The magician arrived for the birthday party over an hour early.
When Ann answered the door, she was hit by a blast of incredible heat. It had to be a hundred degrees outside. Maybe two hundred, or three. Or five. Jesus, it wasn't even noon.
Perhaps, thought Ann, the sun has exploded, which at least would mean she wouldn't be hosting the birthday party.
It was Sam's birthday. Sam. Samantha, Little Mouse, Sam-A-Dam, The Sam Damn Doodle. Her sixth birthday. Twelve kids. Sam's entire class, plus parents. In other words, a day of pandemonium and chaos. Sugar and tears, awkward conversations, accidental injuries, judgement and cruelty and torment.
Are you the magician, Ann asked the man at the door, hoping he wasn't. He was waxy and old, someone you might see at a roller rink, leering at other people's children. But the cheap tuxedo, the white pocket handkerchief, the long, tapered fingers. Of course he was the magician. Of course.
Voila, the magician said, as if this were a word associated with magic.
He didn't wait to be invited in. He slunk into the foyer like a cat.
She saw he'd parked his car—a white panel van—close to the house. He'd backed it in. It was half on the lawn. It was how you'd park if you were moving heavy equipment. Ann wondered what kind of tricks he was planning.
The magician's dyed black hair was thin and combed over to conceal his bald spot.
It didn't conceal his bald spot.
Do you do a lot of little kid's birthday parties, or more adult things, or... Ann's question meandered away.
I just go where the money is, lady, the magician said.
Oh, perfect, thought Ann. Absolutely goddamn perfect.
Hiring the magician for Sam's birthday was the only thing Ann had asked her husband Philbin to do. The only thing. She'd wanted someone young, funny: balloon animals, rabbits in hats, now you see it, now you don't. Instead, she got a paper skinned creeper on leave from the mortuary.
Thanks, Philbin. Great job.
The magician's name was Pete. A disappointing name for a magician.
Not Pete the Magnificent.
Not Pete, Master of the Mysterious.
Just Pete.
Ann and Pete stood in the air-conditioned foyer among decorative woven baskets and fake tropical plants.
I guess I should tell you, the magician said. My dad got electrocuted this morning. The magician's thoughts seemed to flicker, bits of tin and cellophane in a gust of snow.
Ann was taken aback. Electrocuted?
Freak accident, the magician said. I shouldn't have mentioned it, probably. I'm a little, I don't know. Woohoo.
He smiled, revealing glaring capped teeth. Something caught in his throat, and he started to cough, a thick wet cough that went on and on. When he regained himself, there was a brightness in his eyes.
I'm sorry, Ann said. We can cancel. It's no trouble. Do you need to be with your dad or...
No need, the magician said. They put him in one of those bags that zips all the way up.
Do you mean he's dead, Ann asked the magician.
Bingo, he said.
Are you sure you don't want to cancel, Ann asked.
I wasn't too close with him, the magician said. If anything, it's an opportunity. To evaluate some things.
Well, I'm happy to pay you, if it's that.
She assumed it was that. Anyone normal would have cancelled.
The magician patted his pockets like he was looking for something, keys, cigarettes, a lighter. It seemed as though he were evaluating her, the way you might when you run into someone you used to know, someone from another time, another life, another city. You're far away, drifting on a distant mooring, then: flash. Is that really you?
You know what, the magician said. That's nice of you to offer. I appreciate it. A lot of people are assholes when it comes to money. But I'm good. How's about you show me where the magic happens.
Ann and the magician stood at the picture window facing the baking patio. Everything was set up outside. Tables, balloons, HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign. Gift bags at each place.
The sun wanted all of it to burn.
Ann wanted to know what had happened to the magician's father. How had he been electrocuted? Ann wondered if it was maybe the toaster. She'd seen a show a long time ago, when she was a kid, one of those murder mystery shows. The big reveal: it wasn't a murder at all. The guy was trying to pry a bagel out of the toaster with a metal fork and ZAP. Ever since, Ann unplugged the toaster before she started rooting around in there. Or what if it was something really horrible? What if the father touched a downed power line? Where had she read about that? Winter storm. BLAM. Some drunk guy walking home. They found parts of him in the trees.
Not a lot of shade out there, the magician said, in a way that clearly meant, let's have the magic show inside, in the air conditioning.
Everything's all set up for outside, Ann said.
Yeah, I can see that, the magician said. What I'm saying is, you could cook chicken on that patio. If a kid trips or whatever, he's gonna sizzle.
