“Hey, Crystal,” Mr. Phillips called on my way out.
I waved but didn’t stop. Four little vodkas were rattling around in the briefcase.
He shook a copy of the Hollywood Gazette. “Have I got a story for you.”
I walked home on Surf Road, past palm trees like the one in Bill’s photo and a long stretch of beach. The tide was coming in; dusk was settling over white villas and the peaks of distant high-rises. My hair was damp. I tasted salt on my upper lip. I drank two mini-bottles and tossed the empties into the recycling bin stationed outside a mint-green bungalow. Once, when I was young, my mother and I had passed a street magician on this very strip. He was making plastic balls disappear up his coat sleeves. I had tugged her hand and asked if he could be my father, and she’d laughed and said he wasn’t even close to the kind of magician my father had been, to the Great Heraldo.
Outside the dinner theater, a man was hanging around the entrance. I didn’t think he was waiting for me — no one was ever waiting for me — but before I could slip inside, he stepped into my path.
“I want my wallet back,” he said.
It was Bill, wearing black pants and a dress shirt, the armpits ringed with sweat. He turned his wedding band on his finger. I was holding the package of baby carrots in one hand and the briefcase in the other.
“I bet the owner of this place would like to know what you’ve been up to,” Bill said. “I bet he’d find it all very interesting.”
The carrots were cold. I pressed the package against my forehead like a compress. Bill touched my elbow, a little roughly. He asked if I was paying attention.
“You’re too late,” I said. “Everything’s gone.”
“Even the photo?” He squinted at me. His cheeks and forehead shone.
It wouldn’t have cost me anything to give the photo back to him, but that would be hard evidence that I had stolen and that was bad for business. I had to look out for myself in practical ways. I couldn’t rely on magic.
“I get it,” I said. “You don’t want your wife to find out you’re a sleaze. Do you know how old I am? No? I’m a minor, for your information, and I bet some people would be very interested to know about that.”
Bill took a step back. His face went slack, as though I had just slapped him. He didn’t stop me when I opened the door and went inside.
* * *
The first time I went to Coco Cabana, I was fifteen. The night had brought a particularly bad show: we were still doing the saw-a-lady-in-half trick, and my mother had fumbled the reassembly. I was scrunched inside a wood box on wheels, which should have been reconnected to another box with plastic feet — surprisingly lifelike from a distance — attached to the end. My mother hadn’t been able to get the blocks to click into place, and before I knew it, I was drifting across the stage. The audience started booing. Under the glare of the lights, my mother’s eyes widened with panic. Her skin paled beneath her makeup. I could feel her sinking, could feel our lives sinking, like someone had weighted us down with rocks and tossed us into the ocean. When the curtain fell, I was still inside the box, and my mother still looked empty and afraid.
The first time, I didn’t bring the suitcase. I didn’t take anything from the shelves. I didn’t even know why I was there. I just walked the aisles, gazing at the bottles and the liquids inside. It was November, but still warm and humid. I kept thinking how nice it would be to have something cold to drink.
Mr. Phillips was the only person in the store. He stood behind the counter with his paper. I was surveying a display of neon lighters near the front. I picked up a hot pink lighter and made it flame.
“It’s two for one,” he said without looking up. “But you look too young for those.”
“I don’t smoke.” I put the lighter down. I didn’t yet have money of my own.
“Listen to this.” He tapped his index finger against the paper. I walked around to the counter. He wore a gold chain under his white T-shirt and had tufts of gray hair on his knuckles.
“A man is on his way to work, is hit in the head, and gets amnesia. He wanders away, not remembering anything, and goes on to start a whole new life. A year later, he gets his memory back, remembers where he used to live, and shows up on his family’s doorstep.” Mr. Phillips took off his glasses and started cleaning them on his shirt. “What a story!”
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “How did he get hit in the head?”
He put his glasses back on. He looked at the article again and frowned. “Well, it doesn’t say exactly. But look, his picture’s right here.”
He passed me the paper. There was a black-and-white photo of a man with his arm around a woman. Two young girls stood in front of them. Both had braces and pigtails. Everyone was smiling. I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my mother this story and ask if something like that could have happened to my father. I had no way of knowing that when I described the photo with the smiling family, she would hide her face in her hands and begin to cry.
* * *
To no one’s surprise, our next show was a disaster. Backstage, Merlin hadn’t wanted to get into the hat, and once he was inside, he wouldn’t hold still. When my mother tilted the hat toward the audience, a white ear peeked through and people snickered. A woman and her young son, the first family I’d seen in months, walked out. Bill was in the front row, holding a beer and smiling. So far he hadn’t said anything, but I imagined it was just a matter of time. Beyond the lights and the audience, I could see the dinner theater owner standing by the bar, swirling a drink and shaking his head.
When my mother pulled Merlin from the hat, he leaped out of her arms and scurried around the stage for a few minutes before diving into the audience. One man — just the kind I would have liked to buy me drinks later — shrieked and jumped out of his chair. It didn’t take long for the rest of the audience to scatter. In the end, I caught Merlin with the help of a baby carrot and stashed him in our dressing room. Through the closed door, I heard the owner shouting at my mother, telling her our days were numbered. When she came into the dressing room, she didn’t go through her usual routine. She just sat at her table, her cape pooling around her knees, and stared at herself in the mirror.
It was too sad a scene. I left Merlin on the chaise and my mother at her dressing table and went to the bar. Bill was still there, nursing another beer and reading a pamphlet on manatees. Ricky looked at Bill and then back at me, like Now you’re in trouble.
“Are you stalking me?” I stood next to Bill and retied my bathrobe sash. “Do I need to call the police?”
He looked up from the pamphlet. “I’m the one who should be calling the police.”
“I could have you murdered, you know.” I leaned against the bar and crossed my arms, trying to look worldly and assured, which of course I was not. “I know people who do that sort of thing.”
Bill just laughed. “You’re a kid. You don’t know anything.”
“I know you want your wallet back. I know you carry a picture of some stupid tree around. I know you won’t go back to your family and forget all about this like you should.”