Houdini Act

Tobias laid his arm on the cushioned armrest and the lab tech tied on a tourniquet. His free hand worked a deck of red Bicycle playing cards. He looked at her name tag. “Lucy? Lucy what?”

“White.” She swabbed the vein.

“Really? With the dark hair, the eyebrows, I’d have figured you for —” he attempted an Italian accent, “Lucia Bianca.”

She let him prattle. People get nervous in the blood-drawing chair. Men in particular either babble like idiots or faint. She brought the needle to his vein. “Okay: Sharp scratch …”

His card hand worked faster. He gasped as she slid the needle into his vein. “So, ah, why’d you become a phlebotomist?”

She traded the full tube for an empty one. “Quickest way out of Barstow.”

“Barstow? Jeez, that’s uh, that’s rough. But seriously you’re beautiful — you should be a doctor. Or a news anchor. Or a magician’s assistant.”

She snorted. “Your aspirations for me just get higher and higher.”

“That’s a common prejudice. People think assistants are just pretty props. But the assistant is often the one making the mechanics of the illusion work. Highly skilled position.”

She released the tourniquet, withdrew the needle, and put a cotton ball on the puncture wound. “Press on that.”

Reluctantly dropping his cards, he pressed two fingers against the cotton as she attached labels to the tubes of blood. As soon as she had a bandage on his arm, he grabbed his cards and fanned the deck. “Wanna see a trick?”

“Actually, we’re kinda short-staffed today.”

“Come on. Pick a card that speaks to you.”

She looked at him with sympathy. As she took a card, his shoulders relaxed.

“Queen of hearts,” Tobias said, “that’s you all over.” He pulled a felt pen from his pocket. “Write your name on it.” She glanced at her watch, sighed, wrote Lucia across the queen, and handed it back. “This one’s called Bizarre Twist,” he informed her. Hands moving smooth and easy, he took out two aces and sandwiched Lucy’s queen between them, all three face-down. Holding the cards together, he rubbed the top one, rotating it until he’d exposed the queen which had somehow flipped face-up.

“Wait … what?” She looked at his hands. “Do that again.”

Tobias turned all three face-down, rubbed them, and this time Lucy’s trapped queen transformed from a red-backed card to a blue one. He flipped the queen to show that she still had Lucia scrawled across her heart.

“That’s crazy! Show me how you did that.”

She laughed like she loved to be fooled. The sound made him feel drunk, and put some cool in his backbone. He shrugged. “Let me take you for a drink and I’ll show you.”

Her eyebrows lifted. Was this guy kidding? Working those cards, he’d gone from annoying geek to smooth operator in about 60 seconds. But there was a sweetness to him. “You don’t seem like an Angeleno.”

“No? What do I seem like?”

“Canadian or something.” She looked him over. “Minnesota?”

“Duluth! You got some mad cold reading skills, lady.” He smiled. “So?”

“I don’t …” She chewed inside her cheek. “I don’t get off until six.”

* * *

It was 6:30 when Lucy walked into Harpo’s Lounge. The place was thick with the after-work crowd. Tobias looked over from the bar where he had snagged two seats. He was expecting the girl he’d seen at the lab: ponytail, scrubs — but here she was, wild torrent of black coffee curls, short-sleeved blue shirt, and a leggy pair of faded jeans. He stood and waved.

Lucy weaved through tables and took the seat beside him. “Survive the blood-letting?”

The moment she met his eyes, his mouth opened and closed like a beached fish. Eventually, he said, “You’re very … proficient. Must be weird, taking people’s blood all day. Why’d you — oh right, Barstow. Desert. Lots of cactuses. Cacti? Must be hot, huh? Windy?”

The guy who had asked her out for a drink had morphed back into the babbling dork who first sat down in the lab. She nodded. “Good place to stop for gas. Or join the military.”

“What can I get you folks?” The bartender smacked his hands together.

Thank God for bartenders. “Gin and tonic,” Lucy told him.

“Same.” Tobias stared into his lap.

Eyeing them, the bartender shoveled ice into a couple of glasses. “Toby, right?” He poured gin, gunned some tonic, hung a lime wedge on each and set the glasses in front of them. “Hey, man, do that credit card thing again.”