The world beyond the glass shimmered, the leaves on the trees wilted and papery.
Christ. It wasn't supposed to be this hot. Was it? She wasn't used to this climate. Five months ago they'd been in Minneapolis. Now here they were in the fiery furnaces of Hell. Nevada. Who the hell moves to Nevada? There's some lake somewhere Ann had read about where the water gets so hot, it breeds some new, tiny worm that swims in through your eyeballs and turns your brain to goop.
Goddamn Philbin and his goddamn job.
She would have to move the party inside. What time was it? Was there even time to do it? There was time. But dammit this was not the plan. The plan was outside. Ann hadn't vacuumed, there were dishes in the sink, the floors needed mopping, nothing was put away. There was mail on the counter, moving boxes in the hall. The house smelled like cats.
Fuck.
She didn't want these people swarming in, cataloging her faults.
Look, we can move everything together, the magician said. Ten minutes, tops. No big deal.
Ann looked at the magician. He didn't have that fairground huckster vibe she'd expected. Bad suit, yes. But there was a something else quality to him. What was it? Ann thought of the mayor of a fallen city, a guy who'd spit at his captors as they got ready to shoot him.
Intriguing.
Maybe she liked him.
You don't have to help me, Ann said.
No shit, lady, the magician said. And there he went again, coughing and coughing. He dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief. There were rust stains on the handkerchief.
Rust stains?
The world was a furnace. The sky was white, and it seemed like the two of them might burst into flames. They started with the gift bags. They were so hot to the touch, Ann thought about getting gloves. They piled them on the kitchen counter, then headed out for the balloons.
There were too many balloons. A desperate, shrill amount. They bobbed and dipped. There was an ominous feeling to them. They batted and strained as if wanting to escape. Ann started to untie them, worried one might get away and choke a bird. Didn't that happen? Didn't they kill birds? Or was it whales they killed?
In the distance, the door key silhouette of mountains. A tossed off jumble of tacky-tack houses, half of them empty, foreclosed, falling apart. The heat was eating everything alive.
They untied balloons.
It was nice of the magician to help. It felt like forever since anyone had helped her do anything. Philbin huffed when she told him to put the dishes in the dishwasher instead of the sink.
Have you been a magician for a long time? Ann asked.
The magician held a bunch of balloons, and in his cheap suit he reminded Ann of a lawn ornament.
Long enough to think it's time to quit.
Ann wondered how anyone might survive on the wages of a birthday clown. Or magician, rather. Maybe he did other things, too. He must be retired from some regular job, and he just did the magician thing for fun.
Why quit? Ann asked.
Well, in this game sometimes the cards turn. And the cards have turned, the magician said.
Ann wasn't sure what he meant but didn't care enough to pursue it. She was more interested in the secrets: tricks of the trade, how things are done. And what was his story? He seemed like a man who'd lived a few lives. She wanted to hear about it. And the dead father. The electrocuted father. She wanted to hear about that, too.
Ann realized she was sort of having fun. There was something about this man, this Pete.
What's your signature trick, Ann asked.
Well, I make people disappear, he said. That's what I'm known for.
Impressive, Ann asked.
The kids would like that one. But wouldn't he need an assistant? Wasn't it the assistant who disappeared? Ann wondered if he was expecting her to play that role. She didn't want to. She didn't want to be involved, didn't want to be the center of attention, everyone staring.
She took the balloons from the magician. He was better and faster at untying them than she was. He started working on the knot Ann hadn't been able to get loose.
I guess I tied that one too tight, Ann said.
Ann watched his hands as he freed the strings and gathered them together. They were nice hands, nimble. It was clear he knew how to do things with them. Ann had been wrong about him. He wasn't some roller rink creep. No, he was more like someone from a black and white movie. The private detective who's been in the game too long, the guy passing through, ruined by some long-ago mistake, who saves the day and dies redeemed.
There was a small blue cross tattooed between his right thumb and forefinger.
I always wondered, Ann said. Where do people go when they disappear? Is there a false back in the cabinet or something?
Depends on the person, the magician said. Depends on a lot of things. But a professional never gives up his secrets.
He smiled with those crazy Chicklet teeth.
I bet you can tell me some of your tricks, Ann said, smiling. Just a little one?
We'll see, the magician said.
I'd tell you mine, but I don't know any tricks, Ann said. I wish I did. Like card tricks. When I was a kid I had a friend, she could do this thing...
