The Illusionist
Page 22
I felt the tears well up in my eyes. It wasn’t just the money, it was the fact that, in the end, I was just an object to him too, like all the rest of them were.
I dropped the envelope back into the box, closed the lid. So, that was the ending, I thought, even our friendship couldn’t transcend who he really was, a compulsive betrayer of all people. In the end he trusted no one, except maybe Melanie—the one girl he wouldn’t let himself have.
It was ten o’clock now, and my apartment seemed to have a harsher light because everything was packed away. The windows were open, I could hear noise, children playing. Outside in the humid spring air, the fake gaslights on the street were surrounded by a golden aura.
The room looked clean and anonymous, as if I had never even lived here. The wainscoting on the walls was smooth, the brass sconces gleaming. The phone rested upon the bare floor. My suitcase was closed up, the box of books sealed with tape. As if the room were waiting now, for the next stranger.
I hadn’t done any damage to the place. I hadn’t paid Mr. Chin, the landlord, for May—he could have my security for the rent.
I was taking off at 8 A.M. and I would be in Caledonia by lunchtime, and have the weekend to settle in.
I needed a drink and to say good-bye to Carl. “Don’t you leave without saying good-bye,” Carl had said. Funny, I had never seen Carl actually in town, as small a place as Sparta was. I knew he lived in the Sparta Apartments off Courthouse Square, yet I’d never seen him on the street. His only life was the Wooden Nickel, I thought. I’d go over to there, have a drink, and just say good-bye.
* * *
As I drove up Washington Street, I could smell the spring air. There was the tinkling of bicycle bells, and the sound of a calliope somewhere from an ice cream truck. Kids were riding their bikes on the sidewalk while their mothers, wearing shorts, thighs still pale from winter, sat on the stoops talking.
I passed the Opera House and I saw a line of cars. They had raised enough money to restore just the ground floor of the building. And tonight was the opening of an art show by local artists. While they were mounting the exhibit, I had peeked inside. There were paintings of the river, and of Washington Street itself, with the red brick buildings seeming to glow in the light; there was even a painting of the CITGO station, all squares and triangles, bright oranges and yellows.
Now, driving up Washington Street, I came to the New York, New York store. The old lady who ran the antique shop next door to it had been complaining to the cops about all the drug dealers hanging around New York, New York, claiming they were keeping legitimate customers away from her place. You could see her sometimes, a tiny, white-haired figure dressed in blue jeans, standing there yelling at the kids to get off her stoop. The old lady said she wasn’t afraid of the drug dealers killing her. She was too old to worry about dying.
And as I drove through the crazy spring air, the city seemed to glow and there was life echoing in the streets. At the end of Washington Street, I turned onto 7 and coming through the window of the car was the fragrance of cut grass—people had already begun mowing their lawns. In the shadows of covered porches, old women swung back and forth.
On the steep banks rising from Noland Street, people had planted begonias and impatiens, even though it wasn’t officially Memorial Day yet and there was always the danger of frost before then. But after the long harsh winter, people were in a hurry.
On the rise above the river, I saw the lights still blazing in the windows of the Nightingale Home. I could hear the soft clanking of the cement plant across the river, the sound filling the humid air.
I curved around to Old Route 27. Down below, the river ran parallel to the road, a milky color in the spring night, and the sweet smell of the water permeated the air.
Occasionally, as I drove, I passed a lone house, the curtains in the window drawn, the blue light of a television set leaking out from around the edges. So that you saw a darkened house, the shape barely visible from the road, and a blue light emanating from it. Little families in their homes. Little families all together, life within.
Cars whooshed past me. People out late because it was spring, a holiday weekend. There was the old trailer lot, giant trailers unsold and abandoned, looming. And a stretch of dark road now.
I saw a white clapboard building ahead of me, The Wooden Nickel. It seemed almost to glow in the thick night. Funny, I’d never been upstairs in the place. Carl said the second floor was just storage, filled with junk. Once, long ago, when this had been a real inn, the proprietors had rented out the rooms on the second floor to weary travelers on the old coach road. Two hundred years ago, before the white man came to Palatine County, Old 27 was probably an Indian trail, and there had probably always been a trading post of some kind here. It was a natural spot on the road for it. And then the white man had built his inn.
There were cars parked in the lot now. The sign with the Indian head was all lit up. Funny old gnarled Indian head. The place was probably named “The Wooden Nickel” because of the Taponacs. The Taponacs were all gone now. Except maybe for their descendants intermarried with the blacks.
I pulled into the lot. It was lit up almost like daylight by the harsh spotlight.
As I entered the Wooden Nickel, people were watching the local news on TV and customers were playing video games in the back. Bruce Springsteen was on the jukebox singing “Glory Days.” Carl had the top ten of all different years on his jukebox—strange, random years that made no sense. Must have been some package deal he got from a distributor. There were new releases and oldies. Oldies to cater to the older patrons, and on some nights the older customers would take over the jukebox completely and just play record after record of their music, and the younger patrons would jeer and laugh, and there would be actual music wars. It seemed like the older group had won tonight.
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?”<
br />
“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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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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
CIP
ISBN: 978-0-6848-4819-8 (Pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-4391-3176-3 (eBook)