Do You Believe in Magic

The headphone wires were tangled. She had them carefully wrapped before she left, but as she pulled them from her pocket they were knotted absurdly, like a ball of yarn. It had rained during the night and everything was still wet and damp. She'd accidentally stepped in a puddle as she hurried down the street, soaking her foot. She'd always hated wet socks, ever since she was a child. Her mother, when she would do laundry, never dried the socks properly; always left them in a haphazard pile that would cause some of them to dry and some of them to remain moist and musty. Erica had a habit of never drawing the ones that were dry.

At her feet her three-year-old daughter, Jessica, a caricature of impatience, stamped and smacked Erica's leg, screaming, demanding her juice box. The bus was taking forever to arrive this morning and she feared they would be late for her doctor's appointment. When she called Dr. Welles' office yesterday, the receptionist told her the were no available appointments until October. Erica had to first beg and then argue, bargain, even call out of work, just for them to reluctantly squeeze her in. And now she was going to be late. "Great," she said under her breath.

The bus stop was deserted, and it usually was, on account of it being on the outskirts of town. The shelter provided by the bus stop was meager and ineffectual, and the air was still humid and heavy with mist, as though the sky above blew a mocking raspberry at her. She badly wanted to get to the doctors office; she considered calling a cab but then realized her phone had been shut off for not paying the bill. A homeless man approached, emerging from the alcove of a nearby, not yet opened storefront. Erica always felt uncomfortable around homeless men, because they were usually crazy, or drunk, or both, but also because of a story her cousin Lisa had told her when they were kids. Lisa's friend Rebecca had been abducted by a homeless man. It was a big story, all over the papers. Especially after they'd found her, after she escaped. He'd tricked Rebecca, who was seven at the time, to follow him into an abandoned warehouse where he was taking up residence. He wore his uniform and told her that he was a friend of her father's, that he had a present for her. The gift, you can imagine, wasn't one any young girl would have ever wanted. What disturbed Erica most about the story was that he sang to her while he did it. Do You Believe in Magic, by The Loving Spoonfull. It played on the radio he'd turned up to drown out her cries. To this day Erica still changed the station every time the song came on the radio or appeared in a movie.

The homeless man neared Erica and Jessica. He was humming. Erica shuddered and felt a crawling sensation and pulled her daughter closer. Stopping, the man put his fingers on his hips and bent down toward Jessica. "Why, what a pretty little girl we have here," he said. His hair was grey and dirty, teeth rotten. He smelled worse than a wet dog; looked like one, too. "What's your name little girl," he asked while putting his hands on his knees as he stooped lower. His eyes were cloudy and grey, claimed by cataracts, and they gave his face a blind, ghostly quality.

"Do you want to see a magic trick?"