Magic Shop
Magic Shop
by Salmah Abdulkadir
“I’m sorry,” I start. “It’s all I could find.”
I slide a worn three-by-five sack towards the woman quickly, so it won’t be pummeled by the rain. Meira throws her head back and laughs through the mask. Her voice doesn’t echo, not like mine. Her tone is always low and flat, much like her face.
“Fine,” she says. “You’ll find we don’t care much how the outside of things look around here, as long as they do their job correctly. That includes people. And people includes you.” Thickly tatted magenta brows weave in and out of her bangs, putting on a real show. I myself didn’t have time for any fancy mask today, but Meira is an artist. Maybe she’ll trust the simplicity of an open book.
Meira doesn’t touch my sack, even when it rests on the sole of her boot. Ignoring it completely, she withdraws a wad of cash and flashes it between her fingers just long enough for me to see before slamming the whole thing back into her jacket.
This doesn’t bother me. But I do grit my teeth at how she leans onto my offer, pressuring and likely cracking the case of music that I’ve carefully gathered for her inspection. It’s so loud I can hear it from here. But I say nothing.
“You gonna play that for me or you just gonna sit there?”
“Huh?” I ask.
“You gonna play it?”
She wants to listen to my track out in the middle of this dump? “Um, yeah, yes, sure. Okay.” I have to kind of shuffle towards the bag. Meira gives me a strange green-eyed look and uses the tips of her fingers to slide it just out of my reach. She does this with her left hand, keeping her right close to her side. I swallow. She’s bored with me already.
“Tell you what,” she says. “You leave this with me. Come back to my office next week. We’ll discuss your payment then.”
One week passes, then two. The payment. I haven’t given her the payment. The problem is, I don’t even know what it is. It hangs over my head as I attend work every day, gather my savings and head home. I can hardly sleep at night, knowing her dues are in my possession. She doesn’t contact me, so I have to take matters into my own hands. And that’s how I find myself one morning at 4 am standing before a skeleton of a building waiting to be let inside.
How did I get here?
ELF H LP SITE FOR D LUS ONAL PATIENTS.
The rotted wood sign is hanging on for dear life, angled downwards in front of the doorway. The thick, curling letters rust a little more each day, and a few vowels flicker in misery. It smells as neglected as it looks, radiating the stench of spoiled eggs from the loaded trash bins reclining beside the porch.
I reach out and let my knuckles sweep against the bricks. A shaft of blueish moss nearly crumbles beneath my feet, the smallest sign that the old house can support the weight of a person in its ancientness. I stamp hard against the mat and am rewarded with a plume of dust that leaves me sputtering. Then, silence.
I decide to wait for ten more minutes to see if Meira will show up. By the looks of it, I don’t think she will. It’s hellishly cold out here. In fact, it’s not even cold, it’s pain. I place a hand on each shoulder and wrap the ends of my sweater over my wrists like holey old bandages. The threads of the sweater are unraveling between my fingers.
The scene makes me think back to the moment that brought me here. When I first met Meira, I wasn’t much better off than I am now—alone and struggling against the cold. Six days a week I worked as a delivery girl, biking a rental around the daylit streets of the neighborhood before taking the bus back home. I spent nights with paper scattered across my floor as I feverishly composed new music. The yellow lamp of my desk was the only light in the apartment, and my writing the only sound.
That night was no different save for the harsh rap against my window that tore me out of my stupor.
I was wide awake then, my whole body frozen. Before I could stop myself, I was opening the window and leaning out into the cold winter air. Waiting for me was a young woman not much older than myself, a dark hood drawn over her shoulders. There was something instantly familiar about her, the way she stood as if the entire world owed her something and she had come to collect. Her head hung forward, dark, curling hair pouring over her shoulders that looked exactly like my own.
“W-what—” My voice shook. She was the first person I’d spoken to all day. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Can I help you?”
The woman pointed to the side of me and back to herself, then slowly mouthed, your music. The rush of wind carried her voice away into the city. I carefully edged closer to the window to hear just as she said, “You’re living a sad life, sister.”
I blinked slowly.
“My name is Meira Ravenwood, and if you’re interested, I have the key to your future. All of this—your unremarkable day job, your crippling anxiety, the exhaustive habit of writing music at night that no one will ever see—all of that can end.”
I ignored all of this. “Who are you?” I repeated.
She pulled her hood down to expose her face and looked at me expectantly, as if now I was supposed to know who she was.
