Travellers in Magic Read Online Free PDF Page A

picked up one of the pillowcases scattered around her and looked inside. “Damn,” she said. “One of the snakes escaped. I wonder if it’s back at the hotel. Alan? Alan!” The poor kid’s eyes had rolled up under his fluttering eyelids. “Well if you’re afraid of snakes you should have said something when we started out.”
    I hadn’t had any water, but I was sick for a week after we got home. Lying in bed with a hundred-and-two-degree temperature I had time to think about the trip, go over the details, figure out how one thing led to another. I felt as though it had happened to someone else, someone who had far less of a grip on reality than I did.
    That trip clarified things for me. Life just wasn’t lived that way, the way Cassie and her family lived it. You didn’t just jump in a car and drive to Mexico because you felt like it. What if I hadn’t been there with my credit card? What if Aurora had gotten a concussion? I wanted something more for my life—order, sanity. I wanted to complete my studies, get my doctorate in math and get a job in industry.
    I recovered, got busy with fall classes and stopped calling her. I didn’t consciously think that we had broken up, but I’d think of her or her family from time to time with nostalgic regret. There was a guy who hung around their house—I don’t know if he was part of the family or what—who had been in films as a saxophone player. The only thing was, he couldn’t play the saxophone. He just looked like a saxophone player. So there’d be these close-ups of this guy and someone else on the soundtrack. I used to watch him practice, moving the saxophone this way and that without making a sound. It was eerie.
    And I’d remember her great-uncle, asking Cassie to name some part of a doorway in ancient Egyptian. Sometimes she’d know the answer, and he’d beam with satisfaction. Other times she wouldn’t, and he’d shake his head sadly from side to side and say, “Cassandra, my pet, what will become of you?” Once I caught myself shaking my head with regret just thinking of him.
    I probably would have called her eventually, but one day my office-mate’s sister came wandering into the office looking for him, and I ended up taking her out for coffee. Her name was Laura, and she was very sensible.
    I was home, a few weeks after I’d started seeing Laura, when I heard a loud pounding at the door. I set down the Journal of Multivariate Analysis and got up. Once I’d unlocked the door to the apartment I wished I hadn’t. It was Cassie.
    â€œYou want order in your life!” she said with no preamble. Her face was twisted and ugly, her brown eyes hard and flat. I tried to stop her but she pushed her way into the room. “Goddamn it, you want everything to be dull and predictable, you want to know what’s going to happen in your life at every minute. Don’t you?”
    I couldn’t think of anything to say.
    â€œWell, don’t you?” she said loudly. I knew enough about her to tell that she was on the verge of tears. “The way I live is too unpredictable for you, right? If somebody gave you a timetable of your life that told you everything that was going to happen from now until you die you’d welcome it, wouldn’t you? Well?”
    She reached into her purse and took out a small manila envelope. “Cassie, I—” I said.
    â€œWell, here!” she said, thrusting the envelope at me. “I hope you’re happy!”
    A little dazed, I took it. It seemed too slight to be a timetable of my life. I reached inside and took out—photographs. Photographs of me.
    She was turning to go. “Cassie,” I said. “Where did you get these?”
    â€œMy grandmother!” she said, and broke away and ran loudly down the hall.
    I took all the photographs out and looked at them after she had gone. There were