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Authors: Robin Hathaway

BOOK: Sleight of Hand
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On each plate lay a hefty chunk of steak, a baked potato swimming in butter, and a mound of canned peas. Suddenly, I realized I was starving. Max reached for the red wine and studied the label. It was a very ordinary table wine, but he seemed delighted. There was a tense moment when, without thinking, I handed him the corkscrew. He refused it, saying, “You'd better do the honors.”
I took the bottle over to the sink, where I could recover from my blunder and add one more item to my list of things you need a right hand to do: twist a corkscrew.
We all ate as if we had been fasting for days. Everything tasted delicious, even the peas. Lolly had added enough salt and pepper to disguise their blandness. Max drank most of the wine. I sipped mine slowly. I was worried about the swelling of his index finger. If he got a full-blown infection, I wouldn't be able to treat it there at the house. He would have to go to the hospital. I tried to put this out of my mind and contribute to the conversation. Soon we were discussing a TV program we all enjoyed, about a detective who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. We were laughing over something in a recent episode, when Max's face became contorted with pain.
“What's up?” I paused mid-chew.
“My hand!” He bent over it.
I ushered him quickly back to the den.
“What about dessert?” Lolly wailed.
I sat him on the sofa and swiftly removed the dressing. As I examined his fingers, he groaned. Knowing his macho nature, I guessed he was suffering great pain. I handed him two Percocets. “They should help,” I assured him.
He tried to joke. “I guess I didn't drink enough wine.”
Lolly came to the door bearing two plates of chocolate cake.
“Thanks, honey,” Max said. “Put them over there.” He nodded at the desk.
She obeyed. “Now I'll get mine,” she said cheerfully.
When she was gone, I took his pulse and listened to his heart. Both were within normal limits. I felt his forehead for fever. It was cool. He grabbed my right hand with his left, turned it palm upward, and kissed it.
I dropped the pill bottle I was holding in my other hand and bent to pick it up—glad of an excuse to hide my feelings. Surprise, embarrassment, and even a sensual response were jostling for position. I found the bottle and stowed it in my bag. When I finally dared to look at Max, he was almost asleep. Then I understood. The wine, plus the Percocet, was what had prompted the kiss. What was wrong with me? I knew better than to allow a patient to mix alcohol and strong medicines. I also knew better than to mix business with pleasure. I was sure my diagnosis was correct, and I was annoyed at my feeling of disappointment. To my chagrin, I found myself half-wishing the kiss had been caused by something other than chemicals. Or was it simply deprivation? I wondered how long it had been since Max had made love. Six years? I allowed myself a wry smile before tucking him into bed—or, rather, into the sofa.
Lolly brought the afghan and I got the pillow from the parlor. When we were sure Max was asleep, we took our cake back to the
kitchen. Lolly ate hers, but I only toyed with mine. I was making a decision. Should I spend the night on the parlor sofa? As unappealing as this prospect was, I didn't see how I could leave Max, in his present condition, with only Lolly in charge. What if the infection flared up?
I stayed.
As it turned out, Max slept through the night, but I didn't. I kept wondering why he had not left the farm, even to perform a simple errand, for six years!
By morning, the swelling in his finger had gone down. The penicillin was beginning to do its work. I didn't tell Max I had spent the night. I pretended I was making an early-morning call. I didn't want him to feel beholden to me. Or—worse—to think I had given his impromptu kiss any special significance. If he remembered it at all—which was doubtful.
The next few days passed routinely. I went about my business, dropping by to see Max once a day to change his dressing. There were no further alarms. The healing process seemed to be progressing at a normal rate.
Sometimes I asked myself, Why am I doing this? I no longer felt that Max would harm Lolly. Was it guilt? Did I suspect I had caused the accident by popping in on him that way? That was part of it. I knew I had upset him, and right afterward he had been careless with the press. My conscience wouldn't let me desert him. I had to do what I could to make amends. But there was something else. Curiosity. I was curious about this man. What was his story? I didn't believe for a moment he was the stolid farmer-printer he pretended to be. A singular force emanated from him, which he continually tried to suppress. I sensed someone quite different lurked under the ordinary tradesman facade. And, yes, I wanted to know if he had anything to do with that body down the road.
