The Magic Touch (9 page)

“I killed it,” the little boy said woefully. “My mama is gonna murder me.”

“It’s just a plant,” Ray said, looking down at the mess of broken china, shoots, and dirt. A huge pink blossom poked pathetic petals out from the black soil near the bottom of the heap. Something like a small, tan potato stuck out flag-shaped green shoots. The whole thing was liberally sprinkled with sandy white and red particles.

“It’s my mama’s prize
Laeliocattleya
orchid.” The boy recited the difficult name with the expertise of a child born into a specialist’s home. His lower lip quivered, showing he was not so grown-up as he was trying to sound. “She told me not to play in the hot room, but I didn’t listen.” He looked up at Ray with tear-filled eyes. “Tomorrow she was supposed to take it downtown for the flower show. The vase was my grandmama’s from Mexico.”

“It’s an antique,” Rose said, still out of breath from having to run and catch up with Ray. She knelt to pick up some of the pieces and turned them over in her fingers. “Very beautiful, too. Jorgito, you ought to have known better.”

“I know,” the child said, hanging his head. The tears overflowed and dripped off his long, dark lashes and down his face. Ray hunkered down beside him. A broken pot and a plant should be no problem at all.

“Hey, stop crying. We can help you,” he said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Jorge sniffed loudly and looked from Ray to Rose.

“You sure?” he asked. He pulled the hem of his T-shirt up and wiped his nose with it.

“Sure, I’m sure,” Ray said, waving a hand to get the boy’s attention away from Rose. “No problem. See? This is a magic wand.” He showed the boy his training wand. Jorgito looked impressed. Rose pursed her lips in amusement. “Okay, stand back now. We’re gonna do some magic.”

Rose took the boy’s hand and helped him back out of the way, leaving Ray a clear field. Jorge hung on to Rose, but his eyes were fixed on the young black man, following his every move.

Ray felt nervous. It was still only his second time in the driver’s seat. This wasn’t going to be like for Matthew, where anyone could tell it meant real happiness or despair. On the outside this didn’t look like an important case to anybody but Jorge. Every child, every wish was different, Rose said. He could see the truth of that in just the few calls he’d accompanied her on so far. Not a flashy wish, so it should be easy, right?

The vase at his feet was a disaster. It lay in a million pieces. Reconstructing that had to be an integral part of the wish. It was up to him to layout the phrase correctly, the way Rose told him to. He had to concentrate on wording things just right. First, bring the plant together with the dirt around its roots. Then, mold the pot in one piece around the dirt. What were all those white granules that looked like kitty litter? And where did the red pieces go in the pot? Well, anyway, Ray told himself, the magic will know what to do. He repeated his instructions to himself.

“Okay,” he said, holding his hands out, palms down, with the wand extended. He arranged himself several times, like a batter taking his stance at the plate. Closing his eyes, he counted to himself, thinking of getting everything back in the right order from top to bottom. The plant, the dirt, the pot.
One, two, three!

“
Ay de mí!
”
Jorge cried. Ray opened his eyes. Surrounded by a haze of blue light, the bits of pottery were gathering themselves together, but the plant was hanging half out of the top with roots sticking up next to the blossoms, which were twisting weirdly as if in pain. The dirt was still everywhere, except where it was shooting out of the pot from a dozen directions. He dodged a chunk of red pottery that squirted out from the clay and white particles. It clattered to the floor behind him. Ray threw up his hands to protect his face.

“What did you wish?” Rose demanded, gawking at him and the fountaining debris.

“I wished it all back in the right order,” Ray said, ducking more dirt. “What happened?”

“Plants don’t have an order,” Rose said. “A potted plant is an artificial arrangement. We impose that on nature.” She swept her wand out and around. The cascade of dirt stopped, and the pot disintegrated back into a million pieces on the floor. She made a gathering gesture with both hands. The particles of soil and crockery started to creep toward the middle as if ashamed of themselves. “Let’s try again, all right? It’s okay, Ray.” She turned to the boy, who was standing beside her, grinding his hands together nervously. “We need some help, Jorgito. Does your mother have any pictures of her orchids? We don’t know very much about tropical flowers.”

