The Book of Magic

by George R. R. Martin

  The phone rang.

  I let it ring twice before I stripped off my rubber gloves again. I couldn’t afford to miss a customer call. Only three of my crates were full. I needed to board some pets, or groom something, or for someone to walk in with one of my other business cards—the ones that look just like tarot cards. But that hadn’t happened for a while, and my most recent fortune cookie said not to count on good luck. I took a breath and modulated my voice. “Good morning. Tacoma Pet Boarding.”

  “I’m in trouble and no one else can help me.”

  “Add me to the list of people who won’t help you.” I hung up again. Gloves. Scrub. I felt the vindictive satisfaction of someone who was finally able to betray a traitorous friend. How many times had I helped Farky? And my dad had helped him before me. And how had he ever paid us back? With lies and thefts. He always swore he was clean. He always begged for another chance. And he’d be good for a week or two months or almost a year before he stuck his nose back in the Captain Crack box. And then he’d tap the till until I noticed, or copy the store key and come back at night to make off with whatever he thought he could pawn. Give Farky a couch for the night, wake up to half my jewelry gone. No. I was done with him. And if he was in trouble, well, good for him. I was glad of it.

  And curious. What kind of trouble, and how deep? Whatever it was, he deserved it. Was he sleeping in alleys again? Had he cheated a dealer? I thought of the pleasure of hearing him pour out his difficulty to me and then telling him to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

  The phone rang.

  I let it ring as I stripped off my rubber gloves and poured myself a cup of coffee, added creamer, and sat down on the stool by the wall phone. I answered it coolly and formally. “Tacoma Pet Boarding. Good morning.”

  “Celtsie, I swear I’m clean, I swear it, and it’s not that no one else wants to help me, it’s that they can’t help me. Only you. I need that magic shit you do, and listen, I can pay you. Or work for you or something.” The words poured out of him in one stream. I was silent.

  “Celtsie?”

  I said nothing.

  “Celtsie, you didn’t hang up. Good. Listen, just listen. I know I did a shitty thing to you. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. If I could get back the necklace and earrings, I would, but the guy didn’t know who he sold them to.”

  I felt a fresh surge of anger. Silver unicorn earrings and a necklace with a silver unicorn. A gift from my father and grandfather on my eleventh birthday, to make up for the fact that there was no owl post from Hogwarts. “Real silver for a really magical girl.” At least I still had the birthday card. But the earrings and necklace were gone. A part of my childhood stolen forever. I choked on it and could not tell if it was anger, hurt, or loss. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, refusing the tears, and opened them. Wet lashes. I kept silent. I wouldn’t let him hear the hurt in my choked voice.

  “Listen, Celtsie, you there? Did you just leave the phone off the hook? Celtsie. Listen, if you can hear me, I’m in bad trouble and it’s not just me. It’s Selma, too. I don’t know if you can fix it but if you can’t, no one can.”

  Selma. Like Farky, she’d gone to elementary school with me. She’d dropped out in eleventh grade. We were still friends in a very casual way. She worked at Expensive Coffee six blocks away. I swallowed. I’d gotten coffee from her about a week ago, a rare indulgence for me. When I thought about it, she’d been pretty flat that day. No special, “Hello, how are you?” And she had even asked me what I wanted. Selma’s known how I like my coffee for years.

  “What happened to Selma?” I asked in a controlled voice. I suspected I knew. He’d probably stolen from her, too.

  “I’ll tell you, but I got to tell you the whole thing. Can I come over?”

  “No. The restraining order is still in place.” It was a lie. It had lapsed months ago.

  “What? Still? Jeez, Celtsie, it’s been over a year!”

  “Yeah, it’s worked for over a year.”

  “Okay. Be that way. But I still need your help. Your magic. And you should do it, for Selma if not for me.”

  “For Selma, I might. Not for you.” I had a feeling this was going to be a complicated thing, and not something I’d get paid for.

