Bluff

by Michael Kardos

  I needed to get her alone, and it had to be now. I felt certain that once she was out of sight I’d never see her again.

  “I’m going out for a little air,” I said to the room while Ellen went to get her coat. If I got outside first, it wouldn’t seem as if I was following her.

  Ace’s hand was on my arm. “I need you a minute.” Despite my quiet protest, he led me to the alcove near the bathrooms. “That was some bullshit luck,” he whispered. “I’ll explain exactly what happened in the car. But it was some serious bullshit luck.”

  “Okay. That’s fine. Whatever.” I walked back into the main room. The front door was already closing behind Ellen. “I really want to get some air.”

  “You’re just drunk,” Ace said, louder than I would have liked. “You don’t need air, you need a cold shower.”

  I glared at him. My arm was sore from where he had gripped it. “I said I’ll be right back.” But when I went to leave, he reached out for my arm again. “Let go of me!” I yanked my arm free from him and headed for the door.

  “Yep. Definitely drunk,” I heard him say to Ethan. “Pardon us.” He followed me outside.

  When the door shut behind us he said, “Well? Here’s your fucking shithole Atlantic City air, Natalie. How do you like it?” He shook his head. “I swear, I’m not gonna ride home with you if you’re gonna act like this.”

  All the anger and frustration I’d felt from Ace’s weeklong display of disrespect—feelings I’d suppressed in the hope that he might possibly be the skilled cardsharp I’d been promised, that he’d promised me he was—I could suppress no longer.

  “Then find your own ride home, you fucking loser.” I hurried away from him.

  “What?” I heard from behind me. “What did you say to me?”

  “Asshole.”

  I was halfway down the block when I heard a whiny, “Natalie?”

  But I had no time for that.

  Ellen was nowhere in sight. No cars had gone by. I rushed to the end of the block and turned onto the street running perpendicular. She was rounding the corner. I ran after her down the empty street, slower than I wanted, my left leg burning from the dog bite. When I caught up, I called out to her and she turned around.

  “Natalie? I’m in kind of a hurry. I lost track of time and—”

  “Please,” I said her. “I have to talk to you.”

  “It’s really late. I have a long drive home and I teach in the morning.”

  “Trust me. We have to talk.”

  She said, “You can give me your number if you want, and I’ll call you.”

  I shook my head. “I know.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I know.”

  “You know what?” She raised her hands in the air. Feigned ignorance and impatience.

  “I’d never tell anyone,” I said. “But it was the greatest thing I ever saw.”

  Somewhere not far away came the sound of a window being smashed.

  “This isn’t a good neighborhood,” she said, pulling her purple scarf tighter around her. “I don’t like being out here at night.”

  “Please, Ellen—”

  “I had a nice time playing with you tonight, but I don’t know what you’re talking about, and to be honest you’re scaring me a little.”

  When she started to walk away from me, I blurted out, “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.” Her walking slowed down. “Please. Will you please let me buy you a cup of coffee?” She stopped and faced me. “Ace is a cheater,” I said, “and I know you know it, and I know why you didn’t say anything.”

  She watched me a moment before speaking again. “Your friend?”

  “No. We aren’t friends. We aren’t anything. But you. My god, Ellen. You can’t just walk away.”

  She watched me a moment, then took her phone out of her purse, checked it, and put it away again. “I can meet you at the Last Call Tavern on North Covington Road,” she said. “I don’t want you following me. Wait fifteen minutes and meet me there.”

  She turned away and started walking again. Her footfalls were the only sound on the night street.

  I walked the other way, back toward the bakery, wondering how the hell I was going to ditch Ace but determined to ditch Ace. I didn’t want him in my car. I didn’t ever want to see him again, but we were over a hundred miles from home and I wasn’t cold enough to leave him stranded. I decided to take him to the bar of his choice, let him drink it off for an hour until I picked him up again. I’d even give him booze money. Or I’d take him to a casino. Or wherever he wanted. I didn’t care.

  When I got back to my car, the passenger window was smashed. Ace’s backpack, gone. Then I noticed the side of my car had been keyed.

  I guessed he must have decided that vandalizing my car was worth the price of a bus ticket home.

  I used the flashlight on my phone to verify what the keyed writing said.

  BITCH

  But Ace had it wrong. I wasn’t a bitch. I was an accomplished magician and hopeful journalist who’d come to Atlantic City and found her story. The dues I’d had to pay included too much cash and a vandalized car, but there was no denying that, finally, I had found her, I had found her, God damn, I had found her.

  The car started. I pressed the home button on my phone and said, “Driving directions to Last Call Tavern in Atlantic City.”

  When the phone couldn’t find it, I repeated the request. Then I asked for directions to North Covington Road.

  Which, I learned, didn’t exist.

  PART TWO

  A

  I went to bed to the distant rumble and crash of garbage trucks moving through the predawn streets and woke up several hours later hungry and fog-brained. I trudged out to the kitchen and started a half pot of coffee with the last of a container of Folgers. While the coffee dripped I went into the living room, where Ethel was pecking at a small disco ball hanging from the cage top and Julius was sitting comfortably in his food dish. I had left my phone on the coffee table. I picked it up to check email. There was a new message from Brad Corzo.

