Dave the Birthday Magician Loves Tara

    Her hair was red and on the kinky side.  She hated her hair.  She had a splash of orange freckles across her nose and cheeks.  She hated her freckles.  She really should have gotten braces as a child because her teeth were a jumbled mess from over-crowding.  Needless to say, Tara hated her teeth.  Smiling at people with her mouth closed had become second-nature to her.

    However, Dave, who worked in the convenience store with Tara, had recently noticed that when nobody else was around but him, she had started to (without her even knowing it) smile normally.  Dave thought she was really pretty when she smiled.

    Then again, Dave was becoming biased in regard to the physical attractiveness of Tara.  That’s because Dave was falling in love with her.

    Dave didn’t realize that he had become biased in the matter of the physical attractiveness of Tara.  That’s because Dave had never been in love before. 

    Dave thought there was a lot to like about Tara.  She was nice, but not in an overly sweet way.  Her niceness had a laid back sort of quiet coolness about it.  And the more Dave worked with her the more she grew on him.

    Dave came to know (in the way that people who live in the same small town know too much about one another) that Tara had grown up abysmally poor.  She had done outstandingly well in high school, and Dave thought she was the smartest person he knew.  She should have gone on to college.  She should have gone on to a good college.  She would have loved college for all the right reasons.  She would have chewed college up and spit it out, if she had gone.

    But she didn’t.  Instead she stayed at home with her parents and (without any complaining) went to work at a job that she could do with one hand tied behind her back.  She always did great work.

    Compared to Tara, Dave had grown up wealthy.  In high school Dave had thought he was being smart by doing fairly well while doing the bare minimum.  He had gone on to college – an expensive college no less.  Dave had loved college for all the wrong reasons.  College chewed him up and spit him out.  He was gone by his sophomore year. 
 
    And so he moved back home with his parents and took a job that he should have been able to do with one hand tied behind his back.  He complained about his job every day.  He preferred to use just one hand when doing his job.  He, for the most part, did half-assed work.


    Dave was awed and a little intimidated by just how smart Tara was.  Any task or problem that required math, she could calculate in a flash.  She was always coming into the store with a new book she was reading.  It was usually something like Jane Austin, Kurt Vonnegut or Shakespeare.

    Dave thought she may have been one of a handful of people in the history of the United States to have developed an appreciation of Shakespeare from high school.

    One day a bunch of the local migrant workers came into store.  Dave turned his nose up at them; they were all filthy from hard work.  They looked confused, so Tara asked them if she could help them.  They answered that they didn’t speak any English.  She immediately kicked into Spanish and, to Dave’s amazement; they spent the next ten minutes jabbering back and forth as they got their things.  After they had gone Dave asked her how in the hell she had learned to speak Spanish.  She told him from high school.

    Dave thought that Tara may have been the ONLY person in the history of the United States to have actually learned to speak Spanish from high school.

    After that the migrant workers came into the store frequently.  They always spoke to Tara in Spanish and she talked backed to them in kind.

    Another day, not soon thereafter, they came in and loaded up with groceries.  After they left the store Tara asked, "Dave, would you do me a favor?"

    "Sure, what?"

    "It's real slow around here and we are all caught up.  Would go and pick up those guys and give them a ride to their place?"  Dave was about to laugh and ask her if she was out of her gourd, but when he looked up he saw that she looked serious.

    "Are you serious?"

    "It's real hot out there.  I feel bad for them.  Plus, you'll get to get out of the store for a bit."

    So Dave got in his car and found them hoofing it just a couple of hundred of yards up the road.  When they figured out that he was trying to offer them a lift, they refused him.  But when he mentioned Tara’s name and was insistent, they climbed in his car.

    By pointing and by using a handful of English words they gave Dave directions to their home.  He couldn’t believe how far they had to walk to get to the store – it must have been at least four miles.  And what a dump of a shack they lived in.  Absolutely pathetic.  When they got out of his car they thanked him heartily for the ride.

    All this got Dave to thinking and he had a hard time getting them out of his mind for the rest of the day.

    A week later when Dave saw them hauling their groceries down the road again he pulled over and gave them another ride.  And for the rest of that summer, and fall, if he saw them he picked them up and took them “home”.

    And even though Dave couldn’t understand a word they said, he came to think they were really kind of cool - once you got to know them.


