“Are you married?”
“No.” Jimmy shook his head. “I’ve come close a couple of times, but there never seemed any rush. I thought, wait until you’re a little more secure, until you don’t have heavy money worries to sour it. Ha.”
“You have family, or someone special?”
“Family,” Jimmy allowed. “I dread telling them. Listening to them carry on will be even harder than hearing what the doctor told me. Someone special? Not now, not anymore. Never again.”
“Don’t pen yourself in with absolutes. Those thoughts can become as real as iron bars.”
“Sure, everybody’s going to want to fall over me. I have a disease! Maybe it’s not AIDS or leprosy or the plague, but it doesn’t make that much difference. I’m sick. I’m dying. I might as well ring a bell and yell ‘Unclean,’ every time someone gets close, the way lepers had to back in the Middle Ages.”
“You have a crystal ball? I used to, but threw it away. I couldn’t see any future in it.” Walter laughed at his own joke. Jimmy only snorted.
“I’ve heard that one before,” Jimmy said. “But some things you don’t need a crystal ball for.”
“And they tend to lie when you least expect it anyway,” Walter said evenly.
“What the hell are you?” Jimmy asked. “Who are you? You didn’t answer any questions.”
“I’m no more than what I appear to be.”
“I don’t even understand that much. You appear to be an old man who can see without eyes. You’ve got a primitive cottage in the middle of a strange maze in a large park that doesn’t exist in this city. But it does. Or I have gone crazy, the way I thought.”
“You haven’t gone crazy, if I’m any judge.”
“Are you?” Jimmy pounced quickly with that question.
“I judge no one and nothing,” Walter said.
“See, you’re still not giving me any straight answers. Why are you torturing me?”
“Am I?” Walter sighed. “Perhaps I am, in a way. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to add to your burdens.”
“I’ve told you about me. Won’t you tell me about you?”
Walter hesitated before he nodded. “Some folks used to call me a wizard, though I’ve never claimed that for myself. I do have a job or work, of sorts.” He chuckled, soft and short. “I offer a place to rest, such refreshment as I can, and an ear to those who need to talk about their troubles. When I can help, I do. This place”—he gestured around him—“is wherever it needs to be, wherever my modest services are required. I don’t suppose it really exists in the world. But then, perhaps it does. Who am I to judge? I never leave my garden here.”
“A wizard is just what I need now,” Jimmy said. “Someone to do some abracadabra and take the tumors out of my head.”
“I told you, others have called me wizard, now and then. I have never claimed to be one myself. I’m not. I don’t have any magic or miracles to offer you. I told you that before. And I don’t know if anyone has the magic you need.”
“No magic, no cure,” Jimmy said. “Just the death sentence the doctor gave me.”
“I said that I don’t know if anyone has the magic you need,” Walter said. “But I also don’t know that no one has it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Precisely what I said. I don’t know the answer, the solution. I don’t know if the magic exists. Most likely, it does not. But there is a small but finite chance that it does. And, if it does, I do know where you have to look for it.”
“Where?” Jimmy asked.
“Within yourself. I can’t give you a magic, a miracle. If one exists, it exists in here, and here.” Walter reached over and tapped Jimmy first on the head, and then on the chest. “It may exist. Or not. But if it does, you won’t find it unless you look, unless you give yourself a chance. And until you can accept the possibility of failure, you cannot succeed. The doctors say you are dying. You’ve gone from denial to anger, from ‘This can’t be happening to me,’ to ‘This shouldn’t be happening to me.’ That blinds you. That takes your eyes away.”
“Should I wear a tall, pointed hat and start chanting mumbo-jumbo? And what took your eyes away?”
Walter stared eyelessly until Jimmy looked down, away from him.
“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said. “You didn’t deserve that.”
“You don’t deserve what you’re doing to yourself. Me, I see well enough, even without eyes, as you have noticed.”
“What does it matter? I’m as good as dead already. No, not ‘as good as.’ Dead might be better. Then I wouldn’t have all of the suffering left to go through.”
“If you really believed that, you never would have found your way through my maze.”
Jimmy looked across the clearing, at the opening in the hedge. “The maze,” he said. “I almost forgot that. There is magic here. You as much as said so. You said that this place appears wherever it’s needed.”
“If you call that a magic, I won’t argue the term.”
“If you have that magic, then why can’t you cure me?”
“The magic is not mine. I have no magic of my own.”
“You said that people have called you a wizard. They must have had some reason.”
“I cannot answer for what reasons they might have thought they had. I have not lied to you, young man. I do not lie, ever. If there is magic to be found, you must find it within yourself. But you must do the seeking. If you refuse to look for it, it will never come calling.”
“If, if, if.” Jimmy shook his head and stood up. “I don’t know what to make of all this. I guess I’m not thinking straight. I haven’t been. Maybe you’re just a hallucination brought on by the tumors, or the pain pills, or something. If.…” He squeezed his eyes tightly shut for an instant in response to a sudden pain behind them. “In any case,” he said when the flare receded a little, “if you’re just a figment of my imagination, you’re still better than the nightmare the doctor laid on me. If you’re what you claim to be…”
Jimmy was unable to finish that. He had no idea what more to say.
Walter stood and stepped close to Jimmy. “I do not offer false hope to fight real fear. But neither do I offer despair.”
“Thanks for the lemonade… and everything. Now, if I can just find my way out of this maze, I’d better be going. Before I decide that I don’t want to leave at all.”
“Alas that I cannot offer to let you stay. Even that magic is denied me. But you cannot lose your way leaving my garden. You can only lose your way afterward.”
Jimmy turned toward the opening in the hedge. Walter put a hand on his arm.
“A second, please. I have no magic to give you, but you would make me feel better if you took this with you.” He took Jimmy’s hand and pressed the piece of wood he had been carving into it. “If nothing else, perhaps it will help you to believe that this garden was no dream.”
“Thank you, again.” Jimmy started to raise his hand to look at the carving but stopped when the old man, and the cottage, disappeared.
Jimmy looked around. There was no park, no maze. He was standing on the sidewalk, near the entrance to his apartment building. Traffic moved on the street, people moved on the sidewalk. And parked cars separated them.
A fit of shivering came over Jimmy despite the heat of the day. Finally, he looked down at his hand again. He still had the piece of wood. He lifted it closer, and saw himself. The eyeless old man had carved a perfect likeness.