Dick Mable sat in the eighth row of a small crowded theater and might not have known his wife sat next to him if she weren’t gripping his arm in terror. It was dark in there (cave black, he’d called it, finding the description to be clever) and, except for what was happening on the makeshift stage, you couldn’t see a thing. Dick couldn’t get over it. The show.
This guy Emperor was honestly unreal.
What he and his wife and about fifty others had witnessed so far was easily the best magic show they’d ever seen and well worth the eight-dollar tickets. It was crazy. Truly. Crazy. It was nothing like watching TV and nothing like those out-of-control Las Vegas shows where the men in glittering capes rode polar bears. This show was gritty. Almost to where Dick could feel the gravel beneath his dress shoes. The magician, Roman Emperor, was right there, fifteen feet in front of him at the most, using foldout tables as a stage and doing tricks Dick wouldn’t have been able to figure out if you gave him a pencil, a pad, and a month. The Stake, the black-box theater on Main, was the kind of intimate place where, when a play came through, you could see the anxiety on an actor’s face. The place was small. Tight. There was simply nowhere to hide the tricks! Mirrors and trapdoors, strings and pulleys…Dick couldn’t spot any of it. And he’d certainly been trying.
“I’m scared,” Theresa had whispered a few minutes ago, and Dick didn’t blame her.
With TV, you always carried the indomitable suspicion that the reality of the illusion was somehow edited out. And the big Vegas shows may as well have been TV, you were so far from the stage anyway. But Dick Mable was forty-four years old. He’d seen a lot of shows. His nephew was in a loud grunge band and his niece sang opera in Kansas. He’d seen big productions and small, great shows and ones that weren’t so much.
But this one? Christ, Dick could smell the show. And the smell was part grease, part sweat, and the unmistakable odor of honesty.
And yet…it was a magic show. Built on dishonesty.
“I can’t look,” Theresa said.
I can’t stop, Dick thought.
He’d seen the show in the local listings in the back of The Other, the weekly alternative magazine that had proven much more interesting than the Times. Roman Emperor. The name was either cheeky or awesome, depending on how you looked at it, and Dick was sold.
Now, seated before the man and his assistant, Dick couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was seeing. Of course every magician has secrets, but this maniac Emperor was good.
“Oh God,” Theresa whispered, leaning into Dick. “What are they doing now?”
Dick had to admit, the trick looked dangerous. Emperor stood on one side of the stage. His master of ceremonies, a blonde whom Dick couldn’t get a handle on (Is she pretty? Is she sick? Is she perfect?) stood across the shaky stage, an ax raised high in her hands.
“I will stop this tool with my mind,” the blonde said. And everybody knew what that meant. She was going to throw it at Emperor and…stop it with her mind.
Dick looked for the strings.
A wood log stood at Emperor’s feet. The blonde did the whole ring-around-the-weapon thing to show the audience there were no strings attached and even went as far as to hand the weapon out for the audience to inspect themselves. Dick wanted to hold it, but Theresa pulled the arm of his suit coat back as he reached out. Like she was scared he might catch something. Dick didn’t entirely disagree with her.
Emperor paced as the audience inspected the weapon. In fact, he’d been pacing most of the show, as the (sick? gorgeous?) blonde did all the talking.
“It’s so dark,” Theresa whispered. Dick wasn’t sure if she meant the lighting or the show itself.
Emperor finally stood motionless, but the animal energy within him still seemed to pulse. He had his back to the audience now, his head cocked toward the blonde. Dick guessed the magician was under forty, but it was very hard to tell. He was a throwback, to be sure, a character you’d see in a dramatization of the Old World. He wore tight slacks, black boots, a vest, and a white, ruffled button-down shirt, what Dick knew some people called a poet’s shirt. Some gray showed in his mustache and sweaty black hair, but not much. So little, in fact, that it might have been applied for effect. Dick thought he looked like a poet bullfighter. A philosophical hunter. Despite his masculinity, there was something deeply neurotic about him. The way he paced. The way he stood. The unglued look in his eyes coupled with an unseen, but felt, confidence in his craft.
Beyond the prepared look of a showman, Dick detected fear.
And the blonde…what was her name? Had she given it? When she first came out from backstage, Dick thought Theresa was going to kill him.
Oh, sure, Dick. Nice night out.
And yet as stunning as she was, there was something unnerving, too, a sense of fakery that outweighed her features.
She wore a cut-up version of a green-and-yellow Victorian dress, her chest testing the seams, her ivory skin smooth under the lights. The dress had been chopped into a skirt and her boots gave her tall frame a few extra inches. Shoulder-length blond hair half hid a face that came in and out of focus under the overheads.
She was feminine, Dick thought, absolutely. And yet…animal, too.
Theresa didn’t say a word about her. And Dick understood. The show was so good, so fast, that they didn’t have time to look at her legs. And besides, in his way, Emperor was just as striking. If not more so.
“Oh God,” Theresa said as the blonde received the ax back. “Here we go.”
The blonde had dipped her hands into the darkness of the audience, and the weapon she brought back under the lights looked every bit as real as the tools Dick had seen about Theresa’s father’s toolshed. The blonde took the opposite side of the stage from Emperor and raised her eyebrows, silently asking if he was ready.
Emperor nodded once. Dick saw a bead of sweat drip from the tip of his nose.
The woman hurled the ax at his head so fast that the audience screamed as one.
SWOOSH
Dick closed his eyes. He had to. And when he opened them, he saw the ax blade suspended less than an inch from the magician’s face.
The sound of the ax cutting the space between them remained strong in Dick’s mind; the blonde’s boot stomp upon the stage, too; the communal gasp of the audience when it seemed too late.
“Jesus Christ,” Theresa said. “I can’t take any more of this.”
The blonde held her arm out as if an invisible beam tied her to the suspended ax. Dick looked for the strings.
Or was it Emperor that employed the trick? With his eyes on the blade, the magician’s mouth formed a small circle, and he lifted his left hand. He made a subtle motion, as though wiping dust from the shoulder of his vest, a flick of the wrist, and the ax rose a few inches higher into the air.
Silence now. The blonde with her arm out, the magician staring down the high blade.
Then Emperor moved again and the ax began to spin. The audience gasped again as the ax dropped, fast, to the wood at the magician’s black boots.
CHOP
It split the log in two.
The stage rattled. The crowd held their breath before releasing it in nervous laughter and applause.
The lack of music, the lack of explanation, added to the grittiness and Dick slid his dress shoes subconsciously against the theater’s stone floor.
The blonde nodded and Emperor took a bow.
“How is it that the whole world doesn’t know about this guy?” Dick asked his wife. But Theresa just gripped his arm harder. Her heart, she said, could barely take it. She was sure that ax was going to split the man’s face and she’d have to relive that image forever. She knew all about how magicians had their secrets, secrets they don’t share, but there was something different about this show. Something terrible. Something scary.
The blonde came to the center of the stage and asked for a volunteer. Emperor paced behind her. Dick wanted to do it, but Theresa took hold of his wrists and made her point known. A man to the right of the stage beat him to it anyway. Emperor clasped his hands together and the woman explained the next trick.
“This time, you throw the ax at him. And he”—she fanned a smooth palm toward Emperor—“will be blind.”
The crowd moaned. This was too much. The room for error, human error…
“It’s too much!” Theresa said, louder than a whisper.
The volunteer was clearly nervous, but before he could back out the blonde had the ax in his hand and was showing him the most effective way to throw it.
“Use force,” she said. “Do not be shy.”
A slight hint of an accent. Dick couldn’t place it. Finnish?
“Thank you, Maggie,” Roman said.
The audience laughed.
Maggie, Dick thought. Then Maggie turned Roman around so that he was facing the audience.
The crowd was very still. Theresa was about set to break Dick’s arm off. Someone sneaked out. Couldn’t take it.
“Are you ready?” Maggie asked.
Roman, his back to her, nodded.
Maggie looked to the volunteer.
“We’re ready,” she said.
The volunteer threw the ax.
The theater lights went out.
Something fell hard to the stage.
The audience was up, yelling, asking what happened, asking if Emperor was okay.
Dick had a terrible vision of the lights coming back on to reveal the magician on the floor, the ax splitting the back of his skull, Maggie kneeling above him…
It’s a small show, Dick thought. He tried to resist the thinking but it wasn’t easy. They’re not as practiced as those people on TV, those fruitcakes in Vegas.
Then, Jesus Christ, was there an accident? IS HE DEAD?
“What have I done!” the volunteer wailed.
The lights came on.
Maggie was smiling. The ax was frozen an inch from Emperor’s skull. The volunteer fell to his knees and looked like he might cry. Then he started laughing.
“Fuck!” he cried, and the audience felt his relief.
Then the crowd was on their feet and cheering. Dick knew that, if he were ever to see any of these people on the street, he could say, Yes. I was there, too.
The ax spun slowly behind Emperor’s head and came to a stop. The audience, still on their feet, hushed.
The blade cried out as it bent behind him, the weapon warped, folding in on itself. The handle snapped in two. Maggie put her hands on her hips and shook her head theatrically.
“Showing off,” she said.
Finnish? Dick wondered. Czech?
The ax vanished. Smoke hung in the air behind the magician.
And that was it. The end of the show.
No music. No set design. No pyrotechnics. And yet…the greatest show Dick Mable had ever seen.
“Magic,” Roman said, obviously awkward, clearly anxious, “is real.”
Then he and Maggie bowed and together they slipped behind the black curtain, backstage.
People were slow to leave.
“Wow,” Theresa said, a hand to her chest. “That was…brutal.”
“It was great,” Dick said.
“Where to now?” Theresa asked. “Know any good shrinks?”
But Dick didn’t want to leave just yet. He had to meet this Roman Emperor.
“I was thinking we should step backstage. Let them know how wonderful that was. It’s gotta be good to hear.”
Theresa looked to the curtain as if a childhood ghost might be behind it. The thing from under the bed. The bogeyman in the closet at night.
Dick took her by the hand and led her to a back hallway. It was one of the perks of attending shows you read about in The Other: no security, no bodyguards, no fame. There was no fanfare back behind the curtain. No hangers-on. The hall was dark, but Dick saw light from a partially open door. Still dragging Theresa along, he quietly peeked inside.
Maggie was standing at the far end of the room, looking toward Roman slumped in a chair. The magician looked exhausted. He held a hand to the side of his head, as if his mind was tired.
Maggie saw Dick. He shivered when their eyes met.
“Welcome,” she said, and Dick had a strange idea that a fog was rising around her, that specks of dirt showed on her shoulder and neck.
“I just had to tell you guys,” Dick stammered, “that was amazing. The best show we’ve seen in years. Wouldn’t you say so, T?”
He gripped his wife close. As if, without doing so, Theresa might be swallowed by the dark of the hall, and he’d be left alone with these two.
“Yes,” Theresa said, peeking into the dressing room. “That was…horrifying.”
“Thank you.” Maggie smiled. “It all starts with an audience willing to believe.”
Dick and Theresa smiled. These performer types were so…right on!
“I get it,” Dick said. “But I gotta tell you…I looked for the strings…and couldn’t see anything. Like…at all.”
For the first time, Roman cocked an ear in Dick and Theresa’s direction. Then he looked over his shoulder at the couple.
