Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

by Charlie Jane Anders

  “We’re not back to that again, are we?” Derek threw his arms up in a pose of martyrdom.

  “It’s okay,” Peter said. “The media frenzy seems to have died down, and some other asshole is getting his fifteen minutes now.”

  * * *

  Peter almost called Rebecca a couple times. He imagined telling her the truth about his spell, and it made him cringe from the balls of his feet to the back of his neck. He always put the phone away, because he didn’t think he could work the “damaged and complicated” angle without telling the whole story. He went to sleep and dreamed of sitting naked with Rebecca in bed, explaining everything. He woke up with Dobbs sitting on his chest, legs tucked under his fat little body, saucer eyes staring at him. Dobbs licked Peter’s chin in slow flicks of his brash tongue. Lick. Lick. Lick.

  When Peter went to work, his face was on the television in the break room again. Some expert had concocted a theory: Maybe Peter was the reincarnation of an ancient wizard, or maybe he was some kind of spiritually pure mystic or something. Obviously, if Peter really did know the secret of doing magic without any strings attached, he would be the world’s richest and most powerful man. So he either really didn’t have a secret method, or he was some kind of saint.

  This day, in particular, Peter had a progress meeting with some of the other team leaders, and he was trying to explain why the desalination pilot projects he was funding were slow going. It’s easy to add salt to water, but taking it away again is a huge challenge—you have to strip the sodium and chloride ions out of the water somehow, which involves a huge unfeasible energy cost. Peter got halfway through his presentation, when Amanda, who was involved in microfinance in Africa, asked, “So why don’t you just use magic?”

  “Um, sorry?” Peter said. He had clicked through to his next slide and had to click back, or risk losing his thread.

  “Why not just use magic to remove the salt from the water?” Amanda said. “That gets around the high energy cost, and in fact there might be zero energy cost. Potable water for everybody. Water wars averted. Everybody happy.”

  “I don’t really think that’s an option,” Peter said.

  “Why not?” Amanda said. Everybody else was nodding. Peter remembered seeing Amanda on television, talking about him a few days earlier. She was the one who’d explained carefully that Peter had a twelve-year-old Dodge Neon and rented a one-bedroom apartment in a crumbling development near the freeway. If he was a master sorcerer, Amanda had told the ladies on The View, Peter was doing a pretty good job of hiding it.

  Now Amanda was saying, in the same patient, no-nonsense tone: “Isn’t it irresponsible not to explore all of the options? I mean, let’s say that you really can do magic without some backlash, and you’re the one person on Earth who can. What’s the point spending millions to fund research into industrial desalination when you could just snap your fingers and turn a tanker of salt water into spring water?” This particular day, Amanda was wearing a blue paisley scarf and a gray jacket, along with really high-end blue jeans.

  Peter stared at Amanda—whom he’d always admired for helping the poor women in Africa get microloans, and who he never thought would stab him in the back like this—and tried to think of a response. At last, he stammered: “Magic is not a scalable solution.”

  Peter fled the meeting soon afterward. He decided to take the rest of the day off work, since he was either fatally irresponsible or secretly the reincarnation of Merlin. He passed Amanda in the hallway on his way to the elevator, and she tried to apologize for putting him on the spot like that, but he just mumbled something and kept walking.

  Dobbs wagged his tail as the leash went on, and then tried to play with the leash with one of his front paws, like it was a dangling toy. At last, Dobbs understood that the leash meant going outside and relieving himself, and he trotted.

  * * *

  Peter went to bed early, with Dobbs curled up on top of his head like a really leaky hat. He dreamed about Rebecca again, and then his phone woke him up, and it was Rebecca calling him. “Whu,” he said.

  “Did I wake you?” she said.

  “Yes,” Peter scraped Dobbs off his forehead and got his wits together. His bed smelled foggy. “But it’s okay. I was just waking up anyway. And listen, I’ve been meaning to call you. Because I need to explain, and I’m sorry I was such an idiot when we . . .”

