MAGIC (8 page)

Corky walked around the front of the building awhile, always glancing back to the door, checking to see no one came out. The wooden heart was burning in his hand now. It was stupid. Making it was stupid, waiting was stupid.

No one came out.

Five-twenty.

Five-forty-five was when he took the heart, threw it as far as he could, away for now and ever.

Going on six.

“Corky?”

“That you, Peg?” He sauntered over in the dark, smiled at her. “Boy am I ever lucky, running into you.”

They started away from the gym.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Cheerleading practice.”

Corky nodded. “Well I’m sure glad I got the chance.”

“Chance?”

“Family’s kind of heading on. Mutt got a big break in Chicago.

Her turn to nod.

He could tell from the way she did it that she knew. “You heard I guess.”

“About the thing at Grossinger’s? I’m really sorry.”

“Well, he’s a scratchy guy, it was bound to happen.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“So I’ll see you, Peg.”

She started away.

He watched in silence.

She said “oh” out loud then, and spun in the night, running into his arms. “I just realized something awful.”

“What?”

“I’ll miss you.” They stood like that awhile.

(hey-hey)

The giant kept falling up the stairs. He would land hard, sit puffing, rise, try another step or two, then his balance would go and he would fall again. He never lost his temper, didn’t seem to mind the time the trip to the second floor landing took. It was as if the only way to make it was up, then down, gather strength, then onward and upward again.

Scared, Corky watched from the second floor shadows.

The giant made it to the top step, panted awhile. Then he reached an enormous hand into a jacket pocket, fumbled around. The hand eventually came out empty. Now it was the turn of the other hand to try the left jacket pocket. Empty. “Fug,” the giant said. Then he grabbed hold of the top of the banister, stood. His right hand tried his pants pocket and the giant soon nodded, took out a key, lurched to the nearest doorway, pushed the key in the lock. Or at least that was the theory. He missed again and again, sometimes coming closer to the keyhole, never close enough to attempt insertion. The key slipped from his fingers and bounced along the floor. The giant bent for it, a mistake, tumbled down hard, lay there.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Merlin,” Corky said, and he dashed out of the shadows, picked up the key, unlocked the door, helped Merlin up, guided him inside, found a wall light, flicked it on, moved the slumping giant to the sofa, went back, flicked the room to darkness.

The giant awoke hours later, parched. He made it to
his feet, made it to the kitchen, got a glass, drank. Then he returned to the couch and closed his eyes.

“Would you like me to make you some coffee?”

On went the couch lamp. The giant looked at the kid. “How’d you get in here?”

“I brought you in here.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe an Alka-Seltzer? I could run out and try and find a drugstore. Someplace is sure to be open.”

“What are you, some kid genie?”

“Nossir, my name’s Corky Withers and I want to be a great magician like you.”

“A dumb genie, just my luck,” Merlin said. Off went the couch light and he slept.

When he awoke next it was late morning and breakfast was ready. Coffee and toast anyway. Merlin sipped the dark liquid. “Okay, down to cases, what’s all this?”

“Nothing. Only what I told you already. I want them to never forget me. I want them to hold me kindly in their hearts.”

“Where’d you hear that shit?” Merlin wanted to know.

“You
wrote
it.
Classy Classics Volume I
. I’ve got the whole series, all four pamphlets.”

“Supposed to be twenty. Fugging publisher skipped on me.” Merlin shook his head. “I’m not up to private students anymore. Usually all you get is bimbo psychiatrists who use it for therapy.”

“You don’t understand, Mr. Merlin. I’ve got to be great. I’m very good now. Better than practically anybody. But I’m not great yet. That’s why I’ve come to you.”

“You do close-up magic?”

“Yessir.”

“Do me something.”

Corky got out a quarter, put it in his right hand, thumb palmed it, closed both hands, blew on them, opened his hands empty.

“Shitty,” Merlin, Jr. said.

“When you say shitty, you don’t mean shitty, you mean not great, right?”

“I never saw a worse thumb palm. You’re an amateur, kid. Who’d you study with?”

“Books mostly.”

