Don't Expect Magic (7 page)

The bathroom door is open to the room beyond, where Hank paces back and forth, in and out of sight. A woman crosses in front of him. Andrea, I guess. “I know I’m supposed to do it on my own,” she says. “But I can’t even do my hair without a disaster.” She’s wearing an oversized T-shirt and polka-dotted sweatpants. Half of her ashy blond hair hangs straight, and the other half is screwed up in crazy, tiny curls.

“You give up too easily, Andrea. You don’t try.”

“I do!”

I need a better view. The path continues around to the center walk, and I enter the courtyard from the back. Andrea’s front window is half hidden by bushy vines with little white flowers that give off the same perfumey scent I smelled last night and a bunch of freaky-looking plants
with big leaves and blooms shaped like pointy-tufted birds. I wade into the flock but keep my head ducked down.

Inside Andrea’s apartment, it’s all big pillows and scarves draped over lamps and tables, and there’s a cat peering out from under the couch. In the middle of the room stand Hank and Andrea. Andrea’s bouncing up and down on her toes like an ecstatic kindergartner. “Oh, thank you, Dr. Hank!” Damn. I definitely missed something.

“One more night, Andrea,” Hank warns. “That’s all.”

One more night of what? I wonder. Hank pulls a pen out of his pocket. Is he going to write her a prescription or something? Is this his secret? He’s actually a drug dealer?

Instead of writing anything down, he backs up a few steps. I can’t see the pen, but he lifts his arm and it looks like he’s pointing it at her. There’s a spark of light from somewhere and I assume it’s the reflection of the sun. I glance over my shoulder, but the sun’s already dropped behind the other side of the building, leaving just a pale pink sky. Huh. That’s weird.

When I turn back, Andrea’s gone.

No, not gone, but … turned into somebody else. It’s her, but totally different, like she’s been put through some sort of beautifying car wash. Her hair is swept up in a French twist and she’s now wearing a shiny sapphire blue microminidress and matching blue kitten heels. Her eyes seem brighter and I think she may even be taller. She dashes to a mirror and squeals in delight. “Oh, Dr. Hank! This is perfect!”

I don’t get it. Were there two of her? Is this a twin? If it is, where’s Andrea? I shift around and try to see farther into the apartment, and I get a big bunch of the white blooms in my face. Great. If it wasn’t already hard enough to see, now my eyes are watering and the scent is making me dizzy. Maybe I’m having some sort of jasmine-induced hallucination.

“You’re the best fairy godmother in the world!” I hear Andrea say. What is she talking about? Is that some strange California slang term for life coach? “I’m going to text Aaron right now!”

That’s when I sneeze. Loud. Andrea looks out the window and screams. When I try to back out of the bushes, I trip, and it’s only by grabbing one of the huge bird-plant neck-stems that I stop myself from face-planting onto the concrete walk. Unfortunately, I decapitate a couple of the birds along the way. I couldn’t help it. It was them or me.

“Delaney?” I glance up to see Hank, who’s come outside and is staring down at me, half perplexed, half irritated.

Andrea—the pretty twin Andrea—steps up beside him. “Oh, is this your daughter?” She holds out her hand to me. “It’s so great to meet you!” She’s over her scare and now it’s as if finding me in the bushes is simply another wonderful moment in her evening. I don’t shake her hand so much as use it for leverage to haul myself out of the jungle. “Why didn’t you come to the door?”

“I think the better question is what Delaney is doing here at all, since I asked her to wait in the car.”

“It’s been over twenty minutes,” I say, even though I know it’s been nowhere near that.

“You should’ve brought her in with you, Dr. Hank. She didn’t need to wait outside.”

“Think about that for a minute, Andrea.”

“What?
Oh
 … she doesn’t know?”

I look up from plucking the last bits of sappy feather-petals off my shirt. “Know what?”

The now-familiar beat of silence between Hank and me ensues, but it’s not awkward this time so much as tense. I’m getting tired of it. “Know
what
?”

