Daniel Galef

Bunkum was learning how to pull a coin out of someone’s ear. He had a website open on the library computer that said “How to Pull a Coin Out Of Someone’s Ear” at the top. “I’m learning how to pull a coin out of someone’s ear,” he said to the library.

Billings coughed. “You can’t get something for nothing.” Billings was on the computer next to Bunkum. His laminated name tag said “Billings.” They’d never met.

“I know that,” said Bunkum. “It’s magic.” “Stage magic,” he said, so Billings wouldn’t think he was the kind of library wacko who believed in real magic.

“You’re a kind of library wacko,” said Billings, like he was telling Bunkum something, “looking up how to do magic tricks on the computer. I’m doing research.”

“Are you writing a movie?” asked Bunkum, who didn’t care. He didn’t want to keep talking about magic. He didn’t like being called a wacko, even by a different wacko.

“No, I’m doing research,” said Billings, pressing the tab key nine times.

It sounded like Billings wasn’t going to talk again, so Bunkum read the next part of the trick. “Six: Hold the coin up for everyone to see. Say something like ‘He/She has got a coin in his/her ear!’ or ‘Ta Da!’” He held up his coin, which was a quarter. “Ta da!” Bunkum said, quietly so Billings wouldn’t think he was talking to him.

“I’m composing a monograph on the history of ghosts,” said Billings. “I expect it is going to be seminal. Did you know that this library is haunted?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in magic.”

“Ghosts aren’t magic. Don’t be stupid.”

“Sorry.” Bunkum wasn’t liking this conversation very much either. He didn’t like being called stupid, even by a kind of library wacko. And he was pretty sure that ghosts fall under the umbrella of magic.

“Why do you want to pull a coin out of someone’s ear?” said Billings. He scooted his chair closer. “If you want money you should learn how to pull someone’s wallet out of their pocket without them knowing.”

“That’s not a magic trick.”

“Or their watch. I don’t know if that’s the same trick or not, but I saw a magician on a boat who took people’s watches and also their wallets. It might have been two different techniques.”

“I don’t want to steal people’s money. I want to astound them. I want to take a coin right out of their ear and then give it to them for free, like it was really in their ear and it’s theirs. Didn’t your grandpa or somebody ever pull a coin out of your ear?”

“I never had any grandparents,” said Billings, like he never tried a margarita.

“Or somebody. I might have a grandkid someday, or a kid someday, and I decided I want to pull a coin out of his ear.”

“Or her ear.”

“Or her ear,” said Bunkum. “The trick is non-gender-specific.”

“Is it? Golly,” said Billings, who wasn’t trying to hide he was having fun.

“Because everyone has ears, see.”

“I doubt everyone has ears,” said Billings.

“Most people have ears. If my grandkid doesn’t have any ears I can pull a coin out of his nose. Or her nose.”

“That’s a very versatile magic trick.”

“Thank you,” said Bunkum, like it was a compliment. That annoyed Billings.

“Anyway, I don’t think that would surprise me, for someone to pull a coin out of my ear,” said Billings. “I bet I would say, ‘I don’t think you really pulled a coin out of my ear. I bet you had that coin the whole time.’ That’s what I would say, I bet.”

“I don’t want to surprise you,” Bunkum said. “I want to astound people. Different people. And astound them, not surprise. It’s more.”

“No, I think ‘surprise’ is more. Like, ‘whoa, what a surprise!’ That’s what I’d say if a magician stole my wallet.”

“Astound sounds more impressive,” Bunkum said. He was really riled now. “As-tound! As-TOUND!” Some people in the other desks were looking over. “Astound,” Billings said. Bunkum looked at the next step on the screen. “Seven: Take a bow (optional).” He figured he didn’t need to practice that. He went back to step three, which was the whole trick actually, and tried to pull the quarter out of his own ear. The angle was funny, and he dropped it. It rolled right to the air vent under the desk.

The quarter didn’t fall into the vent. It lay flat across two khaki-colored slats. When Bunkum grabbed at it his pinky knocked the coin down the hole. “Shit,” Bunkum said.

“That should be your magic word,” said Billings. Bunkum said nothing. “‘Shit,’ I mean,” said Billings. Bunkum didn’t reply. “You step up onto the stage, drop a quarter down the vent, and say, ‘Shit.’” Bunkum was silent. “Applause,” said Billings.

“Fuck you,” said Bunkum.

A couple of minutes went by.

“Why don’t you write a seminal monograph on shit,” said Bunkum.

“I did.” Billings squeaked his monitor so it was pointing at Bunkum and Bunkum read: “On the Social History of Copromastics and Analytic Scatometry.”

Bunkum read the first paragraph, then pulled down the scrollbar on the side of the screen to read the second. The bar was tiny, a pellet. The monograph must have been a hundred pages. “You’re more a wacko than I’m a wacko,” said Bunkum.

“I’m the ghost of a world-famous stage magician. Five hundred years ago I fell off a cruise ship and drowned. I haunt this library and pull ghost coins out of people’s ears and hide them down the vents.”

“Ghost coins.”

“Yeah, like pirate doubloons and buffalo nickels.”

“I’m going back to my research.” Bunkum pulled on the word so Billings would know he was just as serious about pulling coins out of ears as Billings was about shit, or ghosts, which weren’t real anyway, or if they were real they would certainly qualify as magic.

Bunkum got really into his magic trick, working step three over and over again until he could do it five times in a row without dropping the quarter. A librarian came to tell him the library was closing. Bunkum pulled a coin out of the librarian’s ear. “You have to go home,” said the librarian. “Ta da,” said Bunkum. All of the other desks were empty, including the one Billings had been in.

