Magic for Beginners: Stories

Eric was night, and batu was day. The girl, Charley, was the
moon. Every night, she drove past the All-Night in her long, noisy,
green Chevy, a dog hanging out the passenger window. It wasn’t ever
the same dog, although they all had the same blissful expression.
They were doomed, but they didn’t know it.

B?z buradan çok hosland?k.

We like it here very much.

The All-Night Convenience was a fully stocked, self-sufficient
organism, like the
Starship Enterprise,
or the
Kon-Tiki.
Batu went on and on about this. They didn’t work
retail anymore. They were on a voyage of discovery, one in which
they had no need to leave the All-Night, not even to do laundry.
Batu washed his pajamas and the extra uniforms in the sink in the
back. He even washed Eric’s clothes. That was the kind of friend
Batu was.

Burada tatil için mi bulunuyorsunuz?

Are you here on holiday?

All during his shift, Eric listened for Charley’s car. First she
went by on her way to the shelter and then, during her shift, she
took the dogs out driving, past the store first in one direction
and then back again, two or three times in one night, the lights of
her headlights picking out the long, black gap of the Ausible
Chasm, a bright slap across the windows of the All-Night. Eric’s
heart lifted whenever a car went past.

The zombies came in, and he was polite to them, and failed to
understand what they wanted, and sometimes real people came in and
bought candy or cigarettes or beer. The zombies were never around
when the real people were around, and Charley never showed up when
the zombies were there.

Charley looked like someone from a Greek play, Electra, or
Cassandra. She looked like someone had just set her favorite city
on fire. Eric had thought that, even before he knew about the
dogs.

Sometimes, when she didn’t have a dog in the Chevy, Charley came
into the All-Night Convenience to buy a Mountain Dew, and then she
and Batu would go outside to sit on the curb. Batu was teaching her
Turkish. Sometimes Eric went outside as well, to smoke a cigarette.
He didn’t really smoke, but it meant he got to look at Charley, the
way the moonlight sat on her like a hand. Sometimes she looked
back. Wind would rise up, out of the Ausible Chasm, across Ausible
Chasm Road, into the parking lot of the All-Night, tugging at
Batu’s pajama bottoms, pulling away the cigarette smoke that hung
out of Eric’s mouth. Charley’s bangs would float up off her
forehead, until she clamped them down with her fingers.

Batu said he was not flirting. He didn’t have a thing for
Charley. He was interested in her because Eric was interested. Batu
wanted to know what Charley’s story was: he said he needed to know
if she was good enough for Eric, for the All-Night Convenience.
There was a lot at stake.

What Eric wanted to know was, why did Batu have so many pajamas?
But Eric didn’t want to seem nosy. There wasn’t a lot of space in
the All-Night. If Batu wanted Eric to know about the pajamas, then
one day he’d tell him. It was as simple as that.

Erkek arkadas?n?z varm??

Do you have a boyfriend?

Recently Batu had evolved past the need for more than two or
three hours’ sleep, which was good in some ways and bad in others.
Eric had a suspicion he might figure out how to talk to Charley if
Batu were tucked away, back in the storage closet, dreaming his own
sweet dreams, and not scheming schemes, doing all the flirting on
Eric’s behalf, so that Eric never had to say a thing.

Eric had even rehearsed the start of a conversation. Charley
would say, “Where’s Batu?” and Eric would say, “Asleep.” Or even,
“Sleeping in the closet.”

Charley’s story: she worked night shifts at the animal shelter.
Every night, when Charley got to work, she checked the list to see
which dogs were on the schedule. She took the dogs—any that weren’t
too ill, or too mean—out for one last drive around town. Then she
drove them back and she put them to sleep. She did this with an
injection. She sat on the floor and petted them until they weren’t
breathing anymore.

When she was telling Batu this, Batu sitting far too close to
her, Eric not close enough, Eric had this thought, which was what
it would be like to lie down and put his head on Charley’s leg. But
the longest conversation that he’d ever managed with Charley was
with Charley on one side of the counter, him on the other, when
he’d explained that they weren’t taking money anymore, at least not
unless people wanted to give them money.

