Hocus Pocus

“A book?” Abigail let her voice loose to flutter and pitch toward the ceiling. She had for a while known him to be a writer of reasonable talent, though she couldn‘t keep hidden her present surprise.
“Yes, I suppose that’s what you’d call it, though it hasn’t been published, nor has anyone even read it, so I suppose I’m reluctant to call it that. It seems sort of pretentious, doesn’t it? Pretentious is something I try not to seem.” Murphy was trying his hardest not to stumble over his words, not to blabber out something that would make him seem a fool or a jerk or an ass-hole or worse. He was sharing important news with the woman that he supposed was the love of his life (she was, after all, the reason for his compiling such a work of fiction), and the thought of this dinner-time conversation becoming messy and dashing the seams of their relationship petrified him to dizzying heights. Still, he found it hard to control his tongue when his eyes and his head and his heart and everything else so entranced by her emerald eyes with swelling droplets of black in the center.
“What’s it about, please tell me!”
It was a simple question, one which he had assumed she would ask, and one that he had devoted a number of hours of thought to compiling an answer, though one of concise merit had not yet been devised. Her proud excitement, though, seemed to motor his jaw up and down and flap his tongue back and forth between the roof of his mouth and it’s floor and sent air swooshing up from his diaphragm and twanging off of his voice strings and all of that, and he blabbered out the first thought of reasonable coherence to scroll across the inside of his head, like so:
“It’s about an explosion, really, though not in the traditional fireball sense. I suppose it’s just about a lot of things that happen at once, and each thing keeps bumping into all of the other things until more and more things happen, like a marble rattling through a pinball machine, or something of that sort. Does that make any sense? You’ll really just have to read it to understand. I suppose mostly, though, it’s about my love for you. I‘m in love with you, you know.”
“What are you talking about? Murphy, you shouldn’t joke about such things, it isn’t right.”
“I wasn’t joking. I love you, Abigail.”
“Stop being silly, we were speaking seriously, there’s no need to ruin it with this talk.” Ruin it. Murphy’s palms flooded and his chest shriveled up like a raisin and his jaw shook from his mind’s tremors. He was growing nervous.





“Well that’s simply crazy talk, Murphy, we only met not a year ago.”
“I’m sorry, Abigail, I really am. But I’m only the messenger, after all.”
“Surely you haven’t stopped to think about this rationally, have you? You do have some sort of rational thought in that writer’s mind of yours, don’t you? It’s not all hocus pocus and puffs of smoke and things, is it?”
“Of course it is. I have to go into the city tomorrow, to shake hands with a publisher and perhaps dine out, and afterwards I might take a walk in the park. I think we should go together.”
“Murphy, you know I can’t.” In his head, there had been a puff of smoke that told him she could. “I’ve got work. I’ve got Tom.” Tom was the name of the bastard to whom Abigail was presently devoted. He was a man of low intelligence and high immorality, a lecherous spider who’s web had tangled a woman whose love he was not worthy. He was the sort of man that Murphy had made villains and doomed in his book.
The funny muscle that had before pushed air up through Joseph’s chest was now stretching down toward his toes. The schemers of gravity and the weight of the world seemed now to pull him toward the wooden floor of the large dining room in which they sat, orbited by people and voices, out of the hocus pocus and the smoke. From wherever he landed, he had this to say:
“Tom, yes. You have Tom. And you have children to teach. A future to construct. All of that.”
“Perhaps we should go now, Murphy. Perhaps we should part ways.”
“Yes, perhaps we should. I’ll walk you home, then.”




The blue sky was dark and the streets below were bare by dinner’s end, a sure enough sign that summer had crawled back into hibernation until whenever the calendar declared it time to wake up, or if you’re a human of American dwelling, as were Murphy and Abigail, until a groundhog arose from it’s hole and declared that very moment ready for snow to melt and birds to tweet and flowers to bloom and all of that. For now, though, it was autumn, and as such the planet Earth was as lovely as it would be for quite some time. The air was thin and only slightly chilled, as if tiny drops of ice had mixed themselves in with the floating oxygen. The wiry elm trees which were spaced at equal intervals along the sidewalk each held in their branches oval leaves which were turning shades of orange and red and brown. The branches would soon loose their grip. The leaves would float to someplace new.
Up and down the street and on each side were tall houses made of brick, clustered together with only a speck of space left standing in between. Chimneys were ushering hoards of smoke from their open mouths to combat the cool autumn breath that had swirled and swept indoors through cracks in windows and doors and cement. To their left and right, Abigail and Murphy could both see windows illuminated from behind by chandeliers and hurricane lamps and the like, and men and women were laughing in their lounges with cocktails in hand, bellowing proudly at their days work, at the deals they had swindled and their money, money, money. At how lucky they were to be bundled up and closed in from the cold, from the elm trees’ falling leaves, how grateful they were to have such respectable people living behind the brick wall that began only an inch from where theirs ended.
Outside there was only Murphy and Abigail, walking through a small portion of the world that had been glossed in yellow gold. Earth’s breath sat silent here. There was room for only the people to heave in and out, room for only their money, money, money, and their things and their things and their things.
Murphy hated trampling across these golden streets in his scuffed shoes and his dusty sweater. He hated that he had been so foolish to think that he could swoop in from his perch far below and think that he could steal Abigail from her lofty nest. It seemed to him now that she would stand firm on her branch, and for that he could find no reason to blame her. He simply wished that she could fall from her limb as easily as a leaf from an elm tree. That’s all.
“When did you decide to write a book? I never knew you were that sort of writer, you know. If I’d known, I would have loved to be your reader.” Her voice sang to him so sweet.
“It was never anything that I decided, really. I suppose I just kept having ideas and then more ideas and it seemed as though I should write them down before I forgot them. And time wore on, and it turned out that I kept falling more and more in love with you, and I wanted to write that down too, so I wouldn’t forget.”
“Stop talking like that.”
“Alright.”




