Magic for Beginners: Stories (4 page)

“Batu says that if you need another job, you can come live with
us at the All-Night,” Eric said. His lips felt so cold that it was
hard to talk.

“Is
that
what Batu says?” Charley said. She started to
laugh.

“Batu likes you,” Eric said.

“I like him too,” Charley said. “But I don’t want to live in a
convenience store. No offense. I’m sure it’s nice.”

“It’s okay,” Eric said. “I don’t want to work retail my whole
life.”

“There are worse jobs,” Charley said. She leaned against her
Chevy. “Maybe I’ll stop by later tonight. We could always go for a
long ride, go somewhere else, and talk about retail.”

“Like where? Where are you going?” Eric said. “Are you thinking
about going to Turkey? Is that why Batu is teaching you Turkish?”
He wanted to stand there and ask Charley questions all night
long.

“I want to learn Turkish so that when I go somewhere else I can
pretend to be Turkish. I can pretend I
only
speak Turkish.
That way no one will bother me,” Charley said.

“Oh,” Eric said. “Good plan. We could always go somewhere and
not talk, if you want to practice. Or I could talk to you, and you
could pretend you don’t understand what I’m saying. We don’t have
to go for a ride. We could just go across the road, go down into
the Chasm. I’ve never been down there.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Charley said. “We can do it some other
time.” Suddenly she looked much older.

“No, wait,” Eric said. “I do want to come with you. We can go
for a ride. It’s just that Batu’s asleep. Someone has to look after
him. Someone has to be awake to sell stuff.”

“So are you going to work there your whole life?” Charley said.
“Take care of Batu? Figure out how to rip off dead people?”

“What do you mean?” Eric said.

“Batu says the All-Night is thinking about opening up another
store, down there,” Charley said, waving across the road. “You and
he are this big experiment in retail, according to him. Once the
All-Night figures out what dead people want to buy, it’s going to
be like the discovery of America all over again.”

“It’s not like that,” Eric said. He could feel his voice going
up at the end, as if it were a question. He could almost smell what
Batu meant about Charley’s car. The ghosts, those dogs, were
getting impatient. You could tell that. They were tired of the
parking lot, they wanted to be going for a ride. “You don’t
understand. I don’t think you understand?”

“Batu said that you have a real way with dead people,” Charley
said. “Most retail clerks flip out. Of course, you’re from around
here. Plus you’re young. You probably don’t even understand about
death yet. You’re just like my dogs.”

“I don’t know what they want,” Eric said. “The zombies.”

“Nobody ever really knows what they want,” Charley said. “Why
should that change after you die?”

“Good point,” Eric said.

“You shouldn’t let Batu mess you around so much,” Charley said.
“I shouldn’t be saying all this, I know. Batu and I are friends.
But we could be friends too, you and me. You’re sweet. It’s okay
that you don’t talk much, although this is okay too, us talking.
Why don’t you come for a drive with me?” If there had been dogs
inside her car, or the ghosts of dogs, then Eric would have heard
them howling. Eric heard them howling. The dogs were telling him to
get lost. They were telling him to fuck off. Charley belonged to
them. She was
their
murderer.

“I can’t,” Eric said, longing for Charley to ask again. “Not
right now.”

“Well, that’s okay. I’ll stop by later,” Charley said. She
smiled at him and for a moment he was standing in that city where
no one ever figured out how to put out that fire, and all the dead
dogs howled again, and scratched at the smeary windows. “For a
Mountain Dew. So you can think about it for a while.”

She reached out and took Eric’s hand in her hand. “Your hands
are cold,” she said. Her hands were hot. “You should go back
inside.”

Rengi begenmiyorum.

I don’t like the color.

It was already 4 a.m. and there still wasn’t any sign of Charley
when Batu came out of the back room. He was rubbing his eyes. The
black pajamas were gone. Now Batu was wearing pajama bottoms with
foxes running across a field towards a tree with a circle of foxes
sitting on their haunches around it. The outstretched tails of the
running foxes were fat as zeppelins, with commas of flame hovering
over them. Each little flame had a Hindenburg inside it, with a
second littler flame above it, and so on. Some fires you just can’t
put out.

