She rose hugely from her chair. “Don’t move, honey,” she said to Michael, “don’t any of you all move. Sami’s got to see this.” She steered her bulk with surprising grace, heading for the elevator to Samir Abdel-Noor's inner sanctum.
Taking advantage of her absence, Michael steered Emily to the dessert table. “I had nothing to do with the ice tongs,” Michael said. “I half expected to see the bucket fall out as well.”
After a short while, Miss Wales returned, clasping her hands in anticipation. Less than a minute later the gold filigree cage, balking and shuddering, redescended. Beulah Wales hurried to open the folding gate, but she was beaten to it by an olive-skinned man of thirty, with glossy ringlets and a fierce mustache. Through the wide portal, Michael and his friends could see emerging from the elevator car a gross form, the shape and size of a giant inflated pillow, covered neck to toe by a tentlike caftan embroidered with exotic birds and beasts. As this apparition drew closer, further details became visible: much jewelry, turquoise and silver; a round, swarthy face, the eyes hidden behind dark glasses; a fez, topped by a black silk tassel; a silken scarf or handkerchief, bright green, dangling from one of the caftan’s sleeves; and, below the caftan’s hem, appearing far too small for their enormous burden, feet enclosed in embroidered Turkish slippers with upcurled toes.
Miss Wales, walking backward in front of him with beckoning gestures, led their host into the buffet room. He sniffed the air briefly, then at the woman’s instigation walked directly over to Michael. “Good evening. I am Samir Abdel-Noor, your host. It is a great pleasure to have you here. May I say I find it always a pleasure to meet gentlemen of your profession? My friend Miss Wales informs me that you are a talented magician. What will you do for me? Something interesting? I am easily amused, have no fear. Have you eaten? Have you a drink?” He peered about with a slightly annoyed expression, as if he expected that by some invisible agency a drink should be delivered into his guest’s hand.
“I have a drink, thank you.” Michael raised his glass diffidently.
“You will do some tricks for me, yes? Conjuring—that is what you call it?—has always held a special enchantment for me. When I was a boy I had a tutor who was most dexterously adept at sleight of hand. And card tricks, you never saw such clever card work, he could practically slide the spots around before your eyes. But—oh, he was a dreadful thing, a rude Englishman, he would never show me anything. If you do tricks you must show me how they are done, no? Yes. One wants to know how they are done.” Sami closed his mouth, his lower lip curled in petulance, his expression presaging a child’s tantrum. Then he immediately smiled again, and in the smile, the coquettish tilt of his head, the fluttery play of his pudgy, bejeweled hands, there was something that told of his desperate desire to please.
His long-lashed, damp little eyes with their entreating dogdevotion could hardly take themselves off Michael’s face, and several times as he spoke he touched his hand or exchanged meaningful glances with the Southern woman. His speaking voice was mild, reluctant, fluffy little billowings of sound, spongy and lethargic, lacking substance.
Michael’s first instinct was to dislike this soft, stuffed man, with his small darting eyes and his cherry lips, his costume, the cloying politesse of his tone. But in his obviously sincere hospitality, his anguish to please, his desire to be entertained, his need to be liked at once, there was something touching.
With a precious look, Samir lifted a hand, showing a bent knuckle on which was squeezed a gold ring set with an enormous green gem. Was it an emerald? Michael caught himself staring.
“Do you like it? Mu’ammar al-Gadhafi gave it to me.” Samir giggled at his joke, then took Michael’s arm fraternally. “Aren’t they dreadful, all these rocks? So vulgar, but I like them. Yet, shall I tell you something? I have all these and more. Real. The real thing, not paste—I am not like your movie stars who keep their real diamonds in the safe. I have a coat which is sable on the outside and mink on the inside. It is reversible. I have this house which you see—a small palace, no? I could buy the Chase Manhattan tomorrow if I chose. I mention all this not in the spirit of braggadocio but to make a point. Namely, that I would gladly give up everything—” He paused, his small bright eyes encompassing the guests who stood about listening, and drew Michael closer. “Everything, for one good, healthy shit. It’s true. How do you call it, a ‘dump’?” He spread his fingers over his large round stomach. “I feel that half an hour on the pot and I should be thin like anything. Do you know what my dear, departed friend the Duchess of Windsor once said? ‘One can’t be too rich or too thin.’ It is true. And one cannot have too many shits. Now, young man, your tricks, yes?”
