The Book of Magic: A collection of stories by various authors

I was beginning to get tired of his tale. I thought about just letting the handpiece dangle from its curly cord against the wall and going back to scrubbing the cat box. I leaned back to look out past the curtained doorway into the front room of my shop. Outside my window, it was raining and there were no eager customers lining up outside. I stretched the handset cord to its full length to fill up my coffee cup. I sipped at it.

“Celtsie? You are there, I hear you drinking coffee. Man, I thought you’d hung up! Or, well, not hung up, ’cause I would have heard the dial tone, but you know, dropped the phone.”

“I will hang up if you don’t get to the point soon. What happened to Selma?”

“I’m getting to that. I got to tell the story in order or you won’t get it.”

“So talk.”

“Okay, but you know, I only got this drugstore phone and I’m nearly out of minutes. Can I come by? Please?”

I wanted to tell him I’d meet him in Wrongs Park, but I didn’t want to sit on a wet bench in the rain next to Farky. “Okay,” I said and hung up. I was stupid; I knew it was stupid to let him in the door again. I finished scrubbing the cat box and put it to dry. I took the kennel blankets out of the washer and put them in a hot dryer. I was unloading the water dishes from the dishwasher when I heard my jingle spring over the door. “Jingle spring” was what my dad and my grandpa had always called it; it’s one of those old-fashioned bells on a spring. There’s a lot of stuff left over in my shop from the days when my grandpa had a little magic store in the same place. Card tricks, top hats, hollow thumbs, silk scarves, and smoke powder were his wares. As far as I knew, he never worked the real stuff. Sometimes I wondered what he would think of me. Collars and leashes and cat toys on the pegboard where his magic cheats used to hang.

The jingle at the door was just the mailman. I was putting the bills in order by due date when Farky came in. Emmanuel Farquar is his real name. Farky isn’t much better. I stared at him in disbelief. Shaved. Haircut. Solid-color button-down shirt. Jeans and boots. This is the best he’s looked since class picture day in eighth grade. His brown eyes met mine. “She makes me dress like this,” he said miserably. “Handed me this shirt and took my old Nirvana T.” He looked around the shop. “Quiet in here. Where’s Cooper?”

Cooper is a big calico cat that someone dropped off for me to board four years ago. “He’s probably asleep somewhere.” I didn’t feel like small talk. “What happened to Selma?”

“I’m trying to tell you, but I got to tell you the whole thing.”

“So tell.”

He looked around the shop sadly. “Can we sit in back at the table? Like when we were friends?”

I am so stupid. As stupid as my dad was. Farky admitting that we weren’t friends anymore made it impossible for me to throw him out like I should have. I went into the back room, and he followed. At one time, it had been the kitchenette for a tiny apartment behind the storefront. Now it was the utility room for the store. But there’s still a kitchen table in there, round and red, with chrome around the edges. And four chairs with vinyl seats and backs, mostly red if you don’t count the places where the tears have been duct-taped. He sat down with a heavy sigh. I poured him a cup of coffee and gave mine a warm-up. Reflexes. What my grandpa and dad would have done.

“Celtsie, I’m just so—”

“What happened to Selma?” I knew if he apologized again I’d never be able to forgive him. There’s something terrible about hearing someone say they’re sorry when they truly understand just how bad they hurt you.

He took a long, deep drink of his coffee and sighed. “I was so cold! Okay. Okay. So I drive, turning where Ms. Mego says, and we end up at Fred Meyer. She tells me to wait in the car. And she shops, and comes out with like three little bags of stuff, but she makes the bag boy push the cart for her. And I have to get out and open the trunk and put the bags in, and then open the door so she can get into the car butt first. And when I get back into the car, she rattles off an address. When I say, ‘What?’ she says, ‘Never mind, you imbecile. I will tell you the way.’ So I pull out of the parking lot, and she gives me directions, but she’s terrible at it. Anyway,” he said abruptly when he saw I was tired of his bullshit.

“Anyway, we get to the place and it has a garage sale sign up. And stuff out on tables and spread on the lawn on sheets. And I have to get out and open the door for her and I follow her over to look at the stuff because, what the hell, I might find something good there, right?”

He looked around. “Damn, I could use a smoke. You got a cigarette?”

“I’ve never smoked. You know that. Get on with it, Farky.”

He got up from the table and refilled his coffee and brought the pot over to top off mine. So swiftly did he settle back in, like a stray tomcat that only comes home when his ear is torn and one eye swollen shut. I waited.

