A Touch of Magic
17 Places, Everyone!
21 September 1974, Minneapolis just after midnight
THE HOUSE WAS RESTLESS. Mark was waiting outside the theater stage door with the van when Paul, Wayne, and Lil came out after the show. After dropping them at the house, he promised to be back at eight-thirty to drive everyone to breakfast.
Paul rushed inside and was shown directly to Serepte. She smiled at him sorrowfully and held out her arms. He fell to the bed and embraced her.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get to your show tonight. Tomorrow will be better.”
“Oh, sweetheart, the show is not important. How are you feeling?”
“Tired. And sad. Paul, I tried… I tried to heal them all, but there were so many! Meaghan had to hold the pipes as I played, and it hurt so much. And… I couldn’t… She died, Paul! I couldn’t save her. The little girl in the car. She died just as I touched her and I felt her world come to an end.” Serepte wept in her lover’s arms as she recalled the events of the day. Paul stroked her long auburn locks and began to softly sing to her.
Soon, Serepte slept peacefully.
It was becoming commonplace for Paul to awaken with the naked Goddess in his arms. Commonplace, perhaps, but no less amazing to him. He might never get used to her reddish locks and pale skin against his swarthy shoulder, but he would spend his life trying.
She slowly opened her emerald eyes to see him gazing at her. They drifted closed again and she pressed her smile against his chest. “Magic,” she breathed.
“Any luck with discovering what was taken?” Wayne asked when the couple finally emerged from Serepte’s bedroom. He pulled Paul aside while everyone was waiting for the taxi van.
“Yes and no,” Paul said. He held a notebook out to Wayne. “There’s a page missing. I only have a dim recollection of what is on it. As you can see from the previous and following pages, I was working on various patterns for a new cloth to cover my table. Here at The Showbox, the audience looks up at me on a raised platform. No one can see the surface of the table. Some of the theaters I’m scheduled for this fall have raked auditoriums, so people will look down at me and be able to see the top. I have several adjustments I need to make to the show in order to not have tricks exposed.”
“Hmm. So, you think this was just another design?”
“I know there was something special about it. I liked it a lot, but I can’t remember the design. Every time I think I have it in mind, it shifts around and things aren’t where I expect them to be,” Paul said.
“Would you mind stepping into my room with me?” Wayne asked. “Serepte, can you let go of Paul long enough for me to have a private conversation?”
“Aw. Are we keeping secrets?” she asked with a devilish gleam in her eye.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Paul promised.
“There might be some things I don’t want to know about,” she laughed. “Go. See what my mentor and protector has to offer you.”
Paul followed Wayne into a bizarre room. It had a bed, to be sure, but the room also had a small workbench, a drafting table, and drawings posted on all the walls. He stopped just inside the door and surveyed the room.
“I know, it’s a shock. Judith only comes in here to drag me back to her room. Still, it works for me,” Wayne said.
“It has to be difficult to find space to make things,” Paul nodded. He noticed only one side of the bed had been slept on, as the other side was covered with small objects and drawings.
“I’m a props master,” Wayne said. “Most of the time I have a workshop for my jobs, but we just moved here in the spring and the only shop I have belongs to the university opera. I’ve been making furniture and hand props for Manon that opens next week.”
“Don’t you have to be there for setup?”
“I checked with the tech director early this morning and I won’t be able to have clear access until tomorrow afternoon. He has to paint and decorate some of the set before I can get in with the props. Which brings me to another point. I’m not just a props master, Paul, I’m a toolmaker.”
“What? Like hammers and saws?”
“No. Like wands, cups, pentacles, knives. It has to do with imbuing power in an object while it is made.”
“How do you do that?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t even know about it until I was told I did it. It’s how I was introduced to the circle at Carles Castlerigg. But sometimes, I make something without knowing exactly why. Take this talisman, for example.” Wayne held up a disk that looked like a slightly oversized silver dollar. He handed it to Paul, who looked at it carefully.
“This is beautiful. All of this is engraved?”
“Yes, though I confess that I finally broke down and bought an electric engraver. Up until a year or so ago, I did everything with hand tools.”
“What are these symbols? They seem familiar, but I can’t place them.”
