08 Illusion (14 page)

The little girl was watching, expecting.

Eloise set the quarter she’d taken from her ear on the table and flicked it with her finger, making it spin.

The girl craned to see, wide-eyed, watching, munching another bite of cookie.

Wonder. It was beautiful to see.

Make it quick, Eloise.

She shooed the quarter away with a little jerk of her finger and away it went, spinning around the table, circling the salt and pepper shakers.

Now Mommy and Daddy were starting to get wonder in their eyes.

She gestured “come here” with her finger and the quarter came back around and stopped a few inches shy of the table’s edge, still spinning.

Now two guys—they looked like college types, in clothes that cost a lot but were made to look like they didn’t—halted their conversation and started watching the quarter spin. They exchanged a look and kept watching, two more friends, two more human beings touching her life as she touched theirs. What a feeling.

The little girl was looking up at her daddy.
Oh-oh, got to get her back!

Eloise bent low, her nose just above the table, and mutely beckoned to the coin. It advanced a few inches and stopped. She beckoned again. It backed up.

Come on, now
, she mimed in clownish gestures,
don’t be a wuss!

The quarter wavered, inched forward, backed up, came forward again … slowly …

She placed her index finger against the edge of the table, beckoned and cajoled, and finally … the quarter spun onto her fingertip. She lifted it slowly aloft, spinning and balancing on her finger.

Now, that got a response! Mommy and Daddy, the little girl, the college guys, and now the guys playing chess all watched in disbelief and delight.

Oh, brother. Where do I go from here? Call it quits before I get in trouble?

They were applauding now, and she had the little girl back.

Top it, top it, top it!

She mimed for the daddy to hold up his finger. He laughed, a little nervous about it, but he stuck up his index finger. She steadied his hand with her free hand and brought the quarter down.

It was like lighting a candle. The quarter passed from her finger to his and he held it there, astonished, looking at the quarter from different sides, watching it spin all by itself.

“Hey, check it out!” somebody said.

“What? How’s he doing that?” said a lady at a table close by.

“
She’s
doing it!” said the man sitting with her.

The little girl was enraptured. She reached for the quarter as if it were something truly magical, then shied away. Eloise mimed an open palm, and the girl’s mother reached and helped. The child held out an open palm. The father brought his finger down, and the quarter hopped into the little girl’s palm. Kerplop! It lay flat, happy, harmless, and hers.

Eloise closed the little girl’s hand around the quarter and pointed, miming,
It’s yours!

There was a circle of laughter and applause from the four nearest tables, enough to make some of the computer tappers look up. A few heads turned from the front of the place.

Oh-oh.
Now Mr. Calhoun was watching. So was Abby. Would they be mad or amazed? They weren’t smiling yet.

Well, she’d better be sure they were amazed—and that she had the crowd. It felt a little nutty, something between a ray of hope and a flying leap, but she stood and pulled Burt the Tennis Ball from her coat pocket.

The folks she had were all hers, watching every move she made, expecting something.

She perched Burt on the tip of her finger and gave him a spin. He spun there, never slowing.

How about the little girl? Was she ready? Was she trusting? Eloise mimed for her to point her finger upward.

The little sweetie looked at her daddy. “Go ahead,” he said, and she pointed her finger in the air.

Eloise approached slowly, all smiles and adventure, and brought Burt in for a gentle landing on her fingertip.

This child was going to handle the rest of her life just fine: she held her finger still and let Burt spin while the friends sitting closest, joined by friends a few tables out, applauded and cheered.

And oh, the triumph in her eyes!

Eloise brought her own right hand close and the little girl let Burt hop back onto Eloise’s finger. Eloise raised her right hand and let Burt roll down her arm, over her shoulders, down her left arm, and then—ta-da!—he spun on the finger of her left hand as she held him high.

Applause and even a few whoops.

Now the clatter and chatter were dropping off table by table, talker by tapper, sipper by muncher, as the circle of quiet attention rippled outward. Folks were leaning, looking around heads and bodies, curious.

Mr. Calhoun was watching; she could feel it.

