The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods

by Maria Dahvana Headley

  Every day, Wells puts on the cheapo tux and the clip-on polka-dot tie, polishes the shoes. A hundred bucks and wine coolers in the kitchen with the moms, who will be, if experience is any guide, thirsty. Wells checks the bag for candy. Quality lollipops will make true believers out of most people. He steals a glance at the woman in the back booth. She's got a notebook out and she's scribbling something in it. She looks testy. It's 10:32.

  Wells nudges the bartender. He can see steam. Good enough. The bartender pours water into the mug. Wells adds a teabag and dunks it frantically. The woman takes off her sunglasses. There's an expression on her face Wells doesn't entirely like, but her blue eyes are visible from here, along with mascara that's made its way from lashes to ashes, dust to destiny.

  He's a sucker for messes like this one.

  “You cunt,” the woman comments, unsolicited from just behind him as he's reaching for the milk. “The water must be boiling, or the tea will be weak. And the teabag must be added before the water.”

  Wells turns his head and takes the opportunity to examine her. Thirty-five, chewed lipstick, and there might be blood on the sleeve of her dress, which also seems to be a nightgown, but who's counting flaws? Wells is on the north side of forty, and some of his tattoos are starting to look like cancer. The ones he got more recently pop like goldfish from a carnival bowl, and those are the ones that matter. He flexes the bicep closest to her.

  He considers a coin trick. He could pull one from her clenched fist. What kind of coin, though? He never knows what the bag will give him. Soon after his dad died, he found a pile of peep show tokens in the bottom, and took his miserable self to see some sparkle. Sometimes, he drops his hand in just to see what kind of currency he touches, and then plans his life accordingly.

  This time, he gets a wooden nickel, and ignores it.

  “The. Water. Must. Be. Boiling,” the woman repeats. “Otherwise, things end up useless.”

  Wells pours milk, being helpful, but she unexpectedly slaps the mug, and overturns it. Warmish tea drips into Wells’ lap.

  “You don't add the milk until the tea's had time to steep,” she says. “It takes longer than you think. Particularly if the bloody water wasn't even boiling in the first place.” She makes a moan that is closer to a sob. “I can't bear America.”

  “I'll buy you a better cuppa,” Wells says. “It's on me.”

  Her dress is torn, yes, and possibly stained, but it's flowered. Her cheeks are rosy. English rosy. He envisions something he saw on the BBC, in the dead of night between divorces, a flushed woman in a flowered gown, corset unlaced. Blowsy, he thinks. Yes, a wedding ring. No problem. The stones are turned toward her palm.

  “Cuppa?” she says, and her tone is ominous. “BBC, isn't it. Butlers. That's the accent you're using. You're mangling it. Were you any sort of butler, you'd know how to make a proper pot of tea.”

  She plucks a cocktail straw from the backbar, and fracks his drink to the dregs.

  “I can fix it,” Wells tries. “I'm a magician.”

  She mishears him, probably on purpose. “No. There's no medicine for this.”

  She fishes the teabag out of her empty mug, shoves it in his open mouth, and walks toward the door.

  “You'll be driving, then,” she says, over her shoulder.

  One problem Wells the Magician has always had? He loves damage.

  Wells chews the teabag for sobriety, tasting black leaves like a terrible fortune, drops a twenty from the tricksack on the bar and follows her. He feels himself getting hard.

  “Bro, no,” the bartender calls after him. “That's a no go. I'd watch out for her.”

  “You don't know me,” says Wells. “This is my whole thing.”

  * * *

  In the lot, there is only one vehicle, and she's standing beside it, tapping her foot.

  “Nice car,” she says. “If car's what you call this.”

  Wells's car is a literal lemon. It's a VW bug, painted canary and dimpled with dots made by, Wells suspects, a ball peen hammer. It was part of the flotsam from a foreclosed lemonade stand, and cost four hundred dollars. When Wells took possession of the car after the auction, he opened the trunk and a compressed lemon mascot suit popped out, nearly giving him a heart attack. Also included in the sale were seventeen hundred hollow plastic lemon sippy cups, three hundred and seventy-eight insulated thermal lemons, and forty-five flammable velveteen novelty lemon pillows, each emblazoned with the name and disconnected phone number of the lemonade stand's former owner. They filled the entire interior. Wells went to the dump and gave everything over but the lemon suit, which he kept, just in case. He's pretty sure it's rated for cold, and his last wife ($299 divorce, cheaper than the car) took his camping gear when she went rogue.

