Sleight of Hand

by Peter S. Beagle

  She had no idea where she was going. When she needed to sleep she stopped at the first motel; when the Buick’s gas gauge dropped into the red zone she filled the tank, and sometimes bought a sandwich or orange juice at the attached convenience store. Now and then during one of these stops she spoke with someone who was neither a desk clerk nor a gas-station attendant, but she forgot all such conversations within minutes, as she forgot everything but the words of the young policeman who had come to her door on a pleasant Wednesday afternoon, weeks and worlds ago. Nothing had moved in her since that point except the memory of his shakily sympathetic voice, telling her that her husband and daughter were dead: ashes in a smoking, twisted, unrecognizable ruin, because, six blocks from their home, a drowsy adolescent had mistaken his accelerator for his brake pedal.

  There had been a funeral—she was present, but not there—and more police, and some lawyer; and Alan’s sister managing it all, as always, and for once she was truly grateful to the interfering bitch. But that was all far away too, both the gratitude and the old detestation, made nothing by the momentary droop of a boy’s eyelids. The nothing got her snugly through the days after the funeral, dealing with each of the endless phone calls, sitting down to answer every condolence card and e-mail, informing Social Security and CREF of Alan’s death, going with three of his graduate students to clean out his office, and attending the memorial on campus, which was very tasteful and genuinely moving, or so the nothing was told. She was glad to hear it.

  The nothing served her well until the day Alan’s daughter by his first marriage came to collect a few of his possessions as keepsakes. She was a perfectly nice girl, who had always been properly courteous in an interloper’s presence, and her sympathy was undoubtedly as real as good manners could make it; but when she had gone, bearing a single brown paper grocery bag of photographs and books, the nothing stepped aside for the meltdown.

  Her brother-in-law calmed her, spoke rationally, soothed her out of genuine kindness and concern. But that same night, speaking to no one, empty and methodical, she had watched herself pack a small suitcase and carry it out to Alan’s big old Buick in the garage, then go back into the house to leave her cell phone and charger on Alan’s desk, along with a four-word note for her sister-in-law that read Out for a drive. After that she had backed the Buick into the street and headed away without another look at the house where she used to live, once upon a time.

  The only reason she went north was that the first freeway on-ramp she came to pointed her in that direction. After that she did not drive straight through, because there was no through to aim for. With no destination but away, without any conscious plan except to keep moving, she left and returned to the flat ribbon of the interstate at random intervals, sometimes wandering side roads and backroads for hours, detouring to nowhere. Aimless, mindless, not even much aware of pain—that too having become part of the nothing—she slogged onward. She fell asleep quickly when she stopped, but never for long, and was usually on her way in darkness, often with the moon still high. Now and then she whistled thinly between her teeth.

  The weather was warm, though there was still snow in some of the higher passes she traversed. Although she had started near the coast, that was several states ago: now only the mountains were constant. The Buick fled lightly over them, gulping fuel with abandon but cornering like a deer, very nearly operating and guiding itself. This was necessary, since only a part of her was behind the wheel; the rest was away with Alan, watching their daughter building a sandcastle, prowling a bookshop with him, reaching for his hand on a strange street, knowing without turning her head that it would be there. At times she was so busy talking to him that she was slow to switch on the headlights, even long after sunset. But the car took care of her, as she knew it would. It was Alan’s car, after all.

  From time to time the Buick would show a disposition to wander toward the right shoulder of the road, or drift left into the oncoming lane, and she would observe the tendency with vague, detached interest. Once she asked aloud, “Is this what you want? I’m leaving it to you—are you taking me to Alan?” But somehow, whether under her guidance or its own, the old car always righted itself, and they went on together.

  The latest road began to descend, and then to flatten out into farm and orchard country, passing the occasional township, most of them overgrown crossroads. She had driven for much of the previous night, and all of today, and knew with one distant part of herself that it would soon be necessary to stop. In early twilight, less than an hour later, she came to the next town. There was a river winding through it, gray and silver in the dusk, with bridges.

