The Magic Touch (8 page)

Hakeem still felt the pleasant light-headedness of the drugs in his system, but Zeon was bigger, so probably his dose had worn off too soon. “We’ll find something,” he said, but he didn’t feel at all certain.

“I know a man who could give us a score, just like that,” Zeon snapped his fingers, “but he want cash in hand. You sure you got no money?”

“I’m sure, Zee,” Hakeem said, quickly, worrying whether Zeon would decide to disbelieve him. He’d seen the bigger youth casually beat the guts out of somebody he thought was lying to him. “I’ve got nothing but my bus pass.”

The streetlamps burned too brightly in his eyes, and the air was hot and sticky. Hakeem felt all his senses were too intense. Four more brilliant white lights glared into his face, and he covered his eyes with his forearm. Out of the blazing whiteness, a man’s deep voice spoke.

“Hey, kids, you need money?” The lights dimmed until Hakeem could tell they were only car headlamps. A silhouetted figure, its outline blurred, stepped up in front of them. “Do you two need some money?” The voice, when Hakeem heard it again, sounded melodious and educated, not quite a white voice, but something more exotic.

Zeon, his eyes bleary, turned toward the man. “Who wants to know?” he asked belligerently.

The figure paused significantly. “Somebody who could perhaps grant your wish. Somebody who could make sure you get what you need. Interested?”

“Maybe,” Zeon said, weaving a little. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“This way, then.” The man tilted his head toward a flashy car. Zeon followed, almost as if in a trance. The door nearest him swung open, and Zeon slid inside.

“C’mon, Hakeem.”

Hakeem held back for a moment, then the shadowed man moved a hand. The strong white light grew more intense, and suddenly, Hakeem felt …
receptive
to the stranger’s offer.

With a final look of regret toward Raymond’s house, he trailed along behind Zeon.

Chapter 8

Rose looked up and down the street in front of the Assembly Hall, and checked her watch again. Seven o’clock, already, and beginning to get dark. Where was Raymond? She’d been so certain he had decided to join the Union. And after Eustatia Green had called her with such a glad report on the child’s first day, Rose was ecstatic, certain the two of them were right, that Ray was a willing and viable apprentice. Had he changed his mind in the past six days? Rose was disappointed. She drummed her fingers on the side of her purse and tried not to be impatient. If he came, he came. If he didn’t, well, maybe he forgot. No, Mrs. Green said he never shirked appointments, and he was usually on time. Maybe he got hit by a car. The way people drove around here. Poor child!

“Hey, Rose,” Raymond’s voice said. Rose spun to greet him gladly, and felt her mouth drop open with surprise. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Will you look at you?” Rose asked, before she could help herself. Ray looked down at himself and tilted his head up to meet her eyes with confusion. “What
are
you wearing?”

Well, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t see for herself what he was wearing, but why? The big pants and the enormous maroon T-shirt hanging out over it made him look like a fat man who had gone on a sudden, catastrophic diet. The bronze brocade vest he had on over the shirt was greasy, and his tennis shoes were only laced to the second grommet. He could fall out of them any step. At least he had spared her the backward-facing baseball cap.

“Something wrong with my clothes, grandma?” Ray asked, defensively.

“I should say so!” Rose said, thinking of things to say, then swallowing them. With the tact born of many years of dealing with children and grandchildren, she calmed down and began again. “I know the two of us come from very different generations, Raymond, and maybe I’m just not used to the fashions, but … but you were dressed so nicely the other night.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ray said, rolling his eyes up. “Those were my Sunday clothes. I wear that stuff to church and days when my mom says to dress up. But since we’re going around the neighborhood, I thought it’d be okay if I went comfortable.” His brows lowered. “You want me to go home and change.” It wasn’t a question; it was a challenge.

“How about a compromise?” Rose asked quickly, not willing to alienate him. “Let me explain why it’s important in your position as a fairy godfather to look, well, professional, and you’ll make the decision for yourself, all right?” He made no reply but a surly nod, so Rose pressed on. “All right. You’re trying to engender respect and confidence in children. You’re supposed to set an example. You can’t do it if they can’t distinguish you from the kids they see every day on the street.”

“Isn’t the fact I’m walking in through walls good for anything?” Ray asked, with raised eyebrows. “I’d believe in a man who came in through
my
wall.”

“But sometimes we do use the door,” Rose persevered. “And sometimes we’re already in the room when a client enters. How will they know you’re the one they can trust?”

“Even perverts can wear nice clothes,” Ray retorted, but Rose thought she was breaking through to his natural good humor.

“Yes, because they’re trying to gain the trust of someone who doesn’t know them,” Rose said reasonably. “It’s the right behavior for the wrong reason. You need to do the right thing for the
right
reason.”

