The panes of glass were wiggly with age. Was he the last one left? What was taking so long? The sky was a luminous royal blue dome swarming with huge lazy whorls of stars, van Gogh stars that would have been invisible in Brooklyn, drowned in light pollution. He wondered how far upstate they were, and what had happened to the note he’d been chasing and never found. The book he’d left behind with his backpack in the first exam room; now he wished he’d kept it with him. He imagined his parents making dinner together in the kitchen, something steaming on the stove, his dad singing along to something nightmarishly unhip, two glasses of red wine on the counter. He almost missed them.
With no warning the door banged open and the Dean walked in, talking over his shoulder at somebody behind him.
“—a Candidate? Fine,” he said sarcastically. “Let’s see a Candidate. And bring some Goddamned candles!” He sat down at the table. His shirt was translucent with sweat. It was not impossible that he’d had a drink between now and the last time Quentin had seen him. “Hello, Quentin. Please sit.”
He indicated the other chair. Quentin sat, and Fogg rebuttoned his top button and hastily, irritably whipped a tie out of his pocket.
The dark-haired woman followed Fogg into the room, and after her came the old man with the knots, the fat man with the lizard, then the rest of the dozen or so men and women who had paraded through the room this afternoon. They formed lines along the walls, packed themselves into the corners, craning to look at him, whispering to one another. The punk kid with the tattoos was there, too—he slipped in just as the door was closing, unobserved by the faculty.
“Come on, come on.” The Dean waved them into the room. “We should really do this in the conservatory next year. Pearl, you come around here.” This to the young blond woman who’d made Quentin draw a map.
“Now,” he said when they were all inside. “Quentin. Sit, please.”
Quentin was already sitting. He scooched in his chair a little farther.
Dean Fogg took out of one pocket a fresh pack of cards, the plastic wrap still on them, and from the other he took a stack of nickels, maybe a dollar’s worth, which he put down too emphatically so that they promptly slumped over. They both reached to restack them.
“All right, let’s get to it.” Fogg clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Let’s see some magic!”
He sat back in his chair and folded his arms.
Hadn’t they already done this part? Quentin kept his face studiously calm and unworried, but his mind was in free fall. Slowly he unwrapped the stiff new cards, the plastic crackling deafeningly in the excruciating stillness, and watched from a mental mile away as his hands dutifully riffled and bridged them, riffled and bridged. He searched his brain for a trick he hadn’t already done the first time around. Somebody coughed.
He’d barely started his routine when Fogg stopped him.
“No, no-no-no-no.” Fogg chuckled, not especially kindly. “Not like that. I want to see some
He knocked twice on the hard tabletop with his knuckles and sat back again. Quentin took a deep breath and searched Fogg’s face for the good humor he’d seen there earlier, but Fogg just watched expectantly. His eyes were a pale milky blue, paler than eyes usually were.
“I don’t really get what you mean,” Quentin said slowly, in the silence, like he’d forgotten his line in the school play and had to ask for it. “What do you mean, real magic?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Fogg shot a hilarious sideways glance at the other teachers. “I don’t know what I mean. You tell me what I mean.”
Quentin shuffled a couple more times, stalling. He didn’t know what to do. He would do anything if they would just tell him what he was supposed to do. This was it, he thought, he was coming to the end. This is what failure feels like. He looked around the room, but every face was either blank or avoiding his gaze. No one was going to help him. He was going back to Brooklyn. Maddeningly, he could feel tears pooling in his eyes. He blinked them away. He so badly wanted not to care, but he was falling backward, sinking down inside himself, and there was nothing there to catch him. This is it, he thought. This was the test he couldn’t pass. It wasn’t really all that surprising. He just wondered how long they were going to let it go on.
“Stop fucking with us, Quentin!” Fogg barked. He snapped his fingers. “Come on. Wake up!”
He reached across the table and grabbed Quentin’s hands roughly. The contact was a shock. His fingers were strong and strangely dry and hot. He was moving Quentin’s fingers, physically forcing them into positions they didn’t want to be in.
“Like this,” he was saying. “Like
“Okay, stop,” Quentin said. He tried to pull away. “Stop.”
