“Yes,” said the magician as questioning eyes turned back to him, “he is a very clever young man. He should go far. Very far. Now, if one may ask it, shall we resume?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Help Wanted
MICHAEL SAT IN THE coffee shop across from the Little Cairo Museum of Wonders, watching the entrance and sipping from a shaking cup. It rattled as he set it on his saucer, and to keep his hands busy he smoothed his hair and readjusted his shirt.
What had happened while he stood in the cabinet, braced, he thought, for any eventuality? He tried to recall the exact progression of feelings and events—the magician’s unctuous, mocking invitation, his own confident acceptance, the darkness inside, the waiting. Then the sudden, desperate combat: something, like a pair of human hands, seizing him, pummeling him about the shoulders and neck, not a pair of hands exactly, but some invisible force fastening upon him, an uncontrollable flexion of muscles, a set of purely physical sensations without any accompanying mental processes. How had it been done? How had there been time? Suddenly he’d found himself in the cabinet, wrestling for his life against something dark and powerful, something that buffeted him ruthlessly, flinging him like a sack against the sides of the narrow space, until one vicious, final blow, one last humiliation, like a disdainful kick in the rear from a giant foot, lifted him up bodily from behind and propelled him staggering back onto the stage.
He felt his neck, his arms, shoulders. All the muscles were sore, as if they had been brutally wrenched and pounded. His eye hurt where it had been struck; he thought it might be swelling. And he was convinced that the area from his lower back to his upper thighs was covered by a single deepening bruise. The Queer Duck had got to him again, and again had done it in some unfathomable way. Sitting up as straight as his throbbing body allowed, Michael realized with a thrill of fear that it was going to take more than a thumping in the dark to sway him from his purpose. Now more than ever he was determined to do whatever might be necessary to acquire the skill, the art, the power—it made no difference what you called it—possessed by this uncanny, bumbling, arrogant, absurd, dangerous old man.
The woman, most recently seen as the Chinese princess, was standing calmly outside the coffee shop. Michael saw her through the window, looking once again as she looked when she returned his wallet. He paid for his coffee and went out quickly to her. She smiled a kind smile at him and made a regretful gesture. “I don’t want to disturb you,” she explained. Then she added, in a knowing voice, “I’m sure you could use a few restful minutes.”
Michael made a humphing sound, half laugh, half snort. “I’m all right so far,” he said, and paused, letting his features express an unspoken question.
“He wants to see you,” she said. She was a small woman, and as she looked up at Michael she blinked at the bright sun behind him.
“Lead the way, please,” he said. She turned and crossed the street, he following six feet behind, concentrating on each step and wondering where it was leading him.
The audience was gone. The magician stood on the stage, solitary and spectral under the harsh glare of the worklight overhead. He gave no sign to Michael, but only stood smoking, an elbow cupped in his hand, and leaning back on one leg like a fashion model. The glass eye had been replaced by a black patch, the elastic caught at the back so one tuft of hair reared up like a cowlick. Two gold chairs sat on the bare stage, and with a negligent wave of the hand he indicated that Michael should join him. Michael looked at the woman, who backed away, shutting the auditorium door after her. He turned and walked down the aisle, marched up the steps and onto the stage, keeping a wary distance. The old man, exhaling fumes like dragon’s smoke through dilated nostrils, observed him closely. At last Michael heard not the gaily sardonic stage voice but that bleak, moribund tone that reminded him of dead leaves in the wind.
“I thought I should enjoy a private meeting as well, with so clever a young man,” the magician said, leaning on adjectives as though they were threats. “You are a clever young man, are you not?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I must trust your judgment. Sit.”
The curt abruptness of this order caused Michael to regard the indicated chair; then, to his own surprise, he crossed to it and sat. The old man folded himself into the other one, smoking wordlessly and staring through his single, narrowed eye. Michael found this long scrutiny disconcerting; the magician seemed to be examining him, like a careful buyer appraising a possible purchase. Michael was determined to break the uncomfortable silence, though he had not yet decided how to do so when the old man finally spoke.