Jorge ran out of the room, and Ray heard his feet pattering on the stairs. Ray stared at Rose resentfully.

“I thought it would all go back together right,” Ray said, thrusting his chin up. He was embarrassed to have made a mistake in front of the boy. His pride was in as many pieces as the pot.

“Magic is formless,” Rose said, matter-of-factly. “I told you that before. You have to make it right in your own mind before you even start the process.”

“I don’t know nothing about fancy flowers,” Ray shouted, then lowered his voice quickly. “I only work for the Park District. I didn’t say I was a horticulturist with a PhD!”

“Neither am I. That’s why we’re getting a visual aid,” Rose said. Jorge came running back with a heavy coffee table book hugged to his thin chest.

“This is Mama’s best book,” he panted.

Rose sat down on a chair with the book in her lap. Ray hung over her shoulder, looking at the illustrations as she turned the shiny pages. “My, my, aren’t these complicated setups?” she said, thumbing past pictures of home greenhouses with internal spraying systems. She stopped on the series of illustrations of a woman’s hands repotting a tiny white orchid. “Aha! Do you see this? I think that’s how we have to arrange it. Surround the roots in the white granules—that’s osmundine, it says here—because they keep the pseudobulb
hydrated, then the dirt, with the broken crock on the bottom, and the pot all around. Simple!” she said, snapping the book shut with a smile.

“Yeah, right,” Ray said, unwilling to share her optimism. But he took his place again next to the heap of petals and shards.

“Hurry, please,” Jorge said. “My mama said she would be back by eight.”

Ray glanced at the clock on the wall. It was a quarter to. “Okay.” Keeping the picture of a correctly potted orchid in his mind, he waved the wand. The blue haze of light, so unlike the clear veil Rose and the senior fairy godparents got, spread out uncertainly around the broken orchid. Gently, it gathered up the flower, whose petals were drooping alarmingly in every direction. Ray glanced at Jorge, who looked more unhappy than ever. The plant had been in better shape before Ray’s first try. He was sorry, but what could he do about it now?

The white grains came together around the odd-looking rootstock. Ray let out a tiny part of the breath he was holding as the green stems rose, the hot pink blossoms flying pennant-like at the tips. The rich, black soil, smelling fresh and cool, came next, followed by the sections of red crockery. They grouped at the bottom while the colorful chunks of pottery formed around the whole mass. Ray felt the rightness of layer after layer, congealing into the way each was before. It was like the picture, but like itself, too. The plant was happy to be back in its pot, alive and unbroken. Jorge’s face, beyond the circle of power, was bright with wonder and joy. And then something began to go wrong.

Like a car running out of gas, Ray felt the small hum of power flag, and suddenly the air around his fingers went cold. The magical blueness began to fade, and the fragile construct of the vase shivered and fell apart in slow motion. His wand was failing. Ray reached deep inside himself, pushed at nothingness. He felt exhaustion, desperation, failure. He reached out to catch the pieces of broken china in his hands before they plummeted to the floor.

Suddenly, the faint blue light turned lilac, then warmed to red. Rose’s wand was out, her magic supporting the vase. Spicules of root tucked themselves back into the soil, and the tuber nestled down among the grains of osmundine. Ray withdrew. He watched, half-relieved, half-resentful, as Rose finished the job. The little wand felt hot, as if it had blown itself out. Ray tossed it from hand to hand.

“What happened?” he asked Rose, angrily.

“Later,” she said. As the magic light faded, she took the vase out of the air and handed it to Jorge, who took it gingerly, as if it might fall again, as it had twice already. “All done, honey. Now, remember,” she admonished him with her star under his nose, “no more playing around the orchids.”

“I promise,” Jorge said. He put the pot gently on a chair and threw his arms around Rose’s middle. “Thank you. I knew you were a real fairy godmother.” He turned his head toward Ray. “And thank you, too, Ray. You are kind.”

Ray, realizing with some resentment that the child had automatically transferred authority in the case to Rose, started to reply.

“Hush!” Rose said, raising a finger. “Listen!” They all heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in a lock.

“That’s Mama!” Jorge said, running out of the room. “Bye, bye!” he called over his shoulder.

“We’d better go,” Rose said.

