Balg faded out of sight. The magical fires flickered and were gone. The assassin shivered on his way up to the car. Felon got in, started the engine, and turned the heat up to full. He would look in the envelope when he saw the gold.
14 – Distraction
Mr. Jay had a thing for women. That’s what he called it: a thing! Dawn regretted asking him about it. “Look at them, Dawn. How can I love just one?”
Well what was that supposed to mean? Dawn didn’t understand his wandering eye so it frightened her and being permanently prepubescent left her little to work with.
“You won’t understand,” he explained whenever the subject came up. “You aren’t built for it-and you may never be. The whole business must be alien to you-picture books or not. Understanding why is irrelevant.” A spider of his fingers ran through her hair. “They are honey to me. And I’m a bee.”
Well what was that supposed to mean? Dawn liked honey too and loved finding it on their travels in broken hives and abandoned houses. But she didn’t think she was a bee. She loved honey, but knew it could be trouble. Dawn warned, “Too much will give you a sore belly.”
“If only, darling,” Mr. Jay moaned wistfully. “If only.”
It was because of his thing for women that she still didn’t know why the men were chasing them. In her heart of hearts the forever girl knew that his thing for women would never harm her; but it filled her with dread just the same. She just didn’t understand it. So she was sometimes overwhelmed by a fear that Mr. Jay would one day prefer the company of women to hers. Dawn felt queasy just thinking of the things women could do. She’d heard enough from some of the older kids at the Nurserywood. And a bad one Kevin once showed her a magazine. Yuck!
Dawn’s inner voice suggested that Mr. Jay might meet a nice woman who would like Dawn-perhaps a woman like her mother. But the forever girl hesitated to accept that. She just couldn’t take the chance.
Dawn contemplated these notions where she hid under the stairs that led up to this new woman’s apartment. Waiting was okay; she did a lot of waiting. And hiding too, there was lots of that. Mr. Jay was her only friend, and she knew he cared about her-in fact he went out of his way for her. His thing was beyond her and she had to learn to let it go.
This woman had caught Mr. Jay’s wandering eye not long after the taxicab dropped them off. She was dark- haired and of a pre-Change twenty or so-though Dawn was never good at guessing grownup ages. This woman showed off her bumpy woman’s body in tight black clothing and wore sunglasses. Sunglasses? The forever girl couldn’t believe it. The sun hadn’t broken cloud in a hundred years.
It was Dawn who first caught the woman’s eye-dressed as she was as a dark-bearded midget.
“How sweet!” the woman trilled from the doorway of a coffeehouse. “Such a cute little man.” She dropped to her knees so quickly that it startled Dawn-her nerves still blazing from the chase.
“Forgive me, little friend!” The woman gasped, shocked by the speed with which Dawn had moved. The forever girl watched her from behind Mr. Jay’s knees. “I just wanted to see your face!” The woman rose to her full height, eyes locking on Mr. Jay’s before exclaiming, “Your little friend is shy!”
“Wouldn’t you be?” The magician looked her up and down replying. “Frankly, the world has become a frightening place for me!”
The woman regarded him quickly before replying, “For me also.” Her features softened as she smiled down at Dawn’s bearded features. “I’m so sorry.”
Dawn only managed a suspicious half-smile and growled assent before Mr. Jay began, “We’re entertainers…”
His voice took on a tone that Dawn knew all too well. He had a voice for entertaining on the sidewalks and one for talking to Dawn, and another voice for talking to women. After a few minutes discussion, Dawn discovered that the woman’s name was Carmen, was marooned in the City after the Change so long ago, and still didn’t know if her parents in Paris were alive or dead.
This whole exchange had taken place in the awkward space between a low brick wall and a wooden fence that ran out to the street in front of the coffeehouse. As people made their way in and out of the door, Dawn had to keep herself as small as possible.
The whole time that Carmen had talked, Mr. Jay listened and nodded and spoke and before long she invited him back to her apartment. Mr. Jay said it was on their way anyway so why not.
As she sat under the stairs and waited for the grownups to finish their thing in the rooms above, Dawn remembered the first time she had recognized a change in Mr. Jay’s voice when he spoke to women. She rarely spoke to other people, so her knowledge of Mr. Jay’s voice was intimate. It was the third or fourth time that he had used this voice that she asked him about it. He smiled.
“You’ve got to give me something,” Mr. Jay said blushing. He picked at the ragged hem of his coat and twirled his dirty top hat. “I’m not much more than a beggar without it… And as much as I trust these women’s hearts-their eyes, well they are another matter.”
Dawn pressed the issue: “Is it a trick?”
Again Mr. Jay blessed her with his secret smile. “Not like a card trick or some sort of illusion that confuses the senses. It’s really just listening.” Her friend pondered the point for a little. “In fact, it’s mostly listening. You have to hear past the words to feel the emotion behind them.” Then he laughed. “And there might be more to the process. It’s hard to tell; but who would blame me if there were. I was too duty bound in my former life.” He squinted in a villainous way. “But, I’ve always had a thing for women.”
The forever girl drifted back to where she hid under the stairs like a troll. Carmen was nice to her during their walk to the apartment, but upon their arrival Mr. Jay had insisted that his friend, Mojo wait for them on the main floor-somewhere out of the way. He pointed with his walking stick. “My associate has had a terrible time learning a certain few card tricks. I must implore him to use the time practicing. We shan’t be long, Mojo.” He handed Dawn his pack, and the pair walked up the stairs to Carmen’s apartment. The building was very old, like it was built just after the Change. Stairs at the end of the hall leading down suggested that the building protruded through the Level they were on. It was an old structure so Dawn had no trouble finding a place to hide behind some trashcans under the stairs.
While she scooted around for comfort, Dawn wondered what was going on up there. She remembered Kevin’s magazine and felt like puking about what that crazy boy said. But she was curious just the same.
Mr. Jay’s descriptions of what actually took place were vague and misleading. “We had tea…” Was the one he tried at first, until he realized that Dawn could have tea too, so he added quickly, “And talked about things that grown ups have to talk about. Adult communication, Dawn.”
Dawn brooded on her backpack chair and picked at her sticky beard. Mr. Jay would soon come skipping and whistling his way down the stairs very soon, but she couldn’t shake the anxious thoughts just the same. She knew it was sex up there or something like it, but she couldn’t understand its attraction. Usually after these adult communications, Mr. Jay would call her out of hiding, and the pair of them would make their way back to wherever their hideout was. As she stewed, her mind turned to dark imaginings.
What if Mr. Jay stayed up there all night? Or worse, what if Mr. Jay fell in love with this Carmen. Real love, not just the love he felt for them all. Dawn knew that sex and love were sometimes talked about like they were the same thing, but she didn’t know what either was really. And as always it was while keeping these sad obsessive thoughts from her mind that she most had to fight the urge that inevitably sprang into being. I have to go get Mr. Jay! Make sure he’s okay!
Only once, not long after she had first taken up with Mr. Jay, had she found that urge impossible to resist. That time, she was hiding in a backyard garden shed while Mr. Jay was busy having adult communications in the house with a big breasted woman who had really liked their act. They entertained that night at an inn Mr. Jay described as something from Henry Fielding but with rain. An old gas station he said less imaginatively, later.
Dawn only knew that it was in one of the dirty little villages that had cropped up after the Change-at a crossroads in the wild lands far to the north and west of any of the bigger cities and the highways. But as Dawn hid herself in this garden shed she struggled with this fear and the urge. What if Mr. Jay was tired of her company? It