“Thank God for that,” he said.
And his voice was sharp, foreign perhaps, so direct that Dick felt strangely childish in its presence.
“How is it that the whole world doesn’t know about you guys?” Dick asked.
“Dick!” Theresa said.
“You get what you’re after,” Maggie said. Roman simply stared. “What are you two after?”
“Us?” Dick asked, genuinely surprised. He looked at Theresa. “I guess a good night out.”
“And are you having one?”
“Yes, we are. A great one.”
Maggie held up empty palms and shrugged, as if to say, See?
Dick thought about it. Maybe she was just saying things to say, or maybe Roman didn’t care about fame after all.
“Where are you guys tomorrow?” he asked.
“Goblin,” Roman said.
“Ah,” Dick said. “Strange town. You two will fit right in.”
“Dick!” Theresa gripped his arm.
Then the four were silent for some time.
“Well, okay,” Dick said. “Just wanted to tell you both how good we thought it was. The best show we’ve seen in years.”
“Goodbye,” Theresa said kindly. Then she led Dick away from the dressing room door. But Dick sneaked his head back once more.
“Do you need directions to Goblin? I know the way.”
“We do, too,” Maggie said.
“Well then, uh…how about sharing a secret or two?”
Roman raised a hand and the door started to shut on its own.
“I understand, I understand,” Dick said. He pulled his head out of the way just before it closed.
In the darkness of the hall, he whispered to Theresa, “Goblin is gonna love them.”
But Theresa was just happy to be exiting the theater. Yes, it was a great show, but sometimes great left you feeling afraid.
When Pete found out that Mike got tickets to see Roman Emperor he was very, very jealous. Pete was the one who was into magic. Always had been. Everybody in Goblin Middle knew that. Without Pete, Mike wouldn’t know a white rabbit from a levitation. And now every kid in Goblin Middle was getting tickets and Pete…well, Pete might not be able to afford one.
He needed eight dollars. And for as small as the number sounded to some, it was a big one to Pete. His parents might or might not take him to a midnight magic show, one that was announced last-minute, and one that featured the indisputable king of dirty magic. If Dad took one look at any issue of Presto he probably wouldn’t let Pete go. Hell, he might even ground him for asking.
Pete couldn’t chance that.
Wasn’t even going to ask. He’d ride his bike downtown and get one for himself. He had to see Emperor. For Pete, Roman Emperor was what Captain America was for the other kids. He’d read everything Presto published. The monthly magazine was a wonder ground for his imagination. He’d read about all the traveling magicians. The Spell Circuit, as Presto called it. They were like modern outlaws! Sleight of human hands; nothing like the boring animal trainers in Las Vegas and New York City. No way. The magicians on the Spell Circuit were usually old-school men of magic who performed for peanuts. A whole medium of odd men with odder assistants (none more so than Emperor’s Maggie) playing empty theaters, high schools, libraries, dive bars, comedy clubs, underground speakeasies, and abandoned churches. The more Pete learned about them the more he loved them. He loved that his friends didn’t care. The circuit’s obscurity made him feel like he owned it. Roman Emperor, whom Mike and the others just had to see now, wasn’t even in the top five in Presto’s popularity poll! And though none of the magicians were famous, Roman Emperor was about as infamous as it got. Pete had been introduced to the rogue magician by Mr. Bench, owner of Goblin’s Magic, the one magic store in the city, and Mr. Bench said that Emperor might be the best.
He had to get a ticket. For the love of justice, he had to.
At home, in a desk drawer, Pete had a black-and-white photo of a very young Emperor chained to a giant wheel. Maggie stood beside him, holding a set of keys. The caption read,
EMPEROR REFUSES TO ESCAPE BEHIND CURTAINS
“If there’s a trick to be seen,” Emperor was quoted, “let them see it.”
Pete loved that. Anything Emperor did was done in the open. Unlike the most celebrated men of the circuit, he never hid backstage or behind a curtain; Roman Emperor never stepped foot inside a trick cabinet. That very article suggested Emperor was making the other magicians nervous with his bravado; they were concerned he’d slip up one evening and give trade secrets away. But Pete was awed by this. A magician so edgy that the others cried stop.
And yet…weren’t they all just trying to deceive? As Mr. Bench would say, Fakers crying foul is a bit like bullies crying tears.
Other articles, later articles, talked a lot about the infamous Kerry Theatre show in Morgantown, West Virginia. Planned as a unified promotion of the circuit, it was attended by almost every magician. But it was here that Roman was confronted backstage by others in an attempt to swap secrets. Emperor refused outright, supported (always) by Maggie, citing secrecy as the magician’s only true freedom. Pete read that Don Deanie said it was bullshit (he used that word!) and tried to strong-arm it out of the young Emperor. But (this was Pete’s favorite part) when Deanie went to charge Emperor, he found he couldn’t move. The other magicians searched Deanie for strings.
Emperor took Maggie by the hand and left before his turn was up. The article quoted Emperor as having said, “There’s nothing great about the great Don Deanie!”
Mr. Bench laughed at this story and told Pete that it was exactly what the magicians were looking for: promotion.
Don’t believe too much of that, Mr. Bench said. Emperor isn’t so dirty, and the others aren’t so clean.
But Pete was simply smitten. Like himself, Emperor was an outcast. Walking the halls of Goblin Middle, his black hair hanging in his eyes, Pete could relate. The other kids looked at him the way he imagined the other magicians eyed Emperor. And here, not only had Emperor snubbed the entire circuit by not performing for them, but he’d officially insulted one of its elder statesmen. It was the day the Spell Circuit blacklisted Emperor, no longer including his shows in their promotions. They claimed he dabbled in dirty magic, and Deanie said that hosting Emperor on a bill would be tantamount to inviting a dangerous criminal into a school playground.
Emperor was out.
“He’s one of the villains,” Pete’s mom told him.
And she was sort of right. Just like comic books needed the evil genius, so did the world of magic. And yet Pete couldn’t care less if Emperor was considered good or bad. Between the way he dressed, the things he said, and Maggie, Emperor was electrifying. And what Pete cared about most was his tricks.
He asked Mr. Bench how they might be done.
“This one here,” Pete said, pointing to a photo of Maggie’s head turned completely around. “She’d have to have been wearing her clothes backward the entire show, or…oh…I don’t know how they did this.”
“The secret is the fun part, Pete,” Mr. Bench always said. And Pete understood that, as the proprietor of the city’s one magic shop, he had to say that.
“But let me ask you,” Mr. Bench added, his mustache curled up into a smile. “What makes you so sure there’s a trick? Why can’t it just be magic?”
Despite not telling (or perhaps not knowing) the answer to Pete’s questions about Emperor, Mr. Bench spotted a legitimate enthusiast in Pete and performed simpler tricks for him all the time. Pete had no ordinary boy’s interest in magic. He studied the magazines like other kids from Goblin Middle studied girls. So, encouraged by this audience of one, Mr. Bench brought out his tricks in a series of Sunday meetings with the boy. Pete, without knowing it, had forced Mr. Bench to brush up on a lot of things. The aged proprietor was suddenly rereading old issues of Presto and Magic Magazine, the very rags he’d been selling for years. Behind the red curtains that led to his office in the back of the store, he relearned many old gags and practiced the more difficult card maneuvers. He’d dusted off the glass of his longtime mirror and found in his reflection a fountain of youth, inspiration to be magicking again.
Pete had brought it all back to life again for him. A trick all its own.
And Mr. Bench, in return, encouraged Pete’s interests and supplied him with everything he needed to know about the circuit. He was, of course, the means by which Pete learned that his hero was coming to Goblin.
A week before the show, Pete came in alone, as he often did, and Mr. Bench motioned for him to come to the counter.
“I just got some tour dates you may be interested in, Pete,” he said, feigning a casual tone. He handed Pete a piece of paper.
The list of cities and dates conjured complex images in Pete’s young mind. Places he’d never seen, but ones he’d heard of. And he certainly knew the magicians well.
Gail Gordon in Boise, Idaho.
Invisible Williams III in Des Moines.
“Card Shark Attack” Wills in Montgomery, Alabama.
Finn the Fantastic in New York City.
Pete recalled black-and-white photos of Finn the F pulling rabbits from the hats of people in the crowd.
“Read farther down,” Mr. Bench said.
Pete did.
Sugar Jay and the Outlaws in Chicago.
Michael the Gifted in Detroit.
Roman…
Pete dropped the paper. Had to pick it up again, read the listing once more.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Mr. Bench laughed. “Yes you do.”
“But…but…” Pete’s hands trembled, the paper waving like it was alive. “It says Goblin, Mr. Bench.”
“So it does.”
“But Goblin is…that’s…that’s right here.”
Mr. Bench laughed again.
“And so it is.” He looked through the front glass, through the big blue, reversed letters painted there. goblin’s magic. Out to the bustling city beyond.
Pete, still staring at the paper, suddenly squealed.
“Roman Emperor is coming here?” he yelled, as if only Mr. Bench could make it official. “This isn’t…an old list? A mistake?”
“Hmmm…” Mr. Bench said, taking the paper back and pretending to study it. “Nope. No mistake here. This is a genuine listing.”
Pete turned red. Then he turned his head to the ceiling and howled.
“Holy cow! Mr. Bench! What do I do? What am I supposed to do? Roman Emperor is coming to Goblin! What am I supposed to do?”
Mr. Bench laughed. “Hey, hey, okay. Calm down.”
“Calm down?”
“On second thought, no. That’s the worst advice I can give you. Never calm down. But what should you do? Well…you should get yourself a ticket is what you should do.”
Pete took the list and read it again.
ROMAN EMPEROR—GOBLIN—DOMINO THEATER (Peak Show)—$8
He wrinkled his brow.
“What does that mean, Mr. Bench? Peak show?”
“The peak of night, Pete,” Mr. Bench winked. “Midnight.”
Pete’s joyous expression fell from his face. In its stead was concern.
Midnight.
Would his parents let him go? Could he even risk not going by asking them?
“What is it, Pete?”
“Nothing, Mr. Bench. Honestly. Just…wow.”
He’d figure it out on his own. He’d have to. Nothing was going to stop him from seeing this show. One of the Presto magicians, the most feared magician on the Spell Circuit, was coming to…Goblin?
Pete felt like his legs were on fire. He couldn’t stand still. Roman Emperor was coming to Pete’s Goblin. Man! This wasn’t “cool.” This was huge. Oh…he was going to go. There was no worrying about that.
“You probably don’t have to worry about it selling out,” Mr. Bench said. “Our industry is…obscure, as you know. But I’d get a ticket as soon as possible if I were you. Just to be sure.”
Suddenly Pete felt like he didn’t know enough about Emperor. As if he’d failed to study all the material required for this unbelievable pop exam. When Pete first started reading Presto, he’d gravitated to the more forthcoming magicians. The guys who put their tricks on display or published them in magazines so readers could try to figure them out. Emperor, secretive as he was, had always been a vague impression to Pete. A dark, mythic figure who graced the pages of the magic mags with the sort of mystery ghost stories were made of. Unlike a lot of the readers who sent letters to the editors, Pete was fascinated with his reluctance to expose his moves. But for this, and because the other magicians had more or less ostracized Emperor years ago, material was slim. There just wasn’t that much written about him. Most readers wanted a trick, a code to crack.
