the perils of magic

When I met Leonard, I was at the bus station. I sat down next to what looked like a shag of red hair floating above the duct taped shine of the chair. It took me a couple of minutes of judicious staring before I really saw him—he was skinny like a pipe-cleaner or a child’s stick figure drawing of what a person looks like. But finally he caught my eye with his bright blues, and asked me what I wanted.

I blushed as red as his hair to be caught staring like that, and apologized. “I wasn’t really looking at you,” I lied. “I was just generally looking.”

He accepted the lie in the spirit it was meant (with a faint sneer to show he was smart enough not to believe). But I didn’t care. He had a deep voice that sang through the bus station making everyone who heard it look at him, wondering if that man and that voice could possibly go together. I wanted to hear more, so I kept up my end of the conversation.

“Home for the summer. How about you?”

He got a touch of the strange in his voice—a lisping, lilting drawl like he was from either Mississippi or Ireland. “I’m hitting the road. We’re setting up a show in every town we pass from Chicago to New Orleans. I just have to get to Chicago before Sunday, and I’m set.”

“Oh?”

He explained that he was part of a traveling show. When he wasn’t dressed up in his cape and top hat to act as the magician, he ran a ring toss. “I lost my assistant last August. You seem a likely young lady—would you like a summer job?”

Well, I had to think about that for a few minutes. I’d never been a magician’s assistant before, and the fact he had lost someone didn’t give me any great faith in his ability, but I did need a job. So, before we boarded the bus, he had whipped out a twenty page contract that I glanced over and signed in about thirty different places. He stood, his hair hovering two feet above me, and we shook on it.

I stopped at home just long enough to kiss my mom and repack my bags, and then I headed into Chicago to meet Leonard. My job, as he explained it, was to distract the suckers from seeing what Leonard was doing. To that end, my costume was shiny and loud, while his made him fade even further into the background.

He wouldn’t explain any of his tricks—just told me where to step and how to move. We made a good team, I thought, his voice and my look capturing the audience while miracles happened all around. I clucked like a chicken on cue, was sawed in half and sewn back together, and floated through hoops.

The show went perfectly for the first month or so, but round about Memphis, the act started hitting flubs. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I was getting complacent—not making my mark quickly enough for the magic to work. But he was getting nervous, and that made him upset.

So, at the end of July, we started working up a new trick. I was going to disappear and reappear on the other side of the stage.

It went well in rehearsal, I thought. When he swished the curtain around me, I would take three steps back and two to the side, and then I would reappear on my mark. But he refused to play the trick on the stage. “It’s not ready.” I’d roll my eyes and make snarky comments about perfectionists and he would shake his head and look even more nervous than usual.

Our last night on the road, when I was heading off to school again in a week and needed to go home and repack, the crowd was ugly. Leonard stood there with his pipe-cleaner body and red shock of hair, but even his most hypnotic tones couldn’t calm them. And so he signaled the trick.

As he swished that curtain, I could tell he was shaking. But I made my steps and took my new mark . . . and the crowd got absolutely quiet. I stood there in my spangles with my hands raised like I was supposed to, and there was an absolute hush. And then they just bust out with the biggest applause that we’d gotten all summer.

I smiled and waved my hand, but was just wondering what I’d missed—I mean, it wasn’t that difficult a trick, really. But then I turned my head and looked at Leonard, and he was staring at me about as pasty as a ghost—just bright blue eyes and red hair held up by his long red cape. So I looked down, and just about fainted myself.

“At least I didn’t lose you,” that was the only apology that Leonard gave me when he cut me my check and sent me home.

I reached down from my eight foot, red-haired, blue eyed, half invisible new reality and belted him straight on the nose with my pipe-cleaner fist.

word count: 869