“But he …” Ray sputtered, pointing after Jorge.

“We’ve got to go,” Rose said, pulling him hastily through the wall. “Come on, we’ll talk outside.”

Chapter 9

As soon as they were clear of the wall of the house, Ray exploded at Rose.

“Don’t you just shut me up like that!” he said, pointing back inside. “I have to know what just happened!”

“I don’t know myself,” Rose said. She looked up at the windows of the house, and hustled him out onto the sidewalk where they couldn’t be heard. “And we didn’t need to have the discussion right there. That child was scared, Ray. He was depending on us to be the calm, adult authority figures.”

“He was counting on
you
,
you mean,” Ray spat. “Because when the clutch came, this stupid
toy
you gave me broke down! I couldn’t be the authority because everything fell apart on me.”

He all but flung the wand down in front of Rose. At the last second he found he couldn’t bear to mistreat it, so he just waved his hand angrily in front of her face. “Well, I can’t
do
anything with this. I want a stronger wand. Give me one like yours.”

“It’s not time for you to have one like this,” Rose said. “Yours is fine. I don’t understand what happened just then. The spell should have held together. Here, give me that.” She plucked the pencil-wand neatly from his fingers and held it for a moment with her eyes shut. Ray glared at her even though she couldn’t see him. “What was the gain doing that far down?” she asked out loud. She tweaked something invisible.

“You and those others are trying to hold me back,” Ray said, all the resentment he felt spilling over. “Giving me doodads that don’t work. You and my grandma just keeping me off the streets, or am I supposed to
do
something significant? Make the homeboy a laughingstock? Is that it?”

“No, of course it’s not,” Rose clucked. “The adjustment was a mistake. Forgive me. I should have checked it myself. I had no idea that it would poop out on a delicate wish like that. It’s supposed to be strong enough to focus your desire and hold all the parts of the wish together. I can’t understand. There may be some magical interference in this area.” Shaking her head, she handed the wand back.

Ray took it. The goodness calmed him down a lot, as did her apologies, but he continued to voice his grievances.

“But Jorge didn’t even look at me. He only looked at you.”

“It didn’t have anything to do with specific performance,” Rose said, emphatically. “It was appearance. I have the appearance of authority, because I am wearing a dress.”

“Oh, so you want me to wear a dress?” Ray turned up the glare to volcano laser destruct level. He was still sore, but half kidding at the same time.

“Certainly, if you want to,” Rose said sweetly, refusing to take the bait. She tilted her head sideways and looked him up and down. “You’d look very nice in maybe cream, or I think a really nice sage green would look good with your skin and your eyes. No—rust red. Yes. Rust for daytime, and flame red for evenings.” Ray snorted. “But seriously, sweetheart, he was willing to trust anybody who could help him, but even when you seemed effective he kept looking at me. I noticed that; did you? It was nothing I could help, but you can. Can you please show up looking nicer next time?”

“What do you call nice?” Raymond asked, offended. “These clothes are good. There’s no rips in these. My
mother
let me go out in these.”

“Did your grandmother?” Rose asked, pressing the advantage. “I love Shannon, but she’s not a fairy godmother.”

“Grandma didn’t see me,” Ray said. “She was out when I left.”

“There, now. You’re a teacher and a benefactor to these children,” Rose said. “You’re going to teach them something about themselves they didn’t know before. Think about what Jorge saw, not whether the wand pooped out.”

“Does it have to be the usual
uniform
?
You know, we could have a club badge or something,” Ray suggested, his eagerness regaining momentum. “Something so we can all know each other, too. My cousin’s an artist. She could do us up a really different design, something”—he hammered his fists together, trying to find the right word—“something fine, something
inspiring.
We could all wear it, and then it wouldn’t matter how we dress!”

“And be shot at for wearing something that looks like a gang symbol?” Rose asked, outraged. “No, thank you! Besides, we don’t need a sign to know one other. You’ll see. One day, you’ll run into somebody, and you’ll be able to tell right away if they’re in the PGU or an affiliated organization. You’ll
know.
You don’t need an outward badge. Besides, there are people you don’t want to inform that you’re a wand-carrying fairy godparent. There are predators out there. You’re afraid of the gangs. You should be afraid of other things, too. What you do need to do is dress nice, if you want respect.”

