Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  You look up, your heart racing, and the blind girl over by the poplar grove is looking at you.

  Caution will be seventeen in four weeks. She’s a Sagittarius — the archer. And she’s a murderer. For that, she can never be forgiven. She leans her head against the window of the streetcar, clanging down Queen Street. She has taken Anna Karenina from her Little Mermaid backpack. She tries to read a bit of it every day. It was Spence’s favorite novel. He told her there was a character named Kitty in it. That was all she knew. She took it when she left home. She wanted to know what he found in the story. She has read 153 pages, only 715 to go. But her eyes won’t focus. Her mind won’t sit still.

  She holds her right hand open in front of her eyes and looks at the scars there. It’s as if her palm were a pond into which someone threw a hot pebble and waves of its heat have radiated out in circles. Merlin caught her at something. She can’t remember what now — just something — but he was real mad. He held her hand down on the electric burner. Then he held her close and kissed away her tears.

  “It was wrong what you did,” he said to her, holding her weeping face in his hands.

  And she nodded. She knew. You can’t kill people and expect to get away with it.

  She was the one who came up with the name Caution for herself. Caution, as in Slippery When Wet; Caution, as in Harmful If Swallowed; Caution, as in Toxic.

  She shops at the grocery store and walks home under the noonday sun, with a plastic bag fit to burst in either hand. She thinks about a ham sandwich with mayo and cheese. She thinks about Oreos. Maybe Merlin will be up, and she’ll make him a sandwich, too. She imagines them at the table with mugs of coffee, eating lunch together. In her little daydream, the table isn’t piled high with dirty plates, unpaid bills, a box of Baggies, and a weigh scale.

  She turns up Carlaw and there he is, up the street, looking straight at her, just as if he knew she was coming, as if he was expecting her. Drigo couldn’t have reached him because she has Merlin’s phone. He really is a magician.

  She hauls one of her hands up into the air in greeting. It isn’t much of a wave, what with the groceries dragging her down. He doesn’t wave back. His hands are shoved into his pockets. And as she gets closer, she can see he’s angry. He’s in a white T and jeans and bare feet. There’s a tat of an eagle on his right bicep, and even the eagle is glaring at her.

  “Hey,” she says.

  Then his hand is on her arm, hurting her, dragging her toward their place, while he looks around to make sure no one is watching.

  “I can explain,” she says.

  “I bet you can,” he says.

  He pulls her up the path, opens the front door and shoves her through, buzzes the inner door open and shoves her again, turns down the corridor, and shoves her so hard she almost falls.

  “Okay, okay!” she says.

  Then he slaps her. Hard.

  She shrieks and drops the bag in her right hand to fend off a second blow. His left hand grabs her hand in a steel grip; his right hand cups her chin, lifting her face to his.

  She can feel the shape of his open palm burning on her cheek and wonders if it will leave a hand-shaped mark on her face to match the burner-shaped mark on her hand.

  Tears fill her eyes.

  “Have you got a death wish or something?” he says.

  There it is again. Isn’t this what Drigo was saying? All these people that know her better than she knows herself.

  “We were out of coffee,” she says.

  He squeezes her jaw so tight, she wonders if he might snap it right off. And it would serve her right for talking nonsense. He pushes her up against the wall.

  “We may be out of coffee, but you are out of your fucking mind,” he says.

  She’d nod if she could.

  The door to number four opens. Claudia sticks her head out, her mane all tousled, still in her nightgown.

  “So you found her,” she says, leaning against the doorjamb. She doesn’t sound relieved.

  Merlin drops his hands. Punishment is a private business for him.

  Caution glares past his shoulder at Claudia. “I wasn’t lost,” she says.

  Claudia pulls her nightgown close. “Maybe you should look into that,” she says.

  “Shut up, Claudia,” says Merlin.

  She salutes. “Yes, sir,” she says, and slinks back into her lair.

