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Calvin ?MagiCal? Webster walked into the Dew French Drop bar with a slight limp. He looked tired, frustrated and thirsty. He pulled up a stool by the end, towards the bathrooms, near the payphone and just a half-hearted card toss from the juke box. There was nothing playing tonight, Monday night.
He signaled for a drink and Felicia smiled, poured his favorite in a frosty mug and brought it to the young ? but not as young as he once was ? magician.
Felicia waited in front of the usually cordial magic man. He usually had a quick line, or joke or a pick-up line he?d try on the bar maid. He looked up from his beer and tried to smile as his eyes met Felicia?s but he lacked the energy and the desire to muster the energy.
?You okay, Cal?? Felicia asked. She leaned forward and was tempted to touch his hand as it clutched the beer mug. She held back and just looked. She?d never seen Cal like this before.
Although she looked no older than 18, Felicia was a staple at the DFD. The DFD, in turn, was a staple in the Mystic Hollow magic community. It was the bar where young magicians waited to impress their elders and their elders waited to be impressed. Felicia considered her position behind the bar to be the perfect vantage point to learn from both ends of the age continuum.
She?d known Cal since he came to the big city and settled into the life of a suburbanite in Mystic Hollow. At first, he came on like one of the young bucks; trying to impress and secretly learn from the masters that were crowded by students around the bar. He was always ready with a quick line or a helpful turn of a phrase to even out another magician?s patter. In exchange for his writing and spontaneous patter-aid, he sought only to learn from the masters.
That?s why, tonight, it seemed so odd. This wasn?t like Cal. If he was upset, it was unlikely that he?d be in the bar. She had to assume that was the case because she had never seen him upset. He was always positive and optimistic. He supported even the most hopeless cases and had the patience of a parent as he heaped on the encouragement even when none seemed warranted.
Cal was not a big man. He stood barely over 5?10? but he was not slight in build. Unlike many of the young men and women who came through the DFD on their way to the big city or to one of the coasts, he avoided the anemic or anorexic look. It used to be that his day job at the cement factory on the river kept him in shape but now that he had gone pro, the manual labor was traded for hours at the gym.
His dark and serious looks were belied by his quick, sincere smile. Felicia had often told others Cal had a 10,000 watt smile. He could and did light up a room with that smile. Its absence today made the room all that much darker, she thought.
Felicia watched as Cal finished his beer and then asked for another. She obliged but watched him carefully as she brought the beer towards his place setting of cigarettes, matches and a deck of blue backed Bicycle cards. Cal looked up and slid his empty mug to the young girl in exchange for its replacement.
He?d always had something for Felicia but considered her more of a sister than a prospect. She?d been running the bar…
Continue reading Levitation: Chapter One
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