“Your music is beautiful. Better than that, it’s...nostalgic. Reminds me a little bit of what I used to be able to do. And I need someone to play for me. I think I have a place for you at my office.” She pointed a ghostly white finger at the music sheets clutched in my hands. “Can you play?”
Could I play? Boy, could I ever. It was a dangerously tempting offer. I checked behind me again to make sure there were no stragglers listening in from the hallway. My fingers stilled in their shaking. I turned back to Meira and nodded my head firmly. “I can play.”
Meira smiled for the first time, a brief twitch of one side of her pale face. “One condition,” she said. “I’m giving you something—access to your future. You can’t take from the Magic Shop without giving something in return. You said you can play. Come play with me.”
The sound of my uncle’s footsteps, slow and heavy, were getting louder. My heart thundered as I watched his shadow pass under my door. It darkened the entire room before it passed. I quickly reached to switch out the desk light.
“What do you want from me, then?” I mumbled, my fingers itching to close the window in her face and pretend none of this ever happened.
“Your music would be a good place to start. Besides, what else do you have?” Meira turned from my window and was gone. The sun finally began rising on the horizon, and I could breathe again too.
I may have been struggling up until now, but everything was about to change now that I’d found Meira’s office.
The corpse of a building is literally dangling right off of the freeway. A couple of cars honk at me as they speed past. A passing couple wearing ski masks and parkas turns to stare. Hahaha, their eyes say. Look at this pathetic girl. She’s all alone in the middle of the night. That’s too bad.
I stand to gather some warmth, rub my hands together and look at the sign again. Am I a delusional patient they’re seeking? Or will the inhabitants of this rotting infrastructure find me sound of mind enough that they’ll just scribble a vague prescription and hastily send me away?
The door swings open with such force that it sends off yet another innocent sign letter scattered to the winds.
Now this. This is what I came here for.
Green eyes stare out at me from a pinched, pale visage as I come face to face with Her magenta eyebrows are black again. All the color I had seen in her last time must have been from my imagination, because this is truly the dullest looking person I have ever seen.
Meira says nothing, just gestures for me to follow her inside. I bend my head to avoid the swinging sign and enter through the narrow doorway behind her.
“I’m really so grateful to be here,” I say hurriedly as I follow her down the hallway. “I mean, what an opportunity! Being considered for your program, I—”
She gives me a blank look, looking me up and down. It sends a familiar chill down my back and I instantly fall into silence.
“I...just wanted to say that it means a lot,” I finish meekly, my voice trailing off at the end. Meira just squints her eyes harder, like she’s trying to solve a very difficult equation.
She opens the door and falls back into a wooden room, seeming almost afraid to take her eyes off me. Waves of heat roll out into the hallway to where I stand, and I smile as it warms my frozen face. It’s warm, because it’s not empty. One wall of the room is made entirely of glass, and behind it sits a crowd of people staring straight into the room. If they can see me, they don’t show it.
“Take a seat, there.” She speaks for the first time, her voice much lighter than it was a week ago. Is this even the same person, I wonder? “Welcome to the Magic Shop screening,” she chirps. “Your memory is our priority. What brings you here today?”
I hold the bag of my CDs tightly against my chest. “My music,” I mumble. “You said you would look at my music. You said you liked it.” I sink into the plush armchair and clasp my fingers. Achingly long minutes stretch by, and Meira stares at me, fixated on some obscure part of everything I just said. She slowly taps a pen against her clipboard, her face completely blank for a second before her brows suddenly draw tight and her green eyes fill with anger.
“I said something. I said you reminded me of myself, is what I said.” Meira pulls out the right arm she always keeps close to her side and painfully raises it in front of her. She lets the cloth fall away to reveal a stump at the elbow.
I turn away quickly, the sight of her missing hand making my heart race. I think I throw up a little bit in my mouth.
“I know you have memory issues, so try to remember this.” Her voice is calm, but hateful. “I can’t write music for myself anymore, but yours is close enough. So I need you. That doesn’t mean I like you.”
The people behind the window loom over us. One of them, a tired middle-aged man, catches my eye. He frowns at me and slowly shakes his head in disappointment before scribbling something on his clipboard. Every one of the cinched faces study me, their expressions ranging from abhorrence to fascination to complete appallment.
Meira swallows and her face erases itself into blankness again, restored back to how it once was.“Let’s just get back to the questions. You have a hard time trusting people, is that it?”