  Wells isn't a whimsical man — no magician is — but he could see the utility of a vehicle like this: it is so noticeable that no police officer would imagine its driver committing crimes while behind the wheel. Wells is essentially invisible inside its yellow shell, and whether he speeds, drinks, or drugs his way through an evening, he trusts that no one believes their eyes.

  The lemon sticks when he drives it, but he's had the side painted with his logo nonetheless. Wells the Magician it says, in calligraphy, with a picture of a top hat and a clutter of stars.

  The woman's hand is on the hood, and her nightgown is the shortie kind. Wells feels optimistic.

  “My house is seven minutes away.”

  “Wishes, horses, beggars,” she says, wrests open the passenger door, gets in, and waits. Right, then. Usually he sprints under the red flags of feminine vigilance. He inherited charm from his mother. Women have always been willing to sleep with him, no matter the evidence he's nothing good. There's still time.

  He takes the address the woman gives him.

  He's not sober. She's not sober either. Whatever. Wells has a shortlist of ways he's willing to die. He imagines everyone does. Sometimes you manage to hit a Venn diagram of death wishes in a one-night stand. There should be a dating app to match methods. He laughs as he puts the lemon into gear. She looks at him. He stops laughing.

  He drives out from the bar and into the country, half a silent hour in the general direction of nowhere. At last, she points.

  “There.”

  A Victorian mansion, all gingerbread and gilding, creamy turrets, stained glass windows. She doesn't look like she belongs to a place like this, but goes to show. Wells is midway up the walk behind her when he sees the sign: Nix & Sons, Funeral Home.

  “Hang on,” he says.

  She turns around and looks at him.

  “What? This isn't what you were hoping for? Most things aren't,” she says.

  She walks into the mansion, shutting the door behind her.

  It's suddenly 12:15. Wells gets back into the lemon and opens his glovebox kit to brush the bourbon out of his breath, swab his face with a wipe, and slick his hair into top hat formation. Bag of tricks intact. He fishes for a coin, just to see. A silver dollar might bode well, but there's nothing. He takes a few minutes to stabilize. Win some. Lose most. This is the life of a hack magician, a man whom true magic has not bothered with. Wells's father could do anything. He'd disappear in the middle of a crowded room, drive a car while sitting in the backseat. Once, he floated stark naked over an entire casino, looking over shoulders and reading hidden hands, while Wells kept watch over his tux.

  Where'd he get his magic? He made some jokes about soul sales. Sometimes, when he's not thinking about the thing he agreed to forget, Wells wonders who is ever kidding about anything.

  “Dirt cheap,” his dad said once of his immortal soul, as he was cleaning up a hotel room full of pantyhose, beer bottles, baubles, and Bibles never opened. “Never was anything but shirt deep.”

  Wells was twelve years old at the time, drinking a Jolt Cola and trying to learn how to make girls appear out of thin air. It didn't work if you didn't have any willing and around
to begin with. He's still never learned.

  As he pulls out of the lot, Wells catches sight of the woman emerging onto the porch with an enormous floral arrangement. She's changed into a black dress. He raises his hand to wave, then thinks better of it, but she waves to him. No, that's a finger in the air. Alright then, leave it.

  She's filled Wells's car with the smells of new sweat and old perfume. She's nothing special, not a ghost, not a queen, just his usual kind of trouble. An Amanda or a Bridget or, god help him, a Sonja. He doesn't even know her name.

  She walks down the steps with a driver and gets into the passenger seat of a hearse. Wells shudders as the coffin mobile pulls out.

  Wells, in classic Wells fashion, has definitely hit on a newly-minted widow.