    Dave soon began to realize that he and the Mexican migrant workers were just the beginning of the list of people (mostly made up of losers and misfits he noted) who were devotees of Tara.  Al  was another of her fans.  He came in daily and always in the morning.  He must have been at least eighty five and he did everything slowly.  He drove Dave crazy.

    He never called Tara by name but instead used a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of pet names for her.  Sweetie, Angel, Darling, Sugar, Dolly…he never was for a lack of some insipid nickname for her.  Dave wasn’t even sure if Al knew her name.

    Al clogged up the store at one of its busiest times – morning rush hour.  He would dodder around the store getting in people’s way.  It took him so long to make his morning coffee that by the time he was done perhaps four or five people would be standing behind him waiting to get at the coffee station.  Often, if she could, Tara would intercede at the beginning of this epic process and make his cup of coffee for him.  This, of course, would set off a new round of honey soaked names, as well as about a billion thank yous.

    And then there were his scratch-offs.  He would creep up to the counter and order a few of the instant scratch off lottery tickets.  Deciding upon the number and what type of tickets was a decision of great deliberation.  When he eventually had them, he wouldn’t take them home and scratch them like most people do.  Nor would he take to some out of the way place in the store to scratch them.  He would merely slide over just a bit, where he was still mostly in the way, and start his painfully laborious process of scratching off his tickets right there at the counter.

    And so Tara or Dave and the customers “behind” him would have to work around him as best they could.  First he would fumble around in his pockets for a coin.  Dave noted that he almost never reached into the right pocket with a coin in it first.  He then, with very shaky hands, start to slowly scratch off each ticket.  He liked to announce each and every discovery on his tickets as he scratched them.  “Oh there’s another two dollar sign, one more and I’m a two dollar winner.”  Often he would need Tara’s help in reading the numbers.  And if he did win he would turn the tickets in and “let his money ride” on a round of new tickets, which of course would start the whole painful process over again.  All of it drove Dave crazy.  Tara, of course, dealt with Al with her usual patience, while also managing to work efficiently around him to take care of the other store’s customers.

    Martin was another of Tara’s enthusiasts.  Martin was definitely slow, but not retarded.  He usually came in the afternoon when it was slower.  He would park himself at the end of the counter and talk, in an overly eager and stuttering voice, to Tara non-stop.  He talked about a great many things, but professional sports and movies were his two mainstays.  Dave could not believe how even the golden-hearted Tara could listen patiently to his never ending descriptions of football games or action films.  Dave visibly cringed when he saw Martin come in the store.

    While Al seemed oblivious to Dave’s contempt, between Martin and Dave there was an enmity.  Martin was just ‘with it’ enough to sense Dave’s scorn.  Perhaps he even picked up, on some primordial, instinctual level, that Dave was also a rival for Tara’s affection.  Both Martin and Dave did their best to ignore one another, but when they did have to interact, both laced their voices with disdain.

    There were exceptions to this protocol.  On the odd day when Tara was absent for work, both Al and Martin were so completely thrown out of whack and despondent that Dave softened up on each of them.  On those days he would be the one to help them out and deal patiently with them.  Any customer coming in that day would have thought it was Dave who had the charitable heart.  Dave certainly could empathize with Al and Martin because he also felt out of whack and saddened by Tara’s absence too.  However, the next day that Tara returned things went back to normal, with Dave going back to being exasperated with Al, and the lines of battle were redrawn between Martin and Dave.

    Sometimes when Dave was at the store and feeling particularly sorry for himself he would look over at Tara.  She would, most likely, be cheerfully attending to one of the store’s menial tasks (very likely one of the menial tasks that he ought to have been doing).  Or, perhaps, she would be doggedly giving directions to the interstate to some clueless out-of-towner.  Or she may have been patiently listening to one the store’s lonely regulars who was blathering on about…whatever.  When this happened he’d feel guilty about his self-pity and how he had squandered his opportunity; he’d think it should have been Tara who had been given the chances he had had.

    Tara’s cheerfulness was so prevalent that Dave suspected she might be immune to feelings of sadness.  He himself proved that this theory was incorrect.

    It happened one day during another of those brutally hot summer days during rush hour when the store was busy.  In those days people paid for their gasoline in cash, so people were always flying in and out of the store.  Also, in those days, many service stations had a lane for “full service” where you could have your gas pumped for you.