Tobias grinned. He went into his wallet and frowned. “Must’ve left it somewhere.” He plucked out a folded twenty. Holding it between his thumb and fingers, the cash snap-changed into a Visa card. “Ah! There it is.” He tossed the card to the bartender and the thing vanished. It reappeared in his other hand. Tobias blew his fingers and the card vanished again. “Can’t seem to hold onto this thing.” He looked from hand to hand and then winced at Lucy. He pointed to her shirt pocket. “May I?”

Lucy looked down as he plucked out his Visa. Gin and tonic spurted from her lips.

“Nice.” Tobias laughed. “Where’d you go to charm school again?”

* * *

Two months later, Tobias and Lucy perused the shelves of an illusionist shop called The Magic Lizard. Every cranny was stuffed with tools of the trade: trick dice, finger flashers, packets of flash cotton, and gimmick kits. Tobias shimmied a quarter across the knuckles of one hand.

“Keep thinking of that kid’s face,” she said. Tobias had booked a bar mitzvah the night before. Lucy had gone with him. “When you made his watch disappear, how’d you —”

Tobias handed her the quarter, then made it vanish and reappear under her watch. “My cousin’s having a party next Sunday.” He let her wrist go. “He’s in Venice Beach. Wants me to do a quick show, like ten minutes. Wanna come?”

“Okay.” Lucy handed back his quarter. “Why don’t we do a trick together? When I was a kid, I saw this movie where Harry Houdini and his wife, Bess, had a telepathy act. Bess’d get an object from the audience and he’d telepathize it!” She eyed him hopefully.

“Telephathize? That a word?”

She gave him a soft punch in the arm. “Teach me something.”

He laughed. “Every time I reveal a trick, you get all disillusioned. Like Santa Claus just got busted for grand theft auto.”

“Shut up. Do not.”

“Found it!” The sales guy came out from the back room. Scratching his head through a riot of red hair, he held up a boxed kit that said Super Topit. “Fell behind the guillotine.”

Lucy eyed the box as Tobias turned it over in his hands. “What’s a topit?”

“Not telling.”

“Whatevs. I can Google all your fancy moves anyway.”

Tobias looked at her, the sharp cupid’s bow of her lip. A little voice in his head said, Now you see her, now you don’t. His mouth twitched.

* * *

“A topit is a special pocket that fits inside your suit jacket,” Tobias said with a defeated sigh. “Invented by old time pickpockets, except then it was called a poacher’s pouch.” He kept his eyes on his bedroom ceiling while his fingers worked a deck of cards. “We use them to disappear things. The one I just bought has a system that sends the object to a holding area at the back.”

“Cool!” Lucy reclined beside him in bed, elbow in her pillow, head propped on her hand. “Why couldn’t you just tell me that?” She looked at his hands as they practiced the same drill: Push two cards, lift and snap. She plucked the deck away. “Can you look at me for a sec?”

Tobias looked from her hands to her face. Seeing his despondent expression, she gave the deck back. His fingers resumed their maneuvers. Finally, he said, “Guys always ask me if magic is good for getting girls. The answer is yes. It’s even better for losing them. Mostly ’cause I’m constantly doing this.” He looked at his hands. “But if I’m going to get gigs, I gotta train.” She stayed quiet. His jaw tensed. “I really like you, Lucy. Part of me loves that you think it’s cool how I can disappear stuff and part of me is afraid you’re with me because I can disappear stuff. And if you learn all my tricks, you’ll get bored and I’ll be just one more dork with a finger flasher and sponge balls.”

She nodded. After a long moment she said, “Back in Barstow, when I was in school, we had to practice venipuncture. First, we practiced on a dummy arm with veins and fake blood. Then we practiced on each other. We had to do 50 sticks in class and 100 sticks during the externship. I used to practice on my boyfriend. He worked at a sporting goods store at the outlet mall and they all had to wear these white polo shirts. One morning I had a test coming up and I started pestering him. So, he let me stick him and I blew the vein. Got blood all over his work shirt and he ended up with a massive hematoma. Upshot: He dumped me.” She took a breath. “Point is, I get it. You have to practice to be good. Secondly, yes: At first there was a childish part of me that wanted your tricks to be magic-magic. But now I’m totally into the gaff. I love it when the flames go poof and sponge balls fly. I do! I love it.”

He blinked at her until a soft smile melted over his face.

* * *

The Venice Beach house was suffused with the sounds of classic rock and the smells of skunk weed, sunscreen, and the deep-fryer fug of boardwalk food stalls. About 50 guests milled from the open kitchen to the living room and spilled onto the deck.

