"It's not tricks. It's the beginning of our new life."
Conan had pocketed the tickets, thinking to himself that he wouldn’t be there, wouldn’t be at any hack magic show, and wouldn’t have booked a magician onto The Tonight Show, not for anything. He’d put the tickets in his pocket and looked out at the crowd as Joe had looked out, too, and had thought to himself this: Not gonna see me there. Then he, saw the crowd standing and applauding and he looked back at Joe. He thought, but didn’t say: You got a standing ovation? For giving me tickets? You didn’t even do a trick…
Joe had seen Conan looking at him, and had said: “The beginning. Of our new life. Come and see the show.”
Joe now pulled into the back alley behind the theater, parking his car near the stage entrance for the first rehearsal. He stopped ticking off entertainers in his mind, having gotten stalled trying to decide if Hulk Hogan had been a world-changer. True, he’d not done much, but there was no denying that everybody knew who he was. That was something in and of itself, wasn’t it?
There was a mousy looking woman outside the door, wearing a white blouse and gray skirt and with limp, flat hair, holding a clipboard and a cell phone in her hands.
“Mr…” she said as he closed his door.
“Joe,” said Joe. “It’s just Joe.” It had been, he knew, Joe Krzyzewski, but he didn’t acknowledge that ever, and had no reason to, having legally changed his name 7 years earlier to Joe.
“I’m from The Tonight Show,” the woman said. She held her hand out. Joe took it and looked at her.
“Yes?”
“We appreciated your inviting Mr. O’Brien last night and after talking it through today, decided that he would take you up on it.”
“So they sent you up here on short notice, huh?”
“Yes,” She said. She smiled. “I got up at 5 a.m. I’m exhausted.”
It was four p.m. She looked tired, he realized. The sun beat down on them, hot and close. “How long have you been waiting?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Not long,” she said. She pointed at the door. “They said in the front of the theater to wait back here.”
“Well, come on in. I’ve got a few things to look over and I’m doing a rehearsal on the stage tonight. Why did a producer have to come up here to let me know that Conan is going to come?” He figured he should refer to Mr. O’Brien as Conan if they were to be equals.
“We’d like to film some of it.” Joe had used the stage-door key he’d been given and opened the door, letting them into the cool, slightly-damp, dark back stage area of the theater. He closed the door behind them. “You know Mr. O’Brien’s method. He’ll come and mess around, make jokes, spend a day or two doing that and then put it on the air. The shows don’t start until 8 p.m., right?”
“Except for the last one,” Joe said. “That one starts at 6.” They walked around a few props and dressing rooms and out onto the stage, the large, dark auditorium looming out beyond them, lit only by dim lamps on the walls. “I’m glad he’s coming,” Joe said. “It’s going to be spectacular.”
“He was impressed with the crowd reaction you got last night, he said.” She looked around on the stage. “There’s not many props here.”
“No. No, there’s not.” Joe had brought in with him a case and he set it down, now, on the stage. He looked around and then up at her. “Can you step over there, please?” he asked her, pointing a little more towards what would be stage right, off by the curtains. She did that, saying:
“I’m Jackie, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Jackie,” Joe said and unclicked the locks on the case – which was itself slightly larger than a briefcase but slightly smaller than a suitcase. Joe lifted the lid up, keeping it between him and Jackie and she watched as he held his chin in one hand, kneeling, and his other hand traced around in the air, as though he wasn’t sure what to take out of the case. She watched him and wondered if he was putting on a show for her now, trying to be mysterious. His brow was furrowed by his face appeared uninvolved in the thinking, a blank slate.
Joe stared into the briefcase. He looked up at Jackie and said: “Today, it’s a briefcase.” He didn’t elaborate on what that meant. Then he rubbed his hands together, briskly, set his face, and plunged both hands in.
Jackie watched as he pulled a piece of ordinary-looking white chalk out, thicker than some chalk, about the size of the sidewalk chalks available in most drugstores and toystores. This one was white. Joe pulled it out, she thought, a little quickly and without a flourish. He quickly snapped the case shut but left it there, in the center of the stage.
“Okay,” he said, and stood up. He looked around. “Stay over there for a bit. What would be involved in this shooting?” he asked. Shooting? Jackie wondered for a second, as she watched Joe pace, and he looked up at her as he stood near the front of the stage. “Well?” he asked.
“Oh.” She suddenly got what he meant. She watched as he walked back towards the back of the stage in measured paces. “Not much. We’d scout out in the next few days. We were thinking maybe do some backstage stuff, show the theater, the preparations, and then maybe some stuff on opening night, too.”
