Magic for Beginners: Stories Read Free Page A

never goes to the bathroom. So when she wakes up in
spring, she’s really constipated. The first thing she does is take
this really painful shit. And then she goes and jumps in a river.
She’s really pissed off now, about everything. When she comes out
of the river, she’s covered in ice. It’s like armor. She goes on a
rampage and she’s wearing armor. Isn’t that great? That bear can
take a bite out of anything it wants.”
     
    Uykum geldi.
    My sleep has come.
     
    The snow kept falling. Sometimes it stopped. Charley came by.
Eric had bad dreams. Batu did not go to bed. When the zombies came
in, he followed them around the store, taking notes. The zombies
didn’t care at all. They were done with all that.
    Batu was wearing Eric’s favorite pajamas. These were blue, and
had towering Hokusai-style white-blue waves, and up on the waves,
there were boats with owls looking owlish. If you looked closely,
you could see that the owls were gripping newspapers in their
wings, and if you looked even closer, you could read the date and
the headline:
     
    “Tsunami Tsweeps Pussy
    Overboard, All is Lots.”
     
    Batu had spent a lot of time reorganizing the candy aisle
according to chewiness and meltiness. The week before, he had
arranged it so that if you took the first letter of every candy,
reading across from left to right, and then down, it had spelled
out the first sentence of
To Kill a Mockingbird
, and then
also a line of Turkish poetry. Something about the moon.
    The zombies came and went, and Batu put his notebook away. He
said, “I’m going to go ahead and put jerky with Sugar Daddies. It’s
almost a candy. It’s very chewy. About as chewy as you can get.
Chewy Meat gum.”
    “Frothy Meat Drink,” Eric said automatically. They were always
thinking of products that no one would ever want to buy, and that
no one would ever try to sell.
    “Squeezable Pork.
It’s on your mind, it’s in your mouth,
it’s pork.
Remember that ad campaign? She can come live with
us,” Batu said. It was the same old speech, only a little more
urgent each time he gave it. “The All-Night needs women, especially
women like Charley. She falls in love with you, I don’t mind one
bit.”
    “What about you?” Eric said.
    “What about me?” Batu said. “Charley and I have the Turkish
language. That’s enough. Tell me something I need. I don’t even
need sleep!”
    “What are you talking about?” Eric said. He hated when Batu
talked about Charley, except that he loved hearing her name.
    Batu said, “The All-Night is a great place to raise a family.
Everything you need, right here. Diapers, Vienna sausages,
grape-scented Magic Markers, Moon Pies—kids like Moon Pies—and then
one day, when they’re tall enough, we teach them how to operate the
register.”
    “There are laws against that,” Eric said. “Mars needs women. Not
the All-Night. And we’re running out of Moon Pies.” He turned his
back on Batu.
     
    Some of Batu’s pajamas worry Eric. He won’t wear these, although
Batu has told him that he may wear any pajamas he likes.
    For example, ocean liners navigating icebergs on a pair of
pajama bottoms. A man with an enormous pair of scissors, running
after women whose long hair whips out behind them like red and
yellow flags, they are moving so fast. Spiderwebs with houses stuck
to them.
    A few nights ago, about two or three in the morning, a woman
came into the store. Batu was over by the magazines, and the woman
went and stood next to Batu.
    Batu’s eyes were closed, although that doesn’t necessarily mean
he was asleep. The woman stood and flicked through magazines, and
then at some point she realized that the man standing there with
his eyes closed was wearing pajamas. She stopped reading through
People
magazine and started reading Batu’s pajamas
instead. Then she gasped, and poked Batu with a skinny finger.
    “Where did you get those?” she said. “How on earth did you get
those?”
    Batu opened his eyes.