All the Birds in the Sky

A LEXUS PULLED up in front of Patricia’s apartment building just as she was getting her house keys out of her purse. It was three in the morning, and somehow Kawashima had known the exact moment that Patricia would get home. As usual, he wore a bespoke dark suit, with a thin black tie and a bright red pressed handkerchief providing one splash of color, even on this hot night. He got out of the car and gave Patricia a cheery smile, like he was pleased they’d happened to run into each other. Kawashima was one of the most powerful magicians Patricia knew, but everyone who met him thought he was a hedge-fund manager. His black hair was short except for one perfect swoosh, and he had the kind of boyish good looks that made people want to trust him even when he was scamming them out of millions.

“I didn’t tell him,” Patricia said without bothering to say hi first. “He already knew. He’s known since middle school.”

Kawashima nodded. “Sure. But still, talking to civilians about the things we do, and how we do them…” He leaned against the car and looked at his unscuffed shoes. Then he looked up at Patricia again, taking her measure. “What if we told you to kill him?”

“I’d say the same thing I said to that guy ten years ago,” Patricia responded without hesitation. “I’d say no. Actually, I’d say ‘fuck you,’ followed by ‘no.’”

“We figured.” Kawashima laughed and clapped his hands a couple times. “And of course, we would never ask you to do that. Not unless it was absolutely necessary. But we want to meet him. If you trust him, then we trust him, too. But we’d like to meet him for ourselves.”

“Okay,” Patricia said. “We only had one short conversation. But sure, I’ll try.”

“That’s actually not why I came to see you,” Kawashima said. “Although thanks for bringing it up.” He held up a tablet computer, like a Caddy but less fancy, and showed her a map of San Francisco with some places marked with little dots. The North Beach café with the poet-stabbing, the Hayes Valley assault, the junkie, a few other odds and ends. And the party in Twin Peaks. “You were busy tonight.”

“Nobody saw anything.” Patricia was burning up. “I was careful.”

“This is what you do every night lately. You go out and throw your weight around, for hours. It’s great that you want to alleviate suffering, it’s praiseworthy, but the world is a balance. Much like nature itself. And you have to be careful you don’t cause more suffering than you prevent,” Kawashima said. “We don’t want you to burn out. Or get carried away. Just remember, Aggrandizement comes in many forms.”

Patricia wanted to protest — she was being surgical here, she had trained a decade for this — but there was no point. She should be glad she was having this conversation with Kawashima instead of Ernesto.

“You, of all people, should understand the need for great care,” Kawashima said, because of course he was going to bring that incident up. It would follow her around for the rest of her life. No matter how much she did to atone.

“Okay,” Patricia said. “I’ll be more careful.” She left it vague on purpose.

“Good enough,” Kawashima said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an early-morning brunch date with five Abercrombie models tomorrow.” He saluted and got into his Lexus, which glided down the hill toward Dolores Park. Patricia watched it shrink into the night and marveled at the internal contradiction of telling someone that the most powerful magicians in town are watching her every move, but she shouldn’t get a swelled head. But she was too exhausted to dwell on that, and all of the day’s minor miracles were catching up with her at once. She slipped inside the apartment, where her roommates had fallen asleep watching TV again. She tucked them in.

17

LAURENCE FIRST MET his girlfriend, Serafina, at a robot fashion show, with robots modeling human clothing and human models wearing robot fashions, like mechanical lingerie. The event happened at a garagey artspace somewhere south of South of Market, with a gunmetal trough full of artisanal vodka. Laurence had come this close to mistaking Serafina for one of the models — her cheekbones and oval face, her lustrous skin and shiny red/black hair were that amazing — but he’d realized just in time that she was one of the robot makers instead. Serafina’s “model” was a steel sylph, with ball-and-socket joints that let it strike a pose, pivot, talk with its delicate hands. Laurence had helped to build battle bots in college, but never artificial supermodels, and he’d managed to say something witty enough about the difference between the two that Serafina had friended him on MeeYu.