www.headofzeus.com
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At twenty-seven, Natalie Webb is already a has-been. A card-trick prodigy, she performed on the world magic circuit at eighteen but a liaison with an older performer ended disastrously after he stole her act and blackened her name. With her career over, she now lives alone with her pigeons and a pile of overdue bills in a New Jersey apartment.
To make ends meet, she agrees to write a magazine article on the art of cheating at cards. While researching in Atlantic City, she meets Ellen – a beguiling card cheat with a dazzling sleight of hand – and Natalie soon finds herself facing a dangerous proposal.
Ellen has targeted a group of gamblers called the Midnight Riders – a hedge fund manager, a car dealer mogul and a senatorial candidate – who play an annual high-dollar poker game. Ellen proposes that they combine their skills to pull off the greatest illusion of all and walk away with $1.5 million.
But the rules of the game are about to change...
Welcome Page
About Bluff
Dedication
Epigraph
Part 1
Chapter A
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part 2
Chapter A
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter J
Chapter Q
Chapter K
Part 3
Chapter A
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Acknowledgments
About Michael Kardos
Also by Michael Kardos
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
for Katie
Trust everybody, but always cut the cards.
—American proverb
It started with that most basic of requests: Pick a card.
Though really it started before that, when I asked the woman at the nearest table, “Give me a hand, will you, please?”
She looked a little like me—long brown hair, narrow face, younger than most of the women in the room. Maybe that’s why I’d approached her. Also because she’d seemed engrossed in the show. But when I spoke to her, she threw her hands up as if to prove she wasn’t carrying a weapon.
“Oh... not me,” she said. “I couldn’t.”
“Of course you can,” I said. “You’ll do great!” Usually, that was all it took—a little prodding, followed by some scattered, encouraging applause from the audience.
“No, no,” she said. “I’m way too wasted.”
I scanned the room for another woman to help out. (Women, I’d learned over the years, were better volunteers—they generally followed directions and didn’t try to show off.) But I was too slow. A man at the same table was already springing up from his chair, saying, “I’ll do it!”
Had my wits been more about me, his overeagerness would have put me on alert. But halfway through the show at this point, I just wanted to be done and go home. Close the door on what had been a trying day. Besides, the weather was only getting worse, and my car was half hopeless even on clear roads.
So I said, “Sure, come on up.”
Immediately, people across the ballroom started in with Oooh and Oh, damn and the anxious laughter that told me now I had a problem.
Corporate shows around the holidays were usually plum gigs—good pay, good food, good spirit. And tonight’s event, a holiday party for Great Nation Physical Therapy, in the Hyatt in downtown Newark, had seemed especially promising when I booked it. Who needed to be entertained more than a roomful of medical professionals during the holidays, glad to be away from illness and injury for a night?
But when I arrived, I learned that the party being thrown by the physical therapists wasn’t for them. Rather, the purpose was to wine and dine the hundred or so personal injury attorneys who held the key to an endless supply of injured people in need of rehabilitation. Door prizes included a home theater system and a vacation in Aruba.
My volunteer followed me to the front of the room and stood teetering a little. Definitely dined and wined. But I was determined to push through the routine. It was the finale of the card portion of the show. Then on to the linking rings. I asked my volunteer his name.
“I’m Lou!” he said, beaming. I could picture his face, those white teeth, grinning at me from a highway billboard beneath an aggressive font. SOMEONE MUST PAY FOR YOUR INJURIES!
Within the hour, I’d learn that Lou Husk, though not yet thirty-five, was already a legend among his peers in the room—extreme climber, extreme skier, extremely not someone you want opposing you in court. But right then, standing beside him in the Grand Ballroom, I knew him only as the man who would help my show along, usher me a few minutes closer to collecting my check and going home.
I put on a smile and gave him a warm, two-handed so-glad-to-meet-you handshake. When I went to let go, he surprised me by raising my hand to his lips and kissing it.
Then he licked my knuckles.
It threw me. This wasn’t some bachelor party or frat gig. And even then. In a decade of supporting myself as a working magician, I had been patted, grabbed, groped, and kissed. Even punched once... but never licked.
No one else seemed to notice. I wiped my hand on my pants and reminded myself that on my feet were a new pair of four-inch leopard print stilettos that replaced the red leather heels I’d lovingly worn into the ground. The rest of my outfit was less flashy: pencil pants, white tuxedo shirt left open at the collar, well-tailored black jacket. But even simple clothes cost money, and tonight’s show paid for a new pair of shoes and half a month’s rent.
