Now I was starting to get it. He hadn’t picked the persona of a blowhard or a clown or a doofus for these kids. He was more of a disgruntled Peter Pan, a grown-up child as enchanted, under the aggravation, with the wonderful things he could do as they were. As the act went on even his face changed, lost years, lost strain, and his body seemed to grow suppler and more agile. As a result, eight six-year-olds became rapt and obedient, no jeering or mouthing off, not a single wise guy. Just laughter and wonderment.
I couldn’t laugh, but I could wag my tail when Sam botched the coin vanish, and especially the disappearing egg. The kids laughed so hard, Kayla Logan fell out of her seat. I stopped wagging, though, when Sam pulled two yard-l ong pieces of cord from a pocket and announced he needed two volunteers for his final and extremely difficult trick, Magic Handcuffs.
He picked Allen Hansen and Ethan Carr, Justin’s twin. “Watch carefully! Don’t blink!” he instructed as he tied knots with the cords around four little wrists, stringing the cords together in the process so that, when he finished, Allen’s rope hung in a loose loop around Ethan’s.
“Are you stuck? Try to get away from each other. Nope, they’re stuck. But! Mmm. If they’ve got magic, mmm, mojo, they will miraculously break free! We’ll give them one minute! You have one minute to get free. You can do anything but you cannot untie the knots. Ready? One minute, starting… now. Go!”
They started out self-consciously, testing the ropes with tentative moves like putting their arms around each other from the back, the front. But frustration, crowd laughter, and Sam’s constant countdown-“Thirty more seconds! Twenty-fi ve! Twenty-f our!”-soon had them in a heap on the ground, thrashing and wrestling like kittens, arms and legs tangled. Allen lost a shoe. Everybody thought it was a riot, everybody but me. I knew where this was heading.
“Time!”
Spent, the boys lay flat in the grass, red-f aced and still giggling, while Sam undid the knots around their wrists.
“Too bad, nice try, but now I, the Great Sambini, shall demonstrate, before your wondering eyes, the mystery of Magic Handcuffs. For this difficult trick I will need a mmm partner. A magic partner, it goes without mmm saying. Anyone?” All hands shot up. Sam covered his eyes and pointed to, surprise, surprise, Monica. “Monica the Marvelous!”
“Me?” Such pretty modesty. The kids weren’t even disappointed at not being chosen. They loved Mrs. Carr. And they sensed this trick, the Great Sambini’s last, required an assistant in the know.
It certainly did. Sam had never asked outright, but once or twice, years ago, he’d hinted that he would love it if I’d assist him in his act. Of course I’d said no. Without a second thought. How absurd. Ridiculous and unthinkable, like asking him to hold a real estate closing for me. Still, just for fun, sometimes he enlisted me to help with tricks that needed two people, tricks he couldn’t do onstage-no assistant-but that he just liked and wanted to try out. Like Magic Handcuffs.
So I knew how to do it. You let people from the audience tie the knots, as many or as complicated as they want-just not too tight. “Don’t cut off my blood!” you say (if you’re the assistant), because it’s vital that one wrist rope have a little slack in it. Just a little. So the magician can slip his cord under it and then over the top of your hand. Ta-da, you’re free.
The rest is acting. Overacting, as you both writhe and wrestle and struggle and contort, accomplishing the magic part on the ground and out of view-underneath yourselves, ideally. So it’s like Twister, only more intimate. The one or two times Sam talked me into trying it with him, we enjoyed it very much. Very much.
No way was he going to play Magic Handcuffs with Monica Carr.
Maybe if she’d had on more clothes, not a sleeveless sundress and strappy sandals. Maybe if she hadn’t looked so cute, or smelled so sweet. Maybe if she’d been a little less perfect. Maybe if she was in this country on a visa about to run out. Then I might’ve behaved myself.
Eager volunteers got one of Monica’s wrists tied before I made my move. I was still trying to be good. But my best intentions were undermined by the persistent vision of Sam and Monica locked in an indecent embrace. And then when it hit me-my God!-they must have practiced this trick before, I lost all restraint.
Rowrrr!
Not all restraint; I didn’t bite anybody. But I was in the grip of the most primitive anger I’d ever felt, and Monica wasn’t the only target. Sam infuriated me, too. I wanted to, but I didn’t bite them, only because of the proximity of so many children. One stray fang-it didn’t bear thinking about. I jumped between Sam and Monica and did everything else, though-I growled, threatened, herded, head-butted. Monica I body-slammed to the ground on her behind.
Sam couldn’t believe his eyes. “ Sonoma!” he kept shouting, lunging time after time for my collar. “What the hell? No! Sonoma, no!” He still had one end of his rope in his hand. I let him get close, closer-then I sprang, snatched the rope in my teeth, and whirled away.
Now what? Another damn fenced yard, the bane of my life. I ran around and around the perimeter pursued by two adults and eight children. When it looked like they had me cornered, I dashed into Benny’s playhouse. Hide the rope, hide the rope. Where? In his toy chest?
Too late, no time. I hadn’t escaped. I was trapped. At least the trick was ruined-the Great Sambini could hardly start over after all this mayhem. I’d broken the spell. Mission accomplished.
“Great party, Sam.”
“It was. Goes without saying, I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Oh, sure you could’ve. Wow, the magic show was fantastic.”
“Until it went to hell.” Sam and Monica made the same disgusted face as they glanced through the kitchen door at me. Benny and the twins were upstairs playing with Benny’s new rainbow-making machine; Sam and Monica were finishing the cleanup. I was trying for a low profile in the safest place I could think of: under the dining room table.
“What do you think set her off?” Sam took a handful of washed glasses from Monica and set them on the top cabinet shelf-too high for her to reach.
“I can’t imagine.”
Did he hear the same note in her voice I did? Was it my imagination, or did Monica just send me a look? No, ridiculous; she didn’t know anything. She couldn’t. Except that I didn’t like her-that had to be pretty clear by now.
“I had no idea you were so good,” she told Sam. “I should have. I mean, you do it professionally-”
“Did.”
“But I just never realized. You’d never say, and from what I’ve always gathered from Laurie…”
“What?”
“Nothing, I just-assumed it was more of a hobby, is all. But, Sam, you’re good. Really good.”
Oh, shut up. She wasn’t flattering him, though; she meant it. And Sam beamed with pleasure. So unfair-I wanted to say it to him. I wanted to make him smile and blush and look tickled.
Why hadn’t I ever told Sam he was good?
They finished in the kitchen and moved past me-I watched their legs-into the hall. “Ustin and Jethan!” Monica called; a family joke. “Time to go home!”
Sam started thanking her again. She cut him off to ask, “How are you doing, Sam? I haven’t had a chance with all the birthday business to really talk to you, not in days.”
Days, big deal.
“We’re all right,” Sam said. “We’re fine. Day at a time.”
“But you. How are you doing?”
He hadn’t combed out his Great Sambini hair yet. Back-lit in the open door, he looked like a punk angel. “Starting the new job will be good,” he said, with no enthusiasm. “Get my mind off things.”