Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver) by Bill Hiatt Page B

the evening over, I was incensed. Rather than tell his mom off, which might have made me feel better but would certainly not have helped Stan, I took him aside and wove a little illusion around him. Presto, the suit now appeared to fit, and Stan relaxed, visibly grateful. I could have gotten the suit to fit in reality, except that the presence of synthetic fabrics scrambled that kind of magic.
    The city held its Founders’ Day festivities in the city council chambers at city hall, one of the few original buildings in town mercifully not done in Spanish colonial revival style. That said, the attempt to imitate the neoclassical look of cities like Washington D.C. and some of the early state capitals struck me as more than a little pretentious. The front of the building featured Corinthian columns and marble facade, while the council chamber itself had every wall covered with murals depicting the town’s early history (such as it was, the place having only existed since 1996). Like so much else about Santa Brígida, the place seemed to be trying too hard. At least our nation’s founding fathers had been trying to remind citizens of the civic virtues of classical Athens and republican Rome through our early civic architecture; Santa Brígida’s city hall seemed more like a none-too-subtle salute to imperial Rome, a deliberate display of wealth and power.
    The council chambers, unlike any others I had ever heard of, were designed to accommodate this kind of large dinner, even to the point of having a large kitchen just off the main room. For tonight, the smaller council table on the dais had been replaced by a larger table, obviously intended to serve as the head table and draped with an expensive looking white lace table cloth. The folding chairs normally present in the audience area had been swept away and replaced with round tables, also draped in white and each seating ten, with the three front and center designated for the honored students and their parents. The tables were not folding tables, so it must have taken a lot of effort to move them in; even the chairs were not just the usual folding chairs, but heavy looking and certainly genuine wood.
    I contrived to sit next to Stan, mostly so we could poke each other when especially amusing events occurred but also so that I wouldn’t have to sit next to Eva O’Reilly, though I could still smell her signature jasmine perfume from where I was. She was, after all, Dan’s girl, and therefore off-limits anyway, so why torture myself? Besides, I had found time to casually date a bit recently, and it seemed likely I would soon have a girl of my own, after which I hoped I could stop thinking—and let’s be honest, sometimes dreaming—about Eva.
    At almost 7:00 pm, the scheduled starting time, the dignitaries began to take their seats on the dais: the mayor, the school board president, the municipal court judge, and the person who could most correctly be called the founder of the city, chamber of commerce president and the owner of the development company responsible for the very existence of Santa Brígida, Carrie Winn. If city hall reminded one of imperial Rome, there was really no question who the reigning empress was. All the other dignitaries consciously or subconsciously deferred to her, in body language if in no other way. Easily the wealthiest person in town, she could have lived in the real Montecito instead of “wannabe Montecito,” but for some reason she chose to live here. I gathered from the whispered female conversation at my table that some of the moms were impressed by the fact that Ms. Winn didn’t dress in an overstated, nouveau riche way, yet everything she wore was designer label; the pale green evening gown they seemed to think was a designer original. I had to admit that she was a striking woman; though old enough to not be really exciting to someone my age, her jet black hair betrayed not even the subtlest trace of gray, and her pale white, seemingly