Felony Juggler, page 4
The others who performed at Head House, I just made sure they wouldn’t piss off the shop owners and cops, or otherwise get in the way of my do-re-mi. There were a couple magicians who weren’t good for business, or I just plain didn’t like, and José brought me all their props and they were gone after one show. Fuck them, there’s a lot of streets in the world, get off my dick.
Once, a string quartet came down, music students who wanted to try “busking.” None of us called it that, but they did. They were cute. They were good. I liked them. They didn’t talk to me or even look around when they got there. They made no attempt to understand the situation, they just set up and started playing. I went over to listen and watch. They played for forty minutes. I eyeballed the money in their fiddle case. In forty minutes, they’d made forty-two dollars and almost half of that was a twenty from me. They took a break, and I went over and introduced myself.
“Hey, guys, you sound good, I loved it,” I frog-whispered.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. My name is Poe, and I’m the juggler here. I work right over there doing street shows. And we should figure out our schedules, so we can all work together.”
“No thanks, you just juggle and we’ll do our music, okay?” He was snotty enough to be first violin. He was going to do all the talking. The other three just stood behind him. Pecking order matters in the string-quartet farmyard.
“See, the problem is that I’m wicked loud,” I said. He looked at me skeptically. “It’s a different voice when I’m working. When I’m working, I’m very loud, and I get big crowds, so if I start up while you’re playing, I’ll come off as rude unless I wait until you’re done, and you just did forty minutes. I can’t work with that.”
“We are musicians. We’re at the conservatory, and we’re going to do this on weekends to make a little extra money. Serious musicians. Is a juggler trying to tell us how we should play music?” I think the viola player might have nodded in agreement, fucking toady.
“I’m a serious juggler and I’m not commenting on the music, I’m commenting on the venue. We have our little street-performing ecosystem here and it’s working nicely, and I’d like to fold you in.”
“So you’re the boss here?” The cello player made a questioning face. The second violin was still trying to stay invisible.
“Listen—you just did forty minutes and made ten bucks apiece. I could have done two twelve-minute hunks and snagged over five hundred bucks. Fat Jake needs to do his five minutes, and we’ve got Abe Cadabra also working. We need to all get along here. I can make that happen.” I could have paid them forty dollars an hour to not play. Musician subsidy.
“Fuck off.”
“Hey, Paganini, you don’t want to fuck with me, you really don’t. I mean you really fucking don’t. Look me in the eyes then look around here.” They didn’t even have the street sense to look around when I told them to. None of them checked their six. It seems at the conservatory it’s rare for gangs of children to sneak up on string quartets. They didn’t even see me hold my hand up to José and his troops to keep them back.
“Maybe we do want to fuck with you, juggle-boy, fuck off.”
“I’m going to start a show right now, right here, a very special show, and you’re going to stay and watch.” I nodded to José. (No mind reading or secret codes, I’d talked to José before talking to the quartet. We had a flow chart on how it might go if they weren’t nice.) They weren’t nice and we had a plan.
“No thanks. We’re not big juggling fans.” The dismissive fuck. Cello chick chuckled and bounced in her black dress.
“I think you’ll find it compelling. I bet you stay until the end.” What happened next happened fast. Even twenty-year-old music students forget how fast tweens move. José’s troops grabbed all the cases off the ground, and then the cello and the viola right out of their hands. They left the cheap folding chairs. At the same time, I made my move fast and rough. No mercy. I grabbed the wannabe concert master’s violin by the neck, ripped it out of his hands, and held it over my head. He didn’t expect that. If he tried to grab it away, we’d break his axe together. The quartet now had one violin among them. I had to remember to give José shit for being slower than a second violinist, but they’d grabbed enough to get the quartet’s full attention. I was feeling the weight and balance of the violin in my hand. The quartet was about to see one of my best shows.
