Free Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers Page B

loved his mother then and had known how to say it, maybe with a flourish, and his unguarded love for her had made his apartness unimportant to him and her, and now she was so proud that he had made it, was a professional magician, traveling the world making magic, welcoming magic into his life. All that, Josie thought, and these elderly assholes wouldn’t clap for him.
    Josie downed half her pinot and gave the pretty magician a whoop. If no one else appreciated him, she would. Every time he asked for applause, which was often, she yelled and whooped and clapped. Her children looked at her, unsure if she was being funny. Charlie turned to her and smiled nervously.
    Now the long-legged woman was helping the pretty magician into a big red box. Now she was turning it around and around. It was on wheels! Everything in the act had to be on wheels, so it could be turned around. It was a rule of magic onstage that everything must be turned around and around, to prove there were no strings, no one hiding just behind. But in its absence did the audience ever wonder about the turning around? Did they ever ask: Um, why hasn’t someone turned the box around? Turn the box around! My god, turn it!
    Now the sparkly assistant opened the box. The pretty man was not in the box! Josie whooped again, clapping over her head. Where had he gone? The suspense was fantastic.
    And now he was next to them! Suddenly a spotlight was on their table, or near it, because the pretty man was next to them. “Holy shit,” Josie said, loud enough that the pretty man, whose hands were outstretched, again asking for applause, heard her. He smiled. Josie clapped louder, but again the rest of the audience didn’t seem to care.
He was up there,
she wanted to yell to them.
Now he’s here!
    You fuckers.
    Up close she saw the magician was wearing a tremendous amount of makeup. Eyeliner, blush, maybe even lipstick, all seemingly applied by a child. Then the spotlight went dark, and he stood for a moment, next to their table, hands up, while a second magician appeared onstage. Josie wanted to say something to the pretty man, a heaving silken silhouette a few feet away, but by the time she arrived at what she would say—“We loved you”—he was gone.
    She turned to the stage. The new magician was less pretty.
    “This is the one from Luxembourg,” Charlie whispered.
    “Hello everyone!” the new magician roared, and explained he was from Michigan.
    “Oh,” Charlie sighed.
    The Michigan magician, red-haired in a white shirt and stretchy black pants, was soon in a straitjacket and was hanging upside down twenty feet above the stage. He explained, his breath labored and his arms crossed like a chrysalis, that if he did not escape from the straitjacket in some certain amount of time, something unfortunate would happen to him. Josie, trying to get the attention of the waitress, had not caught exactly what that consequence was. She ordered a second pinot, and soon some part of the contraption holding the magician was on fire. Was that intentional? It seemed intentional. Then he was struggling in an inelegant way, ramming his shoulders against the canvas jacket, and then, aha, he was free, and was standing on the ground. An explosion flowered above him, but he was safe and not on fire.
    Josie thought this trick pretty good, and clapped heartily, but again the crowd was not impressed. What were they waiting for? she wondered. Fuckers! Then she knew: they were waiting for the magician from Luxembourg. They did not want domestic magic, they wanted magic from
abroad
.
    The man from Michigan stood at the edge of the stage, bowing again and again, and instead of the applause growing, it dissipated until he was bowing in silence. Josie thought of his poor mother, and hoped she was not on this cruise. But she knew there was a very good chance the Michigan magician’s mother was on this cruise. How could she not be on this cruise?
    Now a new magician appeared. He had a high