  He rolls down his windows and ushers awkwardness out. Awkwardness is the enemy of magic. He follows the hearse decisively out onto the highway, thinking to flee, but finds himself idiotically part of a long procession of black sedans interspersed with black motorcycles. Wells is appalled by the rudeness of bikers invading a funeral procession, but then…

  The riders are wearing black suits, and Wells is the lone lemon in an all-mourner motorcade. A man with a long white beard turns his head as he passes, and gives Wells a look that says he's broken all laws of civility. The biker has stars tattooed across his face, and his eyes are pink from weeping.

  Wells is reminded of the last rabbit he had, a hostile albino lop named Richard. He glances at the rabbit's top hat, sitting for now in the backseat. He's visited by a vision of the woman wearing it and drinking a perfectly made mug of tea. Her ring is turned the right way round, but it's not the ring she was wearing. It's his own mother's ring, the one he hasn't ever presented to a wife, though he's had two so far. Wells spent his entire childhood traveling with his dad, leaving his mother behind. He only has his mom's wedding ring because she took it off one morning when he was eleven, left it in an eggcup, and walked. Years ago he dropped it into the bag of tricks, and he hasn't seen it since.

  He pulls over and lets the funeral procession pass. Trying to save a pretty woman from preexisting problems is not any kind of plan. Maybe one of the mothers at the birthday will be plausible. He considers himself in the rearview. Not too shabby. Or, at least, no shabbier than usual.

  “The water must be boiling,” he says. He says it louder. “THE WATER MUST BE BOILING OR THE TEA WILL BE WEAK.”

  Wells pulls off the highway entirely, and steps on the gas.

  * * *

  There's a trail of colorful balloons, and cheerful printed signs guiding civilians to Ammy's birthday.

  This seems wrong. Wells checks his contract.

  He isn't the only one having an off day. The parents have misspelled their own daughter's name. He pulls up to the house, and — how late is he? Parents look shitfaced. He checks his watch. No, he's fine. There are people teetering their way around the premises, though, and in the kitchen they're slumped over salsa. Two are chainsmoking. A few more are crying. Screw that, Wells thinks. He congratulates himself again on his vasectomy, undisclosed to his wives, who thought they were the problem. Parents sometimes punch magicians in the head for no reason. Wells stays on guard.

  He scans the crowd for Ammy, and finds her, plastic-crowned and pink-frocked, her expression that of a kid about to vomit or tantrum.

  Wells reconsiders this party. It's October, and it's fifty-one degrees. The swimming pool is open, and Wells has no doubt that he'll soon find himself in the water, rescuing a kid from drowning. He takes a step back. They haven't seen him yet. He still has time. Just a minor magic trick involving illusion and he'll be out —

  But Ammy's got him around the knees. She's glaring up at him, a freckled kid with the eyebrows of a seventy-year-old man.

  “Are you the magician?” she asks. “You don't look like you know magic.”

  “Are you Amy?” he asks. “You don't look like you know magic either.”

  “Ammy,” she says, and curls her lip. Of course she is.

  “DOES HE KNOW MAGIC?” she screams, startling him.

  “He doesn't,” says another kid. “He's a dummy.”

  “DUMMY!” shout four at once.

  Wells brings an emergency wand from behind his back and does a trick involving a bouquet of flowers appearing out of thin air. The kids give no fucks. He transforms the flowers into vending machine slugs, because that's what the bag offers him. The kids origami themselves down into a pointed-knee circle. They're still grim, but he's bought himself three minutes. He glances furtively at the parents. They seem to be heading toward a miserable key party. There's hugging where there shouldn't be hugging. Embraces are lasting too long.

  He waves his wand and makes the slugs into a series of sparkly explosions.

  There is the opposite of applause. One of the kids starts up the kind of whimper that's contagious, and it's only a matter of time. Well brings out the top hat, and pulls from it a lifelike rabbit puppet, which usually goes over incredibly well. It's not Richard the Rabbit, but it's something.

  The voice of a dad carries from the house. “I mean how does this happen? How does she let it happen?”

  A mom joins in. “And him? What was he thinking? How do you — No, I can't even.”

  Wells fumbles for lollies. He's half-buried in the bag of tricks, closing his fist around what feels like a gold bar, when his day officially dives into the shitter.

  “MAGICIAN, LISTEN,” Ammy says, and it's an order. “Mica was on a motorcycle with his daddy.”

