Larry beckoned. “Bring it on.”

“What about my license?” Pamela asked.

“Is it in your wallet?” said Eloise.

While Eloise crossed the room to go eye-to-eye with Larry, Pamela opened her wallet again and there, intact and in its rightful place, was her driver’s license.

Eloise was ready before the applause died down. She had Larry flip the coin and slap it onto the back of his other hand. She appealed to the crowd, “Okay, youcall it this time!”

“Heads!” called half the crowd.

“Tails!” called the other half.

She rolled her eyes. “They want it both ways!”

She nodded to Larry, who uncovered the coin on his hand—it was now twosilver dollars, one tails and one heads.

The house went nuts. Larry was about to give the dollars up, but Eloise wagged her head sadly. “They said heads and tails. These are tails and heads. Nuts!”

As Eloise overplayed some frustration, Larry dropped the two new silver dollars into an empty coffee cup. Now he had four.

She searched her pockets. “Burt? Anybody seen Burt?”

She looked at Larry and his group, then at the coffee cup on the table in front of them. They looked in the coffee cup.

There was Burt smiling up at them. Larry tilted the cup and let Burt roll into his hand while …

… Eloise found four silver dollars in her coat pocket and dropped them from hand to hand while everybody marveled and applauded.

“Say …” Big pitiful look. “Can I have Burt back?”

Larry was into it, goaded by his friends. “What about my four dollars?”

Eloise deadpanned to the crowd. The whole joke was working. “I’ll make it five.”

“What?”

“Give me Burt, I’ll give you five dollars.”

Larry tossed Burt to her. She caught the tennis ball, clapped her hands around it, then opened her hands.

Burt was gone. In her hands was a five-dollar bill. She held it up as the crowd roared and she looked at Larry. “Got change for a five?”

Larry followed her look to the coffee cup and then broke up with amazement and poured out the contents:

Five silver dollars.

They made the trade. Larry came away five dollars richer, and the folks were having the time of their lives.

“Now, what about Burt?” Eloise looked around, dug in her pockets. “Burt? Burt?”

Mark, a college student sitting in plain sight of everyone, noticed his computer case jiggling. Eloise was quick to notice it too and pointed, directing everyone’s attention. “Burt!”

Mark reached down, unzipped the case, and out hopped Burt, bouncing back to Eloise, who caught him and held him up for her big finish. That was all, folks. As the whole house rose to their feet, applauding, she doffed her hat, swept it before her in a big bow, tossed Burt into her hat, and put it back on her head.

Megan and Myron passed around the tip cans, and the dollars and coins piled in. Eloise went around the tables greeting, shaking hands, thanking the folks for coming.

“Hi. What’s your name?”

“Sandra Connelly. This is my husband, Ted.”

“Wonderful to meet you! Hi. What’s your name?”

“Mike.”

“Julie.”

“Christopher.”

Eloise shook their hands. “Wonderful to meet you!”

“Fantastic show! Incredible!”

“Hi. What’s your name?”

The man handed her a business card that read “J. Arnold Harrington, Theatrical Management,” and bore a Las Vegas address, an e-mail address, and phone numbers. “I’m Arnie Harrington. Will you be performing here tomorrow night?”

A hint of thrill brightened her face. “I sure will.”

“Okay. I’m crunched for time right now, but maybe we can talk tomorrow. Could we do that?”

And here came that thrill again, right to the surface. She broke into a grin. “Okay! That’d be great!”

She had to move on, shaking hands, saying hello, glancing back as he smiled at her. Megan and Myron were still moving around the room accumulating tips, mostly in bills.

Arnie watched Eloise Kramer moving through the crowd and shook his head, whistling in wonder. “Dane has to see this.”

chapter

16

Corporal James Dose was serving well in Afghanistan and was a little disappointed to learn that his tour of duty overseas had been cut short for minor medical reasons. Before he knew it he was Stateside, finishing out his army hitch at Fort Lewis, Washington, not far from his family in Tacoma. Given all this, it was time to get the family together for dinner and announce his engagement to Jennifer Long, a gal he’d been courting since high school. They gathered at the Quay, their favorite steak house on the shore of Puget Sound, and James had the ring in his pocket.

The dinner would end abruptly. He would never get a chance to toast the occasion.

Dane took one look at the poster in McCaffee’s front window and stopped dead in his tracks.

Arnie was clearly disgruntled to have to look back. “What?”

Dane’s eyes moved across the girl’s face. The Gypsy had become a clownish hobo, but those eyes and that smile were unmistakable. “I’ve met this girl.”

Arnie looked in through the window and could see the place filling up. More folks were coming from up and down the street even now. “Can we talk about it inside?”

Eloise Kramer. How could it possibly be?

“Dane! We’ve got to get in there if we want a table.”

He turned from the poster and followed Arnie through the door into McCaffee’s, a quaint cubbyhole of clamor now filling with a hodgepodge of people, all ages, urban to organic, having thirty different conversations as they crowded the tables and lined up at the order counter. Posters of Scarlett and Rhett, Bergman and Bogey, Cagney, DiCaprio, Buddy Holly, and Elvis decorated the sand- and rust-painted walls; ceiling fans spun lazily over their heads; drink, dessert, and sandwich menus shouted in loud, colored chalk from a blackboard behind the counter; coffee machines ground, tamped, spewed brew, and spit steam; servers were scurrying, and everywhere, in every direction, were cups of coffee, cups of coffee, cups of coffee.

Arnie found a table near the front window and tossed his hat on the table to stake a claim on it. Dane removed his coat and draped it over his chair, then stood a moment to size up the room. The open floor where the magician would be doing her act was several tables distant. He and Arnie would be watching over and through bodies and heads. And the noise in this place! If Eloise Kramer could sell her stuff in here, her whole approach to performance had to have changed drastically.

Arnie draped his coat over his chair and sat. He patted the table. “C’mon, sit down, sit down.”

Dane sat in his chair, elbows on the table, hands clasped under his nose, still looking around the place.

Arnie leaned in, trying to be heard above the ruckus. “You wanted a fresh start, right? That’s what you told me. You’re thinking about producing, promoting new talent, maybe putting a show together yourself.”

“And so?”

“So that’s what we’re doing tonight. You’re out of that house for a change. You’re circulating, you’re living, you’re scoping out new possibilities. Are you listening?”

“Arnie, she’s a street magician. She was busking out on the sidewalk illegally, freezing her buns off and fumbling… . I had to show her the right way to do a Bentley count.”

He looked at Dane crookedly. “Are you sure you have the right girl?”

There were things Dane could say: “Well, if I do, things have really changed.”

And there were thoughts he wouldn’t share with anybody: She’s just a young girl minding her own business, it’s not her fault, I don’t even know her, I’ve been off my medication for more than a month now so hopefully she won’t bother me, and I have to remember—remember!—that I’m an emotional train wreck.

Eloise Kramer? Where’d she get that name?