knees, and from there up to his feet. Once he was standing, he adjusted the cummerbund on his too-tight tuxedo to cover the stomach-revealing gap in his shirt. “Darn cards keep getting away from me. Speaking of which…”
The putto fanned the deck clumsily and thrust it under Gus’ nose. “Choose a card.”
Gus’ hand reached up reflexively, but Shawn pulled it back down.
“We’d prefer not to choose,” Shawn said. “We like them all equally.”
“No, really, this is good,” the putto insisted. “I’ve practiced it a lot.” His face blazed red as he screwed up his mouth in embarrassment. “I mean, it will astonish and amaze you. You like being astonished and amazed, don’t you?”
Gus had to admit he did. He reached out for a card, but again Shawn pulled his hand away. “You’re just encouraging him.”
“What’s the problem?” Gus said. “All he wants is to do a trick for us.”
“Sure, that’s how it starts,” Shawn said. “But then he’s going to follow you home, and you’re going to want to take care of him. You’ll promise to feed him and clean up after him and take him out for walks-”
“It’s a card trick,” Gus said. He reached for a card and waited until Shawn knocked his hand away. Then he reached out with his other hand and snatched a card out of the deck. “What do I do now?”
The putto looked confused. “I’m trying to remember. It’s been so long since anyone actually said yes.”
“Come on, Gus,” Shawn said. “Let’s find Bud Flanek and get out of here.”
“Wait, wait! I remember,” the putto said. “You look at the card. That’s right. You look at the card and then put it back in the deck.”
Gus glanced at the card. It was the five of hearts. He slipped it back into the deck, which the magician had helpfully shoved back under his nose. The magician gave the deck a couple of sloppy shuffles, then proudly pulled out one card.
“This is your card!” the putto pronounced, holding up the two of spades.
“That’s right, that’s amazing, that’s astonishing,” Shawn said quickly. “If only there was a tip jar.”
Shawn pulled Gus away toward the bar as the putto gaped after them.
“You know that wasn’t my card,” Gus said.
“And so did he.”
“So, what, you were trying to spare his feelings?”
“I was trying to spare us another fifteen minutes watching him pretend to be a bumbling idiot while he worked you over,” Shawn said. “You still have your watch, don’t you?”
Confused, Gus checked his wrist. The Fossil was firmly in place. “I don’t know why you say he was pretending,” Gus said.
“Why are you limping?”
“I’m not.” Gus stopped, realizing that he was. He pressed his left foot down on the floor. “I think there’s something in my shoe.”
“Maybe you should take it out.”
Gus sat on an overstuffed couch, fighting a sneeze as dust motes flew up around him, and pulled off his left oxford. He peered under the tongue. “Nothing there.”
“Try the sock,” Shawn said.
Gus pulled the Gold Toe Executive Stretch off his foot. As it cleared his arch, something fluttered out. Gus picked it up and stared at it.
The five of hearts.
“Is this your card?” Shawn said wearily.
“But he was…,” Gus started, casting a glance back to where the putto, apparently failing another attempt at the Brazilian shuffle, knelt on the floor, scraping up cards in front of a young couple clearly here for a function more glamorous than Bud Flanek’s bachelor party. “How did he? And how did you?”
“You don’t want to know,” Shawn said. “It’s just going to make you mad.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” Gus said.
“And I was right the first time, wasn’t I?”
Gus had to admit it was true. “But why?”
“This is how stage magic works,” Shawn said. “They do a trick. You’re amazed. You can’t imagine how they pulled off something so miraculous. You’re dying to know. But they’ll never tell you.”
Gus slipped his sock over his foot, then stood into his loafer. “Because if you know the trick, then the illusion is ruined.”
“But why would that be?” Shawn said. “If they were really communing with the spirits or reading your mind or dancing with dragons, wouldn’t they want you to know?”
“Sure, but they’re not.”
“Obviously,” Shawn said. “But even if what they were doing was so difficult, so complicated, so challenging, knowing how they did it would only make you respect them more.”
“Yeah.”
“So why don’t they want you to know how they do it?”
Gus thought it through, but he still couldn’t see where Shawn was going with this.
“Just watch him.” Shawn pointed at the putto collecting his cards on the floor.
“What am I watching?”
“That. ”
It was just a flicker of movement. If Gus hadn’t been staring so hard at the magician’s hands, he never would have noticed it. But while the putto was down on the floor gathering his deck, one hand shot out and slipped a card into the shoe of the young man whose way he had blocked. Unlike every other one of the magician’s fluttering movements, this one was sure, direct, and clean.
“Hey!” Gus said. “Did he do that to me, too?”
“What do you think?”
Gus tried to recreate the first moment he saw the man kneeling on the floor. Had he felt something brushing at his ankle? He couldn’t remember.
“But even if he could get a card inside my sock-”
“Which he did.”
“Okay, even after he got a card inside my sock, what if I had chosen the nine of clubs?” Gus said, trying to work out the trick. “He’d look pretty stupid.”
Shawn let out a heavy sigh. “Which is why he didn’t give you a choice of which card to choose. If you could get that deck away from him, I bet you’d find that every other card is the five of hearts. And he knows how to force the right one on you.”
Gus stared as the magician climbed to his feet and thrust the deck of cards into the young man’s face. “So it’s not that he made the card I chose end up in my shoe…”
“It’s that he made you choose a card identical to the one he’d already stuck down your sock,” Shawn said. “Feeling mad yet?”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “But I’m not exactly sure why.”
“It’s the one thing that all magicians share,” Shawn said. “No one ever figures out the secrets to their tricks, not because they’re so complex, but because they’re so obvious. And when people find out the truth, they get mad because the entire illusion depends on the audience behaving like idiots. When they figure it out-if they ever figure it out-they get mad.”
Gus thought that over. And then he got mad all over again. “Let’s go.”
“After we deliver the present.”
“No, let’s go back and expose that fake,” Gus said, staring hard as the chubby magician forced the five of hearts on the young couple.
“Don’t bother,” Shawn said wearily. “These guys are pros. They’re ready for hecklers.”
“He’s not ready for me.”
“Gus, Gus, Gus,” Shawn sighed. “Didn’t you learn anything from War Games?”
“If you mean not to turn complete control of your nuclear arsenal over to computers on the grounds that they’re more logical and less likely to act out of emotion or error, I had already learned that from Colossus: The
