by Rucker Moses
Uncle Long shakes his head and goes back to his work. “Go find your mama before I tell her you back here shoving wet fingers in electrical sockets.”
“You can’t say? Or you don’t know?”
“I said get,” he growls.
“Does that mean we can’t do it? Or we can, but you don’t want to?”
“Get!” he barks like an old dog about to bite.
I take a couple last looks at his workshop on my way out.
But nothing’s floating, glowing, burning, shattering, reassembling, vanishing, or reappearing.
Just a bunch of broken-down parts and half-baked tricks.
No magic.
At least none that I can see.
The next day, Saturday, from the crack of dawn, Ma has her trusty vacuum cleaner humming. I call the machine Ole Betsy. Sounds like she’s gargling lug nuts in a cast-iron throat, as usual.
I open my bedroom door to find Ma running Ole Betsy on the hallway carpet.
“Oh, King, good, you’re up,” she says.
“Huh?” I cup my hand to my ear.
Ma gets the idea and shuts off Betsy. “How’d you sleep?” she asks.
“Okay, I guess.”
I see over her shoulder into her room. Her bed is already made up all perfect, corners tucked crazy tight like they do in hotels.
“How about you?”
When Ma is worried about stuff, she likes to keep busy and work. That’s how I know she must be worried. About the café or just being here with all these memories, I can’t say.
“Wanna help make breakfast?” she asks.
We go from making breakfast with Uncle Crooked to cleaning the kitchen with V and waiting for Long Fingers to come down and eat (he never does) to clearing the table to unpacking all our moving boxes and right into boxing up the magic shop in those same boxes. It’s tough for Uncle Crooked Eye, but Mom tries to be as gentle as she can. Uncle Crooked is at one point standing in the corner, arms full of tricks he can’t possibly part with, like a kid clutching his favorite stuffed animals. Veronica gets him to demonstrate this trick where he blindfolds himself, and Ma and I are able to work.
By 3:00 p.m. it’s scorching hot both inside and out. The AC unit chugs in the corner but isn’t much help. We all retreat to the kitchen and break for a snack. But I’m still starving. Around 4:30 p.m., the air conditioner goes out. V and I make such a fuss about the heat that Ma lets me go out for some pizza. Veronica doesn’t need to beg or even ask permission, but for some reason she does anyway, almost like she wants to. Ma makes a crack about how us “young ones can’t take the heat” and gives me a couple bucks for a slice.
* * *
At 5:00 p.m., when we get outside, the sun is still intense. Sunset is a long ways off on our block.
Looking around Ricks Street, I remember Pop all over this place. On our stoop with his collar open, in linen pants and a porkpie hat. Ma always called him “timeless.” He didn’t dress like anyone else on the block. He also didn’t let me waste the day away on an iPad. Sundays were for learning magic. Coins, cards, watches, we’d sit outside and do it all. Pops knew everyone. I remember him by the gate asking the neighbors about their older folks (Mom would ask about the babies). I see the NO PARKING sign where my bike was stolen one time, and Pop just had to say a couple words to a couple people and, by the morning, the bike reappeared chained to that same post. I see the bodega where they’d save newspapers or flyers with Dad’s shows.
The sidewalk is a patchwork of odd rectangles, from spackled gray to black tar to blond concrete, with sprouts of yellow grass in the cracks between. The gaps get even bigger by the trees, where the roots beneath crack the concrete and stone. I remember Pop would put a hand over those special stones, rising from the earth like the undead, and say, “There’s more life under there. There’s magic under there,” with that wink like maybe he was joking.
I notice some words written in pink and yellow chalk on the concrete. They read:
Are you hurting?
Are you helping?
Am I hurting? Am I helping? The questions worm into my mind.
Then I realize I’m not exactly sure what the questions mean.
“Hey, V,” I say, and point to the sidewalk. “You think that means Are you hurting? like, are you sort of hurting others, like other people? Or you think it means Are you hurting? like, are you in pain?”