Come ten o’clock, Tobias stood just inside the living room’s sliding glass wall. Beyond him the deck looked out to palm trees silhouetted against the violet sky. Tobias shot cards and made them vanish. He conjured a flame that gave way to a missing wallet.

Lucy missed most of it. Too busy ruminating on the mentalism stuff he’d taught her. The night before, they went over it all again. “Most of it’s just cold-reading,” Tobias explained. “Look for body language, accent, clothes. You do this naturally. Like when we met. Took one look at me and said Minnesota! In cold reading, when you get a hit, keep going. Shotgun a bunch of vague stuff that can apply to anyone like, I see a father-figure with a heart problem. Or you can do the medium thing: I have a spirit with me. Older lady. Is your grandmother in spirit? Her name … I’m getting an M, maybe an N? They want it to be real so bad, they’ll fill in the blanks.”

A ruse like that thrilled Lucy but it was too nerve-wracking for her first time out. So, he taught her a mentalist trick called The Center Tear. Anyone can do this, he said.

She forced her mind back into the room just as Tobias disappeared a woman’s margarita glass. His big finish had the room howling.

When he took a bow, the lost margarita woman made a bee-line for him, grasped his arm, and gave him her card: Dr. Miriam Gelson, Cosmetic Surgeon. Rail thin with platinum hair and a frozen forehead, her voice was lilting when she asked, “How much do you cost? My sister’s 40th is coming up. She would love you. Especially the clairvoyance stuff.”

Tobias glanced at Lucy. Her eager expression turned his insides to mush. “I dabble in the psychic arts, but my girlfriend, Lucy, she’s the real deal.”

Minutes later, Lucy sat on the sofa with Miriam. She drew a circle on a five-by-four blank page. “Write down a name — someone close to you. Then fold the paper in half. Don’t let me see.” Lucy turned her back. A small crowd gathered to watch.

Tobias sat on the arm of the sofa as Miriam finished her task.

Lucy faced her. “Perfect. Fold it in half once more.” Miriam obliged. Lucy took the paper. She held the little square between them, pinched between thumb and finger. “Focus,” she said. “All your energy on this person.” Closing her eyes, Lucy breathed deeply. She tore the folded paper to ribbons. Beside her, Tobias winced. She opened her eyes, picked up an ashtray from the coffee table, and dropped in the bits of paper. She handed a lighter to Miriam. “As you burn the paper, think of the last time you saw this person.”

While the woman flicked the lighter, Lucy surreptitiously glanced into her palm, and then gasped as the trick went up in flames. “Crap,” she said. “I did it wrong.”

Tobias cracked up. He kissed Lucy and slung an arm around her. “It’s okay, babe. You have many other fine qualities.”

* * *

Monday afternoon, the day after the party. Tobias was in his black dinner jacket, fresh from a gig at the IBM tower. Afterward, he’d picked up Lucy from an early shift. “Man, you can make bank on these corporate gigs. Used to get staff walking on hot coals — now they got magicians making phones disappear. To illustrate team building!”

In the passenger seat, Lucy tugged a thread on her scrub pants. “Bet they loved you.”

He stopped at a red on Wilshire and looked at her. “You’re not still moping about that trick …”

“Na.” She exhaled at the window. “Miriam the guppy-faced surgeon sure found it hilarious. Seemed like you enjoyed seeing me screw it up.”

His mouth opened, incredulous. “You gotta be kidding. First time I did the dollar-in-the-orange trick I forgot to load the orange. It was funny! Maybe not at the time, but …” He pulled into a loading zone outside City One Bank. “Lucy, come on. Everyone loved you.”

“Ignore me. I’m being a baby. Crap day at work.”

He looked at the bank’s front doors. “How long you think you’ll be?”

“Long as it takes them to figure out why last month’s rent came out of my account twice. Couple years?” A bus honked as it came up the inside lane behind them. Lucy got out.

“Text me,” Tobias called and then sped off.

* * *

A single teller open. Lucy got in line. At the counter was a slight man in a blue fedora; couldn’t have been more than five foot four, but the hat added a couple of inches. In a light voice, New York tinged, he said, “Can you make that two fifties, twenty tens, the rest in fives?”

Next in line, a stocky woman with spirals of copper hair huffed and checked her watch.