I took a breath and got the deck of cards from the table behind me. Shuffled them a few times, fanned them out.
“Pick a card, Lou,” I said, predicting he would select the very top or bottom card on the off chance it would mess me up.
He chose the top card.
Not that it mattered. In fact, the trick itself was the epitome of simple: card selected, shown to the audience, returned to the deck, vanished from the deck. (In that regard, I’ll admit it was a lazy trick. Five years ago, I would’ve been more artful with the setup, if only for my own entertainment.) But this trick was all about the reveal. I went over to my duffel bag of gear and removed a circular target made of Styrofoam, eight inches in diameter. Handed it to Lou and told him to hold the target high above his head with both hands.
I asked him to choose a number between twenty and forty.
“One hundred,” he said.
This was why I preferred women volunteers. They did what I asked them to do. They understood that if they played along for a while, they might just get to see something amazing.
“You’re gonna ruin the fun here, Lou,” I said.
“Okay, fine,” he said begrudgingly. “Twenty.”
I removed a tape measure from my pocket and unspooled it until it measured twenty feet. Returned the tape measure to my pocket.
“Keep the target up high,” I said. “Both hands. That’s right.” Then I asked him for another number between ten and twenty.
He watched me a moment. “Twenty.”
I counted off cards from the deck, letting each card float to the floor. I dropped the rest of the deck. Now I was holding only the twentieth card. Slowly, I turned over the card and showed it to Lou and the audience, not looking at it myself, making a big deal out of saying, “Is this your card?”
“We both know you didn’t really mess up,” he said.
Right, I thought. It’s called playing along. It’s called a performance.
“You’re saying it isn’t your card?” I asked.
“I’m saying you already know it isn’t.”
In a moment, I was supposed to whip the card into the center of the target above his head. The card would travel fast enough to lodge in the Styrofoam, at which point my volunteer would pluck it out and show everyone that it had transformed into the selected card.
“Just hold very still, please,” I said.
Lou grinned and jerked the target a full foot to the left.
“And... that would be the opposite of holding still,” I said, trying to keep things light, though I felt dampness in my armpits and along the backs of my knees.
He centered the target again.
“Much better,” I said.
He jerked it to the right.
The eight-inch target was an effective stage prop, but I could’ve hit a target half the size from twice the distance... provided that my volunteer stopped fucking moving it.
“Stillness, Lou,” I said, struggling to remain calm. “Stillness is everything.”
“You must be a real delight in the sack,” he said.
A collective intake of breath from the room. They were amused, though, not aghast. This was classic Lou! They were witnessing the story they would tell tomorrow. I understood the impulse to want a story, to claim it. Still, I didn’t want this diversion to be all they walked away remembering.
“Too bad you’ll never know,” I stage-whispered. Banter, I reminded myself. That’s all this was. “Now just tell me your card,” I said.
That was all Lou had to do. Then I would reconfirm that the lone card in my hand wasn’t his. Then I would hurl it at the Styrofoam target and the magic would happen and we could all move on.
“Ace of spades,” he said.
A lie. He had selected the three of diamonds. I knew because I had forced it on him at the start of the trick.
The audience tittered uncomfortably. They’d seen the card just after he selected it. They knew he was lying to me—they knew it wasn’t banter, that he was genuinely trying to ruin my trick—but they were keeping his secret, either because I was the stranger in the room or because he’d beaten enough of them in court and they were relieved, now, not to be his adversary.
“How about you try again,” I told him.
My voice must have lost any last trace of amusement, because he said, “What? What did I do?” If his two hands hadn’t been holding the target over his head, one of them would have covered his heart.
I sighed. “Just try again. What was your card?”
“Okay. How about...” More grinning. “The ace of spades?”
I knew it was my fault for letting it get this far. It was something an amateur would do, getting into it with a volunteer who wanted exactly this—to show off, to perform a little impromptu theater for the audience.
But I was off my game, and had been since before the show even began. It had started with the email I received that afternoon: You were not selected to perform at this year’s World of Magic convention in New York City. Rejection is a part of life, I knew that, but as a former grand prize winner in their international close-up magic competition I had counted on being given a show. More important, it was part of the plan—hell, it was the plan—to begin rejoining the wider community of magicians after almost a decade of going it alone. Swallow my pride, let bygones be bygones, and get back in the game, was my thinking. So the rejection had cut especially deep.
