The Self-Working Trick (and other stories), page 4
I handed the cards to Harry and the lesson began.
Just as Alice stepped through the looking glass into a puzzling new imaginative world, over the next two hours Harry guided me through the byzantine maze which was The Trick That Cannot Be Explained. While I recognized versions of some of the effects he produced, I also witnessed miracles I couldn’t explain. The results were sometimes mind-blowing, sometimes merely interesting, but every time the process—and the result—were not only different but seemingly casual. Unrehearsed. Unplanned. Often unfathomable.
It might be that all four aces appeared at once at the top of the deck. Or that your volunteer suddenly dealt out a winning hand of poker. Or that the match to a card thought of by your helper appeared within the seemingly empty card box on the table.
The number of outcomes appeared to be limited only by my imagination and skill.
Limitations with which I was intimately familiar.
Which was why the trick absolutely terrified me.
Although I wasn’t scheduled to work until noon, I showed up an hour earlier, so I could be there for the funeral as well. It was partly out of respect, but also because I wanted to get the lay of the land. And to get a sense of the man whose favorite trick I was about to perform multiple times.
I made a quick check of the reception area in the church’s basement, which was still in the process of being set up. Then I went back upstairs to find a seat, which was a trick unto itself. The place was packed. I finally was able to squeeze into a pew about a third of the way back and on the side. Then I settled in for the funeral.
By the end of the service, I felt like the biggest waste of space on this planet.
Neville sounded amazing. Big-hearted, funny, the go-to guy in a crisis, your best friend, your wisest critic; Neville was extolled by speaker after speaker during the hour-long service. From non-profit boards to overseeing pet adoptions to speaking on climate issues to Bridge, Backgammon and Scrabble clubs. Neville did it all. I couldn’t see how he’d had any extra time to become a master magician, but then that was just who Neville was.
He wasn’t just lauded; he was loved. The same sentiments kept surfacing through all the remarks, but one guy—a friend from high school—seemed to say it best: “The thing about Neville was that you always came away from every encounter with him feeling you had been given a gift of some kind. I don’t know how he did that.” There was a murmur of agreement from the large crowd, and then the old friend went on to recount yet another of the seemingly endless acts of kindness Neville had bestowed.
Any pressure I had felt about doing justice to his favorite trick rose exponentially as the service went on. Someone who was that amazing clearly deserved a top-notch performance.
And I really wasn’t convinced I was the guy to deliver it.
Make no mistake: I’ve bombed before, plenty of times. But the idea of bombing at a funeral really offered its own tragic implications.
To sum up: I wasn’t in a good place. My only consolation was that my current situation, such as it was, was just slightly more positive than the guest of honor. But not by much.
I followed the large crowd as they filed out of the sanctuary and down the narrow steps to the basement reception hall. As I entered the low-ceilinged room, I was delighted to discover that—with the exception of the several food-laden buffet tables—the room was filled wall-to-wall with tabletops. While there was a little standing room around the sides, the layout was designed to force people to grab some food and sit down. I doubt it had been devised with my needs in mind, but I was nonetheless happy with the outcome.
The thing about the trick—or actually the series of card tricks—I was about to perform, was that I pretty much had to do it at a table. Either I could be seated, or my spectators could be seated, or we all could be seated. But it wasn’t something I could do with any great flexibility if I were standing and they were clustered around me, holding drinks or small plates of appetizers.
I stood there for a long moment as the rest of the crowd oozed in around me. In a normal walk-around situation I would’ve dived right in, finding a small group and starting to perform. Something, anything, that would quickly grab the attention of an intimate bunch of attendees.
But that wasn’t going to happen here. I had to wait for people to go through the buffet line, get some food and then sit down. Which meant, basically, I had more time to think and more time to worry and more time to squirm.
Finally, one of the tables filled up and I stepped forward. I was feeling like an amateur skydiver about to jump for the first time; I was not at all certain I had packed my parachute properly. I took a deep breath, approached the table and jumped in headfirst.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Sue asked me to go around and perform Neville’s favorite magic trick for folks. Would you like to see it?”
They agreed to the proposition and I was off and running.
And I kept running for the next hour. From table to table, one right after the other. There was no need to re-set when I’d finished at one table; I’d just grab the cards and move onto the next group.
The time sailed by like a slow-motion blur. And, boy, did I work. In order to pull off The Trick That Cannot Be Explained, I had to be completely present and in the moment. Every single moment.
And the truly amazing thing was, it was paying off.
It’s like the stars had aligned in my favor. I’d get to a new table, set up a new situation (pick a card, think of a card, give me a number between one and twenty—I never knew until I said it just what the set-up might be). And moments later I’d floor them with a trick which used that information to great effect.
It was weird. Really weird.
And understand this: I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in unseen hands from the beyond reaching down and orchestrating events. But I couldn’t deny what was happening. I was doing Neville’s favorite trick—The Trick That Cannot Be Explained—at his funeral and it was working virtually every time.
