A Touch of Magic
5 Nothing Disappears
13 September 1974, early morning
“I HOPE I DIDN’T embarrass you at the show tonight. It’s difficult to tell if a person is willing to play or is just feeling forced into action. But it’s so much more fun if I can find a willing participant who isn’t drunk and falling over the trick.”
“No one forces me,” Serepte said firmly. “In anything.” Paris was taken aback by the abruptness—fierceness—of her response.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said earnestly.
“I know. Family pressure, you know? I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“You left in a hurry after you were on stage. I was afraid I’d embarrassed you. And then finding you as we drove down the parkway, that uh… I’m stammering all over myself. I don’t usually do this kind of thing.”
“Pick up show groupies?”
“No. Uh… Yes. That, too. I mean,” Paris blushed scarlet as he struggled to find a way to explain himself. Serepte laughed at him. “Not only do I not pick up show groupies—I’m not even sure I’ve ever known one—but I don’t usually go out after a show at all. Usually, I go straight to my hotel and try to get rid of my headache. I take aspirin, a shower, sleeping pills—anything to get some relief. Working in smoke filled showrooms with the heat and the lights in my eyes just gets to me.”
“There must be a lot of pressure on you when you perform,” Serepte said softly. She sympathized with her companion. Always pressure to perform.
“Oh, yeah. But that’s not all. I end up not eating. Too nervous before a show and too sick after. I’m probably getting lung cancer from secondhand smoke,” Paris laughed. Serepte sat back and looked him over closely, suspicion and a hint of fear in her eyes. It pained him to see that look. He wanted to rub it out and see the expression of sure confidence he had felt earlier. At the same time, he felt she had examined him inside and out in that one look.
“Hey. Did I say something wrong?” he asked.
“Not really. Um… Just please don’t joke about being sick. You couldn’t have known that I’m sensitive about that.” Paris looked at her as carefully as she had examined him. Was she sick? Wouldn’t it be just his luck to get stuck on someone with a terminal illness? The thing bad movies were made of. Goodbye Minneapolis. Before he could respond Serepte changed the tone. “Who are you really? I feel silly calling you Paris. I mean…” she blushed. “If that’s your real name, I’m sorry. I thought it was just a stage name, you know?”
“It is,” he laughed. “Allow me to introduce myself. Paul Mansfield at your service.” He stood slightly at his seat and bent forward offering his hand—a move that brought his head in contact with the potted fern. Serepte took his offered hand as they laughed at the ridiculous action.
“Is that part of some mystic ritual? Cracking your head on a plant when you introduce yourself?” she laughed. Then she stood, intentionally popped the plant with her forehead, and said, “Serepte Allen. Pleased to meet you.”
“Take it easy on the furniture,” Lissa said coming up to the table with their drinks and an order of fries. “Every evening, I come through the restaurant with a little plastic watering can and imaginary water to sprinkle the plastic plants. That’s what keeps them so green.” She set the fries in front of them. “Cooks mistook a two for a three on my last order, so there’s an extra batch of fries. You looked like you could use them while you’re waiting for the real food.”
“Thanks,” Paul said. “Uh… Sorry about the plant.”
“Don’t worry your pretty little plastic heads about it,” she laughed as she scurried away to another table.
“If I were really able to make things disappear, I think I’d vanish from embarrassment right now,” he said.
“Oh, just move our pesky waitress from one place to another with a wave of your hand,” Serepte rejoined. Soon they were talking about their lives and Paul found himself revealing much more than he normally did. She enjoyed his stories, but picked up on the fact that he was leaving things out. He said he was in his twenties and a college dropout. Serepte said she was eighteen, but she looked to Paris just a little older. More mature than college would suggest.
“So, anyway, I quit college in my senior year and went on the road as an opening act for this comedian. It was a real kick, though a jolt for my conservative parents. Mom was never all that happy about me doing magic tricks as it smacked of… I don’t know. Something not within her Congregationalist upbringing. The devil made me do it,” Paul laughed. “But at some point, you become an adult and assume you can make it on your own. They have to accept it, too. Besides, they had five other children they could fall back on.”
