The Shut-eye

And they have a name for it. It’s called… becoming a shut-eye
-Orson Welles

This is how to perform the oldest trick in the book. Start with three balls and three cups. Arrange them unassumingly on a table. For beginners I recommend that you keep the balls tiny. The balls should be soft too, or else the table should be soft. You don’t want the sound to betray you.

Here is the trick: there are three cups, but four balls. The fourth is already inside one of the cups or in your sleeve or in your palm, depending on the flavor of illusion. The magician alone knows about the fourth ball. And with that knowledge, although it is trivial, and although he must always pretend he does not know it, he conquers the inviolate rules of matter and causality. For this, in Ancient Egypt or in Babylon, he might have enjoyed a confidence with the living gods and princes, standing beside their high thrones, offering them counsel, interpreting their dreams and omens. A miracle only requires a mystery. Something hidden or concealed. A secret.

But what I've told you is not the oldest trick in the book. There is one older.

I'll show you how it goes.

Most days I work underground. Fulton street. 14th street. 42nd street Grand Central Station. I'm unassuming. Not so shameless as to ply people for money with tourist traps and swindles. Not so friendly either.

I have a little plastic folding stool and a round table with a stem that unscrews and with black straps that I cut off from an old duffel bag and nailed to the bottom. You’d be surprised how quickly people can get used to the sight of a bald, bearded man wearing a table on his back like a Viking wears his shield.

I can be out of a place in three minutes. Sometimes the patrolling cops don’t like to see me sitting on my stool, waiting, or with a crowd around me. The musicians, the migrants with infants swaddled on their backs peddling Snickers bars, the churro vendors, the life insurance salesmen trying to meet their monthly quotas, the pole dancers and the preachers and the poets and the perfume sellers–they’re all making an almost honest buck. And most people hardly even see them. They are as invisible as the heat and the stench, the rust and the peeling paint of the girders and ceilings.

But sit down with a sign that says palm-readings, or with a deck of tarot cards, or with a crystal ball, and everyone smells fraudulence in the water. I confess there is nothing special in the gemstone or the astrological sign. But that does not mean what I do is a sham.

I'll do the palm reading because sometimes it helps the other person to think that there is some method; encourages them to take action. I depend on the fact that almost all prophecies are self-fulfilling. But there is no method, only a gift. I do not refer to the prodigy or to providence either. Some of us do come into the world with the gift (or so it is claimed), but some come to it by fierce labor of five thousand hours. A quiet penetration of the mind into spirit–that’s all.

So, I don't really read palms. And I can't tell you what your winning lottery numbers are because, in a way, that's not what you want to know. Money is not the same thing as relief, or confidence, or closure. I can give you these things if you can spare ten minutes on your way to work or from a date with your new girlfriend.

“So how does this work? Do we need candles or something? An ouija board?” he said, setting his sweating glass on the clear table, twisting it round and round. The vertical blinds, controlled by a little knob on the wall, were open, admitting a panoramic view overlooking Central Park. The yellow street lights below illuminated the blinking passage of nighttime runners in high gym shorts, as they went in and out of the patches of darkness.

“What time is it?” I asked.

He smirked. “Why? Do we have to wait for the clock to strike twelve?” He turned his wrist inward and looked at his sports watch. “It’s quarter to nine.”

“I have to be home by 11.” I said.

“A Mrs. Nostradamus? Color me surprised.”

I took off my coat, finally, and laid it on my knees. I was sweating even in the air conditioned room, and could sense that my t-shirt had dark patches below the neck and armpits. Although there was a conscious effort not to look at the gun lying on the table, I can’t say that I was particularly afraid.

“The bakery closes at 11:30,” I said.

“We can order in,” he replied, sedately.

I closed my eyes. I saw my mother in her hospital gown. My mother with limbs like coat hangers and a face that was entirely eyes and skull and teeth and no hair and no color. I could feel the coin in my hand, the ghost of the passes and the card pulls in front of the long mirror at home so I could repeat them for her when I went to visit her after school. But I didn’t want to think of her now, I wanted to be here, with him. With his pain.

“Will Samantha be joining us?” I always start with a question to which I already know the answer. The feeling of control is essential for my powers.

“She was really taken with you, you know that? Yeah, raved about you the subway ride home. The highlight of our date, even. Actually I think you might have helped me get lucky that night.”

“Tell me about her,” I said.

“Samantha?”

“No,” I said.

He frowned. “Isn’t that your job? Aren’t you supposed to be psychic?”

“It helps if you cooperate.”

“Oh, yeah. Forgot about that. Probably by the end I’ll be thanking you right? Begging you to take my money.”

I waited. So much of this art is just waiting. The anticipation before the rabbit is pulled out, the suspense of the return, or the delicious pause before the turn of the card.

“She’s nobody,” he said. “So yeah, whoever it is you’re working with, whatever con you’re trying to pull–”

“You brought me here. I didn’t ask to come.”

