[So at the moment there's nothing- that I know of- that I can do about the absence of indentations. Oh well.]
Toby Dobrinick didn’t believe in many things. He had never, for stale example, been fooled by stories of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny; something that had troubled his parents and Montessori teachers. He did not believe in any god or God (or gods or Gods). He did not believe that his roommate, with whom he shared a small apartment in a complex known as “The Runaround,” liked him very much at all. He did not believe that the college he attended, the classes in which he enrolled, or the textbooks he wearily read would make him a substantially better human being. And he certainly did not believe in magic. In fact, Toby’s favorite activity was writing stories that began in fantastic worlds in fantastic times in fantastic ways. But as the tales progressed, Toby would steadily exile the fantasy, deconstruct the wonder, and re-paint the dreamscape gray, ending each of his stories in a new universe of dullness and banality, bathing what came before in a contemptuous light.
Most of all, Toby did not believe that any person in the world really needed another person in order to get by. That isn’t to say that Toby didn’t believe in love. On the contrary, Toby readily acknowledged the existence of love. He loved his mother and his father, he loved his sister and his brother, he loved animals, and he loved unusually cold air on rainy days in the summer. He just didn’t accept the idea that there was some ultimate happiness or perfect fulfillment to be gained by living the entirety of his life with a woman. Besides obvious anatomy, was a woman really that different? In what ways could a woman, a wife, make him happy that friends couldn’t (again, overlooking obvious anatomy)?
It was thoughts like these that Toby was considering the day he saw the flyer. He was trudging along the sidewalk, his stomach full of inadequate- but cheap- pizza, when a bright yellow leaf of paper stapled to a telephone pole caught his eye. As he approached, Toby could make out the short message written upon the canary-colored sign:
WANTED
closet space- will pay $67/week
must be climate controlled
Inquire at Wired Willy’s Coffee, 2:30 PM, Mon-Wed
Toby snorted. Had he read correctly? Was somebody really attempting to rent closet space? Several more appraisals of the strange words seemed to leave no alternative. Toby grunted another laugh, yet he was becoming more intrigued as seconds passed.
By the time he reached his apartment, Toby had made up his mind: he was going to meet this unusual advertiser at the coffee shop on Tuesday at 2:30, if for nothing more than a laugh and a chance to scratch the itch of curiosity with which the odd bulletin had left him.
Toby walked exhaustedly into his room, swung his backpack from his shoulder to his bed, and retreated into his desk chair. He swiveled around to face his closet. It was so long that it constituted one entire side of Toby’s room, and it was unusually deep for a wall closet. Folding slatted doors separated it from the rest of the bedroom. The only objects residing therein were a few pairs of Toby’s shoes and a set of crutches; Toby kept all of his clothes in the drawers of the dresser next to his bed, to the extreme annoyance of his roommate.
“You know, your shirts would be less wrinkled if you hung them up like a normal person. They wouldn’t have a big crease down the middle from where you folded them, either,” Mitchell would often point out.
Toby leaned back in his seat, picturing his closet full of crates of candy or magazines, thinking hopefully of the prospect of $67 a week for box-sitting.
* * *
At 2:10 that Tuesday, Toby left his house for Wired Willy’s. He was dressed in Khakis and a polo shirt (which he hoped was respectable attire for a young closet leaser), and had with him all necessary preparations (his photo I.D. and a picture-phone photo of his closet). There was only one thing he had overlooked, Toby suddenly realized as he approached the coffee shop: he had no way of identifying the individual who had posted the sign.
Toby was now quickly losing confidence in the legitimacy of this deal. He stood outside the café window, peering inside to look at the customers, hoping against all reason that he would spot somebody wearing a “We buy ugly closets” T-shirt.