  Subject: Invitation

  Dear Natalie,

  The talent committee is pleased to invite you to participate in the upcoming convention. Because final convention details are still being arranged, all presenters will be receiving a separate email once the date (either 12/18 or 12/19), time, and venue for their performances are set.

  Please remember to register online for the conference (as a presenter, your registration fee is waived), and upload a current bio and photo, which will appear on the conference website.

  Yours in magic,

  Brad Corzo

  Chair, Panel Selection Committee, World of Magic

  P.S. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Boy Scouts of America is one of the nation’s largest and most important values-based youth organizations. I myself was once a Scout. Performing for them is always an honor and a privilege.

  I let out an excited shriek, causing Ethel to jump down from her wooden bar.

  This was huge, especially in light of my correspondence the other day, which had been downright petulant. I reread the email to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding, but it couldn’t be clearer. The committee had actually changed its mind. I would perform at the convention.

  This was big enough news that I had no problem letting Brad Corzo’s petty scolding slide.

  Dear Brad,

  I’m grateful for your invitation, and I gladly accept. I’ll go ahead and register, and will await your further correspondence. Very much looking forward to the convention.

  Thank you again,

  Natalie

  Today was December 5. That gave me just under two weeks to prepare—not long, not long at all. Not if the idea was to make my performance great.

  I carried my coffee mug into the bathroom to start the shower. And as the water rained down on me I thought about the cups and balls routine I’d been working on. I could lead into it with the disappearing signed bill trick and
have the bill reappear inside the lime produced at the end of the cups and balls. This was something I liked to do, embed one trick inside another, like magical nesting dolls. It’s very satisfying to an audience.

  When I got out of the shower I saw the pack of cards sitting on the bathroom countertop. My bathroom mirror was the largest in the apartment, and when I’d gotten home last night I’d spent a few minutes in the bathroom with the cards, trying to figure out what the hell that woman, Ellen, might have been doing. I didn’t get far. And now it hit me again that the greatest card manipulator I’d ever seen had vanished right before my eyes.

  Already it felt like a strange, frenzied dream.

  After finding my car vandalized and realizing Ellen had ditched me, I’d gone back into the bakery with an excuse about wanting her advice—for my sister, who has a daughter in kindergarten.

  Ethan had written down Ellen’s cell phone number. He didn’t strike me as a confederate. He seemed ignorant about who she really was and what she could do.

  I’m sure she’d be glad to help, he’d said.

  I wanted to call her now, but I thought, toweling off, that maybe I shouldn’t. Brad Corzo’s email felt like a sign that I ought to forget about my detour into card cheats and poker games and refocus my energies on magic, where, after nearly a decade at sea, I was finally being offered an olive branch.

  I brushed my teeth thinking: the World of Magic crowd would go nuts for the Rings of Fire linking ring routine I’d been working on. I should close with it.

  I put on my jeans and shirt thinking: I need to find her.

  I put on my socks thinking: forget about the lime. More striking if an egg appeared at the end of the cups and balls trick, and then I cracked it.

  I ran a brush through my hair thinking: no way is that really Ellen’s phone number. But I have to find out.

  To my surprise, the outgoing message began: Hi, this is Ellen.

  I left a message, because what was the harm? This is Natalie, from last night. Please call me when you get a moment.

  But I knew she wouldn’t.

  I gave the birds fresh water and returned to the loveseat, about to Google her. What was her last name? Had she ever said? I typed in “Ellen” and “kindergarten” and “Flemington” and got no useful results. I found the school district’s website and searched for kindergarten teachers. No Ellen. Obviously. She wasn’t a kindergarten teacher. She didn’t live in Flemington.

  I poured a bowl of cereal, and while I ate I poked around the school district websites of towns near Flemington—Rowland Mills, East Amwell—but again, there was no Ellen who taught kindergarten. In Franklin there was a first grade teacher named Ellen Sacks, but a subsequent search revealed that she had been teaching at Franklin Elementary School since 1979.

  I Googled more combinations of words—Ellen, poker, New Jersey, Atlantic City—before giving up. Monday mornings always made me restless and vaguely unsettled, society beginning its workweek and me coming off a weekend performance or nothing at all. I dusted and vacuumed the apartment (the vacuuming sending Mustard, upstairs, into a barking frenzy), but my fingers needed a deck of cards in them. I did a few bottom deals, which I knew Ellen hadn’t done, and then some second deals, which didn’t seem right either. What then? What had it been? I was about to call her number again when I decided the hell with it: Flemington, here I come.

  I worried about driving my car with “BITCH” scratched into the side and a trash bag taped over the passenger window frame. There was no money to pay a ticket, nor money for car repairs to prevent getting ticketed, since stupid me had gone frugal on car insurance and waived comprehensive coverage.

  I went online for home remedies for a scratched car. I didn’t own a power sander or polishing wheel. I did own toothpaste. “See you later, birds,” I said, and got my keys from the hook by the door.