  Parking and registering at the first motel with a VACANCY sign, she walked three blocks to the closest restaurant, which, from the street, looked like a bar with a 1950s-style diner attached. Inside, however, it proved larger than she had expected, with slightly less than half of the booths and tables occupied. Directly to the left of the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SERVED sign hung a poster showing a photograph of a lean, hawk-nosed man in late middle age, with white hair and thick eyebrows, wearing evening dress: tailcoat, black bowtie, top hat. He was smiling slightly and fanning a deck of playing cards between long, neat fingers. There was no name under the picture; the caption read only DINNER MAGIC. She looked at it until the young waitress came to show her to her booth.

  After ordering her meal—the first she had actually sat down to since leaving home—she asked the waitress about Dinner Magic. Her own voice sounded strange in her ears, and language itself came hard and hesitantly. The girl shrugged. “He’s not full time—just comes in now and then, does a couple of nights and gone again. Started a couple of weeks ago. Haven’t exchanged two words with him. Other than my boss, I don’t know anybody who has.”

  Turning away toward the kitchen, she added over her shoulder, “He’s good, though. Stay for the show, if you can.”

  In fact, the Dinner Magic performance began before most of the current customers had finished eating. There was no stage, no musical flourish or formal introduction: the man in evening dress simply walked out from the kitchen onto the floor, bowed briefly to the diners, then tossed a gauzy multicolored scarf into the air. He seized it again as it fluttered down, then held it up in front of himself, hiding him from silk hat to patent-leather shoes….

  ….and vanished, leaving his audience too stunned to respond. The applause began a moment later, when he strolled in through the restaurant’s front door.

  Facing the audience once more, the magician spoke for the first time. His voice was deep and clear, with a certain engaging roughness in the lower range. “Ladies, gentlemen, Dinner Magic means exactly what it sounds like. You are not required to pay attention to me for a moment, you are free to concentrate on your coffee and pie—which is excellent, by the way, especially the lemon meringue—or on your companion, which I recommend even more than the meringue. Think of me, if you will, as the old man next door who stays up all night practicing his silly magic tricks. Because that, under this low-rent monkey suit, is exactly what I am. Now then.”

  He was tall, and older than the photograph had suggested—how old, she could not tell, but there were lines on his cheeks and under his angled eyes that must have been removed from the picture; the sort of thing she had seen Alan do on the computer. From her booth, she watched, chin on her fist, never taking her eyes from the man as he ran through a succession of tricks that bordered on the miraculous even as his associated patter never transcended a lounge act. Without elephants or tigers, without a spangled, long-legged assistant, he worked the room. Using his slim black wand like a fishing rod he reeled laughing diners out of their seats. Holding it lightly between his fingertips, like a conductor’s baton or a single knitting needle, he caused the napkins at every table to lift off in a whispering storm of thin cotton, whirl wildly around the room, and then settle docilely back where they belonged. He identified several members of his audience by name, address, profession, marital status, and, as an afte
rthought, by driver’s license state and number. She was never one of these; indeed, the magician seemed to be consciously avoiding eye contact with her altogether. Nevertheless, she was more intrigued—more awakened—than she had meant to let herself be, and she ordered a second cup of coffee and sat quite still where she was.

  Finishing at last with an offhanded gesture, a bit like an old-fashioned jump shot, which set all the silverware on all the tables chiming applause, the magician walked off without bowing, as abruptly as he had entered. The waitress brought her check, but she remained in her booth even after the busboy cleared away her dishes. Many of the other diners lingered as she did, chattering and marveling and calling for encores. But the man did not return.

