Spoonbenders

Teddy wasn’t sure a grandson of Nick Pusateri Senior was ever going to smell like roses, but he kept that to himself. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said.

She unlocked the front door, nodded at the lunch box. “You think if I held on to that, he’d break into my home?”

“Let’s not think about that,” he said. Because Nick Senior would have to come for it. He couldn’t just let it sit in the house, waiting for Graciella to change her mind about the cops. “So…you got anybody living here with you?”

“Besides the boys? No. But I’ve got an expensive alarm system.”

He nodded as if that would make a bit of difference. Nick Senior’s guys had shot people in their own homes. They’d blown up cars by remote control, right in the suburbs. The Sun-Times had been running stories about suspected mob hits all through the trial.

Graciella seemed to know what he was thinking. “He’d never risk hurting his grandsons,” she said.

“No, no. But still.” And thought: Still, there’s you.

“I need them out of this, Teddy. No more contact with the Pusateris, all that family business.”

“I promise you, I’ll make this work.”

Adrian galumphed down the stairs, white robe open and green belt dragging behind him, followed by a lanky brother a few years older. That one was Luke. His uniform was cinched tight, and he wore a swoop of brown hair over one eye like a sixties cover girl. Adrian said, “That’s him,” as if ratting Teddy out. “He won’t do magic.”

“No tricks! We’re late,” Graciella said.

Teddy waved the smaller boy over. “Come here, your shoe’s untied.” Adrian reluctantly stepped forward and offered a scuffed, yet still garish shoe decorated with green cartoon animals wielding swords and such, each no doubt possessed of unique abilities and an elaborate backstory. Teddy went down on one knee. “I know people who can do magic. Real magic. And what does it get them? Nothing.” He struggled to hold the shoelace between finger and thumb. His fingers had turned into rusty shears. Once—decades ago, before Nick Senior—they could make cards dance. Coins and papers and even engagement rings would wink in and out of existence, his touch as silent and quick as a mirror flicking sunlight. Once, he was a phantom of the card table. Maybe it was time for the phantom to strike back.

“Doing real magic,” he went on, keeping up the patter like a professional. “That stuff makes those folk unhappier than if they had no magic at all, because it doesn’t do ’em a damn bit of good. But if you can do a magic trick,

you get paid. Do you want to get paid?”

Adrian nodded.

“Other shoe. Good. Now here’s the thing.” Graciella stood in the doorway, listening. “Magic’s easy. It’s tricks that are hard. You gotta be smart, you gotta be prepared, and you gotta be patient. Sometimes it takes a long time for a trick to pay off. Years even. Most people can’t wait that long. They just want the magic, right now. Poof.”

“I’m patient.”

“We’ll see.”

“So when are you going to show me the trick?”

“You beg, borrow, or steal a fresh one-dollar bill, and then we’ll talk.”

Graciella laughed. “In the car! Now!”

Teddy stood up with an embarrassing pop of the knees.

“You can’t tell a kid to steal money, Teddy. However…” She kissed him on the cheek. “I’m still glad I ran into you that day in the grocery store.”

“I have a confession to make,” Teddy said. “I didn’t run into you by accident. I saw you, I thought you were a pretty woman, and I made sure I got close enough to do my mind-reading trick.”

“Oh, I know about that.”

“You do?”

“How many women have fallen for it?”

“I plead the fifth, my dear.”

“Well, that wasn’t the miracle. It was the fact you were there at all. That you turned out to know Nick Senior, and that you’re willing to help—that Irene is willing to help, too. You two are my pair of pocket aces.”

She knew he’d like that metaphor, and he liked that he knew that she knew. He strolled to his car, humming to himself, swinging the plastic box full of a dead man’s teeth.

He used to have no problem making promises. When he proposed to Maureen, he said, “You’ll never regret this.” When their daughter was born, he said, “I’ll be the best dad in the state of Illinois.” And when Maureen told him she was sick, he said, “You’re going to be fine.”

It was a freezing morning in late winter. He found her in the bedroom, her face wearing that peculiar expression of the working clairvoyant: head tilted, mouth tight, eyes twitching under closed lids like a dreamer.

“There’s a tumor,” she said.

She’d discovered it on her own. She’d been feeling sick to her stomach for weeks, and had stopped eating. Then, following what she called “an intuition,” she’d turned her attention to her own body. Not-so-remote-viewing.