Houdini and Me

by Dan Gutman

  “Acts?” she asked.

  “I do a little magic,” Houdini said modestly, “and escapes, mostly. Card tricks. Pretty much anything. Much like the great Harry Houdini used to. Have you ever heard of him?”

  “Sure I heard of him,” the lady replied. “But we don’t put on acts here. We put on plays and musicals.”

  Houdini smiles, pleased that his name is still remembered after so many years.

  “Is there a theater where people might go to see a magician these days?” he asks.

  “Uh…Madison Square Garden?” she says after thinking it over.

  “Yes, of course,” Houdini says, brightening. “I’ve been to the Garden many times. It’s still around?”

  “Sure it’s still around,” the lady replies. “Where’s it gonna go?”

  “Then I am off to Madison Square Park,” says Houdini, tipping an imaginary hat. “On Madison Avenue, of course.”

  The lady snorts, as if only a total idiot would think Madison Square Garden was near Madison Square Park or Madison Avenue.

  “Madison Square Garden is at Thirty-First Street,” she tells him. “Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. It’s above Penn Station.”

  They moved the theater and put it on top of the train station? Houdini wonders silently. How did they pull that off?

  “Aha, thank you, ma’am,” Houdini says. He turns south, walking down Broadway. Hundreds of people pass by him, none giving him a second glance.

  That wouldn’t have happened in my day, Houdini thinks. I was one of the most recognizable faces in the world. People would be stopping to shake my hand and ask for an autograph. I used to be the great Harry Houdini. And I will be again.

  There would be no point in telling the passersby who he is. Not yet. They would just laugh in his face. He would have to prove himself first.

  Forty-First Street…Thirty-Ninth Street. He knows he’s heading in the right direction. A hot dog vendor is on the corner, and the smell makes Houdini feel a little hungry. He digs into his pockets and is relieved to find some coins.

  “How much?” he asks the hot dog man.

  “Four bucks.”

  “Four bucks?!” exclaims Houdini. “Are you out of your mind? In my day, a hot dog was a nickel.”

  “Then go back to your day, buddy,” the vendor mutters without looking up.

  Thirty-Seventh Street…Thirty-Fifth Street. A newsstand has a row of newspapers on display and Houdini scans the headlines as he walks by. LUNATIC STABS LAWYER IN BAR BRAWL. Houdini shakes his head. Some things never change.

  Thirty-Fourth Street…Thirty-Second Street. He wonders where all the cigar stores and furriers went. Now every few blocks has something called Starbucks, whatever that is. Or a dry cleaner. A pizza joint. A homeless man sleeping on the street. Another one begging for money. Eyebrow threading? What could that be?

  Finally, he sees the sign for Madison Square Garden. The building is huge, much bigger than the one he remembers. The sign is another one of those video screens, flashing a different performance every five seconds: New York Knicks vs. Boston Celtics…Monster Truck Show…a series of rock bands and rappers. Houdini has never heard of any of them.

  He marches through the front doors confidently until he encounters a burly-looking man, with his thick arms crossed in front of him.

  “This area is off-limits, sonny,” says the unsmiling security guard.

  “My good man,” Houdini says, turning on the charm. “Who is in charge of booking acts at Madison Square Garden?”

  “Don’t touch me, kid,” replies the security guard. “Get outta here.”

  Houdini backs off. He has heard that word before, but it had never been directed at him.

  “My apologies,” he says. “Perhaps a small demonstration of my skill will improve your disposition.”

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small box of needles. He puts a bunch of them in his mouth and pretends to swallow them. Then he does the same thing with a long thread. He waits a moment, then reaches into his mouth and pulls out the thread with needles dangling from it. The East Indian Needle Trick!

  The security guard is unimpressed.

  “Get out of my face, punk,” he says.

  Houdini takes a deck of cards out of his pocket and does a fancy shuffle.

  “Pick a card,” he says. “Any card.”

  The security guard refuses to pick a card. “I’ve seen David Copperfield, kid,” he tells Houdini. “He made the Statue of Liberty disappear. So beat it.”