It took only moments for Toby to notice him, a man sitting alone at a table built for two, who easily could have been the victim of a recent, vicious paint-fight. He wore a white tuxedo, complete with coattails and top hat, that was splattered with what can only be described as a vomit of colors. Most of the coffee clientele, Toby noticed, was glancing and giggling at the man, who seemed not to notice. Toby made up his mind that this man in the Jackson Pollock suit was the owner and poster of the yellow “wanted” sign.
With trepidation, Toby entered the shop and walked to where the man sat alone. When Toby reached the table, the gentleman looked up from his coffee cup. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, and his face was lined and somber. Toby had the distinct impression that this was a habitually unhappy person, given his watery eyes and the saggy corners of his mouth.
“You’re late,” sighed the man in a morose voice that perfectly matched his countenance.
“Excuse me?” Said Toby, caught off his guard.
“I said you’re late,” repeated the stranger. “I specifically requested you to be here at 2:30. It’s now…” he shook back his sleeve to check a purple-strapped watch. “2:34. I’ll be wanting those four minutes back, mind you.”
“Oh… I, um… I’m sorry,” Toby stuttered apologetically as he sat down opposite the man. “Very sorry. But at least you had your coffee to occupy you for those four minutes, right?” This very brave attempt at humor was scowled down by the stranger.
“Hardly. Awful stuff. In fact- ah, here we are,” and he flagged down the waitress who was walking by.
“Yes sir?” She said with an impressively straight face and only a tiny downward peek at the man’s colorful suit.
“I’d like another coffee, this one isn’t nearly hot enough,” the man said coldly.
“Heh, Tom Swifty…” Toby chuckled as the waitress hurried off. The man sitting across from him raised an eyebrow.
“Tom what?”
“Tom Swifty….” Toby repeated.
The man shook his head, his face betraying utter perplexion and a hint of frustration.
“What in God’s name are you talking about, son?”
“Tom Swifty? You know, it’s… it’s a joke where a quoted phrase is linked by….” Toby trailed off, considering the consequences of further damaging the fourth wall. “You know what? Forget it,” he finished lamely.
“Very well then,” the man said slowly. He now regarded Toby as though he thought him to be quite insane. “If you’re through… can we get down to business?”
“Of course,” Toby agreed, grateful for the change of subject. He held out his hand to the man. “My name is Toby Dobrinick.” The man did not take Toby’s hand.
“Dobrinick? That’s not Bulgarian, is it?” Asked the man, and he looked down at Toby’s hand as if suddenly afraid it would bite him.
“No sir, Croatian.”
The man regarded Toby silently for a moment, his brows furrowed suspiciously, then reluctantly shook his hand.
“Croatian it is, then,” he said. “My name is Saul. Well, enough chit-chat, back to business. You have a closet for lease?”
Toby nodded. “I do. And about that—”
“How much space does it have, exactly?” Interrupted Saul. “I need a fair bit of room, you know.” Toby reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.
“It’s actually pretty big,” he said as he showed Saul the photo he had taken. Saul nodded his approval.
“And when will it be ready for use?”
“As soon as you want,” replied Toby. “And speaking of use… what exactly do you want to use it for? What’re you going to put in there?”
Saul shrugged uninterestedly.
“Anything that I disappear.”
“Anything that… sorry?”
“Anything that I disappear.” Saul repeated impatiently. “I’m a magician, you see, ‘Saul The Stupendous,’ and I’m in need of a reappearing zone.”
Toby was becoming extremely confused extremely quickly. “Um… I'm sorry, but I’m not familiar with the term ‘reappearing zone.’ What… what is that, exactly?” He asked, hoping he didn’t sound ignorant.
Saul sighed as if Toby had asked him to explain multiplication tables, where babies came from, or how to flush a toilet. “A reappearing zone is where objects reappear after a magician has made them disappear,” he said very condescendingly.
Toby squinted skeptically at Saul The Stupendous.
“But… how does that work? Are you trying to tell me that you actually teleport the things that you make disappear in your magic acts?”