  In the apartment, Caution expects more but gets nothing. It’s a mixed blessing. Sometimes he’s loving once he’s got the rough stuff out of his system. Not that he apologizes. He never apologizes. And the love, she suspects, is because the rough stuff turns him on. Except not this time.

  “The money,” he says. And she gives him what’s left, plus the receipt from the grocery store. He stares at it in disbelief.

  “It’s all there,” she says. “Count it.”

  He throws the cash on the table and walks over to the window. In the glare, he becomes a thick-shouldered silhouette. She sneaks his cell phone out of her jacket pocket and slips it down the side of the couch. It’s foolish of her to think he won’t know she took it, but she has to try. Pretend. Play the game, even though he always wins. She remembers a line from Anna Karenina. “She felt clothed in an impenetrable armor of lies.” Caution wishes she were so lucky. Merlin sees through her every time.

  “Never take money without asking,” he says, not turning to her.

  The statement confuses her. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” he says.

  “I don’t. Didn’t,” she says, squinting at the white wall of light. “Take money from where?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Caution.”

  “I didn’t steal any money.”

  Now he turns, and though she can’t really see his eyes because she’s squinting so hard into the sun, she knows he’s working himself up for another round of violence.

  “The stash is not our stash,” he says. “It is my stash.”

  Oh, she thinks. He doesn’t know where I’ve been. She is momentarily stunned. He’s Merlin — he knows everything. But not this.

  “Merlin,” she says. “If there’s money in some stash, I don’t even know about it. Count it, okay? You’ll see.” What she doesn’t say is that if there’s money in a stash, why are they living on Rice Krispies?

  He pushes himself away from the window ledge and walks toward her. She braces herself for another blow, but he breezes past her to the far corner of the apartment where the painted pony stands. It’s one of those rides they have outside grocery stores. You put in your quarter and let Junior have a little jiggle. She’s not sure where Merlin got it, but there it is: a blue pony with a yellow mane and tail, a golden saddle, and smiley brown eyes. He cups the pony’s head in both hands and lifts it up and over a foot or so. His biceps bulge from the effort. The wooden floorboards under the horse are darker. His fingers pry one of them up and then his hand reaches in and takes out a cookie tin. He opens it and removes a handful of cash, which he counts.

  Caution watches in astonishment.

  He puts the top back on the tin and drops it in the cubbyhole, replaces the board, then lifts the painted pony back into place.

  “I told you,” she says, knowing it may get her a slap but needing to say something.

  He walks to the table and pockets the money left over from the shopping.

  “So, are you turning tricks?” he says. “The breakfast special?”

  She wishes he were angry now. She wishes that the idea of her walking the street made him furious. Instead, a smile plays across his face. He takes his long hair in his hands and pulls it into a tight ponytail. She hands him an elastic band that is lying on the table. It’s instinct. He takes it and ties his hair with it, doubling the rubber band, tripling it.

  “Well?”

  She shakes her head. And now she’ll have to tell him. Tell him what she was doing this morning. Where the money came from.

  “Huh,” he says, looking her up and down
as if she really were a hooker and he was checking out the merchandise. He flicks the edge of her kilt with his finger.

  “Maybe you should look into that,” he says. He smirks. Then he gathers up his watch and car keys and looks around for his cell. She joins in the search.

  “Oh, here it is,” she says. “Between the cushions.”

  He takes it without a word, tucks it into the holder on his belt, and then heads toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  “Out,” he says.

  “Where?”

  “OUT,” he says. “Business.”

  “When will you be —?”

  “When I feel like it,” he says.

  He’s paying her back for . . . for what? For not being there? For showing up with groceries?

  He’s sitting on the pew by the door, putting on his socks and shoes. He once told her he stole the pew from Saint James Cathedral. Stole it right out from under a pack of parishioners, while they were kneeling to pray. One of his better tricks.

  “Merlin,” she says.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He stands up, tucks his T into his jeans, pats his back pocket to make sure his wallet is snug. “Good,” he says.

