And the owner of the stall smiled at her and said, “You mean the wizard holding the crystal, right?” and the woman said, in this really snotty voice, “Quite.”
So the owner wrapped up the little figurine of a wizard holding a crystal ball in several layers of tissue paper, and held it out to the woman and said, “Seventeen-seventy-eight, please,” and the woman was digging in her purse and I swear, all I did was try to step out of their way.
I guess my coat caught on a corner of the door or something, for in the next instant everything was tilting and sliding. I tried to catch the edge of the door-table, but it landed on the woman’s foot, really hard, as all the crystal and pewter crashed to the floor and scattered across the linoleum like a shattered whitecap. The woman screamed and threw up her hands and the little wrapped wizard went flying.
I’m not sure if I really saw this.
The crystal ball flew out of the package and landed separately on the floor. It didn’t shatter or tinkle or crash. It went Poof! with a minute puff of smoke. And the crumple of tissue paper floated down emptily.
“You stupid bitch!” the woman yelled at me, and the owner of the booth glared at me and said, “I hope to hell you have insurance, klutz!”
Which is a dumb thing to say, really, and I couldn’t think of any answer. People were turning to stare, and moving toward us to see what the excitement was, and the woman had sort of collapsed and was holding onto her foot, saying, “My god, it’s broken, it’s broken.”
I knew, quite abruptly and coldly, that she wasn’t talking about her foot.
Then the fortyish man grabbed me by the elbow and said, “We’ve got to get out of here!” I let him pull me away, and the funny thing is no one tried to stop us or chase us or anything. The crowd closed up around the woman on the floor like an amoeba engulfing a tidbit.
Then we were in a pickup truck that smelled like a wet dog, and the floor was cluttered with muddy newspapers and styrofoam coffee cups and wrappers from Hostess Fruit Pies and paper boats from the textured vegetable protein burritos they sell in the Seven-Eleven stores.
Part of me was saying that I was crazy to be driving off with this guy I hardly knew who had stuck me with the bill for dinner, and part of me was saying that I had better get back to Sears, maybe I could explain being this late for work. And part of me just didn’t give a shit anymore, it just wanted to flee. And that part felt better than it had in ages.
We pulled up outside a little white house and he turned to me gravely and said, “Thank you for rescuing me.”
“This is really dumb,” I said, and he said, “Maybe so, but it’s all we’ve got. I told you, magic isn’t what it used to be.”
So we went inside the little house and he put the tea kettle on. It was a beautiful kettle, shining copper with a white and blue ceramic handle, and the cups and saucers he took down matched it. I said, “You stuck me with the bill at the restaurant.”
He said, “My enemies fell upon me in the restroom and magicked me away. I told you. I never would have chosen to leave you that way, Silver Lady. But for your intervention today, I would still be in their powers.” Then he turned, holding a little tin cannister in each hand and asked, “Which will you have: Misplaced Dreams or Forgotten Sweetness?”
“Forgotten Sweetness,” I said, and he put down both cannisters of tea and took me in his arms and kissed me. And yes, I could feel his stomach sticking out a little against mine, and when I put my hand to the back of his head to hold his mouth against mine, I could tell his hair was thinning. But I also thought I could hear windchimes and scent an elusive perfume on a warm breeze. I don’t believe in magic. The idea of willing enchantment into my life is dumb. Dumb. But as the fortyish man had said, it was all we had. A dumb hope for a small slice of magic, no matter how thin. The fortyish man didn’t waste his energy carrying me to the bedroom.
I never met a man under twenty-five who was worth the powder to blow him to hell. They’re all stuck in third gear.
It takes a man until he’s thirty to understand what gentleness is about, and a few years past that to realize that a woman touches a man as she would like him to touch her.
By thirty-five, they start to grasp how a woman’s body is wired. They quit trying to kick-start us, and learn to make sure the battery is charged before turning the key. A few, I’ve heard, learn how to let a woman make love to them.