“Of course,” Saul yawned, maintaining his air of disinterest in the subject. “Everything has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? Nothing can be nothing. Things don’t just go away, never to exist again, and it’s equally impossible for something to come back and be something again once it’s been nothing. So disappeared things have to be put somewhere, you see. And if you’re a magician, they have to be put somewhere out of sight.”
“I’m sorry,” Toby apologized again uncomofrtably. He didn’t know what to believe. Every word from Saul’s mouth seemed so ludicrous, but the ease and indifference with which he spoke them made Toby uneasy. He was afraid that he might actually believe the old magician. Toby would normally have walked out on this conversation by this point, but the unhappy certainty of Saul kept him in his seat. “It’s just that… I figured there was some disappointing trick behind the whole ‘disappearing’ thing.”
Saul frowned, the lines of his face and the droop of his mouth reminding Toby very strongly of a sallow-eyed hound dog.
“There’s nothing not disappointing about this, young man.”
Toby opened his mouth to ask what Saul meant, but the magician continued, cutting him off.
“So, you agree to lease me your closet at the rate of sixty-seven dollars a week?”
Toby nodded, still squirming with questions but doing his best to remain still.
Saul pressed on. “Alright, now that that’s settled, there are just a few things that we should discuss concerning the items that will be appearing in your closet.”
“Okay.”
“First of all, you have my assurance that I will not send anything dangerous into your home. No men juggling swords or fireballs or Siberian tigers….” Saul paused thoughtfully. “You aren’t allergic to rabbits, are you?”
Toby shook his head.
“Good, then no, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“But what am I supposed to do with—”
“I’m coming to that,” said Saul irritably. “Be patient. Now, the objects that I use in my show are normally junk… useless things. That is precisely the reason I use them for the disappearing act; they aren’t things I dearly want to see again. I usually don’t disappear anything valuable. Therefore, you may do whatever you like with any of the items you find in your closet. Keep them, sell them, throw them away, It’s up to you.”
“Okay… but back to the rabbits. Am I supposed to just… let them go? Or sell them to pet shops? It seems kinda expensive and wasteful to use a new rabbit for each performance when you could use the same one…. Why don’t you want them back?”
Saul shook his head. “It’s not as expensive as you would think. Magician’s discount. And besides, I never use the same rabbit twice in my shows… you get too familiar.”
Toby frowned. “But what’s wrong with making friends with a rabbit? Don’t you like rabbits?”
“I love rabbits,” Saul replied somewhat dispassionately. “I simply believe in keeping my business and personal affairs separate, as far as rabbits are concerned.”
Saul was not much of a conversationalist, not one to linger over his coffee, and soon the bill was paid and goodbyes were exchanged. Toby walked home with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on his shoelaces, still undecided as to whether or not he believed that random objects were going to materialize in his closet over the next few weeks.
That night Toby locked the door to his room and closed up the closet. He undressed slowly and lethargically. By the time his head was on his pillow, his thoughts were still full of doubts, concerns, and guilty curiosity of the possibility of real magic.
*
Not since the Christmases of 1994 through 1998 had Toby rolled out of bed so excitedly. After a night’s sleep he was no longer ashamed to admit to himself that he was ready to be proved wrong, that he was earnestly hoping that what Saul had claimed as fact was nothing less. But still he wanted proof. He wanted evidence. He wanted a reason to believe.
This atypical morning idealism was short lived. Toby slid open the doors to his closet to find nothing that hadn’t been there the day before. All optimism not quite crushed, Toby walked into the closet and turned on the light, checking all four corners, even scrutinizing the carpet for a magical thumbtack, a teleported paperclip, but he found nothing.
He dressed quickly before class, annoyed with himself and feeling foolish. Of course there wouldn’t have been anything there this morning, he thought. I mean, it’s not likely that Saul was going to be putting on a performance right after leaving the coffee shop, is it?
But there was nothing in the closet that afternoon when Toby returned home from class, either. Nor was there anything the next morning, or the morning after that. An entire week passed, and Toby had still not discovered anything unexpected in his storage space, nor did he receive a check for $67.