“So will it be published, then? It seems as though it will be, if that’s who you’re meeting with. A publisher, I mean.”
“I suppose maybe it will. I’m looking forward to the trip, you know, to getting into the city. I’m going to sneak Sammy onto the train. She’s never left the apartment, you know.” Sammy was the name of his dog. She was a lovely combination of black lab and cocker spaniel. She hardly ever barked, even when the mail came.
“It sounds like you two will be on an adventure, then. From the country to the city, the journey of man and canine. Over the river and through the woods…” She began to sing.
He contemplated inviting her along once again, but this time chose to say nothing. Instead, he steadied his pace sideways a little so that the sleeve of his jacket and hers were now touching. She didn’t step away. He looked across at her, though she kept staring straight forward, singing still. “To Grandmother’s house, we go…” She was lost in a puff of smoke.




Her rosy chorus cut abruptly short as they stumbled into the stoop of her own tall, brick home and she emerged out from her melodic trance. She looked up at her own glowing window, at her own vomiting chimney, at her own man sitting in his lounge with a drink in hand, smiling blissfully to no one in particular. Then she looked at Murphy.
“It looks as though I’m home now.”
“Mmm humm.”
From inside, they could hear a scratchy radio humming along it’s tune. “While I listened to you play your love songs, all night long for me, only for me,“ it hummed. She looked back through the window and then back at Murphy and said “I should be getting inside. Tom looks as though he’s been alone for a while.”
“How can you tell?”
“Woman’s instinct, I guess you could call it. Have a safe trip, and be sure to give Sammy my best,” she said and they shared a small grin. “I really would be excited to be a reader of yours, Murphy.”
“That’s awful nice of you to say.”
“I mean it.”
“You know Abigail, we’ve known each other since before last Thanksgiving, and I spent every day since Christmas writing this story, and we’re standing here now. You’re the only person I’d like to read it. It isn’t going to mean doodly-squat to anyone else.”
“I have to go inside now, Murphy.”
“Alright, then, I’ll let you go. It looks like a nice place, from the outside, at least. Tom must do well for you both.”
“Please don’t.”
“I won’t.”
“Good-bye, Murphy.”
“Good-bye, Abigail.”




He turned his head down as not to look back up at her as he began trotting onward along the golden sidewalk, for a little while being careful not to cry or make a scene. A small droplet of saltwater fell clumsily from the side of his right eye, and he hurried his pace faster, trying to again find his hocus pocus, his puff of smoke. He supposed it was gone forever. For a moment, he wished he were made of gold, like everything else in this place. He wished he could swindle and steal and bellow promises to do it again the next day. He wished he belonged here, to Abigail.
In his haste, he had not seen that Abigail had not yet gone into her brick house to meet her golden lover. She stood still as a statue watching him sludge off into the dark. She decided then that she had to call after him. She still had his puff of smoke, locked up in her own head somewhere. Inside, still the radio hummed “Come to me now and rest your head for just five minutes, everything is done…”
“If I go to New York with you, and with Sammy, what would I do then? What happens when you’re done shaking hands with whoever is in the city and it comes time to go home? Does it really seem reasonable that we should stand each other in your tiny little apartment, day after day?”
Murphy stopped firm in his tracks, so quickly that his flat-bottomed shoes left a tiny black mark in the golden sidewalk. He was so far away now that he had to shout back:
“Does it seem reasonable that we shouldn’t?” He began crawling slowly closer to her stoop.
She took a step down and said “What about my work, who will teach my class if I leave without notice?”
“Well, I can tell you with utmost certainty that there are schools in Maine in which children congregate to learn and teachers such as yourself can find themselves work. And as for the children you teach now, I’m sure they’ll be fine. It seems as though an entire profession has been dedicated to the practice of substitute teaching.” He inched a little bit closer.
She took another step down. “What about Tom?”
“Let him sleep with his gold.”
They were facing each other again now, and he kissed her soft on the lips and squeezed his eyes tight as he felt his mind become full again. She kissed him back. He loosened his eyes a little. He didn’t have to squeeze them tight to feel her anymore.
They both let go and turned their eyes forward into the cold and dark mouth that awaited them. Their sleeves touched again, and then their hands. With each step they took, the gold beneath them turned a paler shade of yellow. It was beautiful.
“How much time will we spend in New York?”
“Just enough to shake hands and walk in the park.”
“Good.”