He patted Michael’s hand, released him, and sat in a large wicker chair with a high back that rose over him like a cobra’s hood, crossing his ankles below the folds of his garment: an Eastern potentate, waiting to be entertained. Michael looked around; then, with a smile and a little bow, he moved to the table, where he took some fruit from the giant epergne—a lemon, an orange, another orange—which he tossed into the air and manipulated with ease. Samir pursed his lips, leaning his round chin on his sparkling hand, watching impassively. To the revolving circle of fruit Michael now added other pieces until he had five circulating, then a half dozen. He snatched a banana and balanced it on the tip of his nose while the rest of the fruit spun in a continuous arc before him. Then, one by one, he let the pieces fall back onto the pile in the epergne, caught the banana, and laid it on the table. He glanced at Samir, who sat blinking but seemed hardly interested. Michael took three plates from a stack and tossed these into the air, catching them deftly, then adding more until six of them were whirling through the air and as quickly returning to the stack on the table.
“Oh!” Samir exclaimed with a surprised look, nodding and peering about the circle of guests who had joined them in the room. “Adroit, yes, very.” He nodded again, waited for Michael to continue.
Michael approached with exaggerated deference, displayed his fingers and hands, back and front, leaned toward his host, and removed from the front of his caftan a silver half-dollar. The Egyptian blinked with pleasure, the gleam of the metal drawing a gleam from his eyes. Standing erect, Michael caused the coin to do prodigies of movement across his hand, between the fingers, behind, appearing, disappearing, reappearing, seeming to gallop across his agile fingertips, now falling out of his ear, now from his mouth, now from inside his collar. Eagerly following each movement, frowning in concentration, Samir leaned forward, enthralled.
“Good! Good!” He clapped his hands, the other watchers following suit. Michael held out the coin at arm’s length, and at arm’s length caused it to vanish. The applause increased. He crossed again to the buffet. Stepping behind the table, he snapped out one of the blue damask napkins and spread it on an open spot before him. Picking up a salt shaker and unscrewing its top, he poured the contents into his right hand, then raised his open, empty palms. He smiled at Samir, made a quick, grasping motion in the air with his left hand, and looked up; salt was trickling from the closed fist in a thin, steady stream, then pouring copiously, at last forming a white mound equal to the contents of three salt shakers on the blue damask square. Michael shrugged his shoulders modestly amid resounding applause.
“Beautiful,” Samir pronounced admiringly. “Very beautiful. Do some more.”
Michael gave him a helpless look. “I’m sorry—I don't have anything with me…”
“Yes, yes, it is unfair, of course, a magician needs his equipment.”
Seeking to improvise, Michael cast about the room, pausing briefly to note Emily’s proud, expectant smile, Dazz’s smug grin, Beulah Wales’s vast approval. His eye lighted on a woman in evening dress, seated by a window. Quickly crossing to her, he bowed chivalrously and asked if he might borrow the evening bag that lay in her lap. She handed it to him, and he returned with it to the table, where he emptied its contents into a napkin and placed them to one side. The bag was o
f a soft material, with a drawstring, like a reticule, and encrusted with beadwork. He turned the bag inside out, showing the blue silk lining, then right side out again. Setting it in front of him with the bottom squashed flat, the mouth open, he leaned to the pile of eggs by the omelette pans. When he flashed his hands up, the right one was empty, but there was an egg between each pair of fingers of the left. He cracked their shells in turn, one by one, dropping yolks and whites into the open reticule.
“My bag!” the woman exclaimed. “He’s ruining my new bag!”
“Hush!” Samir commanded, holding out an imperious hand, never taking his eyes from Michael, who pulled the drawstring tight and lifted the bag from the table, letting it swing in the air. It had weight and substance, obviously, and he swung it faster so that it made a circle around his hand, faster and faster, until with an abrupt motion he brought it to a sudden stop. Holding it in front of him, he loosened the drawstring and opened the bag wide. Then, with a dramatic flourish, he turned it upside down; from its inverted mouth fell, not a mess of broken eggs, but a bunch of Concord grapes. He turned the bag inside out, revealing its unscathed lining, restored it to its normal shape, replaced its contents, and returned it to its startled owner. The bunch of grapes he brought to Samir.
