Magic Street Page 0,63

houses, takes a dump, and leaves without stealing nothing."

"I'd like to see you prove it."

"We could do DNA testing."

"Shit don't have no DNA," said Mack.

"Did somebody here ask Mr. Science?"

"I wrote that sign in Fairyland," Mack said, returning to the subject. "And come to think of it, stuff that happens here changes the world there, too. I mean, the terrain is pretty much the same. So when we have an earthquake, maybe they have an earthquake, too. Maybe they get mountains because we get mountains."

"That's God's business," said Ceese. "Not mine. I'm a cop, not a geologist."

"You not a cop yet."

"Am too. Been a cop for two weeks now."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I'm still a trainee. Probationary, kind of. I don't want to make some big announcement yet because I still might wash out. But I got a badge and I'm going out on calls."

"You a cop. I can't believe that."

"Now you can't mess with me anymore," said Ceese.

"I never messed with you before," said Mack. "Now I got to start."

"I'll arrest your black ass and give you such a Rodney."

"It takes six cops to give somebody a Rodney."

"It takes six white cops," said Ceese. "Takes only one black cop."

"Who the bigot now?"

"Just stating the obvious," said Ceese. "I been practicing Eddie Murphy's speech from Beverly Hills Cop. His 'nigger with a badge' speech."

"Only cop I ever saw was Baldwin Hills."

"That's one long movie."

"The name of the movie is... stop messing with me, Mack. I come clear over here cause you want to check out the graffiti they wrote about in the paper, and now you telling me you wrote it in Mr. Christmas's back yard."

"It's a big back yard, Ceese."

"Well, I got to give you credit. It's the first graffiti I seen in years that I could actually read. But you can't make a P worth shit."

On the way home Ceese took him to the Carl's Jr. on La Cienega so it turned into a feast, but the whole time, they both knew that something strange and important and maybe terrible was bound to happen one of these days, and they wished they had some idea of what.

Chapter 12

MOTORCYCLE

So it was that, full of curiosity and dread, Mack Street passed the next four years, living as if it were always summer, passing back and forth between the world of concrete, asphalt, and well-tended gardens in Los Angeles, and the wild, rainy tangle of the forests of Fairyland.

In the one world, he went to high school and learned to solve for n, the causes of the Civil War, how to write a paragraph, the inner structure of dead frogs, and how and why to use a condom. He dropped in on neighbors and ate with them and knew everybody. He took Tamika Brown out in her wheelchair and walked her around to see stuff and learned to understand her when she tried to talk.

He broke up fights between neighborhood kids and carried things for old ladies and watched over things, in his way.

In the other world, he wandered farther and farther, climbing higher into the hills, using the tools he brought with him to shape wood and stone. For days at a time he stayed, and then weeks. He built an outrigger canoe and took it out into the ocean, thinking to sail to Catalina, but the currents were swift and treacherous and he used up all his drinking water before he was able to work his way back to shore, south of the barking seals and cruising sharks and killer whales of the rocks around Palos Verdes.

He climbed mountains and wrote notes on the terrain and marked on topographical maps of Southern California. He drew sketches of the creatures that he saw. He traced leaves. He drank from clear streams and looked up to face a sabertooth tiger that merely looked at him incuriously and padded away. He learned that the fauna of Fairyland was impossible. Creatures that could not coexist passed each other on the forest paths or fought each other over carcasses or slept ten yards from each other in the dark of night. Yet whenever he needed to sleep, he lay down in a likely spot and was undisturbed through the night. He was always a visitor here, and even the animals knew it.

His outrigger, which he abandoned on a rock-strewn beach where crabs as big around as basketballs were so thick underfoot that he could hardly find a place to walk, became a drug-runner's