  “The road was slippery,” says another kid. “It was raining.”

  “Now, Mica's over there,” says a third kid.

  Wells looks slowly up from the lollipops. The kids are pointing into the distance, down the highway, and Wells knows exactly where they're pointing. He can imagine what's happening in that cemetery right now, bikers, little coffin, flowers, and the woman from the bar standing beside the grave in her black dress and heart-shaped sunglasses, having spent days in shock, having not changed her clothes since the accident, and he, Wells, couldn't even get the water hot. He couldn't get the tea into the water. He couldn't get the milk into the tea.

  “The hospital tried to fix him, but they couldn't,” says Ammy.

  How can a five-year-old have him by the collar? The children inch closer. Wells has become a sacrifice in the middle of a ring of tiny witches.

  “They couldn't fix him,” the children repeat, mimicking someone else, their teacher, or a parent. “Mica died.”

  “Did Mica's dad die too?” he asks, stalling.

  “He only got hurt,” says Ammy, and visibly seethes.

  Something is pushed into his hand. It's a drawing in crayon. A little boy, a mother in a flowered dress, and a man on a motorcycle.

  “Do the magic,” Ammy demands. “DO THE MAGIC.”

  “Which magic?” he asks. He shouldn't ask. He knows.

  “Make Mica alive again,” she says.

  The rest nod, like bringing someone back to life is a matter of cups and balls, a cabinet, and a wand wave.

  No one is crying. Everyone believes. The mob of kindergarteners stares at Wells the Magician, he of no skills, he of two divorces and one VW lemon, a forty-five-year-old failure, charged with raising the dead, and Wells stares back, frozen.

  This is the truth of the matter: Wells's dad probably could've done this. Whoever his deal was with, a devil or a god, Wells's dad was the real thing, and Wells is not.

  For example: A few days after Wells left his dad's body in Reno, there was an incident in the night kitchen of a diner, a smashed cockroach, and Wells, on his knees, trying to steal hamburger buns.

  Wells touched the roach and said a word he'd heard his dad say, and the roach shook itself and looked up at him, abruptly unsmashed. It spread its antennae, and skittered off into the space behind the range. Wells wasn't sure. Maybe this was a thing cockroaches could do.

  He tried again an
d again, for years, delicately, roadkill raccoon, nest-fallen songbird, frozen squirrel, but nothing.

  Maybe it had been the last remnant of his father's magic, still hanging out nearby. No real magic has come out of him since.

  Still, he finds himself lifting his mail-order wand, to attempt what, exactly? Just as he's about to make the horrific choice of chanting some sorcery-sounding gibberish, a mother comes out singing, candles lit, cake balanced, and the kids turn away from life and death, and toward sugar, leaving Wells, thank fuck, to tend to his own self.

  He stands at the edge of the pool, away from the party, panting. Magic requires leaps of faith. It's been decades since he's leapt, and the same since he's been faithful. He has no paper sack to breathe into, so he uses his bag of tricks. There's no gold bar in there. He sees some ripped up old Italian lire. Not even valid currency.

  When Ammy blows the candles out, though, he's hit by a gust of wish. He takes a stumbling step backward, and finds himself floating on air.

  No. Not floating. Falling.

  Wand, tuxedo, top hat, puppet rabbits and all, baptized. He's a teabag in lukewarm, chest-deep water, the dried remnants of his heart filtering pitifully, weakly, through the pool.

  He struggles out of the water, drags himself to the lemon, and takes the long way back to town, making sure not to pass the cemetery. Two wet puppet rabbits seem to be glaring at him from the passenger seat. One of them has bright red around its mouth. He starts to pull over in a panic, but no, it's only melted lollipop.

  “This is not your fault, Wells,” he tells the car, the air, himself. “None of this is your fault.”

  Back at the Last Kingdom he orders three more bourbons, even though he slunk off from the party without getting paid. The bartending shift has changed, there is that mercy, and so when the bartender lines up his drinks, no one's counting.

  He doesn't want to be a magician. He wants to be something and someone else.

  Wells unfolds the damp crayon drawing from his pocket and spreads it on the bar. A little boy, a mother, and a father on a motorcycle.