by Unknown
‘There are two differences,’ I answer. ‘One is that you knew I’d take your advice. You could look ahead and see it. And the other is that the red light’s always there for everybody, and you aren’t.’
‘Now you’re going to make me feel guilty,’ he says, though he manages a smile.
‘I don’t mean to,’ I say.
‘I know.’
‘I’m just starting to realise what your life must be like,’ I continue. ‘I wouldn’t have it on a bet.’
‘You don’t bet once you’re the Wiz,’ he says gently. ‘In fact, you can’t bet, because betting involves the element of chance.’
‘You should never have volunteered to be a wizard.’
‘I didn’t volunteer.’ He stares at me. ‘You have qualities, Jake,’ he says. ‘You ask a few questions, and in five minutes you’ve figured out that the wizard business isn’t quite exactly what it appears to be from the outside. I’m curious to know what you’ll ask next.’
‘How about “What’s for dessert?”’ I say.
He laughs, and suddenly his melancholy vanishes.
We order vanilla ice cream – it’s the only sweet they serve until dinnertime – and then we walk out into the street.
‘You didn’t pay,’ I note.
‘I did them a favour last week,’ he replies. ‘The meal’s a quid pro quo.’
I check my watch. ‘I’ve got to get back to the office,’ I say.
‘Thanks for eating with me,’ he says, shaking my hand. ‘And for being my friend.’
‘One of thousands,’ I suggest.
He shakes his head. ‘The rest are supplicants.’
‘Surely you have some friends, too,’ I say.
‘Real friends?’ A wistful expression crosses his face. ‘I had one about eighteen years ago.’ A pause. ‘Maybe a little less.’
‘Just about the time you became the Wiz,’ I say. ‘What happened to him?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ he answers.
‘Didn’t work out, huh?’
‘I guess you could say that.’
I think about the Wiz and his one friend all the way back to the office and most of the afternoon.
***
We meet for lunch a couple of times a week for the next month. He lets a few supplicants interrupt us, and he also refuses to talk to some others, and I can never tell by looking at them what the determining factors are. He talks to some bums and sends others on their way … but he also talks to some guys who have their chauffeurs drive them up and sends some of them packing too.
‘How do you decide who to talk to?’ I ask him.
‘I thought I told you,’ says the Wiz.
‘There’s got to be some grey areas,’ I say. ‘The good ones can’t all be trying to save their families from ruin, and the bad ones can’t all be junkies.’
‘Mostly it’s instinct and intuition. Usually I can see what they’re going to do with the help I give them, but even that can be misleading.’
‘So you can make mistakes?’
He nods his head. ‘Yes, from time to time.’ He smiles. ‘After all, I’m only human.’
I stare at him. ‘Are you human?’
‘I’m as human as you are, Jake,’ he says earnestly.
‘I don’t know about that,’ I say.
‘Oh?’ he replies, arching an eyebrow.
‘It’s human to take care of yourself. But you dress like a bum, and you eat all your meals in delis and dives, and if you’ve squirreled away any money you sure as hell don’t use it. Where do you live?’
‘Nearby.’
‘Why don’t I think you live in one of these brownstones?’ I say.
‘Because you’re a reasonable man, Jake,’ he answers. ‘All I need is a place to sleep.’
‘When’s the last time you showered?’
‘Seriously?’ he says. A guilty smile crosses his face. ‘The last time it rained after midnight.’
‘How can you live like that?’ I say in exasperation.
‘I used to live in a penthouse,’ he replies. ‘Brooks Brothers wasn’t upscale enough for my wardrobe. I had a maid and a butler, as well as a valet.’
‘Why did you change?’
‘The people who need me the most couldn’t find me there,’ he says.
I shrug and turn my palms up. ‘How can I answer that?’
He smiles. ‘You’d feel damned foolish trying, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s one of the reasons I like you,’ he says. ‘Not everyone is that perceptive.’ He pauses thoughtfully. ‘In fact, hardly anyone is. I just had a feeling you could be my friend..’
