The old magician, if you asked him, could tell you stories about the days he travelled the vaudeville circuit and how once his assistant had forgotten to walk the sheep he was using in his onstage act, with obvious messy consequences.
He had a booking on Christmas Eve, the same booking he'd rated for the last three years to rave reviews. And he knew, to his heartbreak, that for many of these children in the pediatric ward it would be his goodbye performance. True there would be other patients in the bed, brought there by the maddening, outrageous fact that children don't always bury their parents. He tried hard...very hard...not to think about it.
Wan and weak, they still loved him. He gave them back their childhood, and in return they kept him young. Once--just once--he had to leave quickly for the restroom, locking himself in a stall to wretch and sob. After that, he always put the feelings of his audience first and was, by all accounts, a great success at bringing much needed Christmas cheer.
One little girl caught his eye and as he came to see her, he said, "Aren't you a lovely little thing?"
"I know what I look like," she said quite frankly, pointing to her bald head. "I don't mind."
"Well if you don't mind, I don't." He took off his hat...wig and all...and was as bald as a billiard ball. As he showed the hat about, all the kids laughed. It was one of his favorite stunts and it never failed.
He detached the wig from the hat, placed it slightly askew on his head, then said, "Now we'll pull you something nice from the magic hat, shall we?"
His hand went in to feel for the small sack of chocolate drops he had stuck to the inside with tape. His forearm plunged in up to the elbow. A gasp came up from the audience, and his eyes turned down to see what he thought he would see, his hand punched through the lid and hanging below. But there was no hand below the hat. As he noticed the slight cool breeze that blew across his hand, he knew something was not right.
"I hope it's an orange," she said, her eyes twinkling with merriment.
Just then, the magician felt a hand, quite certainly a hand, brush against his and slip something into his palm. His hand closed around something round, then came trembling from the depths of what felt like a very long tunnel. It was...an orange.
"How did you DO that?"
"Well, Missy, it's a magic hat. Anything can happen."
Concealing his shattered nerves, he put the hat on his head and said, "Oh, look at the time! You do want to tuck in before old Saint Nick gets here!' He gathered his coat and gloves, and though it was a bit brief the performance was over. He left while he still retained a tenuous grip on reality.
"Maybe it was a one-time deal," he said to himself as he sat in his favorite chair before the TV, clutching a bourbon in one hand and his hat in the other. After taking a drink...he felt an urgent need for "spine stiffening"...he looked inside the hat.
Sky. Sky, clouds and sun.
He turned the hat about, seeing his view change as one might while swinging a telescope about. There were mountains, waves, clouds, trees, meadows...
"That's it, Harley. You're losing it." He quickly finished off the bourbon, then poured another. Harley was not a drunk, but he felt if he was going to lose his grip on reality, he might as well enjoy it.
Setting down the glass, he turned off the TV, settled back in his recliner, and let the alcohol dull his panic and guide him to sleep.
***
