The Magician's Assistant (28 page)

“Hooky?” Kitty said.

“Lunch. I needed some things.” Haas looked more comfortable in the Wal-Mart than he did in the Fetters kitchen. He smiled easily.

“We came to get some pens. Sabine is going to do your wedding invitations.”

“That’s what Bertie told me,” he said. “It’s very nice of you. I think Bertie has good handwriting but she feels self-conscious about it. She wants everything to be perfect.”

“She was just trying to give me a task,” Sabine said. “I know she could do them.”

Haas shook his head. “She’s grateful for your help. Bertie’s so glad you’re here. We both are. It means a lot to have all the family together for the wedding.”

“Won’t be long now,” Kitty said.

Haas picked up a package of gold tinfoil stars and ran his fingers over the edges thoughtfully. “We’ve waited a long time. If it was up to me we’d go ahead and get married tomorrow, but Bertie wants a nice wedding and she should have one.” Haas waited through an awkward moment of silence and then tossed the stars in his basket. “I should go. The lines looked pretty long when I came in, and I’ve got to be back in class by one.”

“Sure,” Kitty said.

“It was good to see you again.” He hesitated and then held out his hand to Sabine, who shook it and said good-bye.

“He thinks you’re famous, too,” Kitty whispered as Haas was walking away. “They make him watch the video every night.”

Sabine turned to watch him recede towards Checkout. His legs were thin and long beneath his coat. “Do you think Bertie’s doing the right thing? He seems so solemn.”

“Did you look in his basket? Almond Roca. Bertie loves that stuff and it’s not cheap. He’ll buy a couple of notebooks as a cover but he was over here to get her a present, you can bet your life on it. He loves her and she loves him. If you ask me, Bertie made him wait way too long. Even if the women in my family don’t have such a good track record with men, she’s never had anything to worry about with Haas. He’s always going to be good to her.”

That’s what Parsifal had been, good to her. It was the thing that Sabine believed in, more than passion, more than tradition. Find a man you love who is good to you. She looked at the pens: razor point, fine point, ballpoint, Roller-ball, indelible. There was one felt-tipped calligraphy pen, but it wasn’t what she’d hoped for. She liked the old-fashioned kind, a set with changeable nibs and a bottle of ink. “It seems like they’re waiting kind of late to get these invitations done.”

“I don’t know why they’re bothering to send them at all.” Kitty added a box of envelopes to the cart. “Everybody knows they’re getting married two weeks from Saturday. They know when it is and where it is and whether or not they’re coming. It’s all a formality, sending out the cards.”

“Sentimental words from a woman who got married in a hospital room.”

“It was a ward,” Kitty corrected. “No private room for Howard.”

Sabine dropped the pen in the basket and was ready to push on when she was sidetracked by the glue sticks. They looked so much like ChapSticks. Next to them were the X-acto knives. The posterboard was flimsy and cheap, but there was some illustration board that was almost as good as Bristol board. She picked up a metal ruler for a straight edge. Making models of buildings was how Sabine was used to filling up her time. In Los Angeles she was in demand. There was always a greater need than she could possibly meet. “I think I’m going to buy a couple more things, just to give myself something to do.”

“Sure,” Kitty said. “We’re in no hurry.”

What she needed she already owned. She had it in triplicate at home. But she wasn’t home, and suddenly the idea of building something appealed to her. Maybe she could make something Dot would like. She filled the basket with wire and tempera paint. She found things she never knew she wanted in the hardware section, a lovely jeweler’s file and a three-ounce hammer. She doubled back to Beauty and bought Q-tips and rolled cotton. She bought straight pins in the sewing section and pushpins in School Supplies.

Kitty looked in the basket. “We always buy things we didn’t mean to. That’s the whole point of the place. It’s cold outside, there’s nowhere else to go, so you might as well stay in here and shop.”

Before they left, Sabine bought herself a pair of men’s jeans in dark blue denim.

Kitty and Sabine were home long before anyone else. The day, which had been so bright when they left the house, had clouded over while they had been shopping, and by the time they were home again they had to turn on the light in the kitchen in order to see properly. Kitty made tuna-fish sandwiches while Sabine sorted through her purchases.

“My mother told me you took an egg out of her ear,” Kitty said.

“I did.”

