He thought he might like a cup of coffee, maybe with some of those little bake sale chocolate cookies he bought from Noah Morgan.

Arnie remained in the greenroom as Preston Gabriel announced from the television screen, “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Eloise Kramer.” Her recorded music began, and he saw two hula hoops roll out into the stage lights, one from the left, one from the right. They rolled in a circle in opposite directions and then, as they crossed each other from the camera’s viewpoint, poof, as quick as a blink, there was Eloise spinning to a graceful ta-da pose in the center. The audience gasped, and Arnie had to concede, Just wait, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Her act was astonishing, total fun, total entertainment. She would go far, no question—but without him. Someday her shady morals would catch up to her. She’d pick the wrong man, cross the wrong woman, get the wrong kind of attention. He was thankful that it wouldn’t be his job to cover her back or explain a scandal to the news hounds.

He opened his e-mail account and typed a quick e-mail to Dane:

FYI: Booked Kramer on Preston’s show. Taping today, January 17. Have since withdrawn as her agent. She has secured other management. Take care. Arnie.

No, her performance was not up to her standards. She danced in, around, and through the hula hoops as they danced with her; she set her doves flying in tight formations the cameras could follow and materialized bottles that floated around her singing counterpoint to the music; she did it all with a big smile on her face and boundless energy that played well on television, but it felt slow to her, mechanical, and she was trying too hard. The life wasn’t there, the playfulness and wonder that always popped up and surprised her to the delight of her audience. She was pretending, working against a lingering, leeching knot of sorrow she couldn’t shake.

She pushed through, draining herself, then struck her closing pose, standing in one hula hoop while framing herself with the other, the doves perched atop it. The crowd rose to their feet, as did Preston Gabriel behind his Johnny Carson desk at the side of the stage.

Stagehands gathered up the hoops, doves, and bottles, and she took a bow. She was so relieved she wanted to cry, but she laughed, smiled, and bowed again. Sweat dripped to the floor. So much for her makeup.

“Eloise Kramer, ladies and gentlemen!” bellowed Preston Gabriel.

As planned, she crossed the stage, shook Gabriel’s hand, and took her place in the chair next to his desk for a short interview. She was still panting for breath.

“Marvelous!” said Preston Gabriel, taking his seat. “Truly refreshing!”

“Thank you.”

He was smiling at her, but with a piercing gaze that made her want to cringe. “From Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”

“Yes, sir, born and raised.”

“And just barely out of your teens—or are you?”

“I turned twenty last Saturday. Two days ago.” There was some applause, about the only celebration her birthday got. She rehearsed on that day, alone.

“Remarkable.” Gabriel leaned on his elbow, fingers supporting his face, still looking at her as if he were trying to figure something out. “And you studied with a close friend of mine, the great, the one and only Dane Collins.”

If that was supposed to be a surprise to catch her off guard, it was. Some folks recognized the name, went “Oooh!,” and applauded again, which gave her time to recover, nod, and say a bit weakly, “Uh-huh.” Great, witty answer. Arnie told you, didn’t he? Please, no more questions about that.

“You must have been quite a handful”—the glint in his eye telegraphed he’d used a pun—“with a remarkable trademark, bringing objects to life and making them your co-performers.”

Did he just suggest … ?She was insulted whether he meant it that way or not. How was her smile? Was she having fun? She noticed a dead space in the conversation. It was her turn. “Uh … it’s … it’s like being a kid. When you’re a kid all your toys are alive.”

Gabriel nodded. “Did you see our last guest?”

Now, come on, it would be mean to talk about him. “The kung fu guy?”

“I’d say you did a lot better than he did.”

Some folks clapped, but at the kung fu guy’s expense. It felt mean. “Well …” She shrugged it off.

Gabriel stood a pencil up on end on his desk. “How about this pencil?”

There was a hush. She looked at the pencil, then at him. This couldn’t be happening. “How about it?”

“Can you make it move?”

No magician would do this to a fellow magician. What was he thinking? Smile, play along!“Sure—if I brought my own pencil.” She mugged to the audience and they chuckled.

“So you don’t really have the power to make this one move.”

The audience was hanging on what she would say. It was palpable. And what could she say? Saying “no” would break the spell, the whole covenant that made magic what it was, that made her performance what it was. He had to know that.

She smiled and made a funny little show of thinking about it. Preston Gabriel gave her precious airtime to do so, his eyes locked on her. Maybe he was building the suspense …

Or maybe he was trying to shrink her, make her wither like the kung fu guy. Arnie and he must have had a little talk between old buddies before the show. A tremble of anger went through her. Yeah, I can make it move. I can stick it in your ear.

She tried to put on Playful and Teasing. “Which way would you like it to move?” It didn’t quite work. Her tone came across as challenging. The audience went “Ooooohhh …”

This guy had gall that soured her stomach. “How about making it levitate?”

In the greenroom, Arnie had come out of his chair and crossed to the television. Preston, what are you doing? Forget what we talked about, this is showbiz. I wouldn’t even fry her on television!

Smile! “How high?”

“Oh, let’s say—”

The pencil shot to a foot above the desk and hung there. The audience was all over it: it was part of the act, planned as a surprise, Wow, great, we love it!

And Mandy wasn’t about to disappoint them. She locked eyes—most pleasantly—with Preston Gabriel, friend of Arnie Harrington.

She remembered how she and Dane spent his birthday, how she wished they could have spent hers.

She made the pencil spin a cartwheel. “What else?”

Gabriel eyed the pencil, fascinated.

Fascinated wasn’t good enough. The folks deserved a real finisher, and Gabriel deserved … well, she’d be careful.

The pencil shot around the stage like a frantic bird, circled back, dropped, and touched eraser down on the top of the desk. As if the pencil were doing the lifting, the whole desk rose a foot from the floor and rotated, colliding with the old man’s legs and making his chair spin—she enjoyed that part, but threw up her hands for the audience, Don’t look at me, I can’t control it! While the desk continued lazily rotating in midair, Camera Two lifted from the floor and rose above the frantic attempts of the camera operator to hold it down. It floated above Preston Gabriel, and a lovely crane shot appeared in the monitors: Preston Gabriel, stoic demeanor cracking, about to duck aside in case the camera fell. Oh, no you don’t. Mandy scurried over, put her arm around the snooty, thoughtless old geezer, and looked up, waving, her smile big with sarcasm.

The audience was rumbling, applauding, gasping.

Mandy let the camera and desk down gently, then gave Preston Gabriel a kiss on top of his head. The audience went nuts. They rose to their feet. She pranced forward and bowed, threw them a kiss, and scampered offstage.

They were still applauding as she brushed past Linda the producer—“Hey, that was incredible!”—and slammed through the soundstage door.

Preston Gabriel’s voice came from monitors in the control room—“The incredible Eloise Kramer!”—as she rushed down the hall to the ladies’ room.