Lucy watched a mauve pantsuit stroll out from the back hall. Bank manager? Bobbed silver hair elegant against her bronze skin, the woman gave the room a fatigued look and then strode into a corner office.

Lucy checked the time. She had tried the bank’s call center earlier. But after spending her lunch break on hold, she no longer believed her call was very important to them. She sighed. No patience today. Swiping her cell, she started a text to Tobias. She stopped. As the hairs on her neck pricked, she glanced back.

An angular old man walked in from the day’s heat: black hoodie, black jeans, black boots. He eyed the room, then the security camera. Although he moved like someone younger, his cheeks sagged. His bald head was mottled with age spots. She squinted. Was that a mask? He kept a hand inside his jacket. God, he wasn’t going to—

Pistol out, he pointed at the ceiling. “Everybody be cool. This is a robbery.”

Heads turned, but nobody moved. Lucy gawped. The guy had used a line from an old movie. That Tarantino thing. Was this for real?

The man walked to the nearest security camera and shot the lens.

The man in the fedora ducked, then turned in a strange pirouette, hanging onto the counter’s edge until he lost his grip and fell to the floor. The copper-haired woman screamed, and scuttled to the wall.

On the floor, Lucy tapped three numbers on her phone and hit send. A black boot kicked it out of her hand.

* * *

Parked a block up Wilshire, window down and his radio on, Tobias smacked out a stomp-stomp-clap rhythm on the steering wheel as he sang an old rock anthem played at every Minnesota hockey game he’d ever been to. When the song transitioned to a power ballad, he took out his finger flasher, tossed a flame, and produced an ace of spades.

He examined the device. Clasp felt a bit loose. Squeezing the metal until it felt snug, he picked a fly-size bit of flash cotton from his breast pocket, and reloaded the igniter. He sighed in the heat. Turning off the radio, he checked his texts and saw one from Lucy: “Coming ou 911”

Huh? About to write back, he decided to find her instead. Too damn hot in a parked car.

In front of the bank, no Lucy. Couldn’t see a thing through the smoked windows. He pushed open the door and a rush of cool conditioned air hit his face. Then he saw the people on the floor. An old guy spun toward him. Gun! An explosion. Screams. Behind him, a car alarm blared. Tobias scrabbled to the wall.

“You a cop?” the guy demanded. His body pulsated.

“No. I’m — No.” Toby looked up at a geezer-shaped latex face. He threw a look to the door where a bullet was now embedded in the thick glass, caught by its layers of polycarbonate.

“Lock the door!” the man shouted at the silver-haired woman.

Her employee badge said Yolanda. On the floor by the counter, the pants of her elegant mauve suit were smudged with dirt. She raised her chin. “I do not have the keys,” Yolanda enunciated as if she were not going to say it again.

Tobias locked eyes with Lucy. Her pupils were manhole covers, her skin blanched. He glanced at the others trapped there: a man in a hat, tailored sport coat, and jeans. Like a young Paul Simon. Next to him, a 50-something redhead. She pulled her knees under her chin and covered her face with two hands the way children do when they want to be invisible.

A small pile of cellphones lay in the corner. Not a uniform in the place that Tobias could see. Didn’t banks have guards anymore?

The gunman bellowed, but his mask had shifted and his mouth was covered. Cursing, he grabbed the neck of the latex, yanked it over his head, and threw it on the floor. Early-30s, he was pasty and gaunt, like something escaped from a locked room. “Get me the keys!”

A small hand inched up from under the teller’s window. Picking up the lanyard, a young woman shuffled to him in a pair of chunky brown shoes that looked clownish under her thin legs. Her nametag said Maude. Her hands shook badly. The gunman snatched the lanyard.

Young Paul Simon kept his eyes down. “Please, man, I gotta catch a plane. I swear I —”

“Shut up.” The gunman fumbled a key into the lock’s cylinder and turned it.

Lucy saw Toby’s fingers dash past his pocket. Her stomach lurched.

The gunman pulled a daisy-covered nylon bag from his pocket and waved it at Maude. “Cash. No dye packs. Press the alarm, I’ll shoot you in the face.”

Her legs buckled like a fawn’s. She looked at the lanyard still dangling off the front door. “My key,” she whispered.

He stalked to the door and yanked the key. In the distance, a siren cried. The gunman flinched. Lucy peered up at his sweaty thinning hair, the dark circles as if he hadn’t slept in days. That flowered bag: His mother’s? Did he still live at home?

