reddened.
“Two?”
“Zook’s dead.”
Abe jerked backward in his chair. When he had the breath to speak again, he croaked, “Did you kill him? And Roy?”
“I’ve killed a lot of men, but not those two.”
Abe believed him. “Then who did?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Donne’s voice had dropped from an angry roar to its more usual rumble. “And right now, you’re my best lead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, because I don’t know anything.”
Abe drained his scotch in one long swallow. He felt it burn, but the sensation had long ago stopped bothering him. He imagined it was akin to being a fire-eater, except unlike them, he was left with a pleasant buzz in his brain—a buzz that tended to keep the spirits away.
Donne had been watching him. “You know something,” he finally said. “You knew Zook.”
“I’ve spoken with him briefly after a few of my shows. That’s all.”
“Who knew him first—you or Gage?”
Time for a refill. Abe spoke as he poured. “Roy, and I don’t know how they met. Roy knew a lot of men, and he was especially inclined toward men with money. He was good at sniffing them out.”
“Zook was pretty flush for a department store clerk.”
Abe spread his arms wide, not quite sloshing the liquor out of his glass. “I don’t know about that either. Maybe he inherited a fortune. Maybe he was on the take with a gang. Maybe he could make dollar bills appear out of thin air.”
“That’d be more your line of work, wouldn’t it?”
“I can do an illusion to that effect,” Abe replied, grinning. “But I have to provide the dollars up front.” It was one of his least favorite acts, because although it impressed the audience, they ended up pocketing the money.
“What did Gage tell you about Zook?”
“Nothing, as far as I can recall. Look. Roy brought Zook to a few shows—four or five, I think—and Zook would sit in the front and stare at Roy as if he were the sun itself. Then Zook would wait around after the show while Roy and I packed up, and we’d chat about nothing much for a minute or two before they left.”
Frowning, Donne tapped his fingers on the table. Abe wanted to know what those fingers would feel like on his skin, digging into his flesh hard enough to leave bruises or stroking slowly and gently, making him beg for more. He already suspected what Donne’s fingers would taste like, but what if Donne dipped them in scotch and told Abe to suck them clean? What if Abe bit them at the same time that Donne bit Abe’s shoulder, and they both called out so loudly the neighbors heard?
“Did Gage bring other men to your shows?”
Abe laughed. “Sometimes. He was a pretty boy with a lot of suitors. But if you think one of them was jealous enough to commit murder, I doubt it. Anyone who knew Roy knew who he was and what he was after. He never tried to hide it.”
In fact, Abe had envied that a little. As a man who lied for a living—or at the very least, stretched the truth beyond recognition—he’d long wondered what it would be like to be open with others, to tell them precisely who he was and what he wanted. At this point, he wouldn’t even know how.
A thought occurred to Abe. Maybe belatedly, but he was no detective. “Are you sure the same person killed both of them?”
“It would be an awfully big coincidence otherwise.”
“But this can be a dangerous city.”
Donne shook his head. “The killer knew Gage, likely knew Zook as well.”
“How can you tell?”
“They let him into their flats. He got close enough to stab Gage and strangle Zook. And Gage was naked. Most people put on clothes around strangers.”
“Most do,” Abe agreed sadly. Poor Roy, expecting a friend or lover and getting a blade instead.
“Stabbing and strangling, those are personal ways to kill someone—not cold and distant like a bullet. Of course, they’re quieter than a gun too. Our murderer might simply have wanted to avoid disturbing the neighbors.”
“Our murderer?”
Looking smug, Donne raised his glass in an ironic toast and took a slug. He didn’t wince when he swallowed.
Abe stood, walked to the sink, and began washing dishes. He could see Donne out of the corner of his eye, watching him the way Abe’s mother’s cat used to watch the pigeons on the window ledge. Abe didn’t exactly mind, although he didn’t know whether Donne was hungry for information or hungry for him. Maybe it didn’t matter.
The water ran and the dishes and pots clanked. Donne rolled a cigarette and smoked it. The little kitchen felt warm and shut in, but Abe had never minded enclosed spaces. He’d once seen Harry Houdini escape from a locked milk-can and twice saw him perform his Water Torture act. Abe had even toyed with the idea of doing escape acts himself, but his early efforts were unsuccessful, mostly because he’d settle comfortably into the straightjacket or chains and lose the will to get out.
He didn’t want to get out now, either.
Abe had just put the last of the dishes into the cupboard when Donne stood and came up behind him, looming so close that his breaths tickled the back of Abe’s neck. “How do you know about Birdie?” Donne whispered. Maybe he’d drawn his gun. Abe didn’t turn around to see.
“I don’t have all his memories, you know. Only the ones he shared with me yesterday. But I can tell you things only he and you knew. The first time the two of you made love, you were so clumsy that he thought you were a virgin. He laughed when you told him about some of the boys at school, and Birdie said it was lucky you’d finally found a man instead.”