  The street was dark, and the restaurant no more than a quarter full, when she finally recollected both herself and her journey, and stepped out into the warm, humid night. For a moment she could not call to mind where she had parked her car; then she remembered the motel and started in that direction. She felt strangely refreshed, and was seriously considering the prospect of giving up her room and beginning to drive again. But after walking several blocks she decided that she must have somehow gone in the wrong direction, for there was no motel sign in sight, nor any landmark casually noted on her way to the restaurant. She turned and turned again, making tentative casts this way and that, even starting back the way she had come, but nothing looked at all familiar.

  Puzzlement had given way to unease when she saw the magician ahead of her, under a corner streetlamp. There was no mistaking him, despite his having changed from evening clothes into ordinary dress. His leanness gave him the air of a shadow, rather than a man: a shadow with lined cheeks and long bright eyes. As she approached, he spoke her name. He said, “I have been waiting for you.” He spoke more slowly than he had when performing, with a tinge of an accent that she had not noticed.

  Anxiety fled on the instant, replaced by a curious stillness, as when Alan’s car began to drift peacefully toward the guardrail or the shoulder and the trees. She said, “How do you know me? How did you know all about those other people?”

  “I know nearly everything about nearly everyone. That’s the curse of my position. But you I know better than most.”

  She stared at him. “I don’t know you.”

  “Nevertheless, we have met before,” the magician said. “Twice, actually, which I confess is somewhat unusual. The second time was long ago. You were quite small.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” She was surprised by the faint touch of scorn in her voice, barely there yet still sharp. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I suppose not. Since I know how the trick’s done, and you don’t, I’m afraid I have you at a disadvantage.” He put one long finger to his lips and pursed them, considering, before he started again. “Let’s try it as a riddle. I am not entirely what I appear, being old as time, vast as space, and endless as the future. My nature is known to all, but typically misunderstood. And I meet everyone and everything alive at least once. Indeed, the encounter is entirely unavoidable. Who am I?”

  She felt a sudden twist in the nothing, and knew it for anger. “Show’s over. I’m not eating dinner anymore.”

  The magician smiled and shook his head very slightly. “You are lost, yes?”

  “My motel’s lost, I’m not. I must have taken a wrong turn.”

  “I know the way,” the magician said. “I will guide you.”

  Gracefully and courteously, he offered his arm, but she took a step backward. His smile widened as he let the arm fall to his side. “Come,” he said, and turned without looking to see whether she followed. She caught up quickly, not touching the hand he left open, within easy reach.

  “You say we’ve met before. Where?” she asked.

  “The second time was in New York City. Central Park,” the magician said. “There was a birthday party for your cousin Matthew.”

  She stopped walking. “Okay. I don’t know who you are, or how you knew I grew up in New York City and have a cousin named Matthew. But you just blew it, Sherlock. When we were kids I hated stupid, nasty Matthew, and I absolutely never went to any of his birthday parties. My parents tried to make me, once, but I put up such a fuss they backed down. So you’re wrong.”

  The magician reached out abruptly, and she felt a swift, cool whisper in her hair. He held up a small silver figure of a horse and asked with mock severity, “What are you doing, keeping a horse up in there? You shouldn’t have a horse if you don’t have a stable for it.”

  She froze for an instant, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and then clutched at the silver horse as greedily as any child. “That’s mine! Where did you get it?”

  “I gave it to you.” The magician’s voice sounded as impossibly distant as her childhood, long gone on another coast.

  And then came his command: “Remember.”

  ***

  At first she had enjoyed herself. Matthew was fat and awful as usual, but his birthday had been an excuse to bring together branches of the family that rarely saw one another, traveling in to Central Park from places as whispered and exotic as Rockaway and Philadelphia. She was excited to see her whole family, not just her parents and her very small baby brother, and Matthew’s mother and father, but also uncles and aunts and cousins, and some very old relatives she had never met before in her life. They all gathered together in one corner of the Sheep Meadow, where they spread out picnic blankets, coverlets, beach towels, anything you could sit down on, and they brought out all kinds of old-country dishes: piroshki, pelmeni, flanken, kasha, rugelach, kugel mit mandlen, milk bottles full of borscht and schav—and hot dogs and hamburgers too, and baked beans and deviled eggs, and birthday cake and candy and cream soda. It was a hot blue day, full of food.

