All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders Page 0,67

And if I ever say anything about magic to anyone, I hope I lose my voice.”

“Forever.” Ernesto shrugged as if mentioning a minor detail.

“Forever,” said Laurence.

“There’s just one other favor we wanted to ask,” said the Japanese guy, Kawashima, coming into focus next to Ernesto. They were almost touching. “We worry a lot about Patricia, you see. She went through a lot when she was younger. First that Theodolphus douchebag, and then later that regrettable business in Siberia.”

“I hate it when you talk about me in the third person when I’m in the room,” Patricia said. “Not to mention the way you’re railroading my friend here.”

“We want you to help us look out for her,” Kawashima said to Laurence. “We have few rules, but our biggest taboo is against what we call Aggrandizement. Making yourself into a big deal. So we want you to support her and be her friend, in a way that none of us can. And yet also to remind her that she is just a person, just like anyone else, if she gets too high an opinion of herself.”

“Will you do this for her, and for us?” Ernesto said.

Laurence thought for a moment they were going to ask him to agree that his hands would turn into fins if he didn’t help keep Patricia’s ego under control. But for this promise, just a vague “I’ll do my best” seemed to suffice. Kawashima slapped him on the shoulder and everybody repeated a few times how nice it had been to meet him. Laurence felt his gorge rising. Someone guided him to a small toilet in the far corner of the absinthe bar, and he crouched over it for a good fifteen minutes until his stomach was empty.

Taylor and Patricia took Laurence for vegan donuts over on Valencia Street. His head was split in half and he was seeing spots. Taylor whispered something in Laurence’s ear and he felt a bit more even-keel, plus coffee and ibuprofen helped too. “You did good,” Taylor told him. “You were in the frickin lion’s den and you were as cool as cream cheese.”

“It just pisses me off,” Patricia said. “They think I’m some kind of egomaniac, when all I want to do is make croissants and get on with my life. And they can’t just ask Laurence to keep his trap shut, without putting a spell on him?”

The full weight of it hit Laurence then: They’d put a spell on him. A curse, really. If he spoke a word about magic or magicians to anybody, he would never speak again. He knew in his sore guts that this was a fact. Of course, there was no way to test, except the hard way. He stared at his thumbs, pivoting on the oaken table. What if he had to text people instead of talking to them, for the rest of his life?

“It’s not like that,” Taylor said to Patricia. “You should be grateful that you have people worrying about you. Ever since you moved here to Sucka Free, you’ve been.… overcompensating. I feel bad about Siberia too, but we have to move on.”

“Okay,” Laurence said. “So now I am apparently under a…” He looked around the coffee place twice, trying to figure out if anyone was within earshot. “I am going to be facing certain constraints about what I can say to people who weren’t in that bookstore tonight. So that means you can explain to me, right? You can tell me how this works. I’m just curious, is all.”

“Sounds fair.” Taylor handed him a second donut.

“Yeah, okay,” Patricia said. “But not here. Maybe this weekend, we can go for a walk in the park. I remember how much you like the outdoors.”

Laurence shuddered, which was probably a sign that he was starting to feel like himself again.

20

PATRICIA FELT JITTERY about throwing her first ever dinner party, because part of her clung to the fantasy of being someone who gathered cool people around her. A doyenne, someone who held witty salons. She cleaned the apartment for hours, made a playlist, and baked bread and bundt cake. Her roommates Deedee and Racheline made their famous “passive-aggressive lasagna,” and Taylor showed up with shiny pants and a bowl of mixed greens. Kevin arrived in a deep cerulean waistcoat that matched the ribbon tying back his dreads, and he had brought weird cheeses. Patricia’s bread filled the marigold kitchenette with a yeasty warmth, and she took a deep breath. She was a grown-up. She had