  “No time,” Rebecca said. “I called to warn you. There’s been an incident, and they’re probably coming to your house again soon.” She promised to explain everything soon, but meanwhile Peter should get the heck out of there before the TV news crews came back. Because this time, they would be out for blood. Rebecca said she would meet Peter at the big old greasy spoon by the railroad tracks, the one that looked like just another railroad silo unless you noticed the neon sign in the window.

  Peter put on jeans and a T-shirt, grabbed Dobbs and got in his Neon just as the first people were getting out of their TV vans. He backed down the driveway so fast he nearly hit one of them and then sped off before they could follow. Just to make sure, he got on and off the freeway three times at different exits.

  Rebecca was sitting at the booth in the back of the Traxx Diner, eating silver dollar pancakes and chicken fried steak. The formica table had exactly the same amount of stickiness as Rebecca’s plate. Peter wound up ordering the chicken-fried steak too, because he was suddenly really hungry and it occurred to him he might have skipped dinner.

  As soon as Peter had coffee, Rebecca shoved a tablet computer at him, with a newspaper article: “TWELVE DEAD, FIVE CHILDREN UNACCOUNTED FOR IN SCHOOL DISASTER.” One of the headlines further down the page was for a sidebar: “Peter Salmon: Made People Think They Could Get Off Scot Free?” And there was a picture of Peter, giving a thumbs up to a group of people—taken from his site visit to a water purification project in Tulsa two years earlier.

  Peter spilled coffee on his pants. The waitress came and poured some more in his cup almost immediately.

  “Don’t worry,” Rebecca said. “Ulsa won’t tell anybody you’re here. She’s a friend. Plus she’s really nearsighted so she probably hasn’t gotten a good look at your face.”

  “Okay,” Peter said. He was still trying to make sense of this article. Basically, there was a middle school in New Jersey that was coming in at the bottom of the rankings in the standardized tests, and state law would have called for the school to be closed by the end of the year, which, in turn, would wreck property values. So the teachers and some of the parents got together to do a spell to try and raise the children’s test results by twenty percent, across the board. And it had gone very wrong. Like “everyone’s heads had turned to giant crayfish heads” wrong. There were some very gruesome pictures of adults lying around the playground, their beady eyes staring upward. Meanwhile, some of the children had gone missing.

  “There’s no way anybody could say this is my fault,” Peter stammered, trying not to look at the corpses with stuff leaking out of their necks, just as Ulsa brought a plate of very crispy chicken-fried steak with some very runny eggs. “I told everybody that I didn’t have any secret. They just wouldn’t listen.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Rebecca said. “Like I said, people hate you. This is why I quit my last five jobs, including that pet store gig, which I just bagged on the other day. Everybody feels entitled. I’ve never had a boss who didn’t feel like they ought to own me. People hate realizing that the world won’t just shower them with candy.”

  Peter looked at the crayfish heads, then at his chicken-fried steak. In the car outside, through the one window, he could see Dobbs bouncing up and down. Like Dobbs already knew he was getting that steak. Then what Rebecca had said sunk in.

  “You quit the pet store job?” Peter said, looking up at her.

  “Yeah. They basically wanted me to do unpaid overtime, and they were trying to start a grooming business in the back, and wanted me to help with that as well. I do not groom.”

  Peter could
n’t imagine just quitting a job, just like that. He felt his crush on Rebecca splintering a little bit. Like he’d put her on a pedestal too fast. “So what are you going to do now?” he said. “Are you going to go to L.A. and go to barista school?”

  “Maybe. The next enrollment isn’t for a few months. I guess I’ll see how it goes.”

  Peter made himself eat a little because he was starting to have a full-scale panic attack. He gestured at the tablet without looking at it. “This is going to keep happening. And they’re going to keep trying to make it about me.”

  The radio in the diner quit playing some country song about a cheating man, and a news report about the New Jersey tragedy came on. Congress was talking about regulating magic, and there were questions about whether the makers of the spellbook the teachers had used could have some liability, even though it had five pages of disclaimers in tiny print. And there was a mention in passing of the notion that the teachers might have been influenced by the famous Clean Casting.

  “What if there really was some secret and you had it?” Rebecca said. “If I were you, I’d be doing more spells and seeing if I could figure out what I did right. You could have anything you wanted. You could raise the dead and feed the hungry.”