“All right, maybe we’ll compromise on the clothing,” Ray said. He pointed a finger at her. “I don’t always say I’ll listen to what you tell me, but we’ll see.”

“That’s fine, Ray,” Rose said. “You’re a new generation. That’s what I keep telling you. We’re going to make compromises. I’m going to learn from you just as much as you learn from me. Just like these kids.”

When Ray didn’t offer a return argument, Rose decided the matter was closed at last. She leveled her wand at chin height and began to feel the air for leads. Not too many cases around tonight. Most of them were still simmering, so to speak. She didn’t find any on the boil. But wait—off toward the east there was one tiny sensation of unhappiness. Rose tested the need string. Yes, this would be a good mission for Ray. She beckoned him along and started to walk toward it. He loped alongside her, his hands in his pockets, looking disgruntled.

“All right,” she asked, after a block of silence. “So what’s the matter?”

“How come we are stuck in this neighborhood?” Ray asked. “Is this the whole area of influence? We’ve covered the same ten or so square blocks both nights, now. Is this it? Can’t we get out of this part of town, or is it just because I don’t have front office appearance.”

“Oh, this isn’t our whole beat,” Rose said. “Don’t be silly, Raymond. This in particular has nothing to do with your clothes. I was staying in a familiar area for
you
,
so you could learn the ropes.”

“Thanks a lot,” Raymond said, kicking a stone across the street. It skittered to a halt on the asphalt and a car ran over it. “It’s so I can run into the people whose wishes I screw up.” He pretended to wave to someone. “‘Hey, Ray, how you doing? Yeah, the plant’s still blooming upside down, but that’s okay. So long as you showed up, bro.’” Rose tut-tutted, which made Ray even more angry, “And by the way, I thought fairy godmothers could fly. I’m tired of walking everywhere.” Rose turned to gaze obviously at his half-tied shoes. He seemed to be waiting for one of her comments, but she just met his eyes and answered his question.

“Well, we
can
fly, but only when it’s necessary. You’ve only been on the job two days, Raymond,” Rose said. “You’ve hardly had time to see a representative sample of the kinds of calls a fairy godparent goes on.”

“Maybe not,” Ray said, hearing reason come through, but he wasn’t quite prepared to listen yet. “But how come we’ve got to stroll in everywhere? I thought we’d be able to like, you know, pop in and out, like in the movies.”

“Because, one, we can only do what magic is necessary for the job,” Rose said, counting off the reasons on her fingertips with the star of her wand. “And two, I like walking around. I like to say hello to people. You’re just being impatient because you want to do the magic. Fair enough! It’s new to you, and it’s very exciting. But there’s a reason we don’t just hop around. If you went from client to client to client,
bing bing bing
, the way that you’re talking about, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish one child from another in your mind when you got home that night, and each of them should be as special to you as you are to each of them. You ought to be able to remember them by name, and what the problem was, and how you solved it, and of course”—she ended by tapping her forefinger in the center of his chest once for every syllable—“how you felt about it.”

Ray was silent for a long time. “I guess I didn’t think about it that way.”

“You have to give yourself a rest in between,” Rose said. “Being clever and creative takes a lot out of you.”

In a few blocks, Ray had managed to calm down a lot. He did like what he was doing, even if he didn’t exactly understand the whys and wherefores. He’d had plenty of time to wonder over the course of five days’ worth of pruning City of Chicago rhododendrons.

“Hey, Rose? Can anybody tell when we’re doing magic? Does it show up on the radar screens or anything?”

“My, we are busy with the questions today,” Rose said, with a little smile.

“Shouldn’t I be asking?” Ray asked.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Rose said. “Of course you should ask me things you want to know. It’s good that you’re relaxing enough to ask me questions. Keep going! You can ask me anything. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. If it’s none of your business I’ll say so, but I’ll always tell you the truth as far as I know it.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ray grinned suddenly. “How’s your sex life?”

Rose didn’t turn a hair. “Mr. Feinstein died five years ago, sonny. It’s been a little slow since then.”