  You can’t win ’em all. If at first you don’t succeed, and so on. Houdini bows politely and wishes the man well. He leaves the Garden and walks back uptown on Eighth Avenue, lost in his thoughts. He doesn’t have the expensive props he would need to do the Water Torture Cell trick or one of the other elaborate escapes from his stage act. There must be some other way he can attract attention to himself to get into the newspapers the way he did in the good old days. That is, when he was last alive.

  He’s thinking these thoughts as he turns right on Thirty-Fifth Street and steps off the curb. That’s when a food delivery guy on an electric bike swerves around the corner.

  “Watch out!” somebody shouts.

  Houdini looks left at the last moment, just in time to dive out of the way, but not quick enough to avoid being smacked by the handlebar, spun around, and knocked to the ground.

  “Abre los ojos, idiota!” the delivery guy shouts, which of course means “Open your eyes, idiot!” in Spanish.

  A few people gather around to help Houdini get up and back on the sidewalk. He touches his face. His nose is scraped and bloody. A man offers him a napkin for his wound and a woman hands him a quarter out of pity.

  “There’s a shelter down the street from here,” she says. “You can get a hot meal there too, I think. Do you know where your mom and dad are?”

  Houdini thanks the people who helped him and brushes himself off.

  This is going to be harder than I thought, he mutters to himself as he continues down Thirty-Fifth Street.

  Things are not looking good. Even the great Harry Houdini is beginning to have doubts about his prospects in 21st century New York. But suddenly a wide smile spreads across his face when he sees a sign in front of him on the sidewalk.

  Yes! They’ve created a whole museum in my memory! Houdini thinks to himself. They still remember The Great Houdini!

  He dashes inside and takes the elevator to the fourth floor. It opens to a room with posters, photos, letters, and other mementos from his long career. Houdini looks at them for a few minutes and then marches up to the counter, where a young woman is shuffling a deck of cards.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asks anxiously.

  “No,” she says. “What happened to your face? You’re bleeding pretty bad, kid. Somebody beat you up?”

  “Never mind that,” he says impatiently. “I had a slight mishap on the street. The important thing is that I am Houdini! I’m alive!”

  “Great, and I’m the queen of England,” the woman says. “What can I do for you? You wanna buy a magic kit or something?”

  “Don’t you understand?” Houdini asks. “It’s me! I said if there was a way for me to come back after I died, I would do it. Well, there is a way, and I did it! I am back!”

  The woman was not impressed.

  “You’re going to drip blood on the counter,” she said. “You should go to a hospital. Do your parents know where you are?”

  “Don’t you grasp the enormity of what is right in front of your eyes?” Houdini implores the woman. “I pulled off the greatest Metamorphosis ever!”

  “Congrats,” she says sarcastically. “Kid, nuts come in here all the time saying they’re the next Houdini.”

  “But I really am Houdini!” Houdini yells at her. “I need your help to get some bookings so I can prove I am who I say I am.”

  The other people in the museum turn to see what’s going on. As the woman behind the counter reaches into her pocket f
or her cell phone, a guy in a football jersey approaches Houdini.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, son,” he says. “You’re disturbing the other visitors.”

  “If I were not Houdini, would I be able to do this?” he says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a needle. He proceeds to poke it through his cheek. Everybody in the museum gasps. The woman behind the counter dials 911 on her cell phone.

  “Whoa, calm down, kid,” says the guy in the football jersey. “There’s no need to do that. We’ll get you the help you need.”

  Not more than a minute later, two cops enter the museum.

  “What seems to be the problem?” one of them asks.

  “This young man is being disruptive, violent, and self-destructive,” whispers the woman behind the counter.

  “Has he got a weapon?” asks the other cop.

  “He stuck a needle through his own face,” says the guy in the football jersey.

  “Okay, buddy,” the first cop says, grabbing Houdini by the arm. “Come with us.”

  “I’m Harry Houdini!” Houdini shouts. “Can’t you see?”

  The second cop pulls a pair of handcuffs off his belt and wraps them around Houdini’s wrists.

  “Handcuffs?” Houdini says, a smirk on his face. “Really?”