Time to start. I spit out the lozenge. I coughed up a huge glob of bloody mucus, spat that at the fiddler’s feet (I didn’t hit him, didn’t try), gave a quick yell, and my voice changed. When I was working, I was loud. I was working and I was loud and clear, “Hey everyone,” at full performance volume, right in the first chair’s face, “I’m going to do a special juggling show over here. Let’s get a crowd. I need a crowd. C’mon, you don’t want to miss this. I’m about to do a juggling show. I’m going to juggle knives, eat an apple while juggling, and for my spectacular finish I will juggle this …” I looked the violist in the eye, “valuable violin …” I looked again, “priceless violin.” I said quietly to him, “Sorry, showbiz hyperbole, I know your dad knows exactly what he paid for it, and what it’s worth now.”
A crowd formed right away. A big crowd. The troops had set up my knives, balls, apple, and hood in my usual place across the street. The musicians’ cases had disappeared into the clubhouse with the other priceless string instruments. I walked over to my usual spot, pattering all the way. I was surprised at how many violin jokes I came up with, holding the instrument high over my head, repeating how precious it was and how I was going to juggle it at the end of my show. I led the crowd across the street. When I was near my props, I handed the fiddle to José. The first-chair asshole had even less of a chance of getting it back in one piece from José. The first violinist had no choice but to watch the first juggler.
I did a great show. Eleven minutes in, after a lot of hype about the danger of the knives and the value of the violin, I juggled two of my knives along with the fiddle while blindfolded. Usually, the blindfold juggle was the relaxing time of the show. A time to reflect. It was intense.
The trick was nothing, juggling my three knives was something I could almost do blindfolded, and I wasn’t really blindfolded. I could see clearly. There was no patter, it was heavy, it was my big-dick finish. During that trick, I was alone in the invisibility of a fake blindfold. I would look through the juggle and look out at the crowd. I could see my audience, in public, when they thought I couldn’t see them. There is a story in some carny book about a woman’s first job in a cooch show. A cooch show is a tent in the carnival where women strip after the show. What happens in there changes from county to county, depending on how well the “patch” on the show has greased the local officials (often having one of the cooch performers doing a more organic grease). It’s a traveling “gentlemen’s club.” “Gentleman’s club” is the best example of a dysphemism. Take the perfectly clear, beautiful, and sweet term “titty bar,” and make it something that forces you to think of unhealthy cigars instead of nice healthy breasts. So this young woman went out her first time to strip naked at the cooch show in front of strangers. She did her hunk and came back freaked out and crying. When one of the other performers came to comfort her, she said, through her sobs, “I knew they were going to see me naked, I didn’t know I’d have to see them.” She could have added the word “naked” to the end of that sentence. When I looked through the hood as I juggled, I was seeing people watching a show. I’d look at attractive women and let my eyes wander wherever they wanted. The juggler was gone, out on his own, and I was there to float and stare. I could really watch people watching me. It was a slight, but moral violation of their privacy. It was dirty and peaceful.
That was with three knives. With two knives and the asshole’s violin, it was different. I really didn’t want to fuck up. I didn’t get to space out. I stayed right there, watching the violin and the knives and making sure I was perfect. The violin was safe. I didn’t watch the audience watching, but I knew I was killing. It was a good trick. A great trick, and the audience sure seemed to enjoy it. We’d see just how good the show was after I did my collection.
I handed the violin back to José and passed among the cheering crowd, giving them a chance to drop their appreciation into my executioner’s hood/blindfold/collection purse. At the end I didn’t throw the money-filled bag to José. I held onto it, carried it over to the violinist and opened the bag in front of him, and, in my nonperforming frog-croak-whisper, said: “See that, that’s about four hundred and twenty-five bucks. I got that doing my tight twelve with a special ending. If you had been raised properly and were respectful and polite, you could be working here with us … and … you can still work with us if you can find some humility.”
Joshua Bell stayed silent. José brought over his violin. Jascha Heifetz was afraid to reach for it. José handed the violin to me. I looked it over carefully.
A few minutes after a show, my voice was at its worst. I could barely whisper, and my throat hurt so bad. I took a swig of Chloraseptic, handed the bottle back to José, and looked over the violin. “Seems fine. I’m a good juggler. No drops and I caught it gently every time. You’ll need to check your bridge and sound post; I hope they weren’t jostled. I don’t think you’ll need a luthier, but make sure you have it checked out. You’ll probably have to tune it before your next show, sorry.”