The hot wind gusted and thrashed the balloons.
Good God, she said. It's like a convection oven.
There are better things than finding out someone's secrets, the magician said, gathering the last of the balloons. The strings were wrapped tightly around his fist.
What's better than secrets, Ann asked.
Luck, the magician told her.
I wish I were lucky, Ann said.
You are, he said.
It was the kind of comment that rubbed Ann the wrong way. Because what did this magician know, really? What does anyone know about anyone? Ann lived out of suitcases, moving boxes. She didn't know her own zip code, they moved so often. She was a thousand miles from her closest friends. Her husband ignored her. Ignored Sam. Work, work, work. All the time, at home on the laptop, the phone, away at this meeting, that meeting, who knew. And who cared. Always tense, always ready to lash out over this, that, whatever. He wasn't even going to be there for Sam's party. Whose life was this? It seemed like something she was dreaming. There was a word, a word for living someone else's life, feeling lost and trapped at the same time. Ann assumed it wasn't an English word. The French. Surely the French had a word for it. Ann wished she spoke French, but she'd failed it.
Tell me, why do you think I'm lucky? Ann asked.
Well, you're alive, the magician said.
Ann laughed. Is that the new standard for good luck? Not being dead? Then she remembered the magician's father. I'm sorry, I just meant...
I know what you meant, the magician said. Don't worry about it.
They took the balloons inside and let them go. They bounced and bobbed against the ceiling, red and blue and yellow and pink. They headed back out to Hell and started taking down the HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign.
Here was the truth: Ann didn't want this party to happen. She was desperate for it not to happen. She was afraid everyone she invited would come, and she was equally afraid none of them would come. She was tired. She felt transparent. She was a stranger everywhere she went. She was desperate to sit with someone who knew her. She was tired of telling the same old stories, giving the same old explanations: my husband is a corporate efficiency consultant; he prepares companies for acquisition; we move every year or so; I grew up in Maine; yes, it's cold in winter; yes, we have paved roads. I never went anywhere, I wanted to see the world, and here we are, seeing the world,: melting away in a tacky slapped together Neverland populated by slip and fall lawyers, America Firsters, Bible-thumping ex-strippers, and their spit-shined cruel spawn. The desert, the heat, fast food, cheap casinos, burning cactus, scorched earth. Animals in the dark being torn asunder.
Ann wanted breeze. She wanted soft. She wanted water.
And Sam wanted the party. She asked if she could invite her entire class, and Ann said yes. Immediately, unhesitatingly, yes. Poor Sam. Ann's friends were scattered to the winds, but Sam didn't have any friends at all, in this dump or anywhere else. Maybe the party would help. Maybe the party would change things for the better.
Sam had started performing surgery on her stuffed animals. She tore them open and ripped out their guts and taped them back up. She was playing doctor, of course she was, but Ann didn't remember ever taking a pair of scissors to her favorite stuffed animals, ripping their eyes out, tearing their bellies open and pulling out their guts. She didn't remember because she hadn't done it. She still had her stuffed animals in a box somewhere.
Sometimes she worried if Sam were a little bit I don't know. She stared at walls for 20 or 30 minutes at a clip and gossiped with turnips and russet potatoes like they were old friends going through divorce.
Genius? Weirdo doomed to social isolation? Too early to tell. What was she supposed to do? Ann heard her mother's voice: Figure it out.
Thanks, mom.
Kids would be arriving in less than an hour. Ripples of dread, a sudden thirst for oblivion.
This party is going to suck, Ann found herself telling the magician.
Hey, lady, the magician said. Ann was holding her end of the HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign up off the ground. The sun was beating on her head. It felt like she was being radiated, like the proteins in her brain were being rearranged. You got a healthy kid, right? You don't smoke crack, you don't smack her around, she doesn't have some fucked up thing, she's not like mutated or blind or fucked in the head or some shit, right? She doesn't have cancer or some kind of fucked up birthmark on her face or whatever?
Sam is fine, Ann said crisply. Sam is great.
Yeah, well, that's more than a lot of people. Maybe show some gratitude.
Again, Ann remembered the dad. The dead, electrocuted dad. The one they zipped into a body bag a couple of hours before. She was lucky. It was true. She had Sam. Everything else, maybe it didn't matter. She could leave. If things were so bad, she could take Sam and they could leave. Leave with nothing and move in with her parents.