Kitty nodded, mixing a spoonful of mayonnaise into the bowl. “She said you did a great job. I’d like it if you could take one out of my ear sometime, not to show me how to do it, I know you wouldn’t do that, but I’d like to see the trick.”

“I can’t do it if you ask me to. It only works if you catch someone off-guard. I’ll take an egg out of your ear sometime when you’re not expecting it.”

“Guy had a hell of a time with that one. He never could get it right.”

Sabine shook her head. “I just can’t imagine that. It was the easiest thing in the world for him.” When there were omelettes for breakfast he took all the eggs out of Phan’s ear. Something about the cold shell on the soft skin of his ears made Phan crazy. He would fall on the floor, giggling and squirming, while Parsifal pulled out another and another. Sabine knew how to palm an egg so well because she had seen it done right there on her kitchen floor a hundred times. Parsifal never did the trick again after Phan died. He wouldn’t even eat eggs. “Do you have a deck of cards?” Sabine asked. Think of something else.

Kitty looked in a couple of drawers in the kitchen and then disappeared into the living room. She came back with a blue Bicycle pack that she handed to Sabine.

“No eggs.” Sabine took the cards out of the box, leaving the jokers inside. “So we’ll do a different trick.” She was wonderful at shuffling. That was one of the great responsibilities of an assistant. After every show they did in Vegas the house would offer her a job. She could have had the best blackjack table on the floor. “A pretty girl like you,” they’d say. “You’d make ten times more dealing than whatever Mr. Magic is paying you.”

“Can you imagine anything worse than dealing in Vegas?” she’d say to Parsifal. Winners slipping red plastic chips down the front of your blouse as a sign of appreciation.

Maybe it was because she had such long, slim fingers. Hands that were delicate but strong enough to open lids that were sealed onto jars. “With those hands,” her mother would say, “you could have been a surgeon, a pianist. But my girl shuffles cards for a magician.” In later years, her mother said it proudly instead of sarcastically.

Sabine made the cards fly on the Fetters’ kitchen table. She showed off shamelessly for Kitty, who lowered herself slowly into the next chair. The cards shot up, twisted, and arched. She swept them to the left and then right, rocked them back and forth like notes held long on an accordion. She showed their faces, hid them, changed them. Each of the fifty-two was a separate object, a singular soul. That was how you had to think about them. Not one deck but fifty-two cards.

When she wanted them, they came back to her, a cozy stack. She pushed them with the tips of her fingers across the table to Kitty. “Cut?”

“I can’t believe the boys weren’t here to see this. You have to show them this.”

“You bet.”

Kitty declined to cut the deck and Sabine took it up again and fanned it out. “Pick a card, any card. Memorize it and put it back in the deck. Don’t forget it, don’t change your mind, don’t lie about what it was later on when I need you to tell me the truth.” Card banter. She knew it like a song. She sang it.

Kitty did not reach out at first. The cards still seemed to be spinning. There was not as much air in the room as there had been before. Sabine did not question the wait. She knew it. She had made it herself.

“Okay,” Kitty said, blinking. “Okay.” She slid one from the pack, looked at it, slipped it back.

“You’ve done your part, now relax. Don’t relax so much that you forget your card.” They were not her words, but they came out fine. Whoever really said anything for the first time, anyway? Sabine shuffled again, just a moderate riff this time. The shuffle show was already in place and now what mattered was not disturbing the order of the cards. “There are how many cards in a deck, Mrs. Plate?”

“Fifty-two.”

“Fifty-two, correct. And in that deck of cards there are how many suits?” Cut.

“Four.”

“And do you know the names of these suits?” Cut. Cut.

“Hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs.”

“Exactly right.” Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Put the deck down. “So we have fifty-two cards and four suits, which leaves us how many cards in each suit?” Sabine almost didn’t ask her this part. So many people got it wrong. The simple math of it froze them and they couldn’t tell you to save their lives.

“Thirteen,” Kitty said.

Sabine smiled at her. “Beautiful.” She dealt out the entire deck into four piles. She counted to thirteen four times, made neat and even stacks without having to give the edges a straightening brush with her fingernail. Kitty watched her like she was dealing out Tarot cards, the truth of her future. The Sailor, the Drowned Man, the Queen of Wands. “So that’s all of them,” Sabine said. “Thirteen cards, four piles. My thought then is that this would have to be your card.” Sabine turned over the top card of the first pile, a six of clubs.

