Door Number Two

My job can be extremely boring. I mean, there were days that I left the office with tears of boredom streaming down my metaphorical face by the time I left for lunch!  Today was one of those days! It was only ten in the morning and I was planning my early escape! If I had to sit through another boring staff meeting, I felt like I was going to pull my hair out! None-the-less, I took my seat beside my supervisor for the anticipated tedious meeting that lay between me and my lunch escape plans. I was planning on developing some malady and taking off for parts unknown at lunch time.  I wanted a three day weekend but would settle on a two and a half day one, if I could. The staff meeting droned on...and on...and on…

“Sadie!  Earth to Sadie!” the moderator said, trying to get my attention.  My boss poked me in the ribs and jolted me back to reality. “I want you to interview a resident of Shady Grove Retirement Community and have the interview presented at Monday’s staff meeting.” Since the moderator was the agency's director, I nodded my consent. There went my plans for the great escape. As the meeting was wrapping up, I gathered the handouts that seemed to multiply each week. 

“Here's the name of the lady I want you to interview” the director said as I tried to slip out unnoticed. 

“Thank you” I said, “I hope to do it justice” I continued as I tried to leave quickly and unnoticed. Unfortunately for me, Steve, my cubicle mate caught me sneaking out.

“Sneaking away?” Steve asked.

“Not today” I said. “I’m off to Shady Grove Retirement Community.” 

So, the director gave you the assignment that I ducked out of...I don’t want anything to do with those old coots!”

“Better watch what you say” I said as I opened the office door. “One day, you’ll be one, too!”

At last I was free of that boring office.  I would rush through the interview, and be off to do whatever I wanted for the next two days!  

It took me about twenty minutes to find the retirement community.  I checked in with the receptionist who called the resident in B-22 and told them that I was on my way to their unit. I wandered the halls, looking for room B-22. As I wandered, I noticed that there was absolutely nobody aimlessly wandering the halls like I had thought there would be.  It was clean and well maintained. Again, not what I thought it would be. I eventually found B-22 and knocked on the door. I was somewhat surprised to find a well dressed, sixty-something lady answering my knock.

“You must be Sadie” she said.  “My name is Alice, and my daughter said she’d be sending you over for an interview.” We shook hands as she ushered me into a small living room.  I looked around and saw a kitchenette and two doors. I assumed one was the bedroom, but I had no idea what the other one was leading to.

“My Director said I’m to interview you” I began. “Do you know why?”

Alice slowly turned in my direction and had a weird smile spreading across her face. I began to have questions about this lady. Something was off here. It made me nervous. 

“My daughter is your director” Alice began.  

“Well, that answers one question” I said with a nervous laugh.

“She thinks that my history is something that your agency might find...interesting.” Alice continued.

“What would the Area Agency on Aging find ‘interesting’?” I thought.  

Alice continued, more to herself than to me. “I once was the ‘girl’ in a magic act...you know, the assistant to the magician.  It was an interesting job to say the least. I got to be sawn in half on a regular basis.”

“How do they do that trick?” I just had to know.

“Most magicians will never tell you how they do their tricks” Alice said. “But it has been simply ages since I did that job.  I had to scrunch myself into a tiny box...the feet part was fake and moved by remote control by the magician or one of the back stage assistants.”

“There really is a reasonable explanation for each trick, isn’t there?” I asked.

“Yes” Alice said slowly. “But that’s not the reason I wanted to be interviewed.”

Now, my curiosity was getting the better of me...and I threw all those inner cautionary warnings to the wind. “Why did you want to be interviewed?” I asked.

“Follow me” Alice said and she led me into one of the two doors in the room.

We entered what seemed to be a storage room, or maybe it was a second bedroom doing the job of a storage room. I couldn’t tell. If there was a window, it was expertly camouflaged, and so was the closet. In the room seemed to be every prop her magician’s act ever performed.  There was the box she scrunched into for being sawn in half, and several others. As Alice stumbled around the stuffed storage room, she explained what her magician did. He did the type of tricks where something seemed to come out of thin air. She talked about how he made things vanish and how he made some things float.  She was most infatuated with how he’d take an everyday object, usually something brought in by an audience member, and make it either float or vanish or move from one side of the stage to the other. Sometimes they’d take water and ‘transform’ it into ice on stage. 

As we ventured further into this room, my eye was caught by a large clear container. It was tucked way back in the deepest recesses of the room.

“Tell me about this” I said as we neared the contraption.

“That one is special” Alice said. “It was the magician’s favorite illusion.” Alice went on to say that he thought that he was the first to perform this illusion...fashioned after Harry Houdini’s fateful escape act.  He’d have it filled with water, be handcuffed and chained and then lowered into the water. His intention was to escape the watery tomb and reappear at the back of the theater with a flourish. He nearly drowned the first time he tried to perform this act so he changed it from water to balloons and he disappeared in a puff of smoke and reappeared in the balloon stuffed container.  He would then distribute the balloons to the audience.

“Alice” I said, “it’s clear to me that you really enjoyed this job.”

“I loved it so much” Alice said, “that I married the magician! We had a long, happy life together.  This interview is to tell the world just how marvelous he really was.”