Page 44 of The Rules of Magic

“Of you.”

Vincent turned to him. The man beside him wore a gray suit and a shirt made of fine linen. For some reason, Vincent felt flustered. For once in his life he fell silent.

“I hope you don’t have a rule about not talking to strangers,” the man said.

He let his hand fall upon Vincent’s arm. Vincent felt stung, yet he didn’t pull away. He just let the sting he felt go on, as if he wanted it, as if he couldn’t understand how he’d ever lived without it.

“I’ve heard you play in the park. I go most Sundays.”

Vincent’s gaze settled on the man’s dark, liquid eyes. When he tried to answer, there was a catch in his voice. He, who had talked himself in and out of trouble his entire life, who had charmed the nurse who had stolen him on the day he was born and every woman since without ever caring about a single one, had fallen silent, as if bewitched.

“I’m thinking I should be an exception to the rule. Talk to me,” the man urged. “You’ll be glad you did.” Vincent’s new companion introduced himself as William Grant, who taught history at the progressive university the New School, although he seemed far too young to be a professor. “I’ve been waiting for you to notice me, but since you haven’t, I thought I’d invite you here. The card was from me. You know as well as I do, Vincent, we don’t have all the time in the world.”

William lifted his hand away to signal to the bartender for another round. In that instant something happened to Vincent. He realized he had a heart. It came as a great surprise to him. He sat back on the barstool, stunned. So this was it, and had been all along, the way a person felt when he was enraptured, when he didn’t care about anyone else in the room, or in the city for that matter. It had finally transpired, what he had seen in the mirror, the man he would fall in love with.

They went to William’s apartment on Charles Street. If there was anything Vincent might have done to stop it he wouldn’t have done so, for this occurred only once in a person’s life, and then only if he was lucky. It happened the way things happen in a dream. A door opens, a person calls your name, your heart beats faster, and everything is familiar, yet you don’t know where you are. You are falling, you’re in a house you don’t recognize and yet you want to be here, you have actually wanted to be here all of your life.

Vincent was shocked by the depth of his feelings. All of the women he’d had and he’d felt nothing. Now he was burning, he was at someone’s mercy, embarrassed by his own need. He, who prided himself on being a loner and not caring what anyone thought, cared desperately. When William ran his hands over Vincent’s body, his blood was hot, he wanted to be here and nowhere else. In the past the sex was only about what others might do for him. He had been selfish and thoughtless, but now he was a different man entirely. What they did together was a form of magic, maddening and ecstatic.

Vincent didn’t go home that night. He didn’t care if he ate or slept or if his sisters worried over what had become of him. William set up a Polaroid camera and took photographs of them together. They appeared as if by magic, lifting off the page. In each image, they embraced each other. It seemed they were one person, and that was when Vincent began to worry. If you were one, what befell you hurt the other as well. In a sudden cold sweat, he remembered the curse.

He cared nothing about the ruination of himself; trouble didn’t have to look for him, he went right toward it. But William’s fate was another matter. Not love, he and Franny always said to each other, for look at what had happened to Jet. Anything but that. And yet Vincent stayed, unable to give up this dream he’d stumbled into, the one he’d always had but had made himself forget.

On their seventh day together Vincent fell silent, exhausted by sex and by his own fears, which now had grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t let go.

“What’s wrong?” William asked.

Vincent couldn’t bring himself to speak of the curse or let the idea of it into the room with them, even though William would have understood in a way another man would not. He was a bloodline whose relative Matthew Grant had been tried for witchcraft and then acquitted in Windsor, Connecticut, before disappearing. There was no official record of William’s ancestor after his trial, but there didn’t need to be. He’d come to New York, where the family had settled on Long Island, and William had spent every summer at his family’s house on the shore. He had an easy manner, but was direct and comfortable with himself. He’d been to Harvard, so he understood Massachusetts as well, and he’d written his thesis on John Hathorne, the witch-finder and judge who had sentenced so many of their kind to death, and several of the classes he taught at the New School centered on outsider societies.

“Do you know your fate?” Vincent asked as they lay together, entwined.

“I know yours.” William laughed. “I told you when I met you.”

“To sing in Washington Square Park?”

William grinned. “To be mine.”

When Vincent went missing Franny was worried sick the first two days, furious over the next two days, and hurt every day that followed.

“He’ll be back,” Jet insisted. “You know Vincent.”

Franny walked the dog, who continually pulled on his leash to the corner of Bleecker Street, then would stop, puzzled, refusing to walk on until Franny dragged him home. She wondered if her birthday wish had gone wrong, and had driven Vincent further away.

“You would know if something was wrong,” Jet assured her sister. “You still have the sight.”

At last Vincent phoned to say he was sorry to have been out of touch.

“Out of touch?” Franny had barely slept a wink since her brother had disappeared. “I was afraid you were murdered.”

“Worse,” Vincent told her. “I’m in love.”

“Very funny,” Franny said.

He’d had so many admirers and he’d never cared about a single one. He laughed, understanding his sister’s response. “This is different, kiddo.”

“You don’t sound like yourself.” Franny was already looking for a canister of salt and some fresh rosemary to dispel whatever afflicted him.

“I am myself,” Vincent told her.