  “Okay, so this is the deal. A few months back, I got into some trouble. I swear I didn’t know it was going to happen. Brodie asks me to drive him to the Seven-Eleven cuz he’s pretty drunk. He wants a burrito. So I drive him there. And he says, ‘Wait here,’ and he goes in. And then he comes running out and gets in the car saying, ‘Go, go, go!’ So I drive and he’s like looking back and everything, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, shit, what did he do?’ and he tells me to drive around for a while, like go to Lakewood and back. And he has a brown sack, and when we go back to his apartment and go inside, he dumps money out of it onto the table.”

  Not much surprising. Especially from Brodie.

  “So I’m like, ‘What, you robbed the place?’ and he was like ‘Yeah, last time I was there I told them three burritos and I got home and there was only one in the bag, and when I went back, they said ‘too bad’ and wouldn’t fix it, so you know, they owe me.’ And I was like, ‘That’s stupid, man,’ and then someone pounds on the door, and it’s, like, the cops. They saw him on the security camera and knew him right away. So anyway, I got arrested, too.”

  I was already tired of the story. “And how did this involve Selma?”

  “I’m getting to that.” Oh, the whine in his voice was just too familiar. I nearly slammed the receiver down. Instead, I gripped it really tight and waited.

  “So, anyway, I got Judge Mabel. You heard of her?”

  I had. Everyone in Tacoma has a Judge Mabel story. She’s a local treasure. She’s made shoplifters wear sandwich boards outside the stores they stole from and johns hold signs on the street corners where they tried to pick up hookers. I waited.

  “She says, ‘So you like to “just drive the car” for friends so much, you can drive for senior citizens who need errands done.’ And if my client doesn’t like my driving, instead of probation I’m in jail. So I say, yes, please, thinking I can do that easy. And a few days later, I get my assignment and I take the bus to Ms. Trudy Mego’s house, ’cause I got no car. And I knock on the door, and she comes, and this is no one’s old granny. This is like the Crypt Keeper in drag. Bony face, white hair with a flaky scalp showing through, skinny hands in gloves, and dressed in a black dress and black stockings and black old lady shoes. She has a black cane, and this big black purse, and a folded newspaper sticking out of the top of it. But, what the hell, better than jail, right? And there’s an old Mercedes parked in her carport, so I’m like, well, that’s cool, I never drove a Mercedes before.

  “She gives me the keys and I open the door and it’s like, perfect, and I get in, but it stinks in there like vinegar. Really strong. But I start it up, and then she yells at me, all pissed. She’s like, ‘Get out of there! Open this door for me!’ And she’s going to ride in the back seat and I’m going to sit up front alone and drive her. Well, whatever! So I get out and I open the back door for her and she comes up to it, and then she turns her back to the seat and sits down on it, and then ducks her head and pulls in her arms and legs and her cane. I swear, it reminded me of a spider or an octopus or something getting into its hole. So I shut the door and ask what store she wants to go to, but she takes out a folded-up newspaper from her big ol’ black purse and says, ‘Just drive, I’ll tell you where.’ And I say, ‘I’m just supposed to take you to the store for groceries,’ and she leans forward and slaps me on the back of the head with the folded newspaper and tells me that it’s her car and she’ll tell me where to drive it or she’ll complain to social services. And then, instead of telling me, she opens her purse and takes out a whatchacallit, thing with girl face powder in it, and she takes a long time powdering her face.”

  I was begin
ning to get tired of his tale. I thought about just letting the handpiece dangle from its curly cord against the wall and going back to scrubbing the cat box. I leaned back to look out past the curtained doorway into the front room of my shop. Outside my window, it was raining and there were no eager customers lining up outside. I stretched the handset cord to its full length to fill up my coffee cup. I sipped at it.

  “Celtsie? You are there, I hear you drinking coffee. Man, I thought you’d hung up! Or, well, not hung up, ’cause I would have heard the dial tone, but you know, dropped the phone.”

  “I will hang up if you don’t get to the point soon. What happened to Selma?”

  “I’m getting to that. I got to tell the story in order or you won’t get it.”

  “So talk.”

  “Okay, but you know, I only got this drugstore phone and I’m nearly out of minutes. Can I come by? Please?”

