From the Corner of His Eye

opening his right. She pointed. "It's there."
        "I'm afraid you're wrong." When Tom opened his left hand, the palm lay as bare as that of a blind beggar in a country of thieves. Meanwhile, his right hand had tightened into a fist again.
        "Where did it go?" Grace asked her granddaughter, making as much effort as she could to lighten the mood for the girl's sake.
        Regarding Tom's clenched right hand with suspicion, Angel said, "Not there."
        "The princess is correct," he acknowledged, revealing that this hand was still empty. Then he reached to the girl and plucked the quarter from her ear.
        "That's not magic," Angel declared.
        "It sure looked like magic to me," said Celestina.
        "Me too," Paul agreed.
        Angel was adamant: "Nope. I could learn that. Like dressing myself and saying thank-you."
        "You could," Tom agreed.
        With his bent thumb against the crook of his forefinger, he flipped the quarter. Even as the coin snapped off the thumbnail and began to stir the air, Tom flung up both hands, fingers spread to show them empty and to distract. Yet on a second look, the coin was not airborne as it had seemed to be, no longer spinning-wink, wink-before their dazzled eyes. It had vanished as though into the payment slot of an ethereal vending machine that dispensed mystery in return.
        Around the dinner table, the adults applauded, but the tougher audience squinted at the ceiling, toward which she believed the coin had arced, then at the table, where it ought to have fallen among the water glasses or in her creamed corn. At last she looked at Tom and said, "Not magic."
        Grace, Celestina, and Paul expressed amusement and amazement at Angel's critical judgment.
        Undeterred, the girl said, "Not magic. But maybe I can't learn to do that one, ever."
        As though stirred by static electricity, the fine hairs on the backs of Tom's hands quivered, and a current of expectation coursed through him.
        Since childhood, he had been waiting for this moment-if indeed it was The Moment-and he had nearly lost hope that the much-desired encounter would ever come to pass. He had expected to find others with his perceptions among physicists or mathematicians, among monks or mystics, but never in the form of a three-year-old girl dressed all in midnight-blue except for a red belt and two red hair bows.
        His mouth was dry when he said to Angel, "Well, it seems pretty magical to me-that flipped-coin trick."
        "Magic is like stuff nobody knows how it happens."
        "And you know what happened to the quarter?"
        "Sure."
        He couldn't work up sufficient saliva to get the rasp out of his voice: "Then you could learn to do it."
        She shook her head, and red bows fluttered. "No. 'Cause you didn't just move it around."
        "Move it around?"
        "From this hand here to that one, or somewhere."
        "Then what did I do with it?"
        "You threw it into Gunsmoke, " Angel said.
        "Where?" asked Grace.
        Heart racing, Tom produced another quarter from a pants pocket. For the benefit of the adults, he performed the proper preparation-a little patter and the ten-finger flimflam-because in magic as in jewelry, every diamond must have the proper setting if it's to glitter impressively.
        In the execution, he was likewise scrupulous, for he didn't want the grownups to see what Angel saw; he preferred they believe it was sleight of hand-or magic. After the usual moves, he briefly closed his right hand around the coin, then with a snap of his wrist, flung it at Angel, simultaneously distracting with flourishes aplenty.
        The three adults exclaimed at the disappearance of the quarter, applauded again, and looked knowingly at Tom's hands, which had closed at the sudden conclusion of all the flourishes.
        Angel, however, focused on a point in the air above the table. Faint furrows marked her brow for a moment, but then the frown gave way to a smile.
        "Did that one go to Gunsmoke, too?" Tom asked hoarsely.
        "Maybe," said Angel. "Or maybe to The Monkees… or maybe to where you didn't get run down by the rhinosharush."
        Tom opened his empty hands and then filled one of them with his water glass. The rattling ice belied his calm face.
        To Paul Damascus, Angel said, "Do you know where bacon comes from?"
        "Pigs," Paul