“Beautiful, wonderful, extraordinary,” gushed the happy host, plucking off a grape and popping it into his mouth. His little eyes gleamed hotly behind his dark glasses. “I’ve never seen anything like it. What do you call it, this magic trick?”
“No special name. It’s just the egg-and-bag trick. You supplied the eggs, but I needed a bag. I hope,” Michael added, looking to the woman by the window, “your friend didn’t mind.”
“She is not my friend, I have never seen her before. None of these people have I ever seen before.” He waved negligently at the ring of faces. “Perhaps you can make them disappear like eggs, yes?” He giggled behind his hand, his rings flashing. “Come, do something else, not for them, but for me. You will, yes?”
“I will, yes, but you’ll have to help me,” Michael said softly, drawing closer to Samir as though enlisting a new accomplice.
“Yes, yes, of course.” Samir could barely contain his eagerness, shifting his huge body perilously forward as Michael bent toward him. “Tell me what I must do. And what will you do?”
A feeling of strength, of absolute competence, flooded over Michael. He was truly enjoying himself, performing with an ease and energy that surprised even him. It was as though, after the shock of events earlier in the day and the subsequent purging, he had risen to a new level of competence. Or could it be a new level of power?
“I’m going to relieve you of certain belongings, right in front of your eyes,” Michael said to Samir. “Take off two rings, place one on each palm, and hold out your hands.”
Michael straightened up. He was now wearing Samir’s dark glasses, but the Egyptian, intent on carrying out his instructions, failed to notice this, or the fact that his fez was now on Michael’s head.
“Keep your eyes on your rings,” Michael said. Samir stared at his upturned palms. With two swift movements, Michael closed both of the proffered hands, patting the soft, plump fists. “Hold on tight,” he said, “and count to five, slowly.”
As his victim obeyed, Michael stood in front of him, his hands joined at his mouth, a ring adorning each index finger. “Now open your hands,” he commanded.
Samir did as he was told, gasping at the sight of a napkin ring lying on each fat palm. Raising his eyes to Michael, he recognized, with mounting astonishment, his fez, his glasses, his very rings, and began to giggle uncontrollably, his flesh undulating in ripples under the caftan.
“Ah, my friend,” he said, gasping for breath and drying his eyes with the green silk handkerchief he plucked from his sleeve. “Ah, my friend.”
There was applause from the guests, which Michael acknowledged with an elaborate bow, indicating with a wave of his hand that his performance was ended. All his personal items restored to their rightful places, Samir sat in silence for a while, quivering and turning on Michael a look of utter fascination. “You are a miracle worker, my friend. If my doctors knew their art as well as you know yours, my problems”—he tapped his distended stomach—“would be over.”
Exhilarated and energized to the point of recklessness, Michael spoke more quickly than he thought. “I can fix that too,” he said, gesturing at Samir's belly.
“You can? How? Show me, show me how? You are serious, yes? Show me how you can do this.” The man was practically pleading; Michael had suddenly become the glowing center around which all his hope revolved.
Incredulous in the face of such desperate credulousness, Michael decided to play along; one last, quick trick. “It’s a question of visualization,” he said. “Give me your handkerchief.” He took it and began tying knots in it. “Imagine that this is what your intestines look like now. Here, take an end and pull hard.” They pulled together on the knotted piece of green silk. “All tied up, compacted, blocked.” He crumpled the handkerchief into a ball in his hand. “But now imagine the dawn of a new intestine, grand opening, a mighty river flowing”—he opened his hand and lifted the unknotted handkerchief from his palm—“free at last!”
Samir leaped shouting to his feet, clapping Michael in an embrace that made him imagine an enormous, suffocating cushion. Then Samir released him and fell back with a squishy sound into his chair. “What else can you do?” he panted. He seemed to be having difficulty focusing his eyes.
“I’m afraid I’m all out of tricks,” Michael said wearily. “Usually when I’m hired for a party I have my things with me.”
