The sorcerer drove too fast. He always did but only because his mind was somewhere else, not because he was in love with speed. He was slow, really—sorcery is not a speedy business. What’s speedy are the events that make sorcery necessary. His mind was on his wife, Mary, who sat day after day at her sewing machine turning out small pink dresses, some trimmed in white eyelet, some in lace. Today he was more distracted than usual, this being the same block he’d been driving down the night he first saw her, a skinny girl wearing glasses, balanced on one leg like a stork. The sycamore trees were taller now, full of nests. A shadow leapt from between two parked cars. It was twilight and the papers on the back seat came flying in a white fan around him.
