Houdini and Me by Dan Gutman (large screen ebook reader txt) 📕

she tells him. “Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. It’s above Penn Station.”

They moved the theater and put it on top of the train station? Houdini wonders silently. How did they pull that off?

“Aha, thank you, ma’am,” Houdini says. He turns south, walking down Broadway. Hundreds of people pass by him, none giving him a second glance.

That wouldn’t have happened in my day, Houdini thinks. I was one of the most recognizable faces in the world. People would be stopping to shake my hand and ask for an autograph. I used to be the great Harry Houdini. And I will be again.

There would be no point in telling the passersby who he is. Not yet. They would just laugh in his face. He would have to prove himself first.

Forty-First Street…Thirty-Ninth Street. He knows he’s heading in the right direction. A hot dog vendor is on the corner, and the smell makes Houdini feel a little hungry. He digs into his pockets and is relieved to find some coins.

“How much?” he asks the hot dog man.

“Four bucks.”

“Four bucks?!” exclaims Houdini. “Are you out of your mind? In my day, a hot dog was a nickel.”

“Then go back to your day, buddy,” the vendor mutters without looking up.

Thirty-Seventh Street…Thirty-Fifth Street. A newsstand has a row of newspapers on display and Houdini scans the headlines as he walks by. LUNATIC STABS LAWYER IN BAR BRAWL. Houdini shakes his head. Some things never change.

Thirty-Fourth Street…Thirty-Second Street. He wonders where all the cigar stores and furriers went. Now every few blocks has something called Starbucks, whatever that is. Or a dry cleaner. A pizza joint. A homeless man sleeping on the street. Another one begging for money. Eyebrow threading? What could that be?

Finally, he sees the sign for Madison Square Garden. The building is huge, much bigger than the one he remembers. The sign is another one of those video screens, flashing a different performance every five seconds: New York Knicks vs. Boston Celtics…Monster Truck Show…a series of rock bands and rappers. Houdini has never heard of any of them.

He marches through the front doors confidently until he encounters a burly-looking man, with his thick arms crossed in front of him.

“This area is off-limits, sonny,” says the unsmiling security guard.

“My good man,” Houdini says, turning on the charm. “Who is in charge of booking acts at Madison Square Garden?”

“Don’t touch me, kid,” replies the security guard. “Get outta here.”

Houdini backs off. He has heard that word before, but it had never been directed at him.

“My apologies,” he says. “Perhaps a small demonstration of my skill will improve your disposition.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small box of needles. He puts a bunch of them in his mouth and pretends to swallow them. Then he does the same thing with a long thread. He waits a moment, then reaches into his mouth and pulls out the thread with needles dangling from it. The East Indian Needle Trick!

The security guard is unimpressed.

“Get out of my face, punk,” he says.

Houdini takes a deck of cards out of his pocket and does a fancy shuffle.

“Pick a card,” he says. “Any card.”

The security guard refuses to pick a card. “I’ve seen David Copperfield, kid,” he tells Houdini. “He made the Statue of Liberty disappear. So beat it.”

You can’t win ’em all. If at first you don’t succeed, and so on. Houdini bows politely and wishes the man well. He leaves the Garden and walks back uptown on Eighth Avenue, lost in his thoughts. He doesn’t have the expensive props he would need to do the Water Torture Cell trick or one of the other elaborate escapes from his stage act. There must be some other way he can attract attention to himself to get into the newspapers the way he did in the good old days. That is, when he was last alive.

He’s thinking these thoughts as he turns right on Thirty-Fifth Street and steps off the curb. That’s when a food delivery guy on an electric bike swerves around the corner.

“Watch out!” somebody shouts.

Houdini looks left at the last moment, just in time to dive out of the way, but not quick enough to avoid being smacked by the handlebar, spun around, and knocked to the ground.

“Abre los ojos, idiota!” the delivery guy shouts, which of course means “Open your eyes, idiot!” in Spanish.

A few people gather around to help Houdini get up and back on the sidewalk. He touches his face. His nose is scraped and bloody. A man offers him a napkin for his wound and a woman hands him a quarter out of pity.

“There’s a shelter down the street from here,” she says. “You can get a hot meal there too, I think. Do you know where your mom and dad are?”

Houdini thanks the people who helped him and brushes himself off.

This is going to be harder than I thought, he mutters to himself as he continues down Thirty-Fifth Street.

Things are not looking good. Even the great Harry Houdini is beginning to have doubts about his prospects in 21st century New York. But suddenly a wide smile spreads across his face when he sees a sign in front of him on the sidewalk.

Yes! They’ve created a whole museum in my memory! Houdini thinks to himself. They still remember The Great Houdini!

He dashes inside and takes the elevator to the fourth floor. It opens to a room with posters, photos, letters, and other mementos from his long career. Houdini looks at them for a few minutes and then marches up to the counter, where a young woman is shuffling a deck of cards.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks anxiously.

“No,” she says. “What happened to your face? You’re bleeding pretty bad, kid. Somebody beat you up?”

“Never mind that,” he says impatiently. “I had a slight mishap on the street. The important thing is that I am Houdini! I’m alive!”

“Great, and I’m the queen of England,” the woman says. “What can I do