  But a four-year-old girl can only eat and drink so much…. and besides, after a while the uncles all began to fall asleep on the grass, one by one, much too full to pay attention to her…. and all the aunts were sitting together telling stories that didn’t make any sense…. and Matthew was fussing about having a “stummyache,” which she felt he certainly deserved. And her parents weren’t worth talking to, since whenever she tried they were busy with her infant brother or the other adults, and not really listening. So after a time she grew bored. Stuffed, but bored.

  She decided that she would go and see the zoo.

  She knew that Central Park had a zoo because she had been taken there once before. It was a long way from the picnic, but even so, every now and then she could hear the lions roaring, along with the distant sounds of busses and taxis and city traffic that drifted to her ears. She was sure that it would be easy to find her way if she listened for the lions.

  But they eluded her, the lions and the zoo alike. Not that she was lost, no, not for a minute. She walked along enjoying herself, smiling in the sunlight, and petting all the dogs that came bouncing up to her. If their owners asked where her parents were, she pointed firmly in the direction she was going and said “right up there,” then moved on, laughing, before they had time to think about it. At every branching of the path she would stop and listen, taking whatever turn sounded like it led toward the lions. She didn’t seem to be getting any closer, though, which eventually grew frustrating. It was still an adventure, still more exciting than the birthday picnic, but now it was beginning to annoy her as well.

  Then she came around a bend in the path, and saw a man sitting by himself on a little bench. To her eyes he was a very old man, almost as old as her great-uncle Wilhelm—you could tell that by his white hair, and the deep lines around his closed eyes, and the long red blanket that his legs stretched out in front of him. She had seen other old men sitting like that. His hands were shoved deep into his coat pockets, and his face lifted to the angle of the afternoon sun.

  She thought he was asleep, so she started on past him, walking quietly, so as not to wake him. But without opening his eyes or changing his position, he said in a soft, deep voice, “An exceptional aftern
oon to you, young miss.”

  Exceptional was a new word to her, and she loved new words. She turned around and replied, trying to sound as grown up as she could, “I’m very exceptional, thank you.”

  “And glad I am to hear it,” the old man said. “Where are you off to, if I may ask?”

  “I’m going to see the lions,” she told him. “And the draffs. Draffs are excellent animals.”

  “So they are,” the old man agreed. His eyes, when he opened them, were the bluest she had ever seen, so young and bright that they made the rest of him look even older. He said, “I used to ride a draff, you know, in Africa. Whenever I went shopping.”

  She stared at him. “You can’t ride a draff. There’s no place to sit.”

  “I rode way up on the neck, on a little sort of platform.” The old man hadn’t beckoned to her, or shifted to make room for her on the bench, but she found herself moving closer all the same. He said, “It was like being in the crow’s-nest on the mast of a ship, where the lookout sits. The draff would be swaying and flowing under me like the sea, and the sky would be swaying too, and I’d hang onto the draff’s neck with one hand, and wave to all the people down below with the other. It was really quite nice.”

  He sighed, and smiled and shook his head. “But I had to give it up, because there’s no place to put your groceries on a draff. All your bags and boxes just slide right down the neck, and then the draff steps on them. Draffs have very big feet, you know.”

  By that time she was standing right in front of him, staring into his lined old face. He had a big, proud nose, and his eyebrows over it were all tangly. To her they looked mad at each other. He said, “After that, I did all my shopping on a rhinoceros. One thing about a rhinoceros”—and for the first time he smiled at her—“when you come into a store, people are always remarkably nice. And you can sling all your packages around the rhino’s horn and carry them home that way. Much handier than a draff, let me tell you.”