Was I in the midst of some actual, true, paranormal experience? Were all my years of debunking coming back to literally haunt me? Was this some sort of cosmic comeuppance? The universe shaking a finger at me, saying “Hey, remember everything you thought you knew? Well buddy, think again.”
Was that what was happening?
To say I was spooked might be an understatement. I tried to reassure myself by imagining what Uncle Harry would be saying in this situation: “You make your own luck, Eli. That’s all this is. This is not supernatural. This is not the ghost of Neville, reaching out to you from the beyond, guiding your hand, stacking the deck, and making things—amazing things—happen. This is just you, a good magician with solid skills, who has learned the difficult art of how to take advantage of a situation and make miracles out of it.”
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe I was just that good.
Of course, I knew I wasn’t.
I mean, I’m pretty good. I’m better than the average guy off the street. But this level? This number of miracles one after another? I was supposed to actually believe that, somehow, I was doing that?
That seemed, at best, unlikely. To say I was feeling mixed emotions would be an understatement.
I moved steadily and methodically from table to table, each time introducing myself with the same preplanned introduction (“Sorry to disturb you, but Sue asked me to perform Neville’s favorite car trick for you”), never really knowing what I was going to do after that sentence. Yet somehow I always seem to know. Every time, the next sentence came to me. It was never the same sentence, I was always entirely in the moment. And amazing things happened, one after another.
I began to feel like the bishop in the movie Caddyshack, who in the midst of a tremendous rainy downpour, hits amazing golf shots, again and again. At one point he says something like, “I’m having the greatest game of my life!” And then he misses a shot and swears to the heavens. A moment later, he’s struck down by a bolt of lightning.
I was waiting for that moment to happen to me. When would lightning strike me down?
The tables for the reception were arranged in a large circle, with another circle of tables within that circle. In the center was a lone table, which was reserved for the widow, where she was seated with what appeared to be close friends and relatives.
I had started the gig on the large, outer circle, then moved to the smaller inner circle. My last table was literally the last table in the center of the room.
I introduced myself to Sue, offering condolences and thanking her for the chance to perform Neville’s favorite trick one last time.
“Oh, thank you, Eli,” Sue said, smiling broadly. She was a tiny woman with beautiful stark white hair. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Neville would have been so pleased.”
“It’s been my honor,” I said, and I really meant it. This had been a day like no other.
“Do the trick for us,” someone said from the other side of the table. I looked down at Sue and she nodded.
“I would love to see it again,” she said quietly.
So, I launched into the unknown one final time.
Was it the best version that afternoon? Maybe not, but it was darned good. I used two volunteers: one had chosen a card which had appeared, with a simple cut, in the middle of the deck, while the other’s card was found all by itself in the empty card box.
The table applauded at the conclusion and I looked down at Sue, who was smiling up at me.
“Oh, Eli, that was wonderful,” she said. “But that’s not Neville’s trick.”
I was sure I hadn’t heard her correctly. “Excuse me?”
“That’s not Neville’s trick,” she repeated.
“Yes, I know. It’s different every time,” I began, but Sue cut me off.
“No, it was always the same. Always exactly the same.” She turned to an older gentleman on her right. “George, you know how the trick goes, don’t you?”
“I should say I do,” he said with a grim chuckle. “Neville did it every chance he got. I must have seen it a thousand times.”
He put his hand out and I surrendered the cards, not sure what I had done wrong or where this was headed. George quickly counted out a few cards and then spread the small packet, face up, for a guest across the table.
“Irene, I want you to pick one of these cards. Don’t tell me what you’ve picked, though. Have you picked one?”
The woman nodded and George began to deal out the cards.
Into three piles. Of seven cards each. All face up.
I’m sure my expression must have reflected, at least to a degree, the turmoil I was suddenly feeling. This guy was doing The Twenty-One Card Trick, the simplest, most common trick on the planet. It was the go-to routine for virtually any layperson who insisted on performing a trick for me after learning I was a magician.
This was Neville’s favorite trick?
“I’m sorry,” I said as I looked down at Sue. I’m sure my utter confusion was evident in my voice. “I thought Neville’s favorite trick was The Trick That Cannot Be Explained?”
“Oh, it was,” she agreed, nodding along. “Any time I’d ask him how it was done, Neville always said the same thing: ‘Honey, it’s complicated, it’s a math thing. It’s one of those tricks I just can’t explain.’ So that’s what we always called it. The Trick I Can’t Explain.”
I was suddenly hit with a hard punch of clarity right to the face. I must have misheard her on the phone. Had I asked a follow-up question—any follow-up question—I surely would have quickly realized the trick she was describing.
However, I’d gone down a completely different—and much more agonizing—road altogether. I suddenly felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. I looked down as George continued through the simple steps that always brought The Twenty-One Card Trick to its inevitable and satisfying conclusion. He successfully revealed Irene’s chosen card and was greeted by polite applause by the rest of his tablemates.