“Aw … well, what about some special mark I could wear instead? You all need to lighten up. Everybody in that room the other night was dressed so
drab.
” Ray considered for a moment. “Except maybe the Blue Fairy.”

“The Blue Fairy?” Rose asked, amused.

Ray pulled an embarrassed face. “Uh, the chairwoman. Uh, what’s her right name?”

“Alexandra Sennett.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Well, I don’t want to look like an office dweeb,” Raymond said stubbornly. “I’m me, so I want to look like me.”

“Raymond, you will never look like anybody but you,” Rose said patiently, “but you know, you would have to dress up to go to work, to show that you have some appreciation of the importance of what you’re doing, so why not treat this like a job?”

“Because I’m not being paid for this, which I would if it were a job,” Ray said sullenly, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his capacious trousers.

“You do get paid, sort of,” Rose said tentatively. “It’s not money, but it’s worth something.”

“More intangibles? Like those good memories?” Ray asked, recalling their first conversation. He turned away from her into the shadow under the Assembly Hall marquee so she couldn’t see his face, but she could guess his thoughts. There were a few special memories he was cherishing in that head of his, still too private to share.

“Very much like that,” Rose said, with a smile. She grabbed his arm and pulled him out onto the sidewalk and started walking north, toward a minor need string she had sensed. They could talk while they walked. In the meantime, there were children waiting for help. “For one thing, you get to live happily ever after.” In answer to a derisive snort from Raymond, she added, “Don’t knock it. Listen,” she said, stopping to face him. “There’s something else. You do get another kind of reward for fairy-godparenting. We call them brownie points. You get them when you grant wishes, a point per child you’ve helped, plus fractions for other things, obedience, willingness, good judgment, good deeds.” Rose tried to describe the effect with her hands, and threw them away from her impatiently. “Anyway, it adds up.”

Raymond looked interested at last. “So I have some brownie points right now?”

“At least one,” Rose assured him. If appealing to civic responsibility and self-respect didn’t work, always go for the self-interest, she thought. “You did grant Matthew’s wish. You did a fine job, too.”

“Yeah?” Raymond asked, thinking hard. “So what do I have in brownie points?”

Rose shrugged eloquently. “
I
don’t know. Not too many. You’re the only one who’ll know that for sure. You can figure it out by concentrating on the place where you’ll keep them, a kind of mental bank account. They accumulate slowly. Don’t try to build the Sistine Chapel in one day, Raymond.”

“Concentrate?” Ray asked suspiciously. “They’re not real?”

“Oh, they’re
real
,”
Rose said. “As real as anything we did for those children the other day. Brownie points are
magic.
It’s part of the process of fairy-godparenting. Magic has a certain rebound, like karma. Good people who do good things get good magic in return. You can use a brownie point any way you want. Of course, good people tend to use them in good ways. Which gets you fractional interest in brownie points on top of your original balance, just like that credit card, what’s it called?” Rose waved her hands, trying to think of the name. She could see the logo in her mind’s eye, but her mind’s eye wasn’t wearing its glasses. She squinted.

“How do I get them?” Ray asked, having patiently waited out the stream of consciousness narration. “Does somebody count up my visits and give them to me?”

“No. You just get them. They’re available to you right away, like … like an electronic transfer,” Rose said, finally finding a simile she liked. “Ah. This computer age, it’s like ma—”

“Can you use brownies to hit the lottery?” Ray interrupted, spreading out his hands to collect his imaginary winnings. “Whoa! A million dollars! I would love to take my folks to Europe and Africa, maybe on one of those big cruise ships to the Caribbean. Yeah! What I could do with a million bucks.” He stretched out his arms and grinned up at the streetlamps.

“That wouldn’t be ethical,” Rose said firmly, rapping him on the wrist with her wand. He clutched his hand, and gave her a hurt look. “That defrauds someone else out of real money. If you entered a contest and used magic to sway the judge, wouldn’t that be as bad as somebody who bribed him? Worse, because he wouldn’t know you did it, or how.”

Ray seemed to wilt, disappointed. “There are a lot of rules in this game,” he said, shaking his head.

“There certainly are,” Rose said, but more gently. He was so young, he didn’t understand it in his head yet, but she could see that he did in his heart. “And for good reasons. Power corrupts, you know. It does. The rules protect you. They protect your soul.”

Ray kicked a fragment of concrete into the gutter. “If you can’t win money or influence people, what
can
you do with brownie points?” he asked.

“
I
use them mostly for my grandchildren,” Rose said, happy to move onto one of her favorite topics. “Last Chanukah I found one of those TV dolls, whatever they’re called, when everybody else had absolutely
stripped
the toy store. I found a red one in a corner that somebody had returned, and the box was only a little torn on one edge. I don’t know if I really needed to use a whole point for that, but my little Sharon, you should have seen her face light up!” She sketched a sunrise with her hands, and Ray grinned, diverted in spite of himself.

