Magic and the Modern Girl

by Mindy Klasky

  Maybe he was right. Maybe it was all a mistake. If I felt this terrible just thinking about what had happened, this uncomfortable just remembering how his lips had…

  I forced myself to take a trio of deep yogic breaths. Everyone around me was settling on their mats. To my left, a spry woman who looked as if she was made for the arched backbend of the Wheel Pose settled into Full Lotus and breathed herself into apparent nirvana. I felt chastened, as if I shouldn’t be thinking about David but should instead be focusing on all the peace and harmony that ancient Indian contortion techniques could bring to my life.

  I tried to settle back into my own centering, but I couldn’t keep my attention from wandering to the other students. On the far side of the room was a man who had to be seventy, if he was a day. He spread out his mat and flowed through a loud but precise sun salutation, his breath coming in staccato snorts as he showed off perfect physical form before settling into his own Full Lotus. A pair of teenagers sat behind the old guy, giggling behind their hands to each other.

  Next to me, another man tossed out his yoga mat, trying to make the rectangle lie flat on the studio’s wooden floor. The ends kept curling up, though, despite his best efforts at pressing them to the ground. I watched his struggles for a minute before my librarian instinct to help kicked in. “If you turn it upside-down, it’ll lie flat.”

  He looked surprised that anyone had noticed his dilemma, but then he flashed me a smile. His brown eyes were large behind round black glasses that made him a total ringer for an adult Harry Potter. His grin was crooked as he followed my instructions. “First day with the new mat,” he said self-deprecatingly. His smile was an invitation to chat.

  I wasn’t ready for that. Not ready for the flirtation, not ready for the getting-to-know-you dance. I noted the guy’s eyes, and I thought about other brown eyes, familiar ones, flecked with green, brown eyes that had drawn me in only the afternoon before. I saw unruly chestnut curls, and I thought of straight black hair, of silver glinting at temples that I wanted to reach out and touch…. I shook myself back to the studio.

  Fortunately, I was saved by the bell. Literally. As the instructor flowed into the room, she carried a tray with her, a lacquered surface filled with cones of incense, a tiny vial of lavender oil and a palm-sized brass bell. She set the tray on the ground in front of her own impeccably flat mat, and then she pressed her palms together. She raised her joined hands chest high, letting her fingers point toward the ceiling. “Namaste,” she said, inclining her head in a graceful greeting.

  Namaste. I honor that place in you where the whole universe resides. The traditional Indian greeting that started every one of the twisting, turning torture sessions that Melissa dragged me to. At the instructor’s urging, I struggled for a deep breath, honestly trying to reach out for the universe inside me.

  The universe of confusion, that was. The universe of what-had-I-done. The universe of what-had-I-been-thinking-going-to-bed-with-my-warder.

  But I soon ran out of time for thinking about my stupid actions of the day before. I needed all my energy to focus on my stupid actions there and then, in the yoga studio.

  The instructor started us off with easy poses. She led us through a half-dozen sun salutations, designed to get our hearts pumping, our minds and bodies primed. I kept up well enough, hopping back into a perfectly serviceable Plank, lunging into Downward-Facing Dog. The round of exercises certainly served its purpose. I was breathing like a warrior by the time we finished, furiously trying to manage my gasps for air, breathing in through my nose on a not-quite-steady count of five.

  The instructor became my own personal hero when she ordered us into the breath-saving all-fours pose of Cow. I tugged at my yoga pants a couple of times, trying to keep them from riding up on me, and then I gave in to the series of interlocking exercises—Cow, with my spine curving in, my belly sagging toward the floor and Cat, my spine arching up like a Halloween icon.

  The movement felt good—my back actually enjoyed the contrast from sitting in my chair at the Peabridge. I was even able to get my breathing under control, to find some semblance of the peace and inner strength that Melissa and the instructor always rambled on about. I flashed a smile at my best friend as we rose to our feet for the next round. She had been right after all. The yoga class was precisely what I needed; it was just the ticket to get past my crazy schedule at work, the turmoil that was my twisted family life, the shambles I’d left things with David.