And right on the heels of that, I had to drive to Newark on icy roads to perform. Of course, that’s what a professional does: performs. The show must go on and all that. (In fact, I was hoping this holiday party might lift my spirits.) Except, just as I’d finished setting up and was about to switch on my lapel mic, the overeager kitchen staff had burst into the ballroom with their buffet carts nearly an hour ahead of schedule. Once the first few lawyers stood and started serving themselves, the stampede was inevitable.
So I waited, pretending to be interested in my phone but becoming increasingly irritated, minute by minute, as the sleet fell and the roads froze over. Meanwhile, the attorneys made trip after trip to the raw bar, the carving station, the sushi station. I kept glancing at all that expensive food and thinking, These aren’t even the top lawyers! I could tell from their suits, the way none of them hung right. Jackets too tight in the shoulders, too long in the cuff. Trousers with front pockets so loose I could’ve had my pick for the stolen cell phone routine I performed only when I was certain I could get away with a clean grab.
“Actually, your card wasn’t the ace of spades,” I said to Lou. “If you’ll remember all the way back to two minutes ago, it was the three of diamonds.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you accusing me of lying?” Mock outrage, a performance—unless I had screwed up my force at the beginning of the trick. (I hadn’t.)
“Either you’re lying,” I said, “or your eyes aren’t so good.”
“My eyes are perfect, honey,” he said. “I think it’s your magic act that’s on life support.”
And that, ladies and gents, is what did it. I suppose his words hit so hard because they happened to be true. What had once, long ago, been infinite potential was now, yes, on life support. But that didn’t mean I was ready for that kind of appraisal. Especially today. Especially during the act. And worst of all was hearing it from a pickled show-stealer who had read me so easily I might as well have been blinking neon.
What I’m saying is, his jab caught me at the worst possible moment. I was desperate to be done with this trick, this show, this whole day of frustration and disappointment and self-doubt, and I felt all of it harden at that exact instant into a white-hot hunk of fury.
What I’m saying is, I let the card fly.
Once, I was clocked throwing a playing card at 72 miles per hour. No, that won’t get me into the Guinness Book. Still, a card flying 72 mph travels twenty feet in a fifth of a second, which isn’t enough time for a volunteer to react. No time to move out of the way, or even to flinch.
So it seemed like no time at all, when really it was one-fifth of a second later, that Lou Husk dropped the target, covered his left eye with his hands, and began to howl.
What happened next happened quickly and is a bit hazy in my memory. Someone ran to the stage, then a few someones. Lou Husk’s friends, or rivals, or whatever they were, started pooling their extensive knowledge of the city’s urgent care clinics. Soon they were leaving the ballroom with the patient (who was still groaning, his palm shoved against his eye).
With my thinking pretty much limited to holy shit, holy shit, I hurriedly packed my gear with trembly hands. I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible and was doing my best to avoid looking at anyone (well aware that everyone was peering at me) when a representative from Great Nation Physical Therapy approached. She stopped several feet away from me as if I were feral and might decide to attack her, too. Not that I blamed her.
“You were scheduled for an hour,” she said, “but you performed for less than thirty minutes and injured a guest.”
I knew this already—I’d been there—and didn’t know what to say. Anyway, I couldn’t have said much. My mouth was dry and I felt shaky all over.
Did I just blind a man? Was I about to get arrested?
“We’re going to have to hold on to your payment,” she said.
“Of course,” I told her. “I’m so sorry...” But she was already walking away again.
I carried my bag and fold-up table into the elevator. As the doors were shutting, a lawyer’s thick arm shot forward, causing them to fly open again. The man stepped into the elevator and flashed a close-mouthed smile as we waited for the doors to shut.
My face must have revealed my terror, because he said, “Relax. I’m not in a suing mood.”
We descended to the lobby, and when the doors opened again I started to hurry away. Before I could get anywhere he blurted out, “His nickname is Lucifer.”
I stopped. “Excuse me?”
“Lou? He’s not a well-liked individual. I thought you should know that.”
The lawyer beside me had an ill-fitting suit, jowly cheeks, and a glistening forehead. He certainly had the look down.
“What does that possibly matter?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t. Are you looking for legal representation, Natalie?”
“I have to get out of here.”
But it was a bluff, and he called me on it.