“She goes straight to the toys there, and paws through them like she’s going to find some treasure there. Barbies and a Playmobil and plastic dinosaurs, it’s all just junk at that one. But she picks up each toy and holds it close to her face, one after another. Then she shakes her head and I open the car door again, and drive on, to, like, six different garage sales. And my community service thing says I only have to help her for two hours a day, and it’s been like four. Then we get to a garage sale where a woman and man are still setting stuff up, and they say, ‘We’re not quite ready yet,’ but Ms. Mego acts like she doesn’t hear them. She starts digging through a box of dolls. She holds one doll for a long time, but then as the garage sale woman sets down a shoebox, Ms. Mego practically drops the doll and snatches up the shoebox instead. “How much?” she asks. And the woman says a dollar, and she pays her, and then Ms. Mego rushes back to the car, her cane going crack-crack-crack on the pavement. I have to hurry to get to the door before her and open it. She puts her purse on the seat and does her butt-first thing, really struggling because she’s holding the shoebox in both hands.”

Too much coffee. I suddenly had to pee, badly. “I’ve got to use the john. I’ll be right back.” I thought about telling him not to touch anything, but he was already under my skin. I thought it at him, trying to find my anger and make it hot again. He looked down at the table, his hands around his mug.

When I came back, he was smoking a cigarette at the table. My dad’s old glass ashtray was in the center of the table in front of him. I resented him touching Dad’s ashtray, but that wasn’t the worst. “Damn it, Farky! Where’d you get the cigarette?” I knew the answer; I feared the answer.

“Junk drawer gave it to me,” he said softly. He hunched his head down between his shoulders, like a pup that expects to get hit with a newspaper. “And a lighter,” he added, and flashed it at me. Not a cheap plastic convenience store one; a silver Zippo.

“Damn it!” I stepped to the drawer and put my hand on the handle. Dead. Completely discharged. Nothing humming at all. “Farky, I’ve been feeding that and charging it for, like, a month. And just when we might need it, you burn all the junk drawer magic for a stupid cigarette!”

“I really needed a cigarette!” he whined. And more softly he added, “And it gave me a really good lighter. Like it remembers me.”

“More like I’ve been feeding it for two months and not asking anything of it! And if we need it now, it’s …” I strangled on my anger. Farky. Just Farky. What the hell had I expected, letting him back in? I slammed myself back into my chair. “Selma,” I gritted at him.

“Okay, okay, I’m trying.” He took a long drag on the cigarette and tapped ash. “So I told you. She took the shoebox to the car. I had to run to get ahead of her and open the door. But I’m thinking, good, she bought something, we can go home.

“So I shut the door and get in and ‘All settled?’ but before the words were even out of my mouth she says, ‘Drive!’ So I say ‘Where?’ and she says, ‘Just drive, you fool.’ So I do.” Farky drank more coffee as his eyes roved around the kitchen. “Jeez, I’m hungry.” He looked at the cookie jar, but he should know by now it’s only dog treats. I got up and got us a couple of bananas. He peeled his right away, bit off about half of it, and then talked around it. Cigarette in one hand, banana in the other. I hated him, but I didn’t hate him so much as I knew him.

“So I pulled out and drove. I got about a block before I heard the sound. I knew what it was, because I’d once had a dog that loved to chew plastic. There’s a wet, smacky sound that you don’t forget. I looked in the rearview mirror. The shoebox was full of those green plastic army men. And I saw her put one of the ‘crawl on his belly’ soldiers into her mouth and bite down. She used her side teeth to sever him in half and then she chewed with her mouth open, breathing in and out through her nose and mouth. It was noisy and I got a glimpse of green bits in her teeth. She chewed like someone eating stale taffy, working hard at it, but her eyes were half closed like a woman in ecstasy. I didn’t know what to think, so I just kept driving. She ate the whole box of them! And then she sat up and said, ‘Drive me home now.’ So I do, and I get out and open her door, and she swings her legs out first, and her skirt sort of pulls up, and I realize that for an old woman, she’s got great legs in those black stockings. She holds out her hand like she’s some kind of princess, and when I offer her my hands, she comes out of the car and stands up, and holy cow, she’s not old anymore. She’s not young either, but she’s, you know, one of those middle-aged ladies that it would be okay to get it on with. But her face is covered in cracking powder and she tells me, ‘Put the groceries in the kitchen.’ And then she goes into her house. And that’s it, I carry the groceries in, and I put them on the kitchen table, and it’s like she’s not even there. Cleanest kitchen I’ve ever been in. Like, nothing on top of the counters or table. Nothing. I think I should put her stuff in the fridge, but it’s not food. It’s paper towels and floor cleaner and like that. So I leave.”

I stayed quiet. At first, I had thought “pica.” I’d known a girl in school who pulled the buttons off her coat and ate them. Paste eaters in kindergarten. People with pica eat all sorts of odd things. But a whole shoebox of plastic soldiers wasn’t pica. Nor was it an age regression. I’d never heard of this before, and I was pretty sure I had no idea on how to fight it. Or whether it needed fighting. So an old woman could eat toys and get young again. Who was she hurting?

