He always shrugged it off, because he had someplace to go. And yet he remembered it, too, and walked on the east side of the street as often as not, sometimes even crossing over, going out of his way to avoid it, only to cross back again afterward.
What am I afraid of? he asked himself.
Which is why, on one day in that hot summer of the year he turned thirteen, instead of avoiding that spot on the west sidewalk of the lower part of Cloverdale, he made straight for it, made it his destination, and found himself standing there wondering what it was that had bothered him so many times before.
He still couldn't see anything. This was stupid.
He decided to go home.
And there it was again. That moment of startlement. He'd seen it. Out of the corner of his eye.
But when he turned to look, there was nothing. He sidestepped, looking between the houses, going up and down the sidewalk, and there was nothing.
Again he decided to go home.
Again, as he passed the same spot, out of the corner of his eye he saw...
It was out of the corner of his eye.
Instead of sidestepping, he now turned his face resolutely southward, looking up Cloverdale toward the place where it jogged to the west at Sanchez Drive. Without turning his eyes to left or right, he took a few steps backward, then forward, and both times he saw it, just a little flash of something to the right, directly between the houses, right at the property line.
Finally he got it exactly right and stopped, right there, with whatever it was holding steady at the corner of his eye.
He knew better now than to try to look right at it—it would surely disappear. Instead, keeping his gaze southward, he took a step onto the lawn between the houses. And another.
The shimmer became a vertical line, and then it became thicker, like a lamppost or a telephone pole—how much could he see, really, out of the corner of his eye? With each step it widened out, shoving the other houses aside.
Another step and it was as wide as any house in the neighborhood. A whole house, directly between Snipes' and Chandresses', and nobody but him knew it was there, mainly because there was no way in hell it could possibly be there. A whole house that was skinny enough to fit between two houses taking up no space at all.
He reached out a hand and touched a bush growing in the nonexistent front yard. He sidled closer to the house and in a few moments he had his hand resting on the door handle and it was as real and solid as any door handle in the neighborhood.
So he slowly turned his head and this time it didn't disappear. It stayed right where it was.
A whole secret house.
Somebody else might have doubted his sanity. But Mack Street knew he lived in a neighborhood where young swimmers could wish themselves inside a waterbed.
He rang the doorbell.
In a little while he heard someone moving inside. He rang again.
"Don't keep pestering the doorbell," a man called out.
a couple of years.
"Can I use your toilet?" asked Mack.
"No," said the man. "Go away."
But Mack ignored him because he knew that the man didn't really mean it. He walked past him and found the bathroom behind the first door he tried.
"Can't you take no for an answer, boy?" asked the man.
"You want me peeing on your floor?" asked Mack.
"I don't even want you walking on my floor. Who do you think you are?"
"I think I'm the only person in Baldwin Hills who knows this place even exists." Mack finished peeing and flushed and then, being a nurse's son, he washed his hands.
"Doesn't do any good to wash your hands," the man said from outside the bathroom. "The towel's filthy."
"I don't know how it could be," said Mack. "It ain't like you ever use it."
"Not all the company I get is as tidy as you."
"How do you ever get company at all, being how your house is only visible out of the corner of your eye."
"Depends on where you're coming from. The Good Folk find it whenever they care to come and visit."
"I don't know that I'm such bad folk. I think the folk of Baldwin Hills are maybe a little better than average."
"Well, nobody would know that better than you, Mack Street," said the man. "But the Good Folk I was referring to aren't from Baldwin Hills."
"You got any peanut butter?" asked Mack.
"I'm not here to feed you," said the man.
"How did you know my name?" asked Mack, now that he realized that's what the man had just done.
"Everybody knows your name, Mack Street. Just like everybody knows my house."
"They know my house because I'm right on the shore of the strongest river of power the world has seen in five hundred years. And they know your name because that river started flowing the day that you were born. It's like your birth sort of popped the cork and let it rip. Like lava from a volcano.
Power flowing down Magic Street and on through the whole neighborhood."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Bag Baby," said the man.
"What do you know about the day I was born?"
"Everything," said the man. "And everything about your life since that happy day. The woman who tried to get you killed that very first day of your life. The boy who almost did it and then spent years of his life in penance for having even entertained the thought."
"You talking about Ceese?" asked Mack. "You expect me to believe Ceese almost killed me?"
"In fairness, no. He didn't almost do anything. He fought off the desire. Do you have any idea how strong he must be, to resist her?"
"I might if I knew who her was."
The man smiled benignly and passed a hand over Mack's nappy head, which Mack always hated but never complained about. "So you're thirteen now. Your lucky year."
"Doesn't feel all that lucky so far."
"Well, it wouldn't to you, being a child, and therefore incapable of taking the long view of anything."
"How do you keep your house invisible?"
"It's perfectly visible," said the man. "It just takes a little work. There's a lot of things in the world like that. Most people just don't take the time to look for them."
"What's your name?" asked Mack.
"Why, do you plan on opening a bank account for me? Send me a Christmas card?"