Kitty looked astonished and then heartbroken. It was better than giving them their card. They believed so completely that you would not fail. Even as they tried to follow you and couldn’t, they had seen a lifetime of card tricks. They were sure that the card they selected from the deck would come back to them at the end, even if they couldn’t understand how. Which was true, but Sabine was not at the end.

“No.”

Sabine looked pensive. She touched two fingers lightly to her lower lip. “I thought I knew how this one worked,” she said, not in the magician’s voice, but in her own. She tapped the second stack and turned the top card over. Six of diamonds. “This one?”

Kitty smiled. There was the pattern, the superior revelation. “No.”

Sabine went on to the third. “It shouldn’t be taking this long. Here?” Six of spades.

Kitty, thrilled, shook her head.

“One more chance,” Sabine whispered. She flicked the card over. She barely had to touch it, because it moved beneath her hand. Six of hearts.

“Yes.” Kitty nodded. “Yes, yes, yes.” She fell back in her chair, exhausted from the anticipation. She was smiling like a girl, so huge and open that Sabine could see not only how beautiful she must have been when she was the assistant, but how beautiful she was now. The card trick had made Kitty beautiful. “That was wonderful. Pure genius. You are wasting yourself here with us. You have to be a magician.”

Sabine was so pleased to have done well for Kitty. “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you want to.”

“Bullshit.” Kitty waved her hand. “You just aren’t used to thinking of yourself that way. This is brilliant, Sabine. What a waste it would be not to use this.”

Sabine smiled, flattered. She swept up the cards in one hand. “There are so many people who can do what I can do. To really make it work you have to have something else. Parsifal had it. He made tricks up. He could convince people of things.”

“I have to wonder what would have become of Guy if he’d stayed here. I wonder if he would have been a magician in Nebraska. He could have performed at the schools, I guess. Fairs, parties, maybe.”

Sabine tried to see it, the gymnasium hot and crowded, children squirming against the cold metal of folding chairs. The rabbit slips from Parsifal’s hands and shoots into the tangle of feet. All of the children go onto the floor, scoot under the chairs. “No,” she said. “He was a Californian through and through. He didn’t even like to play in Vegas. We traveled all the time but anywhere we went, all he could talk about was going home. I think no matter what happened he would have wound up out there sooner or later.”

Kitty’s eyes were half closed. Sabine wondered what she dreamed about. “I’m sure you’re right. It’s just that I remember him here. I know that he hated it, but this is where I see him. I see him in this house. I always have.” Kitty picked up the deck of cards from the table. She fanned them out and closed them up again. “Did he do a lot of card tricks?” Her hands were fluid.

“In the end. The last few years, all he wanted to do were cards.”

“I didn’t picture him sawing people in half.”

They had sold the saw box years ago to a married couple who called themselves the Minotaurs. They still had the zigzag box, though. It was such a good one that Parsifal hated to get rid of it, even when he refused to use it. It was made out of teakwood, painted with red and yellow diamonds. The inside was lined in cool blue satin. It was in one of the guest rooms now. It made a pretty little armoire. “He sawed me in half plenty. He folded me down and stuck swords through the box. He made me disappear in a locked trunk and brought me back as a rabbit. That was in a less enlightened time, but we did it all.”

Kitty spread out the cards and stacked them up, spread them and stacked them as if she were trying to figure out how they worked. “I’m surprised.” She tapped the deck thoughtfully. “He didn’t like to be closed in.”

“He hated to be closed in. He closed me in, but he never got boxed himself. Parsifal needed a Valium just to get on an elevator, for God’s sake.” Sabine had looked into the dark barrel of the MRI machine. She had pressed herself into a tenth of that much space. She’d told him it didn’t look so bad. “Your mother told me about the time he cut his face with the hedge shears, how they tied him up in a sack.”

“I remember that.”

“I would think after something like that, small spaces are always going to make you nervous.”

Kitty nodded and tapped the deck again absently. “They do.” Outside, the dark clouds were making the smallest re-lease, a snow so light it looked like talcum powder. “It wasn’t that sack that scared him. I’m sure it didn’t help, but that wasn’t it.”