‘Reappearing zone.’ Right. Toby thought to himself bitterly on the eighth evening of waiting. By the tenth day he had given up hope entirely, decided that Saul was just a crazy and lonely old man, and started a new short story about an elf (who would come to learn that he was, in actuality, just an abnormally long-eared boy who had been abandoned in the woods as a baby).
And that’s why, two weeks after the meeting with Saul The Stupendous, when Toby walked into the kitchen/dining room after a long day of midterms, all thoughts of magical closets were absent from his mind. In fact, he had nearly forgotten the idea entirely.
Toby was accosted on the way to his bedroom by his roommate, Mitchell, who was pacing the living room.
“What’s making all that noise in your room?” Demanded Mitchell without preamble.
“What noise?” Toby asked politely, trying diligently not to allow his frustration with Mitchell’s pompousness to manifest itself by way of vocal tone.
“That scratching noise! Listen….” Mitchell pressed a finger to his lips for dramatic effect.
Sure enough, once they had stopped talking, Toby could hear a weak skitter emanating from behind his closed bedroom door.
“That’s… weird. I have no idea what that is. Did you not look in and check?”
“No,” Mitchell said pompously. “I don’t barge into other people’s rooms without permission.”
The emphasis on “I” made Toby quickly search his memory for a time when he had entered Mitchell’s room without permission. He couldn’t remember one.
“It hasn’t been bothering you, has it?” Toby asked, still trying to paint sincerity on his own face. But Mitchell was already retreating into his own bedroom, and didn’t answer.
Toby grunted. He had come to expect this sort of behavior from Mitchell, who operated under the impression that the entire world was constantly and intentionally offending him.
A soft thump redirected Toby’s attention away from his standoffish roommate. He opened his door and slowly walked into his bedroom, revolving on the spot, listening, seeking out the source of the strange noise.
skit skit skitter… thump
It was coming from the closet. And suddenly it all came flooding back: the coffee house, Saul The Stupendous, the (sub-standard) leasing agreement. Toby rushed across the room, stumbling over a variety of floor junk in his hurry, and flung open the slatted doors.
Something white and blurry zipped out of the closet and past Toby’s feet. Taken completely by surprise, Toby screamed, jumped backward, lost his balance and fell hard on his back. Before he could lift himself up, the unidentified scurrying object ran to Toby and jumped on his chest.
Toby looked down his body. Perched on top of him was a small white rabbit, which had begun to creep slowly up his torso towards his face. Toby was panicking, but didn’t dare to move. As his conqueror approached his head, Toby wondered frantically if rabbits had a taste for human eyebrows (the eyebrow being the most appetizing-looking feature of Toby’s face, he had already decided).
The bunny stopped an inch away from Toby’s exposed neck. Toby closed his eyes, wishing the animal would go away, waiting for the nasty, jugular-severing bite that was sure to come. The rabbit pounced, sprang from Toby’s collar bone and onto his chin… and proceeded to poke its pink, quivering nose into every reachable region of Toby’s face with the authority and determination of a tiny, furry, horribly cute and extremely jittery airport security guard.
Toby laughed with surprise. He wrinkled his nose and tried to turn away from his fervent inspector, but the rabbit only stretched out its soft neck to continue sniffing.
“Ok! Ok!” Toby chuckled, his face puckered against the tickle of whiskers. “I get it. Ok!” And, still laughing, he gently nudged the rabbit with the back of his hand. The bunny leapt off of Toby’s body just as Mitchell entered the room.
“Uh… what is that?”
Toby sat up and rubbed his nose, which tickled maddeningly after his attack, with the palm of his hand.
“Looks like a rabbit to me.”
Mitchell frowned.
“But you didn’t pay the pet deposit. Why didn’t you pay the pet deposit if you were going to have a rabbit in your room? Where did you get it, anyway?”
