Saving Houdini (8 page)

“I think, like, that might, like, work, Dash. Like.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t get enough money for two train tickets.”

“I think
I
can,” replied Dash.

They checked the newspaper at a stand up on Danforth Avenue. There was a train to Montreal, today, at 1 p.m. There wasn’t much time.

Dash insisted that Walter accompany him to the house on Arundel. There was no way he was going to knock on the door by himself and get chopped up into someone’s stew.

On Arundel, Dash stopped about twelve houses up. “Hey, I just realized something.”

“You’re insane?”

“No. There are houses here.”

“Of course there are.”

“But in my time,
right here
is a parking lot. You won’t believe this, but in the future there are going to be so many cars that leaving them somewhere when you’re not driving them is going to be tricky.”

“And they rip up houses so they can park them?”

“They rip ’em up to build roads too. And bigger buildings.”

“They better not tear
my
house down.”

“I don’t think they have, Walt. At least not yet.”

They walked up the other side of the street and stood across from number 64. The curtains were still drawn behind the streaky windows.

“You missed the party they wanted to throw you yesterday, and now you want to ask them for money?”

“Well, they seem to know me,” Dash said. His stomach was aching with both hunger and worry. Maybe if the people in this house didn’t come to the door wearing goalie masks and holding chainsaws, he could ask if there were any of those snacks left over.

They both took a deep breath and crossed the road. The front yard was overgrown with huge, dead weeds. Spikes and puffballs. “You knock,” said Walt.

“Just stand right there,” Dash said, indicating a spot on the porch one inch away from him.

He knocked.

Nothing.

He looked at Walt for moral support, but Walt only shrugged. Dash counted to five and then knocked a little harder.

He stepped back. He could hear someone inside coming down the stairs, then crossing the hall toward the door. The boards beneath him announced the approach of some substantial person. He felt frightened again. The window in the door shook and stirred the light.

Then it went dark. There was a face there, filling the glass pane: a big, white, round face with a long, bushy moustache and
two very small black eyes. The eyes blinked at him. Dash stood frozen for a second. Then he fumbled in his suit-jacket pocket for the envelope.

“Hold on, hold on,” he said. He took out the card with the typed message on it and held it up to the window.

The man unlocked the door and opened it. He’d been bending over to look out the window; now he straightened to his full height. He was a giant in a long grey sleeping shirt. It went almost all the way to his feet. Dash’s mother had something like it in pink.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”

“Koyziti?”

“Sorry?”

“No,” said the man, and began to shut the door.

“Wait!” said Dash, holding his palm out to keep the door open a crack. “Does anyone else live here? Please?”

The man studied Dash’s black suit. His eyes narrowed.
“Zosto shtey oblecheni kako schto?”
At least that’s what it sounded like.

“Please …” Dash said.
“S’il
vous plaît?”

“Francuski?”

“No, English.” There was an open door on a landing one flight up. Light was falling into the hallway there. “Does anyone up there speak English?”

A young boy of about eight came and stood on the landing. “Papa?”

“Pomonkney ova momchee,”
said the man, and the boy came down the stairs slowly, taking Dash in with a worried look.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello,” said Dash. “Someone told me to come here.”

“Who tells you?”

“They gave me a card with this address on it.” He showed the card again. The father watched the two boys talking and eyed Walt out on the porch. Walt saluted. The man asked his son something.

“Are you American?” asked the boy.

“No. I’m from here … from Toronto. Who lives in this house?”

“My father and me live in one of the rooms. There is two families same floor and another family in basement. A man live by himself back there—” He pointed down the hall that stretched beyond the stairs on the main floor. “This room, no one live.” Now he indicated the door to his left. “You want room?”

“No. I thought someone here was expecting me. Do you know all the people in the house?”

The boy spoke to his father. “My father say families are both Macedonia, like us, and the man who live alone is from Irishland.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“No,” said the boy. “He does work. Come home late at night.”

“Where does he work?”

“Bricks,” said the boy. “He make bricks.”

Dash looked down at the card in his hand. There was no name, no instructions. No explanation at all. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Go home.”