‘Your feelings have a way of coming true,’ I acknowledge. ‘But you know something interesting?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve never asked me if you could be my friend.’
‘That’s not as important,’ he says.
I just stare at him. ‘Why not?’ I say at last.
‘You have lots of friends already.’
Somehow I get the feeling that that’s as close as he’s come to a bullshit answer since I’ve met him,
***
We keep meeting, and we keep talking, and he seems open and friendly, but I can’t get over the feeling that he’s got some agenda I know nothing about. I still don’t know why a reasonably pleasant guy like the Wiz hasn’t had a friend in seventeen years, or why he’s chosen me out all the millions who live on this damned island.
We don’t do anything but meet and talk, occasionally in delis and coffee shops, now and then in bars, once in a while when the weather’s nice just out on a bench where anyone who’s looking for him can find him (though everyone who needs him seems to have no trouble finding him wherever we are).
We never go to the Garden for basketball or hockey, we never see a movie or a play, in truth we never get much more than half a block off 34th Street. He just wants to visit, to talk about almost anything, and he’s always straightforward – or at least I think he is – when we talk about what he calls the Wiz Biz.
‘What do you do if someone won’t pay you after you’ve given them a winner, or told them how to avoid a mad dog gunman, or whatever?’ I ask him one day as we’re walking down 34th Street.
‘I’m the Wiz,’ he says. ‘I know before I help them if they’re deadbeats.’
‘That’s a pretty useful thing to know,’ I say. ‘Man’s a deadbeat, you send him away.’
‘Not always.’
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘Maybe his wife or kid is growing a tumour, and he’s not insured and hasn’t got enough to pay for a doctor. It becomes an ethical question: should they suffer because he’s a loser?’
‘I see,’ I say. ‘It’s not as simple as it seems at first.’
‘Nothing ever is,’ he says.
‘Why don’t you quit?’ I say. ‘Just walk away from it all?’
‘Who’d be here help them?’
‘You’ve seen enough suffering,’ I continue. ‘You’ve done your share. It’s their problem.’
‘Just let them all suffer in pain and poverty when I can prevent it?’ he says. ‘Is that what you’d do?’
I think about it for a long moment. ‘No,’ I admit. ‘That’s not what I’d do. It’s just what I’d want to do.’
‘I know,’ he says, and I get the feeling he does know.
‘When we first met,’ I say, ‘I kind of envied you. I really did. I thought you had the greatest gift in the world. But the more we talk about it, the more I hate the choices you have to make day in and day out.’
‘You learn to live with it,’ he says.
‘I don’t know how,’ I say. ‘There’s so much pain, so much misery in the world. Most people just see a tiny part of it, but you – you see it all.’ I shake my head. ‘What must it be like?’
He comes to a stop and grabs my shoulder.
‘Say that again!’ he says, and there’s a hint of excitement in
his voice as his fingers dig in.
I stare curiously at him. ‘What’s it like to see the future?’
‘And you really want to know?’
‘I asked, didn’t I?’
‘Thank you, my friend,’ he says with such an air of relief you’d swear he’s just run a marathon. ‘I have been waiting seventeen years for someone to ask me that.’
And suddenly his fingers feel like they’re dissolving on my shoulder. He seems to grow, not thinner exactly, but somehow less substantial, then translucent, and finally transparent, until there’s nothing left of him but a pile of grubby clothes on the ground and the butt of his still-burning cigarette,
All this happens seven years ago. Sometimes it feels like seven centuries.
***
I am the Wizard of West 34th Street. If you’ve got a problem, or a need, or just a question, come by and tell me about it. There is no situation too dire or too hopeless, nothing so complex that it’s beyond my ability to solve. There will be a fee, of course, but you’ll be happy to pay it, and I will never ask for it before you are pleased with the results.
I’m always around. If you don’t see me on the street, just ask one of the locals, or peek into a restaurant or a bar. There aren’t that many of them, and I’ll be in one. Don’t let my appearance fool you. I’ve got a Master’s degree, I have enough money that I’m not going to con you out of yours, and I guarantee that you won’t catch any diseases from me. How I look just isn’t important to me any more.
