'Oh?'
'Yeah, we stopped seeing each other. Different interests, you know?'
'Was she okay when you-stopped seeing each other?'
'I guess so.'
I stared straight into his eyes and he winced. I didn't like that 'I guess so.' I could see that he was a little afraid of me so I decided to push it.
'What do you mean ‘different interests'?' I asked.
'Well, she got a little weird, you know?' he said.
'I don't know. Tell me.'
He licked his lips and looked away 'I don't want any trouble,' he stated.
'I'd rather not indulge either. What was the matter?'
'Well,' he said, 'she was scared.'
'Scared? Of what?'
'Uh-of you.'
'Me? That's ridiculous. I never did anything to frighten her. What did she say?'
'She never said it in so many words, but I could tell, whenever your name came up. Then she developed all these funny interests.'
'You've lost me,' I said. 'Completely. She got weird? She got funny interests? What kind? What was going on? I really don't understand, and I'd like to.'
He got to his feet and headed for the rear of the store, glancing at me as if I should follow him. I did.
He slowed when he reached a section full of books on natural healing and organic farming and martial arts and herbal remedies and having babies at home, but he went on past it into the hardcore occult section.
'Here,' he said, halting. 'She borrowed a few of these, brought them back, borrowed a few more.'
I shrugged.
'That's all? That's hardly weird.'
'But she really got into it.'
'So do a lot of people.'
'Let me finish,' he went on. 'She started with theosophy, even attended meetings of a local group. She got turned off on it fairly quick, but by then she'd met some people with different connections. Pretty soon she was hanging around with Sufis, Gurdjieffians, even a shaman.'
'Interesting,' I said. 'No yoga?'
'No yoga. When I asked her that same thing she said that it was power she was after, not samadhi. Anyhow, she just kept fording stranger and stranger acquaintances. The atmosphere got too rarefied for me, so I said good-bye.'
'I wonder why?' I mused.
'Here,' he said, 'take a look at this one.'
He tossed me a black book and stepped back. I caught it. It was a copy of the Bible. I opened it to the publishing credits page.
'Something special about this edition?' I asked.
He sighed.
'No. I'm sorry.'
He took it back and replaced it on the shelf.
'Just a minute,' he said.
He returned to the counter and took a cardboard sign from a shelf beneath it. It read JUST STEPPED OUT: WE'LL REOPEN AT and there was a clock face beneath it with movable hands. He set them to indicate a time a half hour hence and went and hung the sign in the door's window. Then he shot the bolt and gestured for me to follow him to a room in the rear.
The back office contained a desk, a couple of chairs, cartons of books. He seated himself behind the desk and nodded toward the nearest chair. I took it. He switched on a telephone answering machine then, removed a stack of forms and correspondence from the blotter, opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Chianti.
'Care for a glass?' he asked.
'Sure, thanks.'
He rose and stepped through the opened door of a small lavatory. He took a pair of glasses from a shelf and rinsed them. He brought them back, set them down, filled both, and pushed one in my direction. They were from the Sheraton.
'Sorry I tossed the Bible at you,' he said, raising his glass and taking a sip.
'You looked as if you expected one to go up in a puff of smoke.'
He nodded.
'I am really convinced that the reason she wants power has something to do with you. Are you into some form of occultism?'
'No.'
'She talked sometimes as if you might even be a supernatural creature yourself.'
I laughed.
He did, too, after a moment.
'I don't know,' he said then: 'There're lots of strange things in the world. They can't all be right, but . . .'
I shrugged.
'Who knows? So you think she was looking for some system that would give her power to defend herself against me?'
'That was the impression I got.'
I took a drink of the wine.
'That doesn't make sense,' I told him.
But even as I said it I knew that it was probably true. And if I had driven her into the path of whatever had destroyed her, then I was partly responsible for her death. I suddenly felt the burden along with the pain.
'Finish the story,' I said.
'That's pretty much it,' he answered. 'I got tired of people who wanted to discuss cosmic crap all the, time and I split.'
'And that's all? Did she find the right system, the right guru? What happened?'
He took a big drink and stared at me.
'I really liked her,' he said.
'I'm sure.'
'The Tarot, Caballa, Golden Dawn, Crowley, Fortune that's where she went next.'
'Did she stay?'
'I don't know for sure. But I think so. I only heard this after a while.'
'Ritual magic, then?'
'Probably.'
'Who does it?'
'Lots of people.'
'I mean who did she find? Did you hear that?'
'I think it was Victor Melman.'
He looked at me expectantly. I shook my head. 'I'm sorry. I don't know the name.'
'Strange man,' he mused, taking a sip and leaning back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his neck and bringing his elbows forward. He stared off into the lavatory. 'I've heard it said-by a number of people, some of them fairly reliable-that he really has something going for him, that he has a hold on a piece of something, that he's known a kind of enlightenment, has been initiated, has a sort of power and is sometimes a great teacher. But he's got these ego problems, too, that seem to go along with that sort of thing. And there's a touch of the seamy side there. I've even heard it said that that's not his real name, that he's got a record, and there's more of Manson to him than Magus. I don't know. He's nominally a painter-actually a pretty good one. His stuff does sell.'
'You've met him?'