The pajama top was a color that Eric could not name. Dreary,
creeping shapes lay upon it. Eric had read Lovecraft. He felt
queasy when he looked at the pajama top.

“I just had the best dream,” Batu said.

“You’ve been asleep for almost six hours,” Eric said. When
Charley came, he would go with her. He would stay with Batu. Batu
needed him. He would go with Charley. He would go and come back. He
wouldn’t ever come back. He would send Batu postcards with bears on
them. “So what was all that about? With the zombies.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Batu said. He took an
apple from the fruit display and polished it on his non-Euclidean
pajama top. The apple took on a horrid, whispery sheen. “Has
Charley come by?”

“Yeah,” Eric said. He and Charley would go to Las Vegas. They
would buy Batu gold lamé pajamas. “I think you’re right. I think
she’s about to leave town.”

“Well, she can’t!” Batu said. “That’s not the plan. Here, I tell
you what we’ll do. You go outside and wait for her. Make sure she
doesn’t get away.”

“She’s not wanted by the police, Batu,” Eric said. “She doesn’t
belong to us. She can leave town if she wants to.”

“And you’re okay with that?” Batu said. He yawned ferociously,
and yawned again, and stretched, so that the pajama top heaved up
in an eldritch manner. Eric closed his eyes.

“Not really,” Eric said. He had already picked out a toothbrush,
some toothpaste, and some novelty teeth, left over from Halloween,
which he could give to Charley, maybe. “Are you okay? Are you going
to fall asleep again? Can I ask you some questions?”

“What kind of questions?” Batu said, lowering his eyelids in a
way that seemed both sleepy and cunning.

“Questions about our mission,” Eric said. “About the All-Night
and what we’re doing here next to the Ausible Chasm. I need to
understand what just happened with the zombies and the pajamas, and
whether or not what happened is part of the plan, and whether or
not the plan belongs to us, or whether the plan was planned by
someone else, and we’re just somebody else’s big experiment in
retail. Are we brand-new, or are we just the same old thing?”

“This isn’t a good time for questions,” Batu said. “In all the
time that we’ve worked here, have I lied to you? Have I led you
astray?”

“Well,” Eric said. “That’s what I need to know.”

“Perhaps I haven’t told you everything,” Batu said. “But that’s
part of the plan. When I said that we were going to make everything
new again, that we were going to reinvent retail, I was telling the
truth. The plan is still the plan, and you are still part of that
plan, and so is Charley.”

“What about the pajamas?” Eric said. “What about the Canadians
and the maple syrup and the people who come in to buy Mountain
Dew?”

“You need to know this?” Batu said.

“Yes,” Eric said. “Absolutely.”

“Okay, then. My pajamas are
experimental CIA pajamas
,”
Batu said. “Like batteries. You’ve been charging them for me when
you sleep. That’s all I can say right now. Forget about the
Canadians. These pajamas the zombies just gave me—do you have any
idea what this means?”

Eric shook his head no.

Batu said, “Never mind. Do you know what we need now?”

“What do we need?” Eric said.

“We need you to go outside and wait for Charley,” Batu said. “We
don’t have time for this. It’s getting early. Charley gets off work
any time now.”

“Explain all of that again,” Eric said. “What you just said.
Explain the plan to me one more time.”

“Look,” Batu said. “Listen. Everybody is alive at first,
right?”

“Right,” Eric said.

“And everybody dies,” Batu said. “Right?”

“Right,” Eric said. A car drove by, but it still wasn’t
Charley.

“So everybody starts here,” Batu said. “Not here, in the
All-Night, but somewhere
here
, where we are. Where we live
now. Where we live is here. The world. Right?”

“Right,” Eric said. “Okay.”

“And where we go is there,” Batu said, flicking a finger towards
the road. “Out there, down into the Ausible Chasm. Everybody goes
there. And here we are,
here
, the All-Night, which is on
the way to
there
.”

“Right,” Eric said.

“So it’s like the Canadians,” Batu said. “People are going
someplace, and if they need something, they can stop here, to get
it. But we need to know what they need. This is a whole new
unexplored demographic. So they stuck the All-Night right here, lit
it up like a Christmas tree, and waited to see who stopped in and
what they bought. I shouldn’t be telling you this. This is all
need-to-know information only.”

