Tales from the Nightside (11 page)

He tripped over a shadow and sprawled in the road, and the burning in his palms felt curiously reassuring.

He stood, swayed, and started running again. The cold air a brace that held rigid his fear, a fear he couldn't shake in spite of his reason.

Tomorrow, of course, it would be different in the sun; and he would come back for his car and search the house if he could. Because Elizabeth had lied when she told him "no electronics," and he wanted to have pictures of whatever gimmicks they'd used.

He slowed.

Tomorrow... in the sun.

He stopped.

He put his hands hard to his hips and bent over slightly, waiting for the air to return to his lungs. He felt stupid and was glad he hadn't brought anyone with him. Foolish because the con he'd been seeking had worked only too well. He looked over his shoulder, and the mansion was dark, the cars in the drive deeper shadows against the night.

There was no sound at all but the rasp of his breathing.

He spat dryly and shook his head, wishing for the first time in months that he hadn't quit smoking. Then, annoyed with himself because he was still playing the mark, he decided there was no reason at all why he shouldn't drive home.

He turned around and scowled.

And the moon was a ghost in the house of night—silent, stained, setting free the shadow that rose in his path, setting free the first sound he'd uttered since his coming.

He screamed.

"Oh... Martin."

*** 

There must have been a hundred kids in Ellie DePaul's backyard, back then on her birthday; everybody from Hawthorne Street it seemed like, and the rest from places I hadn't even heard of. While I was getting dressed that morning I heard Aunt Helen saying to Uncle Steve it was a waste of good money, but I just thought it was plain and simple silly. Ellie had just turned ten, but you'd think she was the stupid Queen of England the way people were fussing over her. It was making me sick to my stomach. I was only ten then, too, but you didn't see people acting that way around me.

Of course, that was then—before I learned about my hand.

The way Ellie's mother set it up, we had to sit on those little wooden chairs that fold up when you're done with them, and I had to sit on the end in the back row because of my leg that I had to keep straight sort of. I could have adjusted the brace, I guess, but I didn't feel like it. Ellie was prancing around in a pink dress and a pink ribbon in her hair, and I almost couldn't stand it she was acting so bad. So I kept the brace tight and kept my leg out, hoping all the time she would prance by and trip over me so her mother would scold her and I could pretend how bad it hurt.

She didn't, though, so I had to be good, even though I would've rather have been back in my room, thinking about. . . things.

Actually, I didn't mind sitting in the back. I could see pretty good, because the yard bunched up into a little hill there before it sloped down to the river, and all the big kids had to sit on the ground in front so the little kids didn't have to stand up. And way down there at the bottom was the Great And Astounding Albert, doing his tricks in a black suit that made him look like he was going to a wedding.

"Nothing up this sleeve," he said, his handlebar mustache making him look like a gorilla, "and nothing up this sleeve." And the next thing you know he had a little bird in his hand or a blown- up balloon or flowers or miles and miles and miles of pretty ribbons and streamers.

Mrs. DePaul and my aunt were sitting on the ground right behind me, and after a while I could hear Ellie's mother whisper, "Oh, dear, do you think he's having a good time?"

And my aunt said, "Sure he is. Why do you say that, Alice?"

"Well, he seems so... so solemn, I guess. Damn, you don't think anybody was teasing him, do you? About, well, you know."

"No, dear, he hasn't been teased, believe me." And she sighed like she does when Uncle Steve tickles her in the hall. "He's just studying, that's all."

I didn't turn around, but my aunt was right. Right then, right there in the backyard with the hundred kids and the million trees and all the cake and ice cream in the whole world sitting there on the card table, I decided I wanted to be a magician when I grew up. I couldn't play ball or anything like that because of my leg, and my mother always told me that the best person you could be was the person who was nice to other people all the time. Well, the Great And Astounding Albert must have been a nice person, because he was making us all laugh and clap, and he was giving out pretty things and winking at the girls, so I spent the whole time trying to see how he did it.

Nothing up this sleeve, and nothing up this sleeve.

