Danny Doyle was a sleight of hand artist. He palmed
cards, snapping one by one eight or ten cards out of thin air, pulled silk handkerchiefs, bouquets, billiard balls, a rubber snake out his
mouth. On weekends he hung out in Alfred’s on La Cienaga and did
tricks for the patrons for drinks. Even after he read Doctor Bob’s latest self-help book, which his wife, Misty, had left opened on his
side of the bed. Misty had opened Reexamine Your Resources a nd Go On From There, to the chapter on obstinacy.

One Sunday afternoon Misty opened up a conversation.
“You read Dr. Bob carefully and the n you tell me why you keep on
doing card tricks.”

Misty patted on more suntan lotion. Their sunlit pool,
not much bigger that their living room, wavered Danny in watery
turquoise, Danny with a pitcher of margaritas and two chilled
glasses. It was the cocktail hour for a not so well known West
Hollywood couple. At one time they had been fairly well known.
Misty had been a torch singer, up Reno way. Danny had had a small
part in a sit-com, “The Battling Brightens,” whose residuals had run
dry. He’d played a kooky next door neighbor by the name of
Willoughby. He kept dropping by at inopportune moments for a cup of
coffee with the sitcom’s stars, the Brightens, lawyers at each
other’s throats in court, at home lovey dovy. Omigod it’s
Willoughby. Not again! Meaning Danny.

Danny poured Misty a margarita. “I have to do
something special,”

“Like card tricks?”

“Tell me, Misty, isn’t belting out “Stormy Weather”
special? Why did you get into that song, and a lot of others?
Because it brought out something in you.”

“Get real, Danny. My voice isn’t what it used to be.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t sing.”

“And you can act. And at least around me. And you can still do card tricks, all kinds of tricks. But where is it getting
you? I can see you in a nursing home, doing card tricks for codgers and biddies, Danny Doyle, senior citizen.”

“That’s a long way off.”

“And a long way off for me.”

Glasses were refilled from the pitcher. Pool turquoise
deepened to lavender and the leaves of their eucalyptus shimmied,
reminding Danny of pennons on a used car lot, Blankenship’s Foreign Cars, where he’d bought a Mercedes 190 SL back in 1980, on proceeds from “The Battling Brightens,” still running af ter many an overhaul.
Not on the road, for that he used a company car, but for tooling
around West Hollywood, cutting through Laurel Canyon, i nto Santa
Monica, over to La Cienaga, passing Mercedes, BMW used car lots.

He brought it up again, what was Misty doing reading
Dr. Bob? “Just because your Uncle Artie does, doesn’t mean you should.”

“I’m humoring him.”

“Some humoring. And why does Uncle Artie need Doctor
Bob? Uncle Artie’s loaded with resources.”

“Financial, Danny, that’s all. What Doctor Bob is
urging Uncle Artie to do is wipe the slate clean and start over.”

“He’s seventy-six years old.”

“Doctor Bob would say seventy-six years young. In good health, and with lots of time on his hands.”

Danny asked himself--what resources do we have, besides
our paid for bungalow, my sales job, what little remained of Misty's
trust fund, and the slim royalties from a recording she’d made forty years ago, “Mist y Sings Mercer”?

“Well I’m not sixty years young. And I’m tired of selling linoleum up and down the Pacific Coast.”

And for what? Margari tas, the bungalow, the eucalyptus, keeping Misty in a lifestyle she had grown accustomed to. It was
time for them to sell the bungalow and move on. And that meant
moving out, way up the coast.

What made Danny a good salesman was what made him a
sleight of hand artist--patter, a knack for shunting off close
examination of a linoleum sample or a stacked deck. Danny’s gift for patter had worked with just about everyone he’d come in contact
with. With Misty it hadn’t worked. With her he was an open book,
she’d often said of him--I can read your thoughts like the newspaper, she’d say, when he’d lost a sale or sitting at the bar at Alfred’s
nobody had bought a drink for him, or he was down in the dumps, and
he’d tell her he wasn’t looking forward to better times. She would offer to go back to tor ch singing, or if that wasn’t practicable, she might find a hostess job in a fancy restaurant on Sunset Boulevard--
your name please, table for two, she’d mimic, as if by mimicry she
could take off some years, be what she once was for him. On Sunset
Boulevard, Wilshire, La Cienaga, in the better sections of L.A. she
couldn’t compete. And who was listening to Johnny Mercer these days?