I’m here to answer your questions, so ask me anything you like.
Anything at all.
Please.
The Seeds of a Pomegranate
Anne Nicholls
I can’t stand dogs that don’t come in a bun with ketchup. When some enormous hellhound barked outside the station it just about frightened me out of my life.
Heart pounding, I looked wildly round for the monster but it must have been behind a fence. Its throaty roar echoed around the deserted forecourt. I almost ran up the road to the safety of the Himachal Palace. Anyway, I’d been dying for my curry all the way home and they were always so nice on the phone.
Two things happened as I reached for the handle. The door burst open and my phone pinged to announce yet another bloody text.
Mr Chopra barged out, chicken-tikka steam billowing around him. In the shop lights he looked grey. He shouldered past as if he hadn’t even noticed me, stopping not three feet away to stare into the darkness.
His haste sent me spinning into the door-jamb. I half-grinned at his wife behind the till, hoping to share a bonding eye-roll of ‘Men, huh?’
Nisha Chopra wasn’t smiling. She was ducking under the counter. Pale with fear, she ran full-tilt towards the door. Something was terribly wrong. We collided and grabbed one another for balance, both gazing in horror at what was happening outside.
The innocent clouds of spiced steam wrapped around her husband. And froze to hang in the air, shining wreaths of solid fog. The icy mist grew a thousand arms that smothered him from turban to toe. Frost crackled over his eyebrows. Over his skin. He – he gleamed. He cartwheeled and crashed to earth like an orchestra of breaking glass. Shards of crimson flesh flew up as though someone had blasted a pomegranate. Icicles of saliva speared his scream to silence.
Nisha lurched towards him. I followed. Glassy splinters melted under our feet. His frosted sheath lost its shimmer though his hands stayed cold and blue. She reached to turn him over.
‘Don’t!’ I yelled, but it was too late. At her touch his jacket crumbled into his half-frozen shoulder. But, horribly, not all of him broke. Rapidly warming to softness in the mild September evening, parts of his face and body remained as they always had, only seamed with canyons of blood where the ice-seeds fell.
Nisha was paralysed by shock but I wrestled her inside. ‘Do you know how to stop that – that thing?’ I babbled. ‘Will the door keep it out?’
The new widow stopped fighting me. ‘No idea, Zoe. I don’t know what’s happening!’
Me neither. We crouched quivering behind the rack of Bombay Mix and peered out through the sudden frost-ferns on the window. Quernmore Road was empty – except for what was left of the cook. He, it, was spread on the pavement, blood turning to black shadows that oozed into the cracks. Another text put me off as I shakily thumbed 999, trying to keep my voice out of the bat register to ask for police and an ambulance. How I managed not to request an exorcist I’ll never know.
***
While we were crying and clinging to each other, I patted Nisha’s back helplessly and wished I’d never come to London. If only I’d never taken the promotion to head office. I could have been home in safe, cosy Rutland where winter didn’t come and go in twenty minutes. If only I hadn’t needed a bigger salary to pay off debts I’d never incurred. If only I hadn’t taken Andy back. If only I hadn’t married a lying, chiselling con-artist like him in the first place. But no, here I was on my tod in London with a loan the size of the Matterhorn. It wouldn’t have been so bad if there’d been someone I could call for moral support but I’d been in the Smoke for less than a month and didn’t know anyone well enough yet. Billy No-Mates. That was me. The sobbing widow in my arms was the only person outside work who called me by my first name and that was just because we’d once been stuck on a broken-down train for three hours.
Shivering on the lino lost in our own thoughts, we nearly had a collective heart-attack when a policeman pounded the door. ‘Constable Ellis,’ he shouted through the window, though he looked scarcely old enough to shave. He was quite good-looking apart from the sticky-out ears. After a second glance at Mr Chopra’s remains he threw up before talking to his radio. He couldn’t decide whether to stand guard over the body or arrest us on the spot.
