Night Magic (21 page)

“Elks.”

“The Elks, to be sure, the Elks. And you know some card tricks. What else?”

“You’ve seen my tricks.” Michael pointed to the rack of costumes, the nun’s habit, the banker’s natty jacket, the Italian beggar’s baggy pants.

Wurlitzer waved his hand in an impatient, dismissive motion. “Yes, of course, my little deceptions, so I could observe you at my leisure. But I’m not talking about tricks or deceptions,” he went on, repeating his contemptuous wave with increased forcefulness. “I’m talking about genuine magic.”

Michael kept his eyes on the worn boards of the stage. “You mean night magic?” he asked quietly.

The magician registered vague surprise, raising his visible eyebrow a few millimeters. “An interesting expression. Yes, that is what I mean, night magic. What can you show me?”

“Nothing,” Michael admitted ruefully, ashamed of his ignorance. Then he looked up, and all the intensity of his desire was in his eyes. “But you can teach me,” he said.

The old man’s reply was a long time in coming, but at last he said, bemusedly, “Perhaps I can.” He sat still for a few moments, slumped in his chair. Then, abruptly, he straightened his back, and the cold edge returned to his voice. “And you are now a professional conjuror?”

“In a minor way. I’ve done shows for small groups. I work at parties sometimes.”

Wurlitzer considered this briefly. “And you have your street routines, your little pantomimes. Very savage, your mimicries,” he said, his eye seeming to narrow at the memory. “Very savage indeed. And quite accurate. I could hardly tell you from myself.” He paused to light another cigarette, but Michael’s lighter was flaming in front of his face before he managed to extract a match from the box he had fished out of his pocket. “Very kind,” he said, spewing out a long stream of smoke. “Now, then, to continue. What else do you do, how do you spend your time? Tell me more about yourself. For example, you haven’t even told me your name.”

“You know my name. It was in my wallet.”

The old man did a broad pantomime of perplexity, as though playing to the cheap seats, followed by an impression of dawning light. Finally he said, “Ah, of course, I had forgotten. Michael, is it? Michael—” He whirled his long fingers, trying to draw the name out of the air.

“Hawke.”

The old man repeated the name softly to himself, his head engulfed in smoke, which he batted away with a hand. “A sturdy Anglo-Saxon name,” he said without enthusiasm. “Ah, well, at least it’s not German. Tell me about your parents.”

Michael winced. “I lost them when I was a little boy.”

The pressure of Wurlitzer’s gaze intensified, as if he were seeking the kernel of truth in Michael’s declaration. “I see,” he said, in a tone so penetrating that Michael thought the words must be literally true. “That explains your—how shall I say it?—not just your independence, that timeworn American virtue, but your so inadequately disguised melancholy.”

Michael’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, but the old man made his dismissive gesture again. “Yes, yes, your black bile, your dark nights of the soul. But let us touch on less obvious matters. For instance, I should be interested to learn something about your Asian assistant.”

Michael stiffened. “Emily?” he said, suspiciously.

“How should I know?” came the bland reply. “The Asian girl, the flute player. She was with you the day you lost your wallet.”

Michael was loath to say anything that might spoil his chances with this presumptuous, humbugging old boor, but he was weary of being interrogated, patronized, mocked. “I didn’t lose it,” he said tersely. “You stole it from me.”

“
‘Stole’
it?” Wurlitzer’s look was infuriatingly droll, as if now things were getting really interesting. “Are you accusing me of being a pickpocket?”

“Picking pockets is easy if you know sleight of hand. Magicians make good thieves sometimes.”

“Perhaps you have had experience there, too, heh?” the old man asked, heavily insinuating.

Michael flushed; he recalled the rabbi at Bloomingdale’s, laughing at him as he practiced at the notions counter. Something fell into place in his mind, too solidly and clearly to be denied expression. “I’ve shoplifted a thing or two, mostly to see if I could,” he admitted, the contrite young sinner confessing to the virtuous elder. Two can play this game, he thought. “That was a long time ago, though, and I was never serious. Not the way you are.”

“About what?” Wurlitzer asked at once, in his bleak, sneering voice.

“About theft,” Michael said flatly, paused for two deliberately measured beats, then pressed on. “I’m a real amateur. For example, I’ve never stolen anything from a museum.”