Roman Emperor seemed to have no code.
“I hear his live shows are thrillers,” Mr. Bench said.
Pete nodded enthusiastically. “Me, too. People have passed out.”
“Is that right?”
Pete nodded. Then he checked his watch. How much time did he have to reread everything he’d ever read about Emperor? A week?
“I gotta go,” he suddenly said. “Thank you, Mr. Bench.”
Then he was out the front door of Goblin’s Magic and up on his bike, pedaling home.
He had a lot of homework to do.
Roman Emperor was coming to Goblin.
Pete cocked his head back and howled delight into the early-evening Goblin sky.
Pete was a good kid, but he also did know where his mom kept her money. And it could hardly be considered stealing in this case. He simply had to see this show. He was one of only nine hundred people in the country with a subscription to Presto. To have one of the magazine’s “Top 40 Active Magicians” coming to his hometown was the biggest news of his life (Emperor came in at number thirty-eight, but the blurb about him said he could be in the top fifteen if he ever learned to play nice with the others.) So…
So Mom left Pete alone on Wednesday afternoons. Though it was difficult to swallow, he’d have to wait a few days. He couldn’t do it when she was home. Just could not risk putting himself in a position to explain what he needed the money for. He hadn’t worked out yet how he was going to tell her or even if he was going to at all. But come Wednesday, he’d sneak into her dresser, take the eight dollars, ride his bike downtown, and get back before she got home. The articles in the magazine, Emperor’s meager recorded history, would have to suffice for now.
But reading about Roman drove Pete only crazier.
With his bedroom door locked, he studied. And with every article he read he was aware of a new sensation: the personal touch of reading up on a man who was coming to Goblin.
One Presto review of a live Emperor show was three years old. There was no photo, but the write-up was fascinating:
SPRAGUEVILLE, RHODE ISLAND—
WADE “MAGIC FINGERS” McGOWAN WASN’T ON THE STAGE BUT HE TURNED SOME HEADS ALL THE SAME WHEN HE ENTERED THE HARDY HAR HAR CLUB IN DOWNTOWN SPRAGUEVILLE. SEEMS McGOWAN WAS AS INTERESTED IN THE LOCAL DEBUT OF ROMAN EMPEROR AS THE TEN OTHER MEN AND WOMEN IN THE AREA WHO WERE IN ATTENDANCE. EMPEROR, A UNIQUE AND EXCITING FACE ON THE SPELL CIRCUIT, WOWED THE SMALL CROWD WITH DANGEROUS TRICKS THAT INCLUDED TOSSED SABERS AND AN ESCAPE FROM A BEAR TRAP. AFTER WARMING UP THE AUDIENCE WITH THE HELP OF AN ALLURING BLOND ASSISTANT (WHO, IN SOME RESPECTS, STOLE THE SHOW), EMPEROR WASTED NO TIME GETTING TO THE THEATRICS. THOUGH NOT ONE MUCH FOR GAB, EMPEROR IS A VERY EXCITING MAGICIAN WITH A HEADY RESPECT FOR THE CRAFT. McGOWAN HAD THIS TO SAY AFTER,
“ANYTIME I’M IN TOWN LONG ENOUGH TO CATCH ANOTHER GUY’S ACT, IT’S A GOOD THING. IT WAS A GOOD SHOW.”
Hmm, Pete thought. A good show.
A lukewarm magician-to-magician review to be sure. Pete suspected jealousy. He picked up another magazine.
Magic Monthly printed photos of twelve touring magicians and listed their statistics beneath them. Pete loved this kind of thing. Finn the Fantastic was one of the twelve featured. So was Emperor. Pete compared the two.
AGE:
Finn the Fantastic: 49
Roman Emperor: 35
FAVORITE CITY TO PERFORM IN:
Finn the Fantastic: Cleveland, Ohio. I love the nightlife. And the burgers!
Roman Emperor: BLANK
ORIGIN:
Finn the Fantastic: Minneapolis. The big city. Go Gophers!
Roman Emperor: BLANK
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Finn the Fantastic: MAA Newcomer of the Year. 5 time MAA Magician of the Year. Runner-up twice. First place in the annual Midwest Magician Convention 11 years running. Performed live on Channel 8 St. Paul in the Afternoon and once on Good Morning Alabama. 8 times on the cover of Magic Monthly. Thanks guys!
Roman Emperor: None.
INFLUENCES:
Finn the Fantastic: The Great Don Deanie. Art Andrews.
Roman Emperor: Every magician that has come before me.
HOBBIES:
Finn the Fantastic: Drawing. Driving. Shuffleboard. Starting my own line of tricks—Finntastic. Look for it soon!
Roman Emperor: BLANK
FAVORITE TRICK OF YOUR OWN/SPECIALTY:
Finn the Fantastic: Moving things with my mind.
Roman Emperor: Moving things with my mind.
Pete knew Finn was being modest. He could have named fifty more awards he’d received. The entire Finntastic catalog rested in a chest in Pete’s bedroom. But Emperor…
Pete experienced that personal touch again. Emperor had given answers Pete no doubt brushed past the first time he’d read the article. But now there seemed to be more meaning in them. As if even with the blanks, Emperor had spoken.
Pete imagined him onstage at the Domino in Goblin. In his mind’s eye an amalgamation of every black-and-white photo of Emperor and Maggie became one, until the stage in the Domino was big enough to hold them all.
He read on.
Next up: Presto’s “Year in Review” from two years ago. The cover showed a top hat with white stars spilling out. The text read:
WHAT A YEAR FOR MAGIC!
PRESTO TELLS YOU WHAT HAPPENED WHERE AND WHO MADE WAVES
It was a “best of” listing. And since there were only so many magicians on the circuit, the same names came up often. The Newcomer of the Year, Ron Dander, was a guy Pete remembered reading about. But Dander had dropped out of the business about the time the magazine came out. Top Magician went to Finn the Fantastic.
Emperor’s name wasn’t listed anywhere. Not once.
Whether it was because the issue came out so soon after the Kerry Theatre fiasco, Pete didn’t know.
Not a single ranking out of the two hundred or so possibilities was awarded to Roman Emperor, a magician who, Pete knew, had more presence in the scene than a good half of the names. Reading this particular issue, one wouldn’t think Emperor existed at all.
Pete found this odd.
Emperor must have had the recent respect of his peers to have been invited to the Kerry Theatre in the first place. So why, Pete wondered, the freeze-out before the incident? Chilled by the thought, Pete suspected Emperor was invited to the Kerry Theatre just so the others could ask him his secrets. Maybe Mr. Bench was right when he’d said Emperor could end up being the best of all of them. And maybe the other magicians, a union headed by Don Deanie, feared this.
Pete was liking Emperor more and more with everything he read.
He read on. Presto from the same time period.
FOR SOME, TOURING IS NOT A SEASONAL THING. IT APPEARS THAT ROMAN EMPEROR IS SET TO PERFORM IN EVERY CITY THE COUNTRY HAS TO OFFER. HE CLAIMS NO PLACE OF RESIDENCE AND YOU CAN PROBABLY SEE HIS BLACK MERCEDES PULL INTO YOUR TOWN IF YOU LOOK LONG ENOUGH. HERE’S TO HOPING ALL THAT WORK PAYS OFF.
Pete figured it had. Somewhat, anyway. Emperor was as familiar a name now as Wade McGowan or Albert Rich. That seemed a long way to come.
And the more he read, the more impatient he got for that ticket.
Mike wasn’t the only kid with his ticket that Tuesday in school. Four other kids had theirs, and rumor was that everybody was going to the midnight magic show at the Domino Theater. It was the biggest topic at school. It was all anyone could talk about. Pete wasn’t even sure how everybody knew! One kid’s dad said he’d take him himself. Another kid said his parents bought three tickets. Girls, boys, everybody was going. In one of Pete’s classes the teacher mentioned Harry Houdini. Referred to him as the “best there ever was.” Pete turned red in his seat. He wanted so badly to get up and tell everybody about Finn the Fantastic and Roman Emperor and the Kerry Theatre and all the touring and every little thing he’d read. But he didn’t want to share this with everyone else. None of this! Magic was his. The only thing he had to himself.
And here that prized possession seemed to be slipping from his fingers.
By Wednesday morning another fifteen kids had tickets. Pete considered stealing the eight dollars from a fellow student. In class he eyeballed pockets, looking for loose bills, like he was starving and there might be bread in there. The wait was torturing him. The school hours sluggishly bumped into one another like bumper cars driven by children. By lunchtime the coming midnight magic show was the only topic of conversation and Pete was losing his mind.
Ryan Dickson called him Roman Empire!
Oh, how the misinformation was driving Pete mad.
“He can make any animal out of a balloon. Even a kangaroo.”
“He dresses in a long black cape and pulls bunnies from a hat.”
“He can read your mind and write down your thoughts before you tell them to him.”
Animal balloons? Bunnies? These kids were in for a surprise. Wait until Maggie hurled an ax at Emperor’s face!
Pete smiled. At some point in the impossibly long day, he’d come to understand that all these frilly rumors were proof that nobody in Goblin was closer to Roman Emperor than Pete himself.
Pete knew Emperor.
He was the only one in Goblin Middle who knew Emperor wore a brown vest. A white shirt. Black boots. That he had wild black hair. That he drove an awesome black Mercedes. That Maggie was more than the usual assistant and actually emceed the shows. That Emperor refused to hide his tricks from the audience while refusing to show them to his peers. That a long time ago he made some enemies in the business because of this. That he once left hobbies blank on a personal profile in Magic Monthly.
That some peers said Emperor used dirty magic.
Pete watched the clock.
The hour was approaching, his exile at last. When he got home he was going immediately to Mom’s dresser, pocketing the eight bucks, and finally getting that ticket. And the closer that time came, the closer Pete felt to the curious magician. It was a bond he’d never felt before. Forget who didn’t know what about Roman Emperor. Forget who said what. And when the bell did ring, things became a speedy blur for Pete, and he wouldn’t even remember the bus ride home. It was as if he were traveling through black smoke, a mist the color of Emperor’s car, as the frightening magician drove toward Goblin, the alluring Maggie at his side.
Entering his own house, Pete thought of Emperor’s hands on the wheel of the Mercedes. Saw magic rings upon each finger. And within each ring was a swirling mist of black. The hurried blur of a true fan finally getting the money together to come see him.
And beyond those fingers…pale Maggie. She was smiling in Pete’s mind’s eye. Like she knew Pete was coming to see the show. Like she wanted him to come as badly as Pete wanted to himself.
As fields of dark-green grass passed by the car window behind her, Pete imagined her speaking directly to him.
Hurry up, Pete, she seemed to say. Get a ticket. And come see our show.
Pete floated up the stairs, as if governed by an adult desire, a deep propulsion he’d never quite felt before.
By the time he got to Mom’s dresser, he was ticklish with eagerness, with swirling black joy, and he wanted to feel that way forever.
I didn’t even check if Mom was home.
But it was too late for that. His hand was already in there, pushing her underwear aside. He was more worried about there being enough money. That would be a problem he didn’t quite have an answer for.
