Magic for Beginners: Stories (3 page)

The zombie customers made Eric feel guilty. He hadn’t been
trying hard enough. The zombies were never rude, or impatient, or
tried to shoplift things. He hoped that they found what they were
looking for. After all, he would be dead someday too, and on the
other side of the counter.

Maybe his friend Dave had been telling the truth and there was a
country down there that you could visit, just like Canada. Maybe
when the zombies got all the way to the bottom, they got into zippy
zombie cars and drove off to their zombie jobs, or back home again,
to their sexy zombie wives, or maybe they went off to the zombie
bank to make their deposits of stones, leaves, linty, birdsnesty
tangles, all the other debris real people didn’t know the value
of.

It wasn’t just the zombies. Weird stuff happened in the middle
of the day too. When there were still managers and other employers,
once, on Batu’s shift, a guy had come in wearing a trench coat and
a hat. Outside, it must have been ninety degrees, and Batu admitted
he had felt a little spooked about the trench coat thing, but there
was another customer, a jogger, poking at the bottled waters to see
which were coldest. Trench-coat guy walked around the store,
putting candy bars and safety razors in his pockets, like he was
getting ready for Halloween. Batu had thought about punching the
alarm. “Sir?” he said. “Excuse me, sir?”

The man walked up and stood in front of the counter. Batu
couldn’t take his eyes off the trench coat. It was like the guy was
wearing an electric fan strapped to his chest, under the trench
coat, and the fan was blowing things around underneath. You could
hear the fan buzzing. It made sense, Batu had thought: this guy had
his own air-conditioning unit under there. Pretty neat, although
you still wouldn’t want to go trick-or-treating at this guy’s
house.

“Hot enough for you?” the man said, and Batu saw that this guy
was sweating. He twitched, and a bee flew out of the gray trench
coat sleeve. Batu and the man both watched it fly away. Then the
man opened his trench coat, flapped his arms, gently, gently, and
the bees inside his trench coat began to leave the man in long,
clotted, furious trails, until the whole store was vibrating with
clouds of bees. Batu ducked under the counter. Trench-coat man, bee
guy, reached over the counter, dinged the register in a calm and
experienced way so that the drawer popped open, and scooped all the
bills out of the till.

Then he walked back out again and left all his bees. He got in
his car and drove away. That’s the way that all All-Night stories
end, with someone driving away.

But they had to get a beekeeper to come in, to smoke the bees
out. Batu got stung three times, once on the lip, once on his
stomach, and once when he put his hand into the register and found
no money, only a bee. The jogger sued the All-Night parent company
for a lot of money, and Batu and Eric didn’t know what had happened
with that.

Karanl?k ne zaman basar?

When does it get dark?

Eric has been having this dream recently. In the dream, he’s up
behind the counter in the All-Night, and then his father is walking
down the aisle of the All-Night, past the racks of magazines and
towards the counter, his father’s hands full of stones from the
Ausible Chasm. Which is ridiculous: his father is alive, and not
only that, but living in another state, maybe in a different time
zone, probably under a different name.

When he told Batu about it, Batu said, “Oh, that dream. I’ve had
it too.”

“About your father?” Eric said.

“About your father,” Batu said. “Who do you think I meant,
my
father?”

“You haven’t ever met my father,” Eric said.

“I’m sorry if it upsets you, but it was definitely your father,”
Batu said. “You look just like him. If I dream about him again,
what do you want me to do? Ignore him? Pretend he isn’t there?”

Eric never knew when Batu was pulling his leg. Dreams could be a
touchy subject. Eric thought maybe Batu was nostalgic about
sleeping, maybe Batu collected pajamas in the way that people
nostalgic about their childhoods collected toys.

Another dream, one that Eric hasn’t told Batu about. In this
dream, Charley comes in. She wants to buy a Mountain Dew, but then
Eric realizes that all the Mountain Dews have little drowned dogs
floating in them. You can win a prize if you drink one of the dog
sodas. When Charley gets up to the counter with an armful of doggy
Mountain Dews, Eric realizes that he’s got one of Batu’s pajama
tops on, one of the inside-out ones. Things are rubbing against his
arms, his back, his stomach, transferring themselves like tattoos
to his skin.

