Magic for Beginners: Stories Read Free Page B

“Excuse me,” he said. “May I help you find
something?”
    “You’re wearing my diary,” the woman said. Her voice went up and
up in a wail. “That’s my handwriting! That’s the diary that I kept
when I was fourteen! But it had a lock on it, and I hid it under my
mattress, and I never let anyone read it. Nobody ever read it!”
    Batu held out his arm. “That’s not true,” he said. “I’ve read
it. You have very nice handwriting. Very distinctive. My favorite
part is when—”
    The woman screamed. She put her hands over her ears and walked
backwards, down the aisle, and still screaming, turned around and
ran out of the store.
    “What was that about?” Eric said. “What was up with her?”
    “I don’t know,” Batu said. “The thing is, I thought she looked
familiar! And I was right. Hah! What are the odds, you think, the
woman who kept that diary coming in the store like that?”
    “Maybe you shouldn’t wear those anymore,” Eric said. “Just in
case she comes back.”
     
    Gelebilirmiyim?
    Can I come?
     
    Batu had originally worked Tuesday through Saturday, second
shift. Now he was all day, every day. Eric worked all night, all
nights. They didn’t need anyone else, except maybe Charley.
    What had happened was this. One of the managers had left,
supposedly to have a baby, although she had not looked in the least
bit pregnant, Batu said, and besides, it was clearly not Batu’s
kid, because of the vasectomy. Then, shortly after the incident
with the man in the trench coat, the other manager had quit,
claiming to be sick of that kind of shit. No one was sent to
replace him, so Batu had stepped in.
    The door rang and a customer came into the store. Canadian. Not
a zombie. Eric turned around in time to see Batu duck down,
slipping around the corner of the candy aisle, and heading towards
the storage closet.
    The customer bought a Mountain Dew, Eric too disheartened to
explain that cash was no longer necessary. He could feel Batu,
fretting, in the storage closet, listening to this old-style retail
transaction. When the customer was gone, Batu came out again.
    “Do you ever wonder,” Eric said, “if the company will ever send
another manager?” He saw again the dream-Batu, the dream-managers,
the cartoonish, unbridgeable gape of the Ausible Chasm.
    “They won’t,” Batu said.
    “They might,” Eric said.
    “They won’t,” Batu said.
    “How do you know for sure?” Eric said. “What if they do?”
    “It was a bad idea in the first place,” Batu said. He gestured
towards the parking lot and the Ausible Chasm. “Not enough steady
business.”
    “So why do we stay here?” Eric said. “How do we change the face
of retail if nobody ever comes in here except joggers and truckers
and zombies and Canadians? I mean, I tried to explain about how
new-style retail worked, the other night—to this woman—and she told
me to fuck off. She acted like I was insane.”
    “The customer isn’t always right. Sometimes the customer is an
asshole. That’s the first rule of retail,” Batu said. “But it’s not
like anywhere else is better. I used to work for the CIA. Believe
me, this is better.”
    “Were you really in the CIA?” Eric said.
    “We used to go to this bar, sometimes, me and the people I
worked with,” Batu said. “Only we have to pretend that we don’t
know each other. No fraternizing. So we all sit there, along the
bar, and don’t say a word to each other. All these guys, all of us,
we could speak maybe five hundred languages, dialects, whatever,
between us. But we don’t talk in this bar. Just sit and drink and
sit and drink. Used to drive the bartender crazy. We used to leave
nice tips. Didn’t matter to him.”
    “So did you ever kill people?” Eric said. He never knew whether
or not Batu was joking about the CIA thing.
    “Do I look like a killer?” Batu said, standing there in his
pajamas, rumpled and red-eyed. When Eric burst out laughing, he
smiled and yawned and