Jay, I told myself then, you could really do that if you tried, you really could.

So the minute Aunt Helen took me home and supper was over, I went into my room and I practiced. I stood in front of the mirror and tried to figure out how the Great And Astounding Albert got all those birds and ribbons and things from his sleeve. It had to be a trick, though, because there's no such thing as magic, and when I couldn't do it I almost cried. I almost gave up. But I didn't. When you have a leg like mine and you can't be like other people, you don't give up just because you want to cry. You try and try again, just like my mother told me. Try and try again*

So I did.

I took spoons from the kitchen and sticks from the yard, and I put them up my sleeve and tried to make them drop into my hand just like the magic man did. It never worked. And by the time two weeks was gone I was moping around the house and not eating and just making myself miserable. That was silly, I know, and I should have gone to Uncle Steve right away, but I wasn't real used to him yet.

See, it was raining one night, and my mother and father and my three sisters and me, we were coming home from the restaurant where we always go when something good happens at my father's store. Then all of a sudden there was this tree and a lot of light that hurt my eyes and a lot of darkness that hurt me, too. And the next thing I knew I was in this funny-smelling bed in this funny-smelling room, and lots of people in white were standing around, and Helen and Steve were there in the corner.

Helen was crying. Steve wasn't smiling.

They told me mother and father and Marlene and Deirdre and Ginny had passed away in the accident. That means they were dead. I knew that, and it hurt for a long time. It still does, at night, when my covers need tucking in and Aunt Helen tries to do it but she doesn't do it the way my mother used to do it and . . . well, it just isn't the same. I know that because I heard Uncle Steve say that one night when I was supposed to be asleep instead of going to the bathroom.

"Damnit, Helen, I feel sorry for the boy, you know I do, and Frank was my brother, for God's sake, so I have an obligation. But that still doesn't change the fact that you and I hadn't planned on children, and suddenly we've got one ten years old, and a cripple at that. I mean, it just isn't fair."

He really isn't mean, but he doesn't understand, sometimes.

So it was a while before I told him what I wanted to do, and after he looked at me funny for a minute he grabbed me up from the floor and took me out to the car. We went right downtown to this gigantic bookstore, and Steve picked out four or five magic books he thought I'd understand.

On the way home he said, "It's funny, Jay, but there was a time when I wanted to be a magician, too."

"So why didn't you?"

He shrugged a little. "I guess I didn't want it badly enough. See, when you grow up and you have to decide what it is you want to do with your life, you really have to want it badly enough or it isn't going to work. If you want to be a doctor, you have to realize there's an awful lot of school to go through—"

"Boy, I sure wouldn't want that."

"—and money and things like that. Or if you want to be a teacher you have different things to learn. Or a writer or a—"

"Magic man," I said, grinning.

"Right," he said. "A magic man." Then he reached over and touched me on the leg. "Now you listen to me, pal—this magic stuff is hard work. It takes a long time to get right, and I don't want you to give up."

"Oh, I won't," I promised. "I'm going to be the best magic man in the whole world when I grow up."

He didn't say anything for a while. Then: "Why, Jay? Why magic?"

"I don't know," I said. "Because it's nice."

And it was work. Boy, it was hard work. Some things I couldn't do because my fingers were too short or I didn't have the right hidden things and I couldn't make them or buy them because I hadn't saved enough. But I got pretty good with cards and the shell trick and the coin trick and things like that. And every night I would show Helen and Steve a new trick, and they would applaud and ask me how I did it. I never told. I never told them once. You never tell a trick or it isn't magic anymore.

But I still couldn't get anything to come out of my sleeve.

Then it was May, and I was sitting out in back, wishing our house was on the river like Ellie's. I was wearing shorts because it felt good on my leg—though I still couldn't look at it all pink and shrively like that—and I was trying to get a pebble out of my sleeve without lowering my arm. The kitchen window was right over my head, and it was a while before I realized they were arguing in there.

"Well, I don't care/' she said, like she was about to start crying. "I just don't care."