She let Burt roll back to her right arm and out onto her right index finger again. More applause, but it was time to move on. She let him roll across to her left hand one more time and then, after bringing both left and right hands together and letting Burt twirl on both fingers, she jerked her hands apart and let him fall.

He bounced on the floor, and bounced on the floor, and bounced on the floor as she watched, following him with big nods of her head.

But he wouldn’t stop bouncing, and folks were catching on, laughing, marveling. Her look-away deadpan would have made Jack Benny proud, and it got laughs.

Enough of this bouncing.
She reached on a bounce to catch Burt—he curved sideways and she missed. She grabbed at him again and he zipped from her grasp. She chased him, groping and grabbing while he bounced between the tables, and finally netted him in her hat.
Well, there!
She was in charge again. She put her hat down on her table with Burt under it and began her next trick, materializing playing cards in her empty hand.

The folks watched her produce a card, then two, then a full hand of them, and they applauded politely, but their eyes were straying and she noticed. They were looking at her table and laughing.

Burt! He was trying to get out from under her hat, wiggling it around, making it crawl blindly around the table and bump into things. The hat was heading for the table edge!

She dove for it, but too late. The hat hung over the edge and Burt dropped free, bouncing—Wow! What a bounce!—into a high arc over the room and dropping toward an older patron’s cup of coffee—a patron who wasn’t paying much attention, by the way. The crowd followed the arc of the ball with a unanimous “Whoooooaa!”

Burt was dropping right on target when the old guy looked up just in time to see the ball plop into Eloise’s hand, inches above catastrophe.

Whoops! Hollers!

And broad, mock relief from the Hobett. She wiped her brow, plopped her hat back on, then tossed the ball over her shoulder, intending to bounce it off a kick of her heel.

She did it. The ball went flying, arced over the heads of the patrons …

And bounced off Mr. Calhoun’s head.

Everybody in the place, as one, saw it happen, and everybody howled.

The Hobett stood there horrified, hand over gaping mouth, while Burt came bouncing back and cowered behind her feet, peeking out, quivering with fear. Now the folks were shouting, some shrieking with laughter. Amazement, astonishment, and wonder filled the room. She had the crowd.

But … did she have Mr. Calhoun? He was glaring at her, and whether he was acting or serious, he still pointed at the door. “Out!”

Play it.
She doffed her hat and bowed repeatedly, backing toward the door.

Burt just sat where he was, undecided.

The Hobett made it to the door, but missed Burt and started looking around for him.

Mr. Calhoun advanced on the tennis ball, about to pick it up.

The Hobett whistled, and Burt scurried to her, struck her big-booted toe, and bounced high over her head. As he came down, she doffed her hat just in time for him to land on her head and replaced the hat just in time to keep him there.

One final bow to a wildly applauding crowd, and she was out the door.

Eloise could still hear the cheers and applause from McCaffee’s as she hurried down the sidewalk, emotions in a blender.
I blew it, I did great, they love me, he hates me, it was unprofessional, it was inspired… . Oh, dear God, can’t I do anything right?

“Hello? Oh, miss! Could you hold on a minute?”

Should she stop? Was it a cop?

Her shoulders were sagging as she turned to face the music.

It was Abby Calhoun, hurrying toward her, smiling, eyes sparkling. “I never caught your name.”

Well, Abby was smiling. Maybe it was safe to tell her. “Eloise Kramer.”

“Roger—Mr. Calhoun—told me to run after you.”

“Is he mad?”

She looked ready to laugh. “I think he is a little mad, yes.”

She deflated, the air sighing out of her.

“But he’d like to talk to you … about your proposal?”

Eloise breathed in again and squared her shoulders.

chapter

14

SATURDAY NIGHT, 7–7:30 P.M.,
enjoy …
ELOISE “The Hobett” KRAMER
Magician Extraordinaire
Astounding.
Astoundingly Funny.
Bring the Family.

I
t wasn’t her name up in lights, just colored marker pen on white copy paper with some of Roger Calhoun’s tacky artwork, taped to the front window of McCaffee’s. But that little poster struck Eloise as a page that could turn to a new chapter in her life, and she could feel it to the bones.