But in the back corner of the drawer was a bundle of bills amounting to a hundred and ten dollars. He slipped out eight singles (and then one more just in case) and set everything back where it was.
I’ll pay her back.
He held the money up and saw it as a makeshift stage with little figurines of Roman and Maggie upon it. In his mind’s eye Roman held out a steady open palm and Maggie rose, arms at her side, toward the darkness of a theater ceiling.
He shut the drawer and raced downstairs. His shoes squeaked on the laundry room floor as he made it to the door leading to the garage.
His bike sat inert beneath the bright hanging bulb. As if spotlighted, on a stage of its own, ready to play a star role in Pete’s journey for the ticket.
The green paint looked like the landscapes he imagined Roman and Maggie driving through, on their way to Goblin.
He pressed the garage door opener on the wall then rushed up onto the bike seat. To Pete, it felt like curtains were rising, a magic show about to begin. He half expected Maggie to be standing in the drive, raising a palm of her own, as…
As an ax comes barreling toward your skull!
Pete blinked the sudden vision away and tore off down the empty drive.
To downtown Goblin! His watch told him it was three twenty-nine p.m. He’d have to time the trip down so he’d know exactly when to head back. He had to beat Mom.
He made a left on Northsouth, Goblin’s second main road. Christmas ran parallel to Northsouth on opposite ends of town and Pete thanked God he didn’t have to burn rubber down that sloppy gravel.
The wind in his eyes, the cars whizzing by, and the faces of the Gobliners who drove them all felt like part of the incredible mission he was on. Perhaps there were secret agents sent from Don Deanie’s camp, watching Pete pedal, weighing when to leap out, when to stop Emperor from receiving another ticket sale?
Pete cackled a high-pitched laughter. Remote facts about all the magicians on the Spell Circuit rolled like bike wheels through his mind, spinning violently around a very powerful hub that could have been Roman Emperor with his ringed hands to the sky.
When downtown came into view, Pete’s watch said three thirty-six. This was going to work out. He had plenty of time to make it to the box office at the Woodruff, Goblin’s nicest hotel, then pedal home. He might even have time to stop by Mr. Bench’s and show the ticket off.
The Goblin Zoo was built on the very northern edge of downtown, and when Pete passed it he thought of Eula the prized gorilla, as if she were part of the magic show. As if Emperor might pull her from a hat.
“From a hat!” Pete cried out, smiling, pedaling rapid-fire, his nerves electric with the prospect of holding a ticket for a legitimate circuit magician.
Making a hard right on Angel, Pete saw the municipal buildings ahead. He knew which was which because Dad forced him to pay attention to such things.
Quit reading that magazine, Dad always told him. You’re never gonna get the layout of downtown if you’re not looking.
And yet, Pete was actually biking the fastest route to the Woodruff. When he hit Concord people hollered at him to watch it, but he slowed down only when he saw two Goblin Police officers slowly trucking uphill on the sidewalk. Their long, rubbery arms swung at their sides, and the dark aviators hid their eyes. Pete didn’t want to mess with the Goblin Police. Dad and Mom talked about them the way some people talked about spiders, or heights, or the dark.
By three fifty-two he was in the nicer part of downtown, closer to those municipal buildings. The courthouse. The waterworks. The morgue. He passed great glass storefronts with huge photos of beautiful women and ebony podiums displaying cologne. More than one store boasted Goblin souvenirs, and each of these had miniature replicas of The Hedges, the maddening tourist attraction at the far eastern border of town.
“The Woodruff!” Pete called out, spotting its roof between closer buildings. He felt the lump of bills in his pocket, Mom’s money, to make sure it was still there.
Another police officer rounded the sidewalk ahead and Pete removed his hand from his pocket. The man turned his head slowly, tracking Pete it seemed, and Pete saw himself in jail, pacing, missing Emperor’s show.
Then he imagined Emperor bending the prison bars with his mind.
Come out, Emperor might say. Don’t miss this.
Pete wasn’t going to miss this. No way.
He reached the lobby of the Woodruff at four oh six. It had taken him thirty-seven minutes to get there. He’d have to head back by four forty-five to be safe and home before five thirty. If it took ten minutes to get the ticket, he’d have twenty-nine minutes to spare downtown. Would he have time to stop by Goblin’s Magic to show it off?
Yes, Pete thought, smiling. He would.
Pete left his bike outside. He waited impatiently while a man bought tickets for a singer Pete’s dad liked. When his turn came up and he asked for a ticket, the balding but young man behind the window shook his head. Pete felt all the air escape his body at once. But the man wasn’t saying no.
“I just can’t believe how well this show is selling,” he said.
Pete smiled, and suddenly he no longer saw the other kids at Goblin Middle as encroaching on his territory; rather he saw them as making up a big crowd. A crowd Emperor deserved.
Pete slid the eight dollars across the counter and the broker handed him a purple ticket. Pete held it like it was a baby bird.
GENERAL ADMISSION
ROMAN EMPEROR–DOMINO THEATER–$8
DOORS 11:30–SHOW 12:00
“Hey, kid,” the man in the booth said. “Wanna step out of the way?”
Pete looked up to see a woman, frowning, next in line. He’d been staring at the words on the ticket, lost in the incredible realness of it.
“Sorry!”
Then he bolted from the Woodruff lobby.
He knew Mr. Bench’s shop was around the corner from Transistor Planet, and he could see that from where he stood outside the hotel. He walked his bike, experiencing a sense of floating, as if even the Goblin Police couldn’t reach him, he was so high.
“Mr. Bench!” Pete yelled, leaving his bike out front and running up to the counter. “Look!”
The purple ticket looked even better in Goblin’s Magic.
“Well, what have we here?” Mr. Bench said, adjusting his glasses. “You don’t say, Pete. It looks like you’re going to see Roman Emperor in person, after all.”
“Yes!” Pete said, trying to keep his cool but failing. “Isn’t it…isn’t it great?”
“It’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bench, for telling me he was coming.”
Mr. Bench smiled. “Well, Emperor may keep secrets, but I do not. And that’s not all you’re going to thank me for. I looked around a little. Found some things you might be interested in. C’mere.”
Mr. Bench knelt behind the counter and returned with a stack of magazines and newspapers and loose pieces of paper.
“Seems there’s more to learn about Roman Emperor than we thought.”
Pete thought he was going to wet his pants. “Holy cow, Mr. Bench.”
The pile on the glass counter was tall. Pete reached out to touch the pages, wanted to absorb it all at once.
“For you,” Mr. Bench said.
“But I don’t have any—”
Mr. Bench shooed this away with a quick hand gesture. “Money is funny, Pete, but it doesn’t make you smile like magic does. Go on. You’d better get. You’ve got a lot of reading to do.”
Between the ticket and the magazines, Pete couldn’t wrap his head around it.
He took the stack greedily.
“Thank you, Mr. Bench. Thank you! You’re the best man…ever!”
Mr. Bench laughed. “Oh yeah? Well you’re not such a bad kid, yourself. Make sure to stop in next week, after you’ve seen the show. I expect you to tell me how he does what he does. Deal?”
“Yes. Deal.”
Pete made for the door.
“Pete,” Mr. Bench said, “pay attention to him. He really might be the best.”
Pete blushed like the compliment was given to himself.
He made it back home with minutes to spare. Time enough to start reading. Mom didn’t get home until five forty-five. Pete didn’t worry about whether she’d notice he’d been in her dresser. He hardly heard her call hello from downstairs.
The material Mr. Bench had just given him was unfathomably right on.
And there was one thing all the write-ups and reviews seemed to agree with, one idea that made itself known in every piece or blurb printed about the mysterious magician: Emperor was so good that it appeared, even to the experts, that his magic was real.
Pete stared at the ticket, imagining Roman Emperor walking into his bedroom, crouching beside his bed, telling him that it was true. That his magic was real. Then the man proved it, and Pete watched as his bedroom became a chamber of spells, the box from which all the impossible things were pulled.
Pete read on, ignoring the chill he’d felt at his vision. The horrible reality of how frightening it would be if it were true; if Roman Emperor had dabbled in dirty magic, and was able to do…anything he wanted to.
“How awful,” Pete said, without realizing he had spoken.
How different, how awful, the man might seem, if Pete were to discover, somehow, that his magic was real.
He pulled his blanket over his shoulders and read on, subconsciously shaking these thoughts away, until the idea was in pieces, floating to the corners of his room, no strings involved, an unseen magic trick of his own.
Emperor’s magic was real.
As a child, walking the sandy streets of the marketplace with his father, Roman Emperor was frightened by a man in rags who leapt out of the shadows with a cold grin.
Don’t worry, Father said. A street performer.
But as Roman’s father made to step around him, the man in rags leapt in front of the child once again.
Excuse us, Father said, gripping young Roman by the wrist.
But the stranger pulled out a playing card and flashed its face for the father and son to see. It was the ten of hearts.
You see it? You see it? the man in rags asked.
Yes, Roman said. I see it.
The man in rags let out a small cry of happiness. The child was interested. From his tattered shirt he produced a whole stack of cards, many more than a single deck, Roman thought. The man slid the ten of hearts into the middle of the stack. To Roman it looked like a knife slicing skin.
The man in rags shuffled the cards. To Roman, this shuffling was as graceful as a dance; it looked to him like the man was pouring cream from palm to palm. Satisfied, he fanned the cards out just inches from young Roman’s face. The boy’s dark countenance intensified. He was confused.
Go on, Roman, Father said. Take one.
Roman thought hard. He could only pick one? He wanted it to represent him somehow.
Go ahead, Roman.
Roman took the one at the far right side of the fan. The man in rags smiled. Emperor’s father bent down and flipped the card over for his son.
Ten of hearts.
Bravo, Father said, only partially impressed. Then he took Roman’s wrist again.
But Roman was rooted to the sandy street.
How did he know which card I’d take, Father?
Come on, Roman.
Father?
The man in rags put a finger to his lips, letting the child know he wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.
It’s called a trick, Father said, impatient. Low art.
But Roman stared at the man’s sandy hands. He could have easily picked the next card over. He almost had.
Possibilities, things he’d never considered before, traveled fast through his mind.
All the cards in the stack were the same.
The man somehow made the card more attractive in the spread.
The man could predict the future.
The man could read minds or at least force someone to do something.
Whatever it was, in the end, it didn’t matter. What got Roman’s blood rushing was the suggestion the trick made. The hint that mysterious powers could exist.
His father dismissed it, but the man in rags had exposed Roman to the core of magic. Years later he’d call it his first glimpse behind the curtain…down the comforting hall of the beyond.
Roman started studying magic at a rapid pace.
At the library. At the bookstores. At school. In the early days, he didn’t even want to be able to explain the tricks to himself. With each new trick he learned, he was struck by two very different emotions: the satisfaction for figuring it out and the disappointment for knowing how it worked. Roman learned fast that a magician had to remind himself how glorious magic was by eliciting that wonder on the faces of his marks.
He would struggle with this paradox for a long time.
He told his father about it but Father only dismissed it. Told him his mother wouldn’t have approved. Roman didn’t believe that. In fact, sometimes he imagined he performed for her ghost. He imagined her sitting up in her casket, the last way he’d seen her, her skin dry as parchment, flaking as she smiled, as she said,
How’d you do it, Roman? Tell me.
