‘A deck of cards, new and shuffled,’ he said, squaring the deck in his hands. ‘But I only require nineteen of them.’
He counted off the top nineteen cards and threw the rest over his shoulder.
‘Although, actually, it’s not really nineteen cards that I require,’ he said, fanning the cards out in front of him so that we could only see their backs. ‘I need something else. Only the cards can tell me what.’
He continued to fan them out, and then turned them around to the audience with a flourish.
Instead of the usual hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades there was a single letter on each card. Danny had fanned them out in such a way that there were gaps between certain cards that made the word breaks in the sentence the cards spelled out.
The cards read: I NEED FOUR VOLUNTEERS.
‘Ah,’ Danny said, as if the cards had just solved a difficult problem for him. ‘I guess I need four volunteers. Any takers?’
05
It was a good trick.
Actually it was an impressive trick, and I know some of the sleight of hand and false shuffles that Danny used to do it.
The rest of the audience thought it was pretty cool, too. There was a round of applause.
At the end of it no one had their hand up.
Danny was looking out across the sea of faces, but there were no takers.
Moments passed and still no one volunteered. It felt like the longer it went on, the less likely he was to get someone to put their hand up. I realised that I was gritting my teeth and holding my breath.
And still Danny looked around the audience, and there was a moment where the stage persona seemed on the brink of slipping.
No Danny, I thought, don’t bottle it.
It was only then that I realised my hand had raised itself above my head. I had been thinking about how maybe I should put it up, but I hadn’t got much past the initial thought, and certainly hadn’t reached a proper decision yet.