“My Ellie. I do love you.”
I snuggled against him, and he put his arm around me. But I felt a whisper of unease. He was being patronizing. Or was that just me being sensitive? Like my father always accused me of being. Doug, too, sometimes. A memory washed through me—Doug chiding me for letting Chloe play with a toy that had loose buttons. One of the buttons had come off. She’d put it into her mouth and nearly choked.
“You can be such an idiot sometimes, Ellie . . .”
“Passive-aggressive Ellie.”
Martin didn’t mean it like that, I decided. He wasn’t like that.
“I still didn’t see the trick coming,” I said, unable to let it go. “He’d been wearing that hat on his head the whole time when he wasn’t tipping it to the audience, and when he did, you could see it was empty.”
Martin considered me, something strange, foreign, forming in his eyes. “Like Houdini once said, El, you saw something, but it’s not what you thought you saw.” He reached across the table and plucked an olive from a plate of snacks. He popped it into his mouth and chewed. “That’s the best thing—what I love—about magic, about trickery,” he said as he swallowed the olive and reached for his glass of Scotch. “The trick is to misdirect, to make us all look and think one way while something is slipped past us another way.”
“You’re making me out to be a fool.”
“On the contrary.” He took a sip, set his glass down, and leaned forward. “When we step into a magic show, we arrive actively wanting to be fooled. Magic is . . . It’s a kind of willing con. You’re not being foolish to fall for it. If you don’t fall for it, the magician is doing something wrong.”
I glanced at the stage. I supposed I had been distracted by the assistant’s choker—she’d drawn attention to it moments before the rabbit trick. The choker had made me think for a moment her white neck had been slashed and the ribbon was blood.
“We crave the deception,” Martin said. “We want to see our world as a tiny bit more fantastical and awesome than it is. That’s why we go to the theater, or movies, read books. The magician is much the same as a storyteller—a trickster who uses misdirection, sleight of hand, to manipulate a person’s beliefs about the world. And we see storytelling everywhere—marketing, politics, religion, over the garden fence.”
I regarded Martin. He had a strange feverish quality in his eyes as he spoke of magic. He’d had too much to drink, I reckoned. The weather had been too hot, the sun too fierce, when he’d sat with me for a while by the pool.
“Another cocktail, ma’am?” I jolted at the sudden intrusion and glanced up to see a server who’d appeared out of nowhere. Just like magic. He bore a tray with a pink champagne fizz and another glass with whiskey and a single block of ice.
“I’ll regret it,” I said, looking at the champagne fizz.
“Come on, last one,” Martin said. “It’s our last night.”
“Oh, all right.”
The server placed the pink fizz on the table in front of me.
“And you, Mr. Tyler?” the server said to Martin. “A refill?”
“It’s Cresswell-Smith,” Martin said coolly and sat up straight. He reached for his glass, threw back the last of his drink, and plunked the glass down hard on the table, his mood suddenly dark.
The server set the fresh whiskey on the table and silently left with the empties.
“What was that about?” I asked quietly, watching as the server disappeared through a dark door in the black wall.
“He must have assumed we were married when you gave him your name,” Martin said.
“I didn’t give him my name.”
“You must have. When you made the reservation for tonight.”
“You made the reservation.”
“Somewhere else, then—you must have given it to someone somewhere. I don’t see why they’d assume I had the same name as you. Why not assume it was the other way around—that you had my last name?”
I frowned at him. “Martin, I didn’t give my name. I’m certain I didn’t. Besides, what’s the big—”
“You didn’t use a credit card over the past few days? You didn’t call down to the front desk using your name? You didn’t make any reservations at the spa, the pool?”
“I . . . maybe.” My head felt thick, woozy. “I just don’t understand what the fuss is about. The server made a simple mistake.”
“These people keep tabs on everything, Ellie. The more they know about guests, the easier it is for them to sell you something that you didn’t even know you wanted. These small things matter to them.”
I hiccuped, pressed my hand to my mouth. Giggled.
“What in the hell is so amusing?”
“You. Being so annoyed by being called Mr. Tyler.”
He stared at me with an unnerving intensity that reminded me of a cat stalking a bird. And suddenly I knew what was bugging him. Yes, he’d had too much alcohol, but I figured the reason he’d been knocking drinks back so hard and fast had something to do with the way he’d appeared edgy when he’d returned to the hotel after his business meeting this afternoon. Something had upset him. Things hadn’t gone as he’d hoped, but when I’d pressed, he’d said it was nothing. In hindsight his malaise had been hovering just below the surface all night, despite the good time we’d had. And now the alcohol was chipping away his facade.
“Talk to me, Martin,” I said gently. “This mood—it’s because of bad news you got at your meeting, isn’t it? Did something not come together as expected?”
“It’s nothing.” He looked away as he sipped his fresh drink. His neck muscles were corded, his jaw tight.
I took his hand. “Hey, it is something. If we’re going to be a team, you need to know you can off-load on me.”
His eyes locked with mine. “A
