Psych: Mind Over Magic

Chapter Nineteen

Augie Balustrade stepped into his bathroom and locked the door behind him. There was no reason for him to turn the latch, or even to close the door-Augie had lived alone since his last girlfriend moved out two years ago, and he hadn’t had a single guest over in at least six months-but this was a habit he’d developed in his early teens, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t break it.

Checking the knob to make sure the door was secure, Balustrade steepled his fingers together and turned them inside out until they cracked. Then he waggled each one from every joint until they were as loose as they could be. Only then did he produce the deck of cards from his vest pocket.

How many times had he laid out fifty-two cards on the back of the toilet, effortlessly fanning them across the slick white porcelain, flipping them over, expanding and contracting them like an accordion? He’d practiced the basic moves four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year for forty-seven years now-sixty-eight thousand four hundred thirty-two hours, two thousand eight hundred fifty-one days. Almost eight full years, nearly a sixth of his life, he had dedicated to this simple set of tasks, and still he knew he could get better.

When Augie was little, his father used to hit him if he caught Augie with a deck of cards. To Martin Balustrade, cards were the tools of hustlers and victims, thieves and suckers, and he hadn’t worked his entire life so that his son could grow up to be a low-life. Martin’s grandfather had been a peasant in the Old Country, his father had worked with his hands building the rails and bridges that made this country strong, and Martin had made the transition into small business with that most traditional of entry-level entrepreneur-ships, the mom-and-pop dry cleaning store. (Although in this case it was only the pop dry cleaning store, since Mom had long since run off with a man who operated a traveling pony ride for small children.) It was more than a cliche; it was Augie’s destiny that he would take the family name one more rung up society’s ladder, finding prominence as a doctor, lawyer, or corporate executive. His future son, in turn, would then climb all the way to the top, so that his own descendants could tumble into decadence. This, Martin would explain nightly in place of a bedtime story, was the American dream, and it was their responsibility to live it out or die trying.

That might have been fine with Augie, had he not sneaked out of his house one Saturday when he was supposed to be doing his chores to see a matinee of some movie all the kids at school were talking about. He didn’t quite get the appeal of watching four singers with weird accents and weirder haircuts be chased around London by a bunch of hysterical girls, but everybody in his class had already seen it, and he was tired of being left out of the conversation. Halfway to the theater, though, he saw something that would change his life forever.

It was only a cardboard box, flipped upside down so that its bottom became a tabletop. And behind that tabletop, an indistinct man in a slick suit was yammering to the passersby as his hands flicked through a small stack of playing cards.

Augie had no idea what the man was saying, and he didn’t understand why he was standing on a street corner, or why people walking by would stop, put down a dollar bill, then walk away without it. All he saw were the three cards the man laid out on his makeshift table, the way they moved, changed, flew, the way the man would put down four cards and make them look like three, the last one disappearing into his palm.

The movie began and ended three times while Augie watched the man’s hands and the cards, and if a beat cop hadn’t ambled by and chased the swindler away, Augie might have stayed there for the week.

From that moment on, his life was set. He began to study up on what his father called “card tricks,” but what he quickly learned was called “sleight of hand.” And then he began to lock himself in the bathroom. For the first few months, his father would hammer on the bathroom door and scream for him to come out, and for Augie, that was some of the best training he ever received. He learned early how to ignore the loudest heckler. And if he finally had to submit to weekly sessions with a therapist to discuss what his father assumed was the real reason he spent four hours at a time behind a locked bathroom door, that merely taught him more about the art of dissembling.

From that moment on the street corner, Augie never doubted that he would spend his life performing up close magic with playing cards. What didn’t occur to him then, or for many years, was that the marketplace for such an act was extremely limited. The thing that Augie loved so much about his art form-the close, personal nature of one man, two hands, and fifty-two cards-also severely limited its commercial possibilities. If you planned to make an elephant disappear, you could do it in a theater that would accommodate thousands. But if all you wanted was to make a certain card appear in the glove compartment of a locked car belonging to a man you’d never met, there was simply no way to sell a lot of tickets. Fortunately, making money was never among Augie’s chief concerns. Even when Ricky Jay, the preeminent, up-close magician of the age, did figure out a way to make a healthy living from his work, Augie didn’t waste a moment cursing himself for missing the opportunity. His father had willed him the tiny bungalow where he’d grown up. The sale of what had grown to be an empire of three dry cleaning establishments and a half dozen coin-op Laundromats provided a small nest egg, and as long as he could buy a case of Bicycles for less than twenty dollars, he didn’t need anything else.

