So, here I am.
But this trip is nothing like debunking a roadside psychic. The Lawson Research Center, or LRC, headed by theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Dr. William Tanbyrn, has big dollars, big names, and a lot of credibility behind it.
It’s true that since Dr. Tanbyrn started getting deeper into the study of the roots of consciousness, he’d fallen out of favor with some of the mainstream scientific community, but most of those scientists were discounting his findings without analyzing or carefully investigating them. It seems that for a lot of people, just the fact that he’s now at the Lawson Research Center — a facility known for investigating the paranormal while also serving as a New Age conference center — is enough to undermine his credibility.
Needless to say, his most recent test results on mind-to-mind, nonlocal communication were controversial; the findings were widely disputed or simply disregarded, as were Dr. Dean Radin’s in the books The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds. However, Dr. Tanbyrn’s research had made it into three peer-reviewed journals and, supposedly, had been replicated by two researchers in Sweden, although as far as Fionna and Charlene had been able to tell, that study hadn’t appeared yet in any of the literature.
In essence, Dr. Tanbyrn and his team were claiming proof of unconscious psychic activity, or psi, saying they actually had hard data to back up the existence of some forms of telepathy. They claimed to have facts — scientific evidence, not just anecdotes of folks saying they could read other people’s thoughts.
I find that all pretty hard to swallow.
Whenever someone claims psychic activity — whether it’s a TV psychic, the gypsy at the fair doing cold readings, or a multimillion-dollar research center, my con-man radar goes up. As Xavier likes to say, “Wherever there’s someone out to make a buck, there’s someone about to lose his shirt.”
I have some ideas on how Dr. Tanbyrn and his team are faking the findings, but I need to be sure. Get it all on film. That’s what my three friends are going to help me do.
Charlene isn’t at the rest stop when we arrive.
While Xavier heads to the vending machines for some Gatorade and Cheetos, I look over my notes about the center where Charlene and I will covertly spend the next three days.
But after a few moments I hear a girl in the vehicle next to me crying and see the family with the ten-year-old boy that passed us earlier. The stressed-out-looking mom is urging her two kids out of the SUV.
“I don’t care if it’s a ten-hour drive.” She’s clearly exasperated. “Please, you have to get along with your sister.” Her kids look as weary as she does. The girl, who’s about seven or eight, wipes a tear from her eye.
Go on. It might help.
I slip out of the van, lean against the door, and pull out the 1895 Morgan Dollar I always carry with me. Rachel and I didn’t wear wedding rings, but since I was a numismatist, she insisted we exchange coins. This is the one she’d given me at our wedding seven years ago. It was by no means my most valuable coin, but being worth $125,000, it wasn’t one that I was about to use to buy a lottery ticket.
I accidentally-on-purpose let it drop. It rolls toward the boy.
After a glance at his mother for permission, he picks it up and hands it to me.
“Thanks.” But as I accept it, I vanish it from my hand. “Hey, where did that go?” I act shocked that it’s gone.
Both he and the girl search my hands, then the ground. I turn my pockets inside out to show them that they’re empty, and that’s when I palm the rest of the coins I’ll need. Then I pretend to notice something beside the boy’s arm. “Hang on. There it is.”
I reach over and pull half a dozen, more commonplace silver dollars one at a time from his left armpit, letting them drop to the parking lot.
“Did you see that, Mommy!” the girl exclaims. She’s definitely not crying now. Her brother searches both of his armpits for more coins. I gather up the ones that fell.
“Yes. I did.” Their mother is eyeing me a little suspiciously, as if I’m the psychopathic magician she’s heard about who lures kids away from their parents by doing coin tricks for them in rest stop parking lots.
Xavier is returning now, snacks in hand. He sees me entertaining the family and tries to hide a half-smile.
I do a couple more tricks — I’m in my element and it feels good — then I see Charlene pull into a parking spot a few cars away, and I tell the kids, “I didn’t realize it before, but I can tell you two are good at magic too.”
They look confused.
“Go on, reach into your jacket pockets.” With the sight angle of the mother and the attention of the kids focused on my right hand, the two left-handed drops I did a few moments ago while I was finishing the second-to-last trick hadn’t been easy, but after twenty-five years of doing this, I’d managed to pull it off.
The kids reach into their pockets and are each astonished to find a silver dollar.
“I told you. It’s magic.”
“That was really good,” the woman tells me, finally sounding a little more at ease, then nudges her kids toward me. “Go on, give the nice man back his money. And thank him for the magic show.”
Though visibly disappointed that they can’t keep the coins, the children obediently offer them to me.
“Oh, those were in your pockets, not mine. I couldn’t take those.” I wink at their mother. “I hope you have a great trip.”
At last, with a word of thanks, she allows the kids to accept the silver dollars, then corrals them toward the restrooms.
Charlene is getting out of the car, and Xavier, who has a mouthful of Cheetos, waves to her but speaks to me in between crunches. “You just can’t stand it, can you?”
“Stand what?”
“Seeing kids cry when you know you can make ’em laugh.”
“What can I say. It’s my only redeeming quality.”
“You’re pretty good at blackjack.”
“True.”
Charlene rounds the van. “Hello, gentlemen.”
We greet her and she watches me pocket my remaining coins. Xavier, who’s deep into his bag of Cheetos now, licks some cheese powder from his fingers.
Charlene sighs good-naturedly. “I see you’re both up to your usual tricks.”
“Old habits.” I put the last coin away.
“How many silver dollars have you given away to kids over the years?”
“A couple, I suppose.”
“Uh-huh.”
She smiles and it looks nice. Brown-haired and congenial, Charlene Antioch has a girl-next-door innocence about her, but also a slyly sexy side that she keeps hidden except when onstage in my show — that is, when I still did stage work. I don’t know how many times in the last six years I’ve made her vanish, sliced her into pieces, or let her chain me up and seal me in a water tank. But I haven’t done an escape in over a year. The thought of Rachel and the boys in the van, trapped, drowning, has just been too much for me. I can’t even stand being in small, cramped places anymore.
An escape artist who’s claustrophobic.
So now he makes films exposing fake psychics.
Pathetic.
Today Charlene, who’s thirty-two but looks twenty-five and is a chameleon when it comes to outfits, has her hair in a ruffled, earthy hairdo that might’ve actually looked more natural on Xavier than on her. Birkenstocks, a button-up shirt, and tan Gramicci climbing pants round out her neo-progressive nature-lover outfit. Undoubtably, she chose it because of the center we’re heading to. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so particular — black jeans, a faded T-shirt from one of the half-marathons I ran last year, a three-season leather jacket. Also black.