“Yes, I suppose we must begin,” he said, almost reluctantly. “First of all, satisfy my curiosity: what made you try to spoil my act?”
Michael dropped his head, contemplated the undone lace of his sneaker. “I suppose I wanted to impress you.”
“You try to impress me by ruining my performance? When the audience laughs at me, you think I am impressed?” There was woefulness in the voice, and self-pity, but the magician’s bearing belied them. Even his sham attempt to conceal his irony was ironic, a complicated charade carried out for some undisclosed effect.
“The laugh was on me, I think,” Michael said. Though he felt foolish and guilty for having tried to show up the old man, he couldn’t bring himself to regard the other as the injured party, not when his eye was swelling painfully and his battered body ached. “How did you do that?” he asked, his voice earnest, almost pleading. “In the cabinet, I mean. What did you use on me?”
Wurlitzer snorted in an unpleasantly liquid way. “You have a vivid imagination, my young friend. I ‘used’ nothing. Whether through clumsiness or claustrophobia, you lost your footing and bumped your eye. Then you burst out and ruined another trick. You seem quite incorrigible.”
Michael almost smiled at this bland, carelessly insincere rationalization. Trying to justify himself, he said, softly, “You spoiled my act, remember?”
“I? You mean your little street pantomime?” The voice was mildly reproving, that of an innocent man unjustly accused, but the eye was hard and cold. “You do not know how to cut your material. Your frog impersonation went on much too long. It is a matter of timing, merely.” Wurlitzer rose abruptly to his feet and leaned toward Michael, who for a single terrible moment felt again the swooning helplessness, the blank surrender he had experienced once before when this strange figure loomed over him. But no compulsive hopping ensued; the moment passed, the magician merely ground out his cigarette under his heel and continued speaking. “Of course, timing is a skill that is learned. It comes with experience. You have had some stage experience?”
“A little.” Michael admired the way the old man had finessed his questions about cabinet-thrashing and frog-horror, as though he knew nothing of such matters.
“Acting?” Wurlitzer asked in a prodding tone as he resumed his seat.
“Yes.”
“And a conjuror as well. A man of parts.” He brought a deck of cards from a pocket. “Show me.”
Michael, though tempted, shook his head in refusal.
“Very well.” Wurlitzer’s look was cunning, as if Michael’s weak defiance provided him some trifling amusement. “It is not necessary. I know what you can do”—he paused significantly—“and what you cannot.” A noise made them both glance toward the wings, where the woman was padding about industriously, gathering costumes from where they had been flung during the magician’s quick changes and putting them on hangers on a wheeled rack.
The old man returned his attention to Michael, looking him up and down as though taking his measure. “So where do you come from?” he asked. “Surely not New York.”
“I grew up in Genesee, Ohio.”
Wurlitzer repeated the unfamiliar names with questioning annoyance. Then he said—it was more a statement than a question—“But you enjoy living in New York.”
“Yes,” Michael said, sensing that short answers were being called for.
“I like it.”
The magician cocked his head oddly to one side before he spoke. “A young man is very brave to live in New York these days, I think. Criminals are everywhere.”
“I’m not brave, I just smile a lot.”
“Yes-s-s, you do.” Wurlitzer released the words in an aspirated sibilance, squinting his eye sardonically, as if assessing a potential enemy or ally. “Your smile is most charming, but you use it too much. Smiles should be only for the fond, or for the wonders of the world. You are perhaps one of those wonders, heh?” His lips sketched the wisp of a smile as he laid his long finger against his long nose, a gesture Michael found precious, something an actor might use to convey roguishness. He decided that there was much of the actor about the Great Wurlitzer.
He resumed the conversation, again in his mocking tone. “You gave little shows in your hometown, correct? For the Rotary Club, perhaps?”