Each time I came, I noticed a slight alteration in his attitude toward me. He was becoming less suspicious, more friendly. I tread very carefully. I wanted to gain his confidence. That was the only
way I would be able to convince him to get the special reconstructive surgery he'd need once his hand had healed.
Meanwhile, Lolly and I were becoming good friends. She rushed out to greet me every day and tagged after me like a puppy. And when I left, she looked like she was going to burst into tears.
I was growing fond of her, too. And I worried about her health. Once, I came in to the kitchen while she was eating lunch. On her plate was a huge mound of potato salad, a generous portion of cold cuts, and a roll. Next to this was a glass of milk, as well as another plate with an enormous slice of chocolate cake. A perfect candidate for diabetes or heart disease, Lolly also might have thyroid problems. I made a note to test her thyroid and give her a general physical examination in the near future.
I sat down at the table and explained to her that she should eat more fruit and vegetables, and cut out the starches and sweets. She nodded agreeably, but I never saw any change in her weight. If only she'd had a mother who was in charge of the food shopping, but Lolly did all the shopping herself. And she bought only what she liked. I mentioned this to Max, but it went in one ear and out the other. He had enough to worry about.
One day when I had finished with Max, Lolly accosted me in the hall and said, “Come upstairs.”
“What for?”
She smiled and tugged at my arm. I hesitated. I didn't make a habit of snooping in my patients' homes. For a split second, professional ethics battled with bald curiosity.
“Come on!”
“Well … just for a minute,” I said, deciding to humor her.
She led me up the main staircase to the second floor, then to a small door at the end of a hallway. Behind this door was a flight of much narrower steps, which led up to the attic.
“I don't think we should …”
She planted her right foot on the bottom step and began to heave
herself up to the next. The space was almost too narrow for her wide buttocks. Reluctantly, I followed. I was fearful that Max might find us—he was more mobile now—and I knew the fragile trust I had so painstakingly built between us could easily be destroyed.
The attic was a clutter of discarded clothes, furniture, cartons, and trunks. Everything was covered with a thin layer of dust. Lolly headed straight for one of the trunks. She threw open the lid and grabbed up a skimpy scarlet costume. It glittered with spangles. I reached out to feel the material—soft and silky.
Lolly burrowed like a bear through the rest of the contents, pulling out one thing after the other—a rumpled tuxedo shirt, a top hat, more brief silk costumes in different shades of pink, lavender, and green, all decorated with spangles or sequins. I admired everything, but my mind was racing like a NASCAR driver, trying to figure out what the contents of the trunk meant.
Tiring of the trunk, Lolly trudged to the back of the attic and began tugging at a large piece of cardboard. Finally freeing it, she dragged it toward me and turned it around.
I didn't gasp, but it was hard not to. It was a poster. Filling the central space was the figure of a man in a tux and a top hat—a younger, more debonair Max. Behind him, more sketchily rendered, was a scantily clad woman. Beneath the two figures, in bold red type, flowed the words MAX THE AMAZING!
I had barely taken this in when we heard Max himself call from below.
“Lolly?”
For a split second, we were both paralyzed. Then I acted. “You go down,” I whispered. “I'll hide back here.” I pointed to a bunch of old clothes that were hanging from the rafters.
“Coming, Daddy,” Lolly cried.
“What are you doing up there? I've told you a hundred times not to go up there.”
“I was looking for something.”
“You have no business …” Their voices grew fainter as they moved down the stairs to the first floor. I prayed he wouldn't notice my motorcycle, which was still parked in the drive—and that Lolly, in her innocence, wouldn't spill the beans.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty. I could stand the tension no longer. I crept to the top of the stairs and strained to hear them. All I heard was the TV, which they left on all day, whether anyone was watching it or not. Lolly had such a short attention span, she could easily forget I was here. I decided to risk it. I had work to do and other patients to see.
