Some Kind of Magic Read online

  “Okay. Call it a horse if you want.”

  Uriah taught him strategies. Taught him how to use the pieces in combination to attack. Dylan could swear Uriah knew the name of every play ever made.

  “I have a photographic memory,” Uriah told him one day. “I don't forget anything. But some of the best chess players don't have the plays memorized. They play from the gut.” He nodded his head. “But the good ones, the ones who make it big, they do both. You've got Moiseevich, who was a purely analytical player. And Adolf Anderssen, who was perhaps too emotional. And then there was Jacob Sax. His strength was the fake out, the con. If a player can be all three, then he's really got something.”

  ~0~

  “I used to be married,” Uriah told Dylan one day. Uriah didn't usually talk about himself. “I had a house and a car. A decent job. Guess what kind of work I did?”

  Dylan shook his head.

  “Come on. Take a stab at it.”

  Dylan tried to picture his friend in some kind of employment, but it was impossible. “I don’t know,” he said, impatiently, not wanting to play a guessing game. Why didn’t the guy just tell him? “A plumber?”

  Uriah slapped the back of Dylan’s head. “Don’t piss me off, kid.” Most people would have gotten scared by that point, but Dylan egged him on. “I know.” He pointed, acting surprised and honored. “You’re that guy.”

  Uriah fell into his trap. “What guy?”

  “You know. The guy.”

  “You want me to smack you again, li’l fucker?”

  “The guy who sifts the cigarette butts from all the sand ashtrays in the world.”

  “You smart-ass.”

  He acted like he was going to smack him again, but instead, he got him in a headlock and gave him a Dutch rub. Except Uriah didn’t know his own strength. It felt like his knuckles were going right through Dylan’s skull.

  “So,” Dylan asked him later. They were walking down the sidewalk, eating the sandwiches the cook at Barley’s had given them through the back door. “What’d you used to do?” Uriah seemed about to answer, when an old lady pushing a shopping cart appeared out of nowhere, almost bumping into him. Uriah jumped lithely to one side. The woman looked up at him and her mouth dropped open. She began babbling in Cajun, made the sign of the cross, and scurried away.

  Dylan had picked up enough Cajun to know that she'd said something about Uriah having death on his face, or in his face.

  “Man,” Dylan said. “That was just plain freaky.” He turned to look at his friend.

  Uriah's face was ashen.

  “Hey, you don't believe that crap, do you? The woman was some nutcase.”

  Uriah let out a nervous laugh. “Hey, if I die you can have all my stuff.”

  “That's bullshit. Come on. You were getting ready to tell me what you used to do.”

  Uriah handed his half-finished sandwich to Dylan. “I used to design arcade games.”

  Dylan laughed, thinking it was almost as funny as his ashtray joke. But then he realized Uriah wasn't kidding. His friend pulled out a pack of generic nonfilter cigarettes, offered Dylan one, then lit both cigarettes with one match. “I couldn't take the pressure,” Uriah said, tossing the match to the ground and pocketing his cigarettes inside the black leather jacket he'd picked up at the Salvation Army. “There were always deadlines.” He shook his head. “Too much pressure. I ended up in the nuthouse. I lost everything. My wife. My home. My car. But you know what’s weird? I don’t really miss it. None of it.”

  Dylan didn’t believe him for a second. A family. A wife. He had to miss his old life. How weird to have lost it all. How did that kind of thing happen? The fact that Uriah had also lost his family made Dylan feel even closer to him, more like maybe they were family, brothers.

  Two days later, Dylan couldn’t find Uriah anywhere. He asked around. The first two people just shrugged. The third person told him Uriah was dead.

  “You’re lying,” Dylan shouted, shoving the guy against a wall.

  “No I’m not, man.”

  He put up his hand, in case Dylan decided to shove him again. “Some gang beat him up. Calling him a faggot. He’s dead. He was put in a body bag and all. I’m not shittin’ you, man. I swear. I’m not shittin’ you.”