“Do a drop vanish.”

Corky did one.

Merlin just looked at him.

“Shitty?”

Merlin nodded.

“Cards are more my specialty.”

“Amaze me.”

Corky pulled his pack of bicycles from his Windbreaker jacket, held them out. “Want to examine them?”

“Get to it.”

“Okay, do you know Paul Le Paul’s Double Deuce?”

“Get to it I said.”

“Ordinary deck. I’ll shuffle the cards.” Corky did a faro shuffle, followed up with the Hindu.

“Shitty.”

“I didn’t do the trick yet.”

“And you’re not gonna, not for me, I got a weak stomach.”

“I’m not that bad.”

“I’m sorry kid; y’are.”

Corky put his cards away in his Windbreaker jacket.

“What’s your name again?”

“Corky Withers.”

“Withers—look around you. This pit is my home. The Collier Brothers would be happy here, but I’m not.”

Corky glanced around. It was a small apartment, living room, a bedroom, kitchenette and bath. And crammed. Corky had never seen so much magic apparatus in his life. There were shelves full of magic books, boxes piled all over. Vent dolls and egg bags and top hats and gimmicks, fakes and pulls, escape boxes, silks of every color and size.

Corky thought it was kind of terrific.

“Magic’s on the skids, Withers. Before my dumpling died last year—” he pointed to a photo of a round, smiling woman “—we had to travel ten months a year to survive. Ten years ago we had to travel four. Once I could stay right here in Los Angeles and eat steak whenever. So what I’m telling you, kid, is why not get yourself an Edsel franchise, you’ll do a lot better. Corner the market in cable cars, if you want. But ride clear of this.”

Corky shook his head.

“I’m talking to you ’cause you’re a handsome kid, you got a sweet look, you made me coffee. I’m leveling, believe that. I, Hymie Merlin, Jr., am as good as the game. That’s no shit gospel. I been forty-two out of fifty years in magic. And why have I failed?”

“You haven’t failed.”

“I’ll trade you bank accounts blind, the Rockefellers wouldn’t make you that offer. Why is because of what magic is and that’s one thing and one thing only:
entertainment
. Why can’t I entertain? I’m charming, I got good patter, the magic’s as good as the game.”

“I don’t know.”

“Take a peek at my face, Withers.”

Corky looked at the huge nose and the wide eyes and the wild hair and the bad mouth with one corner always turned down.

“I’m ugly, Withers; I got a puss stops clocks. I can’t get on the tv, I can’t do schtick with kids, I survive on a limited market. Now, how do we know that if you get great like me, if you spend those
years
, maybe you won’t be ugly but maybe you won’t have charm. Maybe you’ll eat your guts out seeing guys who can’t do shit getting all the marbles ’cause they got charm. You got charm, Withers?”

“Nossir.”

“Then good-bye.”

“I came to you because it began with you but there’s a million others.
You can’t stop me.”

“I’m just trying—”

“—I’ve-got-to-do-this-thing!”

Merlin looked across. “Hey, you’re crazy, aren’t you, Withers?”

“… yessir …”

“How old?”

“Be nineteen.”

“How much you got; I cost.”

“Three thousand dollars.”

“From what?”

“My dad helped run a health club in San Diego the last couple years. It’s his life insurance money.”

“We’d have to start from the top, unlearn all the shit you picked up.”

“I’m a terrific learner.”

“You also thought you were a terrific magician.”

“Okay I’m a shitty learner.”

A nod from the giant. “You just started learning.”

Lesson number one was holding cards in your hands. That was all. Corky couldn’t believe it. But those were the instructions. You went to sleep with a pack of cards in each hand and you woke up that way and when you took the bus, you carried the cards and you carried them to the cafeteria, putting them down when you ate but that was all, and in the movies you carried them and ran your fingers along the edges, getting the feel, getting the feel, you weren’t going no place until you had that feel, and Merlin told of Baker, the Princeton kid who was the greatest hockey player of them all and how he used to flash across the rink in total darkness, guiding the puck blind, because if you had to look for it, if you didn’t feel without seeing, forget it.