Donne didn’t say anything, but his breathing grew faster and louder.
Abe closed his eyes. Sorting through a spirit’s recollections was difficult. He didn’t experience them as he did his own; they were more akin to a motion picture. No—a play, because they were three-dimensional and in color, with full sound, and with scent and taste and feel. He even knew what emotions the person had experienced. But these borrowed memories lacked the substance and context of his own.
“You and Birdie were in a trench, I don’t know where. Everything was damp and brown and smelling like shit, and the war had been going on for a thousand years and was never going to end. But the two of you were playing cards, and Birdie was trying to make you laugh. He loved your laugh, you know. Maybe because it was rare. But your hands were shaking badly, a
nd you’d hardly slept for days. You kept waking up with nightmares. So he told a long joke about the devil digging latrines, and then you did start to laugh. But you didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. He had to slap you to quiet you, and by then he was crying.”
It hurt Abe to feel the recycled anguish of the dead. He clutched the edge of the countertop and wished his whisky glass were closer. Even with his eyes shut, he saw a younger version of Donne in a helmet and muddy battledress, eyes filled not with fog or ice but with a terrible emptiness. Mouth drawn back into a corpse-like grimace.
“Birdie,” whispered Donne—the real Donne, standing in Abe’s kitchen with the weight of years and sorrows heavy on his broad shoulders.
Still facing away, Abe nodded. “I could reach for him now and bring him forward.” Although it was an honest offer, he couldn’t suppress a shudder.
“No. Let him rest.”
Abe slumped with relief. “That’s not up to me. But I don’t have to invite him here now.”
Donne moved away, leaving Abe’s back feeling barren and exposed. But instead of returning to the table or leaving the kitchen, he stood against the wall, at the very same spot he’d pushed Abe into the previous day. He ran a hand through his hair, loosening it from its Brilliantine fetters. “Ghosts,” he said.
“No. Spirits. I’ve explained the difference.”
“But you said ghosts exist as well.”
“They do.” Abe approached him carefully. “And other… beings too. It’s a complicated world. I’ve seen glimpses of things, heard stories. And I wonder what else lies right next to us but hidden from most people’s sight.”
“Things,” Donne echoed.
Abe chuckled, remembering a story he’d heard a few years earlier from a retired magician. “Did you know about the Sasquatch riots?”
“The what?”
“In Oregon, twelve or thirteen years ago.”
“I was in France then.”
“Of course.” Abe patted Donne’s arm, and Donne didn’t push him away. “They’re giant hairy creatures who mostly keep to themselves in the forest. I guess a few of them decided to fight back after their home was cleared and turned to farmland.”
Donne reached up, and for a moment Abe thought he was going to hit him. Instead he was shocked when Donne cradled his cheek with a wide palm. “Spirits… invade you. Doesn’t that make you angry?”
Abe wanted very badly to lean into the caress. To fall into it. But then he’d be lost, and Thomas had asked him a question. “My people tell stories about two types of spirits. There are dybbuks, which are evil. When they possess a person, they make him do all kinds of terrible things. But an ibbur is the soul of a righteous man that joins a living person—always with the person’s permission—in order to do a mitzvah, a good deed. You understand?”
“Yeah.”
The hand was still there, warm against Abe’s skin, strong even in its relaxed state. Abe’s cock began to fill, and he realized he was licking his lips. “Harboring an ibbur isn’t enjoyable, but neither is visiting the dentist, and I do that when necessary. Maybe it’s a little like being a soldier—agreeing to something difficult and dangerous in order to achieve a greater good.”
“Dangerous?”
“There’s a risk the spirit won’t return to the other side. They become more powerful as they remain here. They can stay stuck to the host. I met someone like that once.” A woman on the Lower East Side had claimed she’d come to America from Ireland sixty years earlier, although she didn’t look a day past thirty. Other people had called her insane, but Abe had seen the truth in her tale, the two consciousnesses, not quite overlapping, gazing through a single pair of eyes. She told him she had been different since the ibbur began, being neither her original self nor the spirit but an entirely new entity, and one who fit poorly into the world. Abe had been much younger then, and the woman had terrified him by her very existence.
“What about the dybbuk?” Thomas asked.
Abe would have trembled were it not for Thomas’s touch. “If I were the type of man who prayed, I’d pray very hard to never again encounter a dybbuk.”
“But Birdie…?”
“Was a righteous man,” Abe said with a smile. Meaning it.
For a moment, Thomas’s hard face softened and his eyes shone bright as the sky on a sunny day. He dragged his fingertips tenderly along Abe’s jawline before letting his arm fall to his side. His gaze became foggy again. “I’m not righteous.”
“Nor am I.” Abe smiled wickedly. “But then, you already knew that.”
