Some Kind of Magic (21 page)

“I know you.”

She knew him and understood him more every day, loved him more every day. She knew the box wasn't the only reason he'd needed to come to New Orleans. He'd needed to see what Jackson had done with his gift. He may have spent too much time hiding in the desert, but it hadn’t been idle time. He'd still managed to make a difference.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, curious, half smiling, half knowing.

“Because I love you.”

Things fell into a pattern. Claire sketched and painted during the day, and Dylan ... Well, Dylan piddled around. There was only so much wood that needed to be cut, and only so many ways to haul it in. There were only so many leaky faucets to repair, so many roofs that needed to be fixed. Even though it wasn’t obvious, Claire sensed his restlessness. He was going through a transition. She just hoped she wasn't part of that transition.

One evening she found him sitting on the couch in the dark, the fire in the stove forgotten, the room cold. On his lap was the chess set Uriah had made.

She sat down beside him. “You have to go back. Chess is your life.”

It might mean losing him, it might mean breaking her heart, but she loved him too much to go along with what he was doing to himself.

“I'm not ready.”

“Will you ever be ready?”

“I don't know.”

“You can't turn away from something that's so much a part of you.”

“I was thinking that maybe I'd put an ad in the paper, start teaching chess.”

That was a beginning.

The first person to show up was a ten-year-old boy named Josh who had absolutely no interest in learning to play chess. During the third lesson, when he still hadn't grasped the basic movement of the pieces, Josh finally admitted that his father had suggested the lessons, and he'd gone along with it to make his dad happy.

“Don't tell him, okay?” he begged.

“You can't keep coming here, wasting my time and your father's money,” Dylan told him.

“Maybe we could do something else. Do you have any cool video games? I have this one where the players' heads get chopped off and blood goes everywhere.”

Dylan looked down at the chessboard. It wasn't the one Uriah had made. This was a set Dylan had picked up at the grocery store. He looked at the knight, the queen, and the king. Sure, they were plastic, but how could Josh not feel the same sense of excitement and wonder Dylan felt when he looked at the pieces? “Do you know how old this game is?” he asked.

Josh shook his head.

Dylan figured he’d give the benefit of the doubt. “Nobody knows for sure, but it started before the sixth century. Do you know how old that video game is you're talking about?”

“It came out this year. It’s new. It’s, like, really new. And I’ve heard they’re working on another one that's supposed to be even better.”

“Why play a game that’s been played in feudal Europe? Why play a game that’s been played during the Crusades, and by Greek philosophers, when you could be sitting in front of the television, joystick in your hand, playing something that just came out yesterday and by tomorrow be heading for the landfill?”

Josh totally missed the sarcasm, which was probably all for the best, Dylan figured.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. Except for the landfill part.” The kid was looking at him in that slightly confused way most adults had looked at Dylan all his life. How could he expect a kid to understand? If he ever had kids of his own, would they stare at him in that same way, or would they speak his language? He hoped to hell they'd speak his language, at least part of the time.

His second student was an eighty-year-old man who’d always wanted to learn how to play chess. But ten minutes into the lesson, he asked, “Do you have any checkers? I like checkers. How 'bout you?”

Dylan couldn't win. On one hand, the world was moving too fast for a game that was centuries old, on the other, it was moving too slowly.

“I'm stuck between two worlds,” he told Claire that night when they were lying in bed, tangled and sweet from making love, the voodoo doll that Claire refused to part with perched on the dresser, handcuffs dangling from the top railing of the bed.

Claire dropped a soft kiss on his mouth, so sweet, so tender, causing an ache in his chest.

“I’m sorry.”

“It's not your fault.”

“That reminds me. Libby stopped by and said that she's sending over some guy who's working for her. He supposedly wants lessons.”

“I can't take it anymore. These clowns are an insult to the game.”

“It's too late to do anything about it. He's coming at ten o'clock.”

Dylan groaned and let his head drop back on the pillow.

~0~

At exactly ten o'clock Dylan answered a knock at the door. Standing there was a kind of scrawny guy with bleached-blond hair, dark eyebrows, and one of those short beards that just covered the chin.

“Don't you recognize me?” the man asked.

“Should I?”

He stepped inside and shrugged off his jacket. “It's me. Trevor.”

“You son of a bitch! You damn chameleon!” Dylan grabbed him and half lifted him off the ground. Then he shouted over his shoulder. “Claire! Claire, come down here. You aren't going to believe this!”

Claire came running and everybody started talking at once. The excitement wound down, and Trevor was finally able to explain how he'd turned himself in. “The police made it look like they'd figured it out themselves,” he said, laughing. “But I just walked up and gave them my spiel and they arrested me and threw me in jail.”