    Manic speed was needed to pump the gas and attend to the outside customers, to authorize the pumps for the self-service customers, to ring-up the gas, to ring-up the groceries bought, to make change properly (a “short” drawer at the end of the night was a dreaded headache), to make sure no drive-offs occurred (again a headache for the attendants if one did), to drop two hundred dollar envelopes in the safe when needed, to make sure the cooler was stocked, the coffee pots had joe in them, the food and condiments were all good, etc.

    It was during these mad rushes that Dave would actually do good work, of a sort.  As the rush started he would begin to move at a faster pace.  He would also begin to mutter to himself.  As the rush of customers and crazy, busyness increased, Dave’s speed also increased.  However, his anger also  increased, as did the volume of his complaining.  Up and up each of these would go; the busyness of the store, his speed of work, the complaining about his life and his job – each one fueling the other.

    And so if you were a customer who had happened to come in during one of these times you might have seen this.  Dave would be running into the store from the pumps, complaining that friggin’ Old Lady Rivenburg in the white Cadillac never once tipped him when he pumped her gas - even when she asked him to check her oil and clean her windshield.  Then he’d whip over and wipe down the hot dog station with one hand, while discarding the old dogs and replacing them with new ones.  As he did this he complained with about what slobs the customers here are, all with complete disregard as to whether the customers currently in the store heard him or not.

    Next, he would sail over to the register were he would begin to savagely flip the inside pump switches with one hand (to authorize the pumps for the self serve customers), while his fingers of his other hand danced over the register tallying up the gas and in-store purchases of the customers who were standing in line.

    During these times he never gave the customers friendly greetings.  In fact, usually he really didn’t acknowledge them in any way.  He just rang them through with an angry efficiency.  If you were a regular you would step up to find your gas already rung through, the six pack you held in your hand already rung through, and the question of “Do you need your smokes today?”  Barely before you could utter the answer of yes, your brand of cigarettes would have been plucked from somewhere overhead and slapped sharply on the counter in front of you.  Dave would jab at the register once more, announce your total (correctly) before the machine did, practically snatch the money from your hand, pluck the change from the drawer, rip a plastic bag from the wall, then (with surprising delicacy) place your six pack and cigarettes into the bag and hand it to you.  Before you had a chance to turn and go, he had already eyed-balled what the guy behind you was purchasing and had begun to ring it through.

    Meanwhile the volume and flow of his disgruntled monologue increased to the point where he was taking it to the absolute hilt.

    “I hate this job.  I hate this job.  I hate this job.  Working this god-damned register all day long.  I might as well be chained to the god-damned thing like a slave.  This has got to be the most boring and demeaning work ever invented.  Friggin’ women’s work, that’s what this job is.  Look at this for Christ’s sake – it’s the friggin’ seventh, god-damned two hundred dollar envelope I’ve had to drop into the safe in the last hour.  The friggin’ owners of this store, who I bet anything have probably never worked a god-damned day in their lives, are getting rich while they pay us the friggin’ minimum wage.  How much you want to make a five dollar bet that’s right on the money?  And if you’re off by just one pack of smokes when you do your inventory count at the end of the night it’s like the friggin’ god-damned inquisition the next day.  What a bunch of bastards.  I pray they fire me.  I mean why would anyone want to work here?  The only future someone can have here is to become an assistant manager, make a couple bucks more an hour, have even more responsibility dumped on your ass, and then you have to be the one who cracks the whip over the next generation of minimum wage, enslaved employees they hire.”

    When Dave was done with his tirade (on this particular day) he happened to look up at Tara and saw on her face an expression he had never seen before.  She was visibly upset and she had a definite look of sadness on her face that she was trying to conceal.  Dave went from feeling mad to feeling shocked.  He could not believe that the ever optimistic and cheerful Tara was even able to feel sadness or defeat.  And he felt utterly terrible that it was he himself who was the cause of these feelings.  He immediately stopped complaining, and from that moment on he kept his complaining around her to a minimum, and always under his breath.
   
    Indeed, Dave had recently come to conclusion that he had finally devolved into a complete and utter loser, which was ironic since the truth of his situation was the opposite of that; Dave was, in actuality, just beginning to evolve into becoming something other than the semi-asshole he had always been.

