Time for the spinning quarters.Megan brought out a small round table, and Eloise went to work, materializing two quarters between her spread fingers and giving them a spin on the table. The quarters danced together, spinning around the table like a pair of figure skaters. It looked great, but …

Ehhh …only the closest tables could really appreciate the trick. The people seated farther back were having to stand, crane, try to see what was going on.

Bummer! Too small.The energy from the crowd was sinking like a bad air mattress. She was going to die up there.

This better be good.

Come on, come on, spread it out. Make it big.She got amid the tables, reached behind a lady’s ear, and brought back a quarter—she rolled her eyes a little: Riiight, as if you’ve never seen that one before.She set the quarter on the lady’s table, flicked it to get it spinning, then let it spin onto her fingertip and held it up for all to see.

Ah, they were amazed again.

Keep it close, right before their eyes… .

She went to the other side of the room and picked out a cute, buzz-cut ten-year-old. With clownish gestures she had him hold out both hands palm up, then place one hand atop the other, palm to palm. She mimed, Now lift your top hand away!He lifted his top hand away, and there was a quarter in his other hand. She got it spinning, perched it on the end of his finger, and now he was feeling great, a magician himself.

She pointed to the shirt pocket of one of the college guys. He checked, and there was a quarter. She perched it spinning on his fingertip, and he and his buddy immediately began studying it inches from their noses. They passed their hands around it, feeling for wires or strings; the buddy got out a pocketknife and held it close to feel for magnetism. Nothing there. They looked at her and she just shrugged a showy shrug: Beats me.

A fourth quarter came from the shoe of an older lady three tables back. The lady had long fingernails, but the quarter managed to stay on the end of one without slipping off. Now those folks back there had something to watch.

She pulled a quarter from her nose and milked the gag, wiping it on her coat sleeve and trying to get it to quit hanging and dragging from her fingers by an invisible “string.” Everybody was laughing so hard it made hercrack up. Finally she got it spinning on a table. One of the college girls sitting there was brave enough, and Eloise passed the spinning quarter to her upraised index finger. That got a response; the girl held her hand high to show everyone. She and her friends were totally enchanted.

Following Eloise’s lead, they all held their spinning quarters high like the Statue of Liberty and then gave them a little uptoss and caught them in their hands.

The tip can. Good idea.

She grabbed her can labeled TIPS from the counter and passed it around to collect the quarters, blowing kisses as everyone applauded. Hopefully they’d get the hint for later.

Okay, these nice folks were still hers.

She brought out the deck of cards—and her heart sank. She’d learned a lesson from the quarters routine, which was a heck of a time to learn it: the card tricks, like the quarter routine, would have worked fine for one table, just a few people at a time, but what about all the other folks in the room? Boy, they didn’t call it close-up magic for nothing.

She smiled, fiddled with the cards, fanned them, shuffled them… .

She did a waterfall, cascading the cards from one hand to the other, then switched hands and did it the other way.

She kept raising her feeder hand higher so the cards would drop farther to her other hand. It was getting verysporty.

The folks were still watching, still with her but only because they were expecting something.

She held her hands higher and waterfalled the cards in front of her eyes, one hand to the other, that hand to the other, over and over, her hands wider apart each time.

Could she do it? Would the cards do it?

Even though the cards had to be a blur to everyone else, as they flew past her nose she could see each card in perfect detail. She could touch the card’s edges without touching them, sense its weight, feel the air swirling around it, hear the little slap as it landed on its fellows in her lower hand. Was all this just part of being crazy? She had no time to think about it. The folks were waiting and she needed something.

She held her hands close together, palms up, deck of cards in her right hand. Eyes locked on the cards, she flexed the deck, building the tension.

She let them riffle loose, they sprang into the air in a stream and flew in a little arc to her other hand. Fffffflipppp!And that quick, it was over.

She made them arc again, from left to right, right to left, left to right, back and forth, then started spreading her hands, widening the arc. When her hands were two feet apart she started getting gasps and oohs from her audience.

She extended her hands out past her shoulders, and the cards sailed higher in a fluttering arc. Her eyes, her mind, every nerve ending in her body were locked on the cards, feeling, knowing, energizing. Flipflipflipflipflipthe cards riffled out of one hand; plaplaplaplaplaplapthey landed in the other.

When her arms were spread wide and the cards were soaring through an arc high above her head, over and back, over and back, she held the pose and the ta-da moment came. The audience applauded, cheered, whistled. They loved it.

She riffled off the last card, it sailed through the air after its fellows like the caboose on a train and landed in her other hand—plap! Her fingers, quivering a little, wrapped tightly around the deck as she wilted with relief. She made it clowny, but she wasn’t kidding.

While the folks were still shaking their heads, cheering and clapping, she caught a quick glimpse of Mr. Calhoun. He wasn’t smiling, but only because he was too dumbfounded.

She was trembling, but it wasn’t nervousness as much as raw adrenaline coursing through her, the power, the energy, the pure psychof being in this place in this moment, and now she wanted more.

The coin toss routine was next, mixed in with some cool surprises. Just remember, Eloise, reach out, make it big, draw them in.

She produced a quarter and zeroed in on a grandfatherly-looking gentleman at a front row table… .

She sat on her bed in her room at the Durhams’, dazed with exhaustion, too excited to sleep. It was going on ten o’clock. She was still in her Hobett outfit, her hair was matted from sweating under her hat, she hadn’t even washed off the whiskers, and now many of the little black dots were smeared.

She’d emptied the contents of her tip jar on the bed and counted out the money: $312.75. Now shewas the astonished one. Of course,she told herself more than once, you won’t do this well every night.

But making $312.75 in a half hour was quite affirming, to say the least, and she couldn’t stop replaying the evening in her head.

She could have kept going, but wrapped up her show right around 7:28 P.M. with a big finish and a final bow. Having nowhere to go to get “offstage,” she let Hobett talk in a goofy, bummish voice she borrowed from Red Skelton—one of her favorite TV shows only weeks ago—and visited with people. They loved her show, loved her, shook her hand, raved up one side and down the other, and—happy, happy, happy—they dumped tips into her tip jar hand after hand, the coins clinking, the bills … well, all that quiet was nice to watchfor sure.

“Do you do birthday parties?” a mom asked.

Was the pope Catholic? “Sure!”

They found an available date—for Eloise that was easy enough.

“Oh, and what do you charge?”