Chapter 11 I’ve Really Got to Start Locking That Door
ONCE AGAIN, I AM NOT in Manhattan on Monday morning. But today, I have goals.
Outside, the sidewalk teems with oddly dressed hordes, all doing their best to pillage Salem, robbing it of any historical Puritan temperate decency.
Whether or not they’re of the paranormal variety is unclear, but what’s important is that none of them enter through the front door.
After half an hour, Bulan gives up waiting and whines at me until I set him up with an iPad and a high chair we found in the back alley.
Following that, I slide my laptop from my bag.
I don’t want to waste any more time waiting on customers, or waiting to hear from the concerningly silent world of EFG, or daydreaming about an upcoming date with Hanry.
Nope. Definitely not. Much better to focus on the one part of my life still fully in my control: my CPA exam prep.
By midafternoon, right as I’ve maxed out on the amount of information my brain can hold about tax compliance, Baldy attempts to hand-deliver me a copy of Grandma’s will.
Once more, I ignore him until he leaves, and only afterward retrieve the documents from the doorway.
I flip through the pages, searching for answers.
Grandma’s will is handwritten, her penstrokes characterized by a swoopy and loopy mess.
As far as I can tell, Baldy read that part of the will about her spirit ascending accurately.
It’s almost impossible to know for sure, because Grandma’s writing looks more like bunnies and mice leaping over each other than actual words.
“Bulan,” I call. The head rolls to my table obligingly. “Do you think this looks like ‘twice’? Do you think it might say ‘thrice’? If it’s thrice, maybe all Grandma’s spirit needs is another few days of moon observance. And then I’m off the hook.”
He pops up on the table, scans the page.
“Oh, is this a visual will? That’s unusual.”
“Those are words, Bulan.”
“I see. It appears Rosie was about as talented with writing as she was with numbers. It was, of course, her personality that kept her so well-resourced to the end.”
Ignoring the misguided opinions of Grandma’s personality, I sit back and speculate: “What if the spell put on the will overrode her words with what she intended to write, instead of what she did write? Is that a thing?”
“It could be. Magic can be delightfully zany!”
I roll my eyes. What could possibly be delightful about unclear guidelines with potentially disastrous consequences? It sounds like the only way I’ll know for sure when Grandma has ascended is by making more attempts at leaving. And probably failing.
Great.
With hopes of a reasonable solution to my magical curse dashed, I resort to escapism. I’m scrolling wedding TikTok when someone pounds on the shop door. It’s not Baldy, but a short blond woman.
I jump to my feet, the picture of customer service.
“Hi!” I say, unlocking the door. “I mean, welcome. To my shop. To my wedding planning… business.”
The woman bursts inside. She doesn’t notice my awkwardness, or the fuzzy purple spiders dangling over her head. She’s too busy panting.
“Hi,” she wheezes between exaggerated gasps. “Whew!”
She’s in her early twenties, with a glazed-over expression and a tight, chin-length blond curl stuck to her bottom lip.
Her skin’s eggshell-pale. It emphasizes her cheeks, red as fire hydrants.
She gives off Marilyn Monroe vintage-blond-bombshell vibes, but she’s coquette too.
She looks like she was born in her pastel-pink Mary Janes.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
The woman all but explodes with syrupy delight. “I’m Mandy!”
“No, I was asking if you’re all right.”
“I’m fantastic! Thanks for letting me in! I ran the whole way here.” So much for the “running from trouble” theory. “Wow! What is that? Is that—THAT IS AMAZING.”
She’s fondling a dried lotus. Why, why is that plant so popular with weirdos? Finally remembering my customer service script, I shut my laptop with an exaggerated arm-sweep.
“How can I help you?” I ask.
“SO many ways,” Mandy bursts out, beating at the ruffles of her pink skirt.
I suspect this is her standard way of expressing herself: like Bubble Wrap, popping again and again.
In the process of the fabric abuse, I can see that she’s wearing a thick piece of silk ribbon on her wrist. Familiar magical shapes have been embroidered into the design, marking her as nonhuman.
“You see, I had to come as fast as I could! Because I’m looking for a job.
My landlord kicked the bucket, and I have to pay rent to this machine now.
It’s terrible. And working is teeeerrible. ”
The sunniness with which she says it nearly distracts me from her words.
“You’re in here because you want to work? For me?”
“In your wedding business. Yes!”
“Even though you think working is terrible?”
“Exactly!”
I fix Bulan with my stink-eye. He wouldn’t have been involved in this, would he? He knows I can’t take on employees for my sham company. Much less nonhuman ones.