Except an audience-and that had become increasingly difficult over the last few years as stage magic had reentered the mainstream of pop culture. Magic had become show business, and Augie couldn’t compete with the expectations of the spectacle-sated crowds. He didn’t object to Siegfried and Roy or David Cop perfield when they took their illusions to a ludicrously large scale, because he knew they were at heart master craftsmen, and the tricks they performed were based on the same set of skills they all shared.

But then there was P’tol P’kah, whose act, he was certain, was designed to destroy everything Augie loved about his art. Because what Augie did-and what every one of his predecessors had done for generations before him-was based on precise technical skill. Uncountable hours of practice went into the tiniest movement. This was the real secret of the professional magician. The genius of the act lay not in the trick, no matter how clever, but in the huge amount of work it took to master it.

The so-called Martian Magician was something else entirely, Augie was sure. This dissolving man trick really was just that-a trick. He didn’t know how the green guy was pulling it off, but he could tell that the secret was technological, not manual. And if all it took to be considered a great magician was access to the most expensive toys, then his art would be reduced to the level of the pop music industry, where computers could turn any moderately talented teenage girl into the next singing sensation.

Augie was not going to let that happen. He’d been studying P’tol P’kah’s act for months, and he was almost certain he would have figured it out if he could have seen the Dissolving Man just once or twice more. That, he knew, was why the green giant had vanished after his aborted performance at the Fortress of Magic. He must have known he was going to be exposed. He must have known he was going to be exposed by Augie Balustrade.

But if this fraud thought that simply dropping out of sight was going to protect his secret, Augie was going to make sure he learned just how wrong he was. Let the others chatter on about what a terrific exit they had seen. Let them scramble for the opportunity to take over the enormous showroom. Augie was going to expose him.

It wasn’t going to be easy, but nearly drowning in the Martian’s tank at the Fortress performance had finally given Augie an idea of what the trick’s secret might have been. He hadn’t been able to see much when he was upside down and underwater, but as he looked out at the audience, he was pretty sure he could see a tight grid of tiny wires running through the glass walls. The most likely explanation was that these were merely reinforcements to keep the tank from exploding over the audience, but Augie thought they might have another purpose, as well.

It was still just a theory, but he was chasing hard after further evidence and hoping for some real information soon. If he could have had a few uninterrupted minutes with the dissolving tank, he was sure that what he’d find would match up with what he was assuming. But since that wasn’t going to happen in this or any lifetime, Augie had begun to make some phone calls. He wasn’t asking specific questions yet, just grounding himself in basic theory. But every bit he learned made him more confident that he was on the right track.

Augie scooped the cards up in his left hand and with a graceful wave arced them through the air so they landed facedown in his right palm. He twitched the muscles of his right hand, and the cards flew up again, this time landing in his left, the faces alternating up and down. One more twitch and the deck disappeared from sight. He reached into his jacket pocket-Augie always dressed for business before practice-and pulled out the cards, which were now arranged by suit.

He was about to fan them across the toilet tank again, when he heard a hissing noise. That was nothing new for the bungalow his father had left him; Augie spent almost as much time jiggling the toilet handle to stop it from running as he did working with the cards. His hand was halfway to the lever when he realized that the sound was both higher and louder than any running water he’d ever heard.

And it was coming from outside the bathroom door.

Maybe a pipe broke and there’s water spewing all over the kitchen , Augie thought. But before he could visualize the location of the main valve, he heard something else outside the bathroom.

A footstep.

No, more than a footstep. It was a deep, hard thud pounding against his floorboards.

There was another thump and Augie realized what it was: the sound of a heavy boot stomping across his living room.

A huge, heavy, black boot.

There was another stomp, this one much closer to the bathroom door.

Augie’s hands shook with fear, and the cards scattered over the floor. The green giant was here. It was coming for him.