Other times he pretended his dead mother was his assistant, bringing him the table upon which he would work, adjusting the strings and small pulleys, even speaking to the audience on his behalf.
If Father had known how much Roman was practicing, he’d have sent him to the academy. And by hiding it, Roman had to work twice as hard; deception upon deception. And yet, he did not avoid Father altogether. Doing so would be admitting he was hiding something. Instead Roman overcompensated, trailing Father through the house, bothering him endlessly, and playing him twice daily at chess.
Father always won. Father loved chess like Roman loved magic.
This marked the period in Roman’s magic education when he learned the beauty of being the only person in the room who knew the trick was on display. It was a sensation he came to adore. At a friend’s house he pretended to lift silverware with his mind when only the friend’s grandfather was watching. At school he talked to a fellow student, deftly slipping their things into their desk, giving them a little jolt when they turned to find the tabletop empty. He pulled jewels from his aunt’s pocket, feigning surprise as real as her own.
Roman was well past the point of it all being just a phase. He came to loathe the word hobby.
The thought he put into it, the emotional upheaval it sparked in him, and the grace with which he handled it were the markings of a man who’d heard his calling, and not the fancy of a child playing imaginary games. It was healthy for him (he would be tortured without it) but it was grave, too. He respected it more and more with each passing session…each practice…each new trick learned. And soon this respect swelled into reverence. Magic was a living thing he could identify with more than he could his own father. A beast. And when he rode this beast, the reins comfortable in his hands, his name blazed in his mind as if on fire above infinite clubs across the globe.
ROMAN EMPEROR!
A real man of magic. But not yet a man of real magic.
The day Roman told his father there was no need for him to enroll in college was the day his father’s most paranoid fantasies became real. Roman said he was going to be a magician, and that there was no schooling better than his own.
His father cursed the man in rags from so many years ago. Then he burned a ten of hearts in the kitchen sink.
Roman challenged him to a game of chess.
If you beat me, I’ll enroll. But if I beat you, you must give me your blessings for this journey.
His father agreed. And Roman knew that to beat his father, he’d have to employ a little magic.
The two sat down at the kitchen table, facing each other in the light from the fireplace.
Roman had to be patient. He couldn’t start performing his tricks until the pieces on the board were spread out enough to cause diversions. Cover. If he could remain in the game long enough for that to happen, he had a chance.
He was able to play it safe long enough to watch the two sides advance toward each other slowly. And then, heart racing, in front of his father’s open eyes, he deftly switched two pieces from where they stood. Then he stole an extra pawn when he was supposed to take just one. His sleight of hand was so deft that his father made no sign of noticing the changes. The disappearance and reappearance of the pieces under the nose of an expert was, for Roman, the greatest performance of his life to date.
Did Father even know he was losing? It might not have concerned him if he had. His seventeen-year-old son had never shown the talent for chess that he hoped he would and every game ended the same. So when Roman calmly reached across the board and moved his rook (sliding Father’s king one space over in the process), he said something he’d never said before:
Checkmate, Father.
Father eyed the board for a long time. He eyed the pieces Roman had taken. Then he looked to Roman’s hands and Roman knew.
Father understood what happened.
Excellent, Father said at last. Truly.
Then Father cried and rose to hug his son.
Promise me, Roman, that you will never be a man in rags. That you will always present yourself with delicacy. That you will not magic for money.
The last part of the promise Roman made would eventually be stitched inside the very vest he wore onstage.
never magic for money
Within a month of the compromised game of chess, Roman Emperor was living in the back of the Caper Clothing warehouse, performing magic for mannequins.
His first crowd. Living or not, he gave them his all. Just as he had performed for Mother’s ghost so long ago.
Magic for the unliving. Magic for the departed.
Magic for the dead.
It wasn’t difficult for Roman to go unnoticed as he trained in the warehouse without permission. He slept during working hours, high up in a forgotten storage loft, as the Caper employees boxed coats and hats far below. At night, the place to himself, he rehearsed.
An oblong cedar chest was his bed. Forgotten fur coats, his blankets. And the mannequins below, his people.
He performed for three dozen mannequins nightly, choosing volunteers as eagerly as Finn the Fantastic did with flesh and blood, breathing members of his own adoring audiences in clubs across America. With the bald, peach, lifeless forms amassed before him, Roman practiced every trick he knew and began to discover others. He tried to levitate a mannequin, using thin fabric he hung from high shelves. He sawed another in half using mirrors gathered throughout the space. It was here that he decided not to hide his tricks, as the mannequins gave him no reason to be shy. Often he held the props inches from their lifeless eyes, a habit he would never break.
His new boots (found in the very box he slept in) clacked on the cement floor, and the sleeves of his white button-up shirts flapped in the cold, dark warehouse.
Mother, he’d call out, his voice sharp off the stone ceiling. Please inform the audience of the next illusion.
Even while speaking to the unliving, his voice did not have the weight he wanted it to and he longed for an assistant like the ones he read about in the magic magazines, the pages he never had money to buy.
A slightly crazed look was added to his already dark demeanor. The look of a man halfway up the mountain of his own ambition. If someone were to sneak in and witness his performances, they might not be able to guess his age; Roman was in the timeless grip of frenetic passion.
In his more lucid moments, able to see the scene he’d created from above, himself dressed in clothes from the warehouse boxes, the mannequins angled toward his pacing silhouette, he was able to name it in a word:
Ghastly.
But very soon all manner of lucidity fled him, leaving him completely immersed, behind.
These six months became another at an abandoned sugar plant forty miles from the warehouse. Here Emperor performed for the machinery. The black boots he stole from the warehouse once again rang out against the stone floor but here the echoes were returned by a hard, steel audience that was ever less forgiving.
And yet, by then he was performing for faces. Eyes and noses, ears and tongues, expressions he conjured in his imagination and held fast to as one might reality. The machines became old people and kids, newcomers and regulars, too. In the right mood, he fielded questions.
Mr. Emperor, how is it done?
Look closely. I hide nothing.
Before ever having opened a book on magic, Roman knew not to reveal his secrets. Soon the ferocious hold he held over this principle would come back to hurt the very career he cared so much about cultivating. But the Roman Emperor-to-be was very different from the one performing for steel vats and rusted gearings. And to get from one man to the other, Emperor understood that it was time to play out.
To play out for people.
He got on an open-call bill at the Comedy Canteen, one hundred and twenty miles from the sugar plant, a venue he never dreamed he’d enter. He called from a phone booth, trembling, and they said yes, yes with a name like his they’d be happy to add it to the list. But you better be good! they said. Yes, but you better…be…good.
He was slated to play at nine thirty. Emperor was so excited he showed up three hours early. He didn’t know how shows and times and timing worked, and he hardly understood it when a lady there told him to come back half an hour before he was scheduled to perform. Or, she said, if he wanted to come back at seven thirty, the first of the four magicians slated before him would be starting and if he wanted to see the others—
Of course I want to see them, Roman said, astonished that anybody could think otherwise. When he came back at seven thirty the same lady smiled, told him things were running behind, and let him inside. The room was on its way to being crowded. Roman felt a lump in his throat that shamed him.
Most of the booths were occupied, leathery men and women in leathery coats. He found a small table near the restrooms and sat down alone. He set a suitcase full of props on the floor by his stolen boots.
The first act came on at eight ten.
Roman was stunned. The tricks themselves were no better than those he knew well, but the performer was incredibly talkative and engaging and, Roman had to admit, even funny. The magician, Paul the Pretty Good, was obviously going for a certain thing, but between his well-timed jokes and the smile of his gorgeous assistant, he was achieving it. Roman wanted to dislike it, wanted to hate what he was seeing. But oh, how it worked.
The crowd applauded, laughed, oohed and ahhhed at all the places Paul wanted them to. A volunteer got onstage and didn’t mind it at all when Paul broke an egg over her head.
The second act was just as successful. As was the third. The fourth…
Roman felt sick. It was suddenly very clear to him that not only did he have no help onstage, but he had almost no personality to boot.
Dark thoughts rose mistlike in his mind, coloring the entire club, and forcing him to consider leaving.
The fella who went on before him called himself the Titan of Terror and had the crowd roaring as he pretended to fail at feats of strength, then succeeded at ones that were much harder. Can’t lift a toaster? How about the whole stove? He introduced his tricks with just enough flair to make them sound more difficult than they were. Roman had fallen into a psychological tailspin. The laughing crowd seemed to be laughing at him, seemed to be saying,
You better be good, buddy. You better…be…good…
He hardly relished the moment he’d been waiting for, as, for the first time in his life, his name was announced over the club’s crackling PA.
Roman Emperor, folks! And with a name like that, this shoulda been a toga party. Make sure your money is secure, lest he make it disappear…
Roman took the stage.
The spotlight was filtered red and, looking down at the sleeves of his white shirt, it looked as though he’d been shot, many times, in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists.
The crowd looking back at him suddenly appeared so knowledgeable to him. As if each and every person in the club had read all the same magazines he had, had practiced the same tricks in empty buildings, had even defeated their fathers at chess to earn the right to call themselves magicians.
Roman understood clearly that he was not special. That he had no gag, no bit, no act. And all the eyes upon him would know that very soon.
Striking his best showman’s stance, Roman began without speaking, opening his box and removing objects far too big for it. Nor did he talk while presenting the objects at the foot of the stage. And the silence of the warehouse and the sugar plant, the inaudible intensity and proof of his undeniable command, felt like rejection on the stage of the Canteen.
A radio began playing as he began a new series of tricks. Roman looked to the speakers, assuming it was a malfunction, expecting it to cut off again. But the club’s manager gestured for him to carry on and Roman understood that the club felt some accompaniment was necessary.
Roman was bombing.
And when he looked into the faces in the booths, he saw he didn’t have them at all. They observed him with humor, sympathy at best.
The faces of his first crowd.
Roman, unable to stop the rising tide of shame within, turned red under the red light, bringing a devil’s countenance to his already angular visage. He ended his show without a word and left the stage as silently as he’d taken it.
Young man, the promoter said, whispering to Roman by the bar. You got another twenty minutes to fill.
Roman latched his box shut and exited the Comedy Canteen, his blood burning scorched earth in his veins. He knew what he’d overlooked in those vacant buildings, those two thousand rehearsals alone: The crowd didn’t want magic tricks, they wanted a magic show.
He needed an angle. A lady. A better costume. A joke. A bit. This was all as clear as candy to him as he drove home from his first performance. And yet he was never able to make those things happen. Never able to think of the right changes in the first place. No matter how many nights he told himself what he needed to do, the next day he’d only practice, learn new moves, stare into the mirror at a face that didn’t have any more answers than he did.
And the face in the mirror aged.
Roman floundered in this way for the next twelve years. He played a handful of clubs, brief shameful moments in which he believed he’d gotten good enough at his craft not to need the silly gimmicks so beloved in the magazines. And so he needed someone else to imagine him in a new way, someone else to tap him on the shoulder and say,
If you do this, you will succeed.
Those kinds of meetings, Roman knew, were as rare as brilliance. In which the artist meets his propeller, the engine who sends him motoring across the sea of his most coveted waters.
Then, twelve years after his bombing at the Canteen, Roman met his propeller. And the sharp, strong blades chopped him into so many pieces that he no longer recognized himself for all the blood.