“Big family.”
“I was an unintentional late addition,” he sighed. “That’s when I adopted the stage name of the Great Paris, even if I wasn’t so great. Vanity? Or some desire to protect the family from the shame of a Mansfield doing magic? Not that they needed to worry. Who would go see Paul Mansfield do magic?”
“I would. At least I would now that I know you.” Serepte’s eyes were still laughing.
“But that’s the point. You only know Paul Mansfield because you came to see the Great Paris. And because, in spite of a number of minor faults that don’t bear mentioning, he had the good taste to recognize you while speeding down the parkway in a runaway taxi and sweep you up with him into the glamour of the stage and adventures not yet told or remembered.”
“Remembering stories is important,” Serepte said. “My father, though he was gone before I was born, once said that all the things that ever existed had their being only because people remembered them. And there were incredible things that could bloom into existence if only they could be remembered.”
“Wow. I’m… uh… sorry about your father, Serepte. Just when we need them, things disappear on us.” He crumpled a napkin in his hand, rubbed his palms together, and opened them empty. Then he reached toward Serepte and seemed to pull it from her hair. She laughed—green eyes sparkling, lips parted and turned up in a wide smile. Paul’s heart skipped a beat while he looked at her.
“So, what more genuine name would you like to have?” Serepte asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Something like… like…” he faltered, still caught in the depths of her eyes.
“Like Paul!” Serepte finished, breaking the spell.
“Hey! That’s not bad. I could change my name to Paul. Paul Paris. Oops! I mean Mansfield. Sometimes I forget what my real name is.” He reached across the table to put his hand on hers and felt her tense as the laughter echoed into new-found silence. Their eyes did not waver from each other’s. The light he had seen there changed to something deeper, fierier. Paul released here hand.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning to be forward. It was just…”
“Don’t apologize. I like your hands, Paul. Please… I just have a hard time touching people. I can’t explain. Sometimes it hurts.”
“Does it hurt? To touch me, Serepte?”
“No. Not now. Please give me another chance. I don’t believe you would ever hurt me.” She reached out her hand and Paul took it gently in his own. There was a mutual flow of trust between them. Paul normally avoided touching people more than necessary. He never knew what a touch might reveal.
“Isn’t that sweet?” Lissa said as she approached the table with a platter of ribs, more fries, coleslaw, and Serepte’s mac-n-cheese.
“A touch of magic, Lissa,” Paul jumped in, immediately. “We joined hands to invoke the presence of food and voila! The messenger of the gods arrives with more food than we will ever be able to eat!”
“Honey,” Lissa said, turning to Serepte. “Raise those hands a little higher. I can see your watch is only waterproof and the bullshit is getting deep in here.”
“What a terrible way to talk about your employer,” Paul said quickly. “Demeaning his establishment.”
“Touché,” Lissa said. “I like you. Haven’t had a good challenge like you in five years. I hope you two come back here often.”
“I think I might keep him away from people like you,” Serepte said, playfully scowling at the waitress.
“Okay! I know when I’m not wanted. Messenger of the gods, indeed. I’ll just disappear now.” Lissa turned and wiggled her butt a little extra as she walked away from the table.
“I think she’s an actor,” Paul said, shaking his head.
“I think that’s all they hire here. I actually saw her at Park Square Theater this summer in Moon for the Misbegotten. She’s quite good.”
“Do you know the way to San Jose?” Paul sang softly. “And all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas.”
“You aren’t.”
“Do you know how many of us standup entertainers started out wanting to be legitimate actors?” Paul asked, pointing at the poster of Rudolph Valentino with a rib in his fingers. He didn’t wait for the response before continuing. “I went to college, but there was no degree in standup comedy and sleight-of-hand. I… advanced very rapidly through school when I finally started. Being a standup is more about how quickly you can think and improvise than about how skilled an actor you are.”
“How do you manage to keep so much in your head all the time?” she asked. She tapped a fry against his nose and he opened his mouth so she could feed it to him. He could no longer hold her hand because they were covered with barbecue sauce.
