Dear diary,
The most popular routine that Tara and I performed in our days as magician-and-assistant was the trick called “Is Your Blower Motor Functioning?” The way that it worked was as follows.
We enter the spotlight and take a bow, and then I ask the members of our audience to raise their hands if they own a house with an air-conditioning unit. Invariably every hand in the auditorium shoots up. Then I ask them to keep their hands raised if this A.C. unit of theirs is currently operational. All the hands remain held high — some even start waving a little, as if they have a testimony to add. Then I announce:
“Ah, you’re all so confident that your A.C. is working? Well humble yourselves, because its motor blower has malfunctioned and the unit is stalled, just like when our 1902 Studebaker Electric stalled in the cornfields of Iowa before our first show, exactly forty years ago, on this very day.”
Then I place onto the opaque projector a photo showing Tara and I standing at either side of our Studebaker and smiling.
“See the Death Bag packed in the back of the vehicle?” I ask, using my wand to trace a circle around the sight in question. Then I say: “Now run home and gauge whether my prophecy about your A.C. checks out. Go ahead, I’ll wait right here until you return.”
So the audience half-confusedly leaves the auditorium and endures the ritual of having their left hand temporarily tattooed with an official “Permission to Return to the Magic Show of Bryan and Tara” stamp, which image incidentally contains a unique barcode that allows us to track the fate of each person’s soul (and, yes, this barcode is prefixed “666”). — Then all these paying customers drive to their respective houses and check their thermostats and gasp to see that they all display a message about the blower motor malfunctioning. A quick glance at the “troubleshooting” section of their A.C. instruction manuals reveals that there is no way to fix this problem — everyone henceforward shall simply need to live in fear of their home’s climate crashing and burning.
The audience now begins to shuffle back into the auditorium, little by little. Their eyes are red from weeping and substance abuse. When the last member returns (never does anyone choose to use this opportunity to skip the second half of the show), I lean down so that my face is closer to my lapel mic and proclaim in a menacing tone: “I was right, was I not?”
And the audience sez in unison: “Yes, Bryan.” For they are hypnotized now.
“I bet you all wonder how I did that,” I taunt them further.
And they reply again: “Yes, Bryan.”
But I just waive off the notion of revealing the secret, and instead I maddeningly send them out into the world with the single command: “Go now, and love one another.”
Then all the lights are cut, and Tara and I stumble offstage and run to our Studebaker as fast as we can. We hop in and speed off, while the rest of the audience (who remain hypnotized and are thus forever compelled to obey that last charge that I gave them), laboriously grope their way to the exits and spend the rest of the day trying to schedule an appointment with a repairperson to service their blower motor.
§
“I hope we get good reviews after that last trick,” I say to Tara, as we drive down the road obeying all traffic laws.
“Why would we not?” she replies. “Last week I paid off all the critics in both Indiana and Pennsylvania, where we did our last shows. The Pennsylvania reviews just came in, and they say we’re a hit. One of them said that we should even expect a telephone call from Broadway. (Recall that this name signifies our eon’s best theaters.) And I quote: ‘Bryan and Tara are such a good magician-and-assistant combo that I will give one million dollars to anyone who can prove that a few days after tomorrow they did not receive a visit from the voice of Broadway.’”
“The voice that owns all Broadway Theaters, really?” I take my eyes off the road for the remainder of our conversation. “Isn’t Broadway a STREET, tho? I’m afraid that this good news cannot be true; for, consider it from a strictly literal perspective: How does a road paved with asphalt call out in spirit-form to a duo of humans who have mastered the Dark Arts?”
“By using a telephone booth, like the one from The Birds (1963) which we always use, while all the seagulls are slamming into it. Are you seriously asking this?” Tara delivers her lines deadpan.
“But how does a whole long street fit inside of a glass booth?” I say. “That’s conceptually perplexing.”
“It’s no less farfetched than a Burning Tyger cramming himself into a telephone booth to call a suburban housecat,” sez Tara; “or a Giant Squid transmogrifying into an insurance executive after emerging from exactly the same glass booth.”
I shake my head, trying to stop believing: “I’m too distracted by this thought to be able to drive safely,” I cry. And we see in the corner of the shot that a continuous line of police cars is being run off the bridge that our Studebaker is driving down. Each vehicle that veers leftward falls into the Pacific Ocean; and whoever veers rightward falls into the Atlantic. This is an expensive shot, because we must pay tens of thousands of background actors to embrace their own demise for the sake of our movie. And they must have a clean driving record and possess their own cop car.
“Hey,” Tara nudges my shoulder in a friendly way and lifts the pocket square from my suit coat to wipe the teardrop from my cheek, “cheer up, it’ll all make sense when we finally get to heaven.” Then, to improve the mood inside the Studebaker, she swivels around and reaches into the back and pulls the top hat and the rabbit out of our Death Bag. Hiding the rabbit in the hat when I’m not looking, she then carefully places the hat upon her head, and it lurches back and forth of its own accord slightly. She also retrieves the magic wand and taps me with it while I’m staring at nothing in particular, lost in my wandering thoughts while driving down the highway; and she sez: “Bry, hey Bry — look at me.”
I focus on Tara, and note that she’s sporting the top hat, which is wiggling slightly; also she’s holding the magic wand like she’s about to cast a spell.
“Watch this.” She taps the side of the hat with the wand and sez: “I now introduce you to a childhood pal of mine, whose name is Hocus Pocus, alias Hip-Hop, also known as Abracadabra, soft bride of Ialdabaoth.” Then she lifts the tophat and reveals that there’s a rabbit on her head. The creature continues obsessively sniffing and sniffing.
I smile and reach forward to pet the cute little fuzzball, but it recoils in fear and leaps out the window. — Instead of plummeting into the ocean, however, there happens to be a fire engine passing us on the right at that instant, so the bunny lands on a spotted fire-dog who is riding the ladder at the back of the vehicle.
NOTE. This is the second time, in my career as a writer, that I have compelled a bunny to engage in an interspecies relationship with a canine: for the gentle reader will recall that near the beginning of my fake novel Detective Bryan (2020), I arranged for the little dog Toto from The Wizard of Oz (1939) to enter wedlock with the pink-eyed rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). It is this level of attention to detail that causes my books to dominate the world’s Literary Canon.
In sum, because my fluffy friend dodged my advances, it happened that instead of petting the hare, I ended up stroking Tara’s hair. And this pun was intended.
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