“In the middle of an ice storm? No, I don’t advise that.” And that was without him knowing about my bald tires and screeching brakes. “Come on,” he said, taking the handle of my fold-up table from me. “Let’s step into my office.” He scanned the lobby. “Just as soon as I can find one.”
The lobby bar was bright and close to the elevators, not crowded but moderately bustling, people coming and going. But across the large lobby, in a dimly lit corner, was a much smaller spillover bar, just long enough to accommodate four bar stools. The area was closed, roped off. It was as good a place as any to hide and wait.
So that’s where we sat, folded table and bag of gear beside me, while the ice continued to fall over Newark.
“I just want to say,” he began, “that what you do with those cards...” He whistled. “Not the throwing. The other stuff. Like where the queens all ended up together? It’s truly amazing.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this,” I said.
“What? You’re a hell of a magician, Natalie. That’s all I’m saying. It’s a compliment.”
“I just blinded a man!”
“Maybe you blinded a man. It was a playing card, not a knife.”
“I can pierce the rind of a watermelon with a playing card.”
He winced. “Well, then, all the more important you and I are talking.” He offered me a meaty hand with black hairs sprouting out from the tops of his fingers. “Brock McKnight.” I was relieved when his handshake didn’t crush my bones.
We were by a window, and I could see across the road to another hotel where outside, beneath the overhang, a doorman stood alone and hugged himself for warmth. I shivered. “I feel sick,” I said. It was true. Long ago I had decided that nothing was worse, nothing less forgivable, than to be the cause of someone else’s physical harm. In all the years since, I had subscribed to very few creeds, but always that. “I didn’t really mean to hurt him.”
I was relieved that the words tasted mostly true.
“Of course you didn’t,” Brock said. “Why would you want to sabotage your career?”
Yes, exactly, I thought. An eye is very small. My aim was good, but was it that good? I didn’t remember taking aim. I had been irate and embarrassed, true, but the throw had felt automatic. Like with classical pianists, how the fingers do the thinking, not the brain. Otherwise, they could never do those lightning-fast runs up and down the keys.
But even if my hand had gone rogue, doing what my mind wouldn’t have allowed it to do, did that make it any better? My hand was still part of me, wasn’t it? That snapping wrist, those quick fingers, were mine.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked.
“It depends,” Brock said. “Do you carry liability insurance?” When I didn’t answer right away, he sighed and began to relate highlights from The Legend of Lou Husk. The man with a plan. And that plan was evidently to make his adversaries wish they had never heard the name Lou Husk.
“If he goes to the police,” Brock said, “it’s conceivable the prosecutor could charge you with aggravated assault. But maybe not in Newark, where actual crimes are being committed and taking up police time. You’d probably be looking at misdemeanor endangerment.”
“Which means?”
“The fine caps at a thousand dollars and a year in prison.”
That word, “prison,” echoed like profanity in a language I could barely identify. “For a playing card?”
“You said yourself it cuts watermelons.”
“I guess a thousand dollars could be worse,” I said.
“Oh, don’t worry—it will be, since he’ll almost certainly file a civil lawsuit, too. That’s where the real money is. But that’s a ways down the road.” My eyes welling up didn’t seem to faze Brock at all. He didn’t bother to look out the window or pick imaginary fuzz off his suit in order to give me a moment to collect myself. He must have been used to people hitting rock bottom in his presence. “I’d like to be your lawyer, Natalie,” he said.
“I can’t afford one,” I said, wiping my eyes with shaky hands.
“And now I’m supposed to say, ‘There’s no way you can’t afford one.’ And it’s true. If he ends up blind in one eye...” He didn’t need to finish. “Instead, I’ll tell you I’m really good, and I work on a sliding scale.”
But just how far would it slide? I dropped my head into my hands. “Why the hell would I let him get to me like that?” I muttered.
Over the years I’d faced some nasty characters, been in actual threatening situations. Yet I’d always kept my composure.
“Yeah, but lawyers,” Brock said. “We’re professional assholes. We have it all down to a science.” He didn’t totally mask his pride in saying so. “Look, I can tell you need a drink. What’s your poison?”
If I knew my poison I’d be able to avoid it. And anyway, the bar where we were sitting was closed. I looked out the window again. It was only November. God knew what December would bring. “I can’t believe I have to drive home in this.”
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Too far away for a cab,” I said.