“Don’t look at me!” he shouted

She dropped her head. His eyes: so lost and angry. Like some of those roughnecks back in Barstow when she did her externship at the hospital. All kinds of tough until the needle came out. A couple of them even passed out. One guy cracked his head so hard that they had to keep him overnight. Twenty-two years old, he begged for his mommy. And the woman who showed up — seemed even a vicious mother was better than none at all.

The man shoved the keys at the teller. “Get the cash!”

Maude backed up and moved to her station. She unlocked a drawer. Stuffing cash into the bag, she lifted her eyes as the gunman turned to the front door. He peered at the dent where the bullet had been caught in the glass. The teller trembled hard. She hugged the bag to her chest and then bolted, her soft rubber soles squeaking down the back hall.

The gunman spun. “Get back here!” He dashed behind the counter. A door slammed, its lock snapping like an exclamation point. He picked up a couple of loose bills. “Sonuvabitch!” His bag was gone and most of the cash. “Where’s the rest? Open the vault!”

Yolanda shook her head with disgust. “Vault? What year do you think this is? Like we got millions in some little room? Branch like this …?”

His face burned. He moved into the waiting area. “You saying there’s no more cash?”

“Been lucky if you’d got away with three, four grand. But little Maude took care of that.” Yolanda laughed, a guttural chuckle that started in her belly and rose high in her throat.

Two strides and he cracked the pistol across Yolanda’s head.

“Stop it!” Lucy commanded. Like a mother.

He squinted at her as if he could not believe his ears.

Yolanda lay on her side now, silent, eyelids fluttering as blood trickled from a gash above her brow. Lucy reached out as if she might touch her. But Yolanda was ten feet away. Where were the cops? Wasn’t anyone coming?

The gunman started toward Lucy. Adrenaline streaked up her arms and into her head, filling it like helium until she understood why Yolanda had laughed.

He eyed Lucy’s green scrubs. “What’re you, a nurse? Think you’re somebody?”

She cocked her head. “Why would I think that?”

Tobias watched the guy’s back as he got in Lucy’s face. That little voice in his head again: Now you see her, now you don’t. His guts twisted. Do something! He thumbed the flasher clasped inside his hand and threw a ball of flame.

The gunman wheeled.

A jumble of Toby and Dammit came out of Lucy’s mouth.

The gunman blinked, unsure he’d seen anything at all. He swung back to Lucy. “What’d you call me?

She shook her head.

“Dabby. You said Dabby. I know you?”

“She doesn’t want this!” Lucy blurted. Her eyes batted, wondering what made her say that. Then she knew. There had to be a she. Haunting from the deep. Isn’t there always? “She’s … she says, Stop it, Dabby.”

He stared. His eyes piggy and raw now, his mouth opened and a strand of sticky saliva ran from top to bottom. “She said that?”

Lucy nodded slowly.

“You heard her?”

“Yes,” Lucy whispered. Tobias echoed in her head: When you get a hit, keep going. “She’s saying, Dabby, stop it! I don’t want this.”

“I don’t care what you want!” He looked around again for that flash of ghostly light. To Lucy, he said, “You psychic?”

Tobias watched Lucy’s face go slack, eyes spacy as if she were having a mystic vision. She was either a genius or stone cold crazy.

Lucy let go a long slow breath. “There’s someone here for you. A strong energy. Her name is … I’m getting an M name or maybe it’s a—”

“Amelia!” Dabby’s eyes fished the room and he started to mutter. “Goddamn, Amelia. You’re nothing to me! Never no kinda mother. Just … just mean.”

“Yes. She’s nodding,” Lucy said. “There’s a terrible sadness. Amelia is saying, You’re right, Dabby. I was no kinda mother. I shouldn’t have got in your way —”

“I don’t want you!” Arms limp at his side, pistol dangling as if the weight were too much. “All you do is rag on me. Can’t even take the car. Because Nipper needs it.”

Nipper? Is that his brother? Uncle? Lucy kept going. “You’re right, Amelia is saying. I was too hard on you. You’re all I had, Dabby.”

“Nipper needs it … Who keeps the car because the cat needs it?” Dabby looked at Lucy, incredulous. “Cat wanted out but she wouldn’t let him. ’Cause someone might poison him. So, she put him in the car so he’d feel like he was outside.” Dabby tapped the gun against his skull as if to say that Amelia was a nutjob. “Nipper needs it … Nipper needs it.”

