5

Holding a bouquet of flowers in front of me like a delicate shield, I waited for someone to open the door.

India appeared and smiled at the cluster of red and pink roses. "Well, Joey, that's mighty neighborly of you." She took them and gave me a buss on the cheek. I started through the door and suddenly felt a bitter little pinch in the middle of my back. India loved to pinch. "You look great tonight, sporty. If Paul wasn't here, I'd throw you down on the floor and ravish you."

That was enough to shoot me forward into their living room. I wasn't in the mood to live dangerously. Paul was nowhere to be seen, so I assumed he was in the kitchen preparing his part of the dinner. They liked to do it that way – Paul was soup and salad chef, India main course and dessert. The room was warm and hummed with an apricot light. I sat on the couch and put my nervous hands on my nervous knees.

"What are you drinking, Joey?" Paul came out of the kitchen with a bottle of vinegar in one hand and a beer in the other.

"That beer looks good."

"Beer? You don't drink beer."

"No, well, once in a while." I laughed and tried to sound like a debonair character out of a 1930s movie. Herbert Marshall. Ha ha – very suave.

"Okay, beer it is. I also want you to know, bub, that this meal tonight is going to outdo Paul Bocuse. Beginning with salad nigoise, no less. Fresh anchovies too; none of them little tinned babies!" He went back to the kitchen and left me to ponder slim gray anchovies. Ross had once made me eat two big tins of them, which didn't increase my appreciation any. It was either that or he'd tell Bobby Hanley about my misuse of his sister. Now my hands wilted on my knees as I wondered what I could do to keep the damned things in my stomach once they'd arrived.

"I'll eat lots of bread."

"Huh?" India came into the room with the flowers in a yellow vase full of water. She placed it in the middle of the table and stood back to admire them. "Where did you get roses at this time of the year? They must have cost you a fortune!"

I was still working on anchovy digestion and didn't answer.

"Paul is really putting on the dog for you tonight, Joe."

He stuck his head out of the kitchen. "You're damned right. We owe him for about nine meals. Christ, he had to take care of you for two weeks! That'd be enough to drive Sister Teresa around the bend. India wanted to have fried chicken and mashed potatoes."

"Shut up, Paul. Joe likes fried chicken."

"Low level, India, very low level. Wait till he sees what I've got for him." He started counting off on his fingers. "Salad niзoise. Coq au vin. Pineapple upside-down cake."

I had to stop myself from physically recoiling into the couch. I detested every one of those things. I hadn't eaten any of them, thank God, since my mother had gone away so many years before. In fact, Ross and I had once made lists of our most unfavorite of her dishes, and Paul's menu for tonight had about half of mine. I managed – just – to put an idiotic lip-smackin' smile on my face that pleased him.

India and I made small talk while he banged away in the other room. She looked so different. She wore her hair up, accentuating the high patrician lines of her face. She moved gracefully around the room, sure and at ease in her surroundings. I felt like Jekyll and Hyde here. On this couch I'd had long talks with Paul. Over by the window I had once slipped my hands into the back pockets of India's blue jeans and pulled her close to me. At the dining table, now set with pinks and tropical green, we'd sat and had coffee in the middle of an afternoon and talked. The window, the table – the room was full of ghosts so recent I could almost reach out and touch them. Yet in a part of my heart I felt smug and content because they were half mine.

"Soup's on!" Paul staggered playfully out of the kitchen with a big wooden salad bowl. Two wooden forks stuck up from either side like brown rabbit ears.

I tried to talk straight through each course. I avoided looking down at my plate as much as possible. It reminded me of a time I had climbed a small mountain and discovered halfway up that I was petrified of heights. A friend who had come along told me everything would be all right so long as I didn't look down. That advice had gotten me through more than one scrape in my life, not all of them associated with mountains.

Miraculously, there were only a few suspicious smudges of pineapple on my plate when I finally peeked; the worst was over, and I could put my tired fork down with a clear conscience.

Paul asked who was for coffee and disappeared again into the kitchen. India was sitting on my right; she gave me a little jab in the hand with her dessert fork.

"You look as if you just ate a tire."

"Sssh! I hate anchovies."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Sssh, India!"

She shook her head. "You're such a dope."

"India, stop! I'm not a dope. If he'd gone to all that trouble to cook –"

The lights went out, and a table with candles on each of the four corners came gliding in from the kitchen. They illuminated Paul's face; I saw he was wearing his Little Boy top hat.

A trumpet fanfare and a blasting drum roll followed.

"Ladies and gentlemen, for your after-dinner enjoyment, the Hapsburg Room would like to present the Amazing Little Boy and his bag, or should I say hat, full of tricks!"

Paul remained deadpan throughout the introduction. When it was over (I assumed it came from a tape recorder in the other room), he bowed deeply and reached behind him. The lights in the room came on again, and at the same instant the candles went out. Poof! Just like that.

"Hey, Paul, that's a great trick!"

He nodded, but put a finger to his lips for silence. He had on the familiar white gloves from India's Little Boy painting and a cutaway jacket over a white T-shirt. Taking off the hat, he placed it rim up on the table directly in front of him. I looked at India, but she was watching the performance.

From inside his jacket he took out a large silver key. He held it up for us to see and then dropped it into the silk hat. A burst of flame shot upward, and I jumped in my seat. He smiled and, picking up the hat, turned it so we could see down into it. A small black bird swooped out and winged over to our table. It landed on India's dessert plate and pecked at a piece of cake. Paul tapped the table twice; the bird flew obediently back to him. Placing the hat over it, Paul made a loud kissing noise and pulled the hat up again. Twenty or thirty silver keys fell out of it with a metallic clatter.

India began clapping furiously. I joined right in.

"Bravo, Boy!"

"Paul, my God, that's fantastic!" I'd had no idea he was so talented. "But where's the bird?"

He slowly shook his head and put his finger again to his lips. I felt like the bad seven-year-old at the second-grade puppet show.

"Do your mind reading, Boy!"

Although I didn't believe in it, just the idea of Paul reading my mind at that point made me uncomfortable. I wanted to give India a belt in the mouth to keep her quiet.

"Little Boy is not reading minds tonight. Return another time and he will tell all, including Joseph Lennox's vast unhappiness with tonight's dinner!"

"No, come on, Paul –"

"Another time!" He moved his arm through the air as if he were pushing a curtain across an invisible window.

One white hand stopped above the rim of the silk hat. Paul made the kissing sound again, and the blade of orange flame burst up for the second time that night. It disappeared in an instant, and the hat toppled over on its side. There was a tinny, clinkety-clink sound, and out hopped a large toy tin bird. It was black, with a yellow beak and black wings, and a big red key in its back. It slowly goose-stepped to the edge of the table and stopped. Paul snapped his fingers, but nothing happened. He snapped them again. The toy rose off the table and began to fly. It flapped its wings too slowly and cautiously: an old man getting into a cold swimming pool. That didn't matter, because slow or not, it glided up and off the table and flew in a loud putter around the room.