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