“And you’re telling me there’s no hotel rider in your contract?”
“I have birds,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Doves. To feed. They need food and fresh water.”
“She has birds.” The lawyer shook his head and pried himself off the bar stool. “Come on, what’s your drink? I’ll get it from the other bar.”
Outside, the ice was falling harder. “Just get me something I can’t afford.”
“That’s just what I’ll do”—he held a finger in the air as if testing the wind—“the moment I’m done taking a leak.”
Alone with nothing but a promise. My stomach growled, and I saw my refrigerator at home—plenty of condiments, little to put them on—and wondered who exactly I had been spiting earlier by refusing to invite myself to the buffet. Maybe a stomach full of peel-and-eat shrimp would have made me more patient with my volunteer.
I checked my phone. No missed calls. I’d been hoping to hear from my mother today. As I was returning the phone to the side pocket of the duffel bag, Brock came back empty-handed. “I didn’t feel like waiting,” he said. But rather than sit down again, he went behind our private, closed-down bar and knelt down until only the top of his head was bobbing around.
“And... bingo.” He stood up again. “I’m very surprised they have this.” He came back around carrying a bottle and two rocks glasses. “This is like two hundred a bottle.” He poured us each a generous drink. “No way should they be letting us do this.” He shook his head. “It’s a shame what America’s become.” Then he said, “To my newest client,” and we drank, and the Scotch felt nourishing going down my throat.
Brock laid a reassuring or maybe possessive hand on my arm. “I think it’s vitally important,” he said, “that I pour us refills. This Scotch sat alone in a barrel for twenty years just so you and I could drink it and cement our new relationship.”
It was the most sense anyone had made all night. He poured, and we drank.
“So now that I’m your lawyer,” he said, “I would like to give you a piece of advice. May I do that?”
The Scotch had steadied me a little. I was now a woman with a lawyer who gave her advice. “Sure,” I said.
“You should be working with larger objects,” he said.
“Huh?”
“I mean cards? Coins? Who can see any of that from across a conference room?”
The ubiquitous criticism of the close-up magician. Brock McKnight might have been unique among the lawyers—he alone had followed me, the perpetrator, into the elevator. Still, he was a typical layperson, and despite myself I felt my hackles rise. “It’s called sleight of hand,” I said. “It’s what I do.”
“Still...” He finished his drink. “You do bigger stuff, it might go over better.”
The ice storm was keeping me here. My lawyer’s critique of my show was repelling me to the car. The Scotch was keeping me here. Two against one. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing,” I said. “I’m a professional performer.”
When he laughed, I assumed it was because I had hardly demonstrated my professionalism tonight. But that wasn’t it. “Darling,” he said, “everybody in that ballroom is a professional performer. We’re litigators!” He shifted in his bar stool and got his wallet from his pants pocket. The business card he offered me was curved to the shape of his ass, like a little canoe on the river You’re Fucked.
“Come by my office tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “By then I’ll have something on our pal Lou and we’ll get the paperwork squared away.” He saw me looking at the card. “Sliding scale,” he said, “I promise,” and I took it. Then, almost as if it were an afterthought: “By the way, that trick with the queens? I mean, I’ve seen a lot of card tricks in my day, but with you it’s like another thing entirely. So come on—how’d you do it?”
The Four Queens is very straightforward to watch. I show the queens and lay them on the table, facedown, in a square. Then I lay three additional cards on top of each of the queens, so there are four stacks of four cards. One by one, the queens migrate to a single stack.
How did I do it? I did it by studying with a magician named Jack Clarion. I did it by learning the palms and passes and false shuffles in dozens of books on card manipulation, slowly, over many years and thousands of hours. I did it by developing my own routines with original patter to counterpoint the physical technique, until the moves were so undetectable you’d be fooled from a foot away, and until the routine was so well rehearsed that you could smash a lamp over my head and it wouldn’t affect my timing.
“Sorry,” I said. “It would violate the magician’s oath.”
Brock burst out laughing. “Are you for real?” He made himself stop laughing. “It’s not like you’re giving up the launch codes.”
“Sorry,” I said.
He reached into his wallet again and removed a bill. A hundred dollars. “I assume the physical therapists are withholding payment?”
“I’m not gonna take your money,” I said.
“What, you don’t take tips?”
I was immediately ready with my crude response, the result of too many bachelor parties—
Honey, I take the whole thing.
—but it was late, and I was exhausted and worried and had no taste for posturing.