“I empty my head of everything else. What’s that famous saying about sculpture? That you start with a block of marble and chip away everything that doesn’t look like a man?” Paul laughed. “It’s the same thing with being on stage and why it takes me a while to adjust to not being a comedian when I talk to a real live girl. I hope you’ll be patient with me.”
“You don’t have to entertain me, Paul. I enjoy just talking to you and trying to see who the real Paul is,” Serepte said. She reached with her napkin and wiped a trace of sauce from his chin. “So, you repeated often enough tonight that nothing ever disappears, it just moves from place to place. What happens to all those thoughts and distractions you remove from your mind so you can think about comedy and magic?”
“Mmm. Notebooks. I have one with me all the time. If there is anything worth remembering, I write it down,” he said. “Like tonight. As soon as I’ve cleaned the sticky from my fingers, I’ll pull out my notebook and write down, ‘Met the most amazing woman tonight after the show. Serepte attended to…’ Um… Why did you come to my show? Are you a fanatic about magic?”
“My best buddy told me that there was a new magician in town who specialized in making things disappear. I wanted to see if you could make me disappear,” Serepte said, dipping a fry in the remaining barbecue sauce. Paul opened a foil packet and wiped his hands, pushing the pile of bones away from him.
“Nothing ever disappears,” he said. “I could drop a sheet over your head and when I take it away, the audience wouldn’t see you anymore. But you’re there. Someplace you are still lurking around just out of their sightlines. I could only move you from one place to another.”
“That sounds tempting enough,” Serepte answered. “How about someplace where the world is calm and flat and quiet? Where there aren’t any other people? Where I can hear my own thoughts and see them take shape in front of me? Maybe a place without pain?”
“How about where there’s padded walls and everyone wears white coats? You’re asking to get out of the world.”
“Maybe. But not an asylum. That kind of pain hurts worst. Broken bones and bleeding will at least heal quickly. I can get over that. A disturbed mind… I don’t know if I could recover from that kind of pain. I need a world without suffering, Paul. It crushes me.”
“Is there such a world?” he asked. “I understand what you’re saying. We live in a truly f… messed up world. All I can do is bring people a little laughter. Sunday, I’m doing my show… or a version of it… at the Vets Home. I try to lighten their burdens a little. The real magic would be to make the suffering disappear. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to touch people and heal them?”
“Would it?” Serepte’s response had an edge that Paul missed. He was caught up in his dream and was ready to continue. Drawing himself up in his chair, he kept going.
“Why, yes. Not just for humanitarian reasons. Just think of the entertainment value.” He flashed a coin in his right hand and pointed to it with his left. “Here we have a case of mumps. A touch of magic and they are gone!” The coin in his hand disappeared. He opened his left hand and displayed a coin. Serepte smiled. “And here we have a broken leg. Wave the hand and a touch of magic, you are healed.” The coin disappeared. Good illustrations always came in threes and Paul was about to make his third example when Serepte’s hand darted out and pinned the coin between her thumb and the palm of his right hand. He stammered in surprise, caught as he had never been caught before.
“But nothing ever disappears, Paul,” she said. “You said so yourself. It just moves from one place to another. Now, you are trapped with the broken leg. What will the Great Paris do with it? You moved it from here to here, but it’s still a broken leg. It has an identity of its own as real as the coin in your hand. Where will you shuffle it off to next? Are you going to give it to me? Who is going to bear the hurt? Who is going to facilitate the final release that we call healing? Who wants this pain that you are going to take away from the poor suffering person?”
Paris sat and stammered another minute, not quite able to process his embarrassment. It was not so much the ideas that she was putting across, but his act had been seen through. The speed of her hand in trapping the coin sent a shudder down his spine. He realized what she could have done to his card trick earlier in the evening. She could have caught the card he slipped out without his ever knowing it.
“You see, Paul,” Serepte continued, “the real magic as you call it is just what you do—make coins disappear. Tell people what card they chose. Trick people. Don’t try to heal them. You wouldn’t be happy entertaining that way.”