    Dave’s feelings of inadequacy were so prevalent it was affecting his sex drive.  He paid little attention to the women who came and went from the store.  And, when a really attractive woman was able to catch his eye, his feelings of self-loathing and hopelessness were stirred up, squashing any feelings of sexual desire.  He had even stopped masturbating.

    However, this lack of sexual drive was not the case when he was around Tara – quite the opposite.  Dave was springing boners around her with alarming frequency.  Something as mundane as her standing next to him and talking normally had about a thirty percent chance of causing him to have an erection.  More likely than not, he would get one if she did something like brush up against him accidently while walking by.  And if she did something like reach across him to get a pack of cigarettes for a customer, he was done for.

    It was all highly embarrassing for Dave and really interfered with his ability to do mediocre work around the store.  He did his best to try and cover them up from her.  He wondered if Tara was aware of the affect she was having on him.

    She was aware, but she was just as unsure as Dave was about what should be done about all this.  When you are a young lady with “frizzy, clown hair,” freckles and bad teeth, dealing with this type of problem isn’t something you have experience handling.  She was shy.  She was relatively inexperienced and uncertain of herself in the ways of sex and romance.  And she just so happened to like Dave a lot too, which in this type of situation serves more of an impediment rather than something that will actually facilitate the fulfillment of romantic yearnings.


    Now, Dave had another job.  He performed magic at children’s birthday parties.  This job had grown out of the love he had for magic as a boy.  It was during his high school years that he began to perform at children’s parties for money.  Over time, he had become good at it.  He was very proficient and truly entertaining when he performed.  He felt he was too old for this, but he continued to perform because he needed the money.  He did not hate it like he hated working at the convenience store; he was just embarrassed to still be doing it at his age.

    One day, Dave found himself driving as he had done many times before, to a birthday gig.  He particularly dreaded this one because the father of the birthday girl was an old high school “friend” of Dave’s.  Dave had thought that the father, Ed Kelly, was obnoxious in high school, and when he met with him to work out the birthday party’s magical arrangements his opinion of Ed hadn’t changed.  And so when Dave made a left onto Euclid and parked on the street behind the last of a row of cars he was feeling particularly low.  About four houses down he saw a string of birthday party balloons tied to a mailbox.  Dave took a moment to wallow in self pity, and then he got out of the car.

    Dave walked up and past the mailbox with birthday balloons tied to it.  Ed had done very well for himself and his house and yard were palatial.  Dave was full of self-loathing as he approached the back yard.

    Children milled around.  Most of the girls were dressed in pretty sun dresses, while most of the boys were dressed in khaki shorts and polo shirts.  The parents mixed and mingled.  They paid little attention to either their children or to Dave.  There was a large spread of expensive-looking catered food.  Ed had also booked a bouncy-bounce, a man who was giving pony rides, and a clown, too.

    Dave’s agreement with Ed was to perform magic for two hours.  He would spend the first hour performing magic tricks for individual children, do a short twenty minute show for everyone, followed by another round on individual tricks.

    And so Dave started to ease on into the yard.  His plan was to perform a few small tricks for the children whose attention he caught.  He had learned that he didn’t need to make a grand entrance, after about fifteen minutes all of the children would be drawn to him because of his schtick, not to mention his magician’s hat and cape.

    The first child that Dave came across was a slight boy with dark circles around his eyes.  He was standing apart from the other children.  Dave asked him his name.

    “Michael,” said the boy.

    “Would you like to see a trick?” Dave asked.

    “Sure,” answered Michael.

    Dave pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Now watch me make this quarter disappear,” he said.  Dave waved one hand over the quarter to make it “disappear.”

    Dave waved his one hand over the hand that still held the quarter.  Now what should have happened was that the quarter would simply slide down father into the hand that already held it, but Dave could no longer feel the quarter in that hand.  He opened his hand and, sure enough, it wasn’t there.  “Shoot,” he said.  “I must have dropped it.”  He scanned the ground quickly but could not find it.  “Sorry, Michael I messed that one up.  Apparently I lost it.”

    “Is this what you are looking for?” asked Michael.  Michael reached up to his ear and pulled something out of it.  He extended his hand forward palm side up.  On it was a quarter.