“Serepte’s father left behind a number of papers. His research into music and language. I honestly don’t understand all the meanings, but they called to me. It’s like a mandala—a wheel of fortune. You step on and never know when or where you will step off again,” Wayne said.
“I understand. It’s like that when I do my little juggling dances on stage.”
“I’d like you to take this.”
“What? Why?”
“It just seems that you might need it sometime. Please, just stick it in a pocket and forget about it.”
Mark arrived at the duplex promptly at eight-thirty and all eight ran out to pile into the van.
“You look fresh and lively this morning!” Mark said.
“It’s a good day to be alive,” Wayne affirmed. “A good day for all the family.”
“Where to, Paul?” Judith asked. “You said you were taking us all to breakfast, but where?”
“I read a review of The Original Pancake House. Can you get us there, Mark? I have an address.” There were squeals of delight amongst the women and Mark pulled away from the curb. Wayne rode shotgun while Paul, Serepte, and Judith occupied the second row. The other four women fit snugly in the last row of seats. “This is a little tight for all of us, isn’t it?”
“We’re only going a few miles,” Meaghan said. “We can survive. Besides, I like being sandwiched between Elizabeth and Lissa. Lil just keeps them pressed close to me.”
“That’s me. Just a bookend,” Lil laughed.
“I was thinking about a longer trip,” Paul said. “I’ve got three weeks after I close the show tonight and then my agent has me scheduled for a California Coast tour. I’m not very enthused about it, but it would be a lot better if we… Geez, listen to me. You all have lives. It’s not like you’d want to travel with me. I was just thinking about how big a vehicle I’d need if I stopped traveling by train.”
“Paul? You’d take me with you?” Serepte asked. Her voice sounded tiny in the noisy van.
“In a heartbeat.” The two shifted around and kissed, Judith squeezing to her right as far as possible to give them room. “Then, of course, I realized that you are in school. Wayne is in school. Lissa has a show. I don’t even know what everyone else does. But I know I couldn’t just spirit you away without everyone else.”
“How long is the California tour?” Wayne asked.
“Three months,” Paul said. “The Portland date is firm, but Ricky wants to book me for a weekend in Seattle or Tacoma. Might be a one-night engagement mid-week and then a quick trip south to Portland. The trip is planned along the route of the Coast Starlight train. There is a new indoor theater at Ashland, Oregon, where the Shakespeare Festival is, and they are booking performances during the off-season. I just hope I can get a full house once. The theater seats 600. Then on to Sacramento, Oakland, and LA. Those are the big stops. There’s a side trip for a week-long engagement in Reno and Ricky is trying to book me for New Year’s in Vegas. That would be after Los Angeles and would be the end of my season until March. He thinks he can book me for longer in Vegas if I do well there. I don’t know. There are a couple of big-name magicians already working in Vegas.”
“You’d take me with you?” Serepte repeated.
“Serepte, I never want to be parted from you. Ever.”
“I’ll watch for you,” Mark said as he pulled up in front of the door. “There is a parking space over there where I can see the door.” It had begun to rain—a typical September weekend for Minneapolis.
“What do you mean, ‘watch’? Mark, you are part of the entourage now. Come in for breakfast,” Paul said.
“I’m just the driver.”
“No one is just anything. You have shown friendship repeatedly this past week, Mark. Join us as my friend,” Paul insisted.
Mark was a little hesitant to join the group of under-thirty-year-olds, but eventually was caught up in the merriment as they filled a table and ordered food. He carefully watched Serepte and Paul, silently thanking the gods for what he saw. Soon. He could feel it in his bones and in his heart. Soon it would all be over.
Mark dropped Paul, Wayne, and Lil at The Showbox before taking the other five women home.
“Can we get a ticket for Mark to come to the show tonight?” Paul asked Wayne.
“Not to worry,” Mark interrupted. “I bought my ticket as soon as they went on sale. I will bring everyone back tonight in plenty of time to get their seats.”
Serepte kissed Paul one more time and then the van took off.
“Be safe,” Paul whispered.
“So, what is the set-up for this afternoon?” Wayne asked.
“Two acts. Lots of intimate interaction. So, I’ll be walking into the audience a lot. First act is all parlor tricks. Second act, is a vanishing act. Rabbit and bird, including a flight around the theater.”
