“Right,” Sandra replied. The crisp tone that she used when discussing Winter Palace matters was gone.
“But these stockings,” I continued, “these you’ve got to change. You can’t protect stockings from rough corners and cigarette ash.” I stretched the fabric of the black lace nylons so that Sandra could see their faults. “A snag in the wrong place, and these will disintegrate and curl away from each other.” Through the synthetic spiderweb, I caught Sandra’s gaze. She was peeking at me. She squinted slightly and then looked away. I continued pointing out the stockings’ flaws.
“My advice would be to get solid hose with the lace pattern printed on them. Get something like they use in musicals. That stuff is really sturdy but also breathable.” I folded the stockings and placed them in the clothing pile. When I looked up, Sandra was staring at me.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, strumming the stockings so they twanged like an out-of-tune banjo.
“Wrong? No, of course not,” Sandra said, recovering herself. “I just had a question for you.”
“A question?” Sandra was usually so businesslike that she moved through sessions with her employees without pausing for air.
She took a little breath, “You’re married to the magician, right? The one who works at the Castaway?”
“Why?”
“Well,” Sandra began, “people are starting to talk about him.”
“They are?”
“He’s making quite an impression up and down Fremont Street,” Sandra explained. “His show is incredible.”
“Really?” When I had seen Toby’s show, his magic had not been anywhere near as incredible as it had been in Intersection.
“Haven’t seen his show?”
“Once,” I answered. “But it’s probably changed a lot since then.”
“Well, you don’t know what you’re missing. He works the tables and—I won’t lie to you—the ladies like a pro. Slick as can be.”
“He works the ladies?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that he’s flirting. But it’s something in his eyes. Something intense, like he’s trying to look through us.”
“Us?”
“Well, he doesn’t look at the men that way. In fact, not many men come to his shows. It’s pretty much an all-female audience.”
“Really,” I said, trying not to sound surprised.
“And those eyes of his—they can just drill into you, like he’s trying to dig out your thoughts, you know?”
I knew. I knew the probing, questioning stare that tried to work its way into the corners of my mind. I was surprised that he unleashed it on others.
“What a catch,” Sandra said with a wink. “Most magicians are—you know—unattractive,” she added with a whisper. “But yours—”
“Toby.”
“Yeah, Toby—he’s not just good-looking, he’s—” She stifled a laugh. “—enchanting.”
“Oh, really,” I said, smiling.
“I’d always imagined magicians were weird and kind of awkward. You know, like the kid who sat in the back of the class and played fantasy role games or whatever. But not yours. I mean, between shows, all the ladies want to buy him drinks.”
I shook my head, remembering the lonely man I’d found sitting in a corner booth in Tonopah.
“I’ll admit that even I offered him a cocktail.” Sandra laughed. She waved her pearly manicure in my direction. “I’ve been in this town my whole life, and I’ve never seen a magic show like his.”
“How many times have you gone?”
“Just twice,” Sandra answered. But twice seemed to have been enough for her to fall under the new powers of my magician. “And it made me wonder what it’s like.”
“What what’s like? Living with a magician?”
“No,” Sandra whispered, leaning in close, “sleeping with one.” She recoiled, as if she’d shocked herself with her curiosity. “Growing up in this town, I’ve had singers, race car drivers, boxers, even a member of Riverdance. But never a magician.”
I’m not fond of discussing my personal life with close friends, let alone with acquaintances. My childhood taught me to take my heart off my sleeve and bury it. But now I needed to claim the magician as my own, trap him in my web of description and detail. “Well,” I began, searching for a suitable metaphor, “it’s a bit like sleeping with an octopus. You know, many hands and one mouth. He can be everywhere at once while being right there in front of you.”
“An octopus?” Sandra gasped. “I’m not sure whether that excites me or disgusts me.”
“Take your pick. Many women would kill for an extra pair of arms.”
Sandra squinted, puckered her lips, and nodded in conspiratorial agreement.
I knew she wanted all the details, but I preferred to keep to myself how Toby’s hands flew across my body in a maniacal sign language. When I could have sworn that he was massaging my shoulders, suddenly he was tickling my toes. And when I looked at my toes, I noticed that his hands had moved to my hair. And all the time it appeared that he hadn’t taken his lips from mine. Sometimes he managed to make the bed vanish as if we were floating toward the ceiling in an erotic levitation. Sometimes the ceiling itself seemed to disappear and the room flooded with the sky. After it was over, after my magician’s hands, which had doubled and redoubled as we reached the finale of our private magic show, had collapsed onto the sateen sheets, I woke up to find the remnants of his conjuring pressed into my body. I found coins on my inner thighs, poker chips on my lower back, the jack of diamonds stuck to my left buttock.
I wasn’t sure that Sandra would appreciate the combination of magic and sex, so I told her what I thought she wanted to hear.
“Wow,” Sandra breathed when I had elaborated on several of Toby’s more impressive manipulations. “You are a lucky woman.” She readjusted her jacket. “I think I’ll go down for a vodka. Coming with?”
I looked at the tiny gold wristwatch dangling on Sandra’s wrist. The scrolled hands told me that it was