She looks, reads, and smiles. “Maybe it’s however you take it to mean. Like, it depends on the person.”
We walk some more in silence and pass more faded chalk letters on the sidewalk, too faded to read. Veronica has a hand on her sore hip from all that work at the house. She was always older and bigger than me, but now she’s a teenager and has, like, teenage muscles and this walk that makes me think she could beat me up if she wanted. I realize how little I know about her these days. If she was hurting about something, other than her hip, I’d have no idea what it was.
“Well, what does it mean for you?” I ask.
“It means both, I guess. If you’re in pain, you’re probably hurting someone else. And if you’re helping yourself, you’re probably helping others. But it’s interesting, how everyone takes it different. How’d you take it?” she asks. “Like, what’s the first thing you thought when you first read the questions?”
“Oh, I don’t really remember.”
“You don’t remember? It was seven seconds ago. What was your first thought?” she asks.
“Um . . .”
“Your very first thought,” she says rapid-fire, “right away—go!”
“Okay, well, honestly, my first thought, my very first thought, before I thought about what the words really mean, was, like, it’s great being back here, but I miss Pop. And it hurts.”
“Oh,” she says. “Sorry.”
“Yeah. It’s okay. You asked.”
“Lots of reminders of him?”
“Yup. Everywhere I look,” I admit. “It’s thick with him around here.”
“Okay, well, let me ask you this. Are you helping?”
“Well, sure, I helped unpack and organize and—”
“No, I mean, are you helping yourself feel better about missing your pop?” she asks.
I open my mouth to answer before I realize I have no idea what to say. I want to say, Why, yes, I’m helping in all of these helpful ways, but I got nothing.
I say, “To be honest, I don’t even know what helping would look like. Unless I went back in time and stopped him before he went through the Mirror at the Mercury.”
“What?” she says, her eyebrows bent like crowbars. “No, I mean, helping yourself, like, to not miss him so much.”
“How is that even possible? Like, I miss him. That’s how I feel.”
“Right, but we can help ourselves still, right? Sorta help ourselves not feel so bad about things we can’t change.”
“Only thing that would make me feel better is if he were here,” I say.
Veronica wants to say something else, probably about accepting things the way they are, but I think my tone tells her not to bother.
“So what,” she says, “you expect him to just appear out of thin air?”
I shrug. “He disappeared into thin air. Why not? I mean, V—you ever go by that old theater?”
“Why would I go over there?”
“I don’t know. Is it really abandoned?” I ask.
“Well, I think there’s some pigeons squatting in the hole in the roof. Does that count?”
“I mean . . . I don’t know. It’s stupid. Forget I said anything.”
“Done. ’Cause you didn’t say anything,” she says, and looks at me like I’ve got five heads.
“What I mean to say is, does any magic stuff sorta happen over there? Or anywhere, in general, I guess.”
Veronica l
aughs. “‘Does any magic stuff sorta happen?’” She imitates me, but I know my voice doesn’t sound that squeaky. “King, cuzzo, what sorta magic stuff are you imagining?” Now she’s really cheesing.
I realize how close that smile is to mine, and Pop’s.
“Why are you acting like this is some crazy question? Like, we know my pops vanished in a mirror. That’s what I’m imagining, V. Magic stuff like what we all saw with our own eyes.”
Her smirk softens and her smile is genuine. “Listen, I feel for you, I really do. I mean, I was raised without my mom, and that’s really hard sometimes. And my dad won’t tell me anything about her, just that she didn’t care enough to raise me.”
“Ouch. That’s what he says?”
“That’s exactly how he says it, too.” Veronica bites her lower lip and it disappears beneath her teeth. I remember how she used to make that worried face a lot when she was much younger. “But her—I miss her sometimes, is that weird? Like, how can you miss someone you can’t even remember? But I do.”
We walk in silence for a while, missing our missing parents.