Farky got up and opened the cupboard under the sink to toss in the banana peel. His eyes wandered the kitchen, and he got a wistful expression on his face. He has a lot of history here, almost as much as I do. Afterschool snacks. Playing Magic cards or Clue on this table. First aid from my dad the time he got beat up really bad when he was fourteen and there was no one home at his house. I hardened my heart. It’s his own fault he’s not welcome here anymore. Don’t crap in your own nest. “Selma,” I reminded him.

“Oh. Yeah.” He came back to the table and dropped into his chair. “So, like that. Twice a week. I’m supposed to be taking her to doctor visits and the pharmacy and Safeway. But it’s always garage sales. And it’s mostly toys. Always the same; she picks them up and holds them and then she buys them. And she eats them. And she can eat anything! A forty-five of ‘Rainbow Connection’ by Kermit the Frog. Cobra Ninja G.I. Joe doll. This little worn out Raggedy Ann doll; she tore it to pieces with her teeth and ate it, stuffing and all. And it’s pretty much that she’s an old lady when she gets in the car, and younger when she gets out.”

“Selma,” I reminded him.

“Yeah. Her. That was bad. She rents a little house over on Jay Street, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I didn’t. We pulled up to a garage sale, and I didn’t recognize Selma at first. She had on this big hat and shorts and was sitting in her lawn chair. And you remember that binder of Magic cards she had? She always had the best deck, remember? Well, she was going through it, really slowly, and taking out the cards and putting them in piles on a folding table. Ms. Mego was busy digging in a basket of plastic ponies, so I walked over and said hi to Selma, and she said hi and we talked. She needed some cash and she was sorting out cards to sell on eBay. I guess you can get money for vintage Magic cards. She had some little D and D figurines on the table, all painted. And we’re talking, remembering games in this kitchen, and she even remembers the names of the little figurines and some dungeons we were in together. So we’re laughing and going, ‘do you remember,’ and Ms. Mego comes up and she bends over really close to look at the cards and figurines and then she says, ‘How much? How much?’ And I get this really, really bad feeling!”

Farky did the dramatic pause. I wanted to hit him. I’d all but forgotten how he loves a stage. I glanced at the front of my store. Still no customers. “What happened?” I asked him quietly.

“Well, Selma tried to say they weren’t for sale yet, that she was still sorting and hadn’t really decided if she wanted to part with some of them, but all Ms. Mego says is, ‘How much? How much?’ And she’s really being rude, leaning over the table, really close to Selma. And Selma finally gets mad and says, ‘Four hundred cash for all of it.’” He paused again. He waited. Then he said very softly, “And Ms. Mego opened her big black purse and started counting out first hundreds, then fifties, and twenties. Selma just watched, and I could see by her face she didn’t want to just sell that stuff, or maybe she was wishing she’d asked for a thousand. Ms. Mego set the money down in a messy pile, and then she started scooping up the cards and figurines like she couldn’t wait. She grabbed the binder, you remember that one Selma had, the one she made all those stickers for? She took that, too. She scuttled back to the car like she couldn’t wait, even opened the door herself. She crabbed back into her car, one arm clutching everything to her chest so she wouldn’t drop the little painted clerics and that barbarian warrior. You remember Selma’s warrior? Used to kick butt every time we played?” He stubbed his cigarette out.

“I remember him,” I said, and I did.

“So I stood there, and Selma was, like, sort of frozen. She looked at the money and said, ‘I really needed money. But not that bad, I think.’ And she was crying, a little. Not making sounds, just the tears. And over in the car, I can see Ms. Mego stuffing things in her mouth, and chewing. She was ripping the cards out of the card sheets, and I didn’t want Selma to see her eating them, so I tried to stand in the way. And I said something like, ‘I’m sad she took your cleric. I remember how cool she was. Her name was Selmia, wasn’t it?’ But Selma suddenly just picked up the money and looked at me like I might try to take it and said, ‘Kid stuff, Farky. I don’t even remember how to play. Now buzz off before you scare the real customers away.’ And she said it mean, and, well, she really meant it, Celtsie.

“So I went back to the car and without even asking, I drove Ms. Mego home. And when I opened the door for her and she got out, she was, like, maybe in her twenties. And she’s rocking that black dress and stockings, and the old lady shoes look punk, the way she’s wearing them. And as she walks past me, she grabs my ass and says, ‘I know you like my legs, driver-boy. Want to see where they end?’ And that scared me so bad that I just about pissed myself.”

He drew a ragged breath. “I been to get coffee from Selma twice since then. The first time, I said, ‘Hi Selma,’ and she looked at me like she was shocked I knew her name. And the second time, she gave it to me in a to-go cup and said, ‘The boss doesn’t like crackheads hanging out here.’ I thought she was making a bad joke, but she wasn’t. It’s like the Selma that knew me is just gone.”