Tea is my typewriter

A woman in the second back row of the theatre sprang to her feet, shrieked, “IT’S HERE! OH MY GOD IT’S HERE!”, and waved a wristwatch above her head.

The rest of the audience turned to see her, and wild applause broke out. From the stage, Magic Al beamed and nodded encouragingly, as if she were a child with a finger painting, and called, “Well done that woman! Give her a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen!”, which was a polite, but unnecessary, instruction. Most of the audience were not only clapping, but also cheering. Over the noise, Al announced, “Now kindly return the watch to its rightful owner!” 

This too was drowned out by the applause and anyway, the woman was already ahead of him. She squeezed past the other people in the row, and raced down the aisle. The young man who owned the watch, and who had kindly volunteered it for service, sat on the stage. He had, until a minute ago, thought he was keeping his timepiece safe between cupped hands. But now he was laughing in disbelief, looking in shock from his empty hands to Al. 

When the woman with the watch reached him, they grinned open-mouthed at one another and shrugged their complete bewilderment at what had just happened to them. The young man held his watch high for the audience to see, then put it back on his wrist. The applause was riotous.

They were the last two participants of the evening’s show, which had seen dozens of items be transported from one part of the theatre to another without anyone noticing. Tonight the items had included earrings, wallets, false teeth and, to much enthusiasm, underwear, disappearing from their rightful place only to materialise somewhere else. Magic Al’s Mysterious Teleportation Show had been an incredible success, yet again. 

The crowd were on their feet, and in the palm of Al’s hand. He stood on the small stage in front of the banked seats – still enough unsold tickets for the red velvet to be noticeable – in his purple three piece suit, chest proud, arms spread wide to receive the applause.

“Thank you, thank you all,” he said, and sank into a deep bow. There was a loud bang, a collective gasp, and a burst of thick white smoke. When it cleared, Al was gone.

Chatter filled the theatre as jackets were donned and short queues formed for the exits. All present were amazed by the show, united in their bewilderment at the magician’s skill, and their joy at having been transported to a world of wonder for ninety minutes.

*

By the time the first people got to the theatre doors, Al was already out of his costume and into his jeans and jumper, with a steaming mug of tea on the dressing room table. His purple suit and top hat were hanging on the back of the door, his trousers hung neatly over a chair with his frilled shirt, and his lime green cowboy boots were placed beside them. After an evening of showmanship, he felt weary and there was a nagging heaviness, bordering on an ache, in his arms. He picked up the mug and sat down in the arm chair.

There was a knock at the dressing room door. At a click of Al’s fingers, the handle turned and the door opened. 

The stage manager may have been surprised but he didn’t show it. He was beaming. In a slightly shaky hand, he offered a fat envelope.

“Here’s your share of the takings, Magic Al, as ageed.” Al signalled to the dressing table and taking a step into the room, the stage manager gently placed the envelope down. 

“Are you quite sure you don’t want the stage hands to move your props? Your chest and table? They could take them down to the stage door – “

Thank you, no”, smiled Al. “All of that will be taken care of tomorrow, if you’ll permit. By the time you arrive for work, the props will be” – Al made a flourish with one hand – “gone”.

“Just like magic”, smiled the stage manager, broadly.

“Just like it”, said Al.

The stage manager turned to go and had stepped out into the corridor, but then hesitated and turned back to Al. He was unable to contain himself. 

“Magic Al,” he blurted, “that was the most amazing magic show I have ever seen. Why have I never seen you here before? You really should have a regular slot, we could have filled the theatre tonight if I’d known how good you are. You had them eating out of your hand, and I, well, I couldn’t believe my eyes! It’s as if you really can transport anything to anywhere with that -” he ineffectually tried to snap his fingers, making a tiny wet slap – “finger snap! Well of course,” he added hastily, “that’s your art, isn’t it? To do things that are beyond belief, that people simply don’t understand, even when they can see that you do them with their own eyes?”

Al sipped his tea, fixed a kindly smile on his face, nodded and wondered how long it would take for the stage manager to get to his inevitable point.

“Magic Al”, he went on, “I will gladly clear the programme for the next three nights if you say you’ll perform again. Now, I can’t offer you Wednesday, because that’s the ABBA tribute band and they’re very popular” – Al raised an eyebrow – “but please, please, say you’ll stay for another three shows?”

