Trumps of Doom

He got to his feet and headed for the rear of the store, glancing at me as if I should follow him. I did.

He slowed when he reached a section full of books on natural healing and organic farming and martial arts and herbal remedies and having babies at home, but he went on past it into the hardcore occult section.

"Here," he said, halting. "She borrowed a few of these, brought them back, borrowed a few more."

I shrugged.

"That's all? That's hardly weird."

"But she really got into it."

"So do a lot of people."

"Let me finish," he went on. "She started with theosophy, even attended meetings of a local group. She got turned off on it fairly quick, but by then she'd met some people with different co

"Interesting," I said. "No yoga?"

"No yoga. When I asked her that same thing she said that it was power she was after, not samadhi. Anyhow, she just kept fording stranger and stranger acquaintances. The atmosphere got too rarefied for me, so I said good-bye."

"I wonder why?" I mused.

"Here," he said, "take a look at this one."

He tossed me a black book and stepped back. I caught it. It was a copy of the Bible. I opened it to the publishing credits page.

"Something special about this edition?" I asked.

He sighed.

"No. I'm sorry."

He took it back and replaced it on the shelf.

"Just a minute," he said.

He returned to the counter and took a cardboard sign from a shelf beneath it. It read JUST STEPPED OUT: WE'LL REOPEN AT and there was a clock face beneath it with movable hands. He set them to indicate a time a half hour hence and went and hung the sign in the door's window. Then he shot the bolt and gestured for me to follow him to a room in the rear.

The back office contained a desk, a couple of chairs, cartons of books. He seated himself behind the desk and nodded toward the nearest chair. I took it. He switched on a telephone answering machine then, removed a stack of forms and correspondence from the blotter, opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Chianti.

"Care for a glass?" he asked.

"Sure, thanks."

He rose and stepped through the opened door of a small lavatory. He took a pair of glasses from a shelf and rinsed them. He brought them back, set them down, filled both, and pushed one in my direction. They were from the Sheraton.

"Sorry I tossed the Bible at you," he said, raising his glass and taking a sip.

"You looked as if you expected one to go up in a puff of smoke."

He nodded.

"I am really convinced that the reason she wants power has something to do with you. Are you into some form of occultism?"

"No."

"She talked sometimes as if you might even be a supernatural creature yourself."

I laughed.

He did, too, after a moment.

"I don't know," he said then: "There're lots of strange things in the world. They can't all be right, but . . ."

I shrugged.

"Who knows? So you think she was looking for some system that would give her power to defend herself against me?"

"That was the impression I got."

I took a drink of the wine.

"That doesn't make sense," I told him.

But even as I said it I knew that it was probably true. And if I had driven her into the path of whatever had destroyed her, then I was partly responsible for her death. I suddenly felt the burden along with the pain.

"Finish the story," I said.

"That's pretty much it," he answered. "I got tired of people who wanted to discuss cosmic crap all the, time and I split."

"And that's all? Did she find the right system, the right guru? What happened?"

He took a big drink and stared at me.

"I really liked her," he said.

"I'm sure."

"The Tarot, Caballa, Golden Dawn, Crowley, Fortune that's where she went next."

"Did she stay?"

"I don't know for sure. But I think so. I only heard this after a while."

"Ritual magic, then?"

"Probably."

"Who does it?"

"Lots of people."

"I mean who did she find? Did you hear that?"

"I think it was Victor Melman."

He looked at me expectantly. I shook my head. "I'm sorry. I don't know the name."

"Strange man," he mused, taking a sip and leaning back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his neck and bringing his elbows forward. He stared off into the lavatory. "I've heard it said-by a number of people, some of them fairly reliable-that he really has something going for him, that he has a hold on a piece of something, that he's known a kind of enlightenment, has been initiated, has a sort of power and is sometimes a great teacher. But he's got these ego problems, too, that seem to go along with that sort of thing. And there's a touch of the seamy side there. I've even heard it said that that's not his real name, that he's got a record, and there's more of Manson to him than Magus. I don't know. He's nominally a painter-actually a pretty good one. His stuff does sell."

"You've met him?"

A pause, then, "Yes."

"What were your own impressions?"

"I don't know. Well...I'm prejudiced. I can't really say."

I swirled the wine in my glass. "How come?"

"Oh, I wanted to study with him once. He turned me down."

"So you were into this, too. I thought-"

"I'm not into anything," he snapped. "I tried everything at some time or other, I mean. Everybody goes through phases. I wanted to develop, expand; advance. Who doesn't? But I never found it." He unbent and took another gulp of wine. "Sometimes I felt that I was close, that there was some power, some vision that I could almost touch or see. Almost. Then it was gone. It's all a lot of crap. You just delude yourself. Sometimes I even thought I had it. Then a few days would go by and I realized that I was lying to myself again."

"All of this was before you met Julia?" He nodded.

"Right. That might be what held us together for a while. I still like to talk about all this bullshit, even if I don't believe it anymore. Then she got too serious about it, and I didn't feel like going that route again."

"I see."

He drained his glass and refilled it.

"There's nothing to any of it," he said. "'There are an infinite number of ways of lying to yourself, of rationalizing things into something they are not. I guess that I wanted magic, and there is no real magic in the world."

"That why you threw the Bible at me?" He snorted.

"It could as easily have been the Koran or the Vedas, I suppose. It would have been neat to see you vanish in a flash of fire. But no go."

I smiled.

"How can I find Melman?"

"I've got it here somewhere," he said, lowering his eyes and opening a drawer. "Here."

He withdrew a small notebook and flipped through it. He copied out an address on an index card and handed it to me. He took another drink of wine.

"It's his studio, but he lives there, too," he added. I nodded and set down my glass.

"I appreciate everything you told me."

He raised the bottle.

"Have another drink?"

"No, thanks."

He shrugged and topped off his own.

I rose.

"You know, it's really sad," he said.

"What?"

"That there's no magic, that there never was, there probably never will be."

"That's the breaks," I said.

"The world would be a lot more interesting place."

"Yeah."

I turned to go.

"Do me a favor," he said.

"What?"

"On the way out, set that sign for three o'clock and let the bolt in the door snap shut again."

"Sure." I left him there and did those things. The sky had grown a lot darker, the wind a bit more chill. I tried again to reach Luke, from a phone on the corner, but he was still out.