Jumper

by Steven Gould

  She hugged me then, and pulled my head up into the nape of her neck. I glanced at her face. Her eyes were squeezed shut and a single tear streaked her left cheek.

  That also made me want to cry.

  She took me to bed after that.

  “It’s okay. It happens like that the first time. The second time will be better.”

  “See, I told you. Wow.” She took a large breath. “That was more than better.”

  “Oh my God! Where on earth did you learn that? Are you sure this was your first time?”

  “I told you,” I said truthfully, “I read a lot.”

  PART III:

  ADJUSTMENTS

  Chapter 7

  Love stinks.

  Millie wanted to see me no more than a weekend at a time and no more than two weekends a month. She didn’t want me spending the money. I offered to move to Stillwater, but she was adamant.

  “No way. Wait. I know you’re rich as Midas, but, dammit, I have a life, too! I have classes to study for, a part-time job, and a rich, full part of my life that doesn’t include you.” She held up her hand. “Now, maybe it will include you later, but not right now. Let’s take it slow.”

  “You don’t have to work. I could pay you a salary.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “There’s a word for that. I don’t believe you said that!”

  “Huh?” I thought about it. “Sorry. I just want to be with you as much as possible.”

  It was a matter of hard negotiation to get her to agree to two weekends a month instead of one.

  Love stinks.

  A magician called Bob the Magnificent had an act on Forty-seventh Street. The act featured an escape that baffled the New York Times entertainment reviewer, so I bought a very expensive front-row ticket and went.

  Bob, a short dumpy man with a beard and a tuxedo, kept the audience entertained with pretty good sleight of hand, card tricks, and magically appearing pigeons. He was also good with rings and fire. Still, in preparation for this performance, I’d been reading Houdini’s Magician Among the Spirits and there wasn’t anything about the act that made me suspect the paranormal.

  As you might infer from his name, Bob the Magnificent (B.M. for short) did a lot of comedy as part of the act. He also featured these two assistants, Sarah and Vanessa; they were clad initially in long gowns, but, as the act proceeded, more and more of their clothing was “borrowed” for this trick or that. By intermission they were wearing the sequined equivalent of a one-piece bathing suit with net stockings. At least for the men in the audience, they became more and more of a distraction for Bob’s sleight of hand.

  During the break, I jumped home, used the bathroom, and drank a Coke. I didn’t mind paying the outrageous prices charged at the theater but I did hate standing in line. Besides, the cups they use are so small. I was back in my seat when the curtain opened.

  Bob started the second act by bringing various audience members on stage and pulling animals out of their ears, pockets, and necklines. I was most impressed by the six-foot python that he pulled from a woman’s coat pocket. The woman, however, was not.

  For his next trick Bob wanted to make one of his assistants disappear—he called for another audience volunteer to verify the ordinariness of his materials. He picked me.

  I hesitated, then stood. Previously I’d resigned myself to jumping back to the theater after the show and finding a backstage hiding place to watch tomorrow’s escape—to determine if Bob the Magnificent was teleporting. If I could see enough of the offstage area while up there, I could hide myself in time to witness tonight’s great event.

  Bob the Magnificent said, “Let’s give our volunteer a big hand.” Applause followed me on stage. As I topped the stairs I acquired a jump site just off side of the stage.

  “Tell me,” Bob said, “what’s your name, young sir?”

  “David.” I was blinking from the bright lights, and the directional mikes set on the edge of the stage threw my voice back at me, louder than life, echoing through the auditorium.

  “Just David? No last name?” I swear he smirked.

  I blushed. “Just David.”

  Bob turned to the audience and said, “Isn’t it sad when cousins marry?” He got a big laugh. He turned to me again, talking slowly, like he was talking to an idiot. “Well, David the Ordinary, I’m Bob the Magnificent.” He got a small laugh. “Do you think you could remember where this came from?” He took a drape from his assistant Vanessa. The piece of cloth had begun the act as the skirt of her full gown.

  I nodded.