  I wanted to tell him I’d meet him in Wrongs Park, but I didn’t want to sit on a wet bench in the rain next to Farky. “Okay,” I said and hung up. I was stupid; I knew it was stupid to let him in the door again. I finished scrubbing the cat box and put it to dry. I took the kennel blankets out of the washer and put them in a hot dryer. I was unloading the water dishes from the dishwasher when I heard my jingle spring over the door. “Jingle spring” was what my dad and my grandpa had always called it; it’s one of those old-fashioned bells on a spring. There’s a lot of stuff left over in my shop from the days when my grandpa had a little magic store in the same place. Card tricks, top hats, hollow thumbs, silk scarves, and smoke powder were his wares. As far as I knew, he never worked the real stuff. Sometimes I wondered what he would think of me. Collars and leashes and cat toys on the pegboard where his magic cheats used to hang.

  The jingle at the door was just the mailman. I was putting the bills in order by due date when Farky came in. Emmanuel Farquar is his real name. Farky isn’t much better. I stared at him in disbelief. Shaved. Haircut. Solid-color button-down shirt. Jeans and boots. This is the best he’s looked since class picture day in eighth grade. His brown eyes met mine. “She makes me dress like this,” he said miserably. “Handed me this shirt and took my old Nirvana T.” He looked around the shop. “Quiet in here. Where’s Cooper?”

  Cooper is a big calico cat that someone dropped off for me to board four years ago. “He’s probably asleep somewhere.” I didn’t feel like small talk. “What happened to Selma?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, but I got to tell you the whole thing.”

  “So tell.”

  He looked around the shop sadly. “Can we sit in back at the table? Like when we were friends?”

  I am so stupid. As stupid as my dad was. Farky admitting that we weren’t friends anymore made it impossible for me to throw him out like I should have. I went into the back room, and he followed. At one time, it had been the kitchenette for a tiny apartment behind the storefront. Now it was the utility room for the store. But there’s still a kitchen table in there, round and red, with chrome around the edges. And four chairs with vinyl seats and backs, mostly red if you don’t count the places where the tears have been duct-taped. He sat down with a heavy sigh. I poured him a cup of coffee and gave mine a warm-up. Reflexes. What my grandpa and dad would have done.

  “Celtsie, I’m just so—”

  “What happened to Selma?” I knew if he apologized again I’d never be able to forgive him. There’s something terrible about hearing someone say they’re sorry when they truly understand just how bad they hurt you.

  He took a long, deep drink of his coffee and sighed. “I was so cold! Okay. Okay. So I drive, turning where Ms. Mego says, and we end up at Fred Meyer. She tells me to wait in the car. And she shops, and comes out with like three little bags of stuff, but she makes the bag boy push the cart for her. And I have to get out and open the trunk and put the bags in, and then open the door so she can get into the car butt first. And when I get back into the car, she rattles off an address. When I say, ‘What?’ she says, ‘Never mind, you imbecile. I will tell you the way.’ So I pull out of the parking lot, and she gives me directions, but she’s terrible at it. Anyway,” he said abruptly when he saw I was tired of his bullshit.

  “Anyway, we get to the place and it has a garage sale sign up. And stuff out on tables and spread on the lawn on sheets. And I have to get out and open the door for her and I follow her over to look at the stuff because, what the hell, I might find something good there, right?”

  He looked around. “Damn, I could use a smoke. You got a cigarette?”

  “I’ve never smoked. You know that. Get on with it, Farky.”

  He got up from the table and refilled his coffee and brought the pot over to top off mine. So swiftly did he settle back in, like a stray tomcat that only comes home when his ear is torn and one eye swollen shut. I waited.

  “She goes straight to the toys there, and paws through them like she’s going to find some treasure there. Barbies and a Playmobil and plastic dinosaurs, it’s all just junk at that one. But she picks up each toy and holds it close to her face, one after another. Then she shakes her head and I open the car door again, and drive on, to, like, six different garage sales. And my community service thing says I only have to help her for two hours a day, and it’s been like four. Then we get to a garage sale where a woman and man are still setting stuff up, and they say, ‘We’re not quite ready yet,’ but Ms. Mego acts like she doesn’t hear them. She starts digging through a box of dolls. She holds one doll for a long time, but then as the garage sale woman sets down a shoebox, Ms. Mego practically drops the doll and snatches up the shoebox instead. “How much?” she asks. And the woman says a dollar, and she pays her, and then Ms. Mego rushes back to the car, her cane going crack-crack-crack on the pavement. I have to hurry to get to the door before her and open it. She puts her purse on the seat and does her butt-first thing, really struggling because she’s holding the shoebox in both hands.”