Something had to be done. He hadn’t sold any linoleum for over a month. He’d breeze into a carpet and linoleum dealer,
hardwood floor, vinyl tile samples thundering you can’t compete, you can’t compete, and before he could open his sample case he was ready to turn around and breeze out, you had to if you missed a sale, keep
your chin up and get out fast, but not even trying, that was
horrendous. He’d stop off at Alfred’s hang out at the bar with out of work actors, has-beens, wannabe screenplay writers, and someone
would put a quarter in the jukebox and Bunny Beri gan would come on
with “I Can’t Get Started with You,” Billie Holiday with “Please
Don’t Talk about Me when I’m Gone,” numbers Misty used to sin g in the
shower, used to, not currently. He would pluck a half dollar out of
a barfly’s ear, just to start a conversation. Step outside as
evening closed in, take in the photocopying joint across the street,
one of hundreds--that told you something about your chances in
Hollywood, where there we as many photocopiers for wanabee
screenwriters as message parlors for the needy sex addicts.

Alfred’s was for Hollywood has-beens. Like Jerry
Gresham. Showed up dressed to the nines, tailored suit, silk tie,
oxfords that gleamed, his connection to the American Film Institute
advertised, by Jerry, but not proven. Or, Neal Naylor, parking his
four door Mercedes as Danny pulled out in his SL. Or out in the
patio a run to fat Amanda Allenby surrounded by fawning would be
young male stars, r eady and willing to do anything for a break. But
nice, that Danny could say of Amanda, for beaming, she’d remembered Willoughby, with a little prompt ing from Danny after he’d pulled a
lit cigarette out of her ear. On one of these afternoons at Alfred's he’d spotted a former executive producer of M*A*S*H, Harry Buck, at the bar with a lady who looked like a mud wrestler. He’d had the
audacity to ask Buck to take a card. Buck had told him to get lost,
bent to his double single malt scotch, which he’d drunk as if
obligated to put away as much as he could.

They were spending another Sunday afternoon by the
pool. Their neighbors on either side had larger pools, inhabitants
of renovated, costly houses on either side of the Doyle bungalow.
The voices of splashing kiddies, a boom box from somewhere behind
them. Misty was using an emory board on her fingernails. Soon she
would put on polish.

Danny felt his face open to scrutiny as h e pondered
whether he would let Misty know he’d already contacted a realtor. He had to tell her, he had put it off too long. The rings on her
fing ers, onyx, topaz, jade, these they couldn’t pawn. But the
bungalow had quadrupled in value. Its backside, its shuttered
windows, its red poinsettias hugging the pink stucco walls, its
corrugated roof beyond which the shingled hip roofs across Santa Rosa Boulevard reared up like dire harbingers, its two pink plastic
flamingoes, one facing the other, half buried in a strip of sodded
back yard, all this Misty would have to give up--along with the
flagstone front walk, the staked dahlias flanking the front stoop,
the bougainvillea, the pool itself, although Misty seldom swam in it, instead lounged beside its enticing turquoise in her chaise longue
reading mystery novels and autobiographies of celebrities, as told to books, told to a ghost writer.

Misty seldom went out. She had never gone with Da nny to Alfred’s. Most nights they ordered take out, Chinese, Italian,
Mexican, Greek, pizzas, corn beef sandwiches, a drain on their budget but what co uld you do, for Misty’s cooking was close to nonexistent? Where they moved to would have to be where take out was widely
available.

After doing her pinkie finger, Misty asked Danny what
he had on his mind.

“Nothing you’d be interested in.”

“I think it’s something I would be interested in. I think it’s something that concerns us.”

Concerns us. That it did, for sure. “Guess who I ran into?”

“You mean today?”

“Yesterday. At Alfred’s. You remember Jack Merlin? The guy on the “The Battling Brightens,” played the D.A. He tells me
he’s in real estate.”

