Reply Hazy, Try Again
“I never find anything at the flea,” I complained to Maggie as we circumnavigated a couple attempting to get that perfect Instagram shot with the Manhattan Bridge in the background. A crowd had formed on the street, young and trendy, some holding accessories like flowers or balloons, some in fashionable hats. I wondered if they were all waiting their turn for that aspirational snap. I hoped not.
“You have to really dig,” Maggie said. “And you have to go regularly. It’s like prospecting.”
“Okay, Yosemite Sam.” I laughed. “ ‘Prospecting.’ Done a lot of prospecting?”
“Yes, can’t you tell? I’m pure gold, baby,” she said, spinning around and lowering her oversized sunglasses to give me a wink.
Maggie was very glamorous. She had impeccable style; her closet was full of vintage finds. It helped that everything looked good on her. Some people are lucky like that.
Not me.
We got to where the vendors were set up under the bridge and started browsing. Maggie was an intense browser. She liked to stop and examine everything. She was easily compelled. I once made the mistake of going to MoMA with her, and we were there for seven hours. I wasn’t a lingerer. It took a lot to catch my interest and a hell of a lot to keep it.
We spent a while thumbing through timeworn postcards and subway maps, observing antique furniture. Then we wandered toward the bins of old action figures and plastic soldiers and displaced Happy Meal toys and limbless baby dolls, all interspersed with matchbooks and baseball cards and buttons and marbles.
It was crap, basically. Just a bunch of crap being sold at a Brooklyn premium.
“Who buys this stuff?” I whispered to Maggie, who was admiring a mustached McNugget in a cowboy hat.
“There’s a nostalgia factor,” she said. An indirect answer.
I sighed.
“It’s good to have things around that bring you joy,” she said, and it was as she said this that I spotted the Magic 8 Ball tucked away in a random bin, wedged between a View-Master and a filthy Cabbage Patch Kid.
I reached for it before I understood what I was doing, before I could question what kind of germs occupied its surface. I held it in my hands, turned it around. I couldn’t tell how old it was, if it’d been swiped from a Target discount shelf last month or discovered in some grandfather’s basement, a precious relic from a childhood long ago.
I gave it a good shake, then read what it had to say, its first words to me.
“Oh, cool!” Maggie said. “I always wanted one of those. You should get it.”
I wasn’t a frivolous spender, but for some reason the 8 Ball seemed like a necessity.
“Yeah,” I said. “I should.”
When I brought it to the vendor, a man in a backward cap and oversized flannel, he furrowed his brow. “Where’d you find that?”
“That bin. Over there,” I said, pointing.
He shrugged, then looked me up and down and said, “Twenty bucks.”
It seemed steep, and I almost put it back. But there was something about the weight of it in my hand, how it fit so perfectly in my palm, the way my fingers curled around it, an easy grip. I wanted it, and right as I had this thought, right as the want took root, I looked down at the 8 Ball and now it said, YES—DEFINITELY.
I thought it a funny coincidence.
“Fifteen,” I told the vendor.
“Okay,” he said, nodding.
I’d never haggled before. It was exhilarating.
“Look at you,” Maggie said, “Miss I Never Find Anything at the Flea.”
I cradled the 8 Ball in my hands. I knew it was illogical to have spent fifteen dollars on something I could have gotten for half that from Amazon, and I typically felt immediate guilt after any impulse purchase, even something as small as gum at the register. I waited for the buyer’s remorse to set in, surprised it hadn’t already. “Well, I guess this is the exception.”
“See, Jordy? When you loosen up and are open to things, you find them, and they find you.”
I laughed, charmed by Maggie’s faith. “Sure, if you say so. And you know you’re the only one who can get away with calling me that.”
“Come on, Jordan. Let’s keep looking. See what treasure awaits.”
As we walked, I glanced down at the 8 Ball.
OUTLOOK GOOD, it said.
• • •
Later, Maggie and I sat in Brooklyn Bridge Park, eating sesame bagels with too much cream cheese and drinking iced coffee, savoring our patch of grass and the view of downtown Manhattan. Maggie admired the cameo brooch she had bought at the flea. I took the 8 Ball out of my bag.
YES, it said.
“That will be useful,” Maggie said. “You tend to be indecisive.”
“Me? No, never,” I said. I shook the 8 Ball, which now read, AS I SEE IT, YES.
I put it back in my bag.
“You should ask it if Kenny is going to propose.”
“Mm,” I said, suddenly queasy.
“Apologies,” Maggie said, pulling at her collar. “I was just thinking of silly sleepover questions. Does he like me? Is he going to ask me out? Considering you’re already past that, well . . .”
I shoved some bagel in my mouth as an excuse not to respond.
“Let’s ask it something better,” Maggie said, sitting up on her knees. “Why don’t we ask it if we’ll be friends forever?”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really!” she said. “Please. Let’s have a little fun.”
“All right.” I fished out the 8 Ball and asked, “Will Maggie and I be friends forever?”
I closed my eyes and shook.
I opened my eyes. When I saw what it said, I gasped.
“What?” Maggie leaned over to see. She read it out loud. “ ‘Better not tell you now.’ Hmm. How mysterious.”
“It’s a toy,” I said, slipping it into my bag and then zipping the bag shut.
“Yes,” Maggie said. “Still . . .”
“Still what?”
She shook her head and then tilted her gaze up, up toward the high noon sun. She was like a sunflower, always seeking the light. She had her summer freckles, abundant across her nose and the tops of her shoulders.
“It’s such a beautiful day,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Beautiful.”
• • •
Kenny was in the kitchen, making gnocchi. Making a mess.
“Hey,” he said. “How was the flea?”
“You know—the flea,” I said, searching the fridge for a seltzer.
“Get anything?”
“No.” The lie made a hasty escape. It caught me off guard.
“Oh, well,” he said. “Did Maggie?”
“Yeah. She always does. She got a brooch.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“A decorative pin,” I said. It was what my mother would have called a comma-dumbass sentence. When I was a teenager, I developed a problem with my delivery, my tone. My condescension was out of control. My mother would say, “If it sounds like there’s an implied ‘comma dumbass’ at the end of the sentence, try again.”
I opened my mouth, ready to apologize to Kenny for how I’d spoken to him, but part of me resented having to take responsibility for his obliviousness. I changed my mind.
“Ah,” he said, unaffected. “Like grandmas wear.”
“Exactly.”
“Cool,” he said. “Dinner will probably be around seven.”
“All right. I’m going to go for a run.”
He gave a murmur of acknowledgment and returned his concentration to the gnocchi/mess.
I went into the bedroom and changed out of my sundress and into my running gear. I pulled my hair back. I stretched. I thought about the 8 Ball, where I could put it that Kenny wouldn’t find it. I didn’t understand why I was so averse to him discovering it, to him touching it, but the idea made me itchy. I thought he might disturb its energy, which I knew was ridiculous. It was unlike me to indulge in such ridiculousness.
Still . . .
I took out the 8 Ball and asked it, “Am I being an idiot?”
CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN, it said.
I huffed. I closed my eyes and gave it some thought. “Is it silly that I don’t want Kenny to know about you? That I don’t want him to touch you with his gnocchi fingers?”
MY REPLY IS NO, it said.
“Is that more about me or more about Kenny?” As soon as I asked, I knew it was too complex a question for an 8 Ball. ...
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