The Final Act

The children’s eyes grew wide as saucers as his weathered hand skillfully produced a quarter from behind the boy's ear. It was exactly the one thousandth time he had performed this trick. He was tired.

He scanned the room, taking in the ambiance from what would be the final act of a long and storied career. The assembled group of preschool-aged children were huddled in the center of the room, all held at full command of his every movement. Along one wall was a set of wood cubicles, each bearing the child’s name and along the other, a series of individual crayon-drawn stick figure silhouettes.

He closed his eyes, summoning the will of a thousand combustion engines, searching for a burst of inspiration to keep him going. The tanks were empty.

“He’s a wizard!”, one girl shouted, referencing the nap-time fairytale she had heard just an hour before. The crowd erupted in a series of high pitched gasps and squeals. He felt nothing.

He took a deep breath in as he prepared for his final trick. “This is it…make this one count,” he said to himself.

***

The sun’s rays bore down like a two-ton weight on their sweat-slicked foreheads as a gale force dusty wind whipped up across the sandy terrain, displacing Job’s homemade cape across the front of his body.

Being a devout Christian, his mother had given him the nickname as a toddler because she said just like Job, no matter what test “God would bring to bear upon him” nothing could bring him down. Not even the Polio virus that had plagued him as a toddler, leaving him with a limp in his left leg. The name stuck. So much so, she decided to have him officially renamed on his fifth birthday.

It was his tenth birthday party and a surly crowd of family had assembled to celebrate. He had decided it was the perfect chance to test out his new craft. He got the idea to become a magician a year before upon hearing his uncle’s tale of seeing the famous Harry Houdini after sneaking into a show he had been a stagehand for, in the nearby city of Dallas. Seeing his excitement, his mother purchased him a book of magic for his ninth birthday and he had been practicing ever since. Now was his big moment.

The door of their mobile home let out a deafening squeak as Uncle Horace stumbled out, producing a large cloud of dust as he struggled to regain his footing on the ground below. “Do the gawl-danged trick already!”, he slurred, tipping the half spilled cup of moonshine into his bloated lips.

Job felt thick knots form in his stomach as he produced a deck of cards from his pocket, limping over and fanning them in Horace’s face. “Pick a card!”, he said jubilantly. Horace wobbled from foot to foot, carefully studying the deck for a moment before nodding in affirmation.

Job quickly pulled the deck back for a moment before producing a card, holding it face up in his outstretched hand. “I thought you said you was gonna show me magic, son! That ain’t my card.” Job just shrugged his shoulders, placing the deck back in his pocket. Horace let out a loud laugh and pointed.

Job turned around and walked a few paces before again spinning to face Horace, who was now shaking the cup above his lips in a last ditch effort to imbibe in every last drop of liquid. “Can you please check underneath that table?”, he said, gesturing to a well worn picnic table a few yards away. Horace reluctantly waddled over and bent halfway where he discovered a small package that was neatly wrapped in brown paper. Horace eagerly unwrapped the package and peered inside. A look of astonishment crossed his face as he pulled out a playing card from the box.

“Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-gun! You may be a danged cripple, but I reckon you’d make one heck of a magician!,” Horace belched.

For the first time he could remember, Job felt like he was on top of the world. HIs life had been given a new purpose…to make people happy.

***

The hotel lobby was buzzing with families and businessmen in ice blue suits with pressed white collared shirts and striped ties. Job scanned the large, high-ceilinged room, finally resting his gaze on a mom and her two kids perched on an ornate, velvety red couch a few yards away. He loved this job.

“Another unsuspecting victim?”, the freckled, squeaky voiced bell-hop said, nudging Job with his elbow. “Don’t be such a goof!,” Job replied.

“You hear about the changes?” Eddie blurted out.

“What are you talking about, Eddie?

“I don’t know the details, but I overheard the new management saying something about changing the whole vibe of the hotel. I just hope we’re gonna make the cut ‘cuz I need this job!” Eddie replied.

Job shrugged his shoulders and walked towards the couch, his left leg moving in its usual discord with his right. The youngest of the two boys had taken notice of this and was now leaning in whispering something into his mother’s ear. “Billy, mind your manners. It’s not polite to talk about one’s disabilities!”, she replied back in a hushed tone. Even given her best effort, Job still heard the exchange. He didn’t mind, though; he was more than used to it now, being in his early thirties. He admired kids' brutal sense of honesty.

“You kids want to see some magic!”, he asked. The prior moment’s discomfort was quickly erased as they watched in amazement as the master performed his craft.