Still feeling numb, I collected my cards and once again offered the widow my heartfelt condolences. I then stepped away from the table and scanned the room. I knew they had a buffet, but I had a more pressing question: was there also a bar of some kind?
I didn’t mean to shut the place down. It just worked out that way.
Turns out there was no bar—it was a church basement, after all—but there was still some food left on the buffet. Although I was emotionally and physically spent from performing The Trick That Cannot Be Explained for over an hour, I was also hungry.
So, I grabbed the last of the sliced ham sandwiches and the remaining scoop of potato salad, speared a couple of recalcitrant pickles and a dollop of something that looked like a lime jello salad. And then I sat down, hard, at the first chair I found.
The crowd had thinned out to just a trickle of people and even these stragglers looked like they were about to head out. But I wasn’t ready to go. I needed a few minutes to process what had just happened.
I was deeply mired in my thoughts when I felt a presence next to me. It was George, the fellow at Sue’s table who had performed Neville’s actual favorite card trick. He slid effortlessly into the chair next to me.
“Funerals, huh?” he finally said.
“You got that right,” I agreed.
“Did you know him? Neville?”
I shook my head. “But judging by his eulogies, he was a heck of a guy.”
“That he was.”
We sat in silence for a few moments longer. I could see some of the catering staff starting to eye us. I think they were ready to go home and wanted us to do the same.
“That was a great card trick you did,” George finally said. “Neville would have loved it.”
“Yours was swell as well,” I said.
George shrugged. “I saw him do that darned thing so many times, I could probably do it in my sleep. That was the thing about Neville. You hung around him enough, you just picked things up by osmosis. You didn’t even realize it at the time, but you’d look back and realize he’d given you this gift. And you weren’t even aware when it happened. Know what I mean?”
I looked over at George and thought about the preceding four days. About the lesson I’d had with Harry and all the practicing. And then performing that trick, that impossible trick, at table after table. And not just getting through it, but really succeeding with it.
“Yeah, I think I do,” I said. “Neville was one heck of a good magician.”
George and I talked about Neville for another hour, while the catering staff packed away all their gear.
We were still chatting about him long after they’d left.
The One-Star Review
“’Bumbling?’ What do they mean by ‘bumbling’?”
This produced a weary sigh from Uncle Harry. “Remember when I told you never to read your reviews? This is why.”
“I wasn’t reading my reviews,” I lied. “I was just checking my Yelp rating. I’m a businessperson. I run a business. It behooves me to have a general idea of how my work is being perceived by the public.”
“In my day, we just waited to be booked again,” Harry grumbled. “If you got referrals and repeat bookings, you knew your act was working. If not, you changed your act. Or got out of the business.”
“Well, times have changed,” I sputtered, once again scanning the on-line comments section, looking for anything else less than five stars.
“Apparently. And not for the better, it seems.”
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and for once both Harry and I were working the counter at Chicago Magic. There had been something akin to a rare ‘rush’ that morning—with upwards of six people in the store at the same time—but since lunch we’d had only each other for company. Which was why I had turned to my laptop and done a quick search of my name to see what the interwebs were saying about me.
It was a quick search.
My presence online is not what you would call robust. I have a Facebook page, of course, and a Twitter and Instagram account, but that’s about it. You won’t find me on Reddit or TikTok or SnapChat or Pinterest or whatever the new BlahBlahBlah might be. I think I might have a LinkedIn account, but if I do, I imagine it’s covered in dust and cobwebs by now.
I’m not the only Eli Marks out there, but if you add the word “magic,” it does help to limit the Google results to a more reasonable number. Which is what I had done and immediately discovered the less-than positive Yelp review.
“This bumbling performer attempted to entertain us, but his magic and his patter fell far short of even your standard birthday party magician,” was how it began. And it was all downhill from there. I took immediate umbrage—if that’s the right word, and I’m pretty sure it was—at the unnecessary slam at birthday party magicians. Some of my best friends are birthday party magicians; I’ve walked a mile in their shoes, and trust me, it’s no picnic.
I quickly scanned the other reviews, which—mercifully—were all five-star. But I had an overall average of four-point-five, which I suspected was due to that one-star review which was currently stuck in my craw.
It was short but brutal. I read it again, just to see if I’d mis-read the tone the first time around. I had not. After the opening salvo, it continued in the same, mean vein:
“The tricks seemed tired, as did the magician. I watched for about five minutes and then went in search of something more interesting, like maybe an old phone book to scan through. I certainly don’t need to see another magician in this lifetime, that’s for sure.”
“Ouch.”
That well-placed exhortation came from Harry, who had sidled up alongside me. He was peering down at my computer screen.
“Ouch indeed,” I agreed.
“Why is it that people will see an untalented singer and not walk away from it saying, ‘I’m never listening to music again’?” Harry pondered as he wandered away from the laptop. “Or see an unfunny comedian and swear off comedy? And yet, if they’re subjected to one poor magic performance, that’s it for magic as far as they’re concerned.”