If Thomas’s eyes were fog, his mouth was smoke: a mix of peaty scotch and tobacco. His arms caged Abe, holding him close and proving that Thomas was as hard as Abe was. But although Thomas was bigger and stronger, Abe felt powerful indeed as he worked a hand between them and squeezed Thomas’s erection, causing Thomas to moan into his ear. It was a beautiful sound.
Abe squeezed again and would have kept at it, simply for the lovely noises Thomas made, but Thomas grabbed his wrist.
“You mentioned bedrooms,” he panted.
11
Abe truly was a sorcerer—there was no other explanation for it. With seemingly no effort he could make Thomas forget his job, forget his past, forget safety and rationality. Thomas couldn’t fight this spell and didn’t want to.
Bloody hell, wasn’t a man entitled to a bit of magic now and then?
He followed Abe up a narrow staircase to a short hallway. Out of long habit, he made a quick assessment of the premises. One room looked out onto a garden and was almost empty except for a few dusty boxes. Next to that was a washroom with black-and-white tile and a clawfoot tub. A plant trailed leafy stems from a pot on the windowsill. They passed built-in cupboards and drawers in the hallway, perhaps holding towels and extra bedding. He followed Abe into the second bedroom.
It overlooked Twelfth Avenue, and the window stood slightly open despite the night chill, curtains stirring in the breeze. An oriental rug covered most of the wooden floor. There wasn’t much furniture—a bed, a dresser, a chair, a pair of nightstands—all made of dark wood without elaborate carving or other decoration. In fact, the entire room was plain. No pictures on the white walls, no knickknacks cluttering the dresser or the fireplace mantel. If it weren’t for the handsome blue-and-white blanket on the bed and the little stack of books on the nightstand, the room would have rivaled a bare hotel chamber.
“I saved all the fussiness for my parlor, where my guests can see it,” Abe explained, matter-of-fact and unembarrassed. “I prefer simplicity where I sleep.”
“Interesting, considering you’re a complicated man.”
“Am I?”
“You’re a confidence man in fancy clothing. With props.”
“So maybe you’d rather see me naked, without the props.”
When Thomas arrived tonight, Abe had been dressed casually in a yellow-and-gray-striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up, without a coat or tie. Now he began to unbutton the shirt slowly, with a teasing glint in his eyes.
“Doesn’t mean you won’t lie to me.”
Abe palmed his own crotch, his erection obvious. “This doesn’t lie.”
“Maybe not. But did you bring me up here because you want to fuck me, or because Birdie does?”
“Did you come up here because you wanted to fuck me or Birdie?”
Thomas tightened his jaw. “Does it matter?”
“I guess so, considering Birdie’s not here right now.”
It was funny, really. At first Thomas hadn’t believed that Abe could harbor Birdie’s spirit, and now he wondered if Abe might. He saw nothing of his dead lover in Abe’s face, however, and when Abe shrugged out of his shirt and pulled off his undershirt, he didn’t resemble Birdie at all. Where Birdie had been skinny and pale and nearly hairless, Abe was sleekly muscled and dark, with thick curls on his chest and a line of hair on his lower belly. Birdie had been as clear and straightforward as a glass of cool water on a hot summer day, but
Abe was the ocean, changing and fathomless.
Abe removed his shoes and socks and unfastened his trousers. Clearly enjoying Thomas’s visual appraisal, he stepped out of the last of his clothing and stood with his legs slightly spread and hands on his hips. “You see? Nothing left but me.”
He was even more beautiful naked, with a trim waist and slightly plump arse. His cock stood proudly.
Still fully dressed, Thomas strode forward and grabbed Abe for a bruising kiss. There was something delightfully wicked about all that bare flesh pressed against his own wool and cotton. Perhaps Abe felt so too, because he returned the kiss with equal vigor, groaning when Thomas gnawed lightly at his lower lip.
Abe was entirely wanton and unashamed. A magician must be accustomed to carnality, seeing as he had to control and manipulate his own body in many ways. And Abe in particular, knowing well the thin line between life and death, might be eager to experience joys of the flesh. Thomas had long since tended to place a barrier between his mind and his body, and he envied Abe.
But no need for envy now, when Abe was rutting against him.
Thomas used his greater bulk to drive Abe back all the way to the wall, and when Abe tried to unbutton his shirt, Thomas grabbed his wrists and held them over Abe’s head.
Some men might have struggled against that, but Abe didn’t. In fact, his muscles visibly relaxed and his mouth sagged open. His pupils widened so much that they nearly eclipsed the amber of his irises. It was obviously not fear or panic that quickened his breaths. “Thomas,” he begged. Not Tommy and not Donne.
“Get onto the bed. On your back.”
Abe licked his lips and smiled when Thomas released him. He didn’t hurry across the room, but sauntered, possibly with an extra sway to his hips. When he reached the bed, he yanked the blanket off and onto the floor and lay back on the sheets, exactly as Thomas had told him. Well, not exactly. Because Thomas hadn’t said anything about what to do with his hands, but Abe grinned and rested his wrists against the rails of the headboard.