It felt true, and impossible, and thinking about it gave her the same feeling she had when she watched documentaries about sailing around the world alone, or free climbing the sheer walls of Yosemite.
They held the HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign between them so it wouldn't get twisted or wrinkled. They walked into the house that way, one before the other like pallbearers at a funeral. Careful, careful, and through the door.
Let's hang it above the table, Ann said.
The magician pulled over a chair and climbed unsteadily up. He had another coughing fit, and for a moment Ann thought he might fall. Did he have tuberculosis? Did anyone have tuberculosis? Was that still around? Maybe it was the central air, triggering something. Maybe there were filters somewhere she was supposed to clean.
What I'm saying is, the magician told Ann, after he caught his breath, enjoy the time you have. I've seen so many people, it's too late, it's over, and that's when they say please, please, please, more time, more this, more that, I'll do anything. It's embarrassing, frankly, and all it does is ruin everything. The end is the end. It comes when it comes.
I'm sorry about your dad, Ann said.
Fuck my dad, the magician said. That's what I have to say about my dad.
The magician stood panting on the chair, his dyed black hair askew. So you got tape, tacks, what?
Ann let her end of the sign down to the floor and started pulling open drawers.
She was depressed. Maybe that was the problem. Chemical imbalance, distortions and chimeras. Should she be micro dosing hallucinogenic mushrooms? She needed a therapist. But really, what good would it do? Ann was not the problem. Ann and how she felt about Ann, about life, about Sam and everything else... these were symptoms of a larger problem named Philbin fucking Slidell. An angry ghost who instead of rattling chains and saying BOO, scattered loose change and dirty socks, bellowing right wing talking points like, this is supposed to be a nation of laws.
As if it weren't.
To think that all the time she'd known him, fallen in love with him, happily fucked him under trees in summer rain, this creature had been hiding inside him like a cancer cell, waiting to take the wheel. People change. Monsters are real. Sometimes by accident you marry one.
Guests were due in 40 minutes.
Fuck.
As they taped up the sign, Ann found herself telling the magician about her parrot. When she was a girl, she'd begged, pleaded, promised anything, anything at all, just please, please, please. A parrot. Finally on her tenth birthday her parents gave in. She named her parrot, for reasons lost to time, Captain Leg Leg. The parrot was her friend, he sat on her shoulder, they walked together in the woods. Days passed among the trees. She taught him to say let's boogie.
I love you, Ann said.
I love you, Captain Leg Leg croaked.
But parrots live a long time. Fifty years, sometimes. Ann went away to college. Captain Leg Leg had no way of knowing when she would return. He stopped eating, stopped strutting around his perch. And then one day he started flying at the window. He flew at the window, hitting the glass—WHAM—once, twice, while her parents watched in horror. They couldn't catch him. He dove and swooped and arched, beating his wings, gathering speed. WHAM. And that was that.
Limp head lolling, blood in his eyes, Captain Leg Leg was buried under the bird feeder while Ann was off in Ohio cramming for finals. She found out when she came home for Christmas.
The pain of it, the horror of it. Still right up there, close against her ribs.
I never wanted anything bad to happen, Ann told the magician.
Nobody has any idea what's going to happen, trust me, the magician said. Right up to the second it happens.
Animal love. It was real, it existed. The wolf dies within days of his mate. The parrot kills himself for heartbreak. Ann wanted that kind of love. She missed it. She wanted it, and it was a billion miles away.
She wondered if the magician knew any tricks like that—could he wave a wand and PRESTO—conjure up someone to love her so much it could kill him?
Maybe your parrot was just sick of captivity, the magician said. Maybe he was ready for something else.
The magician climbed down and put the chair back where it was. His cologne smelled cheap and spicy and made Ann think of the way Philbin smelled when he came home from the strip club. She wasn't supposed to know he went to strip clubs, but the smell was hard to hide. And she'd found a receipt in his pants. It was from a place called the Boobie Trap.
Sam was up in her room, jumping from the bed onto the floor. Ann could hear the bed springs, the heavy THUMP. Tinny sugar smack music spilling from her room. THUMP, THUMP. The light over the kitchen table swayed.
They started arranging the gift bags. Putting them in rows. The heat had melted all the candy. Every bag had a few liquified chocolates melting through the bottom, getting chocolate on everything: the noisemakers, the puzzle books and little tubes of glitter lip gloss. Fuck, the lip gloss had melted, too. The bags smelled like cocoanut, like bananas, like suntan lotion at the beach.