Sleeping in an apartment above a Laundromat, a dozen years after his initial flop, Roman woke to the sound of someone knocking at his door. He had no friends, no family, and he was up to date on his rent. Perhaps there was a fire, he worried. A criminal in the lobby. Could it be the police calling to ask questions about his neighbors? Maybe it was a neighbor at the door. He got out of bed and cautiously peeked through the eyehole and saw nobody there. He looked again, thinking a neighbor had a guest who’d knocked on the wrong door before realizing their error.
Then Roman heard a voice from behind him. Inside his apartment.
Roman spun fast, eyeing his one room.
Who’s there? he asked, his hands up, prepared to defend himself. The dark of his efficiency gave him no answer.
Roman. The voice spoke again. Roman Emperor.
The way it was said, the lilt, reminded Roman of the thousand times he’d heard his name through speakers that didn’t crackle, spoken by a knowledgeable lover of magic. It was the voice in his fantasies of the way his career should have gone.
Who’s there!
He made to step from the door, to grab hold of an ax he kept by the closet in case of intruders.
But something in the darkness moved and Roman stood rooted to the stained carpet. He hadn’t felt this stuck in place since encountering the man in rags with the tall stack of cards in the sandy streets of his youth.
A short woman stepped from the shadows where his bed met the wall. Roman instinctively wiped his hands across his abdomen and thighs, as if this woman had soiled him in some way as he’d slept.
Get out! Roman called, but, to his surprise, the words were not commanding.
The woman wore a buttoned-up shirt, a long plaid skirt, and smelled of pipe smoke. Her eyes were made eggs by large glasses and Roman saw the wrinkles of her face magnified through the glass. He looked to her hands and arms, her neck, and saw wrinkles piled like pants around the ankles of someone disrobing for bed.
Who…
Roman Emperor…the world’s greatest magician…loved for his silence…adored for his lack of gimmick. The woman smiled and smoke escaped her lips, but Roman saw no cigarette, no pipe. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Making it to the big time without selling your soul to get there?
As she stepped into the blue light cast by the closed Laundromat sign below Roman’s one window, he saw that her hair was purple and tied up in a bun. When she spoke again, her voice was marked by a hundred thousand smokes, and the wrinkles in her neck gobbled.
Wanna be in the pages of Presto, big time? Wanna be as famous as Finn?
Roman’s entire body cringed. He flattened himself against the wood door.
Get out, he repeated, this time with even less force.
The woman wagged a finger his way. The way she did it, and the way she advanced, Roman thought one word: promoter.
This woman, this impossible intruder, was something like Roman’s fantasies of a promoter had always been. The cigarette voice, the glasses, the business-casual clothing. And the way she wagged her finger when she wanted Roman to know that she knew better than he did.
The woman promoter burped and Roman saw flies escape her fishy lips.
Your act is shit, she said, stepping toward him. Roman pressed his back harder against the closed door. And you know it is. Or you would’ve opened that door and run by now.
With that, Roman reached behind himself and felt for the handle. The woman’s magnified eyes watched, smiling, as his fingers found the knob then slipped from it. Yes, horrified as he was, Roman wanted to hear what she had to say.
Thatta boy, the woman said. Then she coughed and more flies poured forth. She swatted them away with a wrinkled hand, and for a moment Roman saw the hand had impossibly long nails that curled in upon themselves. Then those nails were gone and in their stead were shadows of Roman’s one plant upon the wall.
“Help me!” he screamed.
But he didn’t want help. Not from anyone outside this room.
That’s what I’m here for, kid, the woman said, stepping closer yet. Her eyes were no longer smiling. Roman saw fingers in her hair, keeping it in a bun. You need help. Boy do you need help.
What do I need to do? Roman asked. The words sounded disgusting; syllables of a defeated artist.
The woman nodded and crushed a flyer for one of Roman’s shows with the heel of her right shoe.
You need a gimmick. An act. A bit. You got no ruse, kid. No artifice. And in your line of work, artifice goes a long way. And yet…
What? WHAT?
She held up an open palm and Roman spotted hair there.
How about no trick at all? How about…She was suddenly standing so close that Roman could smell her perfume. Dead wolf. How about real magic?
When the promoter embraced him, all the terror ceased. Roman’s frantic (but wide open; as if he were holding the doors) mind was flooded with pictures of himself performing, doing things he would never have imagined possible. Not for himself.
He saw a crowd as large as the ones Don Deanie performed for. He saw legitimate awe in the eyes of the crowd.
He heard applause.
You see it? she asked him, looking up into his eyes. Roman saw bones dancing in hers. Ah yes, you see it. Keep seeing it, kid.
Then she buried her face in his chest and the fingers in her bun touched Roman’s chin.
And he kept seeing.
The audience applause died to a palpable tension, the kind of silence that meant the people wanted to see more. Roman marveled at his own tricks; he was playing with time and space until natural law was rent, until he could smell the unmistakable odor of the supernatural. A vehicle could be crushed with a gesture, the audience could be lifted with a glance. Roman moaned. Buried under all these incredible accomplishments was a young thin man challenging his father to a game of chess. With these powers he could—
He looked down again to the terrible thing holding him.
She pulled back from him and Roman saw she had a man’s face now, harder features behind the big glasses, under a bun wig, testing the seams of the blouse.
Keep seeing, she said. Because we’re just getting to my fee.
Fee. Yes. A top promoter would need a fee, of course.
A cut.
New, odd visions replaced those that were like ecstasy to Emperor. No longer onstage, now he was digging. His back ached as he tossed shovelfuls of dirt over his shoulders, sending it into the blackness of night. He dug and he dug until he reached a body. Then he shoveled the body out of the hole piecemeal, too. And beneath this body, another. And another, until the piles of dirt behind him were rivaled by the piles of rice paper skin and bone. Roman looked up and saw hundreds, no, thousands of bodies lifted from their graves, a chorus of corpses sitting up.
The dead, he saw removed…taken from their places of rest. And Roman himself was doing the removing.
A graveyard custodian, he thought, but he did not know what it meant yet. What she wanted. Her cut.
I need help, too, kid, she said. And Roman saw she was now sitting on the ground at his feet. I need…turnover.
Turnover?
She coughed and this time images escaped her, rising in the space between them. Roman raising his arms to the sky, sending the corpses nightward. Then Roman carrying new bodies to the empty graves.
Turnover.
He understood.
Kill for her. Bring her bodies. Her cut.
That’s it, kid. Kill for me.
Because even Death needed to clean house. Even Death found the stench unbearable.
Suddenly he felt shame. Not for considering this swap, saying yes to the thing in his apartment, but because he had ever doubted such a day would come.
Roman had no doubt that he deserved this. That he put in the time, the work, the care.
Yes, he said. And the woman melted into black shadows in the carpet.
Brace yourself, kid, she said, leaving him. You’re going to be big.
Her voice trailed off, the tail of an animal in the dark.
There was another knock at the door.
Roman leapt from the wood and turned to face it.
The promoter again? Why? Did she knock on the way out as she had on the way in?
Or was it perhaps the neighbors, coming to ask if he was okay. Or maybe the landlord after all.
Did you just sell your soul, Romie? Are you FUCKING NUTS?
Roman looked through the peephole, expecting to find an empty hall again.
But the hall was not empty.
A blond woman, pale and strange, stood facing him. From what Roman could see, she was naked.
He opened the door slowly.
She was indeed naked, her white pockmarked body like a bumpy dirt road under the hall’s half-dead light.
What…Roman started. Who…
I’m Maggie, she said. I’m your act.
Roman reached out and took hold of her wrist.
Then he brought his fingers back and looked at them.
Frostbite! he thought.
Come in, he said. Before someone sees you…undressed…in the hall.
Maggie entered the small apartment. Roman saw that, the way she moved, she was as powerful as the visions that nearly split his skull a moment ago. Pretty, yes, but that seemed unimportant. The naked woman was a draw.
I think we should get some sleep, Maggie said. We’ve gotta get to work right away.
All right, Roman said, already feeling the balm of realized dreams approaching. Yes.
He got into his bed first and Maggie followed. She lay still on her side, her back to him. Roman was careful not to touch her again.
Try it, she suddenly said. Her voice was tender, pleasing.
Roman understood. He sat up as though in a dream and looked about his apartment.
The stovetop, Maggie said, her back to him. Had she seen the pot on the stove? Was she able to see it, somehow, now? Without looking?
Roman stared at the pan until it rose from the stove. It came to him, gracefully, wobbling, slow.
When it was above the bed, he crushed it with his mind. The metal cried out and for a moment it sounded to Roman like it was telling him to turn back, that he was in danger of losing something more important than his dreams.
Then the pan fell to the bed between his legs.
He turned to Maggie smiling.
But she remained with her back to him. It didn’t matter.
The peace he felt was extraordinary.
He finally had his separation from the other magicians. His spark of originality.
His act.
Thank you, he said, and his breath turned to frost above his new assistant, lying still and forever awake beside him.
Two words followed him into the hole of sleep. Two words that he didn’t mind just then, that felt like a means to an end, bread and cheese for the starving.
Dirty magic.
And the dirt from the magic reminded him of a man in rags and so he dreamed of him; the man slipping a card into a stack so high Roman had to look up, where he saw corpses rising like robins to the sky.
Dirty magic.
Roman could do one of two things. He could spend his years feeling guilty for making the decision he had, or he could twist the memory of that night just enough to make it fit into the arc he always imagined himself making. Almost immediately, he opted for the latter. And anytime he questioned the moral fiber of what he was doing, he let his mind drift back to the days before his ship came in. Often he imagined the wrinkled promoter steering it. He’d remember those long dark nights when he thought all might be for naught. And then, lifting a book from across the room in his better apartment or making a flower on the street vanish for good, he could smile and remind himself that hard work paid off.
Within a year of the night Maggie came to his door, Roman Emperor was a fixture on the Spell Circuit and all his peers considered him a threat. People whispered phrases like he could be and the best ever.
His show was electrifying. It was dangerous. He did things with weapons so frightening audience members would leave an Emperor show with a sense of having survived it. His show was sexy, too, in its way. Maggie changed the show from one of introspective meandering to arresting spectacle. Roman was free to concentrate entirely on the magic at last, as Maggie took care of all the things the audience pined for. And for this, for her, Roman’s seriousness came off as refreshing in relief.
At last, people were getting him.
And yet, how long could he expect to carry out real magic before his peers started to ask real questions?
The Spell Circuit grew suspicious. Magicians whispered. Even writers from magazines such as Presto had incredulity in their eyes.
Unrelated articles about cheating appeared more regularly. The history of dirty magic was brought up.
Anything fishy about Roman Emperor to you?
His peers could tell. Of course none of them had the imaginative capacity to piece together the night Roman met his promoter, but in the same way baseball managers can spot the pine tar, the Spell Circuit smelled a rat.
Roman had always been good but it was strictly on a skills level. If one had asked the top names what they thought about him, most would’ve called him competent at best. And while they might have respected his love for the craft, they could look one another in the eye comfortably, knowing that the overcast man with the tight lip wasn’t going anywhere.
Now though…
Now the guys were shifting in their seats and shaking their heads no. Something was up.
