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He had already unlatched one of his cases and was setting aside decks of cards and various props; I hadn't heard any of it. Spacing out was another symptom of impending gray. I needed to hold out for few more hours. Then I could crawl into my vibrating bed and curl up in the fetal position.
"What should I close with?" Dad asked, shutting his case. "Dove Production? Spoon Bender?"
I frowned. "Doves won't work if it rains."
"Good point," he said, rubbing at his mustache.
"And Spoon Bender is too small for that stage. I was thinking Card to Fruit."
The trick worked like this: The magician asked a volunteer to pick a card and sign it. Then, using sleight of hand—my favorite brand of magic—he vanished the card. Next, the magician selected a piece of fruit at random from a bowl, cut it open, and voilà: he pulled out the signed card, wet with fresh juice. I loved it because of the reaction it elicited from the audience: eyes widening, jaws dropping. The trick defied logic in the most visceral way, and Dad performed it as well as David Blaine had in his famous Harrison Ford YouTube video.
"Perfect," Dad said. He fished the necessary item out of his kit and tossed it to me.
As Dad took the stage, I watched from the balcony, just as I had watched him from the wings since I was a little girl. I'd been six when we relocated from Las Vegas to Indiana—and at the time, I thought we'd had to move because Mom died. Years later, I discovered the truth.
Dad had been grinding out a living at a small casino when he was offered the opportunity of a lifetime: a guest spot on Late Night with Craig Rogan. If it went well, he could finally move into a big theater on the Strip and see his name glowing alongside the greats': Lance Burton, Flynn & Kellar, Daniel Devereaux. He spent a month designing a brand-new illusion—but on the night of the live taping, it went horribly wrong.
My memories of the incident were like fragments of a bad dream. Probably I had manufactured them, cobbled them together from YouTube videos and overheard conversations. But they seemed real to me. Looking down at Dad onstage now, I wondered if he was wearing the same black tie he'd worn that night.
The lights came up, and the wedding guests began to applaud. I remembered the faint smell of burning dust in Craig Rogan's studio, the heat of the overhead lights. I tried to repel the memories of that night, but they pushed against my mind relentlessly, like a song, until I closed my eyes and let them come.
I'm holding my mother's hand as the curtain ascends. When the lights come up on my father, standing center stage, she kisses my cheek, lets go of my hand, and crosses to him. As she turns to acknowledge the audience, her smile is luminous in the glare of the lights. She selects a volunteer, who binds Dad's wrists and ankles—and then a second curtain goes up, revealing an old red Chevy pickup truck and an enormous Plexiglas tank filled with water. My mother helps Dad into the truck, and a winch hauls it toward the rafters.
The hush of the crowd, the gleam of chrome—and the splash as the truck hits the surface and sinks until the water is over his head.
Laughter from below jarred me back into the moment. Dad was finishing his new opening bit: dropping a red toy truck into a half-filled fish tank. The audience responded with a bout of laughter; it had worked.
When our gigs had begun to dry up, we'd had to do something to address Dad's reputation problem. To point out the elephant in the room right at the top so everyone could move on and enjoy the show. But Dad was proud, and it had taken me a long time to persuade him to try the Toy Truck Drop. When he finally relented, it worked perfectly. Audiences laughed, relieved by his self-deprecating humor. They trusted him again, and he was able to perform with his old vigor and panache. For a year or so, the bookings picked up. But then they began to evaporate again, until we had only one gig on the calendar. This one.
Excerpted from The Lightness of Hands by Tim Garvin. Copyright © 2020 by Tim Garvin. Excerpted by permission of Balzer + Bray. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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