Merlin lived in what the real estate people called an “interesting” area between Wilshire and Pico near Fairfax, but what it really was, was a slum on the make, though there were still enough old Jews and aspiring blacks and musicians and artists to make it bearable. Corky took a room at the nearest Y and bought a small mirror and a close-up pad, a thin sponge, and he sat
and stared at his hands in the mirror holding the cards and when lesson numbers two and three came, they came together, strengthening the ring and the pinkie. You needed the one strong for dealing bottoms and the other for any kind of decent pass and Merlin said that with most, the thumb was too strong if anything, the index and middles strong enough. But the ring and the pinkie were problems, especially with the left hand and both hands had to be the same if you wanted to be great, so Corky sat in front of his small mirror in his Y room and he did lifts with his pinkie, stretches with his ring, then reversed the procedures, over and over till his fingers started cramping. That was good, Merlin said, the cramping showed you were serious but you had to wash your hands awhile then, get them warm so the muscles would stop their rebellion.

Then back to the mirror, back to the mirror, you had to get the pinkie strong, look out for the ring, work the pinkie, work the ring, forget the cramping, keep at it, keep at it, you had to keep at it if you wanted to be great.

Merlin was great. Corky could tell that the second week of his apprenticeship when the giant brought him along to an Elks’ smoker in the Valley and Merlin did his close-up stuff, an escape or two, some terrific silk changes, but the audience liked it better when he talked. Merlin made terrible jokes about always getting mistaken for Cary Grant—his jokes seemed mostly to kid about his beauty—and they gave him a decent enough round of applause before they went back to their serious drinking and Merlin picked up fifty in cash from the chief honcho, then drove Corky back to the Y, on the way asking what he thought of the first Cary Grant joke and Corky said fine, why, and Merlin said I was covering a mistake, you always got to have something ready, Leipzig made mistakes, I make mistakes, remember the knife throwing story and Corky asked what that was and Merlin said it was from a
play where an actor had to throw a knife at a wall and what the actor said was, if the knife stuck, “I’m the best in town” and if he missed he said, “I used to be the best in town.” Remember that advice, and Corky said he would and when they were at the Y Merlin said, get lots of sleep, tomorrow we begin with the palm.

There are coin palms and card palms. For coins you had to know the classic and the edge and the thumb, those were crucial, but the back palm and the back thumb palm were handy to have around too. For cards, you weren’t going anywhere without the diagonal palm and the swing palm, the top, the flip over, the crossways and the bottom.

When you went on in coins you had to get your switches and your flips and then all the vanishes. Cards had a different world of sleights: lifts and deals, shuffles, slips and, naturally, the passes.

Corky was good inside a year, good but not, no one needed to tell him, great, and his money was gone but that wasn’t as tragic as it might have been since Merlin had a little stroke after the tenth month and Corky moved in with the giant for what at first was going to be temporary, tending him, sleeping on the couch, talking magic, working magic, reading reading reading the bookshelves through, and when Merlin was around and active he liked the company, he’d always had it, he’d married the dumpling when he was still in his teens. So Corky stayed, and drove the old man’s station wagon to jobs, assisted with the act, and when it came time for the major swings up along the coast, Corky chauffeured and watched and packed and learned, when he wasn’t quite twenty, that he was, astonishingly, good at picking up girls in bars, secretaries and stews and clerks, and at first he thought it was some kind of fluke streak he was riding, but eventually he realized it had to do with a pleasing impression, that’s what they said mostly, he seemed to be nice.

He hoped they were right, thought they were too. And prayed fervently that they never changed their minds.

He and Merlin moved all across the West, Nevada, Colorado, every place big enough to have an order of Elks or some Freemasons, Lion’s Clubs, Knights of Columbus, Pythian Sisters. They went to cocktail parties in Seattle, fund raisers in Ashland, Oregon; trade shows, women’s clubs, sales meetings, and between jobs, Corky sat by his mirror and worked, improving his forces, getting the estimations down, flourishes of all kinds, many his own. He was starting to invent his own moves now, maybe not better but different from before, things that never existed were starting to flock to him.