  “I would never get away with it. I was really selfish and stupid that one time, and I came away with a super-strong feeling that I’d better never try my luck again.”

  And then Peter decided to go ahead and tell her about the spell:

  “Here’s what happened. I was engaged to this girl named Marga. She was amazing and artistic and creative, and she was always doing things like repainting her apartment with murals, or throwing parties where everybody pretended to be a famous assassin. And she had this cat that was always sickly. Constant vet visits and late-night emergencies. She and I moved in together. And then a few months before the wedding, she met this guy named Breck who was a therapeutic flautist, and she fell in love with him. She wound up going with him to Guatemala to provide music therapy to the victims of the big mudslide there. Leaving me heartbroken, with a sick cat. The cat just got more and more miserable and ill, pining for Marga. We were both inconsolable.”

  “I think maybe I can see where this is going,” Rebecca said, picking at her last pancake.

  “Dobbs is way happier as a dog, he gets to go out and run around,” Peter said. “His pancreas seems way better, too.”

  “So you turned your ex-girlfriend’s cat into a dog. As, like, revenge?”

  “It wasn’t revenge, I swear. She doesn’t even know, anyway. I just . . . Dobbs was really unhappy, and so was I. And this seemed like it was a fresh start for both of us. But part of me felt like maybe I was doing it to get back at Marga, or like I was transforming Dobbs without his consent. And I welcomed the idea of being punished for it. So when the punishment didn’t come, it just made me feel more guilty. I started to hate myself. And maybe that’s why. The more I didn’t get punished, the worse I felt.”

  “Huh.” She seemed to be chewing it over for a moment. “I guess that’s not the weirdest thing I’ve heard of people doing to their pets. I mean, at the store, there were people who shaved their pets’ asses. Who does that? And your ex is the one who left her cat behind when she bailed, right? You could have taken him to the ASPCA, and they’d have put him to sleep.”

  And just like that, Peter had a crush on her again. Maybe even something stronger than a crush, like his kidneys were pinwheeling and the blood was leaving his head and extremities. He wanted to jump up and hug her and make a loud train-whistle sound. He hadn’t realized how guilty he’d been feeling about Dobbs, until he told someone and they didn’t instantly hate him.

  “Do you want to go to L.A.?” Peter said.

  “What, now?”

  “Yeah. Now. I mean, as soon as we finish breakfast. You can try and go to that barista school, and I can get a job there. I know a guy who works in solar power financing. I’d barely even be famous by L.A. standards.”

  For a second, Peter felt like he was totally free. He could leave town, with the girl and the dog and whatever else he had in his car, and never look back. He could be like Marga, except that he wouldn’t abandon Dobbs.

  But Rebecca shook her head. Curls splashing. “Sorry. I don’t think I could ever be with someone who thinks it’s a good idea to run away from his problems.”

  “What?” And then Peter said the exact wrong thing, before he could stop himself: “But you just told me that you quit your last five jobs.”

  “Yes, and that’s called having a spine. Quitting a job isn’t the same thing as running away.”

  She got up, and Peter got up too. He was getting a doggie bag for the steak, and he felt as though she was cutting him loose with a pack of wolves on his tail. And then she reached out and unsmudged the corner of his mouth with her thumb, and said: “Listen. I’m going to tell you the secret to getting what you want out of life. Are you ready? Never take any shit from anyone.”

  “That’s the secret? Of happiness?”

  “I don’t know about happiness. I told you, I’m unlucky.”

  She walked back toward her car, then stopped to look at Dobbs, who was bouncing up and down inside Peter’s car, especially now that he could tell Peter was coming back. Dobbs’ eyes were almost perfect spheres, like a Pekingese, and his tongue was sticking out of the side of his mouth, spraying bits of drool. Rebecca leaned over and stuck her hand through the window Peter had left rolled down a bit, and Dobbs licked her. She nodded at Peter, like confirming that yes, the dog was really okay, then went and got in her own car, which was even older and junkier than his.