I carefully handed his violin back. All the other instruments and cases appeared out of nowhere and went to their owners. Everything was in fine condition. The quartet stomped off and we never saw them again. It was a great story that I knew I’d be telling as long as I was Poe, but I felt bad. The music students were the dicks, but now I was the super dick. It didn’t feel as good as it should have. Or it felt exactly as good as it should have. I was just a bully. You can’t fucking win.
CHAPTER 5
I think our street magician, Abe Cadabra, might have been busted for diddling children or something like that. Something bad. I never saw him again. When a magician disappears for reals, it often means he’s in stir, and usually for something creepy. Magicians don’t shoplift or cheat the IRS. Abe was gone, and the next week, by chance, a new magician was there waiting for me when I arrived Friday.
Some magicians wear old-fashioned evening clothes and even capes. Some carry canes and wear top hats. It all started because of a French magician named Robert-Houdin. The “Houdin” part is where Erik Weiss got the name “Houdini.” Robert-Houdin was a heavy cat. He invented the modern magician—not just the tricks and the style, but even the very idea of a modern magician as showbiz and not wizbiz. Magicians before him in the nineteenth century didn’t simply dress like Asians or wizards because those clothes have a lot of sneaky pockets, they were pretending to be something jive-ass exotic and racist and hiding behind the jive. They acted like they were real magic, even worse than the bullshit “street magicians” of the 1990s.
Robert-Houdin got the idea of dressing just like his audience, which meant tails and opera hats. Robert-Houdin dressing in formal evening clothes was braver than Dylan going electric. Every magician followed suit—a hundred and fifty years later they hadn’t noticed that their audiences weren’t dressing like that anymore; they didn’t want to notice because they had found good places to hide shit in those tailcoats, and rabbits looked good coming out of those hats.
These out-of-date-by-more-than-a-century costumes are one of the reasons magicians look stupid and can’t get laid. Remember, this is a juggler writing this. The first time I saw our new magician, B.L. Herman, at Head House, I understood a different way of seeing those clothes. B.L. was dressed in that way, but not like a loser magician, more like a rhythm & blues or funk star. B.L. had a cape, but not an opera cape—a James Brown cape. His hat wasn’t an opera hat, either—it was a top hat, like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or Little Richard might wear. Neither Jay nor Richard would ever wear a hat, their hair was too perfect, but they would have both dug B.L.’s hat. Also, his wardrobe wasn’t black. I guess it was powder-blue, though it was hard to see the fabric through all the rhinestones. Even his shoes were glitter and rhinestones. He was wearing this costume on the street. These were real street clothes for my idea of the streets. B.L. was dressed like a superstar, not a cruise-ship magician. Before he said a word, I loved him.
“You Poe?”
“Yeah, the juggler.”
“You okay? Your voice sounds fucked up and you stink of Vicks or something.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I didn’t sound fine. I wasn’t fine. I was coughing up blood.
“Okay, I’m B.L. Herman, I hope in a few weeks you’ll be calling me Bee. I’m a magician. So, you got the cops and gangs juiced here, right? What do I pay you to work?”
“Nothing. No one takes a taste. You might tip out José and the troops, but that’s your choice. We all work together to keep the cool.”
“You wanna see my show first?”
“Are you as good as your shoes?”
“Better. Wanna see something?” He pulled out a deck of cards. They were well used, but the backs glittered to match his fucking shoes.
“Nah, you don’t audition for me, just do your thing, keep the people happy, and don’t piss off police or store owners. How do you work?”
“I’m in the center of a circle of people. I want them all around me. I don’t do a show, I just kind of work.”
“How long at a pop?”
“I just keep going, I can keep people around for as long as I want. I don’t do patter, I sing, no words, just scat. I’d like to just stay way over there and keep working. I’m not too loud and I make bank the whole time.”
“Yeah, that’ll fuck up my shit. I do my two-minute crowd-gathering, then a twelve-minute show, and then about three minutes more to get my coin. Then I like the crowd to move on. So I kind of need twenty and then I start fresh the next hour. I can’t do it with you over there because I’m loud. I’ll look like an asshole yelling while you’re working.”
