This time there’s no sarcasm, no teasing, nothing unclear in her tone. It’s just earnest and nervous. “What’s the thing?” I ask gently.
“I don’t know what to say to him,” she says, with a one-shouldered shrug. “I can stick a pencil in my nose and make it appear to come out of the side of my head much easier than I can figure out what to write.”
“Wait. You can stick a pencil in your nose?”
She nods in excitement. “Want to see?”
I kind of do, in a sort of sick-fascination way. But not now. “Another time, unless it’s a Blackwing.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s only my favorite type of pencil in the entire world. But let’s focus on one thing at a time. Let me walk you through this. You say: Sure, that sounds great. How about Friday at five p.m.?”
She shudders. “Too hard.”
“To say that?”
She inhales deeply, like she’s steeling herself to say something tough. “Okay, look. There’s no pretending with you. You’ve already seen what happens when I like someone. I can’t talk. I can’t speak. If I can manage words, they’re ridiculously inappropriate ones. Even if I texted him, I wouldn’t know how to act on Friday at five p.m.”
Damn, the way she says that is so sweet and so sad at the same time, and I half feel sorry for her, and half want to tell her she’s so fucking cool it doesn’t matter. But it does matter. Because if she can’t get past her inability to speak around guys she likes, life might be lonely.
I move my stool closer. “But you understand women. You knew what that woman was up to at the bookstore.”
She rolls her eyes. “Vicious’s wife wasn’t exactly subtle. But yes, I can understand my native language. It’s men that vex me.”
“You honestly and truly don’t know what to say or do with a guy?” I ask softly.
She levels her gaze at me. “I’m a magician, Nick. I go to kids’ parties. I work with moms. I never meet men. Simon is the exception because he’s a single dad, and that’s rare. I don’t know the first thing about the mating and dating rituals of the American male. I’m nearly twenty-six years old, and touching your arms to prank my brother in Central Park last summer was the most action I’ve gotten in ages.”
I want to preen and offer her my arms to touch again, because my ego is keying in on the part about me. Then it hits me. Most action she’s gotten in ages?
But before she can elaborate on the state of her sexual satisfaction, or current lack thereof, her blue eyes show a hint of sadness, and she looks away.
“It was?” I ask quietly, trying to digest the enormity of that kind of drought. Sounds like hell.
She looks back at me and shrugs, almost in defeat. Her expression seems resigned, as if she’s accepted the inevitable. “Yep,” she says with a rueful smile. “That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“You haven’t been with anyone, in any way, in a long time?”
“I’m quite close to my iPhone, and I’m kind of amazingly intimate with my pillow. Don’t tell anyone. But yes, I’ve been single in the city since I moved back after college.” She sighs deeply, then squares her shoulders. “But it is what it is, Nick. Being a magician is not that conducive to dating. It’s a trade-off I have to accept.”
“Why does the job hold you back?”
She holds up her fingers and counts off. “First, whenever I do meet new people, usually the first thing they want is for me to show them tricks. They see a magician, not a woman,” she says, keeping her chin raised, even though there’s an undercurrent to those words. “Second, even though I do a few corporate events from time to time, the vast majority of the people I interact with are moms and kids. And third, the reality of my job is that I spend a lot of time alone. In front of a mirror. Practicing tricks,” she says, punctuating each phrase with a pause. “If you want to know why I could barely speak the other day, there you go.”
Something clicks. Harper is fantastically sarcastic, something I love, since it’s a second language for me. But I bet this issue—the solitary nature of her life—is why her sarcasm is so finely tuned. It’s a protective armor, shielding her. She uses it regularly, giving it a thorough workout each day to guard a lonesome heart.
“That’s kind of a bummer,” I say, because it’s rough when the job you love hinders you. I’m lucky to be in the entertainment business. I meet women all the time. But if I were spending all my days at home drawing, like I did in high school, I’d probably be better acquainted with the Saturday night TV schedule. As it is, I don’t have a clue what’s on, and I vastly prefer that my career has a social side to it, since, well, I like people.
“It’s fine,” she says, waving a hand as if she’s making all her solitude disappear in a poof. “I love what I do for a living. If my job makes it harder for me to date, that’s just the price I have to pay.”
“But why does it have to be that way? Why does one have to exclude the other? I don’t think you have to be lonely.”
“I didn’t say I was lonely,” she corrects, but her tone is defensive. Then she brightens her smile. “But hey, I get to have my magic wand in exchange for a meaningful connection with the opposite sex.”
“Depends what kind of magic wand you mean,” I tease.