Fortyish men understand pacing. They know it doesn’t have to all happen at once, that separating each stimulus can intensify each touch. They know when pausing is more poignant than continuing, and they know when continuing is more important than a ceramic kettle whistling itself dry on an electric burner.
And afterwards I said to him, “Have you ever heard of ‘Lindholm’s Rule of Ten’?”
He frowned an instant. “Isn’t that the theory that the first ten times two people make love, one will do something that isn’t in sync with the other?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“It’s been disproved,” he said solemnly. And he got up and went to the bathroom while I rescued the smoking kettle from the burner.
I stood in the kitchen, and after a while I started shivering, because the place wasn’t all that well heated. Putting my clothes back on didn’t seem polite somehow, so I called through the bathroom door, “Shall I put on more water for tea?”
He didn’t answer, and I didn’t want to yell through the door again, so I picked up my blouse and slung it around my shoulders and shivered for a while. I sort of paced through his kitchen and living room. I found myself reading the titles of his books, one of the best ways to politely spy on someone. Theories of Thermodynamics was right next to The Silmarillion. All the books by Carlos Castenada were set apart on a shelf by themselves. His set of Kipling was bound in red leather. My ass was freezing, and I suspected I had a rug burn on my back. To hell with being polite. I went and got my underwear and skirt and stood in the kitchen, putting them on.
“Merlin?” I called questioningly as I picked up my pantyhose. They were shot, a huge laddered run up the back of one leg. I bunched them up and shoved them into my purse. I went and knocked on the bathroom door, saying, “I’m coming in, okay?” And when he didn’t answer, I opened the door.
There was no one in there. But I was sure that was where he had gone, and the only other exit from the bathroom was a small window with three pots of impatiens blooming on the sill. The only clue that he had been there was the used rubber floating pathetically in the toilet. There is nothing less romantic than a used rubber.
I went and opened the bedroom door and looked in there. He hadn’t made his bed this morning. I backed out.
I actually waited around for a while, pretending he would come back. I mean, his clothes were still in a heap on the floor. How he could have gotten re-dressed and left the house without my noticing it, I didn’t try to figure out. But after an hour or so, it didn’t matter how he had done anything. He was gone.
I didn’t cry. I had been too stupid to allow myself to cry. None of this made sense, but my behavior made the least sense of all. I finished getting dressed and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Great. Smeared makeup and nothing to repair it with, so I washed it all off. Let the lines at the corners of my mouth and the circles under my eyes show. Who cared. My hair had gone wild. My legs were white-fleshed and goosebumpy without the pantyhose. The cute little ankle-strap heels on my bare feet looked grotesque. All of me looked rumpled and used. It matched how I felt, an outfit that perfectly complemented my mood, so I got my purse and left.
The old pickup was still outside. That didn’t make sense either, but I didn’t really give a damn.
I walked home. That sounds simpler than it was. The weather was raw, I was barelegged and in heels, it was getting dark and people stared at me. It took me about an hour, and by the time I got there I had rubbed a huge blister on the back of one of my feet, so I was limping as well. I went up the stairs, narrowly missing the moist brown
pile the neighbor’s cat had left for me, unlocked my apartment door and went in.
And I still didn’t cry. I kicked off my shoes and got into my old baggy sweatsuit and went to the kitchen. I made myself hot chocolate in a little china pot with forget-me-nots on it, and opened the eight ounce canned genuine all-the-way-from-England Cross and Blackwell plum pudding that my sister had given me last Christmas and I had saved in case of disasters like this. I cut the whole thing up and arranged it on a bone china plate on a little tray with my pot of hot chocolate and a cup and saucer. I set it on a little table by my battered easy chair, put a quilt on the chair and got down my old leather copy of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. Then I headed for the bathroom, intending to take a quick hot shower and dab on some rose oil before settling down for the evening. It was my way of apologizing to myself for hurting myself this badly.