It got so quiet right here in his own back yard he
considered jumping into the pool, submerging himself until the color
came back into Misty's cheeks. Finally--”So you’ve talked to a
realtor? So you’re putting our h ome up for sale.”

Hangs out at Alfred’s prickled Misty's teal blue eyes.

“What I said was I ran into Jack Merlin.” He had to throw out a smoke screen. “So Jack’s a realtor. That doesn’t mean
I’m putting the house up for sale. I’d never do that without your consent.”

From the chaise longue Misty regarded their bungalow as if a For Sale sign were already planted in the front yard. The hip
roofs visible beyond theirs, set close together, seemed closer
together. Danny wished he could fly over them. Take Misty with him, leave the bungalow behind, their debts, his job, everything.

They would think about it, maybe down the road make a
move. They went on sinking deeper in debt. Danny went on the road
with his sample case and maybe once a week he made a sale. But that
wasn’t enough to pay the bills.

One Friday night after he’d had a good run Danny dropped by Alfred’s to celebrate. He passed under neon, ALFRED’S, and as the
s winging door closed behind him he soaked up a convivial buzz and
hum. He eased onto a barstool. Genuine leather, as the seats in his 190 SL once were be fore he burned cigarette holes in them. Pete,the
barkeep sidled his way. What’ll it be? Glenlivet on the rocks.
He’d unloaded a lot of linoleum today. Thirty-five hundred bucks
would soon be burning a hole in his pocket. So he could afford to
run a tab. So, “Put it on the tab, Pete.”

He took a sip of Glenlivet. Scanned Alfred’s up and
down. Nobody here he knew. Then out of the men’s sauntered Jack
Merlin, all six feet two of him. A cigarette holder preceded Jack,
proceeded by a lit cigarette, its stem firmly lodged between Jack’s precisely etched lips, smoke trailing, Jack sauntering up to the bar
as if he owned the place and was making big money on it. Jack spun
the bar stool next to Danny’s, then hopped on, raising his legs like a stork. Tapped an ash into an ashtray that for an inst ant
threatened to scoot away from him.

“Danny boy!”

“How goes it, Jack!”

A handshake followed. Big grins. A half dollar plucked from Jack’s nostrils.

“I see you haven’t lost your touch.”

“ I gotta do something to chase the blues away. So I do this.”

“As long as you’re good at it, why not?”

Pete the barkeep produced three cards, an ace of spades
and two deuces, knowing Jack Merlin would stand Danny for a round.
“You up for three card monte, Danny?”

“Haven’t I always been?”

He was so good at it his hands went lickety-split and
the ace, it turned up in the wrong place--for them, for Pete, for
Jack. Or were they pretending to be fooled? Well either way.

“Two Glenlivet’s on the rocks,” Jack said. “Doubles.”
Then--“Danny, I got a deal for you.”

Like listing your house. But it wasn’t that. Jack
Merlin had moved on. He was into something bigger, more lucrative.
But what could be mor e lucrative than selling five hundred thousand
dollar houses about the size of Danny’s bungalow.

“When I can, Danny, when I can. They don’t jump u p and
sell themselves.”

Jack Merlin had done a lot of things since he’d played the D.A. in “The Battling Brightens.” He’d been in some shady stuff
in City Hall, by his own admission pushed a little pot, drifted into
selling houses after failing the real estate exam twice. On his
third try he passed it. All this Danny had heard about over scotch
on the rocks at Alfred’s. This new enterprise could be like the
others--a washout, a bust.

“What we do is go to the courthouse. We check out
foreclosures. We buy up the houses and flip them.”

“Buy up with what, Jack?”

“With what we can scrape up. We go fifty-fifty.”

With Jack eyeballing you--like all you had to do was run down to the bank and take out a loan for a million bucks and Jack
would buy you all the Glenlivet yo u could put away in an afternoon--
what could you do but shove off? You’d find another realtor. Or
wouldn’t. He had a buttock halfway off the bar stoo l, a foot on the brass rail.

Jack, affably as an insurance adjuster about to screw
you out of a settlement, said, ”If you ever get around to selling
your house I’ll always be available.” And with that Jack raised one
leg like a stork, vacated the bar stool.