  GET A LIFE

  When I opened my eyes, I was lying in my bed again, just as I had been before my little straitjacket adventure in Kansas City.

  First things first. I checked myself all over. I wasn’t Houdini anymore. I was me. What a relief! My arms and shoulders were sore from struggling to get out of the straitjacket. But other than that, everything was back to normal.

  I looked at the clock on my night table. Eleven o’clock. Well, at least Houdini had kept his promise. Metamorphosis had lasted exactly one hour. My mom never knew I was away. Nobody else knew what happened. No harm. It was like I had been in bed the whole time. I went back to sleep and didn’t wake up again until my alarm went off at seven in the morning.

  I brushed my teeth and stumbled downstairs for breakfast. My mom was already in the kitchen, getting ready for work.

  “Morning,” she said cheerfully. “Sleep good, Harry?”

  “Yeah,” I told her. “I had a dream, I think.”

  “Oh, what happened?”

  I could have told her the whole story of the straitjacket and pretended it was a dream. But I just didn’t want to get into it.

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “It slipped away as soon as I woke up.”

  When I got to school, Zeke caught up to me outside the media center. The little argument we had at St. John the Divine was in the past. Zeke and I have known each other too long to let things like that bother us.

  “You won’t believe what happened to me last night,” he said.

  “Do tell.”

  “My dad came home from work and he said he had a surprise for me,” Zeke told me excitedly. “So he handed me this box and I opened it up. And you know what was inside?”

  “What?”

  “A box!” Zeke said. “So I opened up the second box and you know what was inside it?”

  “Another box?” I guessed.

  “Yes!” Zeke exclaimed. “And there were three more boxes, each one smaller than the one before it. My dad gave me a bunch of boxes!”

  “Your dad is weird, dude,” I told him.

  “I know, right?” Zeke replied. “So what’s going on with you?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.

  “Try me.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into it with Zeke. He already thought I was crazy, and what happened to me the night before was even crazier. But Zeke is my best friend. He’d do anything for me, and I’d do anything for him. So I decided to be honest.

  “I switched places with Houdini,” I said, checking to see if Zeke was rolling his eyes. “He calls it Metamorphosis. He sent me to Kansas City in 1921and I became him. When I got there, some guys put me in a straitjacket and hung me upside down from a building…”

  I told Zeke the whole story of how I got myself free. He just stared at me with his mouth open the whole time.

  “Wow,” he finally said. “That was way more interesting than my dad’s boxes.”

  “Yeah,” I told him, “your story was a little lame.”

  Zeke took a moment to take it all in. I could tell he was trying to process everything I had said. Or maybe he was just wondering whether he should have me checked into a mental institution.

  “What was it like?” he finally asked. “Being Houdini, I mean.”

  “I was scared to death,” I admitted. “I thought I might pee in my pants. You think I’m nuts, right?”

  “No, no,” Zeke assured me. “But let me ask you a question. If you switched places with Houdini and you became Houdini, did he become you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess so. I had a dream that he was here, wandering around Times Square trying to find a place to do his act.”

  The bell rang, and we had to go to class. I told Zeke we’d talk about it later.

  All day long at school, I had a bad feeling inside. Houdini was going to text me again at some point, for sure. But I didn’t know when. I had left the flip phone at home because I didn’t want to deal with him. I was beginning to regret ever getting the phone. It’s funny, when Houdini first contacted me, I was so excited. Now I was avoiding him, like he was a telemarketer trying to sell me something.

  “Mr. Mancini, did you hear the question?” my Social Studies teacher Mrs. Ashbury suddenly asked me.

  “Huh?” I said. “Yeah, I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.”

  “Well tell it to wander back to the Revolutionary War,” she replied. “We’ll have a test on this material tomorrow.”

  When I got home from school, I did my homework and tried to study. I didn’t talk much over dinner. Afterward, I went to my room and watched some YouTube videos to take my mind off Houdini. My mom poked her head into my room.

  “You okay, honey?” she asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet today.”

  “I’m fine,” I replied. “I guess I’m a little nervous because I have a Social Studies test tomorrow.”

