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bread, and cups filled with sludgy water. "Watch this," she said.
In her hands, the detritus turned into cupcakes so white and fine that Val
reached out her hand for one.
"No,"Lolli said. "For them." She handed one to an old man as he passed and he
gobbled it like an animal, reaching for another and another as though they
were the best food in the world.
Val laughed, partially at his delight, partially at their power over him. She
picked up a stone and turned it into a cracker. He ate that too, licking Val's
hands for any last trace of it. His tongue tickled and that only made her
laugh harder.
They walked a few more blocks; Val couldn't be sure how many. She kept
noticing fascinating things she hadn't seen before: the sheen on a roach's
wings as it scuttled over a grate, the smirk of a carved face over a lintel,
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the broken stems of flowers outside of a bodega.
"Here we are,"Lolli said, pointing to a dark store. In the window, mannequins
posed in pencil skirts printed with scenes from comic books, or lounged on
modern, red settees, holding up polka-dotted martini glasses. "I want to go
in."
Val walked up to the window and kicked the glass. Itspiderwebbed but didn't
cave. The alarm squawked twice and went silent.
"Try this,"Lolli instructed, picking up a plastic straw. In her hand, it
changed into a crowbar, heavy and cold.
Val smiled with delight and hit the window with all the built-up aggression
of hating Tom and her mother and herself, all the anger at the troll in the
tower, and the fury at the entire universe. She beat the glass in until it
folded like bent metal.
"Nice."Lolli grinned and crawled through the window. As soon as Val was
inside, the glass was back,uncracked , better than new.
Inside the store, lights came on and canned music started to play.
Each new glamour seemed to feed the power inside of Val instead of depleting
it. With each enchantment, she felt giddier, wilder. Val wasn't even quite
sure which one of them was doing what anymore.
Lollikicked off her shoes in the middle of the store and tried on a dress of
green satin. Val could see her bare feet were red with blisters. "Is this
cute?"
"Sure." Val picked out a new pair of underwear and some jeans, tossing her
old clothes onto the outstretched arm of a mannequin. "Look at this crap,Lolli
. These are a-hundred-and-eighty-dollar jeans and they don't look like
anything. They're just jeans."
"They're free," saidLolli .
Val found clothes and then sat down in one of thecartoonish armchairs to
watchLolli try on more things. As she danced around with a beaded shawl on her
head, Val noticed the display next to the chair.
"See this?" Val said, holding up an avocado-colored wineglass. "How ugly is
this? I mean, who would pay for something this ugly?"
Lolligrinned and reached for a hat with pink feather fringe. "People buy what
they're told to buy. They don't know it's ugly, or maybe they do and they
think there's something wrong with thinking that."
"Then they need to be protected from themselves," Val said, and hurled the
glass at the linoleum tile. It shattered, glass shards spinning out in every
direction. "Anyone can see these things are ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly."
Lollistarted to laugh and she kept on laughing as Val broke every last one.
Walking back toWorth Street station withLolli , Val felt disoriented, unsure
of what had actually happened. As the Never ebbed from her, she felt more and
more faded, as though the fire of the enchantment had eaten away some tangible
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part of her, had harrowed her.
She remembered a store and people that ate food out of her hands, and
walking, but she couldn't quite be sure where she'd gotten what she was
wearing. She remembered a blur of faces and gifts and smiles, as hazy as the
memory of a monster in a tower before all that.
When she looked down at herself, she saw clothes she couldn't remember
picking out big black ass-kicking boots that were definitely warmer than her
sneakers, a T-shirt printed with a heraldic lion, black cargo pants with tons
of zippered pockets and a black coat that was much too big for her. It
unnerved her to think that her own clothes were just gone, left behind
somewhere. The boots pinched her feet as she walked, but she was glad of the
coat. It seemed like they'd walked far intoSoHo and, without the magic in her
body, she felt colder than ever.
As they slipped through the service entrance and down the stairs, Val saw
several people in the tunnel. The changing flicker of the candles lit up one
of their cheekbones, the curve of a jaw, the paper bag-covered bottle one was
lifting to his mouth. The girl with the swollen belly was there, wrapped up in
a blanket with another body.
"There you are," Sketchy Dave said. His voice sounded slurred and when the
candlelight caught him, she could see that his mouth had the slack look of the
very drunk. "Come sit with me,Lolli ," he said. "Come sit over here."
"No," she said, picking her way over to Luis instead. "You can't tell me what
to do."
"I'm not trying to tell you anything," he said, and now his voice was
miserable. "Don't you know I love you, baby? I would do anything for you.
Look." He held up his arm. "Lolli" was carved into the skin in sluggishly
bleeding letters. "Look what I did."
Val winced.Lolli just laughed.
Luis lit a cigarette and, for a moment, as the match struck, his whole face
was illuminated. He looked furious.
"Why don't you believe me?" Dave demanded.
"I believe you,"Lolli said, voice gone shrill. "I don'tcare . You're boring.
Maybe I would love you if you weren'tboring !"
Luis jumped to his feet, pointing his cigarette first atLolli and then at
Dave. "Just shut the fuck up, both of you." He turned and glared at Val, as
though this all was somehow her fault.
"Who are they?" Val asked, gesturing toward the couple tangled in the
blankets. "I thought nobody was supposed to be down here."
"Nobodyis supposed to be down here," he said, sitting down next to his
brother. "Not you, not me, not them."
Val rolled her eyes, but she didn't think he noticed in the candlelight.
Scooting close toLolli , she whispered, "Is he this much of a dick when I'm
not around?"
"It's complicated,"Lolli whispered back. "They used to squat here before, but
Derek got sent upstate for some shit and Tanya moved to some abandoned
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building out inQueens ."
Luis shifted closer to his brother and spoke quietly to him. Sketchy Dave got
up, hands fisted. "You get everything," he shouted at Luis, tears on his
cheeks, snot running from his nose.
"What do you want from me?" Luis demanded. "I never touched that girl. It's
not my fault you're whipped."
"I'm not a thing,"Lolli yelled at both of them, a terrible expression on her
face. "You can't talk about me like I'm a thing."
"Fuck you," Dave shouted. "I'm boring? I'm a coward? Someday you're going to
wish you didn't talk that way."
The girl in the blanket sat up, blinking rapidly. "Wha "
"Come on," Luis said, taking Dave's arm. "Let's get out of here, Dave. You're
just drunk. You need to walk it off."
Dave jerked away from his brother. "Fuck off."
Val stood up, the last lingering threads of Never making the chalky dark of
the tunnels swim. Her legs felt rubbery and the soles of her feet burned from
all the walking her body was just starting to realize it had done, but the
last thing she wanted was to get caught up in claustrophobic bullshit. "Never
mind. We're out of here."
Lollifollowed her back up the stairs.
"Why do you like him so much?" Val asked.
"I don't like him."Lolli didn't bother to ask who Val meant. "His eye is
jacked up. He's too skinny and he acts like an old man."
Val shrugged and threaded her thumb through the belt loop of her new pants,
watching her boots step on the cracks in the sidewalk, letting her silence
speak for her.
Lollisighed. "He should be begging me for it."
"He should," Val agreed.
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