For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone.
The door opened. An inch, apologetically, then all the way.
For the first time in ages, I had a rare flash of sight: I saw his aura before I saw him. Blue, blue, blue. Fee’s words ghosted by me, from the day we did that very first spell. You look like you’re gift-wrapped in sky. I know I stared at him too long. Until he laughed, and came into focus.
A white guy in his early twenties, probably, lean with a deep farmer’s tan. White T-shirt, Elvis Costello glasses, a dark wedge of rockabilly hair.
“Your aura,” I said without thinking. “It’s the prettiest color I’ve ever seen.”
He laughed again, a little startled. “Is that … a pickup line?”
“No,” I told him. Clipped, gathering myself. You didn’t flirt at these things. For all I knew he was the groom.
He saw the book I was holding and brightened. “I love that poem.”
Through the door a new song came on, bubblegum pop, and a swell of voices sang along. He tipped his chin toward them and began to recite. “‘And the soul of the rose went into my blood, as the music clash’d in the hall.’”
My shoulders went up. “Oh. You don’t have to—please don’t do that.”
“Don’t be the asshole quoting Tennyson to girls at the party?”
Hanson kept singing, distantly. “Has it ever worked?”
“Like, ever? I bet it worked for Tennyson. No one else, though.”
Without meaning to, I smiled. “Did you want a reading or what?”
“Prettiest aura you’ve ever seen. Where do I go from there?”
“Well,” I said, remembering with a warm rush that I’d already been paid. “That depends how much of a taste for bullshit you’ve got. I could tell you all about your aura and what it means. I could read your palm as a chaser.”
“But it’s all bullshit, huh.” He sat on the bed, knees pointed toward mine. “Aren’t you not supposed to tell me that?”
His eyes were brown and his hands were big around the neck of a bottle of Rolling Rock. He had excellent hair. “Here’s what I’m not supposed to tell you,” I said. “It’s real. Magic is completely real. The bullshit part is believing anyone would ever want to hear their actual fortune.”
He grinned, not believing a word. “What’s your name?”
He was cute, I decided. He was tall. I didn’t really think he was the groom. I could already see the way he’d look at me just before unlocking his apartment door, the shy, conspiratorial smile. I foresaw the shaggy contours of his place. Its clutter of books and papers, its messy single-guy scent of deodorant and takeout if I was lucky, cat piss and black mold if I wasn’t. I didn’t care so much, I just wanted to spend a bright stripe of hours inside that sky-colored aura.
“I’m Dana,” I told him.
I knew by the way his body shifted, eager and pleased, that he could see the decision in my face. “It’s nice to meet you, Dana,” he said. “I’m Rob.”
* * *
Some of the things Rob said to me. In November and December and in the new year.
“God, it’s so red. It’s like a crayon.” We were lying in the freeze-dried grass of Winnemac Park, Rob hanging over me so I didn’t have to squint against the winter sun. “That’s the first thing I wanted to do when I saw you. Get my hands in this hair.”
At the Peking duck place down the block from my apartment, his glasses fogging over with steam. “You’re my girlfriend, right? I thought you were, but then I woke up worried in the middle of the night.”
Standing in the Powell’s on Lincoln Avenue, whispering in my ear as I browsed the overstock table. “I used to work at the shop on Fifty-Seventh. I still have a key.”
Lying on his futon by the window, street light coming in. Early February, each of us pretending we didn’t remember it was three months exactly since we’d met. “I know you don’t want me to say it.” His breath warm in my hair. “I know you’re not ready to hear it. But, Dana…”
I sat up, into the light. I’d gotten lucky, his place smelled like books and coffee and the must of wet laundry. And like him, a scent that had crept up on me, that made me equal parts restless and inflamed, oppressed and heady. Sometimes when Rob was sleeping and held on to me too tight, my brain said, Run run run. When he was awake he kept hold of me so lightly. Like I was a sparrow on a palm, a wild thing that might take off at the first sign of curling fingers.