“Ah!” There was a pause while the Egyptian gathered his thoughts. When he looked up again, leaning back against the fan of his chair, his eyes had regained most of their customary shrewdness. “You perform at parties?”
“Children’s parties, birthdays, that sort of thing.”
“But you are wasted on children. No, no, no, no, you shall not perform for children. You shall perform for me at my party, my next real party. This”—he waggled his fingers contemptuously—“is a mere get-together, haphazard, slovenly. When is my next important party, Gilbert?” he asked, turning to the glossy-haired one who had remained immobile behind his chair the entire time.
Without moving his head, the Arab said, “The night of your birthday.”
“But of course,” Samir said joyously. “My birthday. It falls on Halloween, and I give a special party. That is perfect. On Halloween night you will come with all your things and perform magic for my guests. You will make it truly special. You are free then?”
“Yes. Sure.” Michael turned to Emily, who smiled slightly and shrugged.
“And so you will come? Definitely?”
“Sure. I’ll come.”
“Then it is arranged.” Samir nodded with satisfaction at Beulah Wales, who was hovering near him. “You hear, dear Boo, this marvelous young man will come.”
“I told you he was special, didn’t I, Sami?”
“Yes. You told me so, and he is. Very quick, your young man. And very handsome. He should go far.” Heaving his bulk from the chair, Samir stood before Michael and took one hand, pressing it between both of his. “Far,” he repeated, then broke into a smile, holding up his bejeweled fingers. “If I were a king you should have one of these in payment for tonight.” He dropped his hand and sighed audibly. “Alas, I am not a king. I bid you good night. Come, Gilbert.” Followed by the Arab, he left the room.
As Michael walked over to Emily’s side, he felt the strange tension that had so completely energized him drain out of him and exhaustion fill its place. It must be well past midnight, he thought, a strange day from start to finish—summer in the city. But his watch read only eight minutes to eleven. Odd, Michael thought. This was a particularly reliable watch, and it had never stopped before.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stakeouts
IT WAS STRANGE WEATHER for “duck” hunting.
The heat persisted, radio and television weathermen predicted continuing excessive temperatures, newspapers headlined NO END IN SIGHT. With Bloomingdale’s Big Brown Bag as his only clue, Michael took refuge in the huge department store, grateful for the air-conditioning. For several days, he staked out the place, moving from entrance to entrance, riding the escalators, the elevators, checking the men’s rooms, going methodically from floor to floor, department to department. Despite the enervating weather, people were buying like crazed creatures, and the store stayed crowded. He saw many weird sights in his days there, but there was no Queer Duck.
He would, Michael figured, be easy to spot in a crowd. Mostly he looked for the umbrella, or for anyone wearing black. He flogged his brain to imagine what merchandise such a person might buy in a department store, especially one so trendy as this. He even checked with the information counter to see if there had been any particular sales or unusual promotions on the “Day of the Frog,” as he now thought of it, but all he could discover were blind leads.
He set up his act outside, on the corner of Lexington Avenue and Fifty-ninth, doing hocus-pocus, and while he performed his tricks he kept his eyes peeled in every direction. He wasn’t merely observing or noting characters, as was his habit, but looking through them, past them, for one particular character, a Queer Duck dressed in black, with a walleye and an umbrella, a strange-gaited, long-haired, absent-minded professor sort of guy with funny shoes and a secret. Michael went through his routines automatically, letting his hands work by themselves while his eyes examined the interminable parade of faces and his brain kept imagining what it would be like to learn the Queer Duck’s trick, whatever it might be, to acquire that skill, that knowledge, that power.
Busy though he was in body and mind, he found the insistent heat sometimes broke through all the barriers of his concentration, demanding attention, and he envied the nun sitting on a camp stool next to the store’s revolving door, cooled by steady blasts from the air-conditioned interior. She sat there so patiently in her long black habit and her starched wimple, a collection can tilted negligently in one hand and the other tucked under her scapular. She always kept her head slightly angled toward him, watching shyly behind her spectacles as he flashed his silks or did his coin numbers, and he wondered what order she belonged to. He was so busy looking up the street and down the street and across the street that he never noticed the tips of her blunt, shiny, patent-leather shoes, barely peeking out from under the hem of her habit.