“Why?” Claire asked. “Why did you do it?”

Trevor looked from Claire to Dylan. “So he could go back. And so I could start at the bottom and work my way up. That's why I'm here. I came for lessons.”

“You're working for Libby?” Claire asked as they set up the chess pieces.

Trevor actually blushed. “Yeah. She's building this wall around her place.”

Dylan laughed.

He looked happier than Claire had seen him look in weeks. She backed away. And when she left the room, no one noticed.

Be careful what you wish for.

~0~

Trevor came almost every day for two months.

It was a bittersweet time, a time when everything felt so right and so good, a time Claire knew would pass.

The day came when Trevor announced that he was leaving, that he was going to take what he'd learned from Dylan and see if he could make it.

“I have a new identity. From now on I will be known as Elliot Lafayette.”

“Lafayette?” Dylan asked, laughing, but Claire could see the restlessness already seeping into his eyes. “Couldn't you have picked something a little less flamboyant?”

“I want to make a splash.”

Claire had a party, just the four of them. And while they joked and laughed, there was an undertone of sadness.

“I'm going to miss that little geek,” Libby confessed to Claire as they stood in the kitchen sipping wine and chewing on crackers neither one of them tasted. Trevor and Dylan sat at the table in the corner, playing one last game of insanity chess.

“You'll see him again,” Claire said with conviction. And she would. There was no doubt in her mind that Trevor would come back to Libby. So why didn't she feel that way about Dylan?

“Dylan is leaving, too.”

“^When? Why didn't he mention it?”

“He doesn't know it yet.”

“Claire. Don't go stewing about something that probably won't happen.”

“He has to leave.”

“Don't tell him that.”

“I love him. I want him to be happy.”

“How about simply content. Isn't that enough?”

“Remember how I tried to give up art? How I tried to convince myself it was the right thing?”

“You were miserable.”

“I didn't know it was apparent.”

“You went out of your way to act like you were having a good time. That's how I knew you were miserable.”

“I don't want to be this woman, waiting for her man to come back. I hate that kind of thing. It's so pathetic.”

“Claire, how much wine have you had?”

Claire looked at her empty glass. She tried to remember how many times she'd refilled it, but couldn't.

Libby lifted the glass from her friend's limp fingers. “That's what I thought.”

There was a shout from the corner table. “You let me win, you son of a bitch.”

Dylan shook his head. “I didn't. I swear.”

“You let me win,” Trevor said, packing up the pieces. “That's okay. Now I can go out into the world and say I beat Daniel French.” He gave Dylan a hug and a slap on the back. “Don't hide yourself forever. Life isn't about hiding. Or about running. It's about playing the game. You always have to play the game or there’s no sense in being here.”

They left in a flurry of confusing good-byes. And then everything was silent.

Dylan continued to stand outside, hands shoved deep into the front pockets of his jeans, staring into the darkness in the direction Libby’s car had gone. He sensed Claire beside him.

“He beat me,” he finally said, stunned.

“Why are you surprised? You taught him everything you know.”

“Not everything. He made a play tonight that I’ve never seen. It was brilliant.”

“And didn’t you teach him that, too? To think for himself?”

Dylan was quiet. He had to tell her, but he didn’t know how.

“It’s time, isn't it?”

“How did you know?”

“I know you.”

“Come with me.”

She shook her head. “I have my art to finish. And I don’t want to be one of those women who follows her man around and in the process forgets who she is. I don’t want to disappear like that.”

“I wouldn’t want that to happen. I want you to always be Claire."'

That night they made love for what Claire feared could be the last time.

“I’ll be back, Claire.”

“Don't make promises you might not be able to keep. You might get out there and decide that this time the world is a pretty good fit.”

“
We're
a good fit.”

The night after Dylan left, Claire opened a bottle of dandelion wine, popped in her Leonard Cohen tape, then sat on the floor, her back against the couch. A minute later, Hallie came walking over, her head low. Heaving a dog sigh, she plopped down on the floor next to Claire, resting her head on Claire's leg.

At first, Dylan wrote. In his letters, he told Claire how much he missed her. He told her how, after his initial return to the chess world, interest in him quickly waned. A seventeen-year-old grand master was news, a thirty-year-old grand master was old news. He didn’t say, but what Claire knew as truth, was that he no longer needed a retreat, because the world was no longer nipping at his heels.

Claire completed her sketches and watercolors for the card line. She mailed them in. Three weeks later she called her agent from the same phone she’d used the day she found out Cardcity wanted to sign her.

