“Hardly!” Lily scoffed, adjusting her hair pulled into a neat bun. This was not the first time she took my side in an argument with my parents, although, I never was sure if it was intentional on her part.
“You just need to give a man a chance,” suggested my dad.
“Exactly!” Mom continued excitedly. “If you just stopped being such an… um… Ice Queen with them! Try to be a little more approachable. Men like to feel feminine warmth.”
Could that be true? Was my mother right? Was I an ice queen? Could that be the reason things didn’t work out with Matt? He was looking for feminine warmth and never found it in me because I was so cold and unapproachable.
“…men need to see a nurturing, loving wife in a woman, the mother of their future children. They like to know that they will be taken care of,” Mom continued, encouraged by my silence.
“Don’t they all have their own mothers for that?” asked Lily, eyeing Evan suspiciously.
Mom ignored her question but leaned in closer.
“You know, Angela never cries,” she told Lily as if revealing a big secret.
“She has a fairly thick skin,” Dad chimed in and added quickly, “which is not a bad thing to have. Especially in business, working for a large corporation and such…”
“Even when she was little,” continued my mother, “she would scrape her knee and just bite her lip, but there would be no tears coming from her!”
Uncomfortable goosebumps crept along my “thick skin” from their scrutiny, but I kept quiet, thinking about her words. I had heard her telling people the same scraped-knee story many times before, but for the first time I really gave her words some serious thought.
I always tried to be strong. Was it wrong? I hated crying in front of anyone — that was true. It didn’t mean I was insensitive or that I didn’t feel like crying at times. It’s just that the very idea of exposing my weaknesses in front of other people terrified me. Showing strong emotions in public felt like exposing myself to more hurt potentially. For me, any pain, big and small, was to be buried deep inside behind impenetrable walls and then covered with thick layers of silence, in hopes that it would suffocate there eventually, like the fire would get smothered under a blanket.
“Evan was always so much more sensitive as a child. He cried at the drop of a hat,” Mom went on.
“Is it true, Evan? Did you cry a lot?” Lily looked at him with adoration, as if there was anything endearing in finding out that he was a whiny kid.
Evan squirmed under her gaze.
“Hey, Angela, I was thinking the other day, sitting on the toilet…” he blurted out, out of the blue.
“Okay.” I wondered where he was going with it. The topic of the conversation had turned awkward for both of us, and Evan obviously was trying to change the subject the best way he could think of. Grateful, I welcomed the interruption.
“Does the demand for toilet paper go up before Christmas too, just like everything else?”
“Yes, Evan. It does,” I answered quickly. “We always have higher order quantities of toilet paper before holidays. Sometimes as high as one-hundred and fifty percent of the regular volumes.”
“Why?” asked my mother.
“No really, why?” echoed my brother.
“Is it because people eat more over the holidays and poop more?” Lily ventured a guess.
“No. Not really.” I remembered Barb’s musing on the very same topic last Christmas season when we scrambled to get enough toilet paper across the country due to heavy snowstorms. “It’s because they have company coming over for visits and stuff.”
“But wouldn’t that mean that there would be less toilet paper consumption in those places where the visitors came from, and in the end the demand across the country would remain stable?” contemplated Dad.
“Unless, they have visitors from out of country, Henry,” added Mom.
“No,” replied Lily, “because some of the Canadians travel abroad too, to Europe and to the States during Christmas.”
“So, unless there is a large difference between the number of people leaving the country and the number of people visiting it, there still should be a balance…” This was my dad again.
Well, it didn’t even matter that the weird topic of their discussion was now hardly even appropriate for a dinner conversation, I was just happy that it had moved away from my personal life.
What could I tell them about it? That the only romantic thing I had in my thoughts lately was the phantom memory of a man I talked to once briefly over a month ago? The man who only said a few rather rude words to me?
I thought that solving the mystery of Marcus the Magnificent would rid me of his ghostly presence in my life, but it only made things worse.
Gradually, I did stop obsessing over Marcus, the magician. I stopped searching the internet for his pictures and only watched new videos occasionally. However, after meeting him in person, Marcus, the man, took over my imagination.
I didn’t need to search for his pictures anymore because as soon as I closed my eyes at night, my memory readily provided me with a multitude of images: his hand in his hair; his midnight-blue eyes on mine; his tall, strong body looming over me with the ever-present, intoxicating, warm smell of him all around me.
Other images were apparently stored in my head, images that didn’t even register at the time but were filed away in my mind nevertheless, just to torture me now: the hard ridges of his abs flexing when he leaned against the back of a seat on the bus; the ropy muscles of his forearms when he crossed his arms; his worn leather pants sitting low on his narrow hips…
Before Las Vegas, I knew I only needed to solve his mystery for him to let me be. Now, I didn’t know what to do to be free from the hold this man had on my imagination. I could only hope that time would be on my side, helping me forget him eventually.
