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“Try these. Please. You need them.”
I put them in my pocket.
“I’m only doing this as a favor to you. So you feel like you’re doing your job.”
“Sure,” Allegra says. “I appreciate you thinking of my feelings.”
We both laugh a little at that bit of bullshit.
She gestures to the exam table.
“Sit down for a minute.”
I do and she shines a light in my eyes. Makes me say ah. Does that weird thing doctors do when they feel under your jaw. From a nearby drawer she takes a little gold compass-looking thing with six or eight hands and presses it to my forehead.
I say, “So, you do still use hoodoo.”
“Of course. Where and when it’s appropriate.”
“What does that thing say about me? Do I need more fiber? Maybe trephination? They say it lets the demons out.”
She takes it off me and stares at the twirling hands.
“It says you’re a mess, but basically healthy.”
“Do I still get a lollipop?”
She reaches into a fishbowl on the counter and tosses me a Tootsie Pop.
I unwrap it and stick it in my mouth.
“Blue. My favorite non-flavor.”
She leans back and shakes her head at me.
“I sometimes wonder what you were like when you were a kid. Were you this stubborn? I bet you were a handful.”
“Mom says I was the handsomest boy in the world.”
“I bet you were. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
I shrug.
“I was like any kid. I could just do tricks other kids couldn’t.”
“What’s the first bit of magic you can remember doing?”
“Are you my shrink now, too?”
Allegra says, “Nope. We’re just a couple of friends talking.”
I think for a minute.
“I don’t remember much that far back. I remember Mom being sad all the time. And drinking. I remember my father being gone. Small mercies.”
“No happy memories?”
“My father missing when he tried to shoot me.”
