Read Online The Confabulist by Steven Galloway - Free Book Online

and took a card, looked at it, and smiled. What a smile. I felt as if I’d fooled the world into believing I was capable of greatness.
    “Put it facedown on the table.” I broke the deck in half at the middle and placed her card in the break. I had swing cut the cards, which means that when you cut the deck you move the top half from one hand to another, so that the top card becomes the card in the middle, and the bottom card ends up next to it. I knew that whatever card Clara had chosen was now in the middle of the deck between the ace of spades and the three of diamonds.
    I then broke the deck slightly above the middle and riffle-shuffled the cards. This might add a card or two between the ace and the three, but it wouldn’t change the general ordering of the three key cards.
    “Now for the hard part.” I fanned the cards out on the table face up. “I will memorize the order of the entire deck of cards.”
    Clara laughed as I made a show of holding my thumbs to my temples and squinting. After a few seconds I said, “Got it.”
    “Really?”
    “Absolutely. I’m going to turn around and close my eyes. I want you to move the card you selected to a different spot in the deck.”
    I turned away and waited for her. Between the ace of spades and the three of diamonds were two cards, the five of hearts and the tenof clubs. Whichever one of those two was missing would be the card she’d chosen.
    “You can turn around,” she said.
    I turned around and looked down the entire length of the deck. I stopped when I got to the ace. Next to it was the five of hearts, then the ten of clubs, then the three of diamonds. None of the cards had moved. Something had gone wrong.
    Clara watched me and seemed to understand that the trick had failed. I frowned and looked at the cards again, then up at her. “I think I screwed it up.”
    She leaned over the table and kissed me. I forgot about the stupid card trick. She tasted like lilacs.
    “Who cares,” she said. “I don’t like you for your magic tricks.”
    The beer hall was poorly lit. Will was sitting at a small table in the back and was a couple of beers ahead of me. He grinned at me as I sat, and pushed a mug across the table.
    “You look like a kid who’s just seen his first naked lady,” he said.
    I hadn’t been aware there was any look on my face. “Shut it.”
    He pretended to flinch. “This is how you treat me after what I’ve got for us?”
    I drank a good third of the glass, set it down, and wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “What exactly is it you’ve got for us?”
    He reached into his coat pocket and handed me four small pieces of paper. They were tickets to Harry Houdini’s show the following night at the Princess Theatre.
    “How did you get these?” I’d tried all week to get tickets.
    He shrugged. “They fell off a truck.”
    Houdini fascinated Clara. He’d performed earlier that day at McGill, but the place was so packed we couldn’t get in. I’d never seen such a crowd before—there were people up on ladders in the student union building. Clara and I had hung around for a while before giving up, and she’d been disappointed about it.
    I stayed out drinking with Will for two or three more hours, celebrating our good fortune. It was too late to go to Clara’s and tell her the good news unless I wanted to have a run-in with her father. Eventually I stumbled out into the street. It was a crisp October evening, but I had enough beer in me not to feel the cold.
    After about a fifteen-minute walk, and some trouble getting my key into the lock, I wobbled my way up the stairs and made it into my room. On the desk was a stack of mail that I’d tossed there that morning. At the bottom was a letter addressed to me in my father’s handwriting. My father wasn’t one to write.
    I sat down and opened the letter. The words made no sense. I understood each of them but couldn’t string them together. I felt sick, and I could feel the blood pumping through my