And then he was cut off, in voice and space, as someone stepped before him and stood between him and Sign Guy.
It was a man. A very happy man from the look of the sappy, sweet smile he was registering, and a very well off man from the look of the suit and the Rolex he bravely wore on his left wrist, and an apparently giving man considering that his right hand was coming out of his pocket.
And a familiar man, Jay thought with some surprise as he got a better look at the fellow’s face.
Jesus, it was Jim Lewissomething, Jay realized. Lewiston. Jim Lewiston. The same Jim Lewiston who was a manager at Framer, Winston, & Lindley, a high flying brokerage as unlike S&M as sex was to jerking off—same result, vastly different approach. Jude had pointed him out to Jay one day on the Street after work, telling who he was and, as important to Jude, how much he made. It was a bunch of green, Jay remembered, but even that didn’t fully explain what he thought he saw next.
Jim Lewiston’s hand emerged from his pocket clutching a folded bill between his fingers, and toward Sign Guy’s Yuban can he reached. The slit lid was his target, and through the opening the offering disappeared, but not before Jay glimpsed it. Yet it could not be what he saw. He must have been mistaken, because why would a maker like Jim Lewiston give a bum a hundred dollar bill? Why would anyone give a bum that much green?
Then Jim Lewiston straightened, without a word to or from the bum he had just given so generously to, and he turned and walked past Jay, leaving as quickly as he’d come. Just left with that damn happy crack of a smile across his face and Jay’s puzzled gaze pecking at his back.
And then, when Jim Lewiston, broker and big, big donor to at least one of the city’s transients, was lost among the flow of people tramping up Broadway, Jay turned back to Sign Guy and his own merry mug. “Hey, did that guy just...”
“Just what, brother?”
“He just gave you a hundred dollars, didn’t he?”
“He gave,” Sign Guy responded without truly answering. “You gave, too, I recall.”
“He gave you a fucking C note!” Jay said with some exclamation. “I gave you some...” And Sign Guy was nodding now, nodding and smiling like some comic whose clever, clever joke had just been got. “...some...”
“Some change?” Sign Guy offered, but Jay did not reply with word or gesture, not a peep nor a tip of his head. His mouth hung partly open, air moving in and out automatically, which was a good thing because if he’d had to think of such trivial matters as breathing right then he would surely have suffocated. His thoughts as they were ran amok, a hundred different ones it seemed, but all radiating in some way from this little thing between him and the bum. This little thing that suddenly seemed not so little at all. (forget the Suzy sign, man, what the hell was going on
now
?) “To be precise—and why not be precise when one can—you gave me one dollar and fifty five cents. Three quarters...” And his gay blue stare set upon Jay in a way that was bright and unsettling, the bad beauty of an eclipse’s corona all about his eyes. “...three dimes...” And Jay’s own eyes beat back now, raging wide, synapses firing unchecked, incredulous thoughts and realizations cascading madly behind the glaze of his stare, a grand joke to which there could be no laughter because it was turning out to be no jest indeed. “...seven nickels, and fifteen pennies. I must tell you, though, that despite your gift I was surprised not to hear a thank you.”
“A what?” Jay asked, dazed and dazzled. “What do you mean?”
“I recount for you,” Sign Guy said. “You gave me some change, I asked if you were rich, you said, and I quote, ‘I wish’, and, well, you do have a certain tool now that is useful toward that end.”
Jay swallowed and rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Are you saying that you...” Then his head shook, responding to his own unfinished question. To the ludicrousness of even entertaining the thought. “No. No way.”
“No?” Sign Guy asked. “Well, unless dancing coins spoke to you before our first meeting, then I believe I can take the credit.”
“I...” Jay began to say, but words were suddenly mountains, daunting and alien.
Dancing
coins? Had he said
dancing
coins? Yes, he had. But
how
could he speak of such things? How? “I don’t...”
Sign Guy nodded,
his
understanding honed sharp, like the glinting edge of a cutting blade. “Why try? Just accept it. It’s your wish, remember.”
Confusion spun in Jay’s head like the foul and dirty spawn of a cyclone. “But why...how...”
