Free The Messenger by T. Davis Bunn Page A

Free.
    Washington, D.C. He already loved this place. The avenue he walked seemed to split the town like a knife. On one side was wealth, and all the possibilities such riches brought a guy like him. On the other side was ghetto city, drugs and gangs and homeboy turf. The perfect place to hide when he had netted the wares and needed a place to chill.
    He pushed through a cluster of pigeons, looked at them standing there; they seemed afraid that one small turn would bring them face-to-face with their worst nightmare. He grinned to himself. Yeah, he was all right again, his head back on straight. All that time, what he had really needed most was a change of scene.
    Manny did not watch where he was going, did not need to, not now, not while he was cruising, taking the air, getting the feel of his new home. Every once in a while a little drift of what he had been hearing and thinking about those past few days would pop into his mind. He would push it away even before the thought and the feeling could form and congeal, shoulder it out, and just walk a little faster. Shoving out all that crazy stuff and the strange way it shook him.
    He danced along the crowded sidewalk, decided without thinking that he could take the next turning, get on a side street where the going was easier. Taking the corner by half-climbing a street sign, swinging up and around and away, drawing gasps from the passersby, out of sight before the people fully realized what they had just seen.
    The side street led away from the glitz and toward the ghetto, the change sudden. He had a feeling a lot of the city was like that, battle lines drawn almost everywhere. His dance was a strut now, showing the locals he was a man in the know, somebody they didn’t want to mess with. Taking another turn, feeling the tension and the anger and the hardship and the drugged-out stress, drawing it in like he did his air, feeding on it. This was his world, the place he could call his own. The same in every city, a dark jungle even at noon, a tangled, fear-ridden strip where only the strong survived. Another turn, not really seeing, just moving with the flow and reveling in the power that seethed with this sense of rebellious freedom.
    Suddenly he halted, the world drawing back into focus. He found himself standing in front of a storefront doorway. Manny looked around, had the sense of abruptly coming awake. Bizarre, like he had been heading here all the time, which was impossible because he hadn’t even been looking where he was going. Angry now, pushing at the thoughts and the door at the same time, not paying attention to the words written on smoked glass in pointy, flowing gold letters: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice .
    A voice from an alcove to his right suddenly said, “Ah, Manny, excellent, excellent.”
    Manny spun about. “Eh, whatsthatyousaid?”
    â€œWe’ve been looking everywhere for you.” A delicately slender man pushed through the curtain and walked toward him.
    Manny took a step back. Then he realized he was moving away from the door, his carefully honed survival instincts failing him in the clutch. “How’d you know my name?”
    â€œOh, you have quickly become quite famous in our circles.” He was elegantly turned out, his dark hair caught in a silver ring and well-trimmed beard flecked with gray. He wore a flowing red silk shirt over black trousers tucked into fold-down boots. “How on earth have you been?”
    â€œSwell.” Manny gave the room a quick scan. Dusty old tomes rose to the ceiling, stacked in careless abandon, some of them bound in metal and embossed with strange symbols. The same symbols decorated the ceiling and hung from the walls in ornately scrolled frames. Maps that made no sense were framed alongside the symbols, with great dragons spouting fire and faces blowing stormclouds and edges inscribed in strange script. Brass instruments were arranged under the counter glass and stacked