  He watched her drive away. Her radio was playing classic rock. He wasn’t sure how you gave chicken-fried steak to a dog, but he figured he should fork it over while it was hot. Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as he tipped it out of the bag onto the passenger seat and Dobbs started chewing on it, the steak suddenly smelled incredibly good and Peter felt a fierce hunger deep in his core. For a second, part of Peter wanted to snatch the food out of his dog’s mouth.

  He thought about what Rebecca had said: Don’t take any shit from anyone. He’d heard people say stuff like that before, but it still felt like a major life philosophy. Like words to live by. He found his phone, which had like twenty messages on it, which he ignored and called Derek.

  “Hey, can you do me a favor? Yeah, this is a chance to make up for telling your friend about me in the first place,” he said. “Whatever, I’m over it. But can you go by my house and tell all the people camped out there that I’ll do a press conference or something? At noon. I’ll tell them the whole story about the spell, and answer their questions, and then they will leave me the fuck alone forever after that. Okay? Great.”

  After Peter hung up, he watched Dobbs eat the last bits of food. He got back in his car and drove around, trying to think of how to explain himself to everybody so they would leave him alone afterwards.

  “Hey guy.” Peter stroked Dobbs behind the ears when they were at a stoplight. “Are you ready for your moment in the spotlight?” In response, Dobbs extended his head, blinked, and sprayed vomit all over the inside of Peter's car. Then Dobbs sprawled in the seat, as if he'd just accomplished something awesome, and started to purr loudly. Like a jackhammer.

  Love Might Be Too Strong a Word

  Here’s how I remember it:

  A touch shocked me. I was reaching for a flash-seared bog-oyster, and then a fingertip, softer than I’d ever felt, brushed my knuckle. The softness startled me so much, it took me a moment to realize the hand had seven fingers, three more than mine.

  Be held a striped cloth in ber other hand. I came up with the correct pronoun by instinct, even before my mind took in the fact that a pilot was touching my hand. Holy shit, a pilot!

  I turned. Be smiled at me, mouth impossibly small, eyes panoramic and limpid. So beautiful I wanted to choke. “You dropped this,” be said. My bandana looked so foreign in ber fingers, I almost didn’t recognize
it.

  And then be tied it around my neck, so gently I couldn’t help shivering. Those fingers!

  And then, it opened. Just a tiny dilation, but I almost had to lean against the cafeteria table. Everyone in the universe was watching. I knew, without reaching around, that there was a teeny wet spot on the small of my back.

  Until that moment, I’d barely ever thought about my harnt, the little hole just above my tailbone. It was just there. It had never opened on its own, much less gotten wet. And nobody had ever touched it, of course. And now, somehow it knew.

  My harnt closed again, but it didn’t make as tight a seal as before. Or at least, it felt restless. It was going to bother me. Right now, it was all I could think about.

  The pilot had finished tying my bandana, but kept looking at me. “You’re so lovely,” be said to me. “What’s your name?

  “Mab.” I managed to avoid stammering.

  “Short for Mabirelle.” Be smiled. “I’m Dot.” And then be bowed and left me to face the stares of my fellow dailys.

  * * *

  Here’s how they tell it:

  Ah love, mystery confounding! Oh lovers, your sighs the dark matter that limns our course. Who can understand the ways of love: ever cruel, ever bountiful? Not the boides, not the breeders, not even the spirers with their countless eyes and base-27 calculations!

  Dot lo Manaret, honored third-level pilot of the City, known for ber gallantry and aplomb, was never word-lost. Until the day be wandered down to the daily canteen and ber eyes fell upon the surpassing loveliness of Mabirelle, most radiant of all the dailys. In that instant, Dot’s heart fell into Mabirelle’s pocket, and Dot’s eyes, which had encompassed interstellar space, now had one vista only. Lost was Dot, lost forever, to the love of Mabirelle!

  A chasm wider than the Inner Axis separated these two lovers, one from the highest dar, the other from the lowest. Pity poor Dot and Mabirelle, their love against all society’s norms, their furtive meetings stolen from the moments between their far-separate undertakings. Theirs must be a fleeting happiness, but how bright the afterimage!