He may be gay, I told myself. For all I know, that handsome blond guy from the limo could be his lifelong partner and lover. That’s why Marcus never had a real girlfriend, and all the party girls are just for show because he’s not ready to get out of the closet yet.
Yep. That’s what I’d keep telling myself, and everything would get back to normal in time.
7. On Top of the World.
It was the end of his week off. Another party. Marcus sat in a white leather chair in Simon’s suite in their hotel. Simon was there too, of course, as well as some of their stage production crew and about a dozen or so showgirls.
Judging by the girls’ different outfits, it looked as if Simon had sent a limo down the Strip to pick up one from each venue. Many still had their stage costumes on, a few wore their regular outfits that left just as little to the imagination as the multicoloured glittering bikinis and feathers of the costumes.
Like a flock of exotic birds, the girls filled the room with noise, colour and life. Marcus leaned back in the chair and soaked in the vitality of others.
Since his early years, he had been perfecting the art of being alone even when surrounded by people.
In every busy foster home filled with children, he made sure to stay away from everyone. Other kids learned quickly that his punch packed “superpowers” when they tried to bully him, so they left him alone for the most part, giving him a wide berth. It was easier to protect his secret when he kept a certain distance from people.
The sad part was that he really hated the isolation. Even now as a fully-grown man, he couldn’t stand being alone, especially at night when he felt the loneliness more acutely. At night, the dark memories came from the shadows of his past to torment him, and he kept them at bay by making sure that there were people around him whenever possible.
Every time when he walked up to his hotel room with a woman on each arm, he felt like he won a few hours from the night again; the shadows of the past and the nightmares that they brought along were shoved away for a while. He could be sure that by the time the women finally left his room in the early hours of the morning — giddy and e
xhausted — he would be tired enough to pass out too, sinking into the dark pit of a blissfully dreamless sleep.
“Marcus, are you all right, man?” Simon asked quietly, passing by. “You seem off lately.”
“I’m fine.” Marcus shrugged Simon’s hand off his shoulder. “Just enjoying the view.” He tipped his chin at the closest group of showgirls.
“Okay then.” Simon sauntered in the direction of the women. “Theresa, baby, have you met my friend Marcus?”
A gorgeous brunette who had been eyeing him a few minutes earlier turned his way eagerly.
“Not yet.” Her lips wrapped around each word seductively as she strolled towards him, her hips swaying side to side. “But I’m going to fix that right now.”
He lifted his hands off his knees, making room in his lap for her, and she lowered her ass in immediately.
Her toned backside, barely covered by a shiny silver skirt with a high side slit, shifted in his lap as she slid along the leather of his pants, closer to his crotch. His dick stood to attention at once.
He splayed his hand on the bare skin of her back. Soft and silky. His other hand slid into the slit of her skirt and up her naked thigh. She moaned and pressed her legs together.
There was nothing wrong with Theresa. She was absolutely perfect. Beautiful and willing.
“I love your mask,” she murmured into his ear as her hands went around his neck. “So hot.” She traced the edge of the mask with one finger. “Do you keep it on when you fuck?”
It was so easy. There is one way to find out, was all he had to say to ensure a warm body in his bed for the next couple of hours tonight.
All his life Marcus had been keeping the fine balance between always having people around and never letting any one of them close enough to learn his secret.
Until Vegas, his lifestyle of the travelling magician made it easy enough: new city — new girl. No strings, no questions. Simple.
Signing the Vegas contract made him stop in one place for some time. It was the longest he ever spent in one city. For the first time in his life, he had a semblance of stability. It surprised him that he grew to like the feeling of waking up in the same place every morning.
The disadvantage was that he couldn’t escape running into the same women again after he had casual encounters with them once. His principle of new city, new girl no longer applied.
He was certain he had seen Theresa’s face at some party before, and there was a strong chance that he’d see her again after tonight. If he took her upstairs now, there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t want to come up again next time she saw him. A relationship of any permanence would lead to questions eventually.
This was the main reason why his usually frequent sexual encounters with random women had dwindled down considerably and, lately, almost entirely stopped.
He shifted his hips under her to lessen the friction on his straining erection, but the movement only made it worse, intensifying his arousal.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Theresa cooed, licking his ear. “Tell me. I’m a very good listener. You can tell me anything.”
Could he really? Could he tell her anything? Even if he allowed it to be more than a one-night stand, could he ever let Theresa or any other woman in all the way? Was any of them capable of caring enough to understand and accept everything about him? The problem was he could never find out for sure. Once the secret was out, there was no way to take it back.
“What if I told you that I fuck without the mask?” he challenged.
Her shiny lips pouted with a practiced perfection as she moved back to look at him.
“No, keep it on, please!” she demanded, gliding her finger along the edge of the mask again. “Hot and mysterious. Just the way I like it.”
Just the way all of them did. Of course, he never had any intentions of actually removing his mask in front of the strangers he brought to his bed, but he knew that every woman he ever had wanted Marcus the Magnificent – fame, mask and all.
