Ring of Light by Isobel Bird Page B

table.
    â€œBut you and I get to leave at the end of the day,” Rudy commented. “They don’t.”
    Annie thought about that as she continued to unpack Rudy’s things. He was right. When she left, the unpleasant smells and the air of sadness stayed behind. But what must it be like to live with them every second of every day? No wonder people like Ben Rowe were so unpleasant. You probably would be, too, if you lived like this, she thought.
    For the next hour Rudy showed Annie the various tricks he would be performing. It was fascinating to see how they worked. Even though most of them had very simple explanations, they still appeared magical when you didn’t know how they were done. It made Annie think about real magic, the kind she and the others involved in Wicca sometimes did. That appeared easy, too, to people who didn’t really understand it. But the fact was that performing magic correctly took a lot of skill and practice. While at first she’d thought of the Amazing Rudolpho as something of a joke, now she wondered if maybe they didn’t have more in common than she’d believed.
    A little before eleven people started entering the room. Many of them walked in on their own, while others were wheeled in or helped along by nurses or friends who could move a little better than they could. They took their seats in the folding chairs that had been set up, and they looked toward the front of the room expectantly.
    Annie and Rudy were behind the black curtain, waiting. Rudy had changed into his magician’s outfit—a black suit with a cape. He had given Annie something to wear as well, a long black robe that covered her street clothes and made her feel like she was part of a choir or something.
    â€œIt’s showtime,” Rudy said as the last of the old people came in and settled down. “You ready?”
    Annie nodded and followed Rudy as he stepped out through the part in the curtains. The audience applauded weakly as Rudy bowed to them and announced in a dramatic voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world of magic.”
    Annie looked out at the sea of faces. Some of them were clearly interested in what was going on, but others just seemed bewildered by it all. A few were even sleeping, their heads lolling to one side as they dozed in the sunlight that came in the room’s windows.
    Rudy didn’t seem at all discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm from his audience. He launched into his first trick—the floating rings—as if he were performing at the biggest circus on the planet. Annie watched as he moved the rings around, pretending to pull them through each other with great effort. When he handed them to her, she raised them up as the crowd clapped before she put them back on the table.
    Rudy worked his way through trick after trick, and Annie dutifully helped whenever he asked for her assistance. Several times Rudy asked the crowd to “give a hand for my lovely assistant,” and Annie blushed as she saw the old people take their eyes away from him for a moment to stare at her.
    After performing a trick in which he made a card disappear into thin air, Rudy turned to the audience. “And now it’s time for some crowd participation,” he said. “Can I have a volunteer?”
    When no hands went up, Annie saw Rudy scan the crowd for someone to call on. She wondered what kind of trick he was going to do. He hadn’t told her about anything that would involve someone else. But everything else had been easy enough for her to do, so she figured this would be easy, too.
    â€œYou,” Rudy said, pointing at someone. “How about you? You look like you could help me work some magic.”
    He walked into the sea of chairs, and Annie looked to see where he was heading. Rudy went straight to the back and reached out to someone Annie couldn’t see at first because he was behind someone in a wheelchair. Then she watched,