“I’ve got two motorized ellipsoids I’ve been dying to try out,” Wayne said. “I can’t control the tightness of the beam while in use, but I can set them narrow before the start. That way, I can follow you with overhead lighting and not have the followspot in people’s eyes as much.”
“Let’s rehearse.”
21 September 1974, The Showbox, Minneapolis
After four hours of rehearsal, both Wayne and Paul felt they had the essentials down and Wayne was working the motorized ellipsoids efficiently. Paul could feel the light and was careful not to step out of it abruptly. His previous shows had been largely improvised cues, but both performer and technician went into the matinee at three o’clock feeling confident.
Wayne got a workout manipulating the ellipsoids. Each was powered by two motors—one for angle of the light and one for rotation. It kept his hands busy during the first act when Paul was working the show floor. As an open performance, people wandered in all during the first act, but the room was full by the beginning of the second act.
By the end of the show, both men were exhausted. Lil had watched everything from the wings of the stage and applauded as Paul walked off stage after his curtain call. The theater was cleared by the management and reset for the evening show. A sign outside proudly announced, ‘Sold out!’
Paul needed downtime and slipped up the back stairs to the café above. The kitchen staff recognized him at once and seated him at a table next to the door where every waiter and waitress tried to meet his needs. The staff had seen the show the previous weekend, and many would be working the show floor tonight. The Great Paris was good for tips.
He decided on something light, but when the chicken salad sandwich came from the kitchen, it looked monstrous. Normally a thick sandwich, the cooks and staff had done him a ‘favor’ by piling it up to twice its normal size. Chips, pickles, radishes, carrots, and celery were served on the side. Paris was as close as The Showbox had ever come to having a ‘Star’ performer.
He made every effort to eat and acknowledge the efforts, but his mind wandered and he found himself exercising his fingers by passing a potato chip between them without cracking the chip. Realizing what he was doing, he pulled out a pen and began to doodle on his placemat. Circle upon circle. He liked scrolls and spirals that always turned in on themselves. He followed the lines in his mind, seeing clearly where each one would lead.
“You’re out of ink,” the waitress said as she watched the moving pen drawing blanks on the placemat. Paris chuckled. The design he saw so clearly a moment before evaporated.
“Invisible ink,” he grinned. “I guess my mind was elsewhere. It’s always hard to eat just before a show.”
“Would you like me to wrap it up for you so you can have it between acts if you get hungry?”
“That might happen. Yes. Please do. And would you get someone to run a glass of milk down to my dressing room between the first and second act? I might need the energy.”
She wrapped the sandwich and brought it to him. The bill had been paid by the management, but he left a generous tip. He didn’t know how many people would be sharing it.
“We live in a world of illusion,” Paris said to his audience. “We have a very respectable name for that. We call it our imagination. We praise our children for their imagination. You might recall your own imaginary friends from your childhood. Perhaps you still have some.” The audience laughed. “But what is the root of imagination? It is simply ‘magic.’ From our own minds, magic happens.”
It was a good audience. They had paid a premium for a ticket and were determined to get their money’s worth. The coming intermission would give them an opportunity to order a fresh round of drinks and many still had food on the table in front of them, though there was no sound of utensils touching their plates. There was something in the air—a sense of expectation. It drove him to do his best. The audience respected him as a performer and his respect for the audience made them complicit in his success.
He had determined, after his disappearing egg trick, to use no more volunteers after this first act of parlor tricks had concluded. He would use the audience only in ways in which he could leave them enjoying their part in the mystery, not in ways that would make them feel tricked. As he neared the end of his first act, they were solidly with him.
“Things disappear all the time. I can never remember where I put my keys, for example.” A heavy key ring plunked down on the table, seeming to appear from thin air. He held up the ring that looked more like a classic jailer’s ring of heavy keys than a person’s house and car keys. He glanced at the table where his friends sat and saw that they were enjoying the show. The audience laughed at the thought of being able to misplace the huge hoop of keys. “The problem with this key ring is that it’s awkward, being so big and all, so I usually wrap a handkerchief around them and shake them up a little.” He picked up the keys in the scarf on the table and the audience could see the weight bouncing in it as he shook them up and down. “Then, when I’m done, they come out like this.” He removed the set of keys from the cloth and they appeared to have shrunk in size to a very small ring. “The problem is that I get confused in restoring them to their normal size. I shake down instead of up.” He shook the keys in the handkerchief again and flipped the cloth open to show that it was empty. “And you thought it wasn’t possible to lose a key ring the size of mine,” he laughed with them.
