Bluff Page 10

  “Nothing,” I said, looking at the bills in my hand. “I was expecting something more … I don’t know. More.”

  “Okay, then here’s another truth. Most cons aren’t elaborate. The shortest route from A to B. That’s your best route. How did we take their money?”

  “By taking it?” I said.

  “Bingo.”

  “But now you can’t ever go back there. Why would you do something like that in your own local bar?”

  She laughed. “What are you talking about, my bar? I’ve lived in this town for ten years and I never set foot in there before today.”

  She made a few turns, and then we were approaching the road where my car was standing vigil over the empty school.

  “Is that yours?” she said. “You gotta fix that. You’re gonna get a ticket.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the bills. “We just robbed those two men,” I said.

  “How does it feel?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Kind of weird.”

  “Does it feel terrible? Do you want to go back and apologize to those men and return their money?”

  I hadn’t answered by the time she stopped her car behind mine.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “You’re now a thief as well as a card cheat. Keep this up, and we just might become friends.”

  3

  Back at home, I parked along the curb in front of my apartment. The kid from across the way, my snow shoveler in chief, was sitting on my front stoop, head in hands. When I approached, he raised his head and asked, “You have any smokes?”

  I told him I didn’t.

  “I could really use a smoke. That’s why I asked.” His hands were jammed in his pockets. He was like a cartoon depiction of down-and-out.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  “No, man, everything’s total shit. You wanna hear what happened?”

  Up and down Selden Avenue it was another lonely late winter afternoon, dusty and gray in the fading light. The mini-mart on the corner had as many customers as the boarded-up storefront beside it. “Don’t you have a friend or a parent or someone to talk to?”

  “So what happened was,” he said, “I stole some records from Hits Vinyl for my girl Cheri because she said she was into old school hip-hop, but then I got busted and then she fucked Bruce.”

  “Bruce …”

  “Bruce!” He stared at me as if I were being intentionally obtuse. I ran through my mental list of Bruces. Springsteen, Willis, Lee. “Bruce Metzger!” he shouted at me. “The dick who doesn’t know shit about old school hip-hop even though he thinks he does.”

  I waited for more, but now he was picking at a patch of flaky skin on the back of his hand.

  “You should use moisturizer,” I told him, because shoplifting was out of my wheelhouse. “I’m a close-up magician, and the skin on my hands has to stay in good condition so I can feel the cards.”

  “What the hell’s a close-up magician?”

  I explained that I did magic, but not with big contraptions or anything. Instead, I mainly used ordinary objects like coins and cards. “I can tell you what brand of moisturizer to get.”

  “I got Cheri good, though,” he said. “And Bruce.”

  “Do I want to know this?”

  He lowered his voice. “You know how you can light dog shit on fire in front of somebody’s door and it flames up and stinks?”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “It works with people shit, too.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I said. “And you shouldn’t be setting things on fire.”

  “I’m already on probation,” he said. I wasn’t going to ask him what for. I knew I wouldn’t need to. “For weed,” he said. “I wish I lived in Colorado. I’d climb to the top of a mountain and smoke up all the time.” He shook his head. “There’s not even any good mountains in New Jersey. Man, I gotta stop getting busted. I’m gonna end up in jail. I’m gonna end up like my old man.”

  “Is he in jail?”

  “What? No, he’s a fucking asshole.”

  How he had decided to brood on my stoop of all stoops I had no clue. Still, I knew something was probably required of me.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “You just did.” Then his whole face crunched in on itself. “See? See that? Now why did I just say that? That’s my old man’s joke. It’s not even funny.” He breathed angrily. “Man, what a stupid joke that is. I gotta stop that.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He looked up at me. “It’s Cool Calvin.”

  I fought back an eye roll. “Calvin, we haven’t had any snow yet.”

  He stared at me blankly. “You mean, like, ever?”

  And the genius award goes to … not this kid.

  “I mean since we made our deal.”