“Because I wanna know how you did it. Was it a projector? Did you slip something into my food? How did you even get in here? Do you know how much hell I gave the security team–they even gave me the tapes. Of course, they gave me the tapes, they know who my dad is. And yeah, nothing. Zip. I’m just talking to a goddamn wall. Empty air.” He takes a sip of his drink. “So yeah, just tell me how you did it and we can call it a night. I’m not vindictive. Tell me how you did it and I’ll call you an Uber right now, and–” He leaned to the side and pulled out his wallet, then some cash, slapping the bills on the table.

“If you loved her that much, why did you hurt her?” I said. I couldn’t help myself. Those of us who have the gift hate to forego its use. I know for some it’s a kind of irritation or even something they can no longer control, but for me it has always been about responsibility. I read an article once about something called the bystander effect–basically, it says that the more people that are around, the less likely someone is to help you if you’re in trouble. They called it a diffusion of responsibility. I can’t imagine anything more abhorrent.

He was trembling. I saw now, beneath the tailored suit and the hair gel and the gold cufflinks, he was only a boy. “How did you know that?” he said.

“How do you think?” I replied.

“She talked to you?” His voice was small now and uncertain. “You can see her?”

I waited.

“She won’t talk to me.” He savagely rubbed his eyes. “Christ, what the hell am I even saying.”

“Is there something you want to tell her?”

He suddenly stood. The gun was in his hand now and he began to pace ferociously. “This is a trick,” he said. “This isn’t real.”

“I want to help you.”

“Why? Why in goddamn would you want to help me?” He laughed. “You, help me? Who the hell do you think you are? You know what? Forget it. Take the money. Yeah, take it and get out. Get out!”

“I don’t want your money.”

He stood still and swallowed a few times, raised the gun, then he sank back down on the sofa. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“She knows that.”

He wiped his eyes. “I didn’t mean... I didn’t know. I mean I was a kid. I was jealous, and yeah, I loved her, of course. But I didn’t know.”

“She loved you too. She forgives you.”

And again I waited. I felt a pleasant warm sensation coming on. I knew was close, but there was also a strange chill, an oppressive feeling. The same feeling I would get sitting in the waiting room for the doctor to call me in. Playing over and over in my head all the possible permutations of what he would say, preparing myself for the announcement of a definite number of days or months. A new deadline to defeat. Laughter was the best medicine. All I needed to save my mother was a new trick, a new secret. I have been cheating death ever since.

“Do you still keep that picture of her?” I asked.

He looked up, visibly astonished, then calm, almost resigned. He nodded and disappeared into another room. The lights of cars and traffic outside plowed ahead in violent pulses, but their noise could not penetrate the silence of the room.

He returned. “This is just a few months before,” he said, handing me a carefully folded polaroid. It showed an attractive dark haired woman, faintly eastern European, posing beside a boy of about thirteen or fourteen. Her hand resting on his shoulder had a maternal quality, but his arm around her waist did not reciprocate that particular sentiment. That was not what disturbed me about the photo. That oppressive feeling grew stronger.

“She wants to know what happened to him,” I said. I wanted now to get up and run, even at the risk of taking a bullet. I wanted not to know this secret.

“The so-called fiancé?” He scoffed. “He made a big fuss at first, but in the end he took the money and never looked back. That’s just how people are. If she had just listened to me then. I could’ve protected her. My dad wouldn’t have–yeah, I’m sure I could have convinced him. I still don’t understand why he had to go that far. I’ll never forgive my dad for that.”

I felt sick. I kept looking at the photo, every detail confirming my initial intuition, the slight pudginess, the tightness of the dress against her chest and abdomen–which I knew had once fit her perfectly, had been a gift passed through the hands of a tailor–trying to convince myself otherwise: she was not pregnant.

“Can you tell her that I loved her?” he said. “I really did. I remember her all the time. Samantha–that’s nothing serious. There hasn’t been anything serious.”

“And her family?”

“What? In Serbia? Old country,” he said in poor imitation of an accent. He shrugged. “They pretty much broke off contact after she came to America. And yeah, she had a brother too, but he lives on the west coast. Didn’t even come for the funeral, the bastard. Guess he had his own stuff going on.”

I looked up and into his eyes. My powers did not fail me even then; the answer was immediate: he didn’t know. Behind him, in the shadow of the hallway leading to his bedroom, I saw something congeal, a shape cradling another shape in its bosom. She wanted me to tell him. To hurt him. To reveal the secret.

But I returned the photograph, and took the money (that, in the end, he forced on me), and I took the secret back to the underground, and as is our art, I pretended not to know it until finally I could not be sure of it myself, for that is the oldest trick in the book, which is not played upon the audience, the mark or the crowd, but on the magician himself.

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Pub: 06 Apr 2025 20:32 UTC

Edit: 06 Apr 2025 20:58 UTC

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