it.
“Who’s Dede?”
“I don’t know. Just somebody. I told you, I don’t feel like talking.”
“Is she some kind of a brain?”
“She was my sister. Leave it alone, okay?”
“Okay, okay!” the big kid said. “I got brains in my family too-brains and weirdoes, take your pick. I’m the onlynormal one…Look at the back of the card.” Milo had to tilt the card to catch the light just so, but then he saw- there was a rainbow across it. “I’m a puppeteer, little man. I’m S. Verducci, traveling showman: MOON amp; STARS, Inc. And I want you to work with me. What do you say to that? You’ll be rich as Croesus, too.”
“I don’t know. You gonna put me up for the night?”
“Didn’t I say so? Let’s go. You’re tired, huh? Wait-pie?”
“No.”
“So what’s your name?”
“Milo.”
“Okay, Milo, follow me. Follow me, flying boy.” S. Verducci dropped a silver dollar into his glass of water, which was still full. He picked up a crushed, empty hard-pack of Marlboros from the floor, tore off one side and placed it over the top of the glass. Then, holding the cardboard there, he inverted the glass on the table and slipped the cardboard out. The silver dollar was at the bottom of an upside-down glass of water. “Don’t you love it? Let the waiter earn his tip, huh? It’s okay-Jitsi likes me.”
Milo followed S. Verducci past the coffee hounds, the welfare mothers, the college brains-a hooker moving in- and past the counter, to the door.
“Bye-bye Jitsi, you old poisoner!” S. Verducci said.
“Bye-bye, Moon and Stars!”
Out the door into the breezy evening.
They walked twenty blocks, increasingly dark, increasingly rundown. Milo spied Dede watching from behind trash cans, though he was careful not to look. She disguised herself as a pimp cruising by in a vintage Cadillac. Her telescope was trained on Milo from a tenement window. And Devore was with her.
He was small. He could hide anywhere, even behind fire hydrants maybe, or down below a sewer grate, phoning Milo’s position in to Dede, who had a cop’s uniform, a patrol car and a gun. Devore had a gun, too. He’d said so.
Don’t think about Dede. There was a way to unthink things, to hold them in the blind spot. All it took was a knot in your stomach-and insomnia.Don’t think about…who?
They came to a sooty storefront to which S. Verducci had a key. Stenciled across one large bay window in bold cursive were the words, “THE GRASS AND TREES.” Underneath that: “Coffee and Conversation.” There was a faint red light inside. S. Verducci turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. The hinges squeaked. The casement groaned. A wonderful smell of wisteria flowed out.
“Everything has its portion of smell,” Milo said.
“Anaxagoras!” said S. Verducci. “Smell, scent, essence,sentience! Everything is everywhere. Nothing’s as solid as it seems! That’s my whole business, little man! How didyou know that?”
“My sister used to say it, that’s all.”
They walked past round tables with chairs on top of them. At the back, they turned a tight corner, and Verducci flicked on a light. They were at the top of a staircase leading to the basement. “Come on.” He led Milo into a sort of black box theater downstairs, with a dozen transplanted church pews around a square platform. There was a large canopied bed on stage. “You can sleep here. I’ll sleep upstairs.
There’s a toilet around the corner. I’ll leave the light on at the top of the stairwell so you don’t get totally spooked. See you in the morning, champ.”
S. Verducci pulled off the bowler. He shook his head, and a stream of brown hair tumbled down to his waist.
“You’re a girl!” Milo said.
“Sure. What did you think?”
“What does the ‘S’ stand for?”
“Sylvie. Sweet dreams, little man.” She climbed the stairs, leaving Milo alone, in the cellar, in the dark.
Dede at the library on a Saturday morning, Milo in her lap with a Dr. Seuss. He peers up at the book she’s reading, sees diagrams that look like envelopes folded funny and ones like globes with twisted meridians. There are letters Dede says are Greek and words she says are German. One Hebrew letter: aleph. Aleph with a tinyzero. Aleph with a tinyone. And a lazy eight: infinity.
“Is this how you do it, Milo?” Dede whispers. She doesn’t expect an answer. At home Mama is washing her hands. Washing her hands and washing her hands.
Suddenly he is in the dark cellar atThe Grass and Trees again, the air swarming with hypnagogic images, red and green, intricate, impenetrable geometries. He feels that he has just screamed, but nothing stirs.
He rubs himself all over to make sure he is a human being. He checks his skin for fur, his shoulder blades for wings.
Sylvie’s in cahoots with Devore-the thought, like a sudden needle, pierces him, as he remembers where he is.
He falls asleep again, and when he blows out the candles, seven of them plus one for good luck, all at once he finds himself on the wrong side of his lips. He is a puff of air eddying around the flames. It only lasts a second. Then all the candles are out. He smiles, but everyone else is screaming. Some of the children cover their eyes. “What’s wrong?” Milo says. Dede is watching with intense curiosity. Curiosity and desire.
Mama hasn’t seen it. Mama is in the kitchen washing the sink over and over. Papa’s eyes are bulging, his mouth hangs open, and his muscles are drawn so tight he looks like a starved alley cat. “What did you do? What the hell kind of trick is that?” He licks his lips and scans the room with a wild look. “Never mind! Never mind!” He runs to the door, then runs back, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I didn’t see nothing.” He shakes one of the guests. “Shut up! Shut up! Everything’s okay!” They all stop crying, terrified. “Am I right, Milo? Am I right?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“That was a mean, dumb trick, Milo. What, did you sneak under the table and back, huh? Don’t you ever let me see you do that again.” Milo won’t.
“What’s the matter?” Sylvie, in her striped pants and a sleeveless undershirt, was standing silhouetted at the cellar door. Scant light from the stairway bathed her like earth shine on a slight, crescent moon.
“Huh?” He sat up. He had been lying fully clothed on top of the covers.
“You shouted. What’s the matter? Scared of the dark? Tell me. Don’t be ashamed.” She walked toward him. Dim, reflected light played on her bare shoulders, through a tangle of hair. A moment of brighter light on one collarbone, as she brushed the hair away, made Milo lift his gaze to the soft, simple curve of her face, the broad forehead, the gentle slope of her nose, and her full lips. The thin fabric of the undershirt hung away from her torso, down from the peaks of her small breasts, and light diffused through the undershirt, shadowing her breasts like X rays. Then she blended into the teeming dark nearer Milo’s bed.
“Stay away.”
“You think I’m gonna rape you or something? There’s a little blue light I was gonna turn on behind the stage. The techy uses it to see what he’s doing when he runs cues. Or maybe you’d like a couple of Kliegs. The control board is back there. I was gonna fiddle with it for you. Don’t bother to say thank you.”
“Okay. Put on the blue light. Don’t touch me, though.”
“You’re a pip, you know that?”
Milo clutched the covers around him and crouched under the canopy while Sylvie walked past him, barely visible in the deepening shadow toward the back of the room. She was just a glint, now and then, a hint of skin, a wrinkle of fabric, disjointed patches of shifting light. Milo heard a click, blue light spilled faintly around the edge of a curtain, then the curtain was pulled back, and the black room filled with blue objects and blue air. It was as if the tide had gone out, leaving jetsam draped with blue algae on blue sand.
“Okay?” she said.
“Okay…did I really scream?”
“Yeah.”
