The Magician's Wife

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Around noon of a bright spring day, on Bay Street in Channel City, Maryland, a man strode toward a restaurant as though he owned it and everything in it. It was a friendly-looking place, of brick painted white, in the quasi-colonial style that bends a knee toward elegance while retaining the common touch, like the bubbles in Welk champagne. Its name, from its columned entrance, was The Portico, and this was also the name of its twenty-two replicas, forming a chain, in Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. But if the place was somewhat folksy, the man wasn’t folksy at all. In every outward aspect he was definitely of that aggressive American breed, the business executive. He was tall, lanky, and gracefully formed, if a bit thick in the shoulders and heavy as to chin, with blue, somewhat expressionless eyes. He wore gray slacks, lounge coat in subdued gray checks, blue shirt, garnet tie, and brown shoes, rather dark. His blond hair, which glinted in the sunlight, may have been the reason he wore no hat. All in all, he had his share of good looks and was certainly not unaware of it as he crunched up the gravel walk that led from the parking lot. But, allowing for strut, the habit of masterful posing, the manner of command, he looked purposeful, as though he had more on his mind than himself, the histrionics of his kind, or lunch.

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