    Dave, frozen in amazement, stared at the quarter.  “Where did that come from?” he asked.

    “From my ear,” said Michael. “Isn’t that where it was supposed to go?”

    Dave looked around.  The other kids were still milling and running about.  The parents were mingling and eating food.  Nobody had noticed a thing.

    Perplexed and slightly shaken, Dave asked Michael if he wanted to see another trick.  Michael said sure, so Dave pulled out a piece of loose leaf paper.  He was planning on doing something new at this party.  He had been practicing making origami animals out of paper, and so he thought he’d make a few for some of the kids.  He began to make a hummingbird (which when he was making them at home were coming out sort of insect-ish looking) for Michael.

    As he finished the last crease, an astonishing thing happened.  Immediately the “hummingbird” leapt to life.  It began to fly, buzzing and circling around Dave.

    Dave shrieked.  He took off in an attempt to get away from the newly animated creature, his arms flailing and swatting about him.  The white hummingbird easily evaded all of Dave’s blows, while managing to stay very close to Dave’s head.  Some of the parents and children looked in his direction and began to laugh, thinking this was all part of his act.

    Some of the children took off after Dave in an attempt to get a better look at the creature.  Dave was much faster than they were, however, and it was only after he accidently plowed into some chairs and fell down that they were able to catch up to him.  As the children approached, the hummingbird buzzed around Dave’s head one final time, hovered above him for just a moment, and then took off quickly over the hedge and off into the distance.

    Ed approached Dave as he lay dazed and panting on the ground, surrounded by the children.  “Good trick, Dave.  I particularly liked the part where you ran around screaming like a girl,” said Ed.  “It seemed to come very naturally to you.  Here’s a piece of advice for you - why don’t you leave the clowning around to Bozo over there.  Now get up and stop screwing around and start earning your money.”

    Normally Dave would have quit on the spot in the face of such rudeness, but the whole situation had him very flummoxed and he was not in his usual state of mind.  As he stood up the children shifted into a semi-circle so that they could all see what he was going to do next.  Ed stood directly across from Dave, his arms crossed, glowering at Dave.  “Well,” he said, “What’s it going to be?”

    The only thing that Dave could think of was the old detachable thumb trick.  He did not even have the presence of mind to give it a good set up and he simply said, “OK, get ready kids because I’m going to remove my thumb…”

    The instant he moved his one thumb from his other thumb he experienced an extremely sharp and shooting pain in his thumb.  A large spurt of blood shot out and hit Ed in an almost perfect line from his head, down his shirt and his slacks to his shoes.  Once again Dave shrieked in fear and pain.

    He held up his hand.  His thumb from beyond the knuckle was gone.

    While a few of the children laughed, most began to scream.  Dave continued to scream himself.  He quickly wrapped his shirt around his thumb, and in a panic, ran toward his car.  As he made his way from the back yard around to the front he heard Ed shout, “You’re fired.”  Being fired from this gig was the least of Dave’s worries.

    As Dave ran into the front he noticed Michael, who was alone again, standing in the yard.  Michael's eyes stared dolefully at Dave from within their dark circles.  Just as Dave passed Michael he heard him say cryptically, but clearly, “Just put it back on.”

    Dave started his car and began to race toward the hospital as best as he could with his hand still wrapped in his shirt.

    As he drove his panic started to subside a little, and he began to try and process what had happened.  He thought about the quarter trick, the origami trick and the thumb trick.  He thought about them again.  Then, as he approached the hospital, he remembered what Michael had said to him in the front yard.  It couldn’t be that easy he thought to himself.

    He pulled his car over.  Carefully, he unwrapped his thumb.  It looked gruesome, but it had stopped bleeding.  He brought his other thumb and index finger up and completed the trick by putting his thumb ‘back on.’

    And to his amazement his thumb was whole again.

   

    Dave sat on his couch in his parents’ basement running through of the events of that afternoon.  He had already made about a dozen quarters disappear.  He did not have the courage to make another origami animal.  Needless to say, he was not going to detach his thumb again in order to test his theory he had gained some kind of new magical ability.