Dash stepped back out onto the porch. The father watched them carefully as he closed the door on them.

“I guess you missed the party,” said Walt.

“Something is wrong. Who gave me this?”

“Well, if you’d gone when you were invited, maybe you’d know by now. Meantime it’s almost noon. If we’re not going to Montreal, I have to go back to school.”

“No … wait,” said Dash. “I have another idea.”

It was one of those plans hatched in desperation and destined to fail. Dash was going to convince Herman Blumenthal that the Soap Bubble Vanish was
real
, and that he and Walt knew how to get it invented. But it was going to take a real master to bring it into existence. Houdini.

Once he explained that, how could Herman Blumenthal pass up the opportunity? To work with Harry Houdini? Blumenthal would buy them a couple of train tickets for sure. Maybe he’d even come with them! Once he saw the
Gazette
, he’d know Dash was telling the truth.

But first, they had to
find
Blumenthal, and that entailed locating a hotel with a phone “register” (as Walter had called it) that would show the magician’s address. Addresses were in the register even if the people listed didn’t have phones. The concept of phonelessness bewildered Dash. How did people ever get in touch with each other? If someone you knew didn’t have a
phone, did you have to
walk over to their house
to make plans? Did you have to
write them a letter
?

Walt had told him that at the top of the woods and across the park there was a series of streets with small houses. It was a neighbourhood of working people’s houses, little red-and-yellow-brick dwellings with vegetable patches on the lawns. “Not a lot of money up there. You might stick out even worse than you did in my part of town. But there’s a hotel on a street called Carlton up there. It’s called the Queen’s Arms. They might have a register.”

They decided on Dash’s outfit. He was going to wear one of Walt’s shirts. His pants were fine. All of Walt’s shirts took cufflinks, so Dash just used his hockey-stick cufflinks. He wore his suit jacket with the cloth cap Walt had given him the night before. While Dash was trying to find Blumenthal, Walter was going to go home and collect a few more items of food and clothing and leave a note for his parents, before making his way down to Union Station. He was going to be in a world of trouble, but he’d made up his mind.

They parted ways and Dash hoofed it up the steep hill leading to town. Then he headed into the warren of streets that led toward the main streets, one of which was supposed to be Carlton.

The side streets finally gave onto a broad, paved expanse of road down which streetcars progressed in a swaying, uncertain fashion. Then, just down a jot, he saw Carlton and made his way there.

The Queen’s Arms Hotel was on the south side. A heavy glass lantern hung over the porch. He went through the door into the foyer, a cramped space with a wooden desk sticking halfway into it. A man was reading a newspaper in a comfy chair, and the man behind the counter let Dash use his register. After a few moments of riffling the pages, Dash found
H. Blumenthal.

“Where’s Augusta Avenue?”

“That’s in the market,” said the man over in the chair. Dash turned to see he’d removed the pipe he’d had clamped between his teeth. “You just take the Carlton tram over past Spadina. It’s the first left after that.”

“Left past Spadina?”

“That’s it. Be careful. Not a nice part of town.”

“Pickpockets and werewolves,” said the counterman.

“I’ll be careful,” said Dash, pushing the directory back across the desk. Spadina. How long a walk was that? He hurried out the door. It couldn’t be that far.

Twenty minutes later, he was goggling at the sight of a dozen houses standing where Maple Leaf Gardens was supposed to be. He didn’t have time to think it over; he carried on. He was panting for breath and he wasn’t halfway there.

It was already ten to noon. They had to make a train at 1 p.m. to get to Montreal in time for Houdini’s talk. It was getting cold again. He crossed Yonge Street, looking south for a moment. He could see the Pantages sign hanging over the street, a little white droplet stuck to the side of a building.

There were lots of people here, as there had been Tuesday night, but most of them now were coming back from lunch, not going home. He dodged them, one way and the other, and pushed on. Bay Street, Queen’s Park. A flag flapped in the light breeze, as it always did there, except it wasn’t the Canadian flag. It was a red flag with the
British
flag in the corner.

Weird.