Ray was ashamed of himself. He dropped a few paces behind her and pulled his ego up out of his shoes, where it had suddenly fallen. “I’m really sorry. I just felt like I made a fool of myself in front of Jorgito, and I’m sore.”

“Thank you, Ray,” Rose said, stopping and patting him on the arm. “I’m sorry, too. I know how it feels when what you try to do falls apart. In this case, literally. But it won’t happen again. You’ll see.”

“Okay.” They walked for a half a block more. Wasn’t Rose going to answer his question? “So, can they?”

“Can they what?” She had forgotten what he had asked.

“Can anybody detect us doing magic?” he said very patiently.

“In a way,” Rose said. “You can sometimes sense when magic is going on around you, and with care, I’m sure you could work out who was doing it. You can definitely feel whether it’s being used for good or bad purposes, though. Bad magic stinks. It smells like”—she wrinkled her nose—“ozone, or burning oil. A sharp stench.”

Ray was fascinated. “What’s good magic smell like?”

“You tell me,” Rose said, with another shrug. “I’ve become so accustomed to doing things over the years, who knows?”

Ray tried to think if he had been aware of anything while the magic was going on.

“Air freshener,” he said at last. “But not perfumey. The way the sky smells after a rainstorm.”

“Hmm,” Rose said. “That sounds nice. We should ask some of the others about their experiences.”

“How many fairy godmothers are there? I mean, if it’s like the motto says, ‘every child deserves one miracle,’ there must be thousands of FGU members in Chicago alone.”

She seemed delighted and relieved he still wanted to talk. “Oh, there are thousands
worldwide.
There’s more than a hundred of us in the Chicago chapter, but we’re stretched pretty thin, which is why we’re recruiting vigorous young people like you. The union needs to expand.”

“Well, how come there aren’t more? How come you aren’t out there, running a membership drive?”

“We’re working on it, honey,” Rose said. “You see why it takes so long to bring on an apprentice? We spend all our time talking when we should be doing.” She whisked her wand in an arc, making sure that lead was still there. “Come on. Your next client is waiting.”

O O O

“Up there?” Ray asked, staring up the height of the Scott Arms Apartment Tower.

“Up there. Thirty-seventh floor. You wanted to fly, didn’t you?” Rose asked.

“Yeah! How?”

“You tell the magic you’ve just got to.” Rose pulled him to the glass wall beside the door under the green-and-white awning. She pointed to the uniformed security man sitting at the high desk just inside. Further in, next to three bronze elevator doors, another man was visible.

“You see? It’s so much trouble,” Rose said in a singsong voice, shaking her head. “There are security cameras everywhere. Tch! And a doorman, too. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to do this. I guess we’ll just have to find another way
in.
”

As she spoke, Ray watched the glow around her star. The light increased a little bit at a time, but wearily, as if it had heard the excuse before and was just tolerating it.

“You know, I’m training Ray,” Rose continued. “And he really needs to come with me, because maybe
he’s
the fairy godparent for this child, and I’m not.” Ray’s small blue star lit up, but more brightly, as if eager to try out this new adventure. Ray felt himself being lifted from the shoulder blades. He snapped his head around to look at his back. By the time he glanced back at the ground, he was already two stories up.

“Whoa!” he cried. Rose floated in the air beside him, grinning.

“You see? So it’s bending the rules a little. But it worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah!” Ray said. He flapped his arms, and found the movement spun him around in a circle. “This is great! Hey, how come you didn’t sprout little frilly wings when the magic touched our backs?”

“Well, neither did you,” Rose said. “I never do. Wings are not necessarily part of the tradition. In all the re-tellings about Cinderella’s fairy godmother they don’t once mention wings. She’s always just described as a woman in a hood. That’s because she wasn’t a fairy. There’s a difference. You’ll see.” They were fifteen stories up, and still climbing. The magic swept them closer to the building. Ray could peek through the curtains of flat after flat. Pigeons, nesting on the top of ornamental brickwork, squawked with surprise as they passed. “Now, you see,” Rose continued, “that was traditional wear for the times. You don’t have to wear a hood, but neither do you have to wear the clown pants.”

“Rose?” Ray said, crawling up the white brick wall like a fly.

“Yes, honey?”

“I
got
the message.”