Magic for Beginners: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

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