“Yeah, I take tips,” I said.
“Well then?” He waited until my fingertips were touching the bill. “By the way, how’d you do that trick with the four queens?”
I let go of the bill.
“A hundred isn’t enough?”
“It’s not that.”
“The oath?” he asked, eyebrow cocked.
“The oath.”
It wasn’t the oath. In truth, I didn’t especially care anymore about a couple of sentences uttered a million years ago in front of a handful of middle-aged men. But I did care about the shred of dignity I might still have at the end of the night. Then again, wasn’t paying my heating bill dignified?
As if reading my mind, Brock set the bill on the bar. “Take it,” he said.
I was about to stuff the hundred dollars into my pants pocket when instead I held it up in front of him. Slowly, I tore the bill in half, then in half again. I crushed the four pieces into a small wad, tighter and tighter, until there was nothing at all left between my fingertips. I showed the lawyer my empty hands, front and back.
My hands were still shaking a little, something that would persist for the next eleven days (until in a cold, windswept parking lot they would suddenly become still again). I took a drink as a bit of misdirection.
“You know, it’s a shame,” Brock said, “a woman with your talents stuck performing for people like us.”
“It’s an honest living,” I said lamely.
“Maybe that’s your problem,” he said.
“What is?”
“I know a guy. Another magician of a sort. He does very well playing poker against people like me. I’m talking world-class.”
“If he told you he’s a card cheat, then he isn’t world-class.”
“I said guys like me. I’m his lawyer. There’s confidentiality between us.”
“You obviously consider it a sacred trust.”
“Natalie, I’m trying to help you,” he said. “You could earn real money if you’re even half as good as my guy.”
I looked him in the eye and said, “Webbs aren’t criminals.”
I had meant it, but my words sounded even to me like Scotch-influenced melodrama. And then there was the matter of the playing card I’d thrown, and how the question of whether or not I was a criminal was very much up in the air.
“Duly noted,” Brock said, and slid off his bar stool again. “Come by tomorrow. Two o’clock?”
“All right,” I said.
He shook my hand again. “You be careful getting home to those birds. I’m going upstairs to see if the zoo animals left me any petit fours. I’m a big fan of those.”
He returned to his brethren, leaving me alone at the closed-down bar by the window. Outside, a steady rain had begun to fall, washing away the ice. I chose to attribute this to my attorney’s vast influence.
I braved the slow, white-knuckle drive south on Route 9, a cavalcade of trucks and SUVs whipping past me in the left lane, splashing a blinding slurry of ice and mud onto my windshield. I was intensely aware of statistics: how on this road, this night, someone was ending up in the back of an ambulance.
The terrifying conditions kept me focused on the road, yet halfway home I remembered that Lou Husk’s wristwatch was still in my pocket. At the end of the trick, once the card had been transformed into the three of diamonds and the audience had finished applauding, I was supposed to say, “I have a prize for you, for being such a good volunteer.” I would then give him back his watch, which I had stolen from his wrist while shaking hands at the beginning of the trick. If my volunteer happened to be wearing a watch, and it was a kind I could pinch—Lou’s had been easy, the band made of spring segments—then producing it at the end of the trick made for a fine, surprising coda.
I rolled down my window and tossed out the watch.
By the time I parked along the road in front of my apartment, the rain had softened to a light drizzle, lifting a curtain on the raw night. There were a few bars within walking distance, and I probably would’ve been able to wangle free drinks because earlier, while sitting at the bar with Brock McKnight, I had become twenty-seven.
But at this hour the bars would be closing in on last call and turning on their rude, despairing lights. I removed my gear from the trunk and lugged it all up the three steps to the landing.
The apartment was only a small house with an upstairs and downstairs unit and a common entrance. Half a dozen of these houses stood in a line on my side of the street, bookended by a tattoo parlor and a mini-mart. I’d forgotten to leave the outside light on, and I fumbled for the keyhole while trying to prevent the table from unfolding or falling over. On the landing I tried to be quiet for Harley, the upstairs tenant, though I could already hear my birds cooing steadily.
I finally got the door open and stowed my gear under the bed. Back in the living room, I tossed my coat onto the loveseat, removed my new shoes, and checked on the birds. Their water bowl was mostly full but the food bowl was empty, so I took care of that. Unless you’re a stage illusionist who’s married to your assistant, coming home after a gig is the world’s loneliest experience. I was glad to have the birds.