Outside the bank’s smoked windows, colored lights appeared and stuttered blue-red-blue. Lucy’s heart banged. Eyes on Dabby, she said, “Amelia’s crying now. She’s embarrassed.” Lucy stared into the middle distance. Her voice caught as if what she’d heard had touched her. “She says she was scared. Scared of losing you. Losing Nipper. She says: Dabby always looked after everyone else, hardly got anything for himself. He deserved better.”

Somewhere in the office, a phone rang with a high-pitched warble. Dabby kept his eyes on Lucy, his lips muttering silently.

Yolanda’s gaze coasted to the windows. Seeing the beacon lights, she sat herself up.

Dabby turned toward the street. “No!” He gripped the gun and paced. “No, no, no.”

The phone continued to ring. Dabby looked at Yolanda. “There a back door?”

She shook her head. The ringing stopped.

From outside, a loudspeaker: “This is Sergeant Martin James of the LAPD. We’re outside the bank. Why don’t you pick up that phone so we can talk?”

After a short pause, the phone started up again.

Dabby moaned. Voice cracking, he said, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry I hurt you. Mommy …” Still pacing, he looked at the ceiling and let out a wail.

As he stepped close to Yolanda, she licked her bottom lip like a brawler, dropped sideways and threw a roundhouse kick to the back of his knee. Dabby went down. The gun skidded toward Lucy. Dabby scrambled for it. Lucy kicked it out of his reach, and sent it spinning across the room to Tobias. Tobias snapped up the gun. Then it vanished.

On his feet, Dabby screeched, “Where is it!?”

Tobias shook his head. “I don’t know, man. It was right there.” He opened his jacket. As Dabby scoured the floor, Tobias locked eyes with Lucy. At once, the two of them launched off the floor and rushed Dabby, tackling him to the ground. Dabby howled. Young Paul Simon joined the fray, blue fedora flying off as he knelt on Dabby’s legs. Yolanda ran for the phone.

As they struggled, Lucy sat on Dabby, directly behind Tobias, her arm knocking against the pistol hidden in the back of his dinner jacket.

* * *

It was after six when Tobias and Lucy finally walked out of the bank. Coming on dusk, only one of the four cop cars remained. Each of the captives had given an account at least three times.

“I need to walk,” Lucy said. She shook her head, punch-drunk.

Tobias nodded. He took her hand and they moved in silence down the palm tree-lined sidewalk. Rush hour traffic crawled down Wilshire Boulevard.

After a couple of blocks, the smell of fresh asphalt came on strong. Lucy tugged Tobias toward the intersection. They crossed over to Hancock Park and into the La Brea Tar Pits.

Walking past spectral sculptures of sabertoothed cats, she steered Tobias toward a bench outside the chain-link fence that surrounded a tarry pond of asphalt. Inside the fence was a life-size scene of a mammoth meeting its end. One creature sank into the black ooze, massive tusks curling skyward, mouth gaping as it tried to escape. A calf stood on the shore, trunk reaching out, while another mammoth watched in somber resignation.

Lucy and Tobias sat on the bench in silence.

“The first time I saw this …” She took a breath as she looked at the gray, still beasts. “Twenty-three years old and I sat here bawling my eyes out. I missed my mother.” She sighed up at the sky. “Do you think he killed her?”

He shrugged. “One of the cops said they’d found her yesterday in some shack out in Lancaster. Neighbor called it in. Figured something was up because the cat was outside.”

“Nipper. Finally made it out.” Lucy watched methane gas bubble up in the dark pond.

Tobias looked into his hands. “The way he came at you … I felt so helpless. All I had was my stupid flasher.”

“It was perfect.” A tiny smile pulled at her mouth. “When you did it, at first, I panicked. I thought he’d —” Her throat constricted. “But you short-circuited him.”

“You did that. I wondered if you really were psychic.” He touched her chin. She looked at him, her eyes full of ache. “Lucy … I could do a Mr. and Mrs. Houdini act with you. Forever.”

She let her forehead rest against his. Around them, lights flickered on, gold in the dusk. After a moment, he put his arm around her and the two of them leaned back on the bench. Surrounded by primitive beasts and their children, they looked out to the pink and indigo skyline.