I tiptoed down the stairs. There was no sound on the second floor. The only occupant was Sapphire, snoozing on a windowsill. The first floor seemed deserted, too. When I reached the side door, I had a moment of panic. How could I disguise the sound of my motorcycle when I left? Wait, I thought. If Max was in the den, I could roll it down the drive and along the road a bit before I started the motor.
I ducked out the back door and loped over to my bike. I was struck, as I often was, by the emptiness of the landscape—and the silence. There were times in Bayfield when I had the feeling I was the last person on earth. I released the brake—another one of those things you do automatically with your right hand—and began to roll it down the drive. If only Max doesn't come out, I prayed.
“I thought you'd gone.”
I jumped. Turning, I saw him standing in the doorway of the barn. My mind went blank. I could think of nothing to say. He began walking toward me. I swallowed and took a deep breath. There was no point in lying. The only way I could save our fragile relationship was to tell him the truth. When he was a few yards away, I said, “Lolly wanted to show me something …”
He waited.
“In the attic.”
He blinked, which was my only clue that he understood.
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone up there,” I said.
“Why not? Is it that dirty?” His laugh was sarcastic.
I said nothing.
He moved closer. He was only a few feet away when he said, “So, now you know. I had two careers. So what? It's a growing trend, I hear. Would you like me to show you a few tricks?” His voice took on the high-pitched treble of the practiced performer. “Max the Amazing will now disappear in a puff of smoke!”
In a crowded theater, it might have sounded exciting, but in the midst of empty fields and sky, it sounded eerie. My gaze fell on his bandaged hand. He had rolled the sleeve of his plaid work shirt above his elbow to make room for the bandage. The skin of his exposed upper arm looked pale and vulnerable. I wanted to cry.
“Don't worry.” He read my mind. “I won't be going back to the stage. Sleight of hand is a thing of the past for me.” He paused. Then he said, “Do you have a minute?”
I didn't. “Sure,” I said.
He turned toward the house.
I rolled my bike back up the drive and parked it. Max held the door for me with his left hand. I could hear Lolly singing some childish nursery song—“I had a little nut tree,/Nothing would it bear”—as she went about her chores in the kitchen. He ushered me into his inner sanctum—the den. The last thing I saw before he flicked off the TV was Oprah laughing.
Max settled onto the sofa and began his story.
“I grew up in a small town in western Pennsylvania—very much like Bayfield. It was quiet and pretty and there was absolutely nothing to do. I was a smart kid and I was bored out of my mind. On the main street, there was a movie theater and a hobby shop. I spent my spare time running back and forth between the two. I loved the glamorous musicals of the forties and fifties—
An American in Paris, The Red Shoes, Singin' in the Rain—
and sometimes they would bring these back and show them. And I loved the dark, musty atmosphere of the hobby shop.
“One day I was browsing in the shop and I came on a book about magic. It told how to do simple tricks. I bought it for a quarter, took it home, and that was it. I was hooked. I suppose if I'd stumbled on a book about atomic energy, I would have become an atomic scientist.”
I laughed.
“I learned every trick in that book. I tried them out on my family and friends. Then I saved my money and got more sophisticated books by mail order. I performed these tricks at school, kids' parties, and the local Lions club. But I soon got bored with the tricks in the
books and began to invent some of my own. I was especially fascinated with mirrors and how—if used correctly—they could make people disappear. But to do this, you needed a partner.
“One night, I was playing a theater in Bayonne, New Jersey, and I found her. She was in the second row, on the left. All evening, my eyes kept straying back to her. She had red hair—and it was real. No rinses for her. And she had this milky satin skin to go with it. No freckles, either. And her eyes were green. So help me god, they were the color of an ocean wave just before it crests and falls. And she was tall, like you, Jo. And, like you, she carried herself well.
“During intermission I sat in my dressing room, racking my brain for some way to meet her. I thought of inviting her onstage to take part in one of my tricks. But she beat me to it. Bold and brassy, she knocked on my door and introduced herself. Regina Cox was her name. She didn't mince words; she asked right out if I needed a partner. No man could resist her.