  And then the instructor told us to move into Eagle Pose.

  I’d done it before. Once. A lifetime ago, when my bones were still made out of Silly Putty, and I’d believed in the power of concentration. And balance.

  I stood as straight and tall as I could. I told myself not to be aware of the perfect bodies all around me, the women who looked like they had been sculpted into their yoga pants and body-hugging T-shirts. I raised my hands, bending my elbows and executing a complicated pretzel twist that tugged at my shoulders. I reminded myself we were all beginners at something, that we all needed to strive toward perfection. I picked a point on the wall ahead of me, staring as if my concentration on this pose in this studio at this moment was the most important thing in my entire life. I reassured myself that we all worked at things, that we all struggled to find balance and peace and harmony.

  I raised my right leg, knee turned out, my foot gliding along the inside of my left calf, my left knee, my left thigh.

  And I stumbled out of Eagle, staggering forward two full steps to end up on Melissa’s mat.

  “Sorry,” I said, hopping back onto my own spongy rectangle. She barely acknowledged my presence, perfectly relaxed as she was in her own flawless Eagle.

  Embarrassed, I tried again. Back straight. Arms twisted. Eyes focused. Leg up.

  Graceless tumble—but at least I stayed on my own mat. That was the good news. The bad news was that I was the only student who fell out of the pose. Even the new guy, the guy who had his mat set up next to mine, managed to sway and keep his balance.

  Gritting my teeth, I rallied one more time. Back. Arms. Eyes. Leg.

  Collapse. Collapse and stagger and tumble and—

  “Easy there,” the guy said, hopping out of his Eagle Pose just in time to keep me from knocking him halfway across the room. Melissa turned to look at me. The entire classroom turned to look at me. I felt as if I was some sort of circus freak show.

  The instructor said, in her calm, soothing voice, “If you ever find a pose too difficult, remember that you can assume Child’s Pose. Find your center. Start again.”

  I’d be damned if I was going to collapse into Child’s Pose. In fact, I’d be damned if I stayed in the room for another two hours of contortionist torment. Catching Melissa’s eye, I mouthed, “I’ll call you later,” and waggled my fingers beside my ear in the universal sign for a phone. I snatched up my mat and headed for the door before the surprised instructor could say anything else, before she could suggest another pose to the entire room full of perfect yogis.

  I stood in the hallway, gasping for breath. I couldn’t tell if I was more winded by my awkward Eagle Poses, or by my embarrassment at having given up. I forced myself to walk up and down the hallway outside the classroom. Now, the deep breaths were easy to come by. Now, I could feel the tension draining out of my shoulders.

  The classroom door opened, and the guy who had broken my fall came out of the studio. My sandals dangled from his hand, and he had slipped my handbag under his arm. “I’m sorry—” I started to say.

  “Don’t be,” he said, handing over my things. “Your friend was going to bring these to you, but I offered. I’ve had enough of the Peaceable Kingdom in there.”

  “You were doing fine,” I said automatically.

  “I was making a fool out of myself,” he said. “I only signed up for the class because my girlfriend wanted me to.”

  “Then you should get back in there!”

  He winced. “Um, that would be ex-girlfriend. We broke
up three months ago. Right after we paid for the session, actually.”

  “You should have gotten a refund,” I said, shaking my right sandal into place. I reached out for my purse.

  “Ah…” he said, handing it over. “Pride goeth before a fall. If you hadn’t given up on Eagle Pose, I’m sure the next position would have taken me out.” I couldn’t believe that he was highlighting my awkwardness, that he was teasing me for falling into him. He apparently couldn’t believe it, either. He winced and said, “That didn’t come out right. I would have fallen in the next pose. I was barely managing Eagle.”