Mack didn't like evasiveness. He liked it when people answered plain, even if it was to say, None of your business. "I'll call you Mr. Christmas."
"You don't get to pick names for strangers, not in this place, boy. I'm master of my own house!"
"Then give me something to call you."
"I don't want you to call me," said Mr. Christmas. "I've been called enough in my life, thank you kindly."
"I can't help what ignorant people think. The house is mine and it don't take no deed to prove it."
"I'm hungry," said Mack. He was tired of talking to somebody who wouldn't say anything useful.
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Mr. Christmas.
So he wouldn't even share food with a visitor. "What you got here that's so important you got to hide from the world."
"Me," said Mr. Christmas.
"Why you hiding? You kill somebody?"
"Only now and then, and it was a long time ago."
"You planning to kill me?"
"This isn't Hansel and Gretel, Mack. I don't eat children."
"Didn't ask if you planning to eat me."
"Believe me, Mack, I don't want you dead." He laughed.
"What's so funny?"
"Humans."
"As if you wasn't one yourself." Mack walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. It was right where it was supposed to be. He went to the fridge and opened it. There was plenty of food inside. Everything he liked to snack on. Milk. Juice. Grapes. Lunchables. Salami. Bologna. Even a leftover mess of beans that looked just like Mrs. Tucker's recipe for burn-your-head-off chil
i.
Mack took the chili out of the fridge and opened a drawer and took out a spoon.
"Where's the microwave?" he asked.
"Do I have one?" Mr. Christmas asked in return.
Mack looked around. The microwave was on the counter right beside the fridge, exactly where it was in Mrs. Tucker's kitchen. He put in the chili, set it for two minutes, and started it going.
"Well, who knew," said Mr. Christmas.
"Who knew what?"
"That I had a microwave."
"You telling me this is a rental and you just moved in?"
"I guess my house just bound to give you whatever you want."
"I want answers."
"Ask the house," said Mr. Christmas.
Mack was sick of this. He rocked his head back and shouted at the ceiling, "Who this brother! I want his name!"
There was a clattering only a couple of feet away. Mack whirled and looked. In the middle of the kitchen floor there was a thick disk of plastic, bright orange. "What's that supposed to be?"
"A pile of flop from a plastic cow?" said Mr. Christmas. "A traffic cone had a baby?"
Mack leaned his head back again and shouted, "What's this thing supposed to be?"
Another clatter. Now, lying beside the plastic thing on the floor was a crooked stick.
"What is this," said Mack. "ESPN in Middle-earth? I don't want to play hockey."
"This is getting funny," said Mr. Christmas.
The microwave dinged. Mack opened it, took out the chili. It wasn't burning hot, but it was warm enough to eat. He dug in with the spoon.
It didn't just look like Mrs. Tucker's chili, it was her chili. Mack jumped up and whooped just like he did when he ate at Tuckers' house. The first bite of chili always made him dance, it was so spicy.
"You eat that on purpose?" asked Mr. Christmas. "Even though it burns?"
"It doesn't really burn," said Mack. "It stimulates the nerves in your mouth."
"I guess I accidently asked Mr. Science."
"It also stimulates the nerves in your butt on the way out. I mean, that's chili."
"You telling me more than I want to know, boy."
"You telling me nothing, so I guess on average we having a conversation."
"Eat your chili," said Mr. Christmas.
"Did you buy this house? Or build it? Or just steal it and then hide it from everybody?"
Skinny House on the Cheap End of Cloverdale."
"The Skinny House Out of the Corner of Your Eye."
"The Skinny House Where Strange Boys Come and Ransack the Fridge."
"The Skinny House of Lies and Secrets," said Mack.
"The Skinny House of the Fairy," said Mr. Christmas.
"Now who's telling more than the other person wants to know?"
"I finally tell you the truth, and you won't believe me," said Mr. Christmas.
"You think I believe a single thing that's happened here this afternoon?"
"You eating that chili."
"I'm pretending you polite enough to offer me food."
"You sure take magic in stride, boy."
"I already seen too much magic in my life," said Mack. "And it's all ugly."
"I'm not the architect, Mack. This house just like the others in this neighborhood. I don't know why people so thrilled to live in Baldwin Hills. I don't think this house is so much."
"The houses up the hill are just fine," said Mack. "But even houses down here in the flat better than what everybody used to have, in Watts."
"Your mama tell you that?"
"Miz Smitcher did," said Mack. "I don't know my mama."
"I do," said Mr. Christmas.
Mack took the last bite of chili. "She living or dead?"
"Living," said Mr. Christmas.
"She live around here?"
"Right up Cloverdale."
"That's such a lie," said Mack. "You think a girl could get pregnant and have a baby around here and the whole neighborhood don't know it?"
Mack ignored him. He got up and washed the dish and the spoon and put them to dry. Mr.
Christmas said nothing till Mack was done. "You downright tidy," he said. "Convenient to have around the house."
"I just felt like washing it," said Mack.
"And you do whatever you feel like," said Mr. Christmas.
"Mostly."
"But ain't it convenient that what you feel like doing is just exactly what other people want you to do."
