The Value of Nothing

Gloria suddenly felt the urge to punish the man. For the first time in ages, she didn’t want herself to be punished, but someone else. It was a new and overwhelming sensation. Did it come from the ridiculous beauty of this angel, his youth, the ridiculous red blotch, or the three hundred euros a guy like him simply had to spare? At any rate, Anna would have found it alarming the way Gloria was tipping, not only in the game but for real, into her opposite, since her ironic detachment from her new job instantly went out the window as this desire rose in her. Yes, what had begun as a stupid game suddenly became a job in her head. Perhaps, she thought, it was more than a job, even a calling! She typed the thought, exclamation mark and all, into her phone and sent it to Anna.

The young man was getting impatient. He tapped his fingers on his exceptionally firm thighs and shot an offended look into the coffee cup, where shreds floated in the dark brown like tiny, matte-white skeletons of wild horses.

»The milk«, he said. »I think it’s…« He didn’t finish the sentence, as Gloria clearly didn’t care what he had to say. Rath-er irritably, she looked for the tarot cards on the Billy shelf, finally found them, sat down across from him, peeled the cellophane off the deck (unused, virginal), and started to shuffle. The material was so cheap and unruly that cards kept slipping to the floor and she kept picking them up again. She performed a disturbingly amateurish choreography that just kept going, prompting the young man to fur-row his beautiful – truly, extremely beautiful – and flawless forehead after several minutes.

»The milk, I mean. I believe it’s gone off«, he said, finally setting the cup down.

»Interesting«, Gloria said. »Do you often believe, sir?« Apparently, they were on formal terms now.

»Whaddaya, what do you mean by that, ma’am?«

»Well«, Gloria bent down again for a few cards that had fallen to the floor and decided that was enough shuffling. »I mean, what do you believe in?«

»Anyway, I don’t believe in any of this esoteric stuff. I’m just doing this…«

»Yeah?«

»For research«.

»Oh?«

»Mom«, he cleared his throat, »I mean my mother… she thought it might help me with my heartbreak… help me understand… I mean, my ex…«, he stammered, twirling a lock of hair around his index finger. »She got completely sucked into this esoteric bullshit. I’d like to understand, I mean, I want…«

»Ah, love!« Gloria now cried out, far too loudly, and sucked at her incisor with her tongue. The tooth wobbled and oozed pus, which she swallowed.

»Don’t I have to draw the cards first?« the young man asked when he saw the Celtic Cross Gloria had laid out on the table.

»Of course you do. I just wanted to get into it, get myself warmed up.«

She pushed the cards back into one pile. Her small mistake unsettled Gloria for a moment, and she looked past the young man toward the lamp lying on the floor, which re-minded her of a time before Xavi. It was an »Oriental« lamp, which she had bought at a flea market in a past life – not an especially beautiful piece, and certainly not a valuable one, but the only thing she had taken with her into the apartment back then. Suddenly, Gloria had to laugh. Her gestures really were humongous: hadn’t she just smashed the lamp and countless years with it, with a single sweep of the arm? The sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window struck the shards, and Gloria noticed a colorful haze rising above them.

»Maybe it’s time for a few basic rules«, she said, watching as the haze drifted across the hideous laminate flooring and glided toward her.

»The same rules apply here as in Aladdin.« Gloria took a sip of coffee; a hideously beautiful pain shot through the root of her tooth. She waited for a nod of agreement from the man sitting across from her, but no nod came, not even a sign of understanding.

»Aladdin? Walt Disney? Doesn’t ring any bells? You’re prob-ably too young for the film.«

»Probably.«

»I’ll explain it to you«, Gloria said, watching with a certain pleasure as the haze now rose from the floor behind him, crept up the chair legs, and slowly but surely wrapped itself around the young man. »First, the genie cannot bring the dead back from the realm of the dead; second, he can’t kill anyone for you. And third, he can’t make anyone fall in love with you. Which means that I don’t have the power to make your ex come back to you.«

The young man contorted his incredibly sensual mouth.

»Huh? I wasn’t assuming that.«

»But that doesn’t mean I don’t have plenty of power!« she cried, again a little too loudly.

»Can you just lay the cards out for me now?« he asked, sneezing violently as the colorful haze danced around his face. He had to sneeze again, and again, and again, oddly thumping himself on the back the whole time.

»To be honest«, he said, looking at his phone with watering eyes and noticing that seventeen minutes had already passed, »am I already being charged for this part? I mean, we haven’t even started.«

»Don’t rush me, young man! As everyone knows, once you get going with magic, there’s no stopping it.« She held out the cards and ordered him to draw seven.

»You cheated on your ex, didn’t you?« she asked as she laid his chosen cards face down. »Do you hate her now? Do you hate each other?«

»There are no evil people, just unhappy ones«, the young man said, wiping the snot on his sleeve.

Where had the boy picked up such a clever line? Gloria wondered.

»Bulgakov«, he said, as if he could hear Gloria’s thoughts.

»The Master and Margarita«. He looked around. »You’re not much of a reader, are you?«

True enough, Gloria didn’t own any books, but only because it would have been too much of a hassle to move them at the time. The boy was starting to get on her nerves.

He scratched incessantly at the base of his spine, and Gloria flipped the first card over.

»The Wheel – is that so. Eternal repetition. The true image of Christ. Do you know what that means?«

»How should I?«

»We’d crucify Christ again and again. We choose violence over love, again and again. Now ask your question.«

»I’d like to know what my ex was looking for«, he said, scratching at his tailbone.

»She probably didn’t even know herself. Many women are used to wandering around inside other people’s heads. When they’re supposed to know what they themselves think, they can’t find their own heads anymore«.

»Is that your opinion or are you seeing it in the cards?«

»Does it make any difference?«

»Sometimes I feel like everyone except me sees clearly«, the young man said. The colored haze had formed a sort of aura around his body. He writhed in his chair like an animal in labor and reached with both hands for his back, then his butt, then his back again. He sneezed several times more until he was completely enveloped in the haze and disappeared from view entirely.

»Yes, it’s lonely in the fog«, Gloria said. A kind of happiness shuddered through her. How was she supposed to explain her transformation into a real magician to Anna? She picked up her phone to take a photo, but the moment she tapped the screen, the cloud of haze collapsed in on itself, vanishing without a trace and releasing the young man. Gloria looked down at his feet. Hooves? No, New Balances. But next to his feet lay the tip of a horse’s tail, growing out of the boy’s previously flawless tailbone. The boy jumped up from the chair and spun in frantic circles, as if trying to get hold of his newly acquired horsehair.

He gasped and cried, »I demand to be restored to my previous form! I demand the immediate restoration of my normal appearance!«

His wish was understandable, but as the rush of her power ebbed away, Gloria felt that emptiness, a nothingness that left her with very little interest in anyone else’s wishes. She got up, took the broom out of the cupboard, swept up the shards, and walked to the window: a gentle breeze, the plink-ing of a piano, a Sunday like every other shitty Sunday alone.

»Hey, you!« she called across the room to the young man who was still chasing himself. »No matter how far you keep falling, it’s always funny in the end, so very funny!« She slipped out of her Timberlands and felt as light as a feather. She spat her incisor onto the floor, clamped the broom be-tween her thighs, and flew out the window, laughing.