He unzipped a black leather clutch that he had brought with him and removed a deck of red Bee playing cards imprinted with the logo of Harrah’s Casino. My cluttered office didn’t feel right, however, so we headed upstairs to a lunchroom, found that it was unoccupied, and seated ourselves in a corner booth, facing each other. He reassured me that he still had something to show me. I apologized for the intrusion, and he apologized for not being more accommodating. There was an awkward moment after the others left. Politely but firmly, Jay made it plain that an audience of one was what he had in mind. I had introduced Jay and the editor once before and-presumptuously, it turned out-had mentioned earlier that morning that he would be coming by for a private performance. As we were talking, an editor friend and two other colleagues dropped by. Every routine appears seamless, unparsable, simply magical.īefore getting down to business in my office, we chatted about this and that: water spouters and armless origami artists and equestrian bee trainers, all subjects that Jay has written about. Studying videotapes of him and observing at first hand some of his serendipitous microbursts of legerdemain have taught me how inappropriate it is to say that “Ricky Jay does card tricks”-a characterization as inadequate as “Sonny Rollins plays tenor saxophone” or “Darci Kistler dances.” None of my scrutinizing has yielded a shred of insight into how he does what he does. I’ve attended lectures and demonstrations by him before gatherings of East Coast undergraduates, West Coast students of the history of magic, and Midwestern bunco-squad detectives. Though he loves to perform, he is extremely selective about venues and audiences. For the past several years, he has devoted his energies mainly to scholarship and to acting in and consulting on motion pictures. He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and also of two diverting and richly informative books, “Cards as Weapons” (1977) and “Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women” (1986). Jay’s collection functions as a working research library. He has a skeptically friendly, mildly ironic conversational manner and a droll, filigreed prose style.
Though I had no idea what was in store, I anticipated being completely fooled.Īt that point, I had known Jay for two years, during which we had discussed his theories of magic, his relationships with and opinions of other practitioners of the art, his rigid opposition to public revelations of the techniques of magic, and his relentless passion for collecting rare books and manuscripts, art, and other artifacts connected to the history of magic, gambling, unusual entertainments, and frauds and confidence games.
He hemmed and hawed and then, reluctantly, consented. Nevertheless, because he happened to be in New York we had made a date to get together, and I, invoking a journalistic imperative, had specifically requested that he come by my office and do some magic while I took notes. The most uplifting magic, Jay believes, has a spontaneous, improvisational vigor. He wore a dark-gray suit and a black shirt that was open at the collar, and the colors seemed to match his mood.
One morning last December, a few days before Christmas, Jay came to see me in my office. Mort discovered, curled inside the neck, the three of hearts.