Bunkum left the library with a print-out of the webpage he had been looking at. “What a heck of a library wacko,” he said to himself out loud, and laughed. He felt for his wallet but it wasn’t there. He was astounded!

DANIEL GALEF has written a gaggle of short stories, a gallimaufry of poems, four and a half plays (including a musical), crossword puzzles, comic strips, ransom notes, a dictionary definition (Merriam-Webster, “interfaculty,” adj.[2]), and the only true fortune cookie fortune in the world which happens to be the fortune you’re going to get the next time you get a fortune cookie. His most recent fiction appears in the American Bystander, Bards and Sages Quarterly, Barnhouse, and Bull & Cross.

This story incorporates text from the WikiHow article “How to Pull a Coin Out Of an Ear: 10 Steps (With Pictures)”

Gary Moshimer

Dr. Zolman has made our house call, with his miracle tracking chip to implant in Father’s neck. Father was found walking twenty miles up the highway in bare feet at two a.m. And he started calling my twin brother Aaron and me this: Laverne and Shirley. He wanted to know when we’d grown boobs. This hit Aaron hard — he’d tried to exercise and diet. We had a bad gene from our mother’s side and now she was dead, leaving no one to defend us.

Father had taken our photos from the wall of his house. He hung new frames and left the generic people in them. “They look nicer,” he said.

He eyed Zolman. “Are you here for the girls? Make them big losers?”

Zolman dissolved knockout pills in Father’s coffee. The implant tool looked like an electric staple gun. BAM, it was in. Father woke up rubbing his neck, squinting at us. “I see you two as water polo cheerleaders.”

Something went wrong with the chip. It did its job, tracking Father, but it also made him stronger. He grew younger each day. He lifted weights. He went to the college gym, where he was alumni, and started barking orders. People listened. He looked like Charlton Heston. He went without a shirt. One night he was up in the trees on the ridge in a loin cloth of his own making. It was purple, part of our mother’s dress. My brother and I hardly slept, watching the monitor where he blipped along, always on the move.

One morning he showed up at our apartment. He wore a suit and tie. The purple loin cloth formed a neat triangle in his breast pocket. “Come girls, we’re whipping you into shape. You’ll meet the team.”

We could not resist. He had pinwheels for pupils.

He paid trainers to torture us: fifty reps, a hundred. We were fat fish, mouths pumping as dying gills. We flopped poolside. The polo team wore Speedos hiding small dolphins. They gave us love kicks.

“They’ll be ready,” Father said.

“Zolman, we need it out.”

He said that would be complicated.

I said, “Don’t you see his power? He’s inside everyone.” I saw the pinwheels in Zolman’s pupils as well.

We came to on the couch, rubbing our necks. Zolman was gone.

Our chips made us shop. We wished to pamper our man breasts and full figures at Victoria’s secret, but the lady had a security button. The shoe place was more cooperative. They had monster shoe horns, jamming us into pumps. We bobbled around the floor, seams bursting. The salespeople liked it. “That’s ten pair you own now.” We felt like geishas with our bound feet.

We bought purses, and at the bath and body shop filled them with fragrant marbles and bubble bath for our first match.

“WE…ARE…THUNDERCATS!!”

We were the base of the slippery pyramid. The other girls perched in our fat palms, little butts snug. A finger might slip in, unseen, a special perk, because we still liked girls and our Speedos would sprout gherkins, little salutes like flag poles.

We quivered under the weight. We were not getting the best workouts because Father had disappeared. His chip no longer worked. We couldn’t find Zolman, either. We feared the worst but were on a new endorphin high.

“T-H-U…N-D-E…R-C-A-T-S!! GO!!!”

Aaron created the distraction by strutting the THUNDERCATS banner on his gherkin, while I poured the bubble bath. It made for an exciting fourth quarter — echoing referee whistles, the dolphin men rising many times with giant bubbles mistaken for the ball.

Zolman returned, drunk, wearing several coats. We saw him staggering on the shoulder, leading Father by the hand. They were casualties, Father with the bloody wrap on his neck, Zolman crying. We pulled them into the car.

Father was his old self, dirty face, suit hanging from shrunken frame. He did not recognize us in dresses and sensible make-up.

Zolman slapped his own face. “I’ve done terrible things!”

“No,” I said. “We’re happy for the first time.”

We cleaned them up, bought Father a smaller suit. We took them to the championship match.

There were footholds in our blubber, launching points allowing crazier spins and twirls. We bounced our girls higher, always catching. People cheered along. Father, half up the bleachers, tossed his cane with malice, but I was able to intercept it and fire it back like a javelin, perhaps too hard. The rubber tip clonked his forehead, rendering his limbs stiff and straight, a pure neurological response. His body shot like a plank through the slats to the concrete below, his ribcage squeezing out some last number combinations, an address or latitude to find an answer, or a question. The buzzer sounded, and we carried him out with pride. The game was won.

The number was Father’s lawyer. Turns out he wanted cremation, his ashes tossed to the sea from a remote bluff in Nova Scotia where he’d spent time with our mother. There was a note: She floundered in the surf, her body whale-like. I tried to save her. Her soul left her. I wanted to live with her soul.

That was too much for us, too far. We put his urn in the back of our mammoth shoe closet.

Meanwhile we inherited the house, redecorated, threw parties. We had the cheerleaders and the dolphin men. All were unthreatened by our small penises. The girls mounted us like favorite stuffed bears of girlhood. The men rolled us around the carpet and threw balls at us.

One drunken night we broke into the pool. We had Father’s ashes. We dumped them in. The cloud became a water tornado and Father formed before our eyes. Out he climbed, an ash man with reddish eyes.

“Now,” he said, his voice an ashy whisper, “we’re going to whip you into shape.”

GARY MOSHIMER has stuff in Wigleaf, Frigg, Atticus Review, and many other places.