Toby had to stop himself from replying with “the closet.” Even if he could convince Mitchell that the rabbit had been teleported to their apartment from a magician’s magic show, Toby felt that the story was too good to waste on Mitchell.
“I, uh… got him yesterday.”
“Well then why didn’t you tell me? And why didn’t you say anything before when we were talking about the noise?”
“I don’t know, I guess I forgot, alright? I’m sorry.”
“But you never paid the pet deposit. Are you gonna pay the-“
Mitchell stopped short as the rabbit suddenly hopped on top of his sneakers. Four seconds later it bounced away again, leaving behind a small brown mass atop Mitchell’s left shoe. For a moment both Toby and Mitchell could only stare at Mitchell’s befouled foot. Then Toby burst out laughing.
Mitchell made a disgusted, angry sound, gave both Toby and the rabbit a burning look, and walked out of the room cautiously, so as to avoid spilling rabbit feces on the carpet.
Toby picked himself up off the floor, closed the door behind Mitchell, and sat down on the edge of his bed. He looked over at the rabbit, which was watching him from the floor, and smiled.
“That was pretty great.”
The rabbit, apparently excited at being addressed, sped the length of the room back and forth before launching itself onto the bed, and he settled himself on Toby’s knees. Toby scratched the rabbit behind the ears, and it drummed its feet happily on Toby’s lap.
Upon further inspection, it was decided that the rabbit was a young male. Toby named him Hatrick, and the two were soon best friends. Every day after classes when Toby walked in the front door, Hatrick would race across the floor and, almost doglike, bound in circles around him. What was even more remarkable about these greetings was the fact that Mitchell insisted on locking Hatrick in Toby’s room every morning, citing “to protect the carpet from more rabbit crap” as his reason. Toby resented the phrase “more crap,” seeing as how the only time Hatrick had ever voided his rabbit bowels inside the house was on his first day in the apartment, on top of Mitchell’s shoes and not the carpet.
Whenever Toby was stressed or unhappy, Hatrick would attempt to cheer him up with what Toby began to call his “drum solos.” Hatrick would lie on a surface in Toby’s room well-suited to producing percussive sound and tap out a rhythm. He was uncannily talented. Sometimes Hatrick would even use two different surfaces- say, the wood of the desk and the cover of a book- to create different pitches and give his compositions some basic form of a melody. Toby had always disliked the term “swan songs,” considering it too feminine and trite. He preferred his rabbit songs, and wondered why nobody had ever thought to make that into an idiom.
Soon after the arrival of Hatrick, objects began to appear in Toby’s closet frequently and regularly, usually in the evening. There was no sound, no flash of light or other archetypal signal that would herald a new materialization; Toby would simply open his closet doors to find something that hadn’t been there before.
Mostly, as Saul had said, the things that Toby pulled out of his closet were junk. He filled garbage bags with scarves, dirty stuffed animals, fake coins, plastic flowers, colorful foam balls, and he threw them into the dumpster under the cover of night to avoid Mitchell. The only other items that appeared in the closet were checks written out for $67.
“Huh, that’s clever,” said Toby as he picked up the first check and showed it to Hatrick. “Saves him money on postage. I guess he didn’t count those first two weeks when he wasn’t disappearing things….”
Even though he was now on the payroll, Toby was beginning to grow disillusioned again, weary of hauling shabby things from his closet to the garbage bin. Magical trash was still trash, after all. His new job behind the scenes of the magic show business was beginning to seem very boring, but then the next rabbit came.
This newly arrived cottontail was big, dumb, and lazy. Hatrick, behaving like a polite host, tried to incite the freshman bunny to play (run around like mad), but soon gave it up for a lost cause. It didn’t take long for Hatrick to start drumming one foot on the ground slowly and deliberately, much like a human does when waiting impatiently for someone who is running late. The new rabbit was promptly dropped off at the animal shelter the following morning.