He arrived in Kensington Market. It was even dirtier and smellier than he remembered, and there were chickens clucking in wire cages stacked on the sidewalk and stray dogs sniffing in the gutters. He smelled coffee roasting and meat being broiled, and to one side of him was an open stall selling spices out of paper bags, to the other, a store with sausages hanging in links in the window. His stomach called out to them. The signs in all the windows were Hebrew.

Seventy-eight Augusta was a small bookshop and beside it a set of stairs led to a basement. Apartment B. He went down and knocked on the door.

Nothing.

He knocked again. No answer. Did anyone ever answer their doors in this town?

“MR. BLUMENTHAL! ARE YOU HOME?”

“Ohfer!” came Blumenthal’s voice. The door flew open. His red eyes tracked down. “What the—?
You
? What are you doing here?” He slivered his eyes. “How’d you find me anyway? You
following
me? Gluckman tell you to follow me?”

“No!” said Dash. “I don’t know any Gluckman! I just want to talk to you. It’s really very important. I found you in the phone book, er, register.”

Blumenthal narrowed his eyes. He was wearing a pair of soiled brown pants and an undershirt. “What is your name?”

“Dashiel.”

He looked at the boy in his doorway and seemed to weigh his options. Then he stood aside and let Dash in. The apartment was a single room, small, and it smelled of cigar smoke. There was a couch with a discoloured white cloth over its back, and a table with three chairs. A pot of water was simmering on the nearby stove.

“Sit down,” he said to Dash. “Give me that Phillie.” Blumenthal was pointing at a standing ashtray to his right. There was a cigar in it. Dash passed it to him and Blumenthal held a match to it. Instantly the room filled with a fresh cloud of noxious, light-blue smoke. “Ahh, good,” he said.

He went to his fridge and opened the door. Dash saw a little block of ice in the bottom, and a fur of frost around the opening. Blumenthal took out a wet package wrapped in waxed paper. He reached into a paper bag on his counter and took out a bagel, which he pried apart with his dirty thumbs and laid flat on his countertop. There was a small plate with some kind of bun coated in big square crystals of sugar. The sight of it made Dash’s mouth water. Blumenthal plastered a thin layer of what came out of the wax package on each half of the bagel and handed one to him. He tried not to eat it too quickly, although
from the way Blumenthal ate, Dash didn’t think he’d mind if he shoved the whole thing into his mouth at once. The stuff in the package was cream cheese, but it was both dense and fluffy, and tasted more like cream cheese than cream cheese had ever tasted before.

“So, whaddisit already?” said Blumenthal. He tore a massive hunk out of the bagel with his front teeth and spoke through it. “For
what
do I owe this pleasure?”

“Can I show you something?”

“Gonna vanish a quarta’ for me?”

“No,” said Dash. “This—”

He held out the newspaper clipping. The man glanced at him with suspicion before taking it and unfolding it.

“What is this?”

“It’s a newspaper that won’t be printed until … tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks,” he said, handing it back. “But I don’t read so good.”

“Look,” said Dash, pointing at the picture. “That’s Walt. Who you met last night. And that’s
me.
Standing beside him. Someone gave me this newspaper eighty-five years from now, and it has a picture in it of
me
and a kid I just met yesterday.”

“Why do I care?” He looked up at the ceiling. “This is a question I find myself asking on a daily basis …”

“You should care because the reason we’re in this picture is that him and me are in Montreal asking Houdini for his help.”

“What help?”

“With the trick. The trick you’re supposed to invent.”

Blumenthal took a long drag on his Phillie, sucking the smoke in through the mess of bagel and cheese in his mouth. Involuntarily, Dash grimaced.

“You don’t have to be stuck at the end of a Tuesday night vaudeville show!” he said urgently. “You’re good! You should be doing your own act on a real stage!”

“HEY!” Blumenthal said, and now he sounded angry. “I don’t need you and I don’t need anyone to tell me howta do what I do! You think I take advice from a kid?”

“No.”

“So
shaddap
.”

Dash looked away from the man’s red, angry face. “Who’s Gluckman?”

“Gluckman,” Blumenthal spat. “My thieving, lying
former
friend.”

“Why former?”