![]() "It's weird," Kathy told him once, "how well you know me." He was there in the drugstore when she bought her first diaphragm. He watched her shop for his birthday present. He learned about her friends, her teachers, her little habits and routines. Hershey bars, for instance-Kathy was addicted, she couldn't resist. It was sleight-of-body work, or sleight-of-mind, and over those cold winter days he was carried along by the powerful, secret thrill of gaining access to a private life. He liked melting into crowds, positioning himself in doorways, anticipating her route as she walked across campus. The trick was to be patient, to stay alert, ad he liked the bubbly sensation it gave him to trace her movements from spot to spot. Occasionally he'd spend whole days just tailing her. No great discoveries, but at least he knew the score. He understood her need to be alone, to reserve time for herself, but too often she carried things to an extreme that made him wonder. All this put a little chill in his heart. That fast-here, then gone-and he wouldn't see her again for hours, or until he found her holed up in a back carrel of the library. ![]() Without reason, usually without warning, she'd wander away while they were browsing in a shop or a bookstore, and a moment later, when he glanced up, she'd be cleanly and absolutely gone, as if plucked off the planet. It wasn't thoughtlessness, exactly, but it wasn't thoughtful either. They'd be at a movie together, or at a party, and she'd simply vanish she'd go out for a pack of gum, or so she'd say, and forget to return. In part, he thought, Kathy had brought it on herself: she had a personality that lured him on. Her competitive spirit made him proud she was a knockout in gym shorts.ĭown inside, of course, John realized that the spying wasn't proper, yet he couldn't bring himself to stop. As an athlete, he decided, Kathy wasn't much, but he got a kick out of the little war dance she'd do whenever a free throw dropped in. On Thursday afternoons he'd stake out women's basketball practice, watching from under the bleachers, taking quiet note of her energy and enthusiasm and slim brown legs. In a way, he loved her best when he was spying it opened up a hidden world, with new perspectives and new things to admire. He looked for signs of betrayal: the way she smiled at people, the way she carried herself around other men. He'd sometimes make dates with her, and then cancel, and then wait to see how she used the time. In the evenings he'd station himself outside her dormitory, staring up at the light in her room later, when the light went off, he'd patiently track her to the student union or the library or wherever else she went. Finesse and deception, those were his specialties, and the spying came easily. Intimate little items: what she ate for breakfast, the occasional cigarette she smoked. Like magic, he thought-a quick, powerful rush. He felt some guilt at first, which bothered him, but he also found a peculiar satisfaction in it. In early December he began spying on her. "Well, maybe you're right," he said, "but how do we know? People lose each other." He was picturing his father's white casket. "You're right," he said, "but it still worries me. Sometimes he'd jerk awake at night, dreaming she'd left him, but when he tried to explain this to her, Kathy laughed and told him to cut it out, she'd never leave, and in any case thinking that way was destructive, it was negative and unhealthy. The trick then was to make her love him and never stop. ![]() He was a senior at the University of Minnesota. Like cutting a tie and restoring it whole. "So what's new?" And they they'd talk for a while, quietly, catching up on things. "Well, I'm back," his father would say, "but don't tell your mom-she'd kill me." He'd wink and grin. He'd lie in bed at night imagining a big yellow door, and after a few minutes the door would jerk open and his father would walk in and take off his hat and sit in a rocking chair beside the bed. He liked watching his hands in the mirror, imagining how someday he would perform much grander magic, tigers becoming giraffes, beautiful girls levitating like angels in the high yellow spotlights-naked maybe, no wires, no wires or strings, just floating there.Īt fourteen, when his father died, John did the tricks in his head. ![]() But John Wade sometimes pretended otherwise, because he was a kid then, and because pretending was the thrill of magic, and because for a time what seemed to happen became a happening in itself. ![]() He placed a penny in the palm of his hand, made his hand into a fist, made the penny into a white mouse. He cut his father's tie with scissors and restored it whole. In the basement, where he practiced in front of a full-length mirror, he made his mother's silk scarves change color. When John Wade was a boy of twelve, his hobby was magic. ![]()
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