  Outside with a hand towel and a tube of Colgate, I attempted what one enthusiastic car owner had called “the never-fail toothpaste method,” which failed utterly.

  I’ll deal with the scratch later, I thought, and got under way.

  While driving, I toggled radio stations and came upon an interview with none other than U.S. Senate candidate Victor Flowers.

  I tell you, Todd, he was saying to the host, I still say we’re a country of optimists. We the people, and we the government, must work together for our kids and grandkids …

  This was New Jersey talk radio, as light and fluffy as a wellmade omelet. It nauseated me, but I couldn’t stop listening. Soon he and the host were reminiscing about Victor’s days singing for his band, the Eternals.

  We were these clean-cut kids playing the same clubs as the Ramones, the Velvet Underground. He laughed. We were so out of place!

  The Eternals recorded, what, three albums? the host asked.

  Only two, Victor said. Two was plenty! Both men guffawed.

  And then you moved over to the business side of the industry.

  Where I belonged, Victor said. Offstage.

  And that’s where the money was.

  I’ve been very fortunate.

  Victor Flowers sounded totally at ease on the radio. He must have been in his sixties by now, but there was a youthful chirpiness to his voice.

  I called my mother in Reno.

  “I’m in the car,” I said when she picked up. “Victor Flowers is on the radio.”

  “Politics is a cesspool,” she replied. My mother thought many things were a cesspool.

  “Do you think he could actually win?” I asked.

  “Honey, if I could tell the future, do you think I’d still be flat broke?”

  All conversations with my mother eventually funneled into the topic of her lack of money. Not to make light of it—older and poor is a terrible combination. And I didn’t believe Chip had meant to con her all those years back with his talk of a better life in Nevada. He was retired military and had intended to start up some business making specialized parts for military aircraft. He had ideas and, supposedly, connections. He just couldn’t do it. The right place at the right time ended up being the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right place at the wrong time. Or maybe the timing never mattered at all, given his appetite for the casinos.

  My mother asked where I was driving to.

  “The supermarket,” I said, and I asked her if she was exercising the way she was supposed to. She’d recently been diagnosed with diabetes. “Yeah,” she said, “sure.” And then like any good evader of the truth, she changed the topic. “Any good bookings lined up?”

  I told her about this morning’s invitation to perform at the World of Magic convention.

  “What does it pay?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t,” I said, the defensiveness already creeping into my voice.

  “Oh. That doesn’t sound very savvy.”

  “It is, Mom. It’s potentially very good for my career.”

  Why? Why had I gone and told my mother the truth, when a lie was always better for our relationship?

  “Hmm,” she said. “Well, I’m sure you know best.”

  “I do, Mom.” I clenched my teeth. “I do know best.”

  I hung up the phone feeling angry and hurt—and guilty, as well, for feeling hurt and angry, because I was way too old for teenage histrionics. On the radio a listener was asking Victor Flowers the vital political question of whether he’d seen Jersey Boys. I changed the station to music and continued westward under a ceiling of low clouds, the taped trash bag flapping in the wind like a sad flag. Over the next hour, the ubiquitous Union County traffic lessened. I began to pass large farms of hard, brown earth where someday something would grow.

  Flemington had only one kindergarten, and at 1:45 p.m. my car was parked across the street (the “bitch” side facing away from the school), engine on, heater running. My stomach was reminding me about the one lesson I should have learned from watching TV cops on a stakeout. I should have packed a sandwich.

  Around 2:15, yellow buses started
to line up outside the front of the school. At a little past 2:30 the school doors opened, and kids—so many kids—poured out of the building, along with some teachers who guided the kids toward the right buses. The teacher I’d hoped to see was not among them, because Ellen, if that was even her name, was not a kindergarten teacher. And if by chance she was, then she didn’t work here. Still, I waited, because it’s easy to follow Plan A when Plan B doesn’t exist. When all the buses had groaned away, I waited while more teachers emerged from the building over the next half hour.

  This was a flat, wide street, where across from the school a row of humble wooden houses stood with leafless trees out front and Christmas lights strung over shrubs and on rooftops. I imagined what it would be like to live here, to work a regular job and come home again at the end of the day to a family. We would eat together and do homework and maybe watch a show. Light a fire in the fireplace, listen to its snap and pop. I knew I should call my mother again and apologize for being short with her on the phone. For always being short with her. For failing to think of ways to bring her a little happiness. I knew she didn’t have it easy. She’d never had it easy. I wished I could do more for her, whatever the hell more was.

  The holidays were an undertow of guilt, and I found myself being pulled into the deeper waters and forgetting where I was—which was why I almost missed the petite blond woman leaving the school.

  She was dressed more like an administrator than a kindergarten teacher: stylish gray coat over a black dress, stockings, pumps. Her gait, though. The briskness of it. The erect posture. It was how she’d hurried away from me on the quiet Atlantic City street the night before.

  My car was an eyesore, but she hadn’t seen it the prior night and didn’t pay it any mind now. I got out of the car, quietly shut the door, and followed her to the parking lot.

  She approached her car, a Toyota Prius. Either she was environmentally conscious or she liked being able to drive in silence.