  “I knew you could.” He paused for laughter. “With this ordinary piece of cloth, I intend to make Sarah, here, vanish from this stage. I want you to verify that it is an ordinary piece of cloth. An ordinary job for an ordinary fellow.” He paused. “David the Ordinary.”

  Me ears burned hotter. With his wit directed my way, Bob seemed less and less magnificent. In fact, I’d come to the conclusion that he was an asshole, and I was hoping that he wasn’t a teleport.

  I held up the drape, shook it out. It was velveteen, cut very full and large enough to cover Sarah since it was no longer gathered into the waistline of her gown.

  The audience burst into laughter and I glanced up in time to catch Bob making faces behind my back. Very funny. I flipped the drape over my head and, as it settled, hiding me from both the audience and Bob, I jumped to the spot I’d chosen, stage left.

  On the stage the drape collapsed and fell to the floor.

  The audience gasped, then burst into wild applause. Bob, after a moment of staring blankly at the cloth, said, “Well where the hell did he go?” The audience thought this was very funny and Bob, startled by their reaction, took a bow, then picked up the drape, gingerly, like it might bite him. He stamped on the floor where I’d been standing, then with a small catch in his voice said, “Uh, I guess we need another volunteer.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was stunned for normal reasons or because he knew what I was. No progress made, no knowledge gained. I was sorry I’d done it, but a magic act was probably the safest place to have it happen.

  I backed away and stood behind a flap of curtain. My end of the stage seemed deserted though I could see a man at the fly rail for the drop curtain and another man watching the act from the far side. He was staring at the spot on the stage where the drape had fallen. The backstage area was dark and I felt relatively safe from detection.

  Back on stage, Bob proceeded to disappear Sarah. I saw her drop into a trapdoor from my vantage point, but it wasn’t anywhere near where I’d been standing. A little later, he reappeared her from an empty box hanging from the ceiling. It was pretty impressive, but I saw her enter the suspended box from a platform behind the curtain, moving through a slit very carefully. It was impressive—the box hardly moved.

  I looked around for another hiding place. The apparatus for the grand escape was set up behind the curtain and when they flew the curtain out, I’d lose my spot. I found a stack of equipment boxes stacked to the left and crouched behind them, arranging a smaller box to sit on.

  While I was doing this there was more of Bob’s shtick and laughter, but I missed most of it. After a minute, though, they raised a section of the curtain and brought some spotlights up to reveal the apparatus to the audience.

  “Ladies and gentleman—the Hammers of Doom!”

  Sitting in the spotlight was a gray platform suspended three feet above the floor by four massive and rigid cables. The cables ran straight up from tie-downs on the stage, to the corners of the platform, then up into the fly rails above the stage. On either side of the platform two enormous pistons were poised, round steel plates about three feet in diameter and ten inches thick. These were welded onto shiny steel rods a foot in diameter that gleamed as if oiled. These rods each ran back a few feet to disappear into huge steel cylinders mounted on steel girders and fastened to the floor by massive bolts.

  On the other side of this apparatus, Sarah was shoveling coal into the fire
box of a steam boiler. On the face of the boiler, a huge pressure gauge showed a needle creeping upward as the steam pressure increased. I noticed the pipes, then, that ran from a levered valve on the side of the boiler to each of the pistons.

  Bob’s other assistant, Vanessa, came back on stage, wheeling a hospital gurney with a sheet-covered form on it.

  “And you guys wondered what happened to David the Ordinary,” said Bob, his hand gripping the edge of the sheet. “Well, keep wondering.” He yanked the sheet off to reveal a dummy of the kind used in car crash tests. “Meet Larry.” He pulled the dummy into a sitting position, legs dangling. Larry’s torso was hollowed out, leaving an oblong hole perhaps two feet tall and a foot wide. A large watermelon was wedged into the cavity.

  Vanessa and Bob carried “Larry” over to the platform and locked its wrists to manacles that hung shoulder-high from the cables, so it stood, arms stretched diagonally across the middle of the platform and, incidentally, squarely between the pistons.