  More blank staring. I started to think it might be his default expression.

  “Here,” I said, “I want to show you something.” I removed a quarter from my purse and knuckle rolled it a few times. My fingers were cold, but after a million or so knuckle rolls I knew I wouldn’t drop the coin.

  “Cool,” he said perfunctorily. I tossed the coin in the air—high, like ten feet—and when it came down I clapped both hands on either side of it, and then the quarter was gone.

  “Wait—” He squinted. “Where’d it go?”

  No matter how cheesy it might sound, I knew what a magic trick could do. In this moment, Calvin wasn’t thinking about his old man or his cheating girlfriend or anything other than the quarter, and how it had just contradicted everything he thought he knew about cause and effect and what was real and what was impossible.

  “Show me how you did that,” he said.

  I sat down beside him on the stoop and I showed him. This wasn’t breaking a code. It was teaching a kid. I broke down the moves and had him try it a few times. Lord, his hands were inept—little wonder his girlfriend had strayed—but then again he was a beginner. In the beginning, we were all beginners.

  “Practice it,” I said. “Then show it to me next week.”

  “A week?” He grinned. “I’ll show you tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to see it tomorrow,” I said. “Take the week. And practice in front of a mirror. That’s important.” My phone rang. I checked the number. “I gotta grab this. I’ll see you later, Calvin.”

  “Wait—” He sounded panicky. “I don’t have a mirror.”

  “There’s no bathroom mirror in your apartment?”

  “Oh, right.” He shook his head. “Duh. I’m so stupid.”

  I quickly went into my apartment, shut the door, and answered the call.

  “I don’t think I was clear before,” Ellen said, as if our conversation from before were still ongoing. “I’d be paying the buy-in for both of us. You wouldn’t be putting anything up.”

  “Yeah. Still. No, I’m sorry.”

  “I think you’re making a big mistake,” she said.

  “I might be,” I told her truthfully, “but the answer’s still no.”

  Without question, Ellen fascinated me. And maybe if I hadn’t just cheered that kid up with a magic trick … And maybe if not for the convention … But I had just cheered that kid up with a magic trick, and I did have the convention to prepare for, which could lead to more shows, which could lead to more money. I knew I was running on fumes as a magician, but fumes can get you where you’re going as long as you don’t have too far to travel. At least that was my hope.

  “Listen,” I said, “I gotta run. Maybe we can stay in touch?”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t work that way.” All the energy had left her voice. “All right, Natalie, you take care of yourself.” The phone went silent.

  I shouldn’t have stormed out of your shop last week. You’ve always been there for me, and without you I would have nothing. You saw something worthwhile in a depressed and lonely kid and gave me confidence and were always on my side, and I’m sorry. And by the way, you were right. The whole id
ea of profiling a cheat—that was dumb. I’ve got better uses for my time.

  I rehearsed several versions of an apology until the moment I entered the dark store, and then the jangle of the sleigh bells shook them all away. It was Tuesday morning. Jack sat on a stool behind the glass counter with a notebook in front of him. He often sat there with a pencil and notebook, I’d noticed over the years—checking and rechecking the math, I supposed, that proved his business was still tanking.

  “I am becoming more like him,” I said.

  “Like who?”

  “My dad.”

  He put down the pencil and shut the notebook. “Forget what I said.”

  “You were right. I’m becoming more like him. He cared about things. He was actually alive before he was dead.”

  “It was a cheap shot. I was aggravated. I’m an ass.”

  “No—you’re a crotchety jerk. There’s a big difference.”

  He slid the pencil into the spiral rings of the notebook and set it down. “You want a soda?”

  “Actually, I was hoping we could talk through a routine I need to prepare. You know, for the World of Magic convention? Where I’ll be performing in a couple of weeks?”

  After a moment of confusion, he smiled, something I hadn’t seen him do in a long time. I’d forgotten how bad his teeth were.