Mercifully, thought Al, this man had cut to the chase. Al had had his fill of theatre owners, tour organisers, would-be agents and all sorts of charlatans who offered him unlimited audiences all over the country, and many of them insisted on hours of flattery or expensive meals or name-dropping proof of credentials before they finally popped the question. This chap was pleasantly succinct.

“Thank you but no”, Al smiled. “I have no interest in more performance. I work for money and tonight’s takings, which you have so kindly delivered, are enough for me until my next show. I like to keep a strict work-life balance, you know.”

The stage manager looked bewildered and fell silent for a moment. He took a deep breath before starting again.  “Are – are you quite sure? Because… well, I heard from the stage hand that your wife – um, that you’ve had a recent change in circumstances, and -“

Al snapped his fingers. The door gently closed, leaving the stage manager outside in the corridor and Al on his own.

*

Al set down the mug, leaned forward in the armchair and buried his face in his hands. With a deep sigh, his body softened and his showman’s poise left him. His shoulders sloped and rounded, and his shiny, slicked-back dark hair gently turned grey from root to tip as the dye left it. When he lifted his head, his face was pallid and wrinkled, giving the impression of a man who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in months. 

Al had never doubted that choosing the magician’s life had been the best thing he could have done. After all, life is easier when you do what you’re good at, and Al was very good at giving audiences what they wanted. On stage he was confident enough for the audience to feel safe and relaxed, yet at the same time he projected the air of kindly uncle who was faintly surprised at the adulation. 

Al gave people a chance to suspend their disbelief for an evening, a reason to believe that anything was possible. Al’s show provided his audiences an opportunity to witness things that they did not understand and, instead of raging against their ignorance, or trying to unpick the tricks, they could simply enjoy the magic, marvel at the unexplained, gasp and applaud. 

Al had learned showmanship out of necessity. As a teenager, he had no other way to explain the way things could appear and disappear around him. Pretending that he was studying the art of prestidigitation was his cover story. It may have made him seem strange to his peers, but it was less strange than the truth – that he was possessed of powers that he couldn’t explain. By pretending that he worked hard at it and by turning it into entertainment, he could avoid the worst of the hostility and bullying in the playground.

And now, as a middle aged man, the facade was just as handy. He sent audiences away happy, he had enough money to live on, legally, and nobody suffered. He used his powers benignly and lived a quiet life, in the same way that a gifted mathematician could easily go unnoticed working as a bookkeeper. So what if he wasn’t exactly as they thought he was? As long as he wasn’t greedy, avoided media scrutiny, and kept giving occasional and brilliant shows, all was well.

And so it had been for twenty years. As far as he knew, he had never met anyone with powers like his own – although it was not something he talked about. He suspected, after research, that the Magic Circle was full of mere magicians – showmen and women practiced in sleight of hand but without any unexplainable powers. He had read into many conspiracy theories and had found no real evidence that the world was run by people like him. It seemed most likely that he was alone. 

But there was one person. There was one other soul who Al knew possessed powers to match his. Jessica was the only person who ever truly knew and saw Al. 

The first time they met, Al was under her spell. She attracted him so strongly that his own powers seem feeble. He was defenceless to her. He was drawn to her by an inexplicable force and he wanted nothing more than to be with her. On their second date, he told her everything. She had nodded and kissed him. And that was that. They were married later that year.

When Al realised he had lapsed into thoughts of Jessica, he shook his head to clear the memories away. He drained the last of his tea and gently lobbed the mug in the direction of the small dressing room sink. As it flew through the air, the tap turned and when the mug reached the sink it was met by a stream of warm water. The mug hovered under the stream, rotated, inverted, and once rinsed, gently shook the excess water off itself and came to rest on the drying rack. The tap turned off.

No point in getting comfy in a dressing room, Al told himself. Much better to be gone before the stage manager came back to tell him the theatre was closing. He stood, picked up the components of his showman’s outfit, and snapped his fingers.

*

Al’s feet landed on the floor of his mobile home. It had been a short distance from the dressing room to the theatre car park, but the journey had tired him. As he hung the outfit in the wardrobe, his arms felt heavy, as if he had been carrying some great weight. It was probably nothing a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure – but where would he get one of those? It was beyond his powers. He had always slept soundly next to Jessica.

Al closed the door that was about to open in his mind. It was a harder door to close than the one to the dressing room, but he was well practiced. He snapped his fingers. The pillows from his bed floated gently across the room and settled on the built-in couch where Al settled himself, comfortable and upright. 

One thought kept Al going. Magic is only the name that people give to things they can’t understand. 