"I try not to be a bother."
"You do your homework, get good grades, you don't steal anything but you don't tell on your friends that do, you go everywhere and see everything but you don't gossip and you don't take anything or damage anything and you don't even drop a candy wrapper on the ground, you take it home and put it in the garbage."
"You been spying on me?"
"I guess you just a civilized boy, that's all," said Mr. Christmas.
Mack wasn't interested in this man's opinion of him. "So what's your back yard like? Does it just disappear again, like in front?"
"Look and see," said Mr. Christmas. "I don't go back there much."
Mack went to the back door and opened it and looked out onto the patio. There was a rusted barbecue off to one side, and an old-fashioned umbrella-style clothesline with a few clothespins hanging on it like birds perched along a wire. Behind the patio a couple of scraggly-looking orange trees were covered in fruit that had been pecked at by birds or gnawed by squirrels. And the scruffy, patchy, weedy lawn was dotted with rotting fruit.
"All the cheap Mexican labor in LA," said Mack, "and you can't even hire a gardener?"
"You call this a garden?" asked Mr. Christmas.
"Don't you even want to eat these oranges before they rot or the birds and squirrels get them?"
"I've had oranges before. They ain't so much."
"What do you eat?"
"Got a taste for See's Candies," said Mr. Christmas.
"I'm surprised you don't have them growing on trees, the way this house goes."
"I got me a box a few years back. It hasn't run out yet."
"Either that was a big box, or you don't eat much."
"Thirteen years," said Mr. Christmas. "As a matter of fact, I got that box as a birthday present."
"When's your birthday?"
"It wasn't for my birthday," said Mr. Christmas. "You jump to a lot of conclusions."
Mack was tired of riddles. He walked out onto the patio.
Did the trees grow taller?
He stepped back. The orange trees were definitely smaller again.
"I see," he said. "Your front yard gets smaller and smaller till your house just disappears. But the back yard gets bigger and bigger."
"It does what it does," said Mr. Christmas.
Mack walked back toward the trees. Right to the edge of the patio. Curiously, the patio had shrunk down now to a brick path, and when he turned around, the house was farther away than it should have been, and was half hidden among trees and vines that hadn't been there when he crossed the patio. Mr. Christmas stood in the doorway, but he was no longer dressed the way he had been.
Nor was he quite the same man. He was thinner, and his clothes fit snugly, and he looked younger, and his hair was a halo around his head, not filthy dreads at all.
"Who are you?" called Mack.
Mr. Christmas just waved cheerfully. "Don't let anything eat you back there!" he called.
Mack turned back toward the forest—for that's what it was now, not a lawn with trees, but a track through a dense forest and not an orange in sight, though berries grew in profusion beside the path, and butterflies and bees and dragonflies fluttered and hovered and darted over the blossoms of a dozen different kinds of wildflower.
It didn't occur to Mack to be afraid, despite Mr. Christmas's warning. If anything, this forest felt like home to him. Like all his wandering through the neighborhood and Hahn Park his whole life had actually been a search for this place. California was a desert
compared to this. Even when the jacaranda bloomed it didn't have this sweet flowery scent in the air, and instead of the dismal brown dirt of Los Angeles there was moss underfoot, and thick loamy black soil in the patches where the path hadn't quite been overgrown.
And water. Los Angeles had a river, but it was penned in like the elephants at the zoo, surrounded by concrete and left dry most of the year. Here, though, the path led alongside a brook that tumbled over mossy stones and had fish darting in the waters, which meant that it never went dry.
Frogs and toads hopped out of the way, and birds flitted across the path in front of him, and beads of water glistened on many a leaf, as if it had rained only a few hours ago—something that never happened in LA in the summer—or perhaps as if the dew had been so heavy that it hadn't all evaporated yet.
Off in the distance, mostly hidden by bushes or vines or trunks of trees, but flashing occasionally as he walked along, there was a tiny light.
Mack left the path and headed toward it. It didn't occur to him at first that he might get lost, once he left the path. He had never been lost in his life. But he had never been in a real forest, either—the open woods of Hahn Park were nothing like this. And when he turned around after only a few steps, he couldn't tell where the path was.
But he could still see the light, flickering among the distant trees.
Now the bushes and branches snagged at his clothes, and sometimes there were brambles, so he had to back out and go around. He found himself on the brink of a little canyon once, and had to turn around and climb down into it, and then search for a place where he could leap over the torrent of water that plunged down the ravine. This place was getting wilder all the time, and yet he still wasn't afraid. He noted the danger, how easily he might get lost, how a person could fall into the current and be swept away to God knows where, just like in his dream, and yet he knew that this wasn't the place or time for his dream to come true, and he would not be harmed here, not today.
Unless, of course, this sense of confidence was part of the magic of the place, luring him on to destruction. Magic was tricky that way, as he knew better than any other soul. What seemed most sweet could be most deadly, what promised happiness could bring you deep and endless grief.
But he went on, clambering up the other side, which was, if anything, steeper than the side that he had climbed down.
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