“What did you see?” Hank asks calmly. Too calmly. Too “it doesn’t really matter what you saw,” which means it
does
.

What
did
I see, though? Nothing, really. Or nothing I can describe in a way that Hank won’t brush off with some flip explanation. So I take a risk.

“
Everything
.”

Andrea’s eyes pop wide and Hank’s back stiffens. I hold his gaze. Showdown. Hank’s eyes flick away first. I win … I think. Hank turns to Andrea. “Okay, Andrea. We’ll do the car.”

“Oh, thank you!” Andrea claps and scurries off toward the garages that line the alley behind the building, her heels click-clacking on the concrete.

“I believe you may have seen
something
, Delaney,” Hank says to me as we follow Andrea to the alley. “But I doubt you understood what it was.” Andrea lifts one of the garage doors, revealing a rusted tomato-red junkyard special. “I intended to put off telling you about this until after you’d settled in, but maybe it’s for the best.”

I really don’t see what the big deal is. So he gives his clients fashion advice in addition to therapy. Why should I care? If there’s some life-coach oath he’s violating, I’ll never tell. “I want you to pay close attention,” he continues. “What you’re about to see is likely to be very confusing. Your brain is going to have a hard time processing it. You’ll try to come up with logic-based explanations, and you’ll probably start to feel overwhelmed, even panicky. So try to relax.”

Uh-huh. The only thing my brain is having a hard time processing is his monotonous, nonsensical rambling. “I’m beyond relaxed,” I say. “I’m ready to fall asleep.”

Andrea has managed to start the car after about fifty engine-grinding tries and has now backed out into the alley. She’s bouncing again, this time on her butt instead of her heels, and not excitedly but impatiently. “Aaron might be there already, Dr. Hank,” she says, a pleading whine in her voice. “He might be wondering where I am.”

“Just a second, Andrea.” Hank stays focused on me. “This isn’t a joke, Delaney. You wanted to know what I’m doing here. I’m going to show you. But I want you to be prepared.”

“Okay, okay.
Whatever
.”

Hank turns back to Andrea and takes out his pen again. This is the part I don’t get. What’s with the pen? “Midnight, Andrea,” Hank warns. “That’s how long it’ll last. Like always.”

“I’ll be back,” Andrea promises.

How long
what
lasts? What’s he talking about? Hank glances up and down the alley in an “is the coast clear?” kind of way, then points his pen at the car and there’s that weird spark again, but it’s more like a shimmer this time—and it’s coming from the pen. I look up but the sky is purple now, the sun definitely gone. When I shift my gaze to the streetlamp, to see if that’s what’s reflecting off the pen, a bright light flashes behind me and I blink.

Then I open my eyes.

Andrea now sits in a dark cherry-red convertible, shiny and new, right out of a car commercial. The tomato junk heap has vanished. Andrea grins, revs the motor and waves as Hank calls “Midnight!” Then she speeds down the alley to the street.

I feel woozy again, even though there’s no jasmine anywhere nearby. I desperately need to see the other car, Andrea’s real car, but it’s gone. Did I ever see it? Am I still hallucinating? Am I even awake?

A second later, Hank shakes my arm, and my eyes open. I’m in Hank’s car and we’re driving. It’s dark out. Streetlamps wash pools of yellow-gray light over us as we pass by them. It
was
a dream. Thank God.

“You fainted,” Hank says.

“I fell asleep. What time is it? How long were you in there? It had to be way longer than twenty minutes.”

“You weren’t asleep, Delaney. Everything you saw happened.”

“Right. I really saw Andrea call you her fairy godmother.”

“I prefer not to give it a label.”

This weird dread comes over me, but why? “Give
what
a label?” Nothing is making any sense.

“It’s an ability, an aptitude. Like athletic skill, or a talent for art. It’s inherited. It’s supposed to pass from mother to daughter, but the bloodline’s gotten diluted over the years and”—he gestures to himself—“this is what happened.”

