“No, but I went to Penn and Teller in Vegas with my brother when he graduated from med school. Those guys rock. Chase and I were determined to figure out how they pulled off every single trick.”
“That’s what seeing Copperfield was like for me.” She leans against the railing. We’re surrounded by people—tourists and locals. Some snap photos, others stare at the sea, and still others tap, tap, tap away on their phones. A mom with a big blue shoulder bag holds her young son’s hand as he gazes at the water. “We went to see his stage show when I was a teenager, and I was dying to know how he did this crazy trick where he selected random people in the audience and then had them reveal facts about themselves, like they’re wearing green boxers, or their favorite number is forty-nine.”
I haven’t seen that show, but I get the concept. “And the answers are actually inside a locked box that’s been on the stage the whole time?”
“Yes! Exactly. And I tried to work out if the audience members could be plants, and if not, then how and when did he or his crew get the information from them into the sealed boxes within the three minutes they were on stage, with the boxes hanging from the ceiling the whole time. Maybe it’s the engineer in me, but I was dying to know how he did it.”
“I’m the same. Chase is, too. After we saw Penn and Teller, we were determined to figure out this one trick where they put an audience member’s cell phone inside a fish and somehow the phone rang from the fish.”
“Ooh, I want to know how that’s done. Did you find out?”
“We tried. It drove us insane. At the show, they put the phone in a bucket on stage, then twenty seconds later, the phone rang in a box on an empty seat in the audience, and in that box was a fish and in that fish was the phone. After the show, we got on YouTube and looked up all the videos we could find of the fish in the phone. Every single one, I swear,” I say, recalling the plethora of search permutations we plied Google and YouTube with to find the answers. “Was it a real dead fish or a fake dead fish? Did they record the sound of the phone ringing and then play that back? We had to know. And we thought we could figure it out.”
“The mechanic and the doctor, after all,” she says, tucking a few windswept strands of hair behind her ear. “Please, please, please tell me how they made a cell phone ring from inside a fish. The answer has to be online somewhere. Did you find out?” She wobbles for a moment. I dart out a hand, curling it over her hip to steady her.
“Thank you. Darn sea legs.”
Nice legs. Gorgeous legs. Strong legs, I want to say. But I don’t. “You’d think the answer would be somewhere on the web. And we did unearth a few details here and there, but there was always some missing piece.”
“That’s how the Copperfield show was for me, too,” she says, shutting her eyes briefly and drawing a deep breath. She opens them. “You can make these logical conclusions about how he did a trick, and you can make assumptions, but then . . .”
I pick up the thread. “But when you get to the heart of the illusion—how he pulled it off—there are always some parts that will never make sense.”
“Maybe it’s a sign that we’re supposed to just enjoy magic shows more?”
“Or maybe our enjoyment comes in trying to figure it out.”
“I do like that part.” She smiles faintly, then she presses her fingertips against her temples. “I think I’m getting a headache.”
I furrow my brow. “You need something for it?”
She winces and closes her eyes again. When she opens them, she tips her forehead away from the water. “Mind if we go inside? I just want to sit down for a minute.”
“Let’s go,” I say. She walks ahead of me, slower than usual. Must be those sea legs.
When we reach the doorway to the interior of the ferry, she sways and shoots out an arm to grab the wall. I slide in instantly, wrapping my hands around her shoulders. “You okay?”
Her hand flutters to her forehead, but she doesn’t answer. I guide her over to the seats, and she plops down with far less grace than I’ve ever seen in her. “My head,” she moans as she drops her forehead into her hands and yanks out her hair-tie, letting the chocolate strands spill over her shoulders. “Everything is moving.”
Oh shit. I think I know what’s going on now. “Henley, do you get seasick?”
“I’ve never been on a ferry, remember?”
“Have you been on a cruise or a boat?”
“Not since I was a little kid. Remember? I like roads.”