From the breakfast nook they had a nice view of the
pool, the flamingoes that continued to signal each other--you want to hang around that’s your business, me I’m taking off. Misty was
buttering toast.

Danny forked his fried over easy egg. “We buy a
trailer, we move to Nevada. Buy some land.”

“And how will we make ends meet, pray tell?”

“On your trust fund and on interest on our savings and what I can pick up in Vegas .”

“Doing card tricks?”

“Intimate stuff, in Caesar’s Palace, sleight of hand, on e on one, or couples, wow the girls and the guy will tip big.” For a little while Danny bought into his own patter, something magicians
weren’t supposed to do. He saw himself inside Caesar’s Palace, at a
table for two, felt his hands, just a shade pudgy, move through their moves as if on their own, controlled by some other power, all agog a
beautiful babe and her well heeled, high tipping escort.

Misty popped more toast in the toaster. Her fried eggs, sunny side up, remained untouched. Her coffee waited for cream from
the pitcher she hadn’t picked up yet. “You want us to live in the desert? In a trailer?” Us, she’d said, not me. “You want us to give up our home because you can’t go on the road? You say you’ve had it with pushing linoleum?”

He knew what was coming. What they had been discussing
last night. Taking in Uncle Artie. They could put him up in the
guest room. We could live high on the hog, Misty had argued, for
Uncle Artie was gene rous to a fault. That Uncle Artie liked to
stroke Misty's legs--that was as far, she’d claimed, as he’d ever gone with her, okay so he’d stroked the back o f her neck--Misty had an answer for that. She would wear pants suits, ankle length dresses and besides she’d lost her looks, what would Uncle Artie see in her now when he could ogle the babes on the news channels, take note of
cleavage, sit in his favorite armchair, the one he had bequeathed to
them at one time, eat popcorn, drink his double martinis.

Danny sopped up egg yolk. Misty hadn’t lost all her looks.

What they compromised on was pants suits and ankle
length dresses for Misty. Now that the flamingoes had decided to
stay where they were, over their coffee, his black, hers with cream,
they discussed how best to approach Uncle Artie. “My thought.” Danny
said casually, “is to steer Uncle Artie to Alfred’s. There’s a message parlor right next door. I could give Alfred the word,
gu arantee a happy ending. Something Uncle Artie hasn’t had for
awhile, not in Plymouth, Indiana.”

“I don’t think Uncle Artie would go for that. At his advanced age, his libido has only so much juice in it.”

“We’d have to get him out of the house.” He hazarded,
“At least when I’m here.”

“You’ll get used to him.”

“That’s what you say.”

Danny realized his coffee was cold. His Sunday was
stretching out too far. He tried to compensate--Misty at the mike in the Coconut Club, her tantalizing teal blue eyes seeking him out,
racing red corpuscles, she’s for me she’s for me. But with her had come Santa Rosa Boulevard, living in style, the SL, for him, the
monthly checks from the trust fund Uncle Artie had set up for her.
But Uncle Artie hadn’t come with her. Never would. He had to make sure that wouldn’t happen.

He nosed the SL into the driveway, a little over the
width of the front walk. Braked with a minatory squeak, r eminding
him of his wet shoes squelching wet gravel--for it had poured down
rain at Venice Beach, and he hadn’t brought along an umbrella. He’d
ridd en the elevator to the twelfth floor of the apartment building,
trudged down the dirty beige carpeted hall to what Jack Merlin called his pad, stripped of almost everything but a waterbed and mats on the carpeting. And a treadmill, dumbbells, a bottom of the line
computer, a Nikon on a tripod.

Jack had called him on his cell phone. Jack had
something you might want to look into.

What that something was art photographs. Who of, first
thing Danny asked Jack, once Jack hinted they would be tasteful, art
photographs for the elderly, for someone your age or older. “We get set up on the internet, we pitch nostalgia, what would she be if you
saw her now, still a doll, still crazy in love with you.” Jack paced the carpet up and down, detouring around the treadmill, his hands
locked behind h is back, globular buttons on his tartan plaid sports
jacket bobbing like apples on a wind swept branch. “Take a guy up in years, like yourself, only he hasn’ t a wife like Misty, still a
looker. And he’s too uptight for centerfolds--just isn’t that kind of guy, maybe religious, just wants some good clean erotic
stimulation, gal in an evening gown, in a one piece, no a woman,
mature, exciting, like but not like his wife. How’s that for openers?”