I unclasp my hands and wrap both arms around my bag. “I was seventeen, a few years ago. I kind of got ripped off.”
“I see.” She hasn't touched her notes. Maybe she's waiting for me to finish so she can summarize. “You may have crossed paths with one of my employees. You can’t remember who the scammer was, is that right?”
I sit up straight and stare into the distance. My clenched hand swings absently before falling limp against the chair.“...I can’t remember, exactly. I’ve been told it was my sister.”
“Your sister?”
“She had these eyes...these splintered green eyes...like they would shatter if you touched them.”
I expect her to ask how the memory of betrayal made me feel. Not only that, but I’m ready with an answer. The discussion is always about how I feel, everywhere I go, every therapist my family asks me to see. At what point are my feelings going to change what happened? At what point am I going to remember?
Meira’s dull eyes roll up to the ceiling.
“Look here.” An iridescent jewelry box glitters in her left hand. I lean off my seat to squint at the tiny, purple and gold key laying inside, pillowed in velvet. It’s beautiful, and familiar.
Meira turns to the crowd behind the window and very slightly tilts her head. She’s laughing at me. Why is she laughing at me?
She suddenly snaps the box closed in my face. “We’re here to help you,” she says quietly. “But I need you to stay with me. You seem extremely focused on that bag of yours. Take everything out and leave it on this table, exactly between us.” She’s probably trying to sound gentle, trustworthy, but her voice just sends that familiar chill down my back again. Alarm bells go off in the back of my head, growing to a shrieking volume. Don’t do it. Don’t give it to her. Until they suddenly go silent. I slowly pull the bag out from under me and place it on the table. The cash payment she’d asked for this meeting comes out. My phone, and my medical workup from the last doctor. The music comes out last, and it takes every bit of my strength to let it leave my hands.
“Good. Now, I’m going to scan your memories for evidence. With this witness technology, anything that could be framed as remotely incriminating should work. Just choose a point in your life you want to go back to, and I’ll see if we can make that happen.”
Now I can smile. Finally, the attention’s been spotlighted on something I came prepared to do. But before I can say anything, the woman shushes me with a frown. “Hold on...” she mutters. “I see something.”
I stay quiet, trying not to encourage the woman to go prying further into my past. Her eyes widen suddenly and she makes a choked sound, snapping her gaze up to where I sit, feeling lost.
Had the distance between us increased suddenly, or had I imagined it?
She clears her throat and directs her eyes to the floor. “There’s something there from this morning. Or rather, someone.”
My arms tensed. “I thought we’re here to see about my future career, no? What does my past have to do with anything?”
“Of course, dear,” she says unconvincingly. “The future.” She steps up to the glass wall with a giant green button before it.
Meira’s hands are getting closer to the button. She’s going for it. She’s doing it. Any second now, I’ll be ten years in the future, seeing how my life has turned out. What kind of house will I live in? Will my sister be married? Will any shred of my memory be left to salvage, as far off as a decade from now? I let the fabric of the pillow sink into my face and take a breath. I close my eyes.
She pauses, and I carefully open one eye. “What is it?”
“Just one question,” she says, her face unreadable. Her eyes are splintered. Huh. I hadn’t noticed. Then the ringing in my head picks up again, washing away whatever new thought I was having.
I haven’t seen her blink once this entire time, staring at me incessantly like a cat. “Aren’t you curious?” She says down to me. “Is it worth it to see how things turn out? In ten years, when your dreams either brush the edge of reality, or they change completely?”
What she’s asking is—do I really want to enter the Magic Shop? Do I really want to know the future?
Yes, of course I do. No more mistakes. By planning ahead now, I’ll make sure everything unfolds perfectly, and I can change what went wrong in my childhood. I’ll be the one in charge, if only for a single day. No more years spent paying penance for what my sister has done. And when I die, it will be in peace, without the stench of vengeance hanging over my head.
My heart burns. I’m hungry for infallibility, starving. “Show it to me now,” I say. “I’ll die without it.”
The empty smile cuts across her face, fleeting as lightning without thunder. So engrossed am I in my own worries that I don’t hear the table slide, again, to her side. I don’t even feel the need to raise my head.
“I can’t tell you what your future will be. No one can tell you. But you’re really desperate to know?
“Live another ten years, then. You are going to have to wait.”
I snap my eyes open. The ivory table between us is empty. Money and pouch are gone. Cellphone, gone. Files, gone. Meira is nowhere to be seen, and where the glass wall used to be lays only darkness.
I’m a fool.