Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

Nina’s dream: She was on a trip — she didn’t know where. She got cold, and went into a store to buy a coat. She bought it — a long black coat with a collar she turned up against the wind. She had not been upset that she was in a strange country, but when she left the store she was suddenly confused: Everything looked strange, and people came by talking in an unfamiliar language. The coincidence of having a dream, she said, that overlapped his dream: It was like walking down a street, thinking of a song, and suddenly the person you pass starts to whistle it. She had dreamed this: That standing on the sidewalk outside the store she had reached into the pocket of the coat, and she had been surprised to discover that there were mittens inside .

THE MAGICIAN’S name was George.

When Bobby saw him sitting on the steps of Cynthia’s building, he figured it out immediately: the path of flowers to the car; the bunch of flowers near the steps. As fast as she grabbed his arm, frightened, he understood and began to smile.

Harmless. It would figure that Bobby would think the magician was harmless. On the off-chance that he was harmless, she still did not want to stand and converse with him.

“I have a crush on you,” the magician said.

“I don’t even know this man’s name,” she said to Bobby.

“George,” the magician said. “I have to go back to California. I wanted to talk to you one more time.”

“We’re going out to eat,” she said.

Wrong thing to have said.

“Why don’t you come along?” Bobby said. He looked at Cynthia; he had just remembered that she was paying. Even Bobby was smart enough to figure out that this man wouldn’t be rolling in money.

They both looked at her: the boy who had found a puppy, and the puppy that thought it had found a home.

“I’ve had about all I can take,” she said.

“This is such a New York thing,” Bobby said. “Let me see that water pistol. Where’d you get that?”

“Hollywood,” the magician said. “The magic store I go to in Hollywood.”

“A magic store? Really? Are you a magician?” Bobby didn’t wait for an answer. “How did you two meet?” he said to Cynthia.

“In a laundromat,” she said. She wouldn’t look at the magician.

“You were so nice to talk to,” the magician said. He said to Bobby, “She was so nice to talk to.”

“Where do you want to eat?” Cynthia said to Bobby. She was walking fast. She could kill him. She could take one of his blue index cards and make it into an airplane with a sharply pointed nose and sail it into his eye. It was Spangle’s fault. Spangle’s friend. Spangle who had moved in with her years ago, when she didn’t really want him. And now he’d moved out, without even telling her, leaving her with a crazy friend — woods queer, she guessed — and a magician who followed her around and hounded her. At least he had said that he was going back to California.

“I can’t believe it,” Bobby said, shaking his head. “You were courting her. That’s so wonderful. She is special.”

“You’re her husband?” the magician said.

“Can we leave my life out of it?” she said. She stared at the magician.

Bobby said, “We just met.”

“I’m not coming to New Hampshire with you,” she said. “Why don’t you see if George wants to come?”

He nudged her. “Don’t hurt his feelings,” he said.

The magician was staring at the sidewalk.

“I did a magic trick with my class the first day of the semester,” Bobby said. “You know that old trick of folding a piece of paper into eight squares so that four of the pieces have two smooth edges? I had the students write down four writers they wanted to study, and I wrote down four writers I wanted to teach, and then I borrowed a scarf from one of my students — beautiful girl — and let her shuffle the pieces of paper on my desk. Then I picked four: three of them mine, one of them theirs. We read Proust, Mann, Flaubert and Richard Brautigan.”

“They like Brautigan, huh?” the magician said. “I like him too. I have all his books.”

“They didn’t put down Brautigan — I did. Flaubert was one of their choices.”

“I love it,” the magician said.

“She was kidding,” Bobby said. “I’m heterosexual. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to entertain you in New Hampshire.”

“What did I say?” Cynthia said. “Only that he should go to New Hampshire. You think everything is sexual.”

“Only in the summer, or when I’m teaching.”

“I’d like to see New Hampshire,” the magician said.

“The real place to see is Vermont. I used to live with her”—he hesitated—“friend in Vermont. Some Indian’s living there now, raising corn. That’s all right, I guess, but the house looked shabby. We did a lot of work on the house. There always was a problem with porcupines living underneath it, though. You’d hear them running and scratching all night. Find quills in the yard. A friend’s dog that was visiting attacked one of them and got a snout full of quills. Had to take it to the vet. I said, ‘I was trying acupuncture.’ Vet took me seriously. What a good time we used to have. Vermont was really the scene in those days. Still is, I guess. New Hampshire’s beautiful in its own way.”

They went to Mamoun’s, and sat at a table in the middle of the room.

“You know Blake’s poem about the lamb?” Bobby said, reading the menu. “Great poem. I can’t believe that pretty soon I’ll be standing in front of a classroom, smelling chalk. I’m very anxious to see if a certain young lady enrolls in my class again this fall, though.” He took Cynthia’s hand. “She can’t compare,” he said. “Idle interest.”

“What will you be doing in the fall?” the magician asked.

“I’m a graduate student,” she said. She stared at the menu. She felt young and stupid, like a teenager dragged along by her parents to meet some friend’s very nice son. Bobby could not possibly have thought that she would want to have dinner with some West Coast crazy who had been bothering her all summer.

“I hate New Haven,” the magician said. “I’m just staying at my mother’s place for a while. I didn’t grow up here, though. She moved here from Providence when my father died. Not much of a city, that I can tell.” He smiled at Cynthia. “Remember?” he said. “You asked me if I could change the color of your clothes.”

She said to Bobby: “I had put a red shirt in with the wash by mistake. That’s what he means.”

“The laundromats in California are nice,” the magician said. “California is nicer than the East.”

“What exactly do you do out there?” Bobby said. “Magic tricks? How does that work?”

“Oh,” the magician said, “I’ve got a rep out there. I do parties sometimes. Private parties. I do quite a few parties for a guy who lives out in Ojai.”

“How long have you been doing it?” Bobby said.

“Since I got out of college. During college, a little. I met a guy at the Santa Monica pier who got me interested in it. We used to set up on the pier and do some tricks. Now people are afraid to come around, because they think you’re going to ask for money. Or they’re too busy roller-skating.”

“So you do private parties,” Bobby said.