Jumper 1 - Jumper (12 page)

"Why is it, Davy, that you know everything about my family and I know nothing about yours?" She brought the tea into the living room on a lacquered tray. The pot and cups were Japanese with unglazed rims. She poured.

"Thanks," I said.

"Well?"

"Huh?"

"Your family," she reminded.

I sipped the tea. "This is really good. Really delicious."

She raised her eyebrows. "That's what I thought. You're a good listener, Davy, and you can change the subject on a dime. You've hardly talked about yourself at all."

"I talk... too much."

"You talk about books, you talk about plays, you talk about movies, you talk about places, you talk about food, you talk about current events. You don't talk about yourself."

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. I hadn't really thought about it. Sure, I didn't talk about the jumping, but the rest? "Well, there's not much to say. Not like those stories of growing up with four brothers."

She smiled. "It's not going to work. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But I'm not going to be distracted again, nor fooled into talking about those idiots again."

She poured more tea into my cup.

I frowned. "Do I really do that?"

"What? Not talk about yourself? Yes."

"No, try and distract you."

She stared at me. "You are fucking amazing. I've never seen someone so good at changing the subject."

"I don't do it on purpose."

She laughed. "Sure. Maybe you don't do it consciously, but you sure as hell do it on purpose."

I sipped my tea and stared at the wall. She set the tea pot down and scooted closer to me. "Look at me, Davy."

I turned. She wasn't smiling and her gaze was calm, serious.

She spoke, "I won't force you to talk about things you don't want to talk about. You have a right to privacy. If you don't want to talk about things, fine. From the way you've changed the subject, I don't think you've ever lied to me. Would you say that's true?"

I thought about it, remembering our time in New York and the phone calls. "I think that's true. I certainly don't intend to lie to you. I don't remember ever lying to you."

She nodded. "That wasn't the case with Mark. I couldn't trust him not to lie. If I ever find out that you have, whatever we have together is over. Got that?"

I stared at her. "Yes, ma'am, I've got it." I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, sideways. "Uh. Does this mean we actually have something? Like a relationship?"

She looked at the carpet. "Well, perhaps." She turned and looked straight at me again, levelly. "Yes. We have a relationship. We're about to see if it's going to become an intimate one."

I shifted on the couch. My ears were hot and I couldn't help smiling.

She sighed and looked at the ceiling, but the corners of her mouth twitched. I slumped down on the couch and curled into her, my head on her shoulder. She put her arm around me and squeezed. She didn't say anything, just sat there, holding me gently.

After a while I started talking. I told her about Dad, Mom, and running away from home. I told about getting mugged in New York City. I told her about the hotel in Brooklyn and the incident in the bathroom. I told her about the trucker who wanted to rape me. She listened quietly, a hand on my shoulder. My voice seemed remote as I talked, not really mine.

I didn't talk about jumping and I didn't talk about the bank robbery. A part of me still felt bad about stealing the money. I still had dreams about getting caught. Telling her about the jumping would just confuse things.

I stopped talking finally, my voice sort of trailing off. I felt ashamed, like I'd just confessed doing terrible things. I couldn't look at her, even though she was there, right next to me, hand rubbing my shoulder, the warmth of a breast against my right arm, the feel of her shoulder against my cheek.

I also felt ashamed for the things I hadn't said, and less than worthy of her concern and attention. I felt like crying again, but didn't want to. I still felt bad about that.

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."

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 firebox 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.