  “Well, it doesn’t look good for Larry, does it?” Bob said, stepping off the platform. He walked over to the boiler. The needle was approaching the red zone on the dial. “Sarah, did we get that safety valve fixed?” Sarah shrugged her shoulders, as if she didn’t know.

  “I could tell you how many tons of force these two steam hammers produce when they collide but I’ll let you see, instead, with this graphic example. Lower the splash shield, please!”

  A ten-foot-by-ten-foot frame, stretched tight with transparent plastic, was lowered between the audience and the platform. A recorded drumroll came from the sound system. The needle on the boiler neared the red zone. Bob pulled even more of Sarah’s costume off to feed the fire, leaving her in a sequined thong bikini and halter.

  Then he threw the lever.

  A tremendous gout of steam shot from vents in the cylinders, briefly obscuring the platform from the audience, and then the two pistons came together with a tremendous clang and thunderclap. Watermelon sprayed forward and backward, spattering the splash shield and looking unpleasantly like blood as it dripped down.

  Bob pulled the lever in the other direction and the two pistons withdrew. As they did, the lower half of Larry, from the shoulders down, dropped onto the stage, pinched off by the impact. The head flipped down and hung, upside down, still suspended by the manacled arms.

  “Tough luck, Larry,” Bob said.

  The splash shield withdrew and Bob’s assistants took the remains of Larry out on the gurney, covered in the watermelon-stained sheet. A recorded dirge played and Bob held his hand over his heart.

  Sarah shoveled more coal into the firebox, and the steam gauge crawled back toward the red. Bob added parts of Vanessa’s costume to the fire so that she was clad as briefly as Sarah; then Vanessa brought another audience member on stage to handcuff Bob to the platform and check the integrity of the manacles.

  “Nervous?” Bob asked the man, who kept glancing sideways at the two pistons. “You should be. The last guy who volunteered disappeared and hasn’t been seen since.”

  I had to admit he was taking my disappearance well. I made up my mind to reappear before the act was over.

  Vanessa escorted the volunteer back off the stage and then Bob said, “If you guys think I’m lowering the splash shield, you’re crazy. If I’m between these pistons when they connect—well, let’s just say I hope to make quite an impression on the audience.”

  The needle moved closer to red and the drumroll began. Vanessa moved to the lever and Sarah joined her, each woman putting a hand on the lever. The stage darkened, and a broad spotlight illuminated Bob and the apparatus. A more tightly focused light lit the two women. In the sudden darkness, the mouth of the firebox spilled an orange glow onto the stage and a third spotlight flicked on and tightened on the steam pressure gauge.

  I blocked the light with my hand, looking, instead, into the shadows around Bob, trying to see what they didn’t want the audience to see. The tension was getting to me and the possibility that Bob would get crunched seemed more and more likely.

  The raised platform eliminated the possibility of him dropping through another trapdoor. While the spotlight did cast shadows, it also wasn’t so tightly focused that he could dodge to either side without being seen.

  The drumroll increased in volume and the women each held up three fingers, then two, then one; then they shoved the lever hard over.

  I kept my eyes on Bob. At the count of two, he shifted his hands and grabbed the chains of the manacles hard. As he did this the sleeves of his tux jacket slipped back and I saw that he had some sort of metal sleeve around his wrists, between the manacles and his skin. As the women counted one I saw something happening to the cables that the manacles were attached to. Thin wires, dull black, pulled out from the surface of the cables and tightened. I saw the ends of the manacles come free of the cable and draw slightly upward, obviously attached to the thin wires.

  Bob preserved the illusion by holding his arms out stiff, so they still seemed to be pulled tight by the cuffs. Then the women shoved the lever over and the steam shot out in front of the platform. As the steam shot out, the wires tightened and Bob literally flew straight up so fast that he was in the shadows above the stage before the pistons came together.

  Then they slammed together with a frightful clang and I jumped to the top of the pistons, where they pressed together, and sat there, in that brief instant before the steam cleared.

  The applause was terrifying.