  Dylan turned and ran in the direction of the police station.

  Everything was a blur. On the sidewalk, peoples’ open-mouthed faces turned in his direction. He knocked a bag of groceries from a woman’s hands but continued running, finally reaching the police station, stopping at the first desk he came to.

  “Yeah, we picked up John Doe in the red-light district,” the officer said, his mouth full of food. How could he eat at a time like this? Didn’t he have any respect for the dead? For the living?

  “Where?”

  The man pointed with his sandwich. “Four blocks down the street at the morgue.”

  It was Uriah.

  He didn't look bad. Not really. Dylan was glad he didn't look bad.

  Dylan turned and ran back into the street. He ran and ran, all the way to the wharf. He stared out across the gulf. Life was so hard. Life was so damn ugly. He wanted to jump in and keep swimming until he couldn't swim anymore.

  The next day, he went to the spot where Uriah had slept. He hadn't used any of the shelters, preferring to have his own spot under a bridge not far from the ocean. There, Dylan found Uriah's magic cards and Leonard Cohen tapes. He also found a notebook with page after page of chess moves and chess strategies, most of which Uriah had taught him.

  And there was a chess set. Handcarved, a timeless replica of the fleeting, intricate, beautiful chess pieces Uriah had drawn in chalk.

  Dylan picked up the black knight, feeling its weight, its perfect balance.

  So far he hadn't cried. But now he broke down and sobbed.

  Dylan was sixteen.

  After Uriah died, Dylan couldn't stay out of trouble. He was always getting thrown in jail for loitering, or breaking curfew, fighting, and underage drinking . . . until one of the cops noticed how much he liked chess and told him about a club in town for kids. He even offered to take Dylan to the meeting.

  At first, Dylan felt so damn out of place he wanted to turn around and run. All the kids there were decked out in brand new clothes with their shiny faces and neatly parted hair. Rich kids from rich families. He didn't belong. He didn’t want to belong.

  But it only took him a short while to realize they had more things in common than he’d thought. There was the obsession with chess, yeah, but there was more. For years, Dylan had been picked on and made fun of because he was different. So had these kids.

  Dylan had first been subjected to verbal ridicule from his uncle, then by the other kids at the orphanage. He didn’t know how or why things were so wacko, but that’s the way it was when you were smarter than your peers. They came at you like a pack of rabid dogs. He’d once read how horses would attack and sometimes kill a white horse in their own herd because the white horse stood out from the rest. Apparently people hadn’t evolved all that much. He was living in a place where being smart was a handicap, but fortunately he’d recognized that twisted fact at an early age. He’d learned to play dumb in order to get along with the rest of the herd.

  With these kids, he could be himself. Or at least a version of himself.

  He began competing, first on a local level, then state. And when he began competing, things moved fast. There was no holding him back. Maybe it was because chess was all he had, or maybe it was something for him to pour himself into, to vanish into, so he didn't have to think about anything. Whatever it was, Dylan became the equivalent of an overnight success. By the time he was nineteen, he was an international chess champion with a handful of high-stakes games behind him that had made him a millionaire. His picture was plastered on the cover of hundreds of magazines. The paparazzi gave him no peace. Even the legitimate press hounded him. Two years after becoming an international chess champion, Daniel Dylan French quietly disa
ppeared.

  Dylan was twenty-one.

  Chapter 22

  Claire pretended to be resting, pretended to be sleeping off her hangover. She heard the front door slam. She gave Dylan ten minutes, to make sure he wasn't coming back immediately, then she jumped out of bed and hurried to the living room, moving softly in her wool socks. She went straight to the antique desk and pulled out the voodoo doll. The pins were still there. One in the heart, one in the crotch. She pulled the pin out of the heart and stuck it in the crotch, along with the other pin. She lifted one of the doll's little white legs, reading the tiny print.

  A libido gone stagnant?

  The front door opened.

  Claire shoved the doll back in the desk, quickly slamming the drawer. Then she waited to see if the new pin in the very important spot would have any effect.