“Elks.”
“The Elks, to be sure, the Elks. And you know some card tricks. What else?”
“You’ve seen my tricks.” Michael pointed to the rack of costumes, the nun’s habit, the banker’s natty jacket, the Italian beggar’s baggy pants.
Wurlitzer waved his hand in an impatient, dismissive motion. “Yes, of course, my little deceptions, so I could observe you at my leisure. But I’m not talking about tricks or deceptions,” he went on, repeating his contemptuous wave with increased forcefulness. “I’m talking about genuine magic.”
Michael kept his eyes on the worn boards of the stage. “You mean night magic?” he asked quietly.
The magician registered vague surprise, raising his visible eyebrow a few millimeters. “An interesting expression. Yes, that is what I mean, night magic. What can you show me?”
“Nothing,” Michael admitted ruefully, ashamed of his ignorance. Then he looked up, and all the intensity of his desire was in his eyes. “But you can teach me,” he said.
The old man’s reply was a long time in coming, but at last he said, bemusedly, “Perhaps I can.” He sat still for a few moments, slumped in his chair. Then, abruptly, he straightened his back, and the cold edge returned to his voice. “And you are now a professional conjuror?”
“In a minor way. I’ve done shows for small groups. I work at parties sometimes.”
Wurlitzer considered this briefly. “And you have your street routines, your little pantomimes. Very savage, your mimicries,” he said, his eye seeming to narrow at the memory. “Very savage indeed. And quite accurate. I could hardly tell you from myself.” He paused to light another cigarette, but Michael’s lighter was flaming in front of his face before he managed to extract a match from the box he had fished out of his pocket. “Very kind,” he said, spewing out a long stream of smoke. “Now, then, to continue. What else do you do, how do you spend your time? Tell me more about yourself. For example, you haven’t even told me your name.”
“You know my name. It was in my wallet.”
The old man did a broad pantomime of perplexity, as though playing to the cheap seats, followed by an impression of dawning light. Finally he said, “Ah, of course, I had forgotten. Michael, is it? Michael—” He whirled his long fingers, trying to draw the name out of the air.
“Hawke.”
The old man repeated the name softly to himself, his head engulfed in smoke, which he batted away with a hand. “A sturdy Anglo-Saxon name,” he said without enthusiasm. “Ah, well, at least it’s not German. Tell me about your parents.”
Michael winced. “I lost them when I was a little boy.”
The pressure of Wurlitzer’s gaze intensified, as if he were seeking the kernel of truth in Michael’s declaration. “I see,” he said, in a tone so penetrating that Michael thought the words must be literally true. “That explains your—how shall I say it?—not just your independence, that timeworn American virtue, but your so inadequately disguised melancholy.”
Michael’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, but the old man made his dismissive gesture again. “Yes, yes, your black bile, your dark nights of the soul. But let us touch on less obvious matters. For instance, I should be interested to learn something about your Asian assistant.”
Michael stiffened. “Emily?” he said, suspiciously.
“How should I know?” came the bland reply. “The Asian girl, the flute player. She was with you the day you lost your wallet.”
Michael was loath to say anything that might spoil his chances with this presumptuous, humbugging old boor, but he was weary of being interrogated, patronized, mocked. “I didn’t lose it,” he said tersely. “You stole it from me.”
“‘Stole’ it?” Wurlitzer’s look was infuriatingly droll, as if now things were getting really interesting. “Are you accusing me of being a pickpocket?”
“Picking pockets is easy if you know sleight of hand. Magicians make good thieves sometimes.”
“Perhaps you have had experience there, too, heh?” the old man asked, heavily insinuating.
Michael flushed; he recalled the rabbi at Bloomingdale’s, laughing at him as he practiced at the notions counter. Something fell into place in his mind, too solidly and clearly to be denied expression. “I’ve shoplifted a thing or two, mostly to see if I could,” he admitted, the contrite young sinner confessing to the virtuous elder. Two can play this game, he thought. “That was a long time ago, though, and I was never serious. Not the way you are.”