“I couldn't believe how well we worked together. We seemed to know each other's thoughts before we spoke them. Talk about being on the same wavelength. When we did a trick—for example, I made Regina disappear—it went perfectly, without a hitch, and the audience loved it.
“As soon as I took her on, our fortunes skyrocketed. At first, it was strictly a business arrangement, at least on her part, but it wasn't long before she began to succumb to my charms …” Max winked.
I groaned.
“And we got married. We were invited to perform in bigger and bigger towns, and received more and more acclaim. One day I got a call from a theater in the biggest town of all—the Big Apple. Our acts became more elaborate and we became more adept. We played in Manhattan all winter to a full house, and during the off-season, we went abroad—to London, Paris, Rome. For five years, life was perfect.
“Then Regina got pregnant. We were happy when we found
out. We had always planned to have a family, eventually. Regina continued in the show until a few weeks before she delivered. We were very ingenious at creating ways to hide her condition. We were magicians, after all. When the baby was born, we were thrilled. Then they told us … she had Down syndrome.”
Max paused to collect himself. When he continued, he spoke more slowly, as if he was going uphill.
“After that, things were never the same. Regina never accepted the baby, and she began to acquire expensive tastes—to compensate for her disappointment, I suppose. And she had to stay home to take care of Lolly. Day care was scarce back then and night care was unknown. I didn't draw as big crowds when I was alone, my runs grew shorter, and the bigger theaters dropped me altogether. I tried to buy her the expensive baubles that made her happy, but it became harder and harder.
“One night, I was standing on the subway platform at Times Square, and this swanky dame swathed in mink and diamonds came up to me—the thing about Manhattan is, everyone rides the subway, even well-to-do people. She asked me for a light. You could smoke on the platform in those days. ‘Sure,' I said. ‘Be my guest.' I handed her my lighter. While lighting up, she turned her back and bent her head. I saw the gold clasp of her necklace just a few inches away. I lifted it. It was so easy. With my sleight-of-hand technique, she never missed it. She turned back, returned my lighter, and boarded the subway. I watched the train pull out and then walked deliberately—no running—up the subway steps to the street.”
Up to this point Max had been sitting forward, telling his story with eagerness, even some pride. But now he sank back into the sofa and his words came more slowly, as if with an effort.
“That was the beginning of a long series of heists,” he said. “Regina was happier and life went on. Then one day, I slipped up. I must have been tired, or overconfident … . Anyway, the clasp on this particular necklace stuck and the woman began screaming, just like
in the movies. ‘Stop thief!' she yelled. The cops came and I was sent up. The sentence was for seven years … Regina managed to support herself and Lolly by doing freelance secretarial work at home. That's what she'd done before I met her. But they lived in a two-room apartment in a lousy neighborhood, eking out a living, barely above the poverty level. Of course, she had to sell all her jewelry. And she had to take care of Lolly without any help. She became very bitter … .
“I got out after five years, for good behavior. The other inmates were sorry to see me go. I'd kept them entertained with my tricks, you know. I tried to find work as a magician, but no one remembered me. People in show business have short memories. Besides, entertainment had changed—taken other forms, like cable television, the Internet … . But I hadn't been idle in prison. I'd learned a new trade—printing. I went to work in a shop downtown and began to save toward buying my own equipment.
“By now, Lolly was seven years old, and because of her disability, she needed special care. She went to a private school a couple of days a week, and it was expensive. Regina had changed, too. Her looks had faded and she had become more and more resentful. She felt the world was against her. Her husband was no longer a glamorous superstar. On the contrary, he was an ex-con. And she was stuck at home with a kid who didn't have all its buttons—”
“Don't!” I exclaimed.
“And she missed her baubles. She refused to have any more children and treated Lolly with indifference. She attended to the kid's physical needs but never played with her or took her anywhere, like the park or the playground. I think she was embarrassed to be seen with her.