“They love everything,” John said.

“That’s great.”

“You don’t sound as excited as I thought you would.”

"I have kind of a headache.” A heartache.

“Well, call me later and we'll talk more. And Claire—get a phone.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“No you won't.”

“You're right.”

She hung up. Would she ever feel better? Would this huge empty feeling in her stomach, in her chest, ever go away?

Spring turned into summer.

Since Claire only rented the cabin for the cheaper, winter rate, she packed her things, preparing to move. She hadn't heard from Dylan in a month. Trevor—a.k.a. Elliot Lafayette—called Libby almost every night. He sent her flowers and sappy poems. Trevor was doing a lot of winning. But Dylan was in a class by himself. Nobody could touch him.

When Claire's editor from Cardcity heard that Claire was moving, she tried to talk her into coming to New York, where she could work more closely with the card company. Her agent thought it was a good idea too.

Instead, Claire ended up renting an upstairs apartment in downtown Fallon. In three months, when the tourist season was over, she would move back to the cabin. She had to be close to nature. How could she be a nature artist in New York City?

~0~

Dylan pulled up in front of Claire's, jumped out of the rental car, and hurried to fling open the cabin door. Standing inside were two people, a man and a woman, he'd never seen before. Understandably, they both looked quite alarmed.

"Where's Claire?”

"There's no Claire here. You must have the wrong cabin."'

“
You
have the wrong cabin. This is Claire's cabin.”

The man and woman looked at each other, then at him. “Maybe you’re looking for the person who rents this place in the off-season.”

Before Dylan had left, he’d tried to talk Claire into getting a phone.

“You know where to find me, ” she’d said.

Why hadn’t Claire told him she would be moving in the summer? He hadn’t even thought about the possibility of her not being there when he returned. “Do you know where she went? Where she moved to?”

They shook their heads. “We’re from Omaha. We come here every summer. But the place is always empty when we arrive.”

“I’m sorry.” He backed away. “Sorry.”

He’d only been to Libby’s once so he had a little trouble finding the place, plus he was in panic mode. Was everything okay with Claire’s Cardcity contract? Had she gotten her drawings done? Turned in on time? Had they liked them? Disliked them? Canceled her contract? Or maybe they'd loved them so much that she'd moved to New York.

Why hadn't he come back earlier?

Time had gotten away from him. One game had led to another and another. It had felt so good, so damn
right
to be doing what he was supposed to be doing that he'd lost track of time.

But Claire. In all the time he'd been away, he'd never quit thinking about her, never quit wishing he could see her, touch her, hold her.

He found the lane that led to Libby’s house. On either side were KEEP OUT, PRIVATE PROPERTY signs. And if that didn’t intimidate anyone, there was a huge locked iron gate at the end of the lane.

He talked to Libby through an intercom that kept cutting out. He was ready to climb the gate when Libby stepped out the front door, barefoot, dressed in baggy camouflage pants and a brown T-shirt.

He jammed his fingers through his damp hair. He was sweating like hell. "'Where’s Claire?”

"'Hi to you, too.”

“Yeah, hi.” Done with that, he got back to the problem, the big problem. “Where the hell’s Claire?” He tried not to shout, but from the look on Libby’s face, he was afraid he hadn't succeeded.

“She’s living in town. Above Electric Iguana. It’s a club.”

He turned and lunged toward the car.

“Thank you!” Libby shouted after him.

He waved a hand in the air, but didn't take the time to look back.

A half hour later he was walking up a narrow flight of stairs to knock on a door painted with heavy green enamel. From inside came the sound of excited barking, then frantic scratching on the door.

Hallie.

He tried to talk to her through the locked door, but that just got her more stirred up. He left, hoping she would calm down after he was gone.

Downstairs he found a guy cleaning the bar. In one corner a band was setting up their instruments. “Cool tattoo,” one of the band members said, inching past him.

Dylan glanced at his arm. “Thanks,” was his distracted answer. “Have you seen Claire?” he asked the guy behind the bar.

“What day is this?”

“Thursday. It's Thursday.”

“I think she teaches painting classes on Thursdays.”

“Painting classes.”

“Yeah.”

All along, Dylan had imagined Claire waiting for him, looking just the way he'd left her, just where he'd left her, doing just what she'd been doing those last days, working on her watercolors for the card company. This threw him. She wasn’t supposed to move. She wasn’t supposed to be living in town, above a bar called Electric Iguana, and she wasn’t supposed to be teaching.

“The classes are out by Fallon Lake. Everybody takes their own easel and sits out there and paints the water and the mountains and crap.”