  Dylan kicked off his boots, then padded across the room in his gray wool socks, a load of wood in his arms. He put the wood down near the stove, then straightened. Claire sat there looking at him, trying to keep her expression neutral.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You have a strange look on your face.”

  “You're leaving, aren’t you?”

  He kind of gave his head a little shake, her directness catching him off guard. “It’s about time, wouldn’t you say?”

  “When?”

  “First thing in the morning.”

  “Oh.” So soon. Too soon.

  Here she’d been waiting for him to throw himself on her, and he was planning his big getaway. How stupid of her. She didn’t believe in voodoo dolls. And she’d never been the coy type, either. She couldn’t saunter up to him, walk her fingers up his arm, hang on him, and giggle in his face. And she had the feeling he wouldn’t like it if she did.

  She had a stomach-churning thought. Maybe that’s what she’d done last night.

  “You still sick?” he asked. “Maybe you’d better go lie down.”

  She nodded and walked past him, humiliated that her close proximity had absolutely no effect on him.

  That night Claire lay in bed, hoping against hope that he would come to her. That the voodoo doll would do its stuff. But he didn’t come.

  Stupid voodoo, she thought. What good is a voodoo doll if you can't put a spell on somebody? She kept thinking about things she could do to make him stay, but the only thing she came up with was handcuffing him to her bed again.

  Up until that moment, Claire had forgotten about the handcuffs, which were still padlocked to the bed, hidden from sight, having slipped past the mattress to the floor.

  She didn't think handcuffing him would make him like her. She's tried that once.

  What would he do if she handcuffed herself to her bed? She rubbed her face. She was getting dumber all time.

  “Claire?”

  She lay there perfectly still. Had she heard something, or just imagined it?

  “You awake?”

  She scooted up in bed. “Yeah.” She pushed her hair back from her face. Had the voodoo worked? “Can't you sleep?”

  “No.”

  “Me either.” That's a hint, Dylan.

  He crossed the room, his feet a whisper against the bare floor. “I can't get you out of my head.”

  Yes!

  “I don't know what's going on, but I can't quit thinking about last night. I've got to get out of here. Now. Tonight. I can't wait any longer.”

  Things had suddenly taken an unforeseen turn.

  She scrambled to her knees, her mind racing. “You can’t leave now, not in the middle of the night. How will you get gas? No gas stations are open now.”

  “I filled the tank yesterday.”

  “But you’ll have to fill it again before morning. That car’s a gas-guzzler if I ever saw one. This is ridiculous. Childish. It’s childish. Don’t leave now. I’ll worry.” As if he cared, she thought. “I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “I have to go.”

  He couldn’t go. He couldn’t leave, not like this. Plan A. What was Plan A? Oh, yeah. Oh, that was stupid. She couldn’t handcuff him to the bed against his will.

  Plan B, then. What was Plan B? Oh, yeah.

  Fumbling in the darkness, she reeled up the cuffs, looped them over the top railing, sat down on the pillow, and lifted her hands above her head, slipping her wrists through the metal bands. Then she clicked them shut, leaving herself dangling there in a totally helpless, sacrificial position.

  There. Plan B. Handcuff herself to the bed.

  “Claire?”

  In the dark, she just had to imagine the baffled expression on his face.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  Yeah, it baffled her, too. “You can't leave now. If you leave, I'll be handcuffed to this bed forever. Or at least until I die and they finally find my rotted carcass in the spring.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “It's— It's a physical demonstration.” She shrugged. “I like you.”

  “How much?”

  He sounded very curious. Very curious indeed.

  “A lot.”

  He laughed.

  She sagged against the metal rails. Thank God he thought it was funny. Something so weird and kinky could have gone either way.

  “Like a sister?” he asked. “Do you like me like a sister?”

  “More like ...” Her voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Like a lover.”

  “Claire, if you wanted me to stay, why didn't you just say so?”

  “Pride?”

  “You're nuts. And I mean that in the nicest way.”