  “Good for you,” he said, and then his smile vanished. “You know the shithead is one of the directors of the conference now?”

  No, I hadn’t known. I shrugged. “I don’t care one way or the other. It doesn’t matter.”

  He nodded. “Atta girl.”

  I almost made it big. That’s the truth. I was seventeen. My dad had been dead for two years, and during that time I had thrown myself into magic for the same reasons so many other kids do—to have control over something, to be mysterious, to avoid whatever needed avoiding. But unlike most kids who dabble for a few years before stuffing their gear into the back of their bedroom closet, I had Jack Clarion for a teacher. So all my practice happened to be the right kind of practice. It led somewhere. I shut myself in my room and woodshedded, and I got pretty good pretty fast. Then Jack goes and registers me for the WOM convention and enters me in the close-up contest without telling me about it first. One day I walk into his store for a lesson and he says, Guess what you’re doing next month? I suppose he saw something in me. We rode the train together to the city and spent the day attending lectures and shows. I’d been to New York only a couple of times before that, and I was anxious about everything and certain I was going to get mugged. My mother had pretty much guaranteed I would. The only thing I wasn’t nervous about was the time I’d be onstage. I was too young and naive to be worried about that.

  I came in second that year. The guy who won, Mick Shane, deserved to win. His close-up performance was inventive and as smooth as silk. He isn’t a household name, but who is, among laymen, except for David Copperfield and David Blaine and Criss Angel and Penn and Teller? And they all do stage acts. They might have started in close-up, but they moved on to bigger things: bigger props, bigger stages, bigger pay. But magicians all know Mick. He’d been around a long time and never changed his focus from close-up magic with everyday objects. He was an inspiring artist, and I was honored to have come in second to him.

  And coming in second to Mick Shane was enough to earn me plenty of attention. I was young and clever and skilled, the girl who’d outperformed hundreds of grown men. Before the weekend was out, I had a booking agent. Before the month was out, that agency had lined me up with a dozen corporate and private gigs.

  They were flying me places: Seattle, San Francisco, Cancún, even London. My mother couldn’t believe it. They paid her way, too, since I was a minor. We traveled together that year. My mother liked to talk as if she were worldly and well traveled, but all her travels were to places like Dollywood and Ocean City, Maryland. So boarding a plane and heading abroad—this was new for both of us. It was wonderful. It began to seem impossible that my life could be otherwise.

  Then the next WOM convention came along, and being eighteen, a full-fledged adult, I insisted on going alone. I won the close-up contest that year. Grand prize. And guess who came in second? Mick was a very gracious runner-up, paying me compliments and inviting me for coffee. We talked about magic in a way I’d never talked about it with anybody, not even with Jack. He told me which moves he—he—hadn’t mastered yet, and he guessed how I did one of the tricks in my performance, where I passed a pencil through a glass of water. His guess was about half right, and I didn’t mind telling him what he’d gotten wrong, because he was impressed, and I was flattered. He said he had a great balcony in his room. Here’s an idea, he said. Let’s order room service. He was very handsome—older, for sure, but not old—and a hero of mine, with the greatest hands I ever saw. He was a true master, though getting me into bed that afternoon had been one of his easier tricks.

  For the remainder of the convention we were inseparable, sitting beside each other at performances and lectures and meals. I returned to my own hotel room only to retrieve and deposit outfits. For three days we were a couple, and then on the last day of the convention, at breakfast in the hotel restaurant, he told me that we couldn’t be in contact anymore. I thought he was joking.

  You know I’m married, he said.

  What?

  It’s common knowledge, he said.

  I became immediately aware of the packed restaurant, all the other magicians at all the other tables.

  Where’s your ring? I asked. His fingers were long and tan, even over the place where a ring would fit.

  He shrugged. I’m allergic to gold.