“I want a Mountain Dew,” Charley had said, making sure Eric
understood that part.

“I know,” Eric said. He tried to show with his eyes how much he
knew, and how much he didn’t know, but wanted to know.

“But you don’t want me to pay you for it.”

“I’m supposed to give you what you want,” Eric said, “and then
you give me what you want to give me. It doesn’t have to be about
money. It doesn’t even have to be something, you know, tangible.
Sometimes people tell Batu their dreams if they don’t have anything
interesting in their wallets.”

“All I want is a Mountain Dew,” Charley said. But she must have
seen the panic on Eric’s face, and she dug in her pocket. Instead
of change, she pulled out a set of dog tags and plunked it down on
the counter.

“This dog is no longer alive,” she said. “It wasn’t a very big
dog, and I think it was part Chihuahua and part collie, and how
pitiful is that. You should have seen it. Its owner brought it in
because it would jump up on her bed in the morning, lick her face,
and get so excited that it would pee. I don’t know, maybe she
thought someone else would want to adopt an ugly little bedwetting
dog, but nobody did, and so now it’s not alive anymore. I killed
it.”

“I’m sorry,” Eric said. Charley leaned her elbows against the
counter. She was so close, he could smell her smell: chemical,
burnt, doggy. There were dog hairs on her clothes.

“I killed it,” Charley said. She sounded angry at him. “Not
you.”

When Eric looked at her, he saw that that city was still on
fire. It was still burning down, and Charley was watching it burn.
She was still holding the dog tags. She let go and they lay there
on the counter until Eric picked them up and put them in the
register.

“This is all Batu’s idea,” Charley said. “Right?” She went
outside and sat on the curb, and in a while Batu came out of the
storage closet and went outside as well. Batu’s pajama bottoms were
silk. There were smiling hydrocephalic cartoon cats on them, and
the cats carried children in their mouths. Either the children were
mouse-sized, or the cats were bear-sized. The children were either
screaming or laughing. Batu’s pajama top was red flannel, faded,
with guillotines, and heads in baskets.

Eric stayed inside. He leaned his face against the window every
once in a while, as if he could hear what they were saying. But
even if he could have heard them, he guessed he wouldn’t have
understood. The shapes their mouths made were shaped like Turkish
words. Eric hoped they were talking about retail.

Kar yagacak.

It’s going to snow.

The way the All-Night worked at the moment was Batu’s idea. They
sized up the customers before they got to the counter—that had
always been part of retail. If the customer was the right sort,
then Batu or Eric gave the customer what they said they needed, and
the customer paid with money sometimes, and sometimes with other
things: pot, books on tape, souvenir maple syrup tins. They were
near the border. They got a lot of Canadians. Eric suspected
someone, maybe a traveling Canadian pajama salesman, was supplying
Batu with novelty pajamas.

Siz de mi bekliyorsunuz?

Are you waiting too?

What Batu thought Eric should say to Charley, if he really liked
her: “Come live with me. Come live at the All-Night.”

What Eric thought about saying to Charley: “If you’re going
away, take me with you. I’m about to be twenty years old, and I’ve
never been to college. I sleep days in a storage closet, wearing
someone else’s pajamas. I’ve worked retail jobs since I was
sixteen. I know people are hateful. If you need to bite someone,
you can bite me.”

Baska bir yere gidelim mi?

Shall we go somewhere else?

Charley drives by. There is a little black dog in the passenger
window, leaning out to swallow the fast air. There is a yellow dog.
An Irish setter. A Doberman. Akitas. Charley has rolled the window
so far down that these dogs could jump out, if they wanted, when
she stops the car at a light. But the dogs don’t jump. So Charley
drives them back again.

Batu said it was clear Charley had a great capacity for hating,
and also a great capacity for love. Charley’s hatred was seasonal:
in the months after Christmas, Christmas puppies started growing
up. People got tired of trying to house-train them. All February,
all March, Charley hated people. She hated people in December too,
just for practice.

