I. The Magician. [Reversed]

Our Rooming House—MORNING

The Library, I guess, wasn’t all that helpful since here I am back in the rooming house where I live with my wife, Andrea. At least this is how I find myself when I nod back awake with a book in my lap.  As usual she is not well, and I sit vigil, stiffly in my tweeds in a straight chair next our bed. Andrea sleeps quietly. Her long black hair spills out over the pillow. Everything else is tucked away under long white robes and sheets that to not belie what are, despite her illnesses, voluptuous curves.

I try to go back to my book but the words swim on the page. I don’t want to go to sleep again, but would rather be ready to minister to her when she wakes. Although soon dozing again, I am startled by a noise outside the bedroom. I look up. A strange man pokes his head in the door and shouts “Door’s open!”

I leap up. He disappears. I fall back to the chair on pins and needle legs. I try to shake myself awake, remembering the Library Guard’s advice.

“Big smile. Yeah, right. Sure. I’ll remember that.”

As I rub the sleep from my eyes, I am aware the phone is ringing, an old black bakelite thing on stand in the front room. Sat amongst a spill of miscellany across the tabletop: a handful of loose change, a letter opener, a half-drank cup of wine. All these things tremble and tinkle as the heavy phone Brrrrrings. The call could only be someone from work. No one much else has the number. I am not going to answer the Call. I Refuse.

In fact, I don’t care to move at all till she wakes up. From this uncomfortable position, I reach out and finger the books in my shoulder bag which lies on the bed next to her. Somehow, I think there is some duty to her to be found in my vigil. And there might be at that. However, I am not sure absolute immobility over her unconscious form is anything but some childish idea of chivalry.

I cannot reach my bag. It’s no use, anyway. I’ve got to get some air. Pensively looking between the woman and the window and back, I eventually get up and leave the dozing woman. There must be something more useful I can do here than sit at her bedside.

Attempt to get up that is. I’ve been sitting in the chair for some time and my legs are asleep. I push up out of the wooden chair and collapse on the floor. Painfully, impossibly tingling from the belt down. As well as the neck up. I scramble, pulling myself up atop the bed as the blood flow slowly returns to my southern half. Andrea, barely stirs as I struggle across her legs getting to my feet. And I pause as I do so to watch for her shallow breathing again.

Once I am sure she is only sleeping, my first stop is the bathroom to toy with my impossible hair in the mirror over the sink. In my sleep, it’s now frizzed up well past its usual pompadour. I’ve grown a couple good inches.

Don’t they say you grow a few inches in your sleep as your spinal column relaxes?

My spine seems as limp as always; but my head sure seems to expand as I sleep.

As I primp myself a bit, I can hear the arguing of the Landlady and her husband, an old Sailor, out in the garden. I tiptoe to the open window so I can better hear the discussion.

“Who is she, Lou?”

I can hear the Landlady bellow. The Sailor is a fainter voice, unwittingly drawn into the spat.

“No one, Maggie love. There is no one else.”

“I don’t believe you, you drunken old sot! Out all night! Coming home at this hour of the morning! Get out of here!”

I take the ensuing silence to mean the fireworks are over, and head back through my rooms and into the hallway. I am just in time to be nearly knocked down by a redheaded blur of a woman who whooshes past me. I jump back into my doorway and out of the way.

“Jesus! It’s a busy street this morning!” I say to myself before venturing to poke my head back out a second later to see if the coast is clear. I enter the hall scratching my head and resurrecting the frizzed up hair.

As I sneak down the hall, I can hear the Landlady and the Sailor arguing again. Apparently the argument had not been concluded but only moved to the other side of the house.

“Leave you? Careful! I just might!”

“I should be so lucky!”

“Why! I oughta!”

I’ll sneak out our rooming house as best I can to avoid interrupting them. It’s a cozy, white-shingled place with a red rose arbor over the door. The arbor, of course, was the selling point of the place. The thought of passing through it coming and going is enough to warm the heart a bit. It’s blooming now, dewy in the early morning sun.

Lou and Maggie’s sparring is muffled by the chirping birds and a lawnmower braying somewhere.

Doesn’t seem right to spoil such a lovely morning fighting.

But, as I close the door quietly behind me, the show continues in the front yard for the whole neighborhood to watch. The Landlady, a large woman with curlers and a muumuu, is yelling and waving arms at the Sailor, a large barrel-chested type in a ratty red bath robe, who sulks. My old friend seems shrunken under his wife’s angry barrage.

“She’s a red devil! I don’t want to see her anymore!”

“Red devil? What does that mean? Never mind. Forget it. I don’t want to argue about it!”

“Neither do I! Just keep that harpy out of my nice, clean house! You’d have her over me? Bah!”

The Landlady beams at this in victory, but is cut short by the Sailor, nodding. “What? Take her over you? Aye, I would. Gladly.”

I pretend not to notice and scuttle off around the corner. I chuckle to myself, repeating. “Aye. Gladly,” I smile a big smile. “And with a big cold-blooded smile, of course. Heh!”