  “Thank you.”

  He laughed again and approached the bed. The mattress dipped until he was straddling her, a knee on either side of her hips. "You are such a surprise. A wonderful, wonderful surprise."

  “That’s one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said to me."

  He reached up and slid her pajama bottoms off her, dropping them on the floor beside the bed. Before removing the tiny scrap of fabric that barely covered anything, he admired her with his hands, sliding his fingers under the elastic band. Using both hands, he cupped her bottom, then followed the elastic everywhere. “How can this be comfortable?" he asked, his voice sounding a little tight.

  '"You get used to it."

  “I’m glad."

  She could already feel herself getting wet for him. The darkness made her brave, bold. With his help, she scooted her legs around so her knees were under her, so she was kneeling, her arms above and behind her head, her back arched, her breast aching for his touch.

  He must have read her mind. With nimble fingers, he quickly unbuttoned her top, spreading the edges wide so that he could fill both hands with her breasts, the nipples pressed tautly against his palms. His hands, his big, wonderful hands, were everywhere. Rubbing her stomach, her thighs, between her legs. He cupped her bottom, his fingers delving between the two soft mounds of flesh. Starting at her navel, he licked her stomach, pausing to suckle her breast before continuing his journey to finally claim her lips. His tongue plunged deep into her mouth, hot and big, a promise of what was yet to come.

  “Last night you took me on the wildest ride of my life,” he whispered against her mouth. “But I think this is going to be even wilder.”

  Her mind was spinning away. But before things got completely out of hand, she had to tell him something.

  “Dylan ... ?”

  His mouth was moving down her neck.

  “In the dresser,” she gasped.

  “Mmm?”

  “The key.”

  He lifted his head. She sensed he was looking at her in the darkness. “Key?”

  “In the drawer.”

  “Later.”

  “Now. Get it now.”

  “I’ll get it later.”

  He began kissing her everywhere, licking her everywhere, until her entire body was aflame, until she completely forgot about the key, until she ached for his most intimate touch. H
e slowly tormented her, his hands freely roaming her body, the calluses sliding across her fevered skin. “Bring your legs around my hips,” he instructed. She wrapped her legs around him, her position on the bed, on the pillow, giving him the ripest access.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Claire?”

  And she realized he couldn't see her. “Yes.” She moved her hips—and felt the hot velvet tip of him against her swollen, feverish flesh.

  “Yes,” she repeated on an exhalation of air.

  A hand supporting her lower spine, he entered her. He filled her.

  She sensed that he was holding back, afraid of hurting her. And there was no way for her to pull him closer.

  “Harder,” she gasped, grabbing the rail above her head, lifting herself into him, showing him how she wanted him to be with her. She should have felt confined. Instead, she felt powerful, euphoric.

  There was something about the position of their bodies or the elevated way he carried his erection that amplified the sensuality of his touch. Every stroke sent a hot, erotic wave through her, wave more intense than the previous until she was setting the pace, increasing the speed of his passion with something close to madness, until at last she shuddered. She tightened, contracting around him. He cried out, and held her tightly, impaling her with a thrust that lifted her from the bed.

  Falling, falling ...

  Until they were limp, Dylan's damp hair against her thundering heart. “My God,” he finally said, his voice a breathless, amazed gasp. He slid down her body so his head rested on her abdomen. “My God.”

  She wanted to touch him, needed to touch him.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “I've got to get the key, but I can’t move.”

  “I want to touch you.”

  He moved over her to kiss her firmly on the mouth, and when he pulled away, she could feel his smile against her lips. He got to his feet and opened the drawer. She heard the sound of things being shoved around.

  He turned on the light and continued his search.

  “Claire?”

  “Hurry.”

  “I can’t find it.”

  “Don’t tease me.”

  “Claire, I can’t find any key.”

  He pulled out the dresser drawer and dumped the contents on the bed. There wasn’t much in it. Some pens. Scraps of paper. Matches. The orgasm book—they wouldn’t need that. But no key.