Magic for Beginners: Stories (21 page)

She hung them up in their house for a while, but they weren’t
comfortable paintings. You couldn’t watch TV in the same room with
them. And Andrew had this habit, he’d sit on the sofa just under
one portrait, and there was another one too, above the TV. Three
Andrews was too many.

Once Ed brought Andrew to poker night. Andrew sat awhile and
didn’t say anything, and then he said he was going upstairs to get
more beer and he never came back. Three days later, the highway
patrol found Ed’s car parked under a bridge. Stan and Andrew came
home two days after that, and Andrew went back into rehab. Susan
used to go visit him and take Stan with her—she’d take her
sketchbook. Stan said Andrew would sit there and Susan would draw
him and nobody ever said a word.

After the class was over, while Andrew was still in rehab, Susan
invited all of us to go to this party at her teacher’s studio. What
we remember is that Pete got drunk and made a pass at the
instructor, this sharp-looking woman with big dangly earrings. We
were kind of surprised, not just because he did it in front of his
wife, but because we’d all just been looking at her paintings. All
these deer and birds and cows draped over dinner tables, and sofas,
guts hanging out, eyeballs all shiny and fixed—so that explained
Susan’s portraits, at least.

We wonder what Susan did with the paintings of Andrew.

“I’ve been thinking about getting a dog,” Ed says.

“Fuck,” we say. “A dog’s a big responsibility.” Which is what
we’ve spent years telling our kids.

The music on the tape loops and looped. It was going round for a
second time. We sat and listened to it. We’ll be sitting and
listening to it for a while longer.

“This guy,” Ed says, “the guy who was renting this place before
me, he was into some crazy thing. There’s all these mandalas and
pentagrams painted on the floors and walls. Which is also why I got
it so cheap. They didn’t want to bother stripping the walls and
repainting; this guy just took off one day, took a lot of the
furniture too. Loaded up his truck with as much as he could
take.”

“So no furniture?” Pete says. “Susan get the dining room table
and chairs? The bed? You sleeping in a sleeping bag? Eating beanie
weenies out of a can?”

“I got a futon,” Ed says. “And I’ve got my work table set up,
the TV and stuff. I’ve been going down to the orchard, grilling on
the hibachi. You guys should come over. I’m working on a new video
game—it’ll be a haunted house—those are really big right now.
That’s why this place is so great for me. I can use everything.
Next weekend? I’ll fix hamburgers and you guys can sit up in the
house, keep cool, drink beer, test the game for me. Find the
bugs.”

“There are always bugs,” Jeff says. He’s smiling in a mean way.
He isn’t so nice when he’s been drinking. “That’s life. So should
we bring the kids? The wives? Is this a family thing? Ellie’s been
asking about you. You know that retreat she’s on, she called from
the woods the other day. She went on and on about this past life.
Apparently she was a used-car salesman. She says that this life is
karmic payback, being married to me, right? She gets home day after
tomorrow. We get together, maybe Ellie can set you up with someone.
Now that you’re a free man, you need to take some advantage.”

“Sure,” Ed says, and shrugs. We can see him wishing that Jeff
would shut up, but Jeff doesn’t shut up.

Jeff says, “I saw Susan in the grocery store the other day. She
looked fantastic. It wasn’t that she wasn’t sad anymore, she wasn’t
just getting by, she was radiant, you know? That special glow. Like
Joan of Arc. Like she knew something. Like she’d won the
lottery.”

“Well, yeah,” Ed says. “That’s Susan. She doesn’t live in the
past. She’s got this new job, this research project. They’re trying
to contact aliens. They’re using household appliances: satellite
dishes, cell phones, car radios, even refrigerators. I’m not sure
how. I’m not sure what they’re planning to say. But they’ve got a
lot of grant money. Even hired a speechwriter.”

“Wonder what you say to aliens,” Brenner says. “Hi, honey, I’m
home. What’s for dinner?”

“Your place or mine?” Pete says. “What’s a nice alien like you
doing in a galaxy like this?”

“Where you been? I’ve been worried sick,” Alibi says.