Joe stood now at the back of the stage, chalk in hand. He bent down and looked at the floor. He held the chalk awkwardly.
“Don’t you have stage hands?” Jackie asked. “Assistants?”
Joe shook his head and held up his hand.
“Hang on a second,” he said. He said it simply but Jackie hushed up anyway, hearing something in his voice. Joe closed his eyes again. She saw him shake his head and move his free, non-chalk holding hand in the air, in the way that someone trying to do arithmetic in his head might. He’s putting on an act, she thought.
It didn’t seem that way, that he was putting on an act, just as it hadn’t seemed that he’d done anything really spectacular last night on the show; before he’d left, he’d promised a trick to Conan’s audience if they gave him another standing ovation. The crowd had leaped to its feet and begun applauding, roaring and cheering and Conan had looked out at the crowd, amazed at the reaction this Joe had gotten.
Jackie had been backstage, too, and had watched from the wings as the crowd had stood, beginning with some in the middle of the lower level of seats until eventually they all had been standing. Joe had remained seated next to Conan, calmly smiling at the crowd. They’d eventually quieted down as he’d waved a hand at them.
“Okay, so let’s see the trick,” Conan had said, wondering what it could be; this Joe had arrived without any equipment at all, just a dusty old duffel bag that he’d brought out onto the stage with him.
The crowd waited expectantly as Joe took a sip of his coffee, the cup that had been placed on the desk, and Joe then looked out at them.
“I’ll see you all opening night,” he said. Then he’d looked at one person in front of him, a young man wearing a plaid shirt, and said “Check your shirt pocket.”
The guy had looked, and pulled out a ticket, identical to the tickets that Joe had given Conan. He’d gasped, surprised. The remainder of the audience had sat, wondering: Is that the trick?
Jackie watched now, as Joe finished whatever he’d been mentally thinking about and began walking backwards in a crouch, chalk touched to the stage. It was, more or less, in the center of the stage and he traced a line from the back wall up towards the front. She was sure he was doing some kind of act for her but she held her breath anyway, waiting to see. As he got near the center of the stage, she noticed that the chalk line was perfectly straight. And she noticed that Joe’s hands were darker – sunburnt seeming.
“You,” Joe had said on the show last night. He’d pointed to a woman on the aisle, a little further back. “Check your purse.” The woman had opened her purse and pulled out a ticket, seeming genuinely wondrous, holding it up and laughing. Jackie wondered: How’d he get those people in the audience? Had he been talking to the crowds lined up outside. “You’ll want to go get tickets for all seven shows,” Joe told the lady as the camera man zoomed in on her smile and surprised expression.
Then Joe had turned back to Conan. “Not bad, right?”
“Well,” Conan said, not wanting to cast aspersions on his guest, but Joe hadn’t listened and instead had turned to the audience. “He’s not convinced,” Joe said, loudly. He’d turned towards the band. “Max – why don’t you guys all check your wallets?” Max had looked confused but had pulled his wallet out.
Before he could get it open, the guitarist had said:“Hey!” and his yelp of surprise was genuine. Jackie could hear it. The other band members, too, each had a ticket in their wallet. As the audience clapped, hesitantly, not sure if this was part of a gag or a set-up, Joe had turned and said:
“Still not convinced? Everyone: Check your pockets and wallet and purse.”
There’d been a rustle and mumble and shuffling and one by one surprised gasps or hollers or Heys! Or Wow and then a groundswell of applause had come up as people realized that they, too, had tickets, and they were not part of any act or set up or gimmick. Jackie had watched, backstage, and had, on the spur of the moment, checked her own jeans pocket.
She’d had no ticket.
She watched now as Joe continued crouch-walking backwards towards the front of the stage, tracing his line, his eyes closed, she saw, his hands definitely sunburnt. She looked at the case again. Powder? Spray-tan in the case? He was tricking her.
One, two, three steps more and Joe stood up and opened his eyes, the chalk line traced all the way to the front of the stage. “There,” he said, and looked over at Jackie. “Now, you were saying?” He asked, casually.
Jackie looked from the chalk line to him and then dropped her clipboard. “What…” she said, bending to pick it up and walking over to him.
“What?” Joe said.
Jackie pointed down and said “How are you doing that?”
They both looked down, then, and saw what had startled Jackie: In drawing the line, Joe had backed up and backed up until he’d ended up where he was now: Standing, chalk in one sunburnt hand and the other empty, but not on the stage.
Instead, he was two feet off the stage, floating in thin air.
Joe looked down and then back up and said “A magician never reveals his secrets.”
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