The magician put his cards on the table. He told me to put my hand on top of the deck and feel the vibe from a particular card. I didn’t feel any vibe, but I picked the 10 of hearts. The magician picked up the deck and found the 10 of hearts — the only card in the deck that was face up with a backing different than the other cards.

For him, it’s probably Magic 101. For me, it’s a few minutes of wonder right there at a table in Borders Bookstore Café in Garden City. And I like wonder more than ever.

“Until you’re 7 or 8 years old, there’s wonder in your life,” says Bruce Kalver. “Then you grow up. The magician brings back that wonder for a little while.”

He certainly brought it back for me. The practiced, nimble ease with the cards, the easy patter that betrays no sense of anything unusual even as unusual things happen — it’s all part of getting tricked and fooled and deceived and feeling damn lucky for the opportunity.

It’s magic, and just when we need more of it, we seem to be getting less.

That’s what Kalver wanted to talk about. Magic is seldom seen as a barometer of anything. Oil might be up, gold down and tech stocks flat. But magic? Who talks about magic?

Magicians do. And they’re reporting demand is down. In a recession, magic apparently gets the early ax.

Kalver knows. He has been taking his tricks on the road for 43 years, ever since that first gig on a wobbly piece of plywood at a nursing home picnic in Jamaica Plain. He was billed as “Rhode Island’s Youngest Magician.” He was 10 and was paid $10.

Actually, he was just 6 when his grandfather, a professional magician who assisted Harry Houdini, started teaching him tricks with things like hats and cups and paper bags. He has been adding to the repertoire ever since.

“Magic is in my head all the time. I dream magic tricks.”

He invented 25 magic tricks and is working on 3 more. He has written three books on magic and served as president of the Society of American Magicians, the oldest magicians’ organization in the world. Mention his name to other magicians and they will probably mention the “growing and shrinking head illusion.” It is Kalver’s signature. You have to see it.

He has worked clubs and cruise ships, corporate outings, kids’ birthday parties, cocktail parties, school assemblies, Cub Scout banquets and dinner theater. He has been hired to use his magic as an ice-breaker before business meetings.

At the end of last year, he started to see companies canceling their Christmas parties or deciding to scratch the magical entertainment. Tighter budgets everywhere meant less money for wonder. So, Kalver says, magicians have to reinvent themselves. He still performs, but his number of shows is way down. So he teaches and lectures. And he mentors young magicians. One is a high school senior in Barrington.

“I’m sort of like his Yoda,” he says.

He’s also a balloon artist. It’s a natural. He can shuffle a deck of cards with one hand. He can twist balloons. He does portraits. If you want yourself done in full balloon, get in touch.

And if you want that wonder, that sense of seeing something you can’t explain and don’t really want to, consider a magician at the house or the office or wherever you and friends might want to be left agape and agog and not knowing how that half-dollar got in your ear.

bkerr@projo.com