by Jordan Bell
He followed me with his eyes, wary and suspicious. Closer I could see the dark circles, the slight wateriness to his irises. He hadn’t been sleeping or eating enough. I knew those signs. Guilt. Regret. Old friends of mine.
I nabbed a deck of playing cards off a table where the seamstress had been working and headed over to where the Magician waited for me. I sat down, cross-legged, in front of him and started shuffling the cards.
“You look like hell.”
“And you’ve been awake, what, a few hours and you’ve already managed to make enemies and end up in a childish brawl. Charming.”
“Hey,” I looked up from my cards. “I also made friends.”
“Ah, well. I stand corrected.”
“You haven’t been sleeping.”
“Someone’s usurped my bed.”
“That seems a little unfair considering I haven’t been conscious in…”
I searched for a number and realized I had no idea how long it had been since that night on the train.
“Two days.”
“Two days. See. And I was stabbed which I think grants me a little leniency.”
The cards ripped across each other, slapping a cadence as they mixed. I cut the deck twice more and then fanned them out between both hands.
“You were hardly more than scratched. If he hadn’t hit you on the head, you would have been up and about in a couple of hours.” He nodded to my fingers. “What’s this?” he asked
“Well,” I held them up for him, face down, a top hat on the back of each card. “It looks like you’re all out of magic juice so I figured someone better to save the show. Pick one.”
He looked skeptical but played along and chose one roughly from the center.
“Look at your card. Memorize your card. Got it? Stick the card back in.”
Once in place I started shuffling again, cutting, shuffling, then set one card on the floor in front of me and the other to the bottom of the deck. One down, one under. One down, one under. This went on for a minute while he watched my hands carefully.
“I can read your mind. Did you know?” I asked.
“Is that so? What am I thinking right now?”
I grinned and stopped my shuffling so that there were two piles, one in each hand.
“You’re thinking, wow, that freckled girl is so very talented.” I looked up and found his grey eyes on mine. “Also, you were thinking of your card.”
I turned over the pile in my left hand to show him the bottom card. The five of clubs.
“That,” he said, “is not my card.”
“No, I know.” I flipped the other pile in my opposite hand to reveal the five of hearts. “It’s her lover.”
Eli sat up, his eyebrows rising together in a look I took as approval. “Where did you learn how to do that?”
I shrugged, feeling a blush touch my cheeks, and started to reshuffle the cards. “We worked a street market in New Orleans when I was a teenager. There was a boy who used the trick to get me to kiss him. I bartered kisses for a few card tricks. His name was Troy, I think.”
“I don’t think I like this Troy fellow very much.”
I smiled into my hands as they busily shuffled the deck. “If I remember right, he was a very talented street gambler, too.”
“But was he a very talented kisser?”
There was that voice again. I stilled my hands and tilted my head to look up into his tired face. There was something there, a spark of amusement I did not think he allowed himself very often. I smiled. “A girl never tells.”
“The girls I’ve met love to tell.”
“Maybe you’ve met the wrong sort of girls.”
“Hmm.” Without asking he stole the deck from me and took over shuffling. “Did you really try to claw out my assistant’s eyes?”
“Well, not both of them, obviously.” He smirked and after a moment of quiet with only the hushhushush of cards crossing each other, I added, “She called me a foundling.”
His grey eyes darkened. “I will see to it she does not make that mistake twice.”
“Don’t. It’s fine. I get it. I do. Unnecessary suspicion is better than the alternative. I’m the new girl. It’s that, I can’t tell you how many times my mother and I fought and I’d win the argument by accusing her of not being my real mother, that she stole me in the night from my real home to make me work her tent. Sometimes she’d get into arguments with other street sellers, especially if we got a really good spot, and they’d call her things like gypsy trash, gypsy thief, and I’d use them too.”
I shook my head, feeling the ever present rock in my chest making it hard for my heart to beat right. I could feel him watching my face but I couldn’t look at him. Instead I picked at the fray around the cuff of my jeans. I didn’t know why I was telling him all the reasons why I was such a wretched daughter. It felt good and terrible to confess.
“She was so beautiful, like some kind of escaped queen from an exotic land far, far away and me with my frizzy red hair and awkward body screaming thank god I don’t look like gypsy trash! at the top of my sixteen year old lungs.” I leaned my head back and stared into the ceiling for answers. Not that I knew what questions to ask. “I was so ridiculous. I had no idea.”
One of Eli’s brows rose as he studied me carefully.
“Two days ago I interrupted the electrical signals keeping my brother’s heart beating. With my mind. You were young. Families are complicated.”
I shot him a look.
“You can’t stop someone’s heart with your mind.”
The Magician fanned the cards in a perfect, evenly spaced circle, face down. “Serafine, I am a magician. I can do anything I want.” He tapped a finger against the bottom of the spread. “Think of one of these cards. Hold it in your mind. Just one. Got it?”
I picked the four of diamonds. “Got it.”
He twisted the fan back into a single deck and cut them randomly. “Is this your card?”
The card he revealed was the ace of spades. I shook my head.
“Nope. What kinds of things can you do, oh great one?”
He cut me a look, but his eyes brightened with repressed laughter. “All kinds of things, little bossy one.”
He reshuffled the cards and turned over the top card. The king of hearts. “How about this card?”
“You’re not very good at this.” I shook out my hair so that it fell around my face. “Can you make me blonde?
“Yes, but I wouldn’t want to.” He leaned forward so we were close. I could smell the plastic of the cards and the familiar, masculine scent from his bed. “Third time’s a charm.”
He turned the deck face up and fanned them out one more time.
And every single card had become the four of diamonds.
I tsked, but inside I felt giddy bubbles of pleasure. As always, every trick the Magician performed made my insides go wobbly. I’d never seen such magic. Likely, I would never again.
“You are a showoff.”
He restacked the deck and with a wave made the whole thing disappear.
“I am a magician.”
I shrugged and came up on my knees so that, with him sitting, we were almost nose to nose. “Same thing.”
He considered this, took a loose red curl that had fallen into my eyes, and tucked it behind an ear.
“Yes, you’re right,” he relented. “Same thing.”
“Good news for you, I’m told they found me my own tent. I’m sure it’s half collapsing and one of my new fan club members will set it on fire while I’m sleeping, but you’ll get your bed back.”
“Ah. Well.” He clasped and unclasped his hands between us, a nervous, human gesture that made him oddly vulnerable. I wanted to slip my fingers between his to give him something to hold onto, but the desire was too enormous to act upon.
He continued in his quiet, accented voice. “I cannot stop them from acting childishly, but they won’t hurt you. They would not dare cross me.” His head dropped forward
so that I was left staring into his curls instead of his face. They were so messy, as if he’d run his hands through them so many times. “You’ve been through quite enough, don’t you agree?”
Touch him.
Absolutely not.
Touch him right now.
My hands lost their minds and carefully, cautiously, like approaching a wild animal, touched his raven black curls. He coiled, prepared to jerk away. My heart beat itself black and blue against my ribcage as I pressed through his hair a bit harder, petting the soft curls through my spread fingers. I dragged my nails lightly along the cowlick at the back of his head and a shiver ran along his spine, tensing and aggressively relaxing the muscles down his back. I touched my way down the scoop of his long neck and the wild animal yielded completely, dropped his head lower in submission.
I could hear his breathing alter, deep, ragged, needy breaths. His shoulders rose and fell with them and skipped breathing altogether when my fingers stroked the downy soft hair on the back of his neck.
His hands settled on my hips, tugged at the hem of my shirt until he had