While they pecked at their food, I went in search of mine. The leftover spaghetti in the refrigerator had absorbed all the sauce and looked alarmingly wormlike, so I settled on a glass of adequate cabernet. I heard somewhere that drinking alone was only sad if the booze was too cheap or too expensive. I sat down on the loveseat and pulled an afghan over my legs.
I opened my laptop and touched a key to wake it up. Did some fast Google searches: aggravated assault, misdemeanor endangerment. Google’s unblemished record of only fueling my anxieties remained intact.
I was about to shut the computer again when I found myself opening my email to reread the message that had come in that afternoon. I couldn’t help myself, like picking at a scab.
Subject: WOM Application
Dear Natalie Webb,
I’m writing to let you know that the selection committee has decided to stand by its original decision. Unfortunately, you were not selected to perform at this year’s World of Magic convention in New York City. Due to the number of magicians who applied to perform (we set an all-time record this year!) competition was especially stiff. As mentioned in my original email, the selection committee had a very difficult job, but they did it with the utmost care. To revisit those decisions now is simply not practicable.
Thank you for your understanding.
Yours in magic,
Brad Corzo
Chair, Panel Selection Committee, World of Magic
After reading the first rejection two weeks earlier, I had gone to Brad Corzo’s website. I’d never heard of him, and, as I’d suspected, he didn’t look like much of a magician—one of those people whose administrative credits overshadowed his professional ones. Did he not know that I had once been a Spotlight Guest, one of only four such magicians that year? That I’d performed on the main stage to a packed room?
I hadn’t attended a World of Magic convention since I was eighteen, since my lightning-fast transformation from Big Deal to Embarrassing Spectacle. But the self-imposed exile felt long enough, and I thought this would be the year to get back into the game. Ten years after my first WOM convention. The symmetry felt right. So I’d emailed back, asking if the committee might reconsider my application in light of my past professional accomplishments.
That email had been highly respectful and diplomatic and not at all pushy. But tonight had me feeling panicky and impulsive. I clicked the reply key.
Dear Brad,
Please review my bio one more time.
Sincerely,
Natalie Webb
Grand Prize Winner, WOM international close-up competition
Then I couldn’t help myself.
P.S. I saw on your website that you performed for three different Boy Scout troops last year. Well done.
I clicked “send” before I could second-guess it and shut the browser. I was riled up all over again, thinking about this second-rate talent wielding his authority. Yours in magic. Give me a break. Then again, what use was talent anyway? The truth was, you didn’t need much talent to fool a Scout troop or even a roomful of drunk attorneys. And all of my experience and technique hadn’t prevented my show from going horribly awry tonight, so I supposed that understanding your audience was a talent, too. Then again, some audiences didn’t merit being understood. Then again, what the hell was I even talking about?
Twenty-seven, man. It felt old. And on a dreary, drippy night like tonight it wasn’t lost on me how many people never made it out of that year, people whose talents far exceeded my own: Jimi Hendrix. Jim Morrison. Janis Joplin. Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse.
Otis Redding, I’d always thought—but I was wrong. He didn’t even make it past twenty-six.
Tonight could hardly have gone worse. And yet I’d made it home again without going down in a plane crash or overdosing on heroin or meeting any of a thousand tragic ends.
Call it a win, girl. Go to bed.
*
I awoke to sunlight. I got out of bed and made a real breakfast, a couple of over-hard eggs and a slice of toast.
In the living room, Ethel was preening. Julius, the fatter bird, jumped down from his wooden bar with a thud to peck at his food. There’s nothing exotic about doves, they’re just white pigeons, but they’re gentle, steadfast creatures, the avian version of Labrador retrievers. When I was done with breakfast, I dug through the junk drawer for Scotch tape to restore Brock McKnight’s hundred-dollar bill. (Fact: currency that’s been taped together remains legal tender.)
After taping half of the bill together, I put on some Chopin. The “Fantaisie-Impromptu.” Talk about technique. Hell, talk about magic. If I were ever to be granted three wishes, two of them would be to have the fingers for a piece like that. I tore off some more Scotch tape and reattached the third piece of the bill. Sunlight streamed soothingly through the half-open shades, and I let myself imagine that somewhere in New Jersey all that serotonin and vitamin D were having a similarly back-from-the-dead effect on my volunteer from last night. Maybe Lou Husk’s eye was better this morning. Maybe it would all be okay.