“You mean the All-Night or the CIA or whoever needs us to figure
out how to sell things to zombies,” Eric said.

“Forget about the CIA,” Batu said. “Now will you go
outside?”

“But is it our plan? Or are we just following someone else’s
plan?”

“Why does that matter to you?” Batu said. He put his hands on
his head and tugged at his hair until it stood straight up, but
Eric refused to be intimidated.

“I thought we were on a mission,” Eric said, “to help mankind.
Womankind too. Like the
Starship Enterprise.
But how are
we helping anybody? What’s new-style retail about this?”

“
Eric,
” Batu said. “Did you see those pajamas? Look. On
second thought, forget about the pajamas. You never saw them. Like
I said, this is bigger than the All-Night. There are bigger fish
that are fishing, if you know what I mean.”

“No,” Eric said. “I don’t.”

“Excellent,” Batu said. His experimental CIA pajama top writhed
and boiled. “Your job is to be helpful and polite. Be patient. Be
careful
. Wait for the zombies to make the next move. I
send off some faxes. Meanwhile, we still need Charley. Charley is a
natural-born saleswoman. She’s been selling death for years. And
she’s got a real gift for languages—she’ll be speaking zombie in no
time. Think what kind of work she could do here! Go outside. When
she drives by, you flag her down. Talk to her. Explain why she
needs to come live here. But whatever you do, don’t get in the car
with her. That car is full of ghosts. The wrong kind of ghosts. The
kind who are never going to understand the least little thing about
meaningful transactions.”

“I know,” Eric said. “I could smell them.”

“So are we clear on all this?” Batu said. “Or maybe you think
I’m still lying to you?”

“I don’t think you’d lie to me, exactly,” Eric said. He put on
his jacket.

“You better put on a hat too,” Batu said. “It’s cold out there.
You know you’re like a son to me, which is why I tell you to put on
your hat. And if I lied to you, it would be for your own good,
because I love you like a son. One day, Eric, all of this will be
yours. Just trust me and do what I tell you. Trust the plan.”

Eric said nothing. Batu patted him on the shoulder, pulled an
All-Night shirt over his pajama top, and grabbed a banana and a
Snapple. He settled in behind the counter. His hair was still
standing straight up, but at 4 a.m., who was going to complain? Not
Eric, not the zombies. Eric put on his hat, gave a little wave to
Batu, which was either, Glad we cleared all
that
up at
last, or else, So long!, he wasn’t sure which, and walked out of
the All-Night. This is the last time, he thought, I will ever walk
through this door. He didn’t know how he felt about that.

Eric stood outside in the parking lot for a long time. Out in
the bushes, on the other side of the road, he could hear the
zombies hunting for the things that were valuable to other
zombies.

Some woman, a real person, but not Charley, drove into the
parking lot. She went inside, and Eric thought he knew what Batu
would say to her when she went to the counter. Batu would explain
when she tried to make her purchase that he didn’t want money. That
wasn’t what retail was really about. What Batu would want to know
was what this woman really wanted. It was that simple, that
complicated. Batu might try to recruit this woman, if she didn’t
seem litigious, and maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the
All-Night really did need women.

Eric walked backwards, away and then even farther away from the
All-Night. The farther he got, the more beautiful he saw it all
was—it was all lit up like the moon. Was this what the zombies saw?
What Charley saw, when she drove by? He couldn’t imagine how anyone
could leave it behind and never come back.

Maybe Batu had a pair of pajamas in his collection with
All-Night Convenience Stores and light spilling out; the Ausible
Chasm; a road with zombies, and Charleys in Chevys, a different dog
hanging out of every passenger window, driving down that road. Down
on one leg of those pajamas, down the road a long ways, there would
be bears dressed up in ice; Canadians; CIA operatives and tabloid
reporters and All-Night executives. Las Vegas showgirls. G-men and
bee men in trench coats. His mother’s car, always getting farther
and farther away. He wondered if zombies wore zombie pajamas, or if
they’d just invented them for Batu. He tried to picture Charley
wearing silk pajamas and a flannel bathrobe, but she didn’t look
comfortable in them. She still looked miserable and angry and
hopeless, much older than Eric had ever realized.