Get hold of yourself, he commanded his body. He’s not a real Martian. He’s not a real giant. He’s probably not even a real magician. If only he could make his hands stop shaking, he knew he could figure out what he should do.

But for the first time in sixty-eight thousand, four hundred thirty-two hours, Augie Balustrade had no control over his hands. Or his feet, which seemed to have sunk two inches into the tile floor so that lifting them was impossible.

At least his neck still worked, and he swiveled his head around to look for a way to escape. There was a window, but it had been nailed shut years ago when Augie’s father thought he was using it to slip out of the house during his mammoth bathroom sessions. He could break the glass and slither out, but it was so small that only his ten-year-old self could have made it through.

Flight was impossible. The only alternative was to fight. But Augie’s hands had never been formed into fists. In junior high, he was beat up every day for a month by a bully named Stacy Starkweather, who kept telling him that all he had to do to stop the punishment was fight back. Augie never did, not once, and finally Starkweather-who was related to the serial killer of the same name only in temperament-finally gave up on him. Although Augie liked to tell himself that his tormentor finally came to respect his principled stand, he knew deep down that he really only got bored.

But Augie also knew the only principle behind his stand was the love of his craft. He would sacrifice nose, eyes, stomach, legs, and whichever other part of him the bully chose to pick on, before he’d risk damaging one of his hands on the kid’s thick skin.

He needed a weapon. A razor would do. At least, an old-fashioned straight razor would. But Augie shaved with a rechargeable electric, and unless the intruder was insanely ticklish, it wouldn’t help him at all. Augie yanked open drawers, tearing through their contents, hurling Q-tips and cotton swabs and Band-Aids and tube after tube of hand cream on the ground. If only he had a proper nail file, the kind with the sharpened point, but Augie’s superstitions about damaging his fingers kept him away from those dangerous tools. Instead, he tossed box after box of disposable, blunt-ended emery boards into the bathtub. Somehow he didn’t think the threat of mild abrasion would do much to keep the Martian monster away from him.

Augie saw a glint of steel at the back of a drawer. He thrust his hand in and came out with the prize: a set of nail clippers. They weren’t Augie’s-he’d never trust his fingers to anything so imprecise. They must have belonged to his father and been hidden in this drawer for years.

Hands trembling, Augie peeled the slim layer of metal away from the body of the clippers. It swiveled out smoothly, the semisharp point of the file adding a good three inches to the length of his weapon.

It wasn’t much, Augie knew. At best, he’d have one chance. He needed to aim precisely at the most vulnerable spot on the giant’s body, and he needed to hit it hard and thrust the blade deep. That might buy him enough time to get through to the kitchen and out the back door.

Augie realized the stomping sounds had stopped. There was silence from the rest of the house. Was it possible that the monster had gone? That he had searched the place, yet somehow missed the bathroom where Augie was hiding? Walked past the locked door, thinking it was solid wall?

It didn’t seem possible. That would be like winning the lottery on the same day you hit the superfecta. And Augie had never been a great believer in luck, especially his own. But the sounds had stopped. No stomping, no hissing.

Augie crept quietly to the bathroom door-and waited. He waited for what seemed like hours, like days. He waited until the sun burned out and the moon fell into the sea and the universe died of heat loss. And then, slowly and carefully, he placed his right hand on the doorknob and turned.

Still nothing from the rest of the house.

He turned the knob the rest of the way, catching his breath as the dead latch eased silently out of the strike plate. Keeping the knob twisted all the way to the left to prevent any stray sounds, he gently pulled the door toward himself until there was a tiny crack spilling light from the hallway.

Augie stayed frozen, waiting to see if anyone had noticed the movement. Again, all was still. This might actually be the day for him to buy lottery tickets at the racetrack. He took a deep breath and yanked the door the rest of the way open, clutching the nail clippers tightly in his free hand.

At first, Augie saw only the corridor and a wink of sunlight coming from the kitchen window at its end.

And then he saw the sharpened teeth-and heard the monster’s terrible roar as it lunged at him.

Augie closed his eyes and struck out with the nail clippers, knowing that this time, his hands wouldn’t be enough to save him.