Sam Weller - Shadow Show

Slowly, the man gained his feet, absently brushed his trousers. Jim noticed that although the man was wearing a shirt and tie, his topcoat appeared thin and worn—and beyond that, he felt an essential sadness about this man.

Sadness… as if just by touching him, Jim felt he knew this brittle man.

Finally standing on his own, the man reached out for the torn package. “Thank you. Thank you very much. I am suffering from the grippe, I fear, and it has left me weak.”

Jim managed a weak smile. “I’m not surprised—if it’s always this cold around here…”

The man looked down at him, his face narrow as a hatchet. “Obviously, you’re not from New England.”

“Nope… Los Angeles, California! It’s a boomtown, my father says.”

The man seemed not to be listening as he inspected the damage to his package. “I’ve got to mend this before I can mail it,” he muttered. He took a step down the sidewalk and paused as his ankle gave way.

Catching him by the elbow, Jim buoyed him up. “Hey, mister, I think I’d better help you.”

“Nonsense, I’m fine. The postal office is nearby. I’ll be fine.”

Jim shrugged. “Okay by me, but how about if I just walk along with you a little while.”

“Don’t you have a previous destination?” The man spoke in precise clipped tones, as if always aware of each word he chose. He had a formal bearing, as if he’d time-traveled from an earlier age.

“Not really. I’ve been trying to find a store. Maestro’s Magical Shop of Wonders—you heard of it?”

The man paused his slow and deliberate gait. “You’re a magician?”

“Well, sorta. I mean, I want to be a real one someday!”

The man nodded. “Well, I have some sorrowful news for you, young man. There is no magical shop—”

“What?” Jim felt something ping in his heart. No shop? That just wasn’t possible! “What do you mean?”

The man sighed. “I have friends who are aficionados of illusion and theatrics. Maestro’s is a mail-order concern.”

“I don’t understand.” Jim couldn’t conceal the ache in his voice.

“No shop, just a warehouse where immigrants pack and ship the orders they get.”

“But the ads say—”

The man waved him off as they walked slowly toward the next intersection. “The ads, they are part of the illusion, so to speak. Do you think a famous performer such as Maestro would actually have the time, or the inclination, to be a shopkeeper ?”

Jim noticed he’d intoned that last word as if he could have just as well have said leper .

“Nah, I guess you’re right.” Although he still supported the thin man with a deft touch at his elbow, Jim felt something sag within himself. He felt embarrassed when he replayed his oft-thought fantasy of actually meeting the great Maestro. Jeez, he felt like an idiot. But he also felt something far worse—a sense of terrible loss, of a dream dashed upon the rocks of a careless world. As Jim paced his companion, he fought the temptation to surrender to such defeat.

“We turn here,” said the man, indicating a left at the corner. “It’s not much farther.”

As they entered a street lined with giant oaks and shuttered Victorian homes, Jim was reminded of Green Town—his midwestern birthplace. He felt a flutter of memory that he would one day recognize as nostalgia, then tried to forget about the magic shop that never was.

Walking another block in silence, Jim listened to the man’s labored breath, punctuated by a series of greasy coughs. He carried his package against his chest as if it were a shield or a talisman, which fired Jim’s curiosity all the more. He had to know what secrets lay beneath the crinkled brown wrapper, and so he simply asked.

“It’s a partial manuscript,” said the man. “Part of a novel I’ve been badgered into starting.”

A smile widened on Jim’s full face. “Really? Are you a… writer ?”

The man shrugged. “Of a sort. Although some such as that mountebank Tarkington would never think so…”

Jim had no idea what he was talking about, but he pushed on. “What do you write?”

For the first time since their encounter, the man enacted the suggestion of smile, a slight grin. “Articles on astronomy. Letters mostly. Lots of letters to lots of friends. But… I’ve done more than a handful of stories and novelettes for the shudder pulps.”

Jim almost grabbed him by his broomstick arm. “Stories? You write fiction? That’s what I want to do!”

“I thought you wanted to be a magician…”

“Well, that too! But I love Buck Rogers and H. G. Wells and Poe, and I can’t forget Burroughs…”

“You have… an energy,” said the man, pausing to look at Jim as though noticing him for the first time, “that I find familiar. What’s your name, boy?”

“James Holloway, but I like just plain Jim just fine.” He extended his hand as his mother had taught him to do.

“And I am Phillips Howard. I feel as though we may have been somehow fated to meet, just-plain-Jim.”

Their handshake was brief, but long enough for Jim to sense the weakness in Phillips’s grip. It was not that limp, dead fish that some people offered but an attempt at strength forever lost. Again, Jim felt overwhelmed by an essential sadness that seemed to radiate from this desiccated man who looked far older than his years.

After departing the post office, Jim suggested they go to the nearest coffee shop, and Phillips couldn’t hide his obvious surprise.

“Upon that, I have several questions. How are you to afford the extravagance? And are you not a bit young to be using caffeine?”

Jim smiled as they returned to the sidewalk. “Well, I’ve got the money I’d saved for Maestro’s, and I figured it was about time I started drinking coffee.”

Phillips regarded him for a moment, then nodded his head. “Very well then. There’s a café down this way. It is run by some Italians, but the coffee is good on a cold day like this.”

As they walked in silence, Jim wondered about a man who considered cups of coffee an outrageous expense. This stiff, spindly man—where did he live? How did he live? Jim couldn’t imagine him going home to a cheery family in one of the clapboard houses that lined these cozy streets. Was he really a writer, or was he just an older version of Jim? A dreamer of lives not yet, and maybe never, lived.

The coffee shop was not crowded, and Phillips selected a table by the window where thin sunlight promised additional comfort. There was a pleasant conversational drone of other patrons mixed with the accented cries of the staff. Jim liked the frenetic charm of the place and allowed the waiter to recommend cappuccino and biscotti for both of them.

“Tell me about your stories,” said Jim. “Maybe I’ve read them already.”

Phillips looked off through the window as if seeking a reply somewhere in the distance. Then finally: “I doubt it. They appear infrequently and seem to be a strangely acquired taste.”

“What made you want to write?” Jim had never met anyone who’d actually written anything, much less been published. Imagining he might never have this chance again, he let loose his curiosity and his questions.

“I don’t think I had much choice in the matter. If you write, it is because you must . Does that make sense?”

“Sure! I feel that way all the time. I’ve been trying to write comics and draw them myself… when I’m not writing regular stories, that is. It’s like, well, like there’s the stuff of story all around us, and somebody’s got to recognize them, and then tell them, right?”