I should throw these away.
It's fine, they get what they get, the magician said. It's your kid's birthday, they're supposed to give shit to her. That's how this used to work.
That's true, Ann said. What happened, that I'm supposed to give everybody something? Who changed that rule?
Change it back, the magician said. Fuck 'em. You don't owe shit to these people.
Ann was thirsty.
How about vodka, the magician said. This is supposed to be a party, let's party. We got a lot to celebrate.
The magician took off his jacket. He'd sweated through his shirt. His shirt stuck to him. You could see his ribs. He looked like an animal someone forgot to feed, a lion in an abandoned zoo.
Ann checked the time. People wouldn't be arriving for half an hour. Sam was in her room. Philbin was in a meeting somewhere near the airport, presenting his preliminary recommendations, which was a fancy way to say, he was telling the executive team who to fire first and what benefits to eliminate.
A tall vodka tonic with ice and lots of lime sounded good. Or vodka on the rocks, even. No frills, wham bam, straight to the point.
I'm kidding about the vodka, the magician said. Just water is fine.
His eyes were blue, the color of sad.
Ann made drinks.
They sat at the kitchen table. In an odd way, one she couldn't explain, she felt like they'd known each other before. Like there was something connecting them.
Somehow she was halfway through her drink.
I'm surprised you made it to the house without getting stopped, Ann said. This is the kind of neighborhood where people see people they don't recognize, they call the cops.
Where I grew up, someone calls the cops on you, it's a death sentence.
Ann didn't blink. That sounded fine, like a good way to live. People rat on you, take 'em out. Yes. She sipped her drink and knew she'd be having another.
You should see what they post in the Mom's Group, Ann said. These bitches are vicious.
She pushed her hair behind her ears. She was sure she looked like shit. Was there time to shower before people started arriving? Probably not. She could only imagine what they'd have to say about her flushed face and crazy hair, not to mention this dumb rented house with its fake plants and Box Store art. Then again, what did these cretins know about art?
She missed her own things. She missed her books, her paintings. Her own actual plants. No plants allowed in the rental! They were worried about bugs, water damage, who knows. She'd left all her lovely plants behind. The rental agency for the last place tossed them in a dumpster and charged them for it.
I feel like nothing makes sense anymore, Ann said. You ever feel that way? That everything's all twisted around?
Oh, I could tell you stories, the magician said.
Tell me a story, Ann said. I'd like to hear one.
The magician finished his drink. He took out a pack of cards and started flipping it around. Ann expected a trick, pick a card, any card. But no, it wasn't a pack of cards. It was a sterling silver cigarette case.
You mind if I smoke?
No I do not, Ann said. But we'd better go outside. My husband will freak.
Your husband smokes.
Ann was taken aback. My husband smokes? My husband doesn't smoke.
He sure does, the magician said. Let's go outside.
Ann stood and picked up her phone.
Leave your phone.
Why leave my phone? Parents might call, or...
Leave the phone, the magician said. Phones listen.
Ann could hear Sam upstairs, singing along to some pop song she probably shouldn't be listening to. Ann couldn't make out the words. Party, party, party, something along those lines. At least it wasn't one of those porno songs about sucking dick or fucking in a private jet. They didn't used to have that kind of junk on the radio, did they?
Maybe it wasn't a nation of laws after all. Anyway, it was all about money. It always had been.
She left her phone and followed the magician into the blast furnace heat.
She hadn't had a cigarette in years. She felt something click, like when you run into someone you used to love, of whom you now are slightly frightened.
The smoke tasted hot and dry and utterly harmless.
You wanted a story, the magician said. It's gonna come as a shock. You sure you want to hear it?
Absolutely, Ann said. Now I really want to hear it.
I'm not a magician, the magician said.
Ann felt something drop inside her.
What do you mean?
Lady, listen. Don't flip out. It's all good, we're good, okay? But no, I'm not a magician. I'm a guy, like a... I don't know what word you want to use. I take care of people.
Ann didn't know what was happening. Like you're a nurse, you mean?
Almost like the direct opposite of that.
What's the opposite of nurse, Ann said. She stared at the magician. His pale face, his thin shoulders. Those sad blue eyes.
Your husband hired me to kill you, he said.
They sat in the living room, a room in which Ann had never previously sat. It was glaringly bright and audaciously furnished. A hibiscus couch, club chairs in a strident pattern you might find in the lobby of a third-tier tropical resort.