  Bob reentered the stage, then, from the other side of the boiler and slammed the firebox door shut. With this cue, the stage lights came up and he stepped forward to take a bow. It wasn’t until he motioned for his assistants to take a bow as well that he noticed they were staring at me, perched on the “Hammers of Doom.”

  He walked toward me, eyes wide, mouth tight. I jumped down, first to the platform, then to the stage. The applause increased and I took a half bow. Bob turned back to the audience again and said, “Thank you for coming.” Then he made a gesture with his right hand and the curtain came down.

  I wondered if it might not be a good idea to leave.

  Bob turned around then, hands at his side, balled into fists. “All right, asshole. How’d you do it?” His voice was harsh and loud, and I took an involuntary step back. He started walking toward me.

  I looked nervously around and saw four of the backstage crew come forward, watching me, wondering who the hell I was. Some of them also looked angry. Sarah and Vanessa just watched, faces impassive.

  “Bob,” I said loudly, “you’re a poseur.”

  Then I raised my hands, snapped my fingers, and jumped.

  The morning after my encounter with Bob the Magnificent, I decided, out of the blue, to go to Florida, to see my grandfather. My travel agent got me a seat on a jet leaving La Guardia in less than twenty minutes. I walked aboard during the final call.

  From Orlando, I switched to a small commuter flight for the last leg to Pine Bluffs. It was noisy, cramped, and it jumped around a lot in the afternoon thermals. At one point, after a particularly vicious downdraft pulled me up against the seat belt for seconds, I nearly jumped away.

  The only thing that stopped me was that I didn’t think I could jump back into a moving vehicle, not one out of my sight. If I was going to jump away from the plane, I decided I’d wait until we were closer to the ground and even more out of control. The flight lasted a half hour of real time and a lifetime of subjective time. Things were better when it was back on the ground.

  The airport building was only slightly bigger than the first floor of my brownstone and the ticket agent was the ground crew, baggage handler, and security. The five other passengers on my flight were met by friends or relatives, leaving me to the tender mercies of the airport car service, a beat-up blue station wagon with a driver whose face was all seams.

  “Where to?”

  “Oh. Hang on a second. I need to get it out of the phone book.” I went back into the building, to
the pay phone in the corner.

  There was no Arthur Niles listed. Shit. I glanced around the building—no one was looking my way. I studied my corner and “acquired” it, then jumped to my old room, in Dad’s house. The dust was thicker than ever. I rustled through my desk until I found one of Granddad’s old letters, a birthday card with the envelope. The address was on it. I tucked it in my pocket and shut all the drawers.

  There were steps in the hallway that stopped outside the door. I froze, stood still as stone. If the door handle moved, I could be gone in seconds. A voice, Dad’s, with a quaver I didn’t remember, said, “Davy?”

  I don’t know why, but after hesitating a second I said, “Yes, it’s me.”

  I don’t think he expected an answer. I heard him gasp and the floor creak as he shifted his weight from one foot to another. Then he was fumbling at the padlock. When I heard it click open, I jumped back to the Pine Bluffs airport.

  The ticket agent/baggage guy at the counter glanced up as I sagged against the wall. Well, let him wonder, I thought, thinking of Dad, not the ticket agent. My stomach was churning, but there was a curious satisfaction, not unlike the feeling I’d gotten when I broke the flour container. Though that hadn’t been as satisfying as it could have been. I didn’t get to see the results, but I also didn’t leave footprints.

  The card and envelope were still in my hand when I walked outside to the cabby. “345 Pomosa Circle,” I told him.

  I got in the back and sat, quiet, as a lot of white houses and greenery went by. Dad had sounded different, old. I tried not to think about it.

  “Here you are: 345 Pomosa Circle. That’s four bucks.”

  I paid him and he drove off.

  The house was mostly as I remembered it, a small white bungalow with date palms and a canal that ran behind every house. The name on the mailbox said JOHNSON.

  The woman who came to the door spoke Spanish and very little English. When I asked after Arthur Niles, she said, “Un momento, por favor.” She vanished back into the house.