“It is very difficult to open the locks on my trunk without the key, though someone recently managed. The nice part about being a magician, though, is that I can make them appear as well as disappear. I just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow,” he said, mimicking Lauren Bacall. He showed both sides of the handkerchief, grabbed up the corners to make it into a net, and whistled. He moved back and forth across the stage, watching the ceiling and holding the net. The audience, of course, followed his eyes up and missed the transfer into the handkerchief as he mimed catching the drop. The keys rattled and he displayed them to a laughing audience.
“Of course, everyone can make money disappear, but money is just another illusion. Can you whistle it back?” He took a bucket and headed down into the audience and began whistling as he snatched coins from everywhere and dropped them in the bucket. He pulled coins from behind ears, under tables, out of drink glasses. Wayne had little difficulty keeping the roving ellipsoids focused on him. Each coin dropped in the bucket made a satisfying clank as it joined the others. He shook the bucket and people could hear the coins jingling. He made his way back to the stage, still dropping silver dollars in the bucket, now seeming to drop from the ceiling. He shook the bucket again to demonstrate how full it was.
“I think I’ve just made more in tips than the waitresses. You should all be ashamed. However, it is better to give than to receive. The more you share, the more you have to share. After all, it’s only an illusion. So here you go!”
He swung back to pitch the coins from the bucket into the audience. Out of it came sparkles, confetti, and sequins, glittering in the lights as people instinctively ducked. The distraction was just enough. When the audience focused back on the stage, Paris was gone. He heard their applause begin as he approached his dressing room, followed by Lil from the wings.
He was still laughing when he passed Judith at the dressing room door. She smirked at him and offered him a high five. He was happy. It was a great audience and he was having a good time. The entire act had been a mixture of magic and comedy. Serious things would come later.
Seeing Serepte in his dressing room eating the chicken salad sandwich startled him, redoubling his happy laughter. What could be better this evening? She stood and joined him in a swinging embrace that nearly knocked his rabbit cage over.
“How did you get here so quickly? I saw you at the table with the others.”
“Judith and I slipped out when you turned back toward the stage. Wayne gave us a backstage pass so we could come in the stage door. I couldn’t wait until after the show to see you.” Her voice was close to his face. Her lips followed and found his. They sat together in the big chair and he nibbled a bit of the remaining sandwich.
“I should have known when I saw Judith outside. Did the little ninja slip in with me?” Serepte laughed as Paul picked up a pillow to look under it. A knock at the door interrupted their next kiss. Lil peeked in.
“That persistent waitress was on her way here with a glass of milk again. I’m sure that if I’d let her get all the way to the door, she wouldn’t have had any clothes on,” Lil said, handing the glass to Paul.
“I asked for the milk, but not the waitress. It was to go with the chicken salad sandwich that my lovely assistant here magically made disappear. I’ll drink the milk anyway.”
“Oh. Wait. Wayne just flashed a warning light for ten minutes.”
“Thanks.” The door closed and Paul turned to Serepte again. “Everyone suspects we’re in here making out,” he whispered.
“They’re right!” She kissed him again.
“I’d better get my pockets loaded up for the next act,” he said. “I’m going to change a rabbit into a dove in this act. Want to watch from the wings with Lil?”
“I’m sure Judith will be there with us. You should make one of them volunteer. You won’t hurt the little bunny, will you?” Serepte looked just a little worried as Paul slipped the rabbit into his pocket.
“No, of course not. Alex and Sandra have been with me over two years. They still like me. Come on. You’ll see how the trick is done from the wings.”
“You said it. I heard you. It’s all an illusion. Eventually everyone learns to see the tricks.”
“I love you, Serepte.”
“I love you, Paul.” Another knock interrupted their kiss.
“Curtain time,” Judith called.
Paul took a deep breath and settled his mind on his performance, reluctantly pulling away from Serepte.
“Showtime.”
Serepte, Judith, and Lil followed to the wings where they found chairs. She could see him when he made his grand entrance as Wayne announced the beginning of the second act.
Comments
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