“Who put you up to this?” Bulan asks, in an obvious hurry to shift blame.
Mandy huffs. “I read about this on the job board, silly head!”
I pause, reeling. This is all happening quickly and it doesn’t strictly make sense.
I only decided to continue wedding planning yesterday.
But on Saturday night, I had a conversation with a certain handsome guy who was convinced I needed an assistant.
Could said someone have then mysteriously posted a listing on my behalf?
I doubt it.
“Did the listing say to get in touch with someone named Hanry Burleson?” I demand.
Mandy worries her lip. “I don’t think so…”
“Are you sure?” I won’t push it, but if Hanry’s interceding that far on behalf of my fake business, that kind of swings him into psycho-stalker territory.
For one paranoid second, I fight off the notion that he might’ve made some kind of deal with Grandma Rose to try to keep me here.
I’d probably prefer a run-of-the-mill stalker.
“Some crows might have posted the job,” Bulan reflects. “They’re very helpful, crows.”
“Oh, are they sentient?” asks Mandy.
“Yes indeed, mine are! And poetic.”
Enough with the supercool crow friends Bulan hasn’t introduced me to, and who may or may not exist. I need to know who’s recruiting for me.
It’s creepy, yes. But I am reluctantly—a little, very small, tiny bit—grateful to them.
If I end up having to work another wedding before going home to New York, I will need an assistant.
One with limbs.
“I might have a job,” I say slowly, hedgingly, “but just so you know, working for me won’t create money out of thin air. If you need to get paid today, I can’t help you. So far, I haven’t been given a dollar. Or a dime. Or a penny.”
“Do you even carry change?” Bulan asks.
“The point is, Mandy, I might owe more money than when I started last week.”
“That’s all fine!” Mandy says with a giggle-beam. “I don’t care where the money comes from, as long as you pay me eventually.”
“If you take the job, you’ll be paid under the table,” I say.
“I can crawl under tables!”
“The other thing is—”
“Tell me, tell me! I can do it.”
“Without knowing what I’m going to ask?”
“I can get anything done. Anything! I have my ways,” says Mandy, exposing two rows of sharp teeth with her smile. They look like they belong in the mouth of a toy shark.
In spite of this, I consider Mandy’s offer. Since I’m officially sick of Grandma Rose’s defrosted, mushy pastas, I come up with a quick grocery shopping list. After I arm her with that, plus a request to market to customers of the non-creepy variety, she scurries off with glee.
Once she’s gone, I perch on a table, facing Bulan in his high chair.
“Did I just hire someone?” I ask. “Someone nonhuman?”
Bulan nudges the iPad screen with his nose and pauses on a close-up of Regé-Jean Page’s glamorous calves.
“Seems like it,” he says. “She’s a pixie, you know!”
“A… manic pixie. That’s a movie trope, right?”
“I don’t know about that, Sabby. But what I can tell you is that pixies are closest to hummingbirds, comparatively.”
That throws me.
“Did Mandy have wings that I missed somehow?” I ask.
“I don’t believe so. It’s rare for a pixie to be born with wings these days!
You see, pixies used to flock near flowers and sap-producing maple trees, and flight was more useful then.
Since humans learned to refine sugar, pixies have become endemic to cities instead, and prefer to keep their fluttering near humankind.
Also, they’re colorful. And a delight to watch. ”
“So… the hummingbird thing is an analogy. Not a scientific categorization.”
Bulan offers me a neutral look. “Perhaps.”
“You weren’t ever educated, were you?”
“I was not!” he says proudly. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Fortunately, Sabby, as energetic and charming as pixies are, they have a sneaky side too. An ability to manipulate situations in their favor, much like—”
“A hummingbird?” I smirk.
“—a siren. All this to say, I bet Mandy will return with everything you requested. And likely at a bargain price!”
This sounds almost too good to be true. “Do you think she’s as harmless as she looks?”
“Only because you’re straight as a headboard,” Bulan laughs heartily. “At least she isn’t fay! They can be such brats, I swear.”
“You’ve said that twice now.”
“Precisely. I’m providing information,” says Bulan. “That’s the service I agreed to provide. That, and tape cutting.”
“You’re a fantastic tape cutter,” I agree. I readjust his iPad and pat him generously on the head. “Not to mention the cheapest pet I’ve ever owned. Please don’t ever tell me how you sustain yourself biologically.”
That night, I visit the commuter rail platform again. Just in case Grandma ascended at high tide today, without being so kind as to let me know.
While I’m recovering from the process of becoming a human puddle, a seagull poops on my head.