Almost all of Roman’s tricks looked impossible. And most of them were brand new; tricks nobody had seen him work out live. And who was the blonde? And where had he found her? It used to be a running joke that, if you needed a quiet place to go, you could get a ticket to the Emperor show.
So…what was going on?
Maybe if the girl was the only thing different about the show…but she wasn’t. Roman was strutting into the club like a soldier, hellfire in his eyes, and he hardly spoke to the other magicians on the bill. This wasn’t protocol. This wasn’t politics. This wasn’t right. Emperor was acting like he owned the circuit and guys were worried he might eventually do just that. Their opinions of him were contorted by envy. And that envy easily led to the two least desirable words in the scene:
Dirty magic.
One evening in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Finn the Fantastic’s tour route crossed paths with the blossoming controversial Emperor and he decided to take in the show. Finn, an amiable and shameless self-promoter, sat at the bar with his collar unbuttoned and a rum and Coke in both hands. His blond hair was as perfect as if he were on his way to shoot a publicity photo, which, of course, already hung on the wall of the Stardust Matinee.
He watched Emperor closely.
Finn, a student like Roman, detected not one reference in Emperor’s act. As if Roman had done the impossible: invent a wholly new show.
The performance ended with Roman tied up in a chair. The audience held their breath as the ropes started to move and untie themselves. Finn knew Roman was using invisible thread, but he couldn’t spot the angles, the places that thread should be connected to. The rope moved snakelike, as though living, and Finn downed a drink, marveling at the fact that, if you knew your magic, even the best illusions looked artificial.
Not this one.
At the conclusion of the trick, Roman tossed the ropes to the foot of the stage and he and Maggie made a somewhat understated exit to the sound of rapt applause.
Finn eyed the rope. He couldn’t resist.
Walking casually to the stage, as though studying the curtains for a show of his own, Finn quickly inspected the rope. No thread. No anything. Finn knew what to look for and there was none of it there to find. All the circuit talk of dirty magic echoed in his ears. When he looked up to the curtain he saw the eyes of Maggie watching him from a pale, placid face.
Finn dropped the rope. He smiled at her but she did not smile back, and he couldn’t help but feel like the rope was left there on purpose. That he had somehow ended up an animal in a trap that night.
He left his second unfinished drink on the foot of the stage and departed.
A week later, Finn ran into Don Deanie in Texas. Finn, political as he was professional, wasn’t one to gossip or smear but after getting very drunk, he told his old colleague what’d happened in Oklahoma and how he felt about it.
Deanie was upset.
Emperor, he said, was going to ruin them. In an effort to circumvent this, he arranged the show at the Kerry Theatre, under false pretenses of uniting the circuit as one. He would lure the quiet Emperor by billing it as a sort of magicians’ conference. Any man desperate enough to shake hands with the Devil wasn’t going to miss an opportunity like this. There was too much potential notoriety to be had. And besides, Emperor was clearly enjoying the power he was accumulating over his peers.
Deanie believed they’d all get to see Emperor up close and then could ask him, in person and together, where he had learned how to bend metal. Make things explode. Stop axes from striking his skull.
Emperor agreed to attend. But Deanie blew up his own plan when he got drunk and confronted the mysterious magician before Roman had a chance to perform.
In front of the entire attending circuit, Deanie asked Roman to reveal his secrets. Emperor refused.
Deanie called him a cheater. Emperor denied it.
Deanie demanded Roman prove his tricks were clean. Emperor kept quiet.
Deanie punched Roman in the nose.
Emperor simply waved a hand across his face and the blood disappeared.
The room went silent.
Maggie, who had been standing in the shadows of the curtain, took Roman by the arm and quietly led him out of the building. Outside, she whispered, “The pettiness of mediocrity. Do you miss it?”
“No,” Roman answered.
But he did.
Roman spent as much time sending corpses to the sky as he did practicing magic with Maggie.
He was the best now and he knew it. But recognition of that would have to come from the audience and not his peers. There was no proof of Roman having dabbled in “that other magic” and so the industry magazines kept mostly quiet. But the magicians talked. And anytime Emperor’s name came up, a morbid mood spread through the clubs and bars. No matter what Roman did from that point forward, he would always have an asterisk next to his name.
*Probably cheated.
And yet the circuit was so small that the disdain of his peers was somewhat irrelevant. None of the magicians would ever fill a thousand-seat theater. There simply wasn’t a fan base that big to tap. Most tickets sold were to people looking for something different to do. People who had never heard of Finn the Fantastic or Magic Monthly Magazine. There was hardly any publicity other than the trades and even these only reached a handful of people nationwide. It was a slim industry. And the crowds Emperor enjoyed following the Kerry Theatre fiasco were no different from those he had before it.
And it wasn’t perception that was getting to Roman anyway.
He’d been spending all his evenings in the cemeteries of the cities he played. Ducking the local police. Checking the groundskeepers’ houses. Watching for grieving visitors. Drunk teens. Sick men. He was used to working through the night, but this was a different kind of show. Often he cringed at what he did: removing the dead from their boxes, sending them into the sky, only to fill those boxes again.
With locals.
And yet, terrible as it sounded, often he felt comfortable out there, in the night, in the cold, with Maggie by his side. As if this particular trick was the one he’d been working toward since meeting that man in rags in the sand.
The bodies! Roman couldn’t begin to count the number of lifeless mounds he’d removed to make room for fresh meat. And Maggie encouraged it. She was never as relaxed as she was in the graveyards. To Roman, it was there that she made the most sense. No longer seemingly odd or mysterious, Maggie looked as commonplace as the tombstones. As comfortable as the moss that grew upon them.
To watch Maggie…her eyes rolling back in her skull…as soft moans of ecstasy escaped her blue lips…as her hands met at her waist, then vanished into the folds of her dress…as her back arched…Roman felt the true darkness of what he did. Many times Roman heard her breathing hard, gripping the iron gates, twisting her body into impossible shapes behind him.
Often the thought of where Maggie came from haunted him. Sitting with her in a restaurant. Standing beside her at the check-in desk of a hotel. Driving with her, always, by his side. He had no respite, no break from the presence of what she stood for.
Maggie squealed with pleasure as they passed cemeteries they weren’t prepared to empty.
The night before their midnight show in Goblin, Roman and Maggie sat quietly in their dressing room following a show. The pair had just thanked an apparent fan and his wife for their kind words and Roman, in a playful display of magic, shut the door on them with his mind. After doing so he turned to Maggie and told her,
“Tomorrow, Maggie. Time to clean up again.”
But Maggie never lost track of the days they were supposed to refresh Death, send new bodies to Roman’s always eager promoter.
By the time they pulled into Goblin the next morning, Roman behind the wheel of his signature used black Mercedes, Roman Emperor considered himself to be the greatest magician in the world.
As he passed between the giant Sherman topiaries of George Carroll and Jonathan Trachtenbroit, he smiled.
“There have been eighty tickets sold for this one already,” he told Maggie. “I’m sure she’ll be happy with her cut.”
Pete was at Mr. Bench’s shop when he saw the black Mercedes drive by. He couldn’t see the driver, but he was positive the blond woman in the passenger seat, looking up through the glass at Goblin, was Maggie.
He’d read every single magazine and paper Mr. Bench gave him. He knew as much as someone could about Roman Emperor. So when the Mercedes passed, Pete’s only thought was to follow it.
“What is it, Pete?” Mr. Bench asked, sensing Pete was distracted.
“Um, I’m gonna run to the Transistor Planet for a second.” His mind raced. “There’s a new game out about witch hunts. Brian at school told me about it. Said they might have it already.”
“Witch hunts, huh? My, how games have changed.”
“I’ll see you, Mr. Bench!”
Then he was out the door.
He searched the streets, looking for the car and peering in every storefront he passed. He moved fast, covering three blocks in a hurry, and headed east. He stopped at a light, Lily and Neptune, and saw Emperor’s Mercedes parked a block away.
Pete’s body stiffened.
The light changed and he had to tell himself to cross the street. Legs like rubber, he passed the black car, hardly able to believe it was here, in Goblin, in person, and he was so electrified that he looked for them everywhere, it seemed, at once, until all of downtown was a shimmering steel blur.
He found them sitting in a booth in Davey P’s Diner.
Pete was stupefied. Rooted to the sidewalk outside. This was a Presto magician. And yet the man looked so lifelike, so alive. Unlike the photos Pete had seen, Roman Emperor’s face moved when he blinked, his hands moved when he brought the fork to his lips, and when a cloud passed in front of the sun, it turned his hair from dark to black.
A raindrop fell from the sky and Pete recalled, vaguely, that it was going to be a boomer of a rainfall tonight. That’s what Mom called it. Said people in town were preparing themselves for a flood. But the only flood Pete was worried about right now was the possibility of wetting his pants as he stared at the two legends beyond the glass.
Pete entered Davey’s in a dream. He could hardly walk normal, one sneaker in front of the other. As he stepped to the host stand, Maggie looked up, and Pete felt a chill. Eye contact. She could tell, he believed, that he’d studied them.
She knows.
Pete sat at the corner of the counter on a stool. Only ten feet now from Emperor’s back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the magician’s black hair, his brown vest, and the white long-sleeved shirt beneath it. Emperor looked so strong…so real…so—
“Kid,” a voice said.
“What?” He swiveled on his seat. The waiter tapped his fingers on the counter.
“You want a menu? You know what you want? The Davey P special perhaps?”
“A…a coffee,” he answered.
“Coffee? How old are you?”
Pete turned red. “Is there an age limit?”
The waiter frowned. “Okay, smart-ass. One coffee coming right up. But don’t blame me if it stunts your growth.”
Rain started to fall harder outside the diner.
He looked back toward the pair nervously. Maggie was blocked by the back of Roman’s head.
Okay, Pete thought. This is it. It simply has to be.
His legs trembled.
“Here’s your coffee, kid.”
Okay. Your name is Pete. Three…
“Don’t blame me if you go berserk from the caffeine.”
Two…
“Don’t blame me if you can’t sit still.”
One.
“Don’t blame me if—”
Pete stood up. He walked to their table. Maggie saw him coming and held his gaze. Once he was beside them he stopped and opened his mouth.
But nothing came out.
When Roman turned to face him, Pete felt like he might melt into the diner tiles.
“Hello,” Maggie said.
Up close, Roman did look different in person. To Pete he looked…sad.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said. The words tumbled up his throat, out his mouth. “I’m your biggest fan in Goblin and maybe the whole world, too. I know everything there is to know about you.” He reddened. “I mean…everything you’ve told anyone.”
Roman blinked. His expression did not change. “That’s wonderful,” he said. And Pete thought he saw something young happen to Roman. As if suddenly the Presto legend was a kid himself again.
“Do you practice magic?” Roman asked.
This was too much. A Presto magician…ROMAN EMPEROR…was asking Pete if he practiced magic.
“Yes. I mean, no. Not like you do. But yes. I mean—” Then, without meaning to say it, Pete suddenly said, “Mr. Emperor, I know you’re not into dirty magic. Because…because there’s no such thing. Any magic is…is…clean.”
Pete saw the distant rise of water in Emperor’s eyes.
“Thank you very much,” the magician said quietly.