Seven to seven-thirty. Half an hour. She could remember thinking,
Only half an hour?
Now, cooped up in the women’s restroom in the back of McCaffee’s, reddening her nose and dotting her face with black whiskers, mumbling to herself one final time the order of illusions she’d planned, all she could think was, Half an hour! How was she going to fill half an hour?

“This isn’t my idea,” Mr. Calhoun had said. “It’s Abby’s idea and I’m going along with it, so okay, I’ll give you half an hour and it better be good.”

She worked and worried and sweated away the hours in her room at Sally and Micah’s until she was ready to eat her pillow, trying to remember and rehearse illusions in the correct order and the right style to hold a coffeehouse crowd, and all she had to work with were two tennis balls—she drew smiley faces on them—a deck of cards, and a batch of quarters.

The doorknob rattled.

“Just a minute!” she called.

It was noisy out in the restaurant, so there was a crowd. Whether they were willing to become
her
crowd was one big question mark. Had any returned from yesterday? Had any word gotten around so there’d be new faces? Was there anybody out there who would, you know, like her in the first place?

She was already sweating. She sniffed herself. Her deodorant was working.

She leaned against the sink and bowed her head. “I’m going to do this. I might make a total fool of myself, but I won’t turn away. Here I am with whiskers on my face and tricks in my pockets and … and somebody needs to use the restroom. Well, You know what I would have said.”

She assumed the Hobett’s personality, face, and body, double-checked her goofy smile in the mirror, and stepped out. With a tip of her hat to the lady waiting outside, she slipped past and flopped into one lone chair in the corner to await her cue. She caught the eyes of a couple sitting at the rearmost table and gave them a disarming, clownish smile. They smiled back. It helped.

Her hand was trembling. She wouldn’t be able to hold her cards …

“Okay, uh, here we go, then… .” Mr. Calhoun had stepped to the center of the floor. He and his crew had crowded the tables a touch toward the walls to allow Eloise a few additional square feet. Now Mr. Calhoun stood in that space looking terribly self-conscious. “For the next half hour we’re gonna have, uh, Elaine … what’d I say? Elaine? Eloise! Eloise Kramer. She goes by the name Hobett ’cause she’s a girl hobo, and, uh … okay. Here she is.”

He wanted to get out of there in no small way, she could tell. He was clearing the floor, face set resolutely toward the safe zone behind the counter.

He’d forgotten. Burt the Tennis Ball was right in his hand and he was walking off.

Great start.
Wonder if he’s going to count this one against me?

She waved at him and he finally saw her. Unhappily, he turned around, went back to the center of the floor, dropped Burt, and cleared out. Now it was just Burt out there, bouncing all by himself with everybody watching.

She leaned forward, eyes on Burt, touching him without touching him from back in the corner.
Come on, Burt. Come on …

His bounce had been decaying, but now, somehow, it gained energy and he kept bouncing, right there in that one spot, up and down, up and down, just as high every time. The people were catching on, starting to giggle to each other. Some of the guys at a front-row table were starting to bend down and search from side to side for wires, strings, the gimmick.

Okay. We have ’em, for now. Got to time this right. Okay … now!

She high-stepped out, moving past tables, bodies, faces, and started clapping her hands in time to Burt’s bounce. With some whimsical, clownlike persuasion she got the folks clapping along. It would have been so much better with music but there wasn’t time to set that up and Mr. Calhoun was at the limits of his niceness anyway.

Get going, get going.

She’d rehearsed this dance with Burt so many times. As she swooped in and let him roll up one arm and down the other, from left to right hand and around again, then let him bounce and weave through her legs in sync with her dancing, she went on pure faith that each move would pop up in her memory when she needed it, and at every crisis moment there it was:
Kick Burt off your heel, catch him in your hat, swing your hat over your head and dump Burt out, let him bounce on top of your head, bounce from head to kicked heel and back again, elbow to elbow, keep those legs shuffling, weave, baby, weave, let him bounce straight up and down from the floor, do your circle dance around him while you get his buddy, Baxter, from your pocket.