I carried my coffee mug into the bathroom to start the shower. And as the water rained down on me I thought about the cups and balls routine I’d been working on. I could lead into it with the disappearing signed bill trick and have the bill reappear inside the lime produced at the end of the cups and balls. This was something I liked to do, embed one trick inside another, like magical nesting dolls. It’s very satisfying to an audience.
When I got out of the shower I saw the pack of cards sitting on the bathroom countertop. My bathroom mirror was the largest in the apartment, and when I’d gotten home last night I’d spent a few minutes in the bathroom with the cards, trying to figure out what the hell that woman, Ellen, might have been doing. I didn’t get far. And now it hit me again that the greatest card manipulator I’d ever seen had vanished right before my eyes.
Already it felt like a strange, frenzied dream.
After finding my car vandalized and realizing Ellen had ditched me, I’d gone back into the bakery with an excuse about wanting her advice—for my sister, who has a daughter in kindergarten.
Ethan had written down Ellen’s cell phone number. He didn’t strike me as a confederate. He seemed ignorant about who she really was and what she could do.
I’m sure she’d be glad to help, he’d said.
I wanted to call her now, but I thought, toweling off, that maybe I shouldn’t. Brad Corzo’s email felt like a sign that I ought to forget about my detour into card cheats and poker games and refocus my energies on magic, where, after nearly a decade at sea, I was finally being offered an olive branch.
I brushed my teeth thinking: the World of Magic crowd would go nuts for the Rings of Fire linking ring routine I’d been working on. I should close with it.
I put on my jeans and shirt thinking: I need to find her.
I put on my socks thinking: forget about the lime. More striking if an egg appeared at the end of the cups and balls trick, and then I cracked it.
I ran a brush through my hair thinking: no way is that really Ellen’s phone number. But I have to find out.
To my surprise, the outgoing message began: Hi, this is Ellen.
I left a message, because what was the harm? This is Natalie, from last night. Please call me when you get a moment.
But I knew she wouldn’t.
I gave the birds fresh water and returned to the loveseat, about to Google her. What was her last name? Had she ever said? I typed in “Ellen” and “kindergarten” and “Flemington” and got no useful results. I found the school district’s website and searched for kindergarten teachers. No Ellen. Obviously. She wasn’t a kindergarten teacher. She didn’t live in Flemington.
I poured a bowl of cereal, and while I ate I poked around the school district websites of towns near Flemington—Rowland Mills, East Amwell—but again, there was no Ellen who taught kindergarten. In Franklin there was a first grade teacher named Ellen Sacks, but a subsequent search revealed that she had been teaching at Franklin Elementary School since 1979.
I Googled more combinations of words—Ellen, poker, New Jersey, Atlantic City—before giving up. Monday mornings always made me restless and vaguely unsettled, society beginning its workweek and me coming off a weekend performance or nothing at all. I dusted and vacuumed the apartment (the vacuuming sending Mustard, upstairs, into a barking frenzy), but my fingers needed a deck of cards in them. I did a few bottom deals, which I knew Ellen hadn’t done, and then some second deals, which didn’t seem right either. What then? What had it been? I was about to call her number again when I decided the hell with it: Flemington, here I come.
I worried about driving my car with “BITCH” scratched into the side and a trash bag taped over the passenger window frame. There was no money to pay a ticket, nor money for car repairs to prevent getting ticketed, since stupid me had gone frugal on car insurance and waived comprehensive coverage.
I went online for home remedies for a scratched car. I didn’t own a power sander or polishing wheel. I did own toothpaste. “See you later, birds,” I said, and got my keys from the hook by the door.
Outside with a hand towel and a tube of Colgate, I attempted what one enthusiastic car owner had called “the never-fail toothpaste method,” which failed utterly.
I’ll deal with the scratch later, I thought, and got under way.
While driving, I toggled radio stations and came upon an interview with none other than U.S. Senate candidate Victor Flowers.
I tell you, Todd, he was saying to the host, I still say we’re a country of optimists. We the people, and we the government, must work together for our kids and grandkids …
This was New Jersey talk radio, as light and fluffy as a wellmade omelet. It nauseated me, but I couldn’t stop listening. Soon he and the host were reminiscing about Victor’s days singing for his band, the Eternals.
We were these clean-cut kids playing the same clubs as the Ramones, the Velvet Underground. He laughed. We were so out of place!
The Eternals recorded, what, three albums? the host asked.
Only two, Victor said. Two was plenty! Both men guffawed.
And then you moved over to the business side of the industry.
Where I belonged, Victor said. Offstage.
And that’s where the money was.
I’ve been very fortunate.
Victor Flowers sounded totally at ease on the radio. He must have been in his sixties by now, but there was a youthful chirpiness to his voice.
I called my mother in Reno.
“I’m in the car,” I said when she picked up. “Victor Flowers is on the radio.”
“Politics is a cesspool,” she replied. My mother thought many things
