My 26th Birthday

Last week was my birthday. While normally I wouldn’t make it into a thing, to this one friend it was a pretty big deal. I’d told Mollie just the day before in passing. We’d been talking about our parents and how I hadn’t really gotten a chance to visit since coming to the city. She’d brought up how her mom died a few years after having her when she was still pretty young; she’d have to have been around thirty. Mollie had just turned twenty-nine last month and was clearly a little wistful about the whole thing. When I told her my twenty-sixth was coming up that week she was absolutely pissed with me. She called me a “stuck up desk jockey” who was “too cool” for parties. I immediately regretted saying anything, but despite my best efforts she sought to draft me into a full long weekend’s worth of celebration.
Not a moment sooner she’d rang up a couple of her friends to introduce me to. I swear she would’ve invited an entire block if I didn’t stop her halfway through a call with one of her louder gal pals. The damage being done though, I conceded to a single evening of food and drinks. A compromise I was fairly happy with considering I could begrudgingly survive one night of nervous galavanting. I’d have felt bad letting her or anyone else spend much more on me.
Twenty-six is an odd number to me. Even I guess, if we’re talking numerically, but it just didn’t feel like a number worth celebrating. Twenty-five made sense since it was that nice clean multiple of five. Twenty might have made sense if I weren’t still holed up in Wisconsin. Twenty-one, I’d rather not think about. Twenty-six though, that’s just such an ugly number. What’s it divisible by; thirteen? Two? I don’t know about two, but thirteen might’ve been a worthwhile birthday if not for how amazingly my parents were ‘tolerating’ each other back then, even after the divorce.
Regardless, eventually the day of the party came. I was stuck not being able to find a taxi for a bit, so by the time I managed to flag one down, I knew was going to be late. I texted Mollie to let her know, and to head in without me. My palms were a bit sweaty on the old blackberry. The nerves were getting to me. After I let the driver know where I was headed, the calloused older man looked back at me through his rear view mirror and spoke in a hoarse voice. He told me there’d been a pretty nasty accident a few blocks down that had essentially blocked off an entire road and that he’d have to go around it. Part of me was relieved at the added time loss, but I did feel a little guilty for that. Opening my phone again, I sent Mollie a quick apology.
I was getting antsy some odd minutes into the ride, and decided to check my phone. Mollie and I didn’t text or call each other much, but from what experience I did have with her, I was surprised she hadn’t replied yet. She must have been entertaining her friends; leading them inside to the restaurant’s corner table, the circular one with the bulbous cushions.
Mollie had these party tricks she liked to do. What one might assume to just be parlor tricks or simple phony birthday magic where she would make a napkin or a small ball disappear. The two of us met by chance at Tony C’s Deli where she’d been showing off one of her tricks to an employee. I was wearing my gloves that day, and despite summer being in full swing rather than confusedly ask or comment on why I was wearing gloves, she complimented them; said she “digged my style”. After that we just kind of clicked. Some odd days and a pep talk later she’d gone to lay her hand on my shoulder, and in her mind I could see that she was just as cursed as me. Mollie had the ability to teleport small objects she touched. It was a little comforting to know I had someone who understood what it was like to live close to her chest, but just the same, that was a secret I would have to keep to myself. Thinking about having to explain in the first place why I knew something about her that she’d probably spent her whole life trying to hide just made me feel ill. Such is my fate.
When I finally got to the venue I found everyone waiting outside on their phones. I recognized one of them as Mollie’s friend, the Tony C’s employee she’d been harrassing that day. A few of them greeted me when I arrived, but most of them were still watching their screens expectantly like hawks. Looking around I had yet to spot Mollie among the small group. I asked if she’d gone inside already, but as I spoke I could see the disappointment in a few of their faces. It turned out Mollie had never shown up. The group had been trying to get in touch with her; some since they arrived, and others since this morning. Eventually we decided to sit down and order. A hush fell over us as we contemplated in anxiousness the whereabouts of our mutual friend. Some tried to break this silence to put up a celebratory facade for me, but ultimately our worry still lingered.
It wasn’t until the next day that I learned Mollie had been detained by the NYPD, and was to be released that afternoon. Turns out that when she uses her magic that she didn’t have any control over where those objects ended up. Apparently she’d thought that they simply vanished and were gone entirely. This came to a head when the day before my birthday she flubbed a trick within sight of a less than kind officer who had her brought in for questioning after hitting him in the eye with a stray playing card she teleported. Bad enough as that was, what’s worse was that she fit the description of another magic user they’d been after for some high value thefts, and she ended up getting detained for almost 48 hours. They questioned her about the thefts from what I heard but in the end they had to let her go since they didn’t have any real excuse to hold her for longer.
Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve joined the police instead of the private field. For situations like Mollie’s it’d make things a lot easier at least. Just a tap and I could know anything there was to know about them. I’d know if they were keeping secrets or being honest, or if they were guilty or innocent. It’d save some good people a lot of time.
Mollie apologized endlessly for missing my birthday but more than anything I was relieved to know she was ok. I haven’t had many friends in this city, but she’s someone who’s meant something to me.
Looking back I think it was my twenty-third birthday that was the most important. Sure it’s even uglier than twenty-six and much less divisible, but it’s the age I came to Brooklyn. It’s where I decided to make a change for myself, and I think that’s something I can be proud of.