“So you use them like little wishes,” Ray said, mining the small kernel of meaning out of her speech.

“Exactly,” Rose replied, relieved that he seemed to understand at last. It would be nice to do something for Ray. He had worked so hard the other day, without knowing any of these things. A little reward was in order.

“Here, hold out your hand.” She thought hard. It felt like there were about eight and a half brownie points left hanging around her. Mentally, she captured one like a firefly in a glass jar, and let it blink at her while she thought about something nice for Raymond. What was it kids always had hanging out of their ears these days? CDs? She was pretty sure he didn’t have one. All right, then, she thought, directing the brownie point. To the best of your ability, give him a personal device that plays CDs with perfect fidelity so only he can hear them. She cupped her free hand, put it over his, and tapped both of them with the wand. She took her hand away. “
Voilà!
”

Ray looked down at the silver object on his palm. It had a round base about four inches across and a tapering spindle in the center, and weighed about the same as a pocket calculator. “What is it? It looks like a giant thumbtack.”

“It’s a personal CD player,” Rose said, a little uncertainly. “For you.” True, it didn’t look like the ones in the magazine ads. But the magic never lied to her. It would do what she had wished it to do.

“Thanks,” Ray said, just as uncertainly. He turned it over a few times. Rose shook her head impatiently and closed her eyes again. The request had actually used up two brownie points, but she felt the value of the demonstration was worth it. She captured a few of the fractional, minor sparks dancing around in her “bank account,” and wished for a disk from home to test the device.

She opened her hand and directed a red-pink flash into her palm. A flat square lay there.

“Tony Bennett?” Ray said incredulously, picking up the box. “Cool. Thank you. You’re not as antiquated as I thought.”

Rose smiled. “I listen to the radio,” she said. As she watched, Ray flipped open the Tony Bennett CD and popped the glistening ring onto the spindle. A second later, he flattened his hand over one ear, then the other. He turned a wondering stare on Rose.

“That’s incredible!” he said, holding up the thumbtack CD player for closer scrutiny. “I’m hearing music. Nothing’s moving, but I can hear the music absolutely perfectly. It doesn’t even have moving parts! How’s it work?”

“Magic,” Rose said, with self-evident calm, but inwardly she was rejoicing. She had forgotten to mention headphones, but the magic took care of that, anyway. She had specified what function she wanted it to achieve, and it worked. He liked it, and no one around him could hear a peep. “It does good things for you, a reward for being a good fairy godparent.”

Ray laughed. “Yeah, but I’ve seen how it costs you. You’re still out about ten bucks from last Saturday night, between the ice cream and the five bucks you gave Clarice to go skating.”

Rose started to shoot back a friendly riposte, but something else caught her eye amid the bits of discarded newspapers and cigarette packs. She scooted to the edge of the sidewalk, and picked up a twenty-dollar bill. She showed it to Ray, then folded it up for her wallet.

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” she said, watching his eyes widen. “One of the other side effects is you get a little bit more good luck than you normally would. But for sure there’s the brownie points.”

“Okay,” Ray said, taking the CD off the spindle and putting both of them in the pocket of his huge trousers. “I believe. I believe! Let me take the first call. Otherwise, I won’t learn anything, or earn any brownie points.” He patted his pocket where the CD player and disc reposed. “And I’ve
got
to learn how you do that.”

“All right,” Rose said, grabbing his arm and shaking her forefinger in his face. “But only if you promise me next time you’ll dress up.”

“Okay,” said Ray. He grinned at her charmingly and took his training wand out of his pocket. “You’re the man.”

O O O

Ray let the need string reel him in like a fish. They hadn’t gone more than a couple of blocks when he felt the tug come down a cross street and take hold of him. He turned, almost unwillingly, toward the south, following the longing. Some child was hurting on the other end of this line, frightened to his marrow. Ray began to regret his insistence that he be in charge of this call. There was deep desperation in the vibration of the need string. He found himself hurrying along the street, far outdistancing Rose for a change. Traffic and pedestrians cleared the way around him, letting him dash through crowded intersections. Neon lights flickering in the windows disappeared as he rounded the corner into a dark residential street. Ray could see less of what was around him, so he could feel even more keenly the agony coming down the need string. The child at the other end had to be suffering torture or excruciating pain, or be dangling from the edge of a building by his fingernails.

“I’m coming, kid,” he panted. “Hang on.”

The reality, when he saw it, was a total disappointment. In a glass-walled room hot even in comparison to a Chicago summer night, in the midst of a hundred tropical plants hanging from hooks and stands, a small boy with big dark eyes and shiny black hair stood staring at a huge mess on the floor.