But I’m also thinking about how she didn’t answer my question.
I remember walking up and down Thurston Avenue with Dad. We had a routine. First the French Drop—a coffee shop with all these strange taxidermied animals mounted to the walls. It’s another bodega now. Then we’d hit Harry’s Handcuffs Hardware and buy what most people considered junk. Pops said it was a gold mine. He usually had a list from Long Fingers, always the weirdest stuff: doorknobs, mannequins, springs, fabric, circuit boards, old gutted TVs, car parts, even pigeons. The last stop was Not Not Ray’s Pizza, best (and only) slice in Echo City.
Pop would explain how there’s like one thousand Ray’s Pizza places all around NYC. Famous Ray’s, Original Ray’s, Famous Original Ray’s Pizza. So somebody opened a spot in Brooklyn called Not Ray’s Pizza. So when Matteo Spinelli opened his spot in Echo City, he called it Not Not Ray’s Pizza. To avoid confusion.
As we stroll the block, I see that Not Not Ray’s has stood the test of time.
This place. I remember the heat-crust-and-cheese smell of the oven wafting outside. Smells so good it hits your toes. We enter and in the back there’s dough being tossed in the air like flying saucers. But I can barely see Matteo Spinelli because there’s this really tall kid there standing in the way. He’s all rods and elbows, like scaffolding.
“Come on, Matty-o, just a couple of those pepperonis. I got you for them tomorrow.”
The kid’s voice sounds strangely familiar . . .
“First of all, my ginormous friend, it’s pronounced Matteo,” he says in a strong Brooklyn-Italian accent, “and you still owe me for the extra sausage from last week.”
“Come on, Matty—Matteo—I’m a growing boy, my body needs those toppings.”
“And my cash register needs that dollar fifty. Look at you, you’ve had enough toppings, you bang yer head in my doorway every other day.”
“Yes, and that reminds me that you, sir, will be hearing from my personal injurious lawyer. Or I can accept a settlement of six to seven pepperonis on this slice right here.”
“Next?” Matteo says to us. “Hi, Veronica. Can I help you?”
The tall kid turns around and I recognize his face. He lights up with a one-thousand-gigawatt smile.
“King! The King is back!” he shouts.
He holds out an open hand, fingers long as ski poles.
“Eddie?” I say.
“They call me Too Tall nowdays,” he says.
I get a pain in my neck looking up at him.
“Oh yeah?” I say, blocking the light fixture from my eyes. “What they call you that for?”
“Um . . . ,” he says, and taps a finger to his lips.
Then he sees my expression and busts out laughing.
“My man, Young King!” he says, and slaps my palm and pats my back. He holds my hand and looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost.
My hand disappears inside his massive one like a coin trick.
Coin trick . . . Makes me think of something.
“Kingston?” asks Matteo Spinelli.
Matteo Spinelli is just as I remember him. The only thing he liked better than pizza was a good magic trick. Show him one he hadn’t seen, and you could snag a free slice.
“Matteo, you remember my cousin?” asks Veronica.
“Of course I do, Preston’s kid. Welcome back!”
“Matteo, you still giving out slices for a good magic trick?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, my friend. I haven’t seen a trick in four years.”
I have these trick white magician’s gloves that Uncle Crooked Eye let me hold, since they fit me so well. I slide them out of my back pocket and pull them on. Too Tall Eddie’s coins sit on the counter. I scoop them up in these white gloves and cup my hands over them and start shaking them like maracas.
“Eddie—”
“Too Tall,” he corrects me.
“Too Tall, how much money was here before?”
“Two dollars, twenty-five cents,” he says.
“Matteo, is that right?” I ask, still shaking the coins in my gloved hands.
“Yup. A dollar fifty short for a pepperoni slice.”
Too Tall rolls his eyes.
Veronica, onto what I’m up to, winks at Matteo.
“Okay. Matteo, hold out your hands, please?”
