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