  I left him there at the table and returned to my room. If his marriage really was common knowledge, then so was our affair. I had thought people were glancing my way all weekend because I was a rising star at the convention. Grand prize winner, and just eighteen, and a woman! I had felt special, being seen with—being attached to—one of the great magicians of our time. But all I’d been doing was making an ass of myself. No one had told me. They were all probably enjoying it too much.

  Then I did something I shouldn’t have done. Mick had a performance later that morning, and I entered the theater just after it started. I watched him go through his first routine, and then I went to the front of the theater, stood right up by the stage so he couldn’t miss me, and gave him the finger with both hands. And I stayed there, frozen, not saying a word yet trying to ruin his show—by throwing him off, by diverting the audience’s attention. I stood there silently, arms extended, middle fingers in the air. Mick was doing one of his signature routines with five golf balls, and he carried on, glancing periodically at the exit, hoping maybe for security to bail him out, but he was on his own. At first, the audience might have thought I was part of the act. Then a couple of guys started whispering, “Stop that,” and, “Sit down,” but I ignored them. Then Mick dropped a golf ball. It made a satisfying clunk on the wooden stage. Mick soldiered on with the four remaining balls, but I knew he was sweating it. After a couple of excruciating minutes, I uttered a single “Fuck you!”—to him, to everyone—and walked out of the convention. I knew I could never go back but, I figured, who the hell cares? I didn’t need the likes of Mick Shane or anyone else.

  Soon after, I started reading online that Mick was performing my pencil-through-water-glass trick in his shows. That was his quiet, nasty revenge—doing my trick. Everyone assumed it’d been his all along, that he’d taught it to me for my show at the competition, since I was, you know, his little slut.

  So I did what I had to. I exposed the method—to my best fucking trick—on every magic blog I could find. Now everyone could learn it, and the trick became worthless. On magic forums online, guys were calling me a bitch and a whore. They depicted in revolting detail exactly how I ought to be punished for revealing the great Mick Shane’s trick—even while they were using it in their own shows.

  I stopped going to conventions after that.

/>   It was hard to believe all that was almost a decade in the past. When I let myself, I could still hear the explosion of applause after being announced as the grand prize winner. I could still feel the medallion being hung around my neck and could still smell Mick Shane’s spicy cologne. That whole experience was a rabbit hole I tried not to go down anymore, though it was hard not to think about it with the convention just a couple of weeks away.

  I reminded myself that the antidote to fear was practice. I would practice in front of the bathroom mirror until my reflection grew tired of seeing me. I would pace my apartment and fine-tune my patter until it shimmered. And when I walked into that convention two weeks from now, it wouldn’t matter which ghosts were there with me.

  4

  Ellen called just once more, on Saturday afternoon. I was practicing at the time and let the call go to voicemail. An hour later I checked it.

  Yeah … so … this thing we were talking about the other day? Turns out I really need you for it. I’ve tried like hell to find someone else, but I can’t. I’m getting a little desperate here. We’re running out of time. I’m just being honest, okay? And the thing is, it’s so guaranteed, Natalie. And it’s such a good … anyway, just call me back, okay? Just … all right? Call me.

  But I didn’t. I’d already made my decision and didn’t want Ellen’s voice in my head. I had work to do.

  When Brock McKnight called shortly after, however, I picked up. A weekend call from my lawyer felt like something I shouldn’t ignore.

  “You want the good news or the bad news?” he asked.

  I braced myself and told him to go ahead with the bad.

  I could almost hear his grin when he said, “There’s no bad.”

  “For real?”

  “I suppose I could tell you that Lou was ready to hit you with a civil suit so big it would stop your heart. But instead I’ll tell you that he’s decided, on second thought, not to do that.”

  He explained, to my amazed ears, that the criminal lawsuit was dead in the water. Lou Husk, like Brock, assumed that the police would be less than enthusiastic about investigating a playing-card incident. It just wasn’t worth their time. Maybe in some Podunk town but not in Newark. “But the civil suit. That was real,” Brock said. “And that’s where my magic comes in. Did you know Lou and I live in the same town?”