“How doesn’t matter. And ‘why?’ Well, some things are just meant to be. You found me, or kismet pushed you my way, and you had your wish, and, well, I was inclined to give you that little boost even before I knew....” And there Sign Guy paused, seeming to take stock of what he was saying. Or about to say. “Let’s not muddy this up with extraneous matters. We’ll just let it be and say that you gave, and I gave, and on we go to see what the ringmaster has in store.”
“Wait a minute. You’re saying you gave me this...thing because I gave you some change?” Jay shakily asked the bum. “That man just gave. More than I did. A hundred dollars, he gave you.”
“Well, despite fate’s funny hand in bringing us together, you did
choose
to give,” the bum told him.
That proclamation of the obvious stumped Jay. What was Sign Guy saying—that Jim Lewiston had not
chosen
to give?
“He certainly did not,” Sign Guy said in answer to the unspoken question, and Jay’s already shaky expression went slack with shock. “Few people with real money choose to give. They need to be...” He searched for the proper term here. “...‘helped’ along.”
“You...you...” And once more Jay’s words stammered to only that point before flaming out.
“Know what you’re thinking?” Sign Guy shrugged. “Child’s play.”
Jay felt his knees go warm and soft, and he reached to the light standard near the crosswalk to steady himself. When his legs no longer were noodles he looked to the bum and gestured to the slab of wood against his knees. “And this sign? That was for me.”
Sign Guy grinned within his grin, an expression which Jay thought sickly sweet, like sugar on sugar on sugar. “I’m sorry—a man has to have his fun. And it did allow us to have this chat, didn’t it? It let us, oh, clear the air I guess.”
“Suzy,” Jay said aloud, and for what reason he did not know.
“That’s her name, don’t wear it out, as they say.” And then the bum chuckled, the sound seeming very odd in concert with that smile. It was a disconnected sound, and Jay could feel quite plainly the gang of goosebumps rise beneath the stiff back of his collar.
“You...
gave
this to me?”
“Guilty.”
“Because I gave you some change?” Jay pressed, belief coming hard—kicking and screaming hard.
“Where I come from, you repay good deeds,” Sign Guy said, parroting somewhat poorly from memory. “Or something like that, wasn’t it?”
Jay nodded dumbly and let go the light pole.
“I’m not an uncultured beast, you know.”
“And...and the guy who gave you...gave you the hundred?”
“Does he get anything?” Sign Guy said, posing Jay’s inquiry himself. “You know what they say—the joy is in the giving.”
Was this possible, what the bum was saying? Was it? Jay thought on that, and within the jumble of
yeses
and
nos
and maybes rattling around in his head he had to admit the fact that there was no more rational explanation out there that he could see—other than the possibility that he had gone totally batshit.
“You’re
not
crazy,” Sign Guy assured him, speaking to unspoken concerns.
Jay considered that for a moment, culling little from the effort. Just another possibility. “Maybe you are...”
“That opinion has been voiced by more learned men than you,” Sign Guy said, his head cocked a bit at Jay now, the twist of his smile angled like some lopsided pink gash upon his face. “Which reminds me—are you feeling all right?”
“What?”
“Any debilitating headaches or feelings of mania?”
Jay stared at him for a moment, then shook his head.
“Your girlfriend...you have a girlfriend, right? Carrie, I believe?”
His stare flared at the knowing now aimed at him. He nodded.
“She’s all right, too, I hope. Hasn’t been hacked to bits or forced to drink some cocktail of caustic chemicals, has she?”
“What are you talking about? She’s fine. She’s fine. Is there something—”
“No, no,” Sign Guy assured him. “If you say she’s fine, she’s fine. Maybe not perfect, but she’s breathing and walking and talking, and that’s what matters at this juncture. No side effects, so we’ll say a big thanks to the ringmaster and be on with it.”
“But...how is this possible?” Jay asked, those four words a plea, and he seemed ready to fall to his knees and beg a reply. “How can this all be?”
“You question good fortune,” the bum observed curiously. “Why not just let be what will be, let come what will come.”
Jay looked silently to the blue dusk filling the street.
Sign Guy’s gaze lay upon him now with surprise, with doubt. And with amusement. “You still don’t believe.”