Maggie leaned forward. “Are you coming to the show tonight?”
“Of course. Half of Goblin Middle is.”
Roman and Maggie exchanged a glance. Suddenly Roman reached out and took Pete’s wrist.
“Close your hand,” he said.
“What?”
“In a fist. Close your hand.”
Pete did as Roman said.
“I’m going to give you something,” Roman said. “And if you promise to always treat magic with respect, I’ll let you keep it.”
Pete nodded.
“Sure. Of course.”
Pete didn’t feel it happen. But Roman released his wrist and when Pete opened his hand he saw four quarters on his palm.
“That’s for your coffee,” Roman said.
Pete looked into the magician’s eyes.
“We will see you tonight then,” Maggie said.
“Yes,” Pete said, trembling.
Then he stumbled backward to the counter and left three of the four quarters for his coffee. He wouldn’t let the last one go. It was a gift from Roman Emperor. He’d never spend it. He’d carry it with him into adulthood and frame it and tell his kids about the time he met the world’s greatest magician and how the man bought him coffee with magic.
By seven o’clock Pete was praying his mom would be asleep by ten. Dad was working and Pete hadn’t told Mom about the show. He couldn’t risk it. Not a chance. But if she was out by ten, that would give him plenty of time. The Domino Theater was at the north end of the city. It wouldn’t take long to get there, but there couldn’t be any room for error. He watched the clock like it was the last minutes he had to live.
By seven o’clock Roman was asleep in his hotel room. Maggie sat silently watching him from a chair.
By eight thirty Pete was trying to get it out of his mom what time she was planning on going to bed without saying it outright.
“Pete,” she said, annoyed. “Stop badgering me.”
“It’s just that I’m so tired, Mom. Aren’t you?”
The rain outside had gotten pretty bad.
By eight thirty Roman was still asleep and Maggie sat patiently in her chair.
By nine o’clock Pete was in his room, pretending to be sleeping. He thought maybe he could spread a sleepy mood through the house.
He watched the clock obsessively. He cursed every minute his mother stayed awake.
By nine o’clock Roman still slept and would for another fifteen minutes until Maggie touched him lightly on the arm and said,
“Roman. It’s time.”
By nine thirty Pete was resigned to the fact that his mom never went to sleep before ten. The light was back on in his room and he flipped through a magazine Mr. Bench had given him. There was a photo of Roman standing in what looked like a backstage hall. The caption read:
EMPEROR READIES HIMSELF FOR A SHOW
By nine thirty Roman was in the shower, humming. Maggie sat in her chair. Patiently waiting in the dark room.
By ten o’clock Pete was insane. Mom was in bed but she wasn’t asleep yet. Couldn’t be. And it seemed like everything was happening too quickly. Exactly when should he leave? He couldn’t make up his mind. He was going to have to walk his bike back through the house because he couldn’t risk opening the garage. It was raining like mad outside and he’d have to bring a cover. He was nervous. Should he risk it and leave right now?
By ten o’clock Roman was behind the wheel of his black Mercedes. He wore a gray coat and he was smoking. The window was open, letting in some of the cold Goblin air and rain.
“Did you know that they’re buried standing up here?” Maggie asked.
“Yes,” Roman answered. “You told me so.”
By ten thirty Pete could stand it no more. He sneaked downstairs quietly. As he took his raincoat out of the closet the door creaked and his body stiffened. He waited. Then he walked through the laundry room to the garage. He opened the door very slowly and went and got his bike, then carried the bike back into the house. He thanked the rain for beating against the house, smothering any noises he made. Goblin was a friend in that way. He worried about Mom. What if she were to wake up and check on him while he was out?
She’d be scared. He’d leave a note.
He crept back upstairs and left this on his pillow:
Mom,
Don’t worry. I’m at a magic show at the old Domino Theater. I wasn’t sure if you’d let me go.
—Pete
He lifted his bike by the bar and opened the front door. The rain made a wall before him.
He stepped into that wall and closed the door softly behind him.
Mom would understand. She’d have to.
By ten thirty Roman and Maggie were walking through the gates of the Goblin Cemetery. Maggie held an umbrella over both their heads. They walked slowly and neither spoke. Maggie, Roman could tell, was yearning for it. Her quiet giggles gave her away.
They stepped around the tombstones, respecting the old idea that one shouldn’t step on another’s grave. Despite the fact that Roman was about to empty them.
The sky was black with rain. Roman liked that. Coupled with the trees surrounding the cemetery, he should have sufficient cover to do what he had to do.
By eleven o’clock Pete was whipping down Northsouth. The rain pressed hard against him, but it made the trip only more magically unreal. The wind, the rain, the time of day. Pete checked his pocket to make sure he had the ticket. The quarter, too. Both were there. Pete rode on.
By eleven o’clock Roman had his palms extended toward the sky. He stood at the head of the Goblin graves and made a violent motion with his arms. The sound of so many lids cracking open at once hid the noises Maggie was making. She watched from under a tree. She gripped the umbrella handle. This was her favorite part.
Because of the wind, the rain hit Roman at an angle that he found almost refreshing. It seemed that even the elements were aware of the importance of this moment. He never felt as powerful as he did just before removing the bodies. And this place proved to be spectacular.
Sometimes Roman laughed at how the deal he’d struck favored him twice over. This part, keeping up his end, was just a different show. And not just for Maggie, either. For himself. There were nights Roman wished to be nowhere else. As he stood with the lids unlatched, lids he himself had forced open, by magic, he felt like the child stupefied by the street performer. Like the young man stealing chess pieces from his father.
Maggie, under the tree, whimpered impatiently.
Roman’s brilliant dark eyes fastened on the group of open holes spread throughout the wet grass. He inhaled slowly. He was prepared; a lifetime of work resting on the simple gesture of his hand. A flick of the wrist.
The dead, he thought. The dead!
He lifted his palms toward the black Goblin sky and made fists toward the falling rain.
Maggie moaned.
The bodies shot up from their graves, still standing, suspended now twenty feet into the sky. The moon cast shadows upon the holes in the grass beneath them.
Roman stepped under the fifty bodies, the dangling pale feet forming an awning, a rotted shoe falling to the ground beside him. Some were more decayed than others. Women with hair so long it almost reached their feet. Old suits, old clothes, fashionable, perhaps, the last time they touched air. Some bodies were rotted to the bone, others with holes just beginning to show. Fingernails reached the knees. Jeweled bracelets barely hung from wrists too thin now to support them. Yellow teeth. Rotting teeth. No teeth at all. Eyes turned to putty, no longer filling their sockets. One woman wore a grocery store apron, and the worms had taken her face completely.
Roman studied them. Maggie fell to her knees.
The pack of corpses hung perfectly still, the gorgeous Goblin rain crashing against them, washing some of their rot to the ground. Roman studied them from beneath like a child looking for the invisible string, looking for the trapdoor, trying to unmask the trick.
“Be gone!” Roman yelled through the wind and rain. “BE CLEAN!”
The bodies were lifted higher. Maggie began moaning so loudly Roman heard it twice over, echoing off the steel lids of the strange Goblin caskets. The corpses went higher…higher yet…and Roman could feel her, the promoter, watching from behind a tree. Which tree? Roman didn’t look. He opened his hands, extending his fingers, sending the bodies higher still until they were indecipherable from the many drops of rain falling fast from the sky.
Maggie screamed in ecstasy.
And then…the bodies were gone.
Roman let his chin fall to his chest. Maggie came up beside him and covered him with the black umbrella.
“Presto,” Roman said.
“That was your best work yet.”
Roman looked to her.
“And now…the encore.”
By midnight Pete was gripping the quarter so hard it left an imprint on his hand. Everyone was there. Mike, Victor, Randy, Susan, Christopher, everyone. A lot of their parents, too.
Pete thought of Dad working. Of Mom asleep.
The Domino Theater was smaller than Pete imagined. He’d read a hundred times how the Spell Circuit magicians performed for sixty people or less, but to see that part of it up close was staggering. It was really no more than a box of a room, four wood walls nailed together, hardly capable of containing a genius like Emperor. But Pete would take it. The stage was so close. And because Roman didn’t hide his moves, Pete would be able to see it all.
The lights went out and his classmates’ chatter ceased with it. The unbearable silence that followed was broken by boots on the stage.
The lights came on.
Maggie.
The crowd was shocked by her. Pete knew they must be. But he wasn’t. He already knew all about Maggie and Roman. Everything there was to know. When Maggie started talking, Pete felt a power in her voice that no magazine had ever mentioned.
She introduced Emperor.
And from the cave-black shadows backstage, he emerged.
He walked out with such confidence and control that the tired face Pete had seen in person seemed like a false memory. He wore the brown pants. Black boots. White shirt and a vest. His hair was wet and Pete was proud that it was because of the Goblin rain.
Goblin.
Roman Emperor was in Goblin.
Without hesitation the pair went headlong into their show. Pete couldn’t imagine how it looked to Mike, someone who had no idea what Emperor was about. And the parents, resigned to take their kids to a midnight magic show, were obviously taken aback. Pete knew they’d been expecting some square in a top hat, but not this brilliant, dark artist who could bend metal with his mind.
People gasped. People called for more.
Pete was fixated on Roman’s hands and body. Every move Roman made lived up to what the magazines said it could be. And yet, Presto’s description of him was a crime compared with what Pete saw for himself. Roman moved so fast it was hard to keep up.
He escaped from chairs without moving his body.
Rope moved snakelike, alive.
Maggie threw an ax at his head that stopped an inch from his nose.
Objects appeared and disappeared, bent and broke.
Pete was speechless.
When Maggie announced they’d be doing their final act and that they needed volunteers, Pete felt a sinking in his stomach. He didn’t want it to end. He didn’t want it to ever end.
But he raised his hand all the same.
Roman was bent over near the back of the stage, drying sweat from his hair as Maggie surveyed the crowd. A small sea of hands waved frantically before her. She stepped to the side of the stage. Making room.
Roman rose and returned to face the crowd. He was loose now. His work almost done.
You wanna be a star, big time? You gotta give me my cut, too.
How?
Roman’s dark eyes traced the hands before him, wagging, begging.
Fresh death, kiddo. Just can’t stand the smell of the old stuff after a time.
Roman stepped to the edge of the stage and spoke the first words he’d spoken all night. With his palms extended toward the ceiling he said,
“All right, children…who wants to disappear?”
The Domino went nuts. Kids jumped out of their seats. Pete climbed up on his foldout chair and reached his hand higher than any other.
My cut, the promoter had said, has nothing to do with how well you empty their graves. She smelled of dead wolf. Of bear. It’s how you fill them back up again that counts.
Pete was screaming himself hoarse. But some kids were scared. And their parents, smitten by the show, weren’t having it.
Roman watched it all as a boy himself, rooted to the sandy streets of his youth.
“Get on up there, Sarah,” Mr. Anderson said. “Don’t you want to disappear?”
“Come on, John! Don’t be so shy!”
Maggie tilted her head. Licked her lips.
“Get on up there!” Mrs. Jones said.
“Go on!”
Roman raised a hand, ready to choose the volunteers, those who had decided to say yes to real magic. Those who were willing to dabble.
“Don’t you want to disappear?” Mr. Parks asked his son. “Don’t you want to disappear?”