“So you’re actually a fairy
godfather
?” I laugh, but it sounds creepy in my ears. It’s the laugh of a crazy person.
That’s
what this is. I’m not sleeping or hallucinating. I’m going insane.

“You’re disassociating, Delaney. Concentrate. Tell me what you saw. That’ll help you make it concrete.”

“I
dreamed
you turned Andrea into Cinderella. I
imagined
you turned her car into a carriage, a red one. No four white horses, though.” I laugh again. It’s definitely a cackle this time.

“It was a red Ferrari. And yes, that’s what I did.”

I remember the pen now, the glowing-shimmer pen. “With your magic wand.”

“That’s good, Delaney. You’re absorbing it now.” Is he crazy too? Why isn’t he giving me the real story? About how light refracts and a person’s focus can be redirected and the mind tricked, all with a little sleight of hand.

Aha!
That’s
it! “You
hypnotized
me!” But why? Is it some bizarre life-coach therapy to treat grief? It’s not working, because I don’t feel better. I might even feel worse.

Hank sighs. He shakes his head. “I guess I’m going to have to show you again and prove it.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Someone with a wish.” Hank searches the crowd as we walk. “A small one.”

We’re at a mall, but like everything else out here in the land of flawless beauty, it’s an alien dreamscape. It’s all outdoors, for one thing, with the shops set along a curving path. The stores are two stories high, but there’s nothing upstairs, just fake European balconies strung with twinkling lights.

“I’ll give you a wish. Turn my boots into glass slippers.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Delaney. It can’t be a random demand. It has to be a genuine internal desire.”

We wind around outdoor vendors selling jewelry made from crystals, lotion scented with jasmine—like I need any more of
that
scent clogging up my brain—and flip-flops in every color in the universe. It’s the street of endless shopping. Everything you didn’t know you wanted, nothing you need.

Hank pauses in front of a fountain where curved arcs of water sway to some old jazz song. I wish I’d brought my iPod with me. At least I’d have
some
connection to reality.

“Get me my iPod from the house,” I say.

“I
told
you—”

“It’s a genuine wish! I just wished it. I
swear.
”

Hank ignores me and studies a little boy standing a few feet away, holding a cup of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream and pouting. “Aha,” Hank murmurs. He pulls out his pen.

“They were out of plain vanilla, sweetie,” the boy’s mother says. “Just eat around the chocolate.”

“But I don’t
want
to.” The boy’s voice is choked with despair at the grand unfairness of life. Welcome to the club, kid.

Then, suddenly, the boy’s misery vanishes, replaced by elation. “Mommy!” He holds up the cup and I can see that the fudge ribbons are gone. It’s all vanilla.

Hank turns to me, half smug, half expectant.

Is he kidding? “You’re telling me
you
did that?” Impossible. The ice cream scoop shifted to hide the chocolate, that’s all. I watch the boy as he follows his mother around to the other side of the fountain and wait for him to discover the awful truth, but the little vanilla lover keeps happily eating, as if the chocolate really did disappear.

If …

There can’t be any “if,” because “if” suggests that it’s possible.

“Enough time has passed for your belief system to acclimate, Delaney. It’s only your intellect that’s resisting.”

“Doesn’t ‘intellect’ mean the
smart
part of my brain?”

Hank repeats his sigh from the car. “Fine. If you’re going to be that way.”

He proceeds to “show me,” again and again. And again. Leading me in and out of stores, waving his pen, granting more wishes. A size 10 skirt appears on a rack where there had only been size 2s, and the size 10 shopper who had been combing through them smiles in delight. A woman is told by a clerk that the handbag she holds doesn’t come in green, only to have it turn to a bright lemon-lime while neither is looking. A man drops his camera in the fountain, and it reappears in his hand. A toddler flings a yellow ball from his stroller, and it’s back in his lap before his parents notice, before the toddler has a chance to let out a cry. Left and right, things are fixed, problems solved. In the blink of an eye.

I watch these little miracles happen, and with each one, some tiny piece of the logical part of my thinking is chipped away. I can’t believe
it
, but I’m starting to believe him.