Free Bjorn! on the Fourth of July (A Barbara Marr Short Story) by Karen Cantwell

I blame myself. I showed her the poster.
    Bjorn! What kind of name is that for a
magician, anyway?
    See, my youngest daughter Amber was going through
a new phase. She'd had her fairy phase, her Disney Princess phase, and her
Josie and the Pussycats phase. Now she was going through a Houdini phase. Harriette Houdini to be precise. A character in a series of early readers she'd
found in her first grade classroom. Amber had a new obsession – magic. Okay. I
could deal with that. In fact, not all girls want to be magicians, so I
actually liked the break from traditional female stereotyped career
aspirations. She didn't want to starve herself half to death to be a supermodel
– she wanted to be a magician. Pretty cool.
    So, I showed her the poster.
    I was optimistic and had energy when I showed
her the poster.
    It was only 78 degrees outside when I showed
her the poster.
    And, if I had to be entirely,
one hundred percent honest... I really thought I could convince Howard
to take Amber to see Bjorn! on the Fourth of
July when I showed her that poster.
    But, when I climbed out of bed at six a.m. on
the day of the big event, I wasn't optimistic, I was pessimistic. And I
certainly wasn't energetic. No, no, no. I was exhausted from attempting to
sleep in an oven of a house whose air conditioning had gone on the fritz in the
middle of the most horrendous heat wave Rustic Woods had seen in years. Seven straight days of 100-plus degrees with humidity so thick that
the mosquitoes were wearing oxygen tanks. And trust me, when your worst
menopausal hot flashes visit you between midnight and three in the morning and
you sleep next to a man who somehow radiates more than his 98.6 degrees of body
heat, that wonky thirty-year-old ceiling fan over the bed just doesn't cut it.
    I figured that maybe, if I was lucky, I'd
managed two, maybe two and a half hours of sleep somewhere in there during the
night. I was going to need coffee and I was going to need lots of it. Iced.
    So I took a cold shower, slipped into a pair of
skimpy shorts and a tank top, and made my way downstairs grumbling the entire
way. Why? Why did the AC have to go out the day before a major holiday? What
sort of Karmic crime did I commit? Did I kill one too many spiders when I could
have just removed them humanely? That was probably it. I knew my fear of
spiders would come back to haunt me some day. See, removing spiders doesn't
solve the problem because they'll just come back into the house and I'm sorry,
but spiders scare me worse than Mel Gibson mug shots.
    I was hunched over a bowl of Captain Crunch at
our kitchen table when Amber plopped into the chair next to me shoving the Bjorn! poster in my face.
    Her own smile formed a crescent from one ear to
the other. "Are you ready to be amazed, Mommy?"
    She was referring to the words on the glossy
page, in brilliant gold font, which read as follows:
    Bjorn!
    on the Fourth of July
    at the Rustic Woods Independence Day Festival
    Magic
like you've never seen before
    Prepare
to be amazed!
    Noon
on the Lake Muir Stage
    Underneath was a publicity headshot of a
dashingly handsome, shockingly blond young man with a politician's smile and
sparkling, white teeth.
    Like I said, it looked like a great idea two
weeks earlier. Now? Not so much.
    "Honey, I think your daddy is taking
you."
    Her head shook vehemently while her smile
drooped. "No he's not. He's taking Callie and Bethany to a five cake. He
just told me. Usually I'd beg to go because you know cake is my favorite food,
but I want to see Bjorn more. It's magic like you've never seen."
    Yes, yes. I know. I showed her the poster.
    Howard bounded into the kitchen too full of
energy and definitely dressed for a run. He opened the refrigerator door and
retrieved the orange juice carton.
    "You're not really still planning to take
the girls to run that 5K today, are you? It's like,
two hundred degrees out there."
    "Barb, give me a break. It's seventy-two degrees, I checked. The run starts at