She met his eyes. How much of the man she imagined—well, yeah, dreamed—him to be was he really?

He was waiting.

She could try a small step—as if a small step off a cliff wouldn’t hurt as much as a big one. Well … Geronimo!“It’s … I guess it’s my mental difficulties.”

“Don’t be afraid. Just tell me.”

“I was having flashbacks of the hospital.”

He crinkled his brow. “The hospital …”

Had he forgotten? “Yeah, the hospital, you know, where they thought I was crazy and had me locked up and then sent those guys after me.”

He cleared up and nodded. “Right. Thathospital.”

“It was like being in McCaffee’s and the hospital at the same time, stumbling around trying to figure out where I was and I couldn’t control it. I could see the hallways and the doctors and … and a really weird room.”

He was about to take a bite from his toast but set it down.

“It was dark, and there were lights and control panels like the inside of a spaceship, real sci-fi-looking. And then there was this big, empty room like a basement and two guys …” This was going to sound so weird! “And they were burning dead monkeys.”

He raised an eyebrow and his face was one big Huh?

“I know it sounds crazy. That’s because it is.”

“Describe it to me.”

Why? “Well, they had a black plastic bag full of dead monkeys and they were throwing them into a big furnace to burn them up.” And she didn’t want to go any further.

He seemed to be envisioning it. “Well. Those were quite the circumstances.”

“So I think … I think I need a breather—not from magic altogether, just from the weird stuff. I think it would be great—if I could, I mean—just to work here, just do whatever you need to have done and rest my brain, and then you could help me learn things that are, you know, from this planet, stuff I can get my hands on and work with and be … be here and not way out there.” Was he sold yet? “I’d work for free and you wouldn’t even have to train me.”

He tried that on for a second, then gave his hands a little toss. “Well. Okay. So what do the Calhouns say? How soon do they want you back?”

“As soon as I heal, I guess.”

“And you need to rest your brain.”

“I sure do.”

“Well, we could just make you an apprentice. I want to finish cleaning out the barn so we can move stuff out of the shop. Then we can make room in there for a working stage and develop a stand-up show featuring you. If you can show up every day—what would you like, a four- or a five-day week?”

She was trying to keep her emotions steady as she worked up an answer. “Umm … five, if we can work around my magic gigs.”

“Got a few?”

“Some birthday parties. I can show you my calendar.”

“We’ll work around your gigs. Always. You need to be out there.”

“Right, right.”

“Five days a week, and working around your magic gigs, which includes McCaffee’s when you’re ready?”

She was getting wide-eyed, nodding as her heart raced.

“I’ll get you on the payroll as an employee. You’ll earn an hourly wage while we put a show together and see if we can make it fly—uh, when your brain’s ready. Sound good so far?”

It sounded so good she was afraid it might not happen. “I want to work. I want to work and get my mind together, get my life together, get in charge of things …”

“Instead of things being in charge of you.”

Who wasthis guy? “Absolutely.”

“I’m all for that. All right. Why don’t you help me clean up the dishes here and then we’ll go unearth some history.”

The crates, trunks, and travel cases, all the imagined, designed, and painstakingly built props and illusions that brought thrill and sparkle to the Dane and Mandy stage for forty years, now rested in a great, squarish heap in the middle of the barn. To the farthest reaches of Dane’s knowledge, the stage lights blackened and the final curtain fell on Dane and Mandy when the last corner of the tarp was tucked in and the last knot in the rope was tied. He never imagined he would return, never thought he would look back, could not have dreamed that he would be standing before this monument with young Eloise. What an image: the finish and the start in the same moment gazing up at the span of time between them.

“Wow,” she said.

Yes. Wow.“Let’s see if we can get this rope undone.” He worked on one side, she worked on the other. The knots could be stubborn. He worked one loose. “How you doing?”

“I think I got it,” came her voice.

The rope went slack. He pulled it over to his side and let it fall. “Okay, come around and let’s ease this tarp off.”

They gently, even reverently, drew the tarp over and down, letting it gather in crackling folds at their feet, and then he gave her time to take it all in: the ruggedly built travel cases with steel edges and corners, the plywood crates nicked and scraped from years of touring, the solid wood trunks with their metal latches and hinges.

And stenciled on the side of every one of them were the words DANE AND MANDY, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, USA.

Her eyes rested on the words. He remained silent, pretending to look things over and tuck away the tarp as he watched.

She lingered, her mouth open, then faintly smiling in amazement as she tilted, then wagged her head. “Her name was Mandy?”

“That’s right.”

She gazed at the name as if gazing into a face and then, reaching as a child reaches for her parent, she placed her hands flat upon either side of the name and framed it. “Whoa!”

“Forty years.”

“That is just so cool.” She studied the name as if reading it for the first time. “You know, I really like her.”

He was thinking of Mandy and looking at Eloise as he said, “So did I.”

She withdrew her hands and her eyes searched out every appearance of that name on every container, her eyes arcing over the stack as if she were in awe of a rainbow.

This would be enough. He could feel his soul, his insides warning him to move on. “I guess we’d better …”

She snapped out of it. “Oh, absolutely, yes. Didn’t mean to … It’s personal, I understand.”

“No problem.” He had to do a little acting, had to push them onward. “Now what I want to do is re-create a stage such as you would find in a small to medium venue, something with more geography. I’d like to build it in the shop and use some of this stuff to create a setting, just give you some things to work around, handle, bump into, use if it fits your style. Going from close-up to stage means everything has to be bigger, wider. Here’s a Zigzag. You know what that is?”

“The optical illusion. The lady stands in the box and then it looks like you remove the middle part of her.”

“Right. I … I don’t see you doing this as part of your act, but working with some larger props might be a good exercise to help you think in bigger, wider concepts.”

“I’d love the experience.”

“Here’s a sub trunk—uh, substitution trunk.”

“Metamorphosis!”

“Okay, you’ve seen this one.”

“The magician’s assistant gets tied inside a bag and locked inside the trunk. The magician raises a shroud around the trunk and then bammo! The magician trades places with her, just like that.”

“It uses a lot of basic principles: timing, misdirection, creating an expectation, and then defying it—and just plain physical ability. We could try that out to hone the basics. It’s easy in principle, not so easy to perform convincingly. Once again …”

“The magic is in the magician.”

“You get an A.” Now he had to laugh. “And this one … this is our old levitation. It’s a dinosaur. There are so many better designs out there now—which I guess you’re aware of.”

“I guess.”

“Mandy and I worked it into a gag routine and put a whole new life into it. That’s another lesson right there: even an old trick that everybody’s seen before can be fresh if you give it a little twist—which brings us to another little idea of mine. Considering how good you are with tennis balls and quarters, this might be just the thing.”