The Magician Read Free Page B

sweat in his armpits and hoping he wouldn’t look a mess for the show. Where the hell was Lila?
    A kid he didn’t know held the door open for him, obviously wondering what the suitcases were all about. Well, he’d know once the show got started.
    Around the corner in the hallway Ed put the cases down, looked at his hands as if he expected instant calluses instead of just redness, then dusted the snow bits off his shoulders, like dandruff, except wet.
    Lila, suddenly standing close in front of him, gave him a quick kiss on the lips. Nobody noticed.
    “Good luck,” she said, showing her crossed fingers to him.
    He abandoned her there, telling her to get a good seat not too much on the side, and headed for the back of the gym, one suitcase in each hand, like Willie Loman. He didn’t feel like the star of the show, that was for sure.
    Backstage, he was greeted by Thin Lips, Mr. Fredericks, the faculty adviser.
    “Mr. Fredericks,” he said, trying to make his voice sound like one professional talking to another instead of a student to a teacher, “it’ll help a lot if I can set up in private, I mean, none of the students around, okay?”
    “Understood,” said Mr. Fredericks. He showed Ed the two tables he had asked for.
    “Just before I’m supposed to go on, this here, the first table, needs to be put out on the left side of the platform, with no jiggling, because there’ll be a pitcher of milk on it, in addition to other things. It wouldn’t be too good for me to do that myself—I mean, carry it on. They shouldn’t see me until I appear.”
    Mr. Fredericks smiled that shitty smile of his.
    “The second table,” Ed said, “should go toward the back, against the curtains, so I have to turn around with my back to the audience to take anything off it. That’s very important.”
    “Sure,” said Mr. Fredericks. “I’ll put them out there myself.”
    “Oh, I didn’t mean for you to carry—”
    “Quite all right. Pleasure to help.”
    Maybe he wasn’t so bad.
    Ed had left himself barely enough time to arrange his things from the suitcases onto the two tables. On the first was a quart-size pitcher of milk, a folded tabloid newspaper, a piece of soft clothesline, his mother’s good scissors, and a brown paper bag.
    On the back table he carefully arranged the material he needed for his pièce de résistance. Then he took his three-by-five cue card out of his pocket and went over the items one by one. He turned the card over, closed his eyes, and repeated the cues from memory. It wasn’t like doing a magic show for a little kid’s birthday party for five dollars.
    Mr. Fredericks came over to say that the lights in the gym were being lowered. He could hear the scraping of the folding chairs, which would be gotten out of the way later for the dance.
    “Are you ready?” asked Mr. Fredericks. “Roberta’s number takes three and a half minutes.”
    Roberta Cardick was the ice-breaker. She would take the head off the mike, as usual, and sing as if she were making love to it. Roberta, a senior, was good, but she was no Janis Joplin, and the kids had all heard her lots of times. Still, she’d put them in a good mood for him.
    “I’m going to introduce her,” said Mr. Fredericks. “All set?”
    Ed wanted to say, “Anytime,” casually, but what came out was a dry, barely audible, “Yes.”
    He watched Roberta. Sideways, her tits seemed even bigger than from the front. She was singing something new, and they loved it, you could tell.
    Never mind. When Roberta came off to wild applause, he held up an approving thumb so she could see. Then Mr. Fredericks carried the tables on carefully.
    Ready or not, thought Ed, here I come.

Chapter 3
    Lila, her back straight, sat on one of the wooden seats way in the rear of the gym, between strangers, isolating herself. When she shrugged her shoulder-length auburn hair out of her vision’s way, the toss of her head and the movement of her long neck were barely