Card tricks that nobody can fathom? Magic. But if you can explain how they’re done, they cease to be magic and become merely clever. Moving pictures in a box in your living room? It’s magic until you learn about how pictures and sounds are turned into signals, transmitted and received. Once you know that, it is a technological feat. Even the magic of apples falling from trees was explained as an invisible force called gravity.

Thus, Al reasoned, so were all things not yet understood. They simply waited for the knowledge to unlock them. 

Time and again, Al had considered the wristwatch. If I already have the power to stop its existence on the stage, and begin its existence in the second back row – why not do the same with missing people? For the last three months this deductive reasoning had been his saviour. All I need, he thought, is the right word, the spell, the potion, the catalyst to the trick. I just haven’t found it yet. 

Buoyed up by the reasoning, Al tried to shake the heaviness out of his arms and closed his eyes. He sank into his trance, the state where he had most control over his powers. In the silent world of only his own breathing and the sensations of his body against the chair, he was in complete control of his thoughts.

This was how he had built the skills for his show. With practice, it became easy to sense the place where a thing was, without laying eyes on it. From there, luring it to another place became almost as easy as picking it up with his hand. Some items were more stubborn than others, and there was a showman’s skill in picking the objects that were easily led.

Al worked for hours, punctuating his attempts with cups of tea and stretches to alleviate the aching in his arms. Again and again his consciousness returned to the room without finding what he sought. By four o’clock, it was getting harder to open his eyes, and his spirit was heavy at the prospect of yet another night’s failure.

The still of the night was broken by a siren, far away from aluminium walls of the mobile home. Now that he was tired, Al couldn’t stop the memories from coming. 

The siren and the flashing light, intermittently illuminated the scene. The wet road was covered in broken glass and bits of metal, and the air smelt of petrol. How the siren had stopped suddenly, leaving a true, deafening silence. There had been no crying, no talking, no moaning. Jessica’s had lain still and silent on the road, her body empty of her spirit. She no longer existed in that place, she was gone from the road beside Al, where they had landed, thrown clear through the windscreen by the collision. But Al knew she must be somewhere else now, she must exist in another place, and if only he could find her, he could bring her back to him.

I want her here, I want her here, I want her here – Al’s lone thought repeated in his head like the siren.

Tonight, like every other night for the last three months, he had sent his consciousness to other worlds, where he searched for Jessica. Each night he had gone farther, seen an array of objects in his mind’s eye. But the search for Jessica, and the place were souls go, went on. 

Al realised that the tears were streaming down his face. His arms ached as his clothes took themselves off his body and were replaced by his pyjamas. He was due in a distant village hall tomorrow, but not till early evening. A distance like that wouldn’t take long, but he would need to rest. He climbed into bed.

*

When Al woke, he was afraid to move, just like every other morning. This was the stillness of bereavement, the fear of starting another day without Jessica, the dread of realising, yet again, that the worst had happened and there was yet another day to be endured alone.

Blocking out the memories – keeping them in any distant place, anywhere that wasn’t his head – Al took himself into his meditative state. His arms had stopped aching and his brain obligingly focussed on sinking down, deeper into relaxation, deeper into the place his powers came from. Maybe today. Maybe this time it would work. 

Al’s body was limp as he let his mind roam and try to find Jessica, searching for the place that had evaded him these last three months.

And there she was. 

She was walking towards him and she was smiling. The cuts on her face from the accident were gone, and she looked as perfect to him as she always had. She broke into a run as he stood stock still, scared to breathe in case he broke the magic.

“You found me, Al. I knew you would.”

He felt every fibre of his body release as he put his arms around her. The smell of her, the feeling of her warm body against him. He was complete again.

“I found you. I found you”, he sobbed, pressing his face into her hair. 

“I’m so sorry I had to go, Al,”, Jessica’s said, “but I knew you’d come.”

Whether this was a trick of his mind, or the ultimate feat of his powers, or something else he would never understand, Al knew that this was the only magic he ever wanted again.

*

It was lunchtime before the stage manager called the police, and mid afternoon before they’d decided to break in to the camper van.

“I’d been expecting him to collect his props”, the stage manager told the officer. “So when I got to work and they were still on the stage, I got a bit worried. I knew he’d parked here, but there was no reply when I knocked.” 

He watched sadly as the medics carried out the stretcher.

“He was the best magician I ever saw. Absolutely incredible, you know? Like real magic, like actual wizardry. He had so much power in his act. I can’t believe that was his final show.”