Then came the knocking on my door.
It was the police. That overconfident thump-thump-thump on the outer door sounded like every cop show, the officers smug with their warrant.
I’d never been arrested before. My pajamas were still on. Would they let me get dressed before parading me, handcuffed, to their squad car?
I went out to the small entranceway. The door lacked a peephole, so I opened it and got blasted by frigid air.
It was just some kid. Thirteen, fourteen. Spiky blue Mohawk, and those earlobe expanders. Whatever they’re called.
“Why do you do that to your ears?” I asked him.
The kid was short and I was up a step. He tilted his head up toward me and said, “Forget my ears.”
“I’m just asking.”
“So you asked.” He coughed, and spat onto the cement beside him. “You want me to shovel your car out of the snow?”
The morning was intensely bright. I made a visor with my hand. “What’re you talking about? There’s no snow.”
“Yeah, but when there is.”
The kid was all points. Pointy hair, pointy chin, pointy nose. Pointy elbows sticking out from his arms, which were crossed in front of him. He hugged himself. It was too cold for the Public Enemy T-shirt he had on, and he was hopping from foot to foot. Any closer to him and I probably would’ve heard the wind whistling through his earlobes.
“Explain this scam to me again?” I asked.
“Ain’t a scam. I’ll make sure your car is always ready to roll,” he said. “Fifty dollars for the whole winter.”
“But you’re not going to do that,” I told him. “You’ll take my money and that’ll be the last time I ever see you.”
“That’s not true. You have my word as a Christian.” He pointed across the street at the brick apartment building. “I live right there. First floor.”
I distinctly remembered seeing a very old woman watering the flowers in front of that unit. He was probably lying. Then again, when had I last seen that woman? There were no flowers out front anymore. A lot of people came and went in ten years. Babies grew up. Kids became teenagers and moved away. People died all the time.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
“I think this is such a stupid idea I’m almost willing to do it as a sociological experiment.” I was still feeling a little giddy that it wasn’t the cops.
“Huh?”
“Forget it,” I said, though now it was bugging me that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the woman from across the street. I never even knew her name.
“If it snows,” I told him, “then come back and I’ll pay you a few bucks to help get me out. Deal?”
“No, no deal.” He watched the sky. “Man, I hope it snows tonight. I hope you get stuck.”
“Hey, look, don’t get all mad at me.”
“Well, I am mad. You’re calling me a liar and a thief.”
“I’m not calling you anything.”
“Yes, you are. Lady, you need to trust people. Plus, my mother’s really sick.”
“Oh, my god.” The kid really needed to work on his patter. “You’re going with the sick mother routine? Oh, brother. Hold on. Wait here a minute.” I went back into my apartment and returned with the unattached quarter of the hundred-dollar bill. “This is worth twenty-five dollars,” I told him, “but it’s of no use to either of us this way. Understand? Do a good job, and for Christmas I’ll give you the next piece. And so on. And it’s real, so don’t lose it.”
Fact: three-quarters of a bill is still legal tender. So I wasn’t giving up anything. But the kid didn’t know it. He eyed the quarter of a bill and jammed it into his pants pocket.
“Who lives upstairs?” he asked.
“Why?”
His blue eyes were full of hope. “I could do his car, too.”
“It’s a her,” I told him, “and she takes the bus.”
“Figures,” he muttered, his renewed entrepreneurial spirit dashed again. Without another word, he walked away from me.
“Hey,” I called after him. When he turned around, I asked, “Want to see a really good coin trick?”
He studied me a moment. “Nah. Nobody wants to see that.” He spat on the ground again and walked away.
A few minutes past two that afternoon, I was sitting opposite Brock McKnight, a marble coffee table between us. His office looked like the movie set of Serious Lawyer, Esq.—large (and surprisingly tidy) desk of dark wood, leather chairs, abstract artwork in muted tones, bookshelves filled with legal volumes that I hoped were more than props. I had just signed Brock’s one-page engagement letter authorizing him to be my attorney, and he was showing me that he was on the case.
“Lou ended up at University Hospital last night, not a clinic,” Brock said. “That projectile of yours made an impressive gash in his cornea.”
I winced.
“That’s the good news,” he said, glancing down at the legal pad in front of him. “The bad news is the hyphema.” And before I could ask: “Bleeding between the iris and cornea.”
“I feel terrible,” I said.