“I don’t want to bust on a new friend, but you ain’t loud, I can barely hear you and I’m right in your face smelling your hospital breath. You sound like Miles Davis on a bad day, and what are you drinking? You fucked up?”
“I blew my voice out doing what I do. I can’t talk normal volume anymore. I either do the Miles thing or I scream. I got no in-between. When I’m working, I’m stupid-crazy loud, but I got nothing quiet. And what I’m drinking is Chloraseptic.”
“Get you high?”
“No, it’s a local anesthetic for my pipes. I got a wicked sore throat all the time. Killer. Listen, I do my twenty, give Fat Jake ten to bang spoons, play harp, and do his weird shit, and then you take up the rest of the hour until you give Jake another five before me. Cool? I’ll watch your show and if you suck, I’ll think of some way to get you to fuck off with kindness.” I gestured to José, who came running over. “José, this is Mr. Herman, B.L. Herman. Sir, this is José. You asked who ran the streets here, it’s José. We perform at his pleasure. José, B.L. is okay with us. Don’t let anyone fuck with him.”
B.L. addressed José: “Nice to meet you, you can call me Bee.” He reached into some pocket somewhere in his funky Liberace suit and pulled out his glitter deck. “You got a favorite card, José?”
“Favorite card?”
I translated: “Name a card, José.”
“Ace of spades?”
“That’s too easy, I keep that one on top.” B.L. turned the top card over, it was the ace of spades. “Make it hard.”
“Wow, that’s the card, wow.”
“Name a hard one.”
“I don’t fucking know, five of diamonds.” While they were talking, Bee was shuffling and cutting, it looked like a nervous habit, though it wasn’t, he was doing the work.
Bee tilted his head with a questioning look, gestured for José to hold his hand out flat, and dealt the ace of spades facedown on the kid’s hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. You’re mumbling and croaking like your juggling frog-boy Poe over here. What card did you name?”
José spoke loudly and clearly: “Five of diamonds!”
“Okay, five of diamonds. Five of diamonds. I don’t know as I have a five of diamonds.” Bee looked through the deck, letting José see the cards too. There was no five of diamonds in the deck. “Nope. Wait.” Bee did a big flourish with the cape, like James Brown or a glittery funk Dracula. The cape moved perfectly. He must have practiced the cape move more than his card stack and top change put together. “What card you holding?”
“Ace of spades.”
“Not anymore, my friend, take a look.”
It was, of course, the five of diamonds. José had seen a real miracle. He didn’t need me to tell him to take care of Bee.
That was the groove for the rest of the summer and into fall. I’d do my show, Fat Jake would blow harp for wine change, and Bee would do his thing.
Bee’s thing was good. It was very good. Like nothing I’d ever seen. There was no beginning or end, it was all middle. He would stand in an open area and start twirling his cape. As people came to look, he’d start doing this weird funk groove with his mouth. This was years before beatbox, but that’s kind of what he was doing, with notes in it and on top of it. He would start with a beat and then sing a bass line. The overdubbing was all done in the audiences’ heads. He’d do the beat long enough that everyone had it, and then start singing the funk bass that would go over that beat. The audience had to put it together themselves. They had to remember the beat and lay the bass over it. With Bee they just did it. That alone was a miracle.
After he had the groove, he would start singing lead parts, kind of organ, and horns, and lead guitar, all with his mouth and all over the rhythm section that was now only in the punters’ heads. He did this all while performing card tricks, coin tricks, hand magic, all executed perfectly. He was so fucking clean. Not one unnatural move and he was wearing a cape. He didn’t work the crowd; Bee didn’t seem to know there was a crowd there. He worked a group of three or four while the rest of the circle watched, yet his focus wasn’t on anyone but the little chosen group. There was no one else in the world. He never spoke, he just had this solo-funk-band thing going, all laid down in everyone’s head. He’d come back to rhythm and then to bass, just to remind people, to keep it going. He had a pro-singer voice with amazing range. Like those 1940s vocal groups, the Ink Spots or the Mills Brothers, who impersonated band instruments, but he was alone and doing funk. Musically it was very sophisticated and had such grooves. Everything fit his magic. He would do his own stings, flourishes, builds, and punches.