“I’m having some...some trouble with all of this,” Jay admitted very freely.
“Doesn’t matter, actually,” Sign Guy said, his smile relaxing now to a simply happy expression. “You don’t have to believe. You got this far. Now you just have to...go along for the ride.”
“The ride,” Jay repeated, thinking that wasn’t a bad way to describe this. One helluva ride.
“And use your...” He stopped, and thought, and then said, “...your ‘donzerly light’ when the spirit moves you.” He winked at Jay. “Good name for it, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” Jay agreed (
donzerly light, boy, donzerly light
), and he thought at that moment that he knew perfectly well how Alice had felt upon her trip through the looking glass. Wonderland it was. Fucking wonderland indeed, but with a smiling bum instead of a crazy fuck with a way out hat. Oh shit, oh shit, this was some insane ride he’d gotten on.
“You’re still troubled.”
Jay half chuckled. The other half of the sound was closer to a gasp. “This is all a lot to digest, fella.”
“I suspect it will get easier. Beyond that...well, that slate’s still blank to me, strangely enough. Does make it interesting, though.”
Oh man, this bum was talking in nutty circles, and this whopper he was laying on was—
“I told you, you don’t have to believe.”
Again the bum had read him. Known what he was going to say. How? How? “This can’t be real.”
“But it’s happening,” Sign Guy told him, putting one check in the mental ‘yes’ column.
“It’s not logical.”
Sign Guy thought on that. “Logic is the relative of fear. That’s what I’ve come to believe.”
“Fear?”
“Fear of what deep down a person—a bright person like you—knows is real. Real as real can be.” The bum rubbed the top of his sign, gently, petting it almost. “As real as you coming to me. As real as those coins coming up heads. As real as the stocks that hit this week. As real as what you see on my sign. Are you going to ignore what’s real, what’s right there before you? Are you going to let logic deny you your wish? Your dream come true? Aren’t you due a good break in life, young fellow?”
A break? Yes, he figured he was due. With two dead parents and all the cruel hurt that festered from that wound and that which had prefaced it, certainly some fortuitous interest had been earned on that loss. Some favoring dividend. And the wish? The dream? Yes, he’d wished for riches, and he’d dreamed for so many years of the day he’d come to Wall Street to make his fortune. But never had anything like
this
crossed his mind as a way to that end. An end that, he was believing more with each passing day, would be reached somewhat sooner than he’d anticipated, thanks to—
“Donzerly light, my young friend,” Sign Guy said, speaking where only thought had been intended.
Jay stared at him, and as he did he was surprised to feel himself calm. Just a bit at first, and no way near anything approaching an expected state of placidity, but still it came. From apprehension to anxiousness, and from there to wariness, and down further to a state of reluctant wonder, but not acceptance. Not quite yet.
“Donzerly light,” Jay said for himself, and dredged from memory that line. That one silly line.
Oh say can you see by the donzerly light...
Yes I can
, he thought.
Yes I can
.
“Dreams can come true,” Sign Guy told him. “Why not yours?”
And for the first time in days, in many days, the questions that had come with every occurrence of new and fantastic happenings did not seem to matter. At least not as much as the truth of the matter—that, if things carried on, his dream would come true. He would be rich, which more importantly meant he would never be poor. Never, ever be poor. Hell, Old Man Mitchell might even bump him straight from junior broker to account manager, or maybe even account executive, because with his ability, with
this
ability... Man! It was almost too much to comprehend.
But was it too much to accept? he wondered. Was it? Did it have to be?
“Your friends are waiting,” Sign Guy said, and Jay glanced at his watch. As he did the bum reached up, very slowly this Friday eve, and turned the inexpensive timepiece his way for examination. He shook his head. “You are definitely going to have to upgrade. May I suggest a Rolex like my most recent giver?”
Jay snickered, equal parts nerves and good humor behind the expression. “You may.”
Sign Guy let go his wrist and said in a familiar way, “You’ll promise me something, brother?”
“What’s that?”
“Just one promise?”
“What?”
“You won’t ignore the possibilities.”
“Possibilities?” Jay asked. “What does that mean?”
Sign Guy’s smile doubled on itself again. “It means what it means.”
Eight
What It Means