Who of, Jack?

Jack turned to the picture window and gazed out at the
rain laced Pacific Ocean. “We throw in an audio with the
photograph. Do you read me? Do you get the picture? Misty sings
Mercer. And there’s Misty in an evening gown, in a one piece, still everything you ever saw in her?”

All it would take was half his savings and a little
cooperation from Misty.

He got out a photograph he still carried in his wallet,
cascading blonde hair, come hither look in her teal blue eye s,
pouring champagne into a bubbly flute. Irresistible then, and, he
told himself, now. One wiper swiped raindrops off the windshield.
He put the phot ograph back in his wallet, took a look at his one
dollar bills--how many—a solitary ten dollar bill, the pouch where a credit card had been, his driver’s license, still good. He got out of the SL, patted its front fender, said “good steed,” apropos the SL, not a horse, an automobile, but it made him feel better, crossed
the squelchy front yard to the staked dahlias, their petals wet,
found flagstones, his head bent into the rain, paused at the front
stoop and with trepidation turned the knob of the narrow front door
smack up against their jutting bedroom A narrow window on the other side of the front door showed him a hall tree stored in a closet,
muffled by hanging, mothballed jackets.

Misty was in the bedroom. She had a washrag over her
forehead. Snoring with her mouth open. He went to her, told her the news, hoping it might be good news.

And it was. She was excited. They would go out
tonight. She was singing in the shower while Danny made their
margaritas. “Don’t know why there’s no sunup in the sky.” How had
she ever been able to memorize so many lyrics. He’d never be able to. But he wasn’t a torch singer. He was a sleight of hand artist. He was a linoleum salesman.

She looked extra good, photogenic, wearing her best
going out dress, sequined and form fitting, lipstick and rouge, panty hose, high heels, teardrop earrings. Side by side on the living room sofa they listened to the rain slacken. Sipped on their margaritas. Held hands.

“You’ll be a star again.”

“I was never a star. I was a torch singer in Reno.”

“For me you were.”

Her hand was warming in his. They hugged. They kissed. The rain picked up again. That should have made kissing her better. If only he’d brought up the half of his savings part, if only it
wouldn’t cost them a dime. Just having her pose all dolled up--
didn’t matter if she got on the Internet and her photograph sold like hot cakes--h aving her pose would be enough for him, but that wouldn’t happen unless he shelled out half his savings, half their savings.

She was reading him like the newspaper, the weather
report, cloudy with showers, sunny, “Do we really want to do this?”

He blurted out he didn’t know.

“Would you rather have Uncle Artie?”

The photograph in his wallet, he couldn’t show her that, not now.

“Or would you have us live in a trailer while you did
card tricks in Vegas?”

The margarita pitcher he wanted to drain wouldn’t help. Sitting side by side on the sofa, two strangers who happened to be in the same room struggled to get back to being man and wife. In a
susurrus of indrawn breath, lips that for a long time hadn’t known
lip gloss parted, as if waiting to transmit something but uns ure what it could ever be, in a freeze frame, as his lips must be. Then, from him, not her, the only thing he could say, “Your call, Misty. You
want me to sell linoleum, that I’ll do. You want Uncle Artie to move in, I’ll look the other away when he ogles you. Or if your willing to pose for Jack Merlin. . . . “

He couldn’t go on.

The sofa creaked. Misty smoothed out her dress. She
gave him a look of inspection--as so often she had on his way out the door, your tie’s stained, don’t button your jacket makes your spare tire look worse, you need to use a styling gel on your hair. She
found a hanky, leaned toward him, wiped lipstick off his lips.

“We’ll work it out, Danny.”

But how would they? No matter how hard he tried, he
could never do right by her. Yet her teal blue eyes were extenuating him, as they had so many times in the past.