Wizard of the Pigeons. Megan Lindholm
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Название: Wizard of the Pigeons
Автор: Megan Lindholm
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007387489
isbn:
He ate without haste, but he did not dawdle. He had to remember that he was the man who had arrived late for a lunch date. No reason to rush. In the course of his meal, he refilled his mug four times, feeling with pleasure the hot rush of caffeine that restored him. During his fifth and final cup, he neatly stacked the dishes out of the way. He drew his newspaper from his shopping bag, folded it to the want ads and studied it with no interest. He had possessed the paper for several days now. It was beginning to look a little worn; best replace it today. So essential a prop was not to be neglected.
As he gazed unseeing at the dense black type, he reviewed his morning. The Celestial Seasonings Sampler was the high point today. He had found the box of tea bags in the dumpster in the alley behind the health food store. The corner of the box was crushed, but the tea bags were intact in their brightly coloured envelopes. The same dumpster had yielded four Sweet and Innocent honey candy suckers, smashed, but still in their wrappers. In a dumpster four blocks away, he had found two packets of tall candles, each broken in several places, but still quite useful. An excellent morning. The magic was flowing today, and the light was still before him.
Wizard drained his mug and set it on the table. With a sigh he folded his paper and slipped it once more into his shopping bag. The bag itself was an exceptionally good one, of stout plastic and solid green, except for the slogan, SEATTLE, THE EMERALD CITY. It, too, had come to him just this morning. Rising, he glanced around the place and left his best wishes upon it.
He paused at the pay phone on the way out, to put the receiver to his ear, then hit the coin return and check the chute. Nothing. Well, he could not complain. Magic was not what it once had been. It was spread thinner these days; one had to use it as it came, and never quite trust all one’s weight to it. Nor lose faith in it.
He stepped back into October and the blueness of the day fell on him and wrapped him. The brightness of it pushed his eyes down and to one side, to show him a glint between the tyre of a parked car and the kerb. He stooped for a shining silver quarter. Now, two more of these, and a dime, and he could have his evening coffee in Elliott Bay Café, under the bookstore. He slipped it into his shirt pocket. He took two steps, then suddenly halted. He slapped his pocket, and then stuck his fingers inside it and felt around. The tarot card was gone. Worry squirmed inside him. He banished it. The magic was running right today, and he was Wizard, and all of the Metro Ride Free Zone was his domain. He believed he would find two more quarters and a dime today.
A sidewalk evangelist with a fistful of pamphlets caught at his arm. ‘Sir, do you know the price of salvation in Seattle today?’ He flapped his flyers in Wizard’s face.
‘No,’ Wizard replied honestly. ‘But the price of survival is the price of a cup of coffee.’ He pulled free effortlessly of the staring man, and strolled toward the bus stop.
Rasputin sunned himself on the bench, making October look like June. He was wearing sandals, and between the leather straps his big feet were as scuffed and grey as an elephant’s hide. His blue denims were raggedy at the cuffs, and the sleeves of his sweatshirt had been cut off unevenly. His eyes were closed, his head nodding gently to the rhythm of his music, one long-fingered hand keeping graceful time. Black and Satisfied, Wizard titled him. Blending in with the bench squatters like a pit bull in a pack of fox hounds. The benches near him were conspicuously empty of loiterers. Wizard shook his head over him as he sat down at the other end of the bench.
Rasputin didn’t stir. Reaching into a pocket, Wizard drew out a crumpled sack of popcorn fragments. He leaned forward to scatter a handful. Rasputin shifted slightly at the fluttering sound of pigeon wings as a dozen or so birds came immediately to the feed.
‘Don’t let them damn pests be shitting on me,’ he warned Wizard laconically.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it. Don’t you think you should carry a radio or something?’
‘What for? So folks would quit looking for my headphones? Ain’t my fault they can’t hear the real music. They too busy covering it up with their own noises.’
Wizard nodded and threw another handful of popcorn. Rasputin’s hand danced lazily on the back of the bench. Muscles played smoothly under his sleek skin, sunlight played smoothly over it. The day arched above them, and Wizard could have dreamed with his eyes open. Instead, he asked, ‘So what brings you to Pioneer Square?’
‘My feet, mostly.’ Rasputin grinned feebly. ‘I’m looking for Cassie. Got a present for her. New jump rope song. Heard it just the other day.’
Wizard nodded sagely. He knew Cassie collected jump rope songs and clapping rhymes. ‘Let’s hear it.’
Rasputin shook his head slowly in a graceful counterpoint to the dance of his hand. A passerby slowed down to watch him, then scurried on. ‘No way, man. Not going to repeat it here. Sounded new, and real potent in a way I don’t like. Gonna tell it to Cassie, but I’m not going to spread it around. Won’t catch me fooling with magic not mine to do.’ Rasputin’s words took on the cadence of his concealed dance, becoming near a chant. Wizard had known him to speak in endless rhymes, or fall into the steady stamp of iambic pentameter when the muse took him. But today he broke out of it abruptly, the rhythm of his hand suddenly changing. A grin spread over his face slowly as he gestured across the square to where a woman in a yellow raincoat had just emerged from a shop.
‘See her? Walking like rain trickling down a window glass? She makes love in a waltz rhythm.’ A black hand waltzed on its fingertips on the bench between them. Wizard glanced from it to the tall, graceful woman crossing the square.
‘That doesn’t seem possible,’ he observed after a perusal of her swinging stride.
‘The best things in this life are the ones that aren’t possible, my friend. ’Sides, would I lie to you? You don’t believe me, you just go ask her. Just walk right on up and say, “My friend Rasputin says you can make a man’s eyes roll back in his head while your thighs play the Rippling River Waltz.” You go ask her.’
‘No thanks,’ Wizard chuckled softly. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Don’t have to, man. She’s one generous lady. Picked me up off the bus one rainy night, took me home and taught me to waltz horizontal. Kept me all night, fed me breakfast, and put me out with her cat when she left for work. Best night of my life.’
‘You never went back?’
‘Some things don’t play well the second time around; only a fool takes a chance at ruining a perfect memory. ’Sides, I wasn’t invited. Kinda lady she is, she does all the asking. All a man can say to her is “yes, please” and “thank you kindly.” That’s all.’
Wizard shifted uncomfortably on the bench. This kind of talk made him uneasy, stirring places in him better left dormant. ‘So you’re looking for Cassie,’ he commented inanely, looking for a safer topic.
Rasputin gave a brief snort of laughter. ‘Did I say that? Stupid way to put it. No sense looking for her. No, I’m just waiting to be found. She’ll know I got something for СКАЧАТЬ