She smiled a bit timidly and reached across the table to smooth the crease from between his eyes. He was still staring at the coin lying in his open hand. He was somehow very vulnerable to her. She could not help but be open with him. This little pain of discovery, she knew, would pass quickly.
“Don’t frown. It was cruel of me to treat you like that. You hit my sensitive point. I just got carried away. I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s not you who should be sorry. You warned me earlier not to joke about illness and pain. I walked right into it like a bull in a china shop,” Paul said. “You have very good hands. Did you ever think of taking up magic?”
“In a way,” she answered. “I took up learning to see through illusions. It’s easy to get through the movements of your hands, if I concentrate on it. But your magic is not in your hands, Paul. It’s in your eyes.” He blushed slightly. He wasn’t used to compliments any more than he was used to having tricks foiled on him.
“Thank you. Um… Any magician will tell you that the secret to success is not in how you control your hands, but in how you control your audience. I think I’ve met my match at both.”
“There are other types of success.”
Their eyes met again and held for a long moment. The coin, long forgotten, still lay in Paul’s open palm as Serepte lightly traced circles around it. Lissa quietly interrupted them to remove the dishes. She looked at the coin.
“Hmm. No one’s ever offered more than a penny for my thoughts,” she said. “Do you need anything else?”
“Just the check, please,” Paul said after glancing up at Serepte. She giggled.
“There will probably be a big tip,” Serepte added. “I think he’s used to overpaying.”
“Well, just relax. There’s no hurry now for a table. I’ll be off these sore feet soon,” Lissa said.
Traffic in the restaurant had slowed. Beyond Serepte, Paul could see the cab driver out of the corner of his eye.
“Look, our cabby just came in,” he said, breaking the moment of intimacy between them.
“Must be closing time,” Serepte answered. Paul waved the driver toward them.
“Hello. Come join us,” he said.
“Thank you. In Greece I would accept your invitation, but in America… it’s different. Don’t hurry. It is still fifteen minutes until closing. I just came in to get a sandwich to go. It will last me through the rest of the night. It’s only lunch for me. Airport traffic will start in about an hour.”
The driver returned to the counter at the front of the restaurant and waited there until his order was ready. Lissa brought their check and they joined the exodus at the cashier’s counter. Paul turned to Serepte as they stood on the sidewalk waiting for Mark to bring the cab around.
“I’d like to see you again,” he said simply.
“Yes.”
“I have three shows tomorrow night and don’t finish until one. Can we go out earlier?”
“I have classes tomorrow. How about Saturday?”
“My time is yours.”
“It’s a long time to wait, Paul. But I’m looking forward to it. I’ll pack a picnic and we can walk by the lake.”
The ride to her home was painfully brief. Paul didn’t want to let go of her now. They held hands lightly in the back seat of the taxi. Their eyes hadn’t wavered from each other. It was too quick for him. It offended his sensibilities. He should slow down. But it was such a sweet offense. The taxi stopped in front of a house of 1930s vintage in a stylish neighborhood of the same era. Its impressive mansard roof was raised above the two stories.
“Ring the upper doorbell when you come,” Serepte said. “We live on the top floor. It’s hard to imagine a house this size was once for just one family. I have five housemates and we all have plenty of space.” They looked at each other as he continued to hold her hand at the door and she fumbled for her keys with the other.
There were a dozen things Paul wanted to say to make the time last a little longer. Serepte touched his cheek with her fingers. He started to speak, but she pressed her forefinger against his lips. He kissed it and she brought it to her own lips, a sign of transference. She gave his hand a light squeeze and opened her door.
“Goodnight, Paul,” she said as she disappeared into the dark entry.
He returned to the cab and sighed as he settled into the back seat. The driver didn’t move.
“Where’s home to you?”
“Oh!” Paul was startled. “The Ambassador.”
Silence graced the remainder of the ride. He was alone with his thoughts, but somehow, he could still feel her soft magical touch at the center of his palm and across his lips.
Sleep was pleasant.
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