The Immortalists(48)

Those sleight-of-hand tricks – they were her strength. They still are. But Klara and Raj have been trying to be Siegfried and Roy. In the process, Klara forgot the old, humble magic on which she was raised. She forgot herself.

‘No,’ she says. ‘It isn’t.’

She walks into the wings to retrieve Ilya’s black box, which she brought today for luck. She carries it across the stage and hops down into the audience, then turns the box into a table in front of the executives. Up close, the men don’t look alike at all. One is compact and hygienically bald, his blue eyes alert behind silver-rimmed glasses. He wears a red silk shirt. The other, in a black-and-white pinstriped shirt, is tall and pear shaped, his dark hair combed into a ponytail. Lavender glasses perch atop his nose, a delicate gold cross around his neck.

Raj walks to the edge of the stage and sits behind Klara. His body is stiff, but he’s watching her. She pulls her favorite deck out of the table’s hidden compartment and spreads the cards on Ilya’s table.

‘Pick three,’ she tells the bald man. ‘Turn them faceup.’

He selects the ace of clubs, the queen of diamonds, and the seven of hearts. She puts them back in the deck. Then she claps.

The ace flies out, fluttering midair before landing on a chair. She claps again: the queen sticks out of the center. When she claps a third time, the seven of hearts appears in her hand.

‘Ha!’ says the man. ‘Very nice.’

Klara doesn’t allow herself the compliment. She has work to do – Raise Rise, to be exact. She pulls a permanent marker out of the drawer and passes it to the man in the lavender glasses.

‘Cut the cards,’ she says. ‘Any place you like.’ He does, revealing the three of spades. ‘Excellent. Would you sign this card for me?’

‘With the marker?’

‘With the marker. You’ll keep me honest. There may be another three of spades in this deck, but none that look like yours. We’ll put it back in the middle of the deck, like this. But here’s a funny thing. When I tap the card at the top of the deck’ – she turns it over – ‘there’s your three. Strange, isn’t it? Now, let’s put it where it belongs, in the center. But wait: if I tap the top card a second time, here’s the three again. It’s risen through the deck.’

Raise Rise is one of the most difficult tricks Klara knows, and she hasn’t practiced it in years. She shouldn’t be able to do it – but something is helping her. Something is pulling her back to the person she’s been all along.

‘Now, I’ll show you very carefully how I put it in the middle of the deck. I’ll even leave it sticking out this time so you can be sure I’m not lying – you see it? So do I. So why,’ she says, turning the top card over, ‘is it on top for the third time? And now – let’s see; I think I feel it moving – it’s strange, but I could swear it’s on the bottom. Would you remove the bottom card, please?’

He does. It’s his. He chuckles. ‘Well done. I wouldn’t have noticed the double lift if I hadn’t been looking for it.’

He still has one eye on his pager. Klara makes him her target. Her pinkie is cramping – it’s been a year since she worked on her outjogging – but she doesn’t have time to shake out her hands. She grabs a fistful of quarters when she puts the deck away and points at the metal coffee mug that sits at the bald man’s feet.

‘Mind if I use that? Thank you; you’re very kind. I don’t know if you’ve noticed – I don’t know if you’ve looked – but this place is lousy with coins.’

She holds the mug in her right hand and splays her left, to show them it’s empty. When she snaps, a quarter appears between her left thumb and forefinger. She drops it into the mug, where it clinks. She pulls two coins from the bald man’s shirt collar, one from each of his ears, and two from the larger man’s shirt pocket.

‘Now, this is your mug, not mine. There’s no secret compartment, no storehouse of coins. So I bet you’re wondering how I’m doing this. I bet you already have your predictions.’ Klara gestures to the dark-haired man’s glasses. He hands them to her, and she tips them toward the coffee mug. One quarter slides over each lens. ‘It’s a natural response: we give life logic all the time. You see me producing coins over and over. Well, you assume, they must be in my left hand. And when I show you my left hand, when you realize that I can’t be holding them there, you change the logic. Now you’re thinking they’re all in my right hand. It would be useful, wouldn’t it? So close to the mug. You can’t see that I might’ – she passes the mug to her left hand – ‘be shifting’ – she reveals her right hand, empty – ‘methods.’

She coughs; two coins tumble out of her mouth. The dark-haired man puts his pager in his shirt pocket. Now she has his attention.

‘You’re a religious man,’ says Klara, eyeing the cross around his neck. ‘My father was, too. Sometimes I thought he was my opposite. His rules versus my rule-breaking. His reality versus my fantasies. But what I’ve realized – what I think he already knew – is that we believed in the same thing. You could call it a trapdoor, a hidden compartment, or you could call it God: a placeholder for what we don’t know. A space where the impossible becomes possible. When he said the kiddush or lit the candles on Shabbat, he was doing magic tricks.’