It’s great to see smiles on their faces as I rip up oversized playing cards and then restore them, pull a chain through my neck, and toss my Morgan Dollar up and vanish it in midair.
Charlene helps me with some of the illusions, and even Xavier gets in on the act, doing a cups and balls routine and then showing the children how it’s done so they can perform it for their friends. He wants to do his new flaming bubbles effect, but as he’s pulling out the necessary chemicals, Ms. Sage-Turner quickly but politely puts a nix on that.
Derek sat on the edge of the bed and told Jeremy Turnisen what lay in store for him if he was not cooperative.
His eyes were wide with fear, his voice quavering. “If I can help you, yes, yes, I’ll do anything. Just please, don’t hurt me.”
In response, Derek freed the man’s hands, but left his feet bound to the chair.
“I want to show you something.” Derek nodded to Calista, who went to retrieve a tablet computer from the desk. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I want you to be as forthcoming in your answers as you can be. It’ll save us both a lot of time and effort.”
“I’m telling you,” Turnisen pleaded, “whatever it is you want, I’ll help you, but you have the wrong man. I’m just an engineer—”
“Where?”
“Where?”
“Where do you work? Where do you do your research?”
“I’m self-employed. I can give you my files, my client list, everything.”
“I’m sure you can.”
Calista returned and stood expectantly beside Derek. “Show him,” he said.
She swiped her finger across the screen to pull up the photos she’d taken for Derek out in the desert, the pictures of Heston Dembski, RN, former special assistant to Dr. Malhotra. There were a dozen photos of the man after Derek had finished his target practice on him.
Turnisen gulped, almost imperceptibly. “What is it you want from me?”
“The launch codes.”
“What?”
“The launch codes. For the test flight scheduled tonight at 8:46.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know where you work, Jeremy.”
“I told you, I’m—”
“Please. No lies.”
Calista scrolled through the photos again, to make sure Jeremy got a good look at all of them, but he closed his eyes and turned away halfway through.
“Why did you kill that man?” he whispered.
“To make clear to you how serious I am about getting what I want.” Derek patted Calista’s arm, and she bent and straightened out the plastic sheet that was spread out beneath the chair.
“What’s that for?” Turnisen’s voice trembled as he spoke.
“Easier cleanup.” The colonel removed the needle and heavy, black thread from his pocket. “Hold out your wrists.”
“No. Listen, I’m telling you, I—”
“Hold them out or I’ll start with your eyelids.”
The French Drop
The boy with progeria, who I find out is named Tim, isn’t there in the conference room, which is okay by me because I was actually hoping to talk with him privately.
Some of the children who couldn’t come are asleep, a few are contagious, one is in a coma. One burn patient, who tipped a deep-fat fryer of hot grease onto her head, was so easily prone to infection that she was isolated in a section of a room partitioned off with a plastic tent.
Since our performance tonight at the Arête was cancelled, I call off our afternoon rehearsal. That means we aren’t under any time constraints, so after the show, Xavier, Charlene, and I split up the remaining rooms and do some walk-around effects for the kids we’re allowed to see. I’m even able to do some card tricks for the girl with the burns, from the other side of the plastic sheet where the nurses do most of their work.
The last room I visit is Tim’s.
Children with progeria don’t need to stay in hospitals, but they often have recurring health issues that cause them to spend more time there than other children, and the nurse who’s leading me to Tim’s room informs me that that’s been the case with him.
We arrive and she knocks gently on the door. “There’s someone to see you, Tim.” We wait for him to invite us in, then we enter.
It’s hard to describe how a child with progeria looks.
Tim has lost nearly all of his hair. His face gives you the impression of an old man and a young boy mixed together into the same body. He has a high forehead and a sharper than average nose. A movie I once saw about Benjamin Button comes to mind, but even that doesn’t do justice to portraying someone who has progeria in real life.
Tim remembers me from the time I was here doing a show before, and his eyes light up. I join him by his bed and the nurse gives us some privacy, closing the door quietly behind her.
Tim is seven. Unless there are unforeseen complications or unexpected treatment breakthroughs, he’ll likely die of old age within seven or eight years.
My boys were five when they died, and even though Tim looks nothing like them, I end up thinking of them when I see him.
I do a few vanishes with the cards and then offer to teach him how to do a French Drop for coin tricks, but he tells me he already knows how to do it.
Sure enough, when I hand him my Morgan Dollar, he goes through the proper mechanics of the move. His technique is good, and even though I can follow the coin, to an untrained eye he would have likely pulled it off.
I’m impressed. “Who taught you how to do that?”
“Emilio.”
“Emilio Benigno?”
Tim nods. “He was my friend. He went to heaven.”
“Yes.” I fumble for how to reply. “He did.”
“We’d go and watch the fountains sometimes. You know, at the Bellagio. My parents are divorced. My dad can’t see me anymore. Emilio was nice to me.”
Emilio’s friendship with Tim is news to me. I knew about my friend’s shows here at the hospital, but I didn’t know about his personal connection with any of the patients. However, from all I do know about Emilio and his sense of compassion, the extra time he spent with Tim doesn’t surprise me.
Tim didn’t seem sad a moment ago when he said that Emilio went to heaven, but his mood has shifted and he becomes more melancholy. “He said he was gonna help me.”
“How was Emilio going to help you?”
“To not get old so fast.”
Immediately, Emilio’s transhumanism books and his research on the jellyfish and progeria come to mind.
“Do you know how he was going to do that? To help you not get old so fast?”
“The drug people.”
“The drug people?”
“From RixoTray. The doctor who asks me all the questions and gives me the medicines. Dr. Schatzing.”
Tim looks past me out the window. The whole idea of coming in here to cheer him up seems to have backfired, and it looks like the conversation is only serving to make him somber.
I’m trying to figure out the best way to turn things around again when he offers to show me another trick.
“That’d be great.”
He picks up the straw from his lunch tray, tears off one end of the paper wrapper covering it, and slides the part that’s still around the plastic up and down five or six times. Finally, he removes it, then slides the miniature pepper shaker to the center of the tray.
After carefully balancing the straw on the pepper shaker’s lid, he passes his hands close to the straw and it begins to spin.
“I’m not blowing it,” Tim tells me proudly. “It’s magic.”
I know it’s the static electricity that builds up from the paper rubbing against the plastic straw, but who’s to say there’s nothing mysterious or magical about that? An invisible force that seems to come from nowhere and that most people couldn’t explain if given the chance? Sounds like magic to me.