  I made a wry smile but accepted his explanation, glancing at my watch. “Thanks for bringing me my stuff. I’m sorry to be rude, but I really should be going.”

  “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  “I have to be somewhere,” I said automatically.

  “You were supposed to be here for two more hours,” he pointed out. “Come on,” he said. “Just a cup of coffee. And you can explain to me about the peace and centering and holistic healing that you women find in there.” He nodded back toward the studio.

  “I absolutely cannot do that,” I said. “The only thing I find in there is a best friend who’s a whole lot better at this than I am. Not that we’re supposed to compare ourselves to others.” I mimicked the instructor’s saintly tone. “We’re here to grow our own spirit, not measure ourselves against the rest of the class.”

  “Maybe that’s why most guys can’t get into this stuff,” he said. “We men should start our own studio. Extreme yoga. Competition for our modern age.”

  He pulled his face into a horrifying grimace and struck a fake body-builder pose that was so incongruous to his Everyday Joe build that I couldn’t help but laugh. “There,” he said. “One cup of coffee? Make me feel like I didn’t totally waste my afternoon.”

  “One cup,” I finally said, deciding to choose companionship over an afternoon of nursing a bruised ego. Some more. I held out my hand. “Jane Madison,” I said.

  “Will,” he countered. “Will Becker.”

  He held the door for me as we stepped out onto the street. I imagined Melissa in the studio, gliding into Camel Pose or Cobra Pose or something even more exotic. I was never going to make it as a yoga goddess. But I was excelling at living the life of a caffeine queen.

  6

  “What’s up, girlfriend?”

  I pushed my hair back behind my right ear for the thousandth time. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you’re more nervous than a cat,” Neko said, arching one eyebrow. “And believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be nervous?” I countered, catching myself chewing at my lip. “This is the biggest working I’ve undertaken in months.”

  But not the only magic I had done, a part of my mind nagged. No, I had used my powers only the day before. I could still feel the little twist in my belly, the spark that told me my magic had worked. The spark that—supposedly—reminded me that there would be no lasting impact from my indiscretion with David. For the thousandth time, I panicked that I had misperformed my contraceptive spell, that I was misreading the magical record in my body. But no. I was enough of a witch that I could tell it had worked. I was safe from that worry, at least.

  Even if I had to keep racking my brain, trying to figure out how I was going to act natural, act normal, when my warder walked through my front door.

  Matters weren’t helped any when Neko sniffed the air, his nose twitching with all the delicacy of a calico scenting rotten salmon. I was suddenly horrified by the thought that he knew what had happened between David and me. I had showered—twice—since then. And I was wearing completely different clothes. But my familiar had strange abilities when it came to knowing that I’d made a fool out of myself.

  There was a knock at the front door, and Neko nodded. “There,” he said. “I knew he was out there.”

  So, that was all that he had sensed. David’s arrival. Nothing more secret. More embarrassing. Neko waited for me to wave a purposely languorous hand, freeing him to answer the door as I descended to my basement lair. I sneaked in a half-dozen deep breaths before my partners in magical crime joined me in front of all my books.

  Neko was quivering with excitement, each muscle stretched taut beneath his revealing black T-shirt. He was wearing the leather pants he’d sported when I first awakened him from his statue form, over two years before. His feet looked small and neat in his European-styled shoes, and I might have described his walk as delicate, if I hadn’t known the power that lurked just beneath his flesh. He could mirror my own magic back to me, magnify my spells into things of true arcane spectacle. Without Neko, I was a powerful witch. With him—if David was to be believed—I was almost unstoppable.

  And David was someone to believe.

  He stopped at the foot of the stairs, as if awaiting formal permission to enter my witchy domain. He was wearing charcoal-colored slacks, as neat as if he’d just retrieved them from his tailor. A flawless cotton shirt blazed white against the gloom of the staircase, crisp without the stiffness of starch. I glanced at his face, fearing what I might see there, but his features were smooth. Implacable.