Being in love, Batu said, like working retail, meant that you
had to settle for being hated, at least part of the year. That was
what the months after Christmas were all about. Neither system—not
love, not retail—was perfect. When you looked at dogs, you saw
this, that love didn’t work.

Batu said it was likely that Charley, both her person and her
Chevy, were infested with dog ghosts. These ghosts were different
from the zombies. Nonhuman ghosts, he said, were the most difficult
of all ghosts to dislodge, and dogs were worst of all. There is
nothing as persistent, as loyal, as
clingy
as a dog.

“So can you see these ghosts?” Eric said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Batu said. “You can’t see that kind of
ghost. You smell them.”

Civarda turistik yerler var m?, acaba?

Are there any tourist attractions around here, I wonder?

Eric woke up and found it was dark. It was always dark when he
woke up, and this was always a surprise. There was a little window
on the back wall of the storage closet, which framed the dark like
a picture. You could feel the cold night air propping up the walls
of the All-Night, thick and wet as glue.

Batu had let him sleep in. Batu was considerate of other
people’s sleep.

All day long, in Eric’s dreams, store managers had arrived, one
after another, announced themselves, expressed dismay at the way
Batu had reinvented—
compromised
—convenience retail. In
Eric’s dream, Batu had put his large, handsome arm over the
shoulder of the store managers, promised to explain everything in a
satisfactory manner, if they would only come and see. The store
managers had all gone, in a docile, trusting way, trotting after
Batu, across the road, looking both ways, to the edge of the
Ausible Chasm. They stood there, in Eric’s dream, peering down into
the Chasm, and then Batu had given them a little push, a small
push, and that was the end of that store manager, and Batu walked
back across the road to wait for the next store manager.

Eric bathed standing up at the sink and put on his uniform. He
brushed his teeth. The closet smelled like sleep.

It was the middle of February, and there was snow in the
All-Night parking lot. Batu was clearing the parking lot, carrying
shovelfuls of snow across the road, dumping the snow into the
Ausible Chasm. Eric went outside for a smoke and watched. He didn’t
offer to help. He was still upset about the way Batu had behaved in
his dream.

There was no moon, but the snow was lit by its own whiteness.
There was the shadowy figure of Batu, carrying in front of him the
shadowy scoop of the shovel, full of snow, like an enormous spoon
full of falling light, which was still falling all around them. The
snow came down, and Eric’s smoke went up and up.

He walked across the road to where Batu stood, peering down into
the Ausible Chasm. Down in the Chasm, it was no darker than the
kind of dark the rest of the world, including Eric, especially
Eric, was used to. Snow fell into the Chasm, the way snow fell on
the rest of the world. And yet there was a wind coming out of the
Chasm that worried Eric.

“What do you think is down there?” Batu said.

“Zombie Land,” Eric said. He could almost taste it. “Zomburbia.
They have everything down there. There’s even supposed to be a
drive-in movie theater down there, somewhere, that shows old
black-and-white horror movies, all night long. Zombie churches with
AA meetings for zombies, down in the basements, every Thursday
night.”

“Yeah?” Batu said. “Zombie bars too? Where they serve zombies
Zombies?”

Eric said, “My friend Dave went down once, when we were in high
school, on a dare. He used to tell us all kinds of stories.”

“You ever go?” Batu said, pointing with his empty shovel at the
narrow, crumbly path that went down into the Chasm.

“I never went to college. I’ve never even been to Canada,” Eric
said. “Not even when I was in high school, to buy beer.”

All night the zombies came out of the Chasm, holding handfuls of
snow. They carried the snow across the road, and into the parking
lot, and left it there. Batu was back in the closet, sending off
faxes, and Eric was glad about this, that Batu couldn’t see what
the zombies were up to.

Zombies came into the store, tracking in salt and melting snow.
Eric hated mopping up after the zombies.

He sat on the counter, facing the road, hoping Charley would
drive by soon. Two weeks ago, Charley had bitten a man who’d
brought his dog to the animal shelter to be put down.

The man was bringing his dog because it had bit him, he said,
but Charley said you knew when you saw this guy, and when you saw
the dog, that the dog had had a very good reason.