  “Don’t you want to know where the money came from?”

  He smiles. “You think I don’t know?”

  He doesn’t wait for her response. He’s through the door and gone. Poof!

  Caution sits on the couch, rubbing the tops of her legs with her hands. So he does know. But how? They have no landline. Does Drigo communicate with him telepathically? She wouldn’t put it past either of them. But, no, she thinks. Merlin doesn’t know. And this is a little hard-won victory.

  After a minute, she gets up and goes to the window to look down on the alley in back where his beater is parked, a rusted-out blue Nissan. She presses her nose against the glass, warm under the sun. She waits; he doesn’t show. So she waits some more. Nothing. Odd. Merlin never takes public transportation. Wizards just don’t. So his business must be nearby. She tries to think of any clients close by but remembers that he didn’t leave with any dope.

  And then it comes to her. Just like that. All of it: why he didn’t seem to care about where the money came from; where he was last night until forever; why they haven’t had sex in weeks. She marches to the door, closing it silently behind her. She sneaks down the hallway to number four and puts her ear to the door. Claudia is laughing. Someone speaks in a low murmur. She laughs again.

  Caution remembers how Claudia looked. Still in her nightgown but tarted up — lipstick, mascara, the whole nine yards; plucked and moisturized, her thirty-something-year-old wrinkles painted over. Caution can see her again in her mind’s eye, leaning against the doorjamb, her fingernails polished.

  And tuning into her very recent past, Caution pictures Merlin. She had been so frightened of him, she hadn’t really noticed that he was showered and shaved, doused with L’Homme — reeking of it!

  She staggers back from the door. What catty thing was it Claudia had said when Caution told her she wasn’t lost? Maybe you should look into that. Which is the same thing Merlin had said when Caution said she wasn’t turning tricks. The exact same words.

  Caution stares at Claudia’s door. She saw inside the apartment once when she came around to borrow something. She remembers thinking how great it looked, with cushions everywhere and Indian printed cotton flung over the table lamps. There was a beaded curtain and some kind of exotic bird in a cage, green and gold and singing.

  Caution: Corrosive. May Cause Blindness.

  She wants to smash on Claudia’s door with her fists — knock it down. The only thing stopping her is she’s not sure which of them to kill first. But even as the thought occurs to her, that worst of all possible four-letter words cracks opens in her skull and out flows the strong poison inside it. To even think the word kill is to let it loose inside her system, like some paralyzing drug. She stumbles, has to reach out and support herself against the wall. Is this what a heart attack feels like? she wonders. She starts to sob, inconsolably, burying her face in her hands to keep anyone from hearing her heart break.

  She leans there for hours or minutes or until there are no sounds from inside Claudia’s apartment. Then slowly she gathers herself together and makes her way back to the apartment.

  Caution sits in the buzzing silence of the sun-filled apartment. Apart from the sun, it is also filled with flies — filling up with flies — she isn’t sure from where. Perhaps there is something dead in here, she thinks. She is sagging now — hot, worn out. She unzips her jacket. Under the fuzz, it’s quilted, way too warm for this weather. She’s wearing a pink tank top with a silver-sequined kitten on it. She leans back, her arms cradling her belly, though there’s nothing really there to hold. She’s worn out from so much weeping.

  For the second time today, she is sitting on a couch with nothing before her but an oversize TV. But what is she waiting for now? Nothing, as far as she can tell.

  Merlin found her on the street, sitting cross-legged behind a fabulous straw hat she’d lifted from somewhere. It had a wide, purple polka-dotted sash and yellow feathers. He wanted to see it on her, and so she had emptied the few coins in it into her hand and modeled it for him.

  “A girl should be going to a garden party in a hat like that,” he’d said. She’d laughed and it hurt, like any kind of exercise you pick up again that you have abandoned for too long.