The sentence hung in the air between them. Michael cringed, fearing he had gone too far, but then the magician suddenly began to laugh, a horrible cackling sound like the background noises at a witches’ sabbat. “You are very foolish, my young friend,” he said with a discomfiting leer, “but you are also very brave. I noticed this at our first meeting. We shall discuss the museum another time.” He fell silent, lost in thought, then chuckled again. “Yes,” he said, as though answering a question only he could hear. “Yes, yes.” He looked directly at Michael as he murmured these words, an eager, avid look the younger man found both flattering and disquieting. “Yes,” Wurlitzer was saying again, “you are very brave. And very talented, with your frog and your other pantomimes. And your clever costume, your top hat and your military jacket. Your little robot routine is very well realized.” He seemed decided now, and determined to please.

“Thanks,” Michael said, puffing up slightly. “I call it the Mechanical Man.”

“Good, good.” Head tilted back, Wurlitzer had lifted his black patch and removed a wad of cotton from the eyeless socket. Quickly covering it with a cupped hand, he began to massage the periocular region, gently, as though it pained him. “You mentioned acting,” he said, still rubbing. “What roles have you played?”

“I just played El Gallo in
Fantastiks.”

“Whatever that may be,” Wurlitzer murmured, clearly unimpressed. He brightened. “Yet it seems you have laid the foundations for a well-rounded career, doesn’t it? All you need is a bit more skill, a bit more discipline. Well, well.” A fugitive smile played upon his lips as he replaced the cotton, drew down the patch, leveling his single eye at Michael. Embarrassed, the younger man gazed around the stage, fixing at last upon the lacquered Chinese cabinet, which stood off to one side, near the wings. He felt certain that Wurlitzer was on the verge of some proposal, one whose nature was not immediately apparent, for there was a shadowy movement in the wings, and the old man peered offstage in annoyance. The woman stood back behind the curtain ropes, beckoning.

With a peremptory “You will excuse me,” delivered in his curtest tone, the magician unfolded himself from his chair and shuffled across the stage, his walk ducklike, his patent-leather shoes gleaming in the light. He drew the woman behind the leg of a velour stage return, and for a moment there was silence.

Michael quickly rose, using the opportunity to examine the cabinet from which he had so recently been ejected. The doors stood askew on their hinges where he had broken through them, and the box looked like nothing so much as a well-used stage prop. He thrust his head inside, gingerly, flicked his cigarette lighter on, feeling around the sides with his free hand. Wood panels, painted black, with stretchers and corners reinforced by metal angle irons. He bent and looked at the flooring: nothing but an empty cabinet.

But—there was something about it. He got a distinct feeling, eerie, spooky, that he had no way of identifying. Something, he thought, like the idea of encountering a ghost in a haunted house; or perhaps like the encounter itself. A noise behind him startled him badly. He turned to see Wurlitzer standing on the bottom step of the stage stairs. Michael had no idea how long he’d been under observation, and he was sheepish as he acknowledged the old man’s presence.

“Forgive the interruption,” Wurlitzer said airily. “I trust you have not been bored in my absence?” His tone was bland, yet with that hint of mockery in it. “You were admiring my little cabinet, I see.” Michael grunted, bending to retie his sneaker lace, as the old man pattered volubly on. “Come, come, no need for modesty here, we are all friends, or soon shall be, heh?” Michael found the “heh,” emphasized by a jerk of the chin, peculiarly annoying. He was being baited, for sure. But for what reason? At least the old man seemed to want something from him; Michael supposed this was a good sign, whatever the something was.

“Come along, then,” Wurlitzer was saying, gesturing to the wings and leading the way. “Enough of the stage, we shall go upstairs and enjoy the small refreshment that Lena is preparing. Perhaps she can also give you a cold cloth for that nasty bump over your eye. You must learn to be more careful.”

“Upstairs” was gained by means of a large iron staircase, curving from the stage-right wing to a point high above the stage itself. Wurlitzer’s soles clacked on the perforated metal steps as he climbed. He didn’t look back until he had rolled aside the small iron door set into the brick wall at second-story level and entered an upper room, where he waited for Michael to pass him.