  “Maybe you should get to bed early tonight,” she said. “I’m going to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Yeah, going to bed sounded like a good idea. Maybe Houdini wouldn’t call at all. Maybe he got Metamorphosis out of his system and I wouldn’t hear from him again. It occurred to me that once the battery on the phone died, he wouldn’t be able to contact me if he wanted to. But right now it had a full charge. It would take a few hours of solid texting to drain it.

  That’s when it happened.

  Bzzzzz…bzzzzz…bzzzzz…

  Oh no, it was him. I didn’t want to text with him.

  I let it ring a few more times, hoping it might stop. But it didn’t. Reluctantly, I flipped opened the phone. This was on the screen…

  “HARRY, IT’S ME, HARRY.”

  Of course it was him. Who else could it be?

  “Yeah,” I tapped.

  “THAT WAS SOME METAMORPHOSIS, WASN’T IT?”

  “Yeah,” I tapped again. I didn’t want to get into an argument about it. I was mad.

  But Houdini was in a talkative mood.

  “I WAS A BOY, LIKE YOU!” he texted. “IT FELT SO GOOD TO BE YOUNG AGAIN! AND THE CITY CHANGED SO MUCH! THE CARS! THE FASHIONS! THE SKYSCRAPERS! I HAD A WONDERFUL TIME! AT ONE POINT I GOT ARRESTED AND THE COP HANDCUFFED ME. THEY THOUGHT THEY COULD HOLD ME WITH HANDCUFFS! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?”

  He went on and on, describing his adventure in New York just the way it had happened in my dream. He could barely contain his excitement.

  I didn’t respond. I just watched the words scroll up the screen. It didn’t seem to register in his mind that I was angry.

  “SO HOW DID YOU LIKE BEING THE GREAT HOUDINI?” he finally asked.

  I didn’t reply. If you don’t have s
omething nice to say, don’t say anything at all. That’s what my mom always tells me.

  “YOU STILL THERE, HARRY?”

  “Yeah,” I tapped.

  “SOMETHING WRONG?”

  I decided to be honest.

  “Yes, something is wrong,” I tapped. “You deceived me.”

  “HOW?”

  He didn’t have a clue. It was like he didn’t pick up on other people’s feelings.

  “How do you think?” I tapped. “I could have been killed.”

  “BUT YOU SAID YOU WANTED TO BE FAMOUS,” Houdini texted. “I SAID I WOULD MAKE YOU THE MOST FAMOUS MAN IN THE WORLD FOR ONE HOUR, AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I DID.”

  “You didn’t tell me I’d have to hang upside down and get out of a straitjacket!” I tapped angrily. “You did a misdirection on me!”

  “YOU WANTED TO BE FAMOUS, HARRY,” he continued. “FAME DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN TO PEOPLE. YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TO GET FAMOUS.”

  In the 21st century, it occurred to me, people can become famous overnight by simply putting on some silly costume or by posting an outrageous tweet that goes viral. In Houdini’s day, you had to actually do something amazing to get famous. And after you did it, there was no Internet to spread the word about what you did. They didn’t even have television yet. Houdini had to risk his life escaping from something every day, in every town, in front of a live audience. And the people must have felt they had to make the effort to be there to see it in person. Because they never knew when he might fail to escape, or even die trying.

  Still, I was mad. He should apologize.

  “You should have warned me,” I tapped. “That would have been the right thing to do.”

  “BUT ADMIT IT,” he texted. “YOU HAD FUN, DIDN’T YOU?”

  “Fun?” I tapped. “I wouldn’t call it fun. Maybe it’s fun for you to put your life on the line. It wasn’t fun for me.”

  “BUT YOU GOT OUT OF THE STRAITJACKET, RIGHT?” he texted. “YOU ESCAPED.”

  “Yes.”

  “AND YOU CONFRONTED YOUR FEAR OF HEIGHTS.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “AND I BET IT MADE YOU A BETTER PERSON,” he texted. “NOW YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU COULD ESCAPE FROM THAT SITUATION, YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING.”