While their dull visitor may have underwhelmed Hatrick, Toby found himself preoccupied with a new and slightly disturbing possibility as he drove home from the puppy pound: would Saul ever vanish a person for one of his performances? Would Toby, like Hatrick, have to entertain an unexpected visitor? And what if such a visitor appeared in the closet while Toby wasn’t home? What would he do or say if he entered his room to find a stranger sitting at his desk?
Coincidentally, that evening Toby found in his closet a letter from Saul (along with two gaudy, pink flamingos) that addressed his concern:
Dear Mr. Dobrinick,
I am writing to inform you that, due to an upturn in business, my performance budget has grown. As a result, I have been able to hire an assistant, whom I will use in an all-new disappearing act. This individual has been given very specific instructions as to how she is to respect your living space. Seeing as how she will not be able to lock the front door behind her in the event that she reappears in your home while you are away, she will wait in your room until you are able to escort her out. Don’t worry; she will be disappeared with plenty of cash and a bus pass. I hope you do not feel that this is a breach of our original agreement.
Wishing you the best,
Saul The Stupendous
Toby wasn’t sure how he felt about the situation. He didn’t think that Saul was dishonoring their contract, and he didn’t necessarily have a major problem with somebody materializing in his closet. And yet, Toby felt inexplicably wary about this new part of Saul’s show.
Toby crossed the room and sat down at his desk, where Hatrick lay warming himself underneath the reading lamp, and dropped the letter in front of his small lapin friend.
“We’re gonna have another guest, what do you think?”
Hatrick looked over the letter for so long that Toby began to worry the rabbit was actually reading it. When finished perusing, he drummed apprehensively.
“Yeah, I know. I hope she won’t be anything like our last visitor too,” said Toby.
After receiving the letter, Toby spent a few anxious evenings waiting for a woman to show up in his room. The more he thought about it, though, the more he began to feel a small amount of excitement along with his anxiety. Maybe Saul’s new assistant would be the kind that Toby had always seen on TV and in movies, young and beautiful with perfect teeth and flawless breasts. Toby was further excited by the realization that the assistant would be appearing in his closet in her performance attire, which he imagined would be sparkly and, more importantly, minimalistic. The deal seemed sweeter every minute.
Then one evening, as Toby sat at his desk reading about German expressionism in film and as Hatrick snoozed on top of Toby’s bed, the closet door suddenly opened.
Toby snapped around in his chair and beheld the creature that stood in the middle of his room. At least one aspect of Toby’s imagination had been fulfilled; the woman was scantily clothed. Her costume was golden and shiny, and it was adorned with several large pink feathers. The rest of the hopes that Toby had held for the assistant, however, were smashed, and his once-stiff enthusiasm went instantly limp.
She was old. She may have been beautiful once, but time had caught up to her and subsequently left her in the dust. Her hair was brown and thin and meticulously curled. Beneath her chin were two breasts that were fooling neither Toby nor Hatrick, the latter having awoken at the sound of the door opening. Her face was leathery with worry wrinkles, and she gave off a dried-out, wispy aura, the kind that one sometimes associates with chain smokers.
“Which way outta here?” She asked in a gruff voice, and then began hacking in a way that suggested she dearly wanted to liberate one or both of her lungs from her chest.
Yup, definitely a chain smoker, Toby thought to himself.
“I’m Toby,” he said over the sound of her coughing, not sure whether or not he should pat her on the back.
Finally she stopped coughing and straightened up.
“Denise,” she grunted. “This the way out?” And without waiting for an answer she walked out the bedroom door and into the living room.
Toby followed quickly, praying silently that Mitchell wasn’t in the living room. Toby’s prayer was answered. Mitchell was in the kitchen.
“Excuse me,” said Denise as she brushed past Mitchell and made her way to the front door. Before leaving, she turned and spoke to Toby.
“See you sometime next week.” And with that she walked out the front door, her feathers swishing as she closed the door behind herself.