Jeff picks up a card, props it sideways against the green felt.
Picks up another one, leans it against the first. He says, “You and
Susan always looked so good together. Perfect marriage, perfect
life. Now look at you: she’s talking to aliens, and you’re living
in a haunted house. You’re an example to all of us, Ed. Nice guy
like you, bad things happen to you, Susan leaves a swell guy like
you, what’s the lesson here? I’ve been thinking about this all
year. You and Ellie must have worked at the same car dealership, in
that past life.”

Nobody says anything. Ed doesn’t say anything, but the way we
see him look at Jeff, we know that this haunted house game is going
to have a character in it who walks and talks a lot like Jeff. This
Jeff character is going to panic and run around on the screen of
people’s TVs and get lost.

It will stumble into booby traps and fall onto knives. Its
innards will sloop out. Zombies are going to crack open the bones
of its legs and suck on the marrow. Little devils with monkey faces
are going to stitch its eyes open with tiny stitches and then they
are going to piss ribbons of acid into its eyes.

Beautiful women are going to fuck this cartoon Jeff in the ass
with garden shears. And when this character screams, it’s going to
sound a lot like Jeff screaming. Ed’s good at the little details.
The kids who buy Ed’s games love the details. They buy his games
for things like this.

Jeff will probably be flattered.

Jeff starts complaining about Stan’s phone bill, this
four-hundred-dollar cell phone charge that Stan ran up. When he
asked about it, Stan handed him a stack of twenties just like that.
That kid always has money to spare.

Stan also gave Jeff this phone number. He told Jeff that it’s
like this phone sex line, but with a twist. You call up and ask for
this girl named Starlight, and she tells you sexy stories, only, if
you want, they don’t have to be sexy. They can be any kind of story
you want. You tell her what kind of story you want, and she makes
it up. Stan says it’s Stephen King and sci-fi and the
Arabian
Nights
and
Penthouse Letters
all at once.

Ed interrupts Jeff. “You got the number?”

“What?” Jeff says.

“I just got paid for the last game,” Ed says. “The one with the
baby heads and the octopus girlies, the Martian combat hockey.
Let’s call that number. I’ll pay. You put her on speaker and we’ll
all listen, and it’s my treat, okay, because I’m such a swell
guy.”

Bones says that it sounds like a shit idea to him, which is
probably why Jeff went and got the phone bill and another six-pack
of beer. We all take another beer.

Jeff turns the stereo down—

Madam I’m Adam

Oh Madam my Adam

—and puts the phone in the middle of the table. It sits there,
in the middle of all that green, like an island or something.
Marooned. Jeff switches it on speaker. “Four bucks a minute,” he
says, and shrugs, and dials the number.

“Here,” Ed says. “Pass it over.”

The phone rings and we listen to it ring and then a woman’s
voice, very pleasant, says hello and asks if Ed is over eighteen.
He says he is. He gives her his credit card number. She asks if he
was calling for anyone in particular.

“Starlight,” Ed says.

“One moment,” the woman says. We hear a click and then Starlight
is on the line. We know this because she says so. She says, “Hi, my
name is Starlight. I’m going to tell you a sexy story. Do you want
to know what I’m wearing?”

Ed grunts. He shrugs. He grimaces at us. He needs a haircut.
Susan used to cut his hair, which we used to think was cute. He and
Andrew had these identical lopsided haircuts. It was pretty
goofy.

“Can I call you Susan?” Ed says.

Which we think is strange.

Starlight says, “If you really want to, but my name’s really
Starlight. Don’t you think that’s sexy?”

She sounds like a kid. A little girl—not even like a girl. Like
a kid. She doesn’t sound like Susan at all. Since the divorce, we
haven’t seen much of Susan, although she calls our houses
sometimes, to talk to our wives. We’re a little worried about what
she’s been saying to them.

Ed says, “I guess so.” We can tell he’s only saying that to be
polite, but Starlight laughs as if he’s told her a joke. It’s weird
hearing that little-kid laugh down here.

Ed says, “So are you going to tell me a story?”

Starlight says, “That’s what I’m here for. But usually the guy
wants to know what I’m wearing.”

Ed says, “I want to hear a story about a cheerleader and the
Devil.”