    Then he got an idea.  He had often performed, usually for older crowds, a trick were he ‘turned’ a one dollar bill into a ten dollar bill.  He pulled a one dollar bill out of his wallet.  His hands were shaking and he had to calm himself to get them under control.  Carefully and precisely he folded the bill as he had always done in the trick.  For a moment he could not bring himself to unfold it.  But when he did he leapt up and shouted for joy.  The one had turned into a ten dollar bill.  A minute later he had turned two more dollars into a pair of tens.  As he looked at the thirty dollars on the coffee table he thought, it can’t be that easy, can it?

    There was a tapping on one of his windows, but when Dave looked up nobody was there.  Probably one of his friends screwing around thought Dave as he got up to check.  No sooner had he cracked open the widow then the white hummingbird zipped into the room.

    Dave froze.  The hummingbird hovered and scooted around the room, as if to check it out.  It moved over to the coffee table where Dave had left a half drunk glass of soda.  The creature landed on the lip of the glass.  It dipped its head into the glass and extended its “bill” into the soda.  It then proceeded to drain the glass dry.

    When it was done it took off into the air again.  It maneuvered over to Dave and hovered in front of him as if it was examining him.  It moved to his shoulder where it landed.  Dave, who was very afraid but even more afraid to move, continued to stand still. Dave saw, it did indeed, look like a cross between an insect and a hummingbird.  It was snow white with little blue lines running around it the short way and one fine, red line running down its length.  The creature fell asleep on Dave’s shoulder, and that is where it remained for the rest of the day.

    Dave quickly warmed up to the creature, which he named Houdini.  He named it that because it had the uncanny ability to disappear just before other people came around.  Dave decided he wasn’t going to tell anyone about Houdini.  He also decided he wasn’t going to tell anyone about his new ability to perform magic.  Part of the reason he decided not to tell anyone was because he planned on funding his existence by converting ones into tens.  Needless to say, he promptly quit his job.

    Yet there remained one last unfinished issue regarding the store – Tara.  Dave could no longer use the excuse that he didn’t have the money to ask Tara out, or that he didn’t have the money for a girlfriend.  And so the day came when Dave plucked up his courage and in a voice, not much different from Martin’s, asked Tara out on a date.  She said yes, of course, and Dave took her out to a nice restaurant in “the city.”  Tara had only been to the city a handful of times, and most of those had been for school field trips.  As they drove up, Tara was very moved by how pretty it looked at night with the lights on.  Later, Dave was very moved by how pretty Tara looked under the city’s lights.

    On their way back Tara stared dreamily out the car window.  Dave, kept sneaking looks at her as he drove.  She caught him looking at her, and misunderstanding his expression, sheepishly took her feet off of his car's seat.  "I'm sorry, I had my feet on your seat.  It's a bad habit I have."

    "I don't care.  My car's a piece of junk, and even if it weren't, I still wouldn't care.  Put your feet on my car's seat all you want."

    They were silent for a time then Dave said, "Tara, I'd like you to put your feet back up on my seat."

    "Really?  Why?"

    "I want you to be comfortable with me.  I'm hoping that you will be spending a lot more time with me, and that includes riding around in my car.  If you are most comfortable with your feet up, but your feet up.  Please, I'm asking you."

    "OK," said Tara and she very slowly, almost demurely put her feet back up on his seat.  Later that night she would kiss Dave for the first time in much the same manner, very slowly and demurely.

    "Can I see you tomorrow," asked Dave.

    "Yes."
 

    The next day Houdini made an appearance in front of both of them.  Tara was, and remained, the only person Houdini ever appeared in front of besides Dave.

    Dave told Tara everything.  Tara agreed with Dave that the best course of action would be to not tell anyone, at least for the time being.  They never did.

    Dave took a job working for his friend who was a carpenter and was swamped with work to do.  Dave partly did this because of the qualms he had about using his magic as his sole means of support.  He also liked the work.

    Six months later Tara and Dave decided to move into a small apartment together in the city.  Tara began to take nursing classes.  She chewed them up and spit them out.

    Then one day about six months after they had moved into their apartment together, something strange happened.  Dave and Tara had just come back from playing tennis.  Dave went to put the rackets away while Tara went into the kitchen to pour each of them a couple of lemonades.  Dave called to her from the back hallway.  She went to see what was wrong.

    Dave had made it only halfway down the hallway.  He was standing still and looking down.  As Tara approached him she could see he was staring at something small and white in front of him on the floor.  As she drew closer she realized what it was.  It was his little pet.  It was no longer alive.  It had turned back into paper.