It didn’t take long for flocks of coppers to show up. Their suspicions swirled around us. While I wrapped Nisha in shawls and helped her sip sweet tea, they badgered us with questions, tramped all over the house and erected a tent over what was left of ‘the deceased’, as they called him. They kept leaving the doors open so the balloons saying 7 Today bobbled against the walls. Nisha wailed, ‘Anjuli’s round her friend’s at her party. How am I going to tell the child her father’s been murdered today of all days?’
The police were more interested in why I kept saying the deceased had been frozen since it was mid-September and warm for the time of year?
‘But he was frozen!’ I insisted since Nisha was too upset to talk. So far tea hadn’t done much of a job of calming her down. Mind, my feelings were a-bubble like a shaken bottle of pop.
‘Hardly!’ the woman in the white bunny-suit retorted. ‘I mean, it’s a good twelve degrees outside. When did you say he died?’
‘Look at our CCTV!’ Nisha mumbled.
‘We did,’ said DCI Johnstone, stubbly, over-promoted and disillusioned. ‘The cameras froze—’
‘Aha!’ I cried.
His turn for the eye-rolling. ‘I don’t mean froze as in freezing, Ms – Ah.’ I’d already given him my name. Several times. So I didn’t fill in the gap. He went on, ‘Froze as in the picture broke up. And, it seems, you were the last person to touch Mr Chopra before he died. What was your story again?’
My phone rang. I ignored it because words like false imprisonment and miscarriage of justice were polka-ing round my mind. ‘Surely he’s got frost-bite or something?’ I stammered.
The pathologist sighed ostentatiously, raising her brows to show she was humouring me. Guarded by the jug-eared coplet, I followed her outside, flushing under the stares of the assorted ghouls hanging round beyond any crime scene tape: reporters, the crowd off the next train and no doubt the pickpockets and bag-snatchers London Transport advertised.
I was glad to duck under the tent-flap until I saw what it hid up close. When I retched, Ms Pathologist pulled a tut face and glanced down at Mr Chopra’s bluish fingertips, once casually and once not. Focussed now, she frowned and pinched the skin. ‘You’re right! The t
op layer of skin’s soft but his flesh is hard as iron. And see here? There’s blisters – like he’d been in a deep freeze or something, though he’s pretty much ambient temperature now. Inspector, I think those two ought to come down to the station to answer some questions.’
Back inside while Taxi-ears played detectives and the Inspector talked to his radio, Nisha wailed to the WPC, ‘We paid a fortune for those cameras! You lot never investigate when they scrawl ‘Pakis go home’ on our windows so we got the best. Don’t they at least have him running out of the shop before...?’
Inspector Johnstone said flatly, ‘Let’s see your deep freeze.’
Leaning on me as though she’d aged a hundred years, Nisha stumbled down to the prep room behind the commercial kitchen. There stood the freezer, empty and turned off, door sagging on a broken hinge. An Environmental Health label dangled from it. ‘See? Three days ago! They said they’d sign it off when it was fixed but we’re still waiting for the engineer to come.’
‘Aha! So what are you doing feeding the public when you’ve been shut down?’ asked PC Taxi-ears. Whipping out his notebook, he whirled to face the widow.
‘We haven’t been shut down!’ Nisha exclaimed indignantly. ‘Nikodem’ – she nodded towards the Polish deli next door – ‘keeps our stuff on ice. The EHO gave Dev a chitty but I don’t know where he put it. I wish he...’ She broke down again. Obviously the back-patting was no use. I tried holding her hand instead.
DCI Johnstone pursed his lips and glared at the boy in blue. ‘Go and fend off the press, Sherlock. Unless you’ve got a Doctor Watson to do that for you?’
‘Yes, sir. No, sir.’ Back of his neck as red as radish, PC Ellis scampered out of the back room. But he hadn’t taken two steps into the shop when we heard him bump into someone. Puzzled, we all looked round but it wasn’t yet more police, nor even an intrepid reporter. Instead a short but gloriously handsome man eeled in, keeping one side of his face turned away. Just as I said, bewildered, ‘Bosh?’ PC Ellis flashed a torch at him.