I opened the bathroom door, and a stenchful cloud of sulphurous green smoke wafted out. Choking and gasping, I peered in, and there was the fortyish man, clad only in a towel, smiling at me apologetically. He looked apprehensive. he had a big raw scrape on one knee, and a swollen lump on his forehead. He said, “Silver Lady, I never would have left you like that, but.…”
“You were teleported away by your arch rival,” I finished.
He said, “No, not teleported, exactly, this involved a spell requiring a monkey’s paw and a dozen nightshade berries. But they were last year’s berries, and not potent enough to hold me. I had a spell of my own up my sleeve and.…”
“You blasted him to kingdom come,” I guessed.
“No.” He looked a little abashed. “Actually, it was the ‘Incessant Rectal Itch’ spell, a little crude, but always effective and simple to use. I doubt that he’ll be bothering us again soon.” He paused, then added, “As I’ve told you, magic isn’t what it used to be.” Then he sniffed a few times and said, “Actually, I’ve found that Pinesol is the best stuff for getting rid of spell residues.…”
So we cleaned up the bathroom. I poured hydrogen peroxide over his scraped knee and he made gasping noises and cursed in a language I’d never heard before. I left him doing that and went into the kitchen and began reheating the hot chocolate. A few moments later he came out dressed in a sort of sarong he’d made from one of my bed sheets. It looked strangely elegant on him, and the funny thing was, neither of us seemed to feel awkward as we sat down and drank the hot chocolate and shared the plum pudding. The last piece of plum pudding he took, and borrowing some cream cheese from my refrigerator, he buttered a cabalistic sign onto it. Then he went to the door and called, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”
The neighbor’s cat came at once, and the ratty old thing let the fortyish man scoop him up and bring him into my living room, where he removed two ticks from behind its ears and then fed it the plum pudding in small bites. When he had done that, he picked it up and stared long into its yellowish eyes before he intoned, “By bread and cream I bind you. Nevermore shalt thou shit upon the threshold of this abode.” Then he put the cat gently out the door, observing aloud, “Well, that takes care of the curse you were under.”
I stared at him. “I thought my curse had something to do with me working at Sears.”
“No. That was just a viciously cruel thing you were doing to yourself, for reasons I will never understand.” He must have seen the look on my face, because after a while he said, “I told you, the magic is never quite what you think it to be.”
Then he came to sit on the floor beside my easy chair. He put his elbow on my knee and leaned his chin in his hand. “What if I were to tell you, Silver Lady, that I myself have no real magic at all? That, actually, I climbed out my bathroom window and sneaked through the streets in my towel to meet you here? Because I wanted you to see me as special.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What if I told you I really work for Boeing, in Personnel?”
I just looked at him, and he lifted his elbow from my knee and turned aside a little. He glanced at his own bare feet, and then over at my machine. He licked his lips and spoke softly. “I could get you a job there. As a word processor, at about eleven dollars an hour.”
“Merlin,” I said warningly.
“Well, maybe not eleven dollars an hour to start.…”
I reached out and brushed what hair he had back from his receding hairline. He looked up at me and then smiled the smile where he always looked aside from me. We didn’t say anything at all. I took his hand and led him to my room, where we once more disproved Lindholm’s Rule of Ten. I fell asleep curled around him, my hand resting comfortably on the curve of his belly. He was incredibly warm, and smelled of oranges, cloves, and cinnamon. Misplaced Dreams Tea, that’s what he smelled like. And that night I dreamed I wore a peacock feather gown and strolled through a misty garden. I had found something I had lost, and I carried it in my hand, but every time I tried to look at it to see what it was, the mist swirled up and hid my hand from me.
In the morning when I woke up, the fortyish man was gone.
It didn’t really bother me. I knew that either he would be back, or he wouldn’t, but either way no one could take from me what I already had, and what I already had was a lot more magic than most people get in their lives. I put on my ratty old bathrobe and my silver ladies and went out into the livingroom. His sarong sheet was folded up on the easy chair in the livingroom, and the neighbor’s cat was asleep on it, his paws tucked under his chin.