  We might have been presidents of our very own Fortune 500 companies, meeting to collude on prices in the most illegal antitrust scheme in the history of capitalism. We might have been spies sent to assassinate each other for shadowy government agencies that claimed to keep peace in the world. We might have been strangers meeting in the hallway of some luxury hotel.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  Or we might have been awkward former lovers, trying to figure out how we could continue working together.

  Strike that. I might have been an awkward former lover. David seemed utterly unaffected by what had happened.

  Neko looked at me, and I realized that my familiar truly was going to figure out what was going on if I didn’t pull myself together and start acting normally. “Hi!” I said, and I realized that my voice was a dozen shades too bright. I cleared my throat and said, “Thank you for coming.”

  Ouch. Wrong word choice.

  David didn’t react, though. Instead, he glanced at the rows of books behind me. “Have you thought about the ritual? About what you’re going to do?”

  Fine. If he was going to act as if nothing had happened, I could be every bit as blasé.

  I nodded, with the aplomb I harnessed every day as a reference librarian. Hardening my voice, I made myself sound like the trained professional I knew I could be. “Yes.” There. I almost kept my voice from quaking. “I’m going to create an anima.”

  Neko sucked in his breath, and I took a perverse pleasure in knowing that I’d surprised him. I smiled sweetly and found the strength to go on. “I’ll vivify it tonight and then task it to straighten things up around here. It can use its powers, its focus of my powers, to work through the crystals and the books, to get everything back in order. Each task it completes will build my reservoir of power.”

  David’s eyes narrowed, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. I remembered kissing his throat, and a sudden breathlessness crushed my heart like a ton of featherbeds. Concentrate, I told myself. This is important.

  “Have you reviewed the spell?” he asked, and he might have been inquiring if I’d had a chance to check the weather forecast, for all the emotion he loaded into the question.

  “Three times,” I said. “At least, my memory of it. I studied it in depth last winter.” And I really had. At the time, I’d still been smarting from my encounter with the Coven. I’d contemplated creating an anima, a creature to do my own arcane bidding, just to prove that I was not magically alone. I’d memorized the spell, but I had not worked it before the laptop crashed. Before the laptop crashed, and my interest in my witchy abilities had faded.

  I had winged things often enough when I’d worked with David and Neko, but I couldn’t take that risk this time. I could sense the truth: we wer
e approaching a true transition. Either I saved my powers now, or I lost them forever. The anima working was the strongest spell I knew by heart, the most elaborate working I could accomplish without benefit of the spell books that would fade away at my touch.

  I glanced at Neko, wondering how he felt about tonight’s magic. Last year, when I had done battle with the Coven, Neko’s independence was on the line. David had warned me numerous times that I needed to perfect my skills as a witch or the Coven would reject me and take Neko away. Take all of my accoutrements away.

  I sighed. As a librarian and a scholar of Elizabethan literature, I understood the meaning of irony. Alanis Morissette and her song aside, I knew it would be ironic if I’d fought the Coven, gained my witchy independence, only to lose Neko and my arcane collection now, through lack of use.

  David nodded, accepting my determination as if I’d always been a star pupil. Yeah, sure. “All right, then. Shall we get started?”

  And that was it. No great debate. No long discussion. No back and forth about whether I had chosen the correct ritual, the proper symbols, the perfect expression of my magical intentions. Momentarily speechless, I nodded.

  David reached inside the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small silver flask. It was the sort of vessel that might hold holy water, if he’d belonged to a different esoteric school. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Rainwater, collected under a full moon.”

  Of course. “So you knew, all along, what I was going to try?”

  He shrugged. “I knew that you’d likely be calling on the elements for whatever you work. I can take it back, if it bothers you. If you have your own that you want to use.”

  “No!” My voice still sounded too shrill to me. I glanced at Neko, only to find that he was staring at me curiously.