"Helen, please be reasonable." And I could see without seeing him that he was standing with one hand on his hip and the other shoved in his hair, with this look on his face like nobody ever listens to anything he says. "Helen, this is the chance we've been waiting for, and we simply cannot take Jay with us."

"But why not?"

"Damnit, Helen, use your head! Kuwait isn't London, y'know. It may have tons of money, but it isn't the kind of place I'd want the boy to grow up in. It'll be at least a year, and he's barely hanging in school as it is. God, doesn't he have enough problems?"

"We could get tutors."

"Helen."

"We...”

I couldn't hear anymore for a while, but it didn't matter. The sun went cold, and the trees seemed like they were covered in ice. I snapped my brace back on and walked out to the street. Ellie and a few others were playing hopscotch on the sidewalk across the way, but when they called to me I didn't answer. I didn't feel like it. They only played with me because their mothers told them to. Not all of them; some of them. And it was hard to tell from one day to another which ones it was.

So I walked for a couple of blocks until I was in front of the luncheonette, looking at the pictures of the sundaes and sodas that were all white from the sun. Then this man walked out, and before I knew I grabbed his arm to stop him. It was the Great And Astounding Albert, only he didn't look so great or astounding without his wedding suit or his mustache.

"Mr. Albert," I said, and then I saw what I was doing, so I tried a smile that felt real silly and backed away from him.

He stared down at me from about a mile up, frowning like he thought he should know me but he didn't. We stood there for a couple of seconds before I told him where I was from and where I saw him, and he smiled and nodded as if he'd guessed it all along. And when I told him I was going to be a magic man when I grew up, he put a hand on my shoulder and took me inside where he lifted me onto a red counter stool, and we each had a double icecream soda while he told me all the places he'd been and the famous people he'd known, and how all the other magic men used to come see him but now they don't anymore.

It was the first time I noticed how old he was.

"It's hard, Jay," he said, suddenly sad and looking tired. "I've lost the knack, it seems, to make the grown-ups believe."

"But it's all tricks, isn't it?"

"Sure it is. But the real trick is to make it look like it isn't a trick, but magic."

I thought about that for a moment, not really understanding. Then we talked some more, and he reached out and pulled a dollar bill from behind my ear. I brushed a hand through my hair and laughed, and before I knew it I was telling him how I couldn't pull anything out of my sleeve because every time I let my arm down the things would fall out. Well, he looked really serious at me for a while, and I was afraid I'd said something to get him mad. There were other people coming in and out and buying the papers and smiling at me like they knew me, but I didn't pay them any attention because just then the Great And Astounding Albert held up his arm and pulled down the cuff of his jacket and said, "What do you see up there, boy?"

I kind of leaned forward and squinted. "Air."

He snapped his arm straight out and I ducked, frowned, looked up the sleeve again and said, "Still air."

Then he made a pass in front of me, slow and gentle, like a snake charming a robin. Slow and gentle before he cupped his hand like there was something in it. I waited, and one by one his fingers opened. "Now what do you see?"

I didn't know what to say. "Air."

"And that's all there ever is, son. Air. Everything else comes from someplace else, and there's nothing up my sleeve but air." He closed his fingers again, blew on them, opened them and said, "What's there now?"

It was getting awfully silly. "Air."

"See? Now you try it."

Well, I thought he was kind of crazy being so old, but he told me again so I rubbed my hands together, made the same moves he did as best I could, and pulled air from my sleeve, making the kind of trumpet sound with my lips like they do on television when the elephant disappears. Then Albert laughed and I laughed, and before I knew it I'd made the slow pass in front of the waitress's face and tucked the air back in my sleeve. She giggled and started to cough, but I was excited because I suddenly knew what Albert was saying about tricks and magic, and I thanked him politely because my mother always told me to be polite, then I slid off the stool and hurried home as fast as I could.

Ellie and the others were still playing hopscotch, and when they saw me run-hobbling like that they thought something was wrong so they ran across the street. I told them not to worry, though, and before I could stop myself I had shown them my trick.