    Dave sat on couch.  He was beside himself.  His pet lay on the coffee table in front of him.  Tara, who had tried to console him as best she could, was now in the kitchen making dinner.  Suddenly Dave had a thought.  He pulled out a one dollar bill from his wallet and folded it up deftly, as he had done many times before.  As he unfolded it his suspicion was confirmed.  It remained a one dollar bill.

    For the next month Dave was absolutely despondent.  He slept very little and began to look terrible.  Unless he was going to work, he refused to leave the house.  Normally very affectionate with Tara, he withdrew from her completely.  They had stopped making love.

    Tara got him a dog.  It was an almost full grown Labrador mix.  She got it from the pound.  It was one of those dogs that throws itself into a spastic fit of wiggling convulsions every time someone it liked came home.  It liked everyone.

    Two weeks later Tara came home from work.  Rudy greeted her in his usual whirling dervish fashion.  Dave had a salad, lasagna and a bottle of wine ready for her.  He couldn’t keep his hands off her. 

    After dinner Dave told Tara to sit down on the couch.  He wanted to unveil a trick he had been secretly working on with Rudy.  Dave told Rudy to sit.  Rudy sat.  Dave made his index finger and thumb into the shape of a gun.  He pointed the “gun” at Rudy.  Rudy stared at him with rapt innocence.  Dave closed one eye, aimed, dropped his thumb and said, “Bang.”  Rudy rolled onto his side and lay still on the ground.  His mouth was agape and his tongue even lolled out onto the floor.

    In fact, Rudy lay so still on the ground, that for a moment, Tara wondered if he was actually all right.  Then, to her relief, saw the dark pupil of his eye momentarily move as his gaze switched from her, back to Dave.  He lay there a moment later, and then when Dave said, “You’re OK boy,” Rudy leapt up, wagging his tail and body so enthusiastically Tara was afraid he was going to give himself a spinal injury.   

    That night Dave was back to his old self again.  He was very amorous with Tara and made love with her twice.

    Dave went into business with his friend and Tara became a nurse in the city’s hospital.  They got married and bought a house back in their hometown.  They had two daughters, Kathy and Elizabeth.  They were, in general, very happy and content.

   
    Then one day, many years later, Dave was sitting on his couch on a Sunday as the late afternoon sun streamed in, when something miraculous happened.  He and Tara had just met Kathy's boyfriend, Mike.  He was a teacher.  He was quiet and polite.  He was ten years older than her, and Dave didn't want to like him, but there was nothing to dislike.  In fact, the only remarkable thing about him was that he looked like he hadn’t slept in days from the looks of his eyes.  Dave thought there was something familiar about Mike, but he couldn’t place him.  Dave got the impression things were getting serious between the two of them.

    And so he sat on the couch, slightly saddened about how quickly his daughters had grown up.  He was absentmindedly watching football while, even more absentmindedly, folding and unfolding a dollar bill.  Unconsciously, he was folding and unfolding the bill just as he had done many times to transform them magically into tens.  Tara, who was puttering around in the kitchen, heard him call out for her.

    She went out see what he wanted.  He held up a ten dollar bill.  He immediately got up and went to get her purse to see if she had any one dollar bills, since he did not have any in his wallet.  As Dave began to rummage through her purse Tara descended the stairs into the basement, his grumbling about her stereotypical, cluttered purse fading the further she went down.  “I finally found a couple of singles,” she heard him call to her.

    Tara fetched the step stool and brought it over to the old jelly cabinet and climbed up.  Dave called from above, “Yup, this one is a ten now…and this one is a ten now…”

    Tara reached all the way to the top and to the back of the cabinet and retrieved an old jewelry box.  Dave called to her, “What in the world are you doing down there?”  She carefully brought the jewelry box down and laid it on the floor.

    Coming from inside the box she heard a sound.  Even though it was a sound she had not heard in a long time, she knew exactly what it was.  It was a buzzing sound, and as she opened the lid she gave one of her wide, jangly toothed smiles she did only in front of those she loved.

    She cooed, “Well hello there.  Where have you been?  Someone is going to be so happy to see you.  You must be hungry, I imagine.  Let’s go upstairs and I’ll pour you a glass of soda.”

Word Count 6625