The Sleepwalker(43)

I knew on some level that I should stop, but then decided it was too late. An expression came to me: in for a nickel, in for a dime. I was going to finish this last glass because I did indeed like the Riesling, and because I liked the permission the alcohol was giving me to lose a little of the control that had marked my world since my mother had disappeared. Had died. I blinked at the way my mind had made that alliterative jump. I vowed that I would not slur my words; I would think before I spoke; my pronunciation would remain crisp. Gavin might suspect I was getting drunk, but I didn’t need to advertise the fact for him. We were sitting in a corner, nestled on an L-shaped settee, seated on adjacent sides of the table. He had been right about how the hostess would give us a lovely spot, but he had been wrong about it being a showplace table by the window. It was instead a nook that purred romance.

“So, you know nothing about this magician,” he was saying.

“Not a whole lot. I hadn’t heard of him before you suggested we come here, but I found out a little about him on the web.”

“And?”

And he was handsome, I recalled, though I didn’t say that. He was young, maybe thirty or thirty-five, with dark eyes and a Scottish accent. He was part of that newer breed of magicians who performed in skintight black T-shirts, had serious guns for arms, and did a lot of terrifying things involving knives and Sweeney Todd straight razors. He had tattoos. Watching him turned me on. “He isn’t your mother’s magician. He’s pretty hip. Think David Copperfield with an edge,” I answered.

“Maybe he’ll escape from a cage.”

“Not his thing, as far as I can tell. Expect a magician, not a gorilla.”

“You know what I mean: like Houdini. Handcuffs, chains, underwater.”

“We’ll see.”

“Think he’ll saw a woman in half?”

“Oh, we are so over that,” I told him, shaking my head. I meant to laugh ever so slightly, but in my head it sounded a little raucous. I imagined myself prone. In a box. Then a bed. I saw Gavin atop me. I knew how long it had been since I’d had sex.

“Levitate someone from the audience, maybe?” he asked.

“If someone from the audience is levitated, it will be a confederate.”

“Southerner?”

“Accomplice,” I corrected him reflexively.

He nodded. I realized after I spoke that he had been kidding. I found myself looking at his mouth. His smile. “Well, Jasmine will be a tough act to follow,” he told me.

“Hah! I think you are about to be dazzled.”

“Maybe. But I keep telling you: you were fun to watch. And the toughest act to follow will be dessert here.”

“The chocolate mousse?”

“The chocolate mousse. We’re not talking pudding.”

“I like pudding.”

“Pudding’s for kids. This is adult.”

“NC-17?”

“Depends on how you eat it, I guess. You want coffee? Cappuccino?”

I motioned at my wine. I had planned to just wave at it with my fingers and tell him I was fine. But did it really matter if I got a little rickety on my feet? I’d gone with the boots, not the heels. Boots. Not heels. I’d be okay. I was in Montreal with a guy who was, I remembered from the moment he had appeared outside my family’s house that awful August morning, handsome. Hot. A hot cop. I chortled, saw him raise his eyebrows. And so I reached for my glass by its stem and polished off the last of the Riesling. Then I smiled and spoke: “Yes. Coffee would be perfect with the mousse.”

When a busboy and the waiter once more had come and gone, clearing the table and taking our dessert order, he started to ask me something about etiquette in a magic show. Something about whether I would tell the performer I was a magician if he happened to ask me—no doubt, he added, the most beautiful young woman there—to come to the stage to be part of a trick. He was sitting back against the rear of the settee, his right hand on the cushion no more than four or five inches from my thigh. I was feeling adult; the wine had made me daring, desirous of doing something I’d never done before. I took his hand and placed it underneath the tablecloth in my lap, spreading my legs and pressing his fingers against me. Then I leaned into him and curled my lips over my teeth, sucking for a brief second on his earlobe. When I pulled his fingers from between my legs, I kissed them—locking my eyes on his—before returning his hand to the settee.



The magician was too big and too good for the club, but I loved watching him work. There were seventy-five or so people scattered around the small tables, but there was room for at least twice that many. I hoped for his sake that his next show was sold out. The performer almost—though not quite—took my mind off the desire the alcohol had unleashed. I felt myself starting to sober up, and I didn’t want to, and so I ordered a glass of wine, and then another one after that. I kept Gavin’s hand in mine as the performer chewed up and swallowed Canadian and American paper money and restored the bills in the different owners’ wallets, and as he put an ice pick through his forearm. I only released Gavin’s fingers when we would applaud, which we did a lot. The guy was good. Inspiring. I knew how he did about two-thirds of his show, and probably could add half of that to my repertoire if I wanted. But it would take a lot of work and a lot of practice.

When we were walking to the parking garage, while Gavin was telling me that he still preferred watching Jasmine perform, I interrupted him. “I don’t want to go home tonight,” I said.