Dylan drove halfway around the lake before he found a bunch of brightly dressed people in big hats sitting in front of easels. It wasn’t until he got closer that he realized one of the artists was licking the paint off her brush.

And when he stepped from the car, he saw that the students had quite a bit of age on them. That’s when it dawned on him that they were nursing-home residents.

Even though the temperature must have been at least eighty degrees, one of the residents wore a goofy crocheted hat just like Claire’s.

He walked closer and saw that it wasn’t a nursing-home resident, but Claire, trying to maintain control of her students but losing ground fast.

“Please, Mrs. Dottingham. Paint the paper, not the easel. And Henrietta, don’t eat the paint. When we’re done here, we’ll get ice cream.”

“At the drugstore soda fountain?'"

“We’ll go to Dairy Delight."

“I like the soda fountain.”

“It’s not there any—“ She stopped midsentence, her gaze freezing on Dylan.

She looked good in summer clothes, he decided. He was even getting used to the goofy hat.

“Dylan...”

She was wearing beige shorts and a white sleeveless top. On her feet were hiking boots. She was tan and healthy-looking. It didn't look as if she'd been pining away for him.

“I went by your cabin and found out you don't live there anymore. Why didn’t you tell me you'd moved?”

“I didn't have any way to get in touch with you.” Plus, I wasn't sure you’d care, seemed to be her unspoken words.

This wasn't going at all the way he'd imagined. He'd expected her to throw herself into his arms. He'd expected her to kiss him, be glad to see him. Instead, she wasn't even looking at him. Instead, her head was bent and she was fiddling with the paintbrush in her hand, seeming to find it more fascinating than his return.

He took a step back, not knowing what to say. Maybe she'd met somebody else. Or maybe she'd lost interest in him. He didn't know how to react. The future without Claire . . . it wouldn't be a future at all.

“Maybe I'll see you later,” he said, stupefied. He'd lost everybody he ever cared about. Why not Claire, too?

Hurt.

God, he hurt like hell. Claire. Claire
, I love you
.

She finally looked up. “You’re leaving? But you just got here.”

“You’re busy. I’ll catch you later.”

“When? Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Al he knew was that he had to get in his car and drive. Away from there, away from the pain. “At your apartment,” he lied, knowing he couldn’t go back there, knowing this was it. It was over. He started to walk away, when she called after him. He slowed and turned around.

“I don’t want to hold you down,” she said, catching up with him. “I’m so afraid I’ll hold you down.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve just gotten your life together. I don’t want to mess you up.”

Was that what this was all about? “What I have out there—none of it means anything without you. You. You are my life.” He didn’t get it. How could she have thought any differently? “I told you I was coming back.”

“You were gone so long.”

He should have come back sooner. He should have written more. He was so certain of their love that he hadn’t questioned their time apart and what it might mean to Claire. “Three months. I was gone three months.”

“I know.”

He’d spent almost a decade in the desert. To him, three months wasn’t even something that could be measured, it was that small. But for Claire . . . He could see that for someone who lived in the moment, three months might as well have been a lifetime.

“Men have walked out of my life before,” she explained. “I used to tell myself, He'll be back. But then I learned to tell myself, He won't be back, so quit moping around. Get on with your life. And as time passed, my memory became fuzzy and I realized that I was better off by myself.”

This didn't sound good.

“But it was different with you. The ache never went away. It just kept getting worse.”

“That's what I like to hear.”

“That I've been in pain?”

“That you missed me. It's so weird. It's like you're everybody and everything I've known and loved. Yet at the same time, there are so many things about you that are uniquely you. Your sense of humor. The way you just dive into life. Where some people would stand around, analyzing things from every angle, checking out the pros and cons while the years dwindle away, you jump. You have this wonderful ability to live in the moment. And when I'm around you, I can be a part of that. I can live in the moment, too.”

She shook her head, her eyes glistening. “I'm not that person,” she confessed. “I wish I were, but I'm not.”

“You are. You live life the way I only imagine, the way I can only do through chess. With reckless abandon. With unrequited joy.”

He could tell she was thinking, looking back.

“Don't you see?” she said, “I'm that person when you're around. When I'm with you, I'm stronger. There’s more life in me. It's not me. It's you. “

He understood what she was saying, because he felt the same thing. He was more when he was around her. He was more alive. He was smarter. Funnier.
More.

“Together,” he said, smiling, “We're one damn bright star.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her right there in front of her entire art class.

Nobody even noticed.

“I know this isn't really the place to ask—” He glanced around at her students, then back at her. “Well, maybe it's the perfect place. Will you grow old with me?”