And he hasn’t got any pants on.

Bat?k gemilerle ilgileniyorum.

I’m interested in sunken ships.

“You need to make your move,” Batu said. He said it over and
over, day after day, until Eric was sick of hearing it. “Any day
now, the shelter is going to find someone to replace her, and
Charley will split. Tell you what you should do, you tell her you
want to adopt a dog. Give it a home. We’ve got room here. Dogs are
good practice for when you and Charley are parents.”

“How do you know?” Eric said. He knew he sounded exasperated. He
couldn’t help it. “That makes no sense at all. If dogs are good
practice, then what kind of mother is Charley going to be? What are
you saying? So say Charley has a kid, you’re saying she’s going to
put it down if it cries at night or wets the bed?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” Batu said. “The only thing
I’m worried about, Eric, really, is whether or not Charley may be
too old. It takes longer to have kids when you’re her age. Things
can go wrong.”

“What are you talking about?” Eric said. “Charley’s not
old.”

“How old do you think she is?” Batu said. “So what do you think?
Should the toothpaste and the condiments go next to the Elmer’s
glue and the hair gel and lubricants? Make a shelf of sticky
things? Or should I put it with the chewing tobacco and the
mouthwash, and make a little display of things that you spit?”

“Sure,” Eric said. “Make a little display. I don’t know how old
Charley is, maybe she’s my age? Nineteen? A little older?”

Batu laughed. “A little older? So how old do you think I
am?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. He squinted at Batu. “Thirty-five?
Forty?”

Batu looked pleased. “You know, since I started sleeping less, I
think I’ve stopped getting older. I may be getting younger. You
keep on getting a good night’s sleep, and we’re going to be the
same age pretty soon. Come take a look at this and tell me what you
think.”

“Not bad,” Eric said. “We could put watermelons with this stuff
too, if we had watermelons. The kind with seeds. What’s the point
of seedless watermelons?”

“It’s not such a big deal,” Batu said. He knelt down in the
aisle, marking off inventory on his clipboard. “No big thing if
Charley’s older than you think. Nothing wrong with older women. And
it’s good you’re not bothered about the ghost dogs or the biting
thing. Everyone’s got problems. The only real concern I have is
about her car.”

“What about her car?” Eric said.

“Well,” Batu said. “It isn’t a problem if she’s going to live
here. She can park it here for as long as she wants. That’s what
the parking lot is for. But whatever you do: if she invites you to
go for a ride, don’t go for a ride.”

“Why not?” Eric said. “What are you talking about?”

“Think about it,” Batu said. “All those dog ghosts.” He scooted
down the aisle on his butt. Eric followed. “Every time she drives
by here with some poor dog, that dog is doomed. That car is bad
luck. The passenger side especially. You want to stay out of that
car. I’d rather climb down into the Ausible Chasm.”

Something cleared its throat; a zombie had come into the store.
It stood behind Batu, looking down at him. Batu looked up. Eric
retreated down the aisle, towards the counter.

“Stay out of her car,” Batu said, ignoring the zombie.

“And who will be fired out of the cannon?” the zombie said. It
was wearing a suit and tie. “My brother will be fired out of the
cannon.”

“Why can’t you talk like sensible people?” Batu said, turning
around and looking up. Sitting on the floor, he sounded as if he
were about to cry. He swatted at the zombie.

The zombie coughed again, yawning. It grimaced at them.
Something was snagged on its gray lips now, and the zombie put up
its hand. It tugged, dragging at the thing in its mouth, coughing
out a black, glistening, wadded rope. The zombie’s mouth stayed
open, as if to show that there was nothing else in there, even as
it held the wet black rope out to Batu. The wet thing hung down
from its hands and became pajamas. Batu looked back at Eric. “I
don’t want them,” he said. He looked shy.

“What should I do?” Eric said. He hovered by the magazines.
Charlize Theron was grinning at him, as if she knew something he
didn’t.

“You shouldn’t be here.” It wasn’t clear to Eric whether Batu
was speaking to the zombie. “I have all the pajamas I need.”

