“Oh!” I say. This is a relief. “Lobsters! How wonderful!”

“Yeah. Well, they’re for you. I feel like Blix . . . and Houndy . . . they woulda wanted you to have them.” He has that expression that everyone else here has when mentioning Blix and Houndy: sad yet smiling. Remembering something.

I ask him in for a cup of tea, but he says he can’t. He points to a pickup running at the curb. A woman waves to me from the passenger seat. So I thank him and take the bag of wiggling lobsters upstairs and wrestle the bag into the refrigerator and slam it shut.

I think I can hear them in there disrupting the eggs and the milk.

I text Patrick.

Refrigerator is possessed by an alarmingly active bag of sea creatures with claws and tails. A gift from Houndy’s friend. Please help!

What nature of help do you wish? Pro tip: I hear that some people like them with drawn butter and lemon.

May I . . . could we . . . I need help with all aspects of this project. Chasing, cooking, eating.

Ah, well. In the interest of being a good neighbor, I invite you to bring your sea creatures down. Also I believe Blix has some rather formidable lobster pots. We can take care of this problem.

It turns out that there are four actual living beasts in the bag when I finally get it down to Patrick’s kitchen, and they are not interested in hanging out quietly while we prepare to boil them on the stove.

Neither one of us has ever cooked a lobster before, so we call up a YouTube video on how you do it, and we drink a glass of wine to fortify ourselves while we watch it. Apparently someone has to boil water and then pick up this thing, this animal, and plunk it in the boiling water. It might make a noise when that happens.

I take a deep sip of wine. “Okay, I’ll go back upstairs and make a salad while you plunge the lobsters, and then I’ll come down when they’re done.”

He says, “I don’t want to plunge the lobsters.”

“Well, somebody has to.”

We sit there, staring at the computer monitor. There’s a crash from the kitchen, and we turn to each other.

“They’re taking over,” he whispers. “They’re going to try to put us in the boiling water.”

“We’ve got to go see.”

“Don’t let them lure you into the pot. That’s the important thing.”

We go to the kitchen in time to see all four lobsters scuttling along the floor, waving their claws at us.

“What the hell?” he says. “They’re making a run for it! The video did not talk about this part!”

“I think we’re going to have to pick them up,” I say. One’s gone behind the stove. “We have to chase them down. And by we, I hope you know I mean you.”

“Wait. Why me?”

“First of all, because it’s your apartment, and secondly, because I am a known coward, and you’re not. Also, they now look like giant cockroaches to me.”

“Okay,” he says grimly. He puts on an oven mitt and starts running around after them, while they clatter along, going in circles. He finally gets one and holds it in midair and does a mock bow. “Now what am I supposed to do with this monster?”

“Put him in the sink. Or no. He’ll get out of the sink—in the bathtub.”

It takes twenty more minutes to catch two more, and then we have to move the stove in order to capture the fourth, and by then we’re laughing so hard we can’t even stand up.

And we have a tub full of lobsters that we cannot ever imagine eating.

The night’s dinner turns out to be pizza, and the lobsters spend a luxurious day and night in Patrick’s bathtub, until Paco finally comes over and takes them away.

I don’t work at Best Buds on Friday, which is good because that means that Sammy can wait here every other Friday afternoon for his dad to pick him up for their weekend together. Jessica has to work, and besides, she’s never gotten all that good at being nice when Andrew comes to get their son.

“Do you think my dad and my mom will ever get back together again?” Sammy asks me one day. I glance at him. He has a nonchalant look on his face behind those huge round glasses, but I can hear the anxiety in his voice. He keeps tapping on the kitchen table with his pencil.

“Well, what do you think?” I ask, stalling for time.

“I think they still love each other. They’re both always asking me about the other one. My dad goes, ‘How’s your mom? Does she mention me?’ And my mom goes, ‘What did he say to you about the breakup with what’s-her-name?’”

“Hmm.”