“One day, Regina stole a wallet off a tourist in Times Square. She had learned a few tricks herself while working with me. It had a couple of hundred dollars in it. Like me, she found stealing easy, and soon it became a regular thing. She didn't tell me about it, of
course. She spent the money she stole on her favorite thing—jewelry. But she didn't dare wear any of the baubles in public. She hid them in her bureau drawer and took them out only when she was alone. Then she would put them on and admire them in the mirror. During one of these sessions, Lolly burst in on her, ran over, and asked if she could try on the pretty necklace. Her mother slapped her and told her if she ever told Daddy, she'd beat her. I had come home early that day and witnessed the whole scene. I bawled Regina out and warned her about striking Lolly. I doubt if Lolly understood all we said, but from then on I noticed she was afraid of her mother. We were a very unhappy family.”
Max closed his eyes and sighed. I knew he was getting tired, and I should have suggested he stop and continue some other time. But as usual, my curiosity won out over my better judgment. I wanted to know what happened next. He took a deep breath and went on.
“One Christmas, Regina lifted a woman's pocketbook outside Macy's. You're a New Yorker, so you know what the crowds are like at that time of year. It's a haven for pickpockets and petty thieves. Before she grabbed the bag, she bumped into the woman—a useful distraction. I had used it often myself. In fact, she'd probably learned it from me. But this time she overdid it and the woman lost her balance and fell in front of a taxi. The taxi hit her and she was badly injured. Regina ducked down the subway steps, but an undercover cop had seen her, and he followed her. When she got home, she was so upset, she told me all about it. I whipped out some of my old equipment—mirrors, mostly—and set them up in the living room. The cop came and searched the apartment, but he didn't find Regina. He knew me, however, and as he left, he said, ‘If we don't find her, we'll arrest you. You probably put her up to it anyway.'
“Two days later, the victim—Jane Lansing—died.”
“Oh no!” I said.
“I went to the biggest newsstand in New York City—the one at Grand Central that has all the out-of-town papers. I bought some
papers from small towns in upper New York State, northern Pennsylvania, and southern New Jersey. A south Jersey town won out. I spotted an old farmhouse for rent in the classifieds, at a sum we could afford. Afraid the apartment was being watched, I packed Regina and Lolly up and sent them down the fire escape to the bus terminal, where they caught a bus to Bayfield. Soon after, I took a circuitous route, changing subways, taking cabs, NJ Transit, and finally a bus to join them. Apparently, we outwitted the law.
“The money I'd saved for printing equipment came in handy. I set up shop in the barn and started my own mail-order printing business: Barnhouse Press. The press was in the barn, but the camera and computer were in the house. The business was completely anonymous. I didn't have to deal with anyone personally. Regina took care of the bookkeeping and occasional personal contacts. There was a warrant out for her arrest in New York, but she had no police record and wasn't in the national FBI database. The risk of anyone spotting her in such a remote part of New Jersey was minimal.
“For a while, things went pretty well. Regina was grateful to me for getting her out of the jam and tried to make a go of it. She was even nice to Lolly. The only bad part was, I had to keep a low profile. I had to be almost invisible. But then, I
had
been a magician. Invisibility was sort of second nature. But as the years rolled on, Regina became restless. She was not made for small-town life. She missed the city—the lights, the traffic, the crowds, all the excitement. One morning, I woke up and she was gone. She'd left a note: ‘Sorry, Max. I can't take it anymore. I'm going back to the city. You don't need to know which one. Good luck. R.'
“I was devastated. I loved her, you see. I thought of trying to trace her. And I would've, too, if it hadn't been for Lolly. I couldn't risk it. If I was caught and had to go to prison for Regina's crime, who would take care of the kid? She was only fourteen at the time. I always hoped Regina would come back, but she never did. That day you came into the barn, for a split second I thought you were
Regina. You are the same height and build. The light was behind you and I couldn't see your face, only your silhouette. When I realized you weren't Regina, I caught my hand in the press. End of story.”
He closed his eyes again.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Why don't you take a nap. I have calls to make. But I'll stop back later tonight.”
Eyes still closed, he nodded.

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