"It's true," Irma said. "I heard about it on the radio last week. It made me sick. I can't believe how rotten some people are."
Margaret moved closer to the girl who had spoken about the garbage cans; she was one of the youngest of the group, not more than fourteen or fifteen; the bones of her shoulders were visible through her unicorn T-shirt.
"My name is Margaret," she said. "You're Christine?"
"No, Karen," said the girl, with her mouth full. "That's Christine over there. Hi."
"Have you been away from home long?"
"Couple of weeks, I guess."
"Going back there sometime?"
The girl shook her head. "They don't want me anymore."
Margaret felt her eyes blurring. She reached for her beach bag, found her wallet and a tube of suntan lotion. She pulled out the bills without trying to count them. "You'd better take this," she said, handing Karen the tube of lotion. "And this." She pressed the money into the girl's hand. "Will you share it with the others?"
"Oh, yeah. Gee, thanks. Thanks a lot."
The sandwiches were gone; Gene handed out lemon tarts and poured coffee. The corners of the children's mouths were sticky yellow; their voices grew loud and cheerful. When Pongo collected the empty cups and began packing things away in the hamper, they glanced at each other and stood up.
"We've got to be going now," said Carl. "Really appreciate this -- that was really good food." The others came up to shake Gene's hand, and Karen kissed Margaret quickly on the cheek.
"Be careful," said Margaret, in a voice she did net recognize.
"We will. Good-bye!"
The children walked away, some with their arms around each other; they turned once or twice to wave. Beyond them, over the ruddy ocean, a line of pelicans was moving north. The birds drifted motionless for a long time. First one, then the next, beat its wings for a few strokes; then they drifted again.
"What's going to happen to those kids?" Margaret asked.
Linck said quietly, "They will survive, some of them. They are surplus children. We have them in Amsterdam also. In Bogotá there are thousands, sleeping in the streets. It's nothing new."
"Can't somebody do something about them?"
"There are various ways. One way is to put them into monasteries and convents. Another is war."
She turned to Gene. "Couldn't you -- ?"
"Take them in? Give them jobs on the grounds crew, or something like that? Yes, I could. And then what would I do with the next batch? There are hundreds of thousands of unwanted teenagers in this country alone."
After a moment she said, "I'm sorry."
"No, it's all right. I understand how you're feeling. 'Surplus children' is an ugly phrase. But that's what they are. Years ago I met a man who was beating the drum for population control. That was in the sixties. He was right, but he couldn't get anybody to listen to him. It's this funny idea we have about the future, that it's somebody else's problem."
"There are some very good organizations," Linck said.
"I belong to about thirty of them," said Gene, "but it isn't enough. It isn't working. Let's go home."
Later that evening Irma found Margaret in the patio, staring at the fountain. "Still thinking about those kids?"
Margaret nodded. "I know he's right -- he can't help them all, but it just seems -- "
"That if he wasn't a son of a bitch, he would have done something?"
"I didn't mean it that way."
"That's the way it is, though. When you get right down to it, Gene doesn't give a damn. Maybe it's because he was an only child. Or it could be that just because he was so big, he never could make friends with the other kids."
"It sound s terribly lonesome."
"There you go. Feeling sorry again for the poor rich man."
She smiled. "I was, wasn't I?'
"Sure you were, and so was I. That's what drives me crazy."
Chapter Twenty-one
Margaret was not quite sure what to make of Wilcox. He had fitted himself unobtrusively into the household, as if he had always been there. Under his easy flow of talk there was a feeling of reserve, of something not spoken. Was that it, or was it the deceptions he practiced on them all, with evident enjoyment, when he picked silver coins out of their ears or made fans of cards appear and disappear?
One afternoon she found him in the living room playing with some ping-pong balls on a marble-topped coffee table. One of them fell off, and he said, "Damn." He looked up. "Maggie, come and watch this, will you? I need the audience."
She sat down across from him. "What is it?"
"A new thing I'm trying. It may not be any good." He gathered up the balls in one hand, dropped them in a row on the table. While they were still bouncing, he passed his hand over them: it was the same row of bouncing balls, but now there were five instead of four. He did it again; now there were six. She couldn't see where the extra balls were coming from, although she leaned over to watch. Another pass, and there were five balls; then four; and finally a single ball tapping on the marble. Wilcox picked it up, tossed it into the air; she distinctly saw it rise, but it never came down. He grinned at her.
"How did you do that?"
"Tricks of the trade."
"I think that's so frustrating."
"Because you're not sure if it's real magic or not?"
"Well -- I know it isn't."
"But there's always a moment when you're not sure, isn't that true? I think that's the point. You know, when I was nine, I was a bit slow for my age, and I absolutely believed in magic. I thought it would be a great thing to learn how to do it, so I asked my mother to bring me a book from the library. Well, it was a disappointment at first, because what I had in mind was turning flowerpots into bicycles, or whatever, and this was all about deceiving people with matchsticks and rubber bands. But once I got over that, it began to be very interesting, especially the close-up work. The big stage illusions, the ones that mystify everybody, are actually quite easy. Those are mechanicals, you know, like the glass box on wheels -- a girl gets in, they cover it with a cloth and whirl the box around, then whip off the cloth and she's gone, or else the magician himself pops out. All the big theatrical illusionists are using that now -- you've probably seen it yourself."
"Yes, on television."
"Well, the only skill involved there is the skill of the people who invented the trick. Aside from that, it's all showmanship. People don't care so much about skill, they just want to be amazed. They like to believe in magic, just for a moment; I think that's what it's really all about."
Wilcox borrowed Irma's car every afternoon to drive into St. Petersburg and see his assistant. After ten days she was discharged from the hospital, and Wilcox brought her out to the house to say good-bye. Her name was Nan Leach; she was a tall, slender blonde, handsome rather than pretty; her right leg was in a brace, and she walked by swinging her leg from the hip. "It's still pretty stiff," she told them. "I'm supposed to have therapy when I get home."
Her right leg, stretched out in front of her with the foot on a hassock, was not quite so shapely as the other; it was swollen around the knee, and the calf looked shrunken.
"That's a shame," Gene said. "Let me see. Do you mind?" As the others watched, he knelt and put his fingers on her knee.
"No, that's all right," she said with an air of faint surprise, glancing at Wilcox.
Gene stroked her knee for a moment, then drew his hand away suddenly. Her body jumped a little.
"I'm sorry, did I hurt you?"
"No. It's all right, it just felt funny." She looked at Wilcox again. "We'd better go."
Wilcox kissed the women, Irma a little more thoroughly than Margaret. "Come back, Mike," said Gene.