Mack Day studied the Fun Grabber machine in the corner while he sipped his coffee. One of the toys–a plastic and plush dancer in a green sequined dress–blinked at him. “Help me, please,” mouthed the doll, shivering . . .
The morning was turning out to be a bust. The first client wanted to pay with a personal check, which I’ve learned to not accept. She had no cash, credit card, or ID. The second client had cash but turned out to be a thirteen-year-old kid who wanted a “really sexy picture” for her boyfriend. No way: session cancelled. The third client was late.
Yes, yes, the transport was amazing. Around her now was her husband’s best work. 1947, Tokyo. Dusk in Rikugien Park, north of the city, the pond reflecting the harvest moon, the drooping pines, their branches in the water, and she could walk down to the edge of the lake, hear yama-gare sing tzu…tzu…tzu flitting their chestnut bellies and black caps among the branches of the matsu pines—for a full seven minutes. Peace.
Cyril wanted to dig out a cave to play smugglers in, but the others thought it might bury them alive, so it ended in all spades going to work to dig a hole through the castle to Australia. These children, you see, believed that the world was round, and that on the other side the little Australian boys and girls were really walking wrong way up, like flies on the ceiling, with their heads hanging down into the air.
That Wednesday, the witch found five silver paperclips laid across her doorstep, next to an apple and a sharpened No. 2 pencil. She regarded them gravely as the breeze from the lake swept up through the pine trees and ruffled her upswept black hair. Then she turned to see if she could spot any signs of who had left them.
The sorcery of djinn was like a stalking beast. You had to stay downwind of it, even when you were the hunter. Antar knew, as always, everything depended on him seeing the unseen and forcing his eyes to reveal what lay in the membrane between light and darkness. He drew a deep breath and rolled between his thumb and forefinger the seal that was chained to his neck.
It was the smell which woke me up, insinuating itself between the planks of my coffin: cooked meat mingling with the sweet odour of aromatic rice, and the tangy hint of fruit and spices — a powerful summoning if there ever was one.
When you climbed out of the water, naked and dripping, you saw him standing by the rock where you’d left your skin in the sun, just standing over it with a quizzical look, poking at it with a finger. His eyes slid up along you and down again to it. With your skin in both hands he stared at you . . .
She’s tried. Tried heading to random stores, and just grabbing decks with her eyes closed. Tried asking other people to grab the decks for her. They look at her strangely when she asks this, but she’s pretty enough, and manages a nervous smile, so they do. “Arthritis,” she says, to anyone who appears particularly uneasy. They grab the decks for her, take them to the counter, where the cashier places them into a plastic bag. She takes the bag home, touching only the handles, and shakes out the card decks, opening them slowly, carefully.
She never finds the Queen of Spades.
Someone beside the television, a shaggy man Noy identified at last as Sip Pan Joe, said, “Heard the first baby was born yesterday on the Chinese moon colony.” They called him Sip Pan Joe because he always charged ten thousand kip for a city journey. “Sip pan! Sip pan!” he would say, losing money every time he took a fare. They called him Joe because of some character in a Thai soap. Sip Pan Joe wasn’t all there, but he had a way of getting news. Noy said, “I want to go to the moon,” and Sip Pan Joe cackled and said, “No tuk-tuks on the moon! No air!”
