Now You See It

“How’d you like to see me pull a rabbit out of your ass?” Phil said, his face red moving back toward Ott.

“I don’t have a …”

“Well we can just check to be sure,” Phil said.

“Phil,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, trying to sound like Lewis Stone as Judge Hardy telling Andy to curb his enthusiasm.

Phil paused just long enough for Ott to make it through the door. The slam it made as he exited started the bird fluttering around the office over our heads.

“Open the window,” Phil said, moving to his desk.

I got up and did as he asked.

“Tell the bird to get the hell out of here,” he said as he sat down.

I chased the bird around the room two or three times before it found the open window and dived into the smog.

Phil got out of the chair, went to the window, and closed it. He turned to me.

“People are dying,” he said. “Thousands of people. Kids. There’s a war going on. And that grinning rich monkey in a fifty-dollar jacket is playing games with people’s lives.”

His fists were clenched.

“If he comes back …” Phil began and then changed his mind.

“He won’t come back,” I said. “He’s saving his next trick for tonight.”

“I’m going home,” Phil said.

“I’ll tell Blackstone what’s been going on,” I said.

“Do that,” said Phil, heading for the door.

“See you at the Roosevelt,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never seen you in a tux,” I said.

“You’re in for a treat,” Phil said, slamming the door as he left.

When he was gone, I called the Pantages and found out from Pete Bouton that his brother had gone to the hospital to see Gwen.

I turned off the lights, went in the hall, locked the door, and listened to the late morning sounds of the Farraday: The muffled whimper of Shelly’s patient. From above, the badly tuned piano of Irwin Duncan, “voice teacher to the stars,” as he batted out Rum and Coca Cola and his latest off-key client tried to mimic Patty Andrews.

I took the stairs, hearing a typewriter clacking on the third floor, a drum beating on the second floor, and a floor polisher on the lobby floor. Jeremy was pushing the polisher gently and evenly. He saw me and flipped it off.

“I just saw Calvin Ott leaving,” he said.

“Right.”

“And Phillip was not far behind,” Jeremy said, rubbing the side of his bald head with two fingers.

“Ott offered to pay out ten thousand dollars if we succeed in stopping him from doing whatever it is he plans to do to Black-stone tonight. Like a challenge.”

“We’ll stop him,” said Jeremy confidently.

I tried to imagine Jeremy in a tuxedo. I couldn’t.

“You have a moment?” he asked, reaching into his pocket.

I knew what was going to come out, but I really had no choice.

“Sure,” I said. “A poem?”

“It isn’t long,” he said, unfolding the sheet. “It’s called Magic.”

The Farraday did not suddenly go silent, but the persistent clatter and clang didn’t stop Jeremy Butler from his poem.

“It is not real magic we expect

but the illusion. We desire to be fooled,

are pleasured to know the miracle

we are about to witness is a trick

inside of which are hidden wheels.

‘How did he do that?’ we ask.

But do we really want to know?

In theater darkness, looking up,

we are transported to a Camelot

where belief is truth and truth belief.

A man told me he knew there was a God.

‘Miracles prove this truth.’

‘Today I believe there is no God,’ I said.

‘How do you know there is no God?’

‘I do not know, I tell you what I believe.

You tell me what you believe

and declare that it is truth.’

The magician asks us to believe

for only the space and time of illusion.

He does not ask for endless faith.

We need more magicians.”

He folded the sheet of paper neatly and put it back in his pocket.

“We need more magicians,” I said.

I didn’t understand most of Jeremy’s poems and this one was no exception.

“I have to revise it,” he said, moving back to his floor polisher. “I fear there are too many magicians like Mr. Ott and they are not all on the theater stage. Many of them are on the stage of life.”

“Yep,” I said, feeling the rumble of forgotten taco in my stomach, the hole in my molar, the slight but distinct ache in my shoulder. “You going to publish it?”

“When I revise it,” he said. “Perhaps it should rhyme.”

“Good idea,” I said. “You make it rhyme, and people know for sure that it’s poetry. See you tonight.”

I headed for the door. Behind me, the polisher rattled back to life.

“He’s right.” I heard a familiar voice say behind me as I stepped onto Hoover.

I turned my head to see Juanita.

“I heard the poem,” she said. “He’s right. At least about some of it.”

Juanita was a seer. Born seventy years earlier in Brooklyn, she had grown up as a nice Jewish housewife with a solid husband, and, when he died, a second solid husband who also died. She had not chosen to have visions, but they had come-on her fiftieth birthday, to be exact. She had then migrated to Los Angeles, rented an office in the Farraday, and handed out little printed cards. Now she had a running clientele, mostly Mexicans and Eastern European refugees. Juanita could see into the future.

“It comes in little flashes, like waking dreams or just words,” she had once told me. “I don’t know.”

The problem with Juanita’s visions was that they almost never made sense till they had taken place, and, by then, it was too late to do anything about them.

“Gift, curse, who the hell knows, you know what I mean?”

Now overly made-up, gypsy dressed, with bangled earrings tinkling, the slightly pudgy Juanita stood at my side and looked at the passing parade of cars, servicemen on leave, people going out to late lunch. She sighed.

“I was looking for you,” she said.

“Juanita,” I almost pleaded.

She shrugged.

“You don’t want to hear, you don’t want to hear. Who’s going to force you?”

“You are,” I said.