“About what?” Wurlitzer asked at once, in his bleak, sneering voice.
“About theft,” Michael said flatly, paused for two deliberately measured beats, then pressed on. “I’m a real amateur. For example, I’ve never stolen anything from a museum.”
The sentence hung in the air between them. Michael cringed, fearing he had gone too far, but then the magician suddenly began to laugh, a horrible cackling sound like the background noises at a witches’ sabbat. “You are very foolish, my young friend,” he said with a discomfiting leer, “but you are also very brave. I noticed this at our first meeting. We shall discuss the museum another time.” He fell silent, lost in thought, then chuckled again. “Yes,” he said, as though answering a question only he could hear. “Yes, yes.” He looked directly at Michael as he murmured these words, an eager, avid look the younger man found both flattering and disquieting. “Yes,” Wurlitzer was saying again, “you are very brave. And very talented, with your frog and your other pantomimes. And your clever costume, your top hat and your military jacket. Your little robot routine is very well realized.” He seemed decided now, and determined to please.
“Thanks,” Michael said, puffing up slightly. “I call it the Mechanical Man.”
“Good, good.” Head tilted back, Wurlitzer had lifted his black patch and removed a wad of cotton from the eyeless socket. Quickly covering it with a cupped hand, he began to massage the periocular region, gently, as though it pained him. “You mentioned acting,” he said, still rubbing. “What roles have you played?”
“I just played El Gallo in Fantastiks.”
“Whatever that may be,” Wurlitzer murmured, clearly unimpressed. He brightened. “Yet it seems you have laid the foundations for a well-rounded career, doesn’t it? All you need is a bit more skill, a bit more discipline. Well, well.” A fugitive smile played upon his lips as he replaced the cotton, drew down the patch, leveling his single eye at Michael. Embarrassed, the younger man gazed around the stage, fixing at last upon the lacquered Chinese cabinet, which stood off to one side, near the wings. He felt certain that Wurlitzer was on the verge of some proposal, one whose nature was not immediately apparent, for there was a shadowy movement in the wings, and the old man peered offstage in annoyance. The woman stood back behind the curtain ropes, beckoning.
With a peremptory “You will excuse me,” delivered in his curtest tone, the magician unfolded himself from his chair and shuffled across the stage, his walk ducklike, his patent-leather shoes gleaming in the light. He drew the woman behind the leg of a velour stage return, and for a moment there was silence.
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Michael quickly rose, using the opportunity to examine the cabinet from which he had so recently been ejected. The doors stood askew on their hinges where he had broken through them, and the box looked like nothing so much as a well-used stage prop. He thrust his head inside, gingerly, flicked his cigarette lighter on, feeling around the sides with his free hand. Wood panels, painted black, with stretchers and corners reinforced by metal angle irons. He bent and looked at the flooring: nothing but an empty cabinet.
But—there was something about it. He got a distinct feeling, eerie, spooky, that he had no way of identifying. Something, he thought, like the idea of encountering a ghost in a haunted house; or perhaps like the encounter itself. A noise behind him startled him badly. He turned to see Wurlitzer standing on the bottom step of the stage stairs. Michael had no idea how long he’d been under observation, and he was sheepish as he acknowledged the old man’s presence.
“Forgive the interruption,” Wurlitzer said airily. “I trust you have not been bored in my absence?” His tone was bland, yet with that hint of mockery in it. “You were admiring my little cabinet, I see.” Michael grunted, bending to retie his sneaker lace, as the old man pattered volubly on. “Come, come, no need for modesty here, we are all friends, or soon shall be, heh?” Michael found the “heh,” emphasized by a jerk of the chin, peculiarly annoying. He was being baited, for sure. But for what reason? At least the old man seemed to want something from him; Michael supposed this was a good sign, whatever the something was.