Magic for Beginners: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

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