Sometimes, Marcus wondered what would it be like not having to hide from at least one person in the world?
Not that it was that difficult to hide. Half the time, he didn’t even have to explain anything if he made a mistake and exposed his magic accidentally. He found early on that people were more than happy to come up with an explanation for him. Their brains were so pre-conditioned to explain away the unexplainable with logic and science that they readily believed any half-plausible explanation he gave.
He’d been hiding in plain sight for years, and no one knew.
Except for her. The girl in the red dress knew. Somehow she figured it out; somehow, she was the only one brave enough to see the truth.
He had thought about her often and even asked Simon to do a search, using the footage of the nearby security cameras, a few days after they met. She turned out to be a tourist, like most people on the Strip on any given day.
Simon was able to confirm the hotel where she was staying with a group of other young women, but she was long gone by then. The name that the rooms had been booked under turned out to belong to someone else. All he learned was that she was from Toronto, Canada. Not only from another city, but from another country as well.
Marcus didn’t know her name. He didn’t even take a good look at her to remember her face. In addition to the grainy images from the security tapes, he only had the memories of her bright red lipstick and that it matched her dress. He vaguely remembered her dark, wavy shoulder-length hair that was pinned up from both sides in a fashion that reminded him of 1940s, but it was mostly a memory of a feeling, not a specific image.
Theresa’s cool hand landed on his cheek, just under the mask.
“Baby, you’re burning with fever! Are you sick?” she shifted away in his lap.
It was the end of his week off at the venue. The next show couldn’t come soon enough. The arousal from having Theresa in his lap had been overshadowed by the increasing irritation and anxiety. He needed a release, but Theresa was not the one capable of giving it to him.
“I’m fine.” He lifted his hands up and spread them to the sides, signaling her to get off him. “But I think I’ll call it a night.”
***
Back in his own suite, Marcus lowered himself into the couch on the terrace outside and stretched his legs in front of him.
It was still scorching hot during the day in Vegas, but at night the air was cool as the year headed into the fall.
He got rid of his clothes, removed the mask and leaned his head back, exposing his face and naked body to the light breeze. The night air felt good against his skin, but it was not nearly enough to cool the liquid fire building beneath the surface. He needed to go to the ranch house, the sooner the better.
Since moving to Vegas, Marcus felt settled enough to invest in real estate and bought a ranch about an hour away from the city. Actually, it was just a house on a large property that might have been a ranch or a farm once, but there weren’t any horses there anymore. In fact, even the barn and the stables had been taken down long before his time.
He liked that the house was surrounded by acres and acres of desert, with no neighbours in sight. For the first time in his life, he had a safe place to be himself, to chill out whenever he needed it, without witnesses.
He picked up the phone and texted Simon.
I’m sleeping in until noon tomorrow
Now Simon would make sure that no one entered his suite until noon. This way when Marcus returned, he wouldn’t run the risk of materializing in front of the hotel maid cleaning the bathroom, or something.
Simon didn’t ask why it was important to keep people out of Marcus’s room. He just made sure everyone stayed out until the time Marcus gave him.
This was the nature of their professional partnership ever since it was formed back when Marcus was still in high school, performing in mall parking lots and gas stations. As long as Marcus continued to do what made them both money, Simon did what Marcus told him to do
, and wasn’t overly concerned with how it all really worked. Whether or not Simon ever guessed anything about Marcus’s unusual abilities, it was impossible to know, simply because they never talked about it.
His thoughts strayed to the girl in the red dress again, for the second time tonight.
He regretted now how he handled it when she approached him at the Bellagio fountains. He still wasn’t sure what the best thing to do in that situation would have been, but it certainly was not what he did.
She caught him off guard.
During the years, Marcus had been approached every now and then by people who thought they knew the truth. They had been all possible kinds of weirdos. Some were eccentric gadget inventors, trying to sell him “magical” stage props that never worked; some were extremely religious and demanded he convert to whatever gods they preached. There were devoted UFO enthusiasts, who wanted him to admit that he was an alien, and spiritual oddballs, who passionately insisted he’d joined them in their astral travels. They all were from the extreme end of human spectrum, and many acted just plain crazy.
The girl in the red dress looked and talked differently than all of them. She didn’t want anything from him — another new one. He didn’t know where to place her right away and ended up screwing it up.
The more time passed, the more he felt sorry that he never got to have a proper conversation with her. After all, she was the only person in the world who knew what he truly was, and he didn’t even remember her face or her voice.
He never forgot her words, though.
If I have a chance, I’ll come to see your show one day.
Even if she kept her promise, he couldn’t know for sure to which one of his Vegas performances — if any — she’d come to.
Every now and then during the show, he caught himself straining his eyes, trying to see past the stage lights, as if it was possible to make out her red lipstick from the stage.
He even accepted her challenge to blow their minds and spent weeks thinking how he could let his own magic shine through the acts of others that he shamelessly copied.
The Real Thing Page 5
