TWO.

    I search for magicians everywhere, but not in any obvious, meticulous way. I am merely preconditioned to notice them, or to notice something amiss. I suspect they disguise themselves in everyday attire when they are not on stage, so I am wary if something is out of place - a coat with too many pockets, hair indented by a hatband. Finesse, a performative way of moving, expressive hands, a smile that does not extend to the eyes. I suspect that magicians share the honesty of petty criminals, and imaginative children. I'm not sure what the distinction is. Occasionally I take unnecessary strolls down the street when it becomes necessary to go outside. I cross the driveway of the Magic Castle and peer into the tinted windows of luxury cars that cross my path. I walk slowly and look for luck. My grandmother used to take me to breakfast at a roadside diner and her gentlemen friend would amuse me by pulling pennies from behind the folds of my ears. A penny for your thoughts, he'd say. I was hooked. Magic cast its glamour over me. I have always been perplexed and awed by the magicians I've see on television and at county fairs. I knew I was capable of no magic myself - I have never been able to tell a convincing lie, so how could I mask myself well enough to fool an audience of skeptics? I can't follow directions or move from step to step with ease, or tell a story without succumbing to vertigo. I have trouble even believing in generally accepted facts, like news reports and weather predictions. There's no magic in evading the truth, only in inventing it. Magic is the ultimate fabrication: it manages to be scientific, historical and yet seeks to embroider reality. It attempts to convince us that despite its feints and deceptions, there is something sincere it betrays, some unfathomable element about the world, a thing we can't quite determine or name.

    I am convinced there is something real obscured by magic's sleight of hand; I feel it is the same thing that informs love - perhaps what I'm talking about is faith, a provision of belief that extends beyond proof. Sometimes love is as cunning as magic, as skilled and contrived. As true.

    Every morning I turn back my curtains and glare up at the silver thimble of sky visible above rooftops and trees. It is unutterably clear. The sun seems to dissolve the clouds like butter so thin they melt. Pulled like cotton candy. I watch old movies about elegant women living in New York high-rises and I envy their elbow-length leather gloves and ankle-grazing mink coats. It has been so hot lately that its difficult to feel glamorous. I couldn't bother with a coat of lipstick. I try to stay inside, in sheer slips, only venturing downstairs in my robe to check the mail.

    My window rattles, struck by the grind of machinery. The yellow tractor has returned, bringing with it a backhoe. They grumble at the earth and nudge it about, their wheels beating patterns into the soil. A dump truck waits on the street, ready to cart dirt away, to build a mountain somewhere else. I dread the interruption of construction, the harsh noises it produces in the morning, when I would be asleep. I become frustrated, pressing my head into the pillow, attempting to drown out the noise.

    The events taking place in the lot next door seem serious now, not anomalous like the chairs and the little hill. The lot twists, bellows, unearths itself. Takes on a new shape.