“Lena, Lena, we are here,” the old man called, urging Michael ahead and indicating that he should go to the end of the passageway. Here another door, which had been left open, admitted them to a second passage on the right side of the stage wall. From this passageway, Michael could see down the staircase to the ground level and up to other floors overhead.

“Just to the end, if you please,” Wurlitzer said. He passed Michael again, held open the door at the far end of the hall, and showed him in. “Here is Lena’s parlor,” he said, gesturing his guest toward a chair, “and music room, I should add, for that is what she calls it.” Michael looked around the room, which was crowded and cluttered with old furniture, shelves with books and papers, a large table under an overhead lamp, a piano, a music stand, and, everywhere, antimacassars.

“Galena!” Wurlitzer shouted through the doorway, then went and stood by the clock on the mantel. “Sit down, my boy, sit down,” he said. “She is surely coming. In the meantime, where were we?” He seemed to become all vague and bumbling, absently patting his pockets, fingering his stiff collar, stretching his neck, shrugging his jacket up and down. For a moment, Michael thought of a harmless, absentminded professor: Einstein wondering where he’d left his notes. The painful tightness around Michael’s eye when he smiled at this image caused him to revise it. Absentminded, perhaps; but definitely not harmless.

At last he settled in a well-worn armchair, placed at an angle to the sofa where Michael sat, and slowly turned his head to face him. “Ah, yes, I recall,” the old man said, sitting up ramrod straight and riveting Michael’s gaze with his searching single eye. A cold, unnerving force seemed to flow out of him; every element of caricature, of absurdity, fell from him like a shed disguise. “Let us pass directly to the heart of the matter,” he said, his bleak voice like an ominous wind in Michael’s ears. “I have a serious proposition for you to consider.”

Michael sat bolt upright, perched on the edge of the sofa like a bird poised for flight, his position mirroring the old man’s, all his faculties concentrated on this moment, these words. Outside, the city’s fevered pulse raged on, its cacophony shifted from crescendo to crescendo; inside, in Lena’s parlor, time moved with glacial slowness, and silently.

“I have lived for a long time,” Wurlitzer began. “I am weary of this theatrical life, of this world of trickery and illusion. I wish to make a final, permanent exit from the stage.” He paused again, as though contemplating his own words with a hint of regret. Then he continued. “But before I take my last bow, I require a helper, let us say a kind of apprentice. Such a person must be talented, clever, and ambitious. On the first two counts, I am fairly satisfied with you, but I know nothing of your ambitions. What are they?”

This was an easy question. “I have only one,” Michael said earnestly. “To be the greatest magician in the world.”

The old man’s fierce gaze relaxed, became almost indulgent. “And what are you willing to go through to realize this noble, if somewhat solemn, ambition?”

Michael found this one easy too, though the answer frightened him. “Whatever it takes,” he said.

“It is as I thought,” Wurlitzer replied in his dry, rasping voice, like a prosecutor handed a clinching piece of evidence.

Silence fell between them again. Michael sat stiffly, staring at Wurlitzer in astonishment. Surely it couldn’t be this simple. All his hopes, his dreams, all those imagined conversations with the Queer Duck, thus neatly tucked into a package, as though his wildest fantasies were being delivered to him, made to order. “I would be your assistant?” he asked hesitantly, fearing to break the spell.

“Yes-yes-yes, assistant, helper, whatever you choose to call yourself.” The old man spoke impatiently, desiring to have the matter settled.

“How would I assist you?” Michael wanted to know.

“As you must have observed, there is much to do here, chores for which I need your brawn more than your brains. There are things to be built, items to be repaired. To say nothing of rehearsals, working out new routines, and the like. If all goes well, then we shall prepare for the Grand Finale.”

“The Grand Finale?” Michael asked, as he was clearly meant to do.

“My farewell to the stage, upon which I have strutted and fretted long enough.” The old man, absorbed in his own imaginings, shifted his gaze to some indefinable point above Michael’s head and spoke eagerly, pridefully. “I am planning a spectacular show, the likes of which no magician has ever performed. That show will be the ultimate goal of our—what shall I call it?—partnership.”

“I’m extremely interested,” Michael said, “but I still don't understand the terms of the proposition. What would the pay be?”

“Pay?” Wurlitzer looked amazed and spoke sharply. “Who talks of pay? Of late you have discovered that money comes when you need it. Your pay will be in what you can learn.”