Tony Chang Vanishes a Dime

You and a group of your friends find yourselves at a cocktail bar on New York City’s Lower East Side at 1:00 a.m. and end up in conversation with a group of magicians holding decks of cards. Their ringleader is an eccentric philosopher king in a Ted Baker jacket and square, dark-rimmed glasses. He drinks Jameson and speaks in a manner that is casual yet high-falutin, inviting, and occasionally punctuated by an explosive belly laugh at a joke that nobody quite understands. From the graceful way he holds playing cards, and the way the other magicians listen to him, your curiosity is piqued. When asked to do a magic trick, however, he just deflects or goes on a philosophical tangent. Eventually he takes you aside and shows you this one thing.