She felt nothing. It was like there was a wind blowing through her. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Her heart was doing weird things. Fast, slow. She felt a kind of clicking in her chest, like the spinning wheel on a game show. Click, click, click, we have a winner.
There wasn't going to be any birthday party. There wasn't going to be any anything.
How is all this supposed to work, Ann heard herself asking, like she was talking to a doctor, like she was talking to someone presenting her with options for treatment she knew she could not afford.
It can work a couple ways, the magician said.
He wasn't a magician. He was not at all a magician. Ann had to stop thinking of him that way.
The hands on the clock going around.
Enlighten me, Ann said.
He showed her encrypted messages on his phone, initial contact, their address, instructions on what was needed. It had to look natural, an accident. Heart attack. All this from Philbin. Philbin. A man who years ago had sucked Ann's toes, washed her hair in the shower. She looked at the texts as they swam and blurred. These things don't happen. These things aren't real.
She thought of Philbin on the day their little Sam was born, how good he was, how patient and bowled over. But who the fuck was he? How could he do this? She'd never known him at all. Was everything a lie? All of it? Why, to what end, for what purpose? It made no sense. She was furious. It was rising in her, a deep red venom.
There was very little time. Things needed to be decided. They needed to be decided quickly. She was supposed to be dead already, or on the way there. She was supposed to be unresponsive on the floor, heart slammed shut from a massive dose of insulin. It was supposed to be a heart attack, for insurance money, because Philbin was a compulsive gambler. A gambling addict. She'd never known. Sports, cards, casinos. Their money was gone. And he owed money, he owed a lot of money, to Russians, Chechens, Jamaicans, bad people, violent people, and they wanted assurances, a plan. They wanted the money, and if they didn't get the money, they wanted blood. They wanted Ann and Sam and Philbin in pieces dissolving in a drum full of acid. They wanted no teeth or fingerprints or distinguishing features, and it felt to Ann as though she had dropped from a thousand feet into the plot line of a crime show she wouldn't bother to watch.
The interested parties want the money owed, the magician said. Are you and douchebag both on the same insurance policy?
Ann nodded, feeling some deep dark hollow of herself swing open, a secret room in the house where she'd always lived, discovered at last.
Then it doesn't matter really which one of you goes. What matters is, the money goes to the interested parties, and no loose ends.
How is this happening, Ann asked.
The same way it always happens, the magician said.
Give me a cigarette, Ann said.
The magician stood.
What are you doing?
Don't we smoke outside?
Jesus Christ, give me a cigarette.
The hands on the clock nudged them closer to party time as the smoke blew this way and that in the breeze from the central air.
So I walk out that door, that's it, the magician said. Don't ask for details. When you get the insurance settlement, you give them the money, all of the money. You do not run, and you do not fuck around.
Ann thought about it. There was something wrong, something loose. What about the police? I have to go to the police.
The magician sighed. You really don't want to say that. This is not that. This is a different situation. You're a different person now. Please, think about what I'm telling you. I want to help you.
The magician—Pete—looked around for somewhere to ash.
Use the planter, who cares, they're plastic anyway. Use the goddamn floor for all I care.
A few minutes earlier, Ann had gone upstairs and stuck her head into Sam's room—to see her, look at her. She looked the same as she always looked. She was serving her favorite stuffed animal tea. Here you are, Pig Herbert, she said. Drink this while it's hot, but it might spill out the holes in your tummy.
Hey Sammy, Ann said. It's almost party time!
Sam ignored her and kept playing. She hadn't slept well the night before. She was too excited about her birthday, about the party, all the people. Now she was in a mood. She got like this. She shut people out, disappeared somewhere. Ann had the horrible thought that she got this from her father, this tendency to retreat, to go cold and disappear.
Oh, no. Oh, no.
The air conditioning hummed. What is life now? What is life ever going to be? It was cold in Sam's room. Sam was wearing her favorite little hoodie, with the overlong sleeves and the heart on the front. Ann watched Sam play and wondered how an entire world, an entire life, can end just like that, snap, while other things go on, normal things, silly things. She thought of something she'd read, or been told, or maybe seen on TV. That when a person is decapitated, the severed head can think and see what's happening for a few seconds before everything goes black.
How the hell does anyone prove something like that? Ann wondered.