I dump the coins into Matteo’s palms.
The pizza shop owner counts the coins twice, three times, and nods, impressed, as he slides them into his register. “One pepperoni, coming right up, and a free slice for the young magician!”
Too Tall’s eyes wow in amazement. He points a finger at my chest as a smile expands across his face. “You, my man, you are magic. You are a magical little individual.”
“So, Too Tall—”
“King, you can call me Tall, for short,” he says with a warm, pepperoni-filled grin. Too Tall, Veronica, and I are all sitting in a booth with our slices.
“I ain’t calling you nothin’ for short,” I say with a snort.
“Good one!” he says.
Veronica shakes her head. “How did you two dorks survive without each other all these years?”
“That’s a good question,” Tall says, taking her words at face value. “I played a lot of basketball. Got going on my sneaker collection, and when I couldn’t afford a slice at Not Not Ray’s, I ate a lot of peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches.”
“Really?” I say. “Interesting. Honey, you say?”
“Honey.” He nods. “Jelly is not a necessary condiment. The important thing is the sweet, mixed with the nut butter.” He chef-kisses his fingertips.
“Well, how does this sound?” I suggest. “Jelly-with-cream-cheese sandwiches.”
Too Tall’s eyes go wide.
“On cinnamon-raisin bread,” I add.
“Mind. Blown.”
Veronica hits an eye roll strong enough to flip the checkered pizza table. “Okay, you two are the worst. I thought boy talk would be more interesting than this.”
“Thought wrong, cuzzo,” I say with a satisfying bite of Not Not Ray’s finest.
“So what you been up to all these years?” asks Tall.
“Just, you know, going to school, and working on my magic.”
“Working on your magic? Like, how you work on a jump shot?”
“Sorta like that, I guess.”
“Like—magic tricks?” Tall asks.
“No, not stupid magic tricks.” Veronica jumps in with eyes of mischief. “Real magic. Right, King?”
“What? No, Tall was right, magic tricks—”
Veronica goes on: “So what were you asking me about just now? About the Mercury and magic ‘stuff’?”
“W
ell, yeah, that’s different—”
“Real magic, right, King? That’s what you were wondering about?”
I set my slice down on the wax paper and wipe the grease from the corners of my mouth. Too Tall’s and Veronica’s eyes are on me. I remember their faces from years before, how they used to look. Veronica’s eyes were wider then, her cheeks chubbier, her smile was full of teeth too big for her mouth. Too Tall—we used to call him “Skinny Eddie”—and, well, there’s about twice as much of him now. That was also a different me then, and I start thinking about time, and how different I was four years ago before the fire at the Mercury. Before Dad vanished. Before I knew for certain that magic was really real.
“I was asking Veronica about the Mercury Theater. Where they had the fire. Where my dad disappeared. I mean, you been around Echo City all this time. You ever seen anything go down over there?”
“Any magic stuff?” Veronica chimes in with that sarcastic grin.
Too Tall thinks this over. “You mean that old building with the big dome and those gargoyles?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well . . . this is going to sound weird, but . . .” Tall hesitates.
“Tall, my father disappeared through a mirror four years ago and never came back. You’re not going to out-weird me.”
Too Tall is startled to hear this. “What? What do you mean, through a mirror?”
This leaves me speechless.
I always figured that everyone knew that Dad was gone, but it never occurred to me that everyone might not know how Dad had gone.
Maybe the real story went around—but who would believe that?
“He’s not lying,” says Veronica, sincere for once. “I was there. Everyone saw it, right there onstage. Kingston’s dad jumped in that creepy Mirror and was just gone. There was a big crash, and then that fire everywhere. Last time anybody saw him.”
“Whoa,” says Too Tall. “So when you left? Okay . . . Wow.”
The expression on his face seems to work out a whole lot of missing information about a whole lot of missing years.
“So what were you going to say?” I ask. “About the Mercury?”