In the Lake of the Woods. Tim O’Brien

private oath. He would devote more time to her. He would investigate the market in blue Victorians. He would change some things.

      At the inaugural ball that evening, after the toasts and speeches, John led her out to the dance floor and looked directly at her as if for the first time. She wore a short black dress and glass earrings. Her eyes were only her eyes. “Oh, Kath,” he said, which was all he could think of to say, nothing else, just “Oh, Kath.”

      

      One day near Christmas, when John was eleven, his father drove him down to Karra’s Studio of Magic to pick out his present.

      “Anything you want,” his father said. “No sweat. Break the bank.”

      The store hadn’t changed at all. The same display cases, the same carrot-haired woman behind the cash register. Right away, when they walked in, she cried, “You!” and did the flicking thing with her eyebrows. She was dressed entirely in black except for a pair of copper bracelets and an amber necklace and two sparkling green stars pasted to her cheeks.

      “The little magician,” she said, and John’s father laughed and said, “Little Merlin,” and then for a long time the two of them stood talking like old friends.

      John finally made a noise in his throat.

      “Come on,” he said, “we’ll miss Christmas.” He pointed at one of the display cases. “Right there.”

      “What?” said his father.

      “That one. That’s it.”

      His father leaned down to look.

      “There,” John said. “Guillotine of Death.”

      It was a substantial piece of equipment. Fifteen or sixteen pounds, almost two feet high. He’d seen it a hundred times in his catalogs—he knew the secret, in fact, which was simple—but he still felt a rubbery bounce in his stomach as the Carrot Lady lifted the piece of apparatus to the counter. It was shiny black with red enamel trim and a gleaming chrome blade.

      The Carrot Lady nodded, almost tenderly. “My favorite,” she said. “My favorite, too.”

      She turned and went into a storeroom and returned with a large cucumber. The sucker move, John knew—prove that the blade was sharp and real. She inserted the cucumber into the guillotine’s wooden collar, clamped down a lock, stepped back, pulled up the chrome blade and let it fall. The cucumber lay on the counter in two neat halves.

      “Good enough,” said the Carrot Lady. She squinted up at John’s father. “What we need now is an arm.”

      “Sorry?”

      “Your arm,” she said.

      His father chuckled. “No way on earth.”

      “Off with the jacket.”

      His father tried to smile—a tall, solid-looking man, curly black hair and blue eyes and an athlete’s sloping shoulders. It took him a long while to peel off his jacket.

      “Guillotine of Death,” he muttered. “Very unusual.”

      “Slip your wrist in there. No sudden movements.”

      “Christ,” he said.

      “That’s the spirit,” she said.

      The Carrot Lady’s eyes were merry as she hoisted up the blade. She held it there for a few seconds, then motioned for John to step behind the counter.

      “You know this trick?” she said.

      His father’s eyes swept sideways. “Hell no, he doesn’t know it.”

      “I do,” John said. “It’s easy.”

      “Bullshit, the kid doesn’t have the slightest –”

      “Simple,” John said.

      His father frowned, curled up his fingers, frowned again. His forearm looked huge and meaty in the guillotine collar.

      “Listen, what about instructions?” he said. “These things come with instructions, right? Seriously. Written-down instructions?”

      “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” John said, “she told you to relax.”

      He grasped the blade handle.

      Power: that was the thing about magic.

      The Carrot Lady folded her arms. The green stars on her cheeks seemed to twinkle with desire.

      “Go on,” she said. “Let him have it.”

      

      There were times when John Wade wanted to open up Kathy’s belly and crawl inside and stay there forever. He wanted to swim through her blood and climb up and down her spine and drink from her ovaries and press his gums against the firm red muscle of her heart. He wanted to suture their lives together.

      It was terror, mostly. He was afraid of losing her. He had his secrets, she had hers.

      So now and then he’d play spy tricks. On Saturday mornings he’d follow her over to the dry cleaners on Okabena Avenue, then to the drugstore and post office. Afterward, he’d tail her across the street to the supermarket, watching from a distance as she pushed a cart up and down the aisles, then he’d hustle back to the apartment and wait for her to walk in. “What’s for lunch?” he’d ask, and Kathy would give him a quick look and say, “You tell me.”