The devil spat on the grass at her feet, turned once around, and was gone, vanishing with a small whuft of displaced air.
That’s your best parting shot? Staley wanted to ask, but decided to leave well enough alone. She gave her surroundings a last look, then started up fiddling again, playing herself back into the green of summer where she’d left her friends.
Robert’s pretty impressed when Staley just steps out of that invisible door, calm as you please. We heard the fiddling first. It sounded like it was coming from someplace on the far side of forever, but getting closer by the moment, and then there she was, standing barefoot in the grass, smiling at us. Robert’s even more impressed when she tells us about how she handled the devil.
After putting her fiddle away, she boiled up some water on a Coleman stove and made us up a pot of herbal tea. We take it out through the woods in porcelain mugs, heading up to the top of the field overlooking the county road. The car’s still there. The sun’s going down now, putting on quite a show, and the tea’s better than I thought it would be. Got mint in it, some kind of fruit.
“So how do I stop this from happening again?” Staley asks.
“Figure out what your music’s all about,” Robert tells her. “And take responsibility for it. Dig deep and find what’s hiding behind the trees-you know, in the shadows where you can’t exactly see things, you can only sense them-and always pay attention. It’s up to you what you let out into the light.”
“Is that what you do?”
Robert nodded. “‘Course it’s different for me, because we’re different people. My music’s about enduring. Perseverance. That’s all the blues is ever about.”
“What about hope?”
Robert smiled. “What do you think keeps perseverance alive?”
“Amen,” I say.
After a moment, Staley smiles. We all clink our porcelain mugs together and drink a toast to that.
A Reversal of Fortune by Holly Black
Nikki opened the refrigerator. There was nothing in there but a couple of shriveled oranges and three gallons of tap water. She slammed it closed. Summer was supposed to be the best part of the year, but so far Nikki’s summer sucked. It sucked hard. It sucked like a vacuum that got hold of the drapes.
Her pit bull, Boo, whined and scraped at the door, etching new lines into the frayed wood. Nikki clipped on his leash. She knew she should trim his nails. They frayed the nylon of his collar and gouged the door, but when she tried to cut them, he cried like a baby. Nikki figured he’d had enough pain in his life and left his nails long.
“Come on, Boo,” she said as she led him out the front door of the trailer. The air outside shimmered with heat and the air conditioner chugged away in the window, dribbling water down the aluminum siding.
Lifting the lid of the rusty mailbox, Nikki pulled out a handful of circulars and bills. There, among them, she found a stale half-bagel with the words “Butter me!” written on it in gel pen and the crumbly surface stamped with half a dozen stamps. She sighed. Renee’s crazy postcards had stopped making her laugh.
Boo hopped down the cement steps gingerly, paws smearing sour cherry tree pulp and staining his feet purple. He paused when he hit their tiny patch of sun-withered lawn to lick one of the hairless scars along his back.
“Come on. I have to get ready for work.” Nikki gave his collar a sharp tug.
He yelped and she felt instantly terrible. He’d put on some weight since she’d found him, but he still was pretty easily freaked. She leaned down to pat the solid warmth of his back. His tail started going and he turned his massive face and licked her cheek.
Of course that was the moment her neighbor, Trevor, drove up in his gleaming black truck. He parked in front of his trailer and hopped out, the plastic connective tissue of a six-pack threaded between his fingers. She admired the way muscles on his back moved as he walked to the door of his place, making the raven tattoo on his shoulder ripple.
“Hey,” she called, pushing Boo’s wet face away and standing up. Why did Trevor pick this moment to be around, when she was covered in dog drool, hair in tangles, wearing her brother’s gi-normous t-shirt? Even the thong on one of her flip-flops had ripped out so she shuffled to keep the sole on.
The dog raised his leg and pissed on a dandelion just as Trevor turned around and gave her a negligent half-wave.
Boo rooted around for a few minutes more and then Nikki tugged him inside. She pulled on a pair of low-slung orange pants and a black t-shirt with the outline of a daschund on it. Busy thinking of Trevor, she stepped onto the asphalt of the self-service car wash-almost to the bus stop-before she realized she still wore her broken flip-flops.
Sighing, she started to wade through the streams of antifreeze-green cleanser and gobs of snowy foam bubbles. They mixed with the sour cherry spatter that fell from the trees to make the summer smell like a chemical plant of rotten fruit.
There were only a couple of people waiting on the bench, the stink of exhaust from the highway not appearing to bother them one bit. Two women with oversized glasses were chatting away, their curled hair wilting in the heat. An elderly man in a black-and-white hound’s tooth suit leaned on a cane and grinned when she got closer.
Just then, Nikki’s brother Doug’s battered grey Honda pulled into the trailer park. He headed for the back-the best place to park even though you sometimes got a ticket. Her brother anticipated a big winning in another month and seemed to think he was already made of money.
Nikki ran over to the car and rapped on the window.
Doug jumped in his seat, then scowled when he saw her. His beard glimmered with grease as he eased himself out of the car. He was a big guy to begin with and over 400 pounds now. Nikki was just the opposite-skinny as a straw no matter what she ate.
“Can you take me to work?” she asked. “It’s too hot to take the bus.”
He shook his head and belched, making the air smell like a beach after the tide went out and left the mussels to bake in the sun. “I got some more training to do. Spinks is coming over to do gallon-water trials.”
“Come on,” she said. It sucked that he got to screw around when she had to work. “Where were you anyway?”
“Chinese buffet,” he said. “Did 50 shrimp. Volume’s okay, I guess. My speed blows, though. I just slow down after the first 5-8 minutes. Peeling is a bitch and those waitresses are always looking at me and giggling.”
“Take me to work. You are going to puke if you eat anything else.”
His eyes widened and he held up a hand, as if to ward off her words. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s a ‘reversal of fortune’ or a ‘Roman incident.’ Don’t ever say puke. That’s bad luck.”
Nikki shifted her weight, the intensity of his reaction embarrassing her. “Fine. Whatever. Sorry.”
He sighed. “I’ll drive you, but you have to take the bus home.”
She sat down in one of the cracked seats of his car, brushing off a tangle of silvery wrappers. A pack of gum sat in the grimy brake well and she pulled out a piece. “Deal.”
“Good for jaw strength,” Doug said.
“Good for fresh breath,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Not that you care about that.”
He looked out the window. “Gurgitators get groupies, you know. Once I’m established on the competitive eating circuit, I’ll be meeting tons of women.”
“There’s a scary thought,” she said as they pulled onto the highway.
“You should try it. I’m battling the whole ‘belt of fat’ thing-my stomach only expands so far-but the skinny people can really pack it in. You should see this little girl that’s eating big guys like me under the table.”
“If you keep emptying out the fridge, I might just do it,” Nikki said. “I might have to.”