  Too much coffee. I suddenly had to pee, badly. “I’ve got to use the john. I’ll be right back.” I thought about telling him not to touch anything, but he was already under my skin. I thought it at him, trying to find my anger and make it hot again. He looked down at the table, his hands around his mug.

  When I came back, he was smoking a cigarette at the table. My dad’s old glass ashtray was in the center of the table in front of him. I resented him touching Dad’s ashtray, but that wasn’t the worst. “Damn it, Farky! Where’d you get the cigarette?” I knew the answer; I feared the answer.

  “Junk drawer gave it to me,” he said softly. He hunched his head down between his shoulders, like a pup that expects to get hit with a newspaper. “And a lighter,” he added, and flashed it at me. Not a cheap plastic convenience store one; a silver Zippo.

  “Damn it!” I stepped to the drawer and put my hand on the handle. Dead. Completely discharged. Nothing humming at all. “Farky, I’ve been feeding that and charging it for, like, a month. And just when we might need it, you burn all the junk drawer magic for a stupid cigarette!”

  “I really needed a cigarette!” he whined. And more softly he added, “And it gave me a really good lighter. Like it remembers me.”

  “More like I’ve been feeding it for two months and not asking anything of it! And if we need it now, it’s…” I strangled on my anger. Farky. Just Farky. What the hell had I expected, letting him back in? I slammed myself back into my chair. “Selma,” I gritted at him.

  “Okay, okay, I’m trying.” He took a long drag on the cigarette and tapped ash. “So I told you. She took the shoebox to the car. I had to run to get ahead of her and open the door. But I’m thinking, good, she bought something, we can go home.

  “So I shut the door and get in and ‘All settled?’ but before the words were even out of my mouth she says, ‘Drive!’ So I say ‘Where?’ and she says, ‘Just drive, you fool.’ So I do.” Farky drank more coffe
e as his eyes roved around the kitchen. “Jeez, I’m hungry.” He looked at the cookie jar, but he should know by now it’s only dog treats. I got up and got us a couple of bananas. He peeled his right away, bit off about half of it, and then talked around it. Cigarette in one hand, banana in the other. I hated him, but I didn’t hate him so much as I knew him.

  “So I pulled out and drove. I got about a block before I heard the sound. I knew what it was, because I’d once had a dog that loved to chew plastic. There’s a wet, smacky sound that you don’t forget. I looked in the rearview mirror. The shoebox was full of those green plastic army men. And I saw her put one of the ‘crawl on his belly’ soldiers into her mouth and bite down. She used her side teeth to sever him in half and then she chewed with her mouth open, breathing in and out through her nose and mouth. It was noisy and I got a glimpse of green bits in her teeth. She chewed like someone eating stale taffy, working hard at it, but her eyes were half closed like a woman in ecstasy. I didn’t know what to think, so I just kept driving. She ate the whole box of them! And then she sat up and said, ‘Drive me home now.’ So I do, and I get out and open her door, and she swings her legs out first, and her skirt sort of pulls up, and I realize that for an old woman, she’s got great legs in those black stockings. She holds out her hand like she’s some kind of princess, and when I offer her my hands, she comes out of the car and stands up, and holy cow, she’s not old anymore. She’s not young either, but she’s, you know, one of those middle-aged ladies that it would be okay to get it on with. But her face is covered in cracking powder and she tells me, ‘Put the groceries in the kitchen.’ And then she goes into her house. And that’s it, I carry the groceries in, and I put them on the kitchen table, and it’s like she’s not even there. Cleanest kitchen I’ve ever been in. Like, nothing on top of the counters or table. Nothing. I think I should put her stuff in the fridge, but it’s not food. It’s paper towels and floor cleaner and like that. So I leave.”