Showtime!
Bea and Teenie beckoned Oliver to the stage, then stepped away, leaving him alone with the mic and an audience of about forty confused brunch guests.
“Thank you, Brilliant Bea and, er, Terrible Martina,” Oliver said. “And thank you Mr. Miguel and Mr. Simon for finally getting married.”
Oliver gulped. He forgot how he was going to start.
“C’mon, you’re a magician,” Benny whispered in his ear. “Keep up the patter. Ask for a volunteer if you’re stuck.”
“I need a magician,” declared Oliver, flustered. “Do I have a magician in the audience? Er, a volunteer. A magician’s volunteer!”
Oliver looked out at the tables. The wedding guests were beginning to talk among themselves. His mother sat near the front. She emptied her glass and raised her hand for another.
“Oh, don’t look at me,” Oliver’s mother said. “I’m not volunteering for anything. I’m on vacation.”
“Call up Dad,” said Teenie in a loud whisper.
“Oh, right.” Oliver pointed at Simon, who had not raised his hand. “We have a volunteer! Mr. Dad, er, Simon. Please make your way to the stage.”
The crowd clapped as Simon made his way onto the terrace.
“Now, Mr. Simon, we don’t know each other, do we?” asked Oliver.
“You come to our house every day after school,” said Simon.
“True,” said Oliver. “But we don’t know what each other is thinking.”
Simon looked at him askance. “What are you thinking?”
“Even though we’ve only just met, I can read your mind,” Oliver said. “My assistant will hand you a book. Open it to any page and write down the first word you see.”
Bea handed her father an encyclopedia volume. He flipped through the pages, then wrote down a word on the sticky note attached to the dust jacket.
“I couldn’t see.” Oliver turned to the crowd. “Did he write a word? Good. Now, Mr. Simon, crumple the note so I still can’t see it, and place it in your back pocket. Then hand the book back to me.”
Simon hid the note, then handed the book to Oliver, who immediately flipped through the pages, rather obviously checking the jacket of the book.
“Bea!” Oliver called in a panic. She tiptoed over so they could talk without the audience hearing. “Bea, this isn’t the right book. This is K. You were supposed to give him J.”
“Oh, J was boring,” Bea said. “The sequel’s much better.”
Oliver hit his head with the “sequel.” He’d hidden a piece of carbon paper in the first book, so that when Simon wrote down his word, it would appear on another piece of paper, also hidden in the book. Now Oliver had no idea what word Simon had chosen.
“Okay, I noticed you were looking near the front of the book? Right?”
Oliver flipped through the book, hoping that a word would catch his eye. He considered his odds. What was the most commonly used word?
“Was it, um, the? Is the your word?”
Simon was confused. His actual word was karma.
He glanced over at his daughters, who both looked meaningfully at him.
“Yes,” Simon said. “My word was the. How’d you know?”
Oliver beamed. He’d done it—real magic!
“A magician never reveals his secrets!” To keep up the momentum, he rushed right into his big trick. “And now for the grand finale. Teenie? Bea?”
The girls rushed Simon off the terrace and into the library. From the other side of the wall Simon could be heard saying, “You want me to get in that? Wearing these shoes?”
“I’ll need one more volunteer.” Oliver scanned the crowd.
A few hands went up. But he pointed to the other groom, Miguel, who had his camera pointed at Oliver. (Miguel had chosen to save money by photographing his own wedding.)
“Mr. Miguel!”
Miguel shook his head. He didn’t want to volunteer. But the crowd clapped and cheered until Miguel reluctantly handed his camera to Spencer and joined Oliver on the terrace stage.
Spencer shot enough photos to blind everyone with the flash.
“Hello,” said Oliver. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Now, Oliver—”
“That’s my name too!”
As the crowd laughed, Oliver gained confidence. Perhaps too much confidence. “Well, Mr. Oliver, what brings you to Hauntington Gardens today?”
“It’s Mr. Miguel. I mean, it’s Miguel. Just Miguel. I’m getting married. This is our rehearsal brunch.”
“Oh, a wedding and a brunch!” Oliver improvised. “A day when two become one. And a meal where two meals become one. Breakfast and lunch . . . But for my next trick, one will become two.”
He waved his wand, the signal for the twins to reappear with the coffin and dolly. But they were having technical difficulties.
“Dad, we need you to be quiet and not make a scene,” Teenie told Simon. “Like how we’re supposed to act at nice restaurants.”
As they rolled the coffin onto the terrace, a sharp-eared audience member might have heard some unexpected sounds coming from inside it.