“Blix said they still love each other. They match, is what she said.” He draws a circle on the table where a drop of milk has spilled.

“Really? She said that?” I look at him with interest. They do match, I want to tell him. They absolutely belong together. I’m gratified to hear Blix thought so, too.

“Yeah. I think she was going to do a spell or something on them, but . . . well, then she died.” He shrugs and looks away.

“Did she do a lot of spells?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Like, one time when I couldn’t find my backpack, she snapped her fingers and she said we could imagine the backpack, and then I knew where it was, but a few minutes earlier I couldn’t have ever remembered that. So that makes me think she put spells on things.”

“Really!”

“Yes, and one time the subway wouldn’t come and wouldn’t come, and Blix said she had to put a spell on it, and then it came right then. But she said it like it was kind of a joke. And the subway would have come anyway, you know.”

“True.”

“That’s why I like coming here and hanging out. Because sometimes if I close my eyes, I think Blix is still right here, too.”

He puts down his glass of milk just so on the table and turns his face to me. His eyes are wide and wise; like a lot of only children, he’s older than his years. “So do you believe in all that stuff Blix believed in?”

“Like what are you talking about? Specifically.”

He looks me over. “Oh, you know.” He waves his hand around. “How she could make stuff happen. Do spells and stuff like that.”

“I’m not so sure.”

He gives me an appraising look. “She told my mom that you were a matchmaker. So I think you could get them back together again. How are you going to know if you won’t even try?”

“I don’t know, Sammy. I mean, your mom is pretty sure she doesn’t want to have anything to do with your dad right now, so maybe we have to wait and see. Not try to change things. You know? If it’s meant to be, they’ll find their way. Right?”

He gives me a look that holds so much disgust that I almost laugh out loud.

“My childhood is practically over!” he says. “I’m in double digits already. What if they don’t get together until I’m all grown up? That would be the stupidest thing in the whole world.”

“But isn’t your dad . . . living with somebody else?”

“No! That’s the thing! My mom always liked to say that, but he wasn’t really. He had a girlfriend who would stay over sometimes, but I think she’s gone because I never see her anymore, and when I ask him about her, he gets very quiet. Says it’s nothing for me to worry about.”

He slumps down in his chair and then looks up at me from underneath his fringe of bangs. “Blix had a book of spells. You could use that and maybe you’d learn how to do a bunch of stuff. It could help you.”

“I heard she had a book, but I’ve never seen it.”

“It’s right over there,” he says. He gets up and points to a bookcase in the corner, filled with cookbooks. “This is the book she showed me when she looked up a way to make my sore throat go away.”

Sure enough, there’s a book called The Encyclopedia of Spells sitting right out there for anybody to see, a book I’d somehow never noticed. The binding of the book has a picture of a vine with red flowers. Frankly, it doesn’t look all that legitimate. I think a real book of witches’ spells would look secretive, with hieroglyphics. You wouldn’t be able to read the title from across the room.

Just then the doorbell rings, and he jumps up and grabs his backpack. “Don’t tell my dad,” he says. “And think about it. Read the book! Pleasepleasepleaseplease!”

After he leaves, I finish drinking my tea. Periodically I glance over at the book and think about getting it off the shelf and looking at it, just to see . . . you know . . .

But something holds me back. I go outside, sweep the stoop, then go get some chicken salad at Paco’s bodega for dinner, and find myself watching a lively neighborhood conversation there between the regulars about which kind of people read the New York Daily News and which ones read the New York Post, and whether you can tell the difference merely by looking at people. Paco, in the minority, maintains that you can’t, and looks to me to back up his position.

I shrug and he laughs at his mistake. “How you going to know? You’re an incomer!” he says. “Now, Blix—she would have talked all day about this.”

Everybody gets quiet. It’s as though they’re observing a moment of silence for Blix.

“She was la maga. Our magician,” Paco says softly. And he wipes his eyes.

THIRTY

MARNIE