  And he did take her to a party that very night, although it wasn’t in a garden — it being March and freezing. He introduced her as Lalalania — she hadn’t given him a name, and he hadn’t asked. At that point she hadn’t given herself a name — not one she could stick with. It changed with everyone she met. All she knew was that she wasn’t Kitty Pettigrew. Not anymore.

  He was so attentive, his arm around her as if she were his and his alone. She wasn’t fooling herself. She guessed where the night was heading, knew she’d have to pay for so much attention, one way or another. She’d been living on the street for four months, after all. But that night, high, and warm in someone’s eyes, she was beyond caring. It was enough to be loved. And whatever came next . . . well, that kind of fit into her plan in a way, if you could call it a plan. She was not fit to live, so this handsome man with the scar through his right eyebrow and the blond ponytail could be her private executioner.

  That he wasn’t a pimp was the first surprise.

  He wanted her. Wanted a lot out of her. He was rough, but there was a certain sweetness to the pain. And, yes, she could help with the business, if he liked. Run errands, sure. Do the odd transaction, especially in situations when a thirty-year-old male might look conspicuous. Selling pot at high school: no problem. She was useful. She wanted to be useful. And when she screwed up . . . well, the punishment was almost a relief. It was all she deserved. She remembers lying in bed one night, with him snoring beside her, while she nursed a bruised cheek with a frozen bag of peas. One of these days, he’s going to kill you, she had thought. Something to look forward to.

  But he loved her, sort of. Or he had loved her. Or said he had. He would set up a video camera sometimes. It turned him on to watch. He’d get the lighting just right, as if maybe he’d worked in the movies. Or maybe just done this kind of thing before.

  Caution looks up at the TV, remembering the porn movie she’d seen that morning. Merlin had a few himself. Everyone did, didn’t they? Guys, anyway. She pushes herself up from the couch and, kneeling by the shelf where he kept his DVDs, she looks for the one he’d made of her. She finds it and stares at the cover of the jewel case. He’d titled the little home movie. Had she ever noticed that? She doubts she had — she’d never had the slightest desire to watch it on her own. Now her hand trembles. He’d titled it “Come Again.”

  The scene at Drigo’s office came flooding back into her mind, swamping her, drowning her. Boris’s last words. Come again, he’d said.

  It
can’t be. There is no way. He wouldn’t.

  She shakes her head, back and forth, back and forth, and even in this gesture of denial, the motion knocks the last shred of doubt from her mind. He could. He would. She may be blind, but she isn’t a fool.

  She gets up and finds his laptop. The top of it is covered with decals as if it were a guitar case or something. She flips it open and boots up. The computer asks for a password; she types in P-A-I-N-T-E-D P-O-N-Y and waits. It had taken her a while to figure the password out — weeks, actually — but there had been no hurry. For her it had been an exercise, a brain game called “How Well Do You Know This Man?”

  Not as well as she thought, obviously. In less than twenty minutes, she finds “Come Again” on the website Amateur Whore.

  She had cleared a space at the table to set up the laptop, and now she sits there watching the video, watching them — the two of them. She makes herself watch it all the way through.

  “What’re you doing now?” she asks Spence.

  “I’m accessing a search engine,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “Think of anything you want to know about.”

  “Hmmm. How about why Auntie Lanie has more moles than Mama.”

  She laughs and Spence laughs, and he types in “moles.” They look at a couple of mole sites and then at a few genetics sites, and even though they never get a real answer for why Lanie has so many moles — because Spence has homework to do — she gets the idea of how a search engine works. How one question leads to another and then another, and you get closer and closer as you narrow the field of your investigation.

  “Show me more,” she asks her brilliant big brother, and he says, “Go brush your teeth; it’s way past your bedtime.”

  Caution closes the movie. She sits for a moment, limp, her hands in her lap, her mind reeling. But like a spinning top, it stops eventually. Then she sits up straight, takes a deep breath, and proceeds to erase every file on Merlin’s laptop. She makes sure they aren’t still around in his trash or on any other backup system as far as she can tell. Spence taught her a lot about computers.