She was flipped out and kind of drunk, and she stank of cigarettes. And there was her strange sad daughter, who didn't know one world was over, and a new world would have to be assembled, or that the last time she had seen her father—whenever that was—was the last time she would ever see her father. Sam didn't know any of that, but Ann did, and this secret knowledge threatened to break Ann's heart.
The secrets we learn, the secrets we never learn.
Sam laid Pig Herbert down and put a washcloth over his face. There you go, buddy, she said. You're going to be asleep for a hundred years and when you wake up, you'll have a brand-new foot that's not a monster foot anymore.
Ann retreated and closed the door.
So first off, there's no manual for life, the magician said.
Or rather Pete. Because, no magician. Pete. Pete.
There's no way of saying, this is my fault, his fault, whoever's fault. What I mean is, if anything, this is your husband's fault.
Shut up, Ann said. Please.
Look, Pete said. We're in a pickle. We're all in a pickle. Things are fluid, I guess is what I mean.
I don't care what you mean. Look, first question, when you got dressed this morning, put on your socks, were you thinking, okay, orange juice, coffee, then head over to kill that lady, then who knows, dry cleaning, maybe get a steak.
I'm a vegetarian, Pete said.
Ann slapped him.
Okay, he said. Okay.
Ann was horrified. This man was a killer. This man looked into the wheeling eyes of people begging for their lives and said no, and killed them.
I'm sorry, Ann said, quite politely.
I'm throwing a lot at you, I realize.
Is your name really Pete?
I am not going into personal details, for I think pretty obvious reasons.
What am I supposed to call you?
Just call me Pete. What's wrong with Pete?
Fine, Pete, what's the plan? In five minutes, tops, I'm the happy host of an asshole convention.
That's exactly right. You host the party. Later you're going to get a call from somebody, the hospital, probably, cops, maybe somebody else, I don't know. There's been a tragedy, there's been an event, etc. And that's when you find out the terrible news.
The terrible news.
The whatever kind of news, the upsetting news, the shocking news, however you want to call it. But whoever is on the other end of the line is going to deliver some ill tidings, and you are going to be upset. Listen, I need you to understand: there is no turning back. When I walk out the door, you may as well be figuring out where goes the urn.
The urn?
Like for the ashes. As in cremation. Most people cremate these days. It's cheaper.
Ann realized there was another thread needing pulling. She didn't want to pull it. But she had to.
Why aren't you just killing me?
A car passed on the road. Pete and Ann froze. It slowed, slowed, and pulled away, speeding up.
Okay, Pete said. Listen. So I went to the doctor the other day, and guess what he told me?
I have no idea what he told you.
He told me, uh oh. He told me, 50 years of smoking. He told me, stage four. Call the priest, basically. All the things. Nothing I didn't suspect, but the be all and end all is, I'm toast. So certain things, I see them in a different light. Things like my work, things like, good guys, bad guys, how I got into this life, which was, my dad, things like, okay, my dad was in the life, plus maybe he did some other things, maybe he was a fucking pederast, and so I get this news, okay, about myself, and my own little imminent journey, and here I am taking care of him in his final days, being a little fucking angel, after all of that stuff, all the creeping around and let me climb into your bed shit when I was a kid, and the stink of him and his hands on me, and here he is rotting from cancer and drooling and shitting himself, and it's me, taking care of him, and what the fuck, and so this morning, I put him in the bathtub. I say, a nice hot bath, let's get you clean, let's scrub that filthy scabby back, you fuck, you piece of shit, let's get you in that nice warm water with the fucking soap and bubbles. Let's get you in there, and then let's, I don't know, blow dry your hair maybe, sure, why not, let's plug in the blow dryer and turn it on and whoopsie, the blow dryer goes into the water.
I lived a life, the magician said. I will not be redeemed. Today's just your lucky day, I guess.
Ann sat on the arm of the couch and felt something like joy. For what, for whom, she had no idea. It was nothing she'd ever felt before. It was a blooming, an exhalation, the appearance of a beautiful, benevolent god. It was a feeling that made no sense and had no context, and it gave her great comfort.
The magician put his cigarette out in the plastic dirt of the plastic plant.
Kill him, Ann said, as the doorbell began to chime.
Oh, yes, my dear, the magician said. I surely will.
The magician made soundlessly for the kitchen, opening the slider and disappearing as Ann gazed around the room and past it, into the rest of her life. The doorbell rang far away, bing, bong, while Ann, her eyes falling here and there, searched for the empty place where she might keep the ashes.