After finishing, Job started walking towards the other side of the lobby where he noticed James, the hotel’s general manager, clad in a well-fitted, black pinstripe suit, walking towards him.

James quickly escorted Job to his office where he politely offered him a drink before informing him that today would be his last at the hotel. He avoided Job’s gaze as he explained the hotel’s new owner had decided to reinvigorate the ambiance of the lobby by replacing him with a new more contemporary offering, a jazz band.

Job held his high high as he thanked James for his time before gracefully exiting the lobby. He had been through much worse things in his life and this was just a minor setback. He still had his regular gig at the Hop Hole nightclub. It didn’t pay much, but it was enough to support him and his wife as he continued to find more work.

***

The sound of beeping monitors and a sole whirring fan filled the stark white hospital room.

Phyllis lay silently, struggling to curl the corners of her lips into a small smile between struggled gasps of breath as the cancer tightened its metastasized grip around her lungs.

Job had been let-go from the hotel a little over ten years ago and a couple of years after that, his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Unable to afford the ongoing medical treatments on his magician’s pay, he had been forced to take up a series of jobs that offered more consistent hours and better pay than his former career. So for the better part of his thirties until now, just a week after his forty-fifth birthday, he had left the magic life behind. It had been an extremely rough bout on Job, but they managed to get by. A deep hole formed in his soul where magic used to occupy, but his wife was his first priority and he loved her deeply.

Job heard a knock at the door, he turned to see a young nurse enter the room, a solemn look on her face. “Hi folks. Sir, can I please speak with you for a moment,” she said in a gentle voice, lightly grabbing him by the shirt sleeve, leading him into the hallway.

“I”m sure the doctor has already let you know that we don’t have much longer with her. Anything we can do to make her more comfortable?”, she asked. Job fought back the tears as he felt the lump that had settled in the pit of his stomach slowly making its way up past his throat and into his eyes. He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Well then, I”ll leave you two.”

Job slowly walked back into the room and rested in the chair at Phyllis’s bedside. He leaned in as he heard a whispering sound coming from her mouth. “What is it? Do you need something?”

“You have to make me a promise, Job.”

“Anything”, he said as his voice began to crack.

“When I’m gone, I want you to go back to your first love, the one my sickness took from you.”

He felt a river of tears begin to rush down his cheeks.

It represented everything he loved about her. She was the most selfless person he knew; even on her deathbed she was putting his needs first.

He nodded his head.

“It’s time for my final wish,” she whispered, loosening the grip on his hand as the strength continued to evaporate from her failing body.

Many years before, in the beginning days of her illness, she had requested one simple final wish. He didn’t want to hear it then; he refused to believe that she wouldn’t beat this.

He summoned every last drop of resolve he could muster. He bent over, reaching his hand under the bed, retrieving the small brown paper package.

***

Sometime after his wife had passed, he ended his hiatus from the one thing that had brought him joy for so many years; and it had been a good run. However, with the advent of the internet, Job didn’t think people had the patience for it all anymore. The time had now come; the pre-school classroom serving as the staging ground for his final act.

He noticed a middle-aged woman quietly sneak in, as not to disturb the performance, resting herself against the wall of wooden cubicles.

Job looked in the direction of a toy bin, sitting against one of the far walls of the room. “Excuse me young man, could you please get something for me from that bin over there?” The child eagerly hopped up, ran over, flipping open the lid. He reached both hands in and produced a small package, neatly wrapped in brown paper. “And now will you please open it and show the class what you find inside?”

The boy feverishly tore the paper open, reaching in and holding up a playing card. The room erupted in cheers.

Soon after the show had ended, the middle-aged woman made her way over to him, briefly stopping to give one of the kids a kiss on the cheek. “Job the Great! I thought I recognized you!”, she said excitedly.

“Do we know each other?”, he asked. He was sure he didn’t.

“I saw you when I was a kid; you came to my school and did that trick with the package. I never forgot that. It changed my life!”

“Well that’s quite the endorsement,” Job blushed.

“I’d never seen magic before and my parents were so practical—they were always beating into my head that I had to be a doctor or a lawyer. But I was taken with how you made something appear from nothing. It made me feel like anything is possible. I always remembered that, and after college I started my own business because I figured—“.

“Anything is possible?” Job said, finishing her sentence with a smile.

At that moment, the same feeling he had in front of that dusty trailer over three-quarters of a century before washed over him. “Maybe it’s not quite time to hang it up”, he thought to himself.

***