The zombie said nothing. It dropped the pajamas into Batu’s
lap.

“Stay out of Charley’s car!” Batu said to Eric. He closed his
eyes and began to snore.

“Shit,” Eric said to the zombie. “How did you do that?”

There was another zombie in the store now. The first zombie took
Batu’s arms and the second zombie took Batu’s feet. They dragged
him down the aisle and toward the storage closet. Eric came out
from behind the counter.

“What are you doing?” he said. “You’re not going to eat him, are
you?”

But the zombies had Batu in the closet. They put the black
pajamas on him, yanking them over the other pair of pajamas. They
lifted Batu up onto the mattress, and pulled the blanket over him,
up to his chin.

Eric followed the zombies out of the storage closet. He shut the
door behind him. “So I guess he’s going to sleep for a while,” he
said. “That’s a good thing, right? He needed to get some sleep. So
how did you do that with the pajamas? Is there some kind of freaky
pajama factory down there?”

The zombies ignored Eric. They held hands and went down the
aisles, stopping to consider candy bars and Tampax and toilet paper
and all the things that you spit. They wouldn’t buy anything. They
never did.

Eric went back to the counter. He wished, very badly, that his
mother still lived in their apartment. He would have liked to call
someone. He sat behind the register for a while, looking through
the phone book, just in case he came across someone’s name and it
seemed like a good idea to call them. Then he went back to the
storage closet and looked at Batu. Batu was snoring. His eyelids
twitched, and there was a tiny, knowing smile on his face, as if he
were dreaming, and everything was being explained to him, at last,
in this dream. It was hard to feel worried about someone who looked
like that. Eric would have been jealous, except he knew that no one
ever managed to hold on to those explanations, once you woke up.
Not even Batu.

Hangi yol daha k?sa?

Which is the shorter route?

Hangi yol daha kolay?

Which is the easier route?

Charley came by at the beginning of her shift. She didn’t come
inside the All-Night. Instead she stood out in the parking lot,
beside her car, looking out across the road, at the Ausible Chasm.
The car hung low to the ground, as if the trunk were full of
things. When Eric went outside, he saw that there was a suitcase in
the backseat. If there were ghost dogs, Eric couldn’t see them, but
there were doggy smudges on the windows.

“Where’s Batu?” Charley said.

“Asleep,” Eric said. He realized that he’d never figured out how
the conversation would go, after that.

He said, “Are you going someplace?”

“I’m going to work,” Charley said. “Like normal.”

“Good,” Eric said. “Normal is good.” He stood and looked at his
feet. A zombie wandered into the parking lot. It nodded at them,
and went into the All-Night.

“Aren’t you going to go back inside?” Charley said.

“In a bit,” Eric said. “It’s not like they ever buy anything.”
But he kept an eye on the All-Night, and the zombie, in case it
headed towards the storage closet.

“So how old are you?” Eric said. “I mean, can I ask you that?
How old you are?”

“How old are you?” Charley said right back.

“I’m almost twenty,” Eric said. “I know I look older.”

“No you don’t,” Charley said. “You look exactly like you’re
almost twenty.”

“So how old are you?” Eric said again.

“How old do you think I am?” Charley said.

“About my age?” Eric said.

“Are you flirting with me?” Charley said. “Yes? No? How about in
dog years? How old would you say I am in dog years?”

The zombie finished looking for whatever it was looking for
inside the All-Night. It came outside and nodded to Charley and
Eric. “Beautiful people,” it said. “Why won’t you ever visit my
hand?”

“I’m sorry,” Eric said.

The zombie turned its back on them. It tottered across the road,
looking neither to the left, nor to the right, and went down the
footpath into the Ausible Chasm.

“Have you?” Charley said. She pointed at the path.

“No,” Eric said. “I mean, someday I will, I guess.”

“Do you think they have pets down there? Dogs?” Charley
said.

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “Regular dogs?”

“The thing I think about sometimes,” Charley said, “is whether
or not they have animal shelters, and if someone has to look after
the dogs. If someone has to have a job where they put down dogs
down there. And if you do put dogs to sleep, down there, then where
do they wake up?”