Bones says, “So what’s she wearing?”

Pete says, “Make it a story that goes backwards.”

Jeff says, “Put something scary in it.”

Alibi says, “Sexy.”

Brenner says, “I want it to be about good and evil and true
love, and it should also be funny. No talking animals. Not too much
fooling around with the narrative structure. The ending should be
happy but still realistic, believable, you know, and there
shouldn’t be a moral although we should be able to think back later
and have some sort of revelation. No
and suddenly they woke up
and discovered that it was all a dream.
Got that?”

Starlight says, “Okay. The Devil and a cheerleader. Got it.
Okay.”

The Devil and the Cheerleader

So the Devil is at a party at the cheerleader’s house. They’ve
been playing spin the bottle. The cheerleader’s boyfriend just came
out of the closet with her best friend. Earlier the cheerleader
felt like slapping him, and now she knows why. The bottle pointed
at her best friend who had just shrugged and smiled at her. Then
the bottle was spinning and when the bottle stopped spinning, it
was in her boyfriend’s hand.

Then all of a sudden an egg timer was going off. Everyone was
giggling and they were all standing up to go over by the closet,
like they were all going to try to squeeze inside. But the Devil
stood up and took the cheerleader’s hand and pulled her
backwards-forwards.

So she knew what exactly had happened, and was going to happen,
and some other things besides.

This is the thing she likes about backwards. You start out with
all the answers, and after a while, someone comes along and gives
you the questions, but you don’t have to answer them. You’re
already past that part. That was what was so nice about being
married. Things got better and better until you hardly even knew
each other anymore. And then you said good night and went out on a
date, and after that you were just friends. It was easier that
way—that’s the dear, sweet, backwards way of the world.

Just a second, let’s go back for a second.

Something happened. Something has happened. But nobody ever
talked about it, at least not at these parties. Not anymore.

Everyone’s been drinking all night long, except the Devil, who’s
a teetotaler. He’s been pretending to drink vodka out of a hip
flask. Everybody at the party is drunk right now and they think
he’s okay. Later they’ll sober up. They’ll think he’s pretentious,
an asshole, drinking air out of a flask like that.

There are a lot of empty bottles of beer, some empty bottles of
whiskey. There’s a lot of work still to be done, by the look of it.
They’re using one of the beer bottles, that’s what they’re
spinning. Later on it will be full and they won’t have to play this
stupid game.

The cheerleader guesses that she didn’t invite the Devil to the
party. He isn’t the kind of guy that you have to invite. He’ll
probably show up by himself. But now they’re in the closet together
for five minutes. The cheerleader’s boyfriend isn’t too happy about
this, but what can he do? It’s that kind of party. She’s that kind
of cheerleader.

They’re a lot younger than they used to be. At parties like
this, they used to be older, especially the Devil. He remembers all
the way back to the end of the world. The cheerleader wasn’t a
cheerleader then. She was married and had kids and a husband.

Something’s going to happen, or maybe it’s already happened.
Nobody ever talks about it. If they could, what would they say?

But those end-of-the-world parties were crazy. People would
drink too much and they wouldn’t have any clothes on. There’d be
these sad little piles of clothes in the living room, as if
something had happened, and the people had disappeared, disappeared
right out of their clothes. Meanwhile, the people who belonged to
the clothes would be out in the backyard, waiting until it was time
to go home. They’d get up on the trampoline and bounce around and
cry.

There would be a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil and sooner or
later someone was going to have to refill it and go put it back on
the pantry shelf. You’d have had these slippery naked middle-aged
people sliding around on the trampoline and the oily grass, and
then in the end all you’d have would be a bottle of olive oil, some
olives on a tree, a tree, an orchard, an empty field.

The Devil would stand around feeling awkward, hoping that it
would turn out he’d come late.

The kids would be up in their bedrooms, out of the beds, looking
out the windows, remembering when they used to be older. Not that
they ever got that much older.

But the world is younger now. Things are simpler. Now the
cheerleader has parents of her own, and all she has to do is wait
for them to get home, and then this party can be over.

Two days ago was the funeral. It was just how everyone said it
would be.