Back when I was still young enough to receive invites to such things, I used to look for a deck of cards shortly after arriving at a party. I would look in drawers – if someone asked, I would say I was looking for a bottle opener. If I found a deck of cards, I would discreetly pull them out and place them on a bookshelf or a table, somewhere in plain sight where they might be noticed. I would then promptly forget about them.
More times than not, someone would find them and a drunken card game of some kind or another would break out. As I usually made it a habit to move around quite a bit at parties, from room to room or inside to outside and back again, I would eventually discover the game and edge my way closer to observe the action, biding my time for a meaningful break in play.
Having found my moment, I would interject that I only knew one card trick, but it was The Greatest Magic Trick of All Time. I would sell it the best I could by launching into a fabricated story about the time I went to Vegas and ended up broke and sitting at a bar next to a frail old man who chatted me up, and how he told me story after story that could not possibly be true. I related how, he claimed he had hobnobbed with a who's who of Vegas showmen, politicians, gangsters, and street magicians. I told of how he knew many famous stars intimately, how he had been involved in some of the biggest capers in Vegas history with the most notorious individuals, and how he had performed for them all. I listened and bought us drinks as he regaled and entertained. As the evening dragged on, a well dressed younger gentlemen sat down on the other side of him and after a quick introduction - to this day I can't remember his name - the younger man quickly went to begging him for something. Clearly they knew each other from some previous meeting, but the bar was loud and the drinks had flowed, so I couldn't hear much and what I could hear I couldn't remember clearly. I explained how after what seemed like a long time of the old man firmly rejecting the younger man's pleas, he finally grew quiet and just stared into his glass for what seemed like an eternity. He looked at me and then at the younger man and then back at his drink and when he spoke, we were both at rapt attention, my curiosity piqued and the younger man's hopes building. "I am an old man now", he said when he spoke at last. "In my life I have performed thousands of tricks, some of them were even good."
"There are more magicians now than there have ever been," he directed his attention to the younger man, "But I can count on one hand the good ones."
"The good ones," he continued after a long sip from his drink, "always knew, or quickly figured out, how I did each trick...but there is one trick – the one you're asking for now – that after sixty years no one but me knows how it is done." I laid it on thick. I told them I had not noticed until now that the old man had drawn a small audience – the bartender, a couple of barflies that looked like they had been sitting on the same stools since the bar opened twenty years prior, and a card dealer on break. "I am an old man now. I will perform it one last time", he said with a grim nod.
The word spread like wildfire, I told my audience. I was swept up in the electric buzz of it all and within twenty minutes, I found myself one of a throng of maybe thirty people in a penthouse squeezing around the old man. I recognized a couple of famous magicians in the group – depending on my crowd I might tell them it was Doug Henning or David Copperfield, or perhaps even Penn & Teller. I would throw in at least one A-list movie star and maybe a couple of politicians. I told them that the old man performed the most ridiculous card trick that could ever possibly be done.
I would go on and explain that afterwards, everyone had to know how he did, but he would never tell. Even the prodding and pleading from a Hollywood A-lister couldn't get him to confess. I would tell how a few of us returned to the bar and eventually as the night ran into what must be the wee hours, after hours of drinks, it was just the old man and me. And he told me.
I would then ask my crowd if they would like me to perform it for them. Of course at this point they are dieing to see it. I told them the important thing is for me to never touch the deck of cards, to never be closer than I was at that point – I always tried to stay at least ten feet from the cards so there could be no question. I would ask them where they got the cards - they could always assure me that it was a deck I had no way of intervening with. The owner of the house would inspect the deck and confirm it was his, those who had been playing would confirm that they had been playing for an hour or however long and that the first time they had seen me was when I had just walked up. Others could confirm my whereabouts at the party at various times.
I told them if they weren't satisfied with this deck, that I was willing to wait while they went out and bought an unopened deck to use. I told them that I would at no point get within ten feet of the deck, twenty if they preferred. And finally I told them I would perform this trick one time only and I would not reveal how I did it.
Finally, when the deck had been shuffled to everyone's satisfaction, I would tell the crowd to select any one person to draw out a single card.
"Three of clubs" I would say after but a moment of contemplation.
Fifty-one times out of fifty-two, that trick is unsuccessful. I was just guessing after all. It takes plain old dumb luck for the trick to actually work.
But somewhere out there, there are a couple dozen people, maybe thirty, who I like to think, still wonder from time to time just how in the hell did he do that?
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