Toby sighed. Mitchell was staring at him with a look of confused revulsion. Everything had happened so fast and so unexpectedly; Toby hadn’t been able to fabricate an excuse in the event that Mitchell witnessed the departure of the assistant. He should have planned for this to happen.
Oh well, thought Toby, who was still bitter that the magical assistant that had teleported to his closet wasn’t a twenty-year-old blonde bombshell. I’ll make up an excuse to tell him later.
“What the hell….” Began Mitchell.
“I’ll think up an excuse to tell you later,” said Toby, and he walked back to his room and closed the door, leaving Mitchell stammering indignantly in the kitchen.
“Saul’s got some taste in assistants, wouldn’t you say?” Toby asked Hatrick as he sat down on the bed beside the rabbit. Hatrick made a tiny retching noise, like a kitten coughing up a hairball, and drummed rapidly on the bedspread. Toby laughed, scratched Hatrick’s neck, and committed himself to his desk once more.
By the time there were no more pages to be read, the digital alarm clock on the bedside table displayed “3:47” in treacherous luminescent green. Toby swore to himself, certain that he would sleep through his morning classes again. He hastily brushed his teeth and undressed, then turned out the light and climbed into bed. Hatrick crawled up and settled himself beside Toby’s neck for warmth.
Toby lay on his back with his eyes shut for several minutes, but sleep wouldn’t come. Something didn’t feel right. Careful not to wake Hatrick, he turned his head to look at his clock.
4:03
And then Toby heard it, something was making noise in his closet. He sat bolt upright, prompting Hatrick to awaken and hop away sleepily. He stared at the closed slat doors, trying not to breathe, listening for the sound to come again. And it did.
It was a sob, small and pathetic. Somebody was in his closet, and they were crying. Toby looked at his clock again. Saul had never made anything disappear at such an hour before.
“Hello?” Toby whispered into the darkness.
There was no reply other than a slight increase in the volume and frequency of the sobs.
“Hello? Who’s there?” Toby slowly removed the bedcovers from his legs and slid his feet slowly to the carpet. Hatrick, he noticed, was cowering at the edge of the bed farthest from the closet, his face hidden under his paw. The crying grew more earnest as Toby crept towards the closet.
“Hey….” He whispered as he reached the slatted doors, though which he could barely distinguish a hunched form. Very carefully, standing as far back as he could, he reached out and pulled the doors apart.
Sitting on the closet floor, shaking, her knees drawn to her chest, was a woman. For a moment Toby thought it was Denise, but a few seconds’ scrutinizing through the darkness revealed that the pitiful lady was not Saul’s assistant. The woman that sat before Toby now seemed to be of middle-age as well, but when she lifted her tear-smeared face to look at him he perceived softer angles and kinder features.
“Close the door,” she squeaked, and she buried her face in her knees.
“I’m sorry… what’s going on?” Asked Toby.
The crying woman merely shook her head.
“Is this some… are you a part of some new act?” He asked hopefully. This just made the woman sob harder.
“Leave me alone,” she said more loudly. Toby held out his hands and shushed her.
“I’m sorry, I just want to know what’s going on. Where did you come from?”
The woman raised her head again.
“He… he m-made me disappear,” she sobbed.
“Well, yeah, I know that, but why—”
But before Toby could continue his interrogation, the woman leaned back and grabbed one of the closet doors. She pulled it closed and leaned forward for the other door and shut it as well.
“Go away.”
Toby stood there for a moment, staring at the collection of fractions of woman that he could see through the slats of the doors. Then, silently, he turned his back on the closet and crawled back into bed. Hatrick scurried to him and burrowed himself partially under the covers, where he shivered against Toby’s chin.
Toby closed his eyes. The moonlight from the window had illuminated the woman’s hand when she had reached for the closet door, and on that hand Toby had seen a diamond ring. With Hatrick beside him and sobs escaping from his closet, Toby tried to sleep, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything but think about the things he had always believed in, the things he had never believed in, the words of Saul The Stupendous, and what it took to make somebody who loved you disappear.
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