And my Muse was there, too, perched on the corner of my desk, one knee under her chin as she painted her toenails. She looked up when I came in and said, “If you’re quite finished having a temper tantrum, we’ll get on with your career now.” So I sat down at my machine and flicked the switch on and put my fingers on the home row.
Funny thing. The keys weren’t even dusty.
ALAN BRENNERT
The Third Sex
Alan Brennert was beginning to make a reputation for himself in the genre in the 1970s as a writer of finely crafted short stories, but then he was lured away by Hollywood. Since then, he has served as executive story consultant on The Twilight Zone during its recent television revival, written teleplays for China Beach, The Mississippi, and Darkroom, and has twice been nominated for the Writers Guild Award. His first novel was Kindred Spirits; another, Time and Chance, was just published by Tor and a story collection titled Her Pilgrim Soul and Other Stories is coming soon.
In spite of all this, he still finds time for the occasional short story, which show up from time to time in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Pulphouse, and elsewhere. He’s lost none of his touch—as demonstrated by the brilliant story that follows, from Pulphouse, about someone who is caught, quite literally, between two worlds.
The Third Sex
ALAN BRENNERT
I couldn’t have been more than three years old, that night I wandered into my parents’ bedroom; I’d had the dream again, the one where I was being crushed between floor and ceiling, unable to breathe or break free. Shaken, I raced down the hall, pushed upon my parents’ door—then stopped as I saw what they were doing.
Locked in a sweaty tangle of sheets, they were jerking back and forth, making short, breathless sounds; for a minute I thought maybe they were having the same bad dream I’d just had. Their arms were wrapped around one another, the two of them lying face-to-face, so close I couldn’t tell where one began and the other left off. When they saw me, my mother called out my name, my father swore, they pulled apart with a wet, sucking sound … and as the sheets fell away I saw a thick, curved finger between my father’s legs, and between my mother’s, another pair of lips. I rushed up, fascinated, asking a million questions at once; my father just looked at my mother, sighed, and tried to answer my questions—what is that called? what is that for?—as completely and honestly as you can, to a three-year-old; and when I went to bed that night, I reached down under my pajamas and touched the smooth, unbroken skin between my thighs, and dreamed of the day—Daddy never men
tioned it, but I knew it had to come—when my own penis or vagina would start to grow. But somehow, it never did.
I’d been a perfectly normal newborn infant in all other respects, though not the first of my kind to appear. At first no one had a clue what to put on the birth certificate, much less what to name me, so they equivocated and the name on the county records is Pat; Pat Jacquith. Later, of course, they realized I had to have some identity, and since they were hoping for a daughter, that’s what I became … at least until that night in their bedroom. “You’re Daddy’s little girl,” my father had always told me, but if I was a girl, why didn’t I have what Mommy had, that second pair of lips, that bristly hair? All I had was a pee-hole; it hardly seemed fair. And in years to come, when Mommy would take me out, shopping for skirts, or dolls, or frilly bedclothes, I knew I wasn’t really like Mommy, would never be like Mommy … and I felt ashamed. Ashamed to be seen in clothes I didn’t belong in, pretending to be something I wasn’t.
So I started picking fights, at school … jumping hedges, shinnying up hills, sliding down cliffs … anything to get my pretty dresses torn, or dirty. We lived in a woodsy suburb called Redmond, and between the ages of six and thirteen I could usually be found in t-shirt and jeans, hiking, bicycling, or swimming in Lake Washington. I was a bit taller than the average girl, a bit shorter than the average boy; my voice was pitched a little lower than most girls, a little higher than most boys, but with a scratchy quality that somehow made it acceptable for either sex. I had no curves to speak of, and as the girls had begun to blossom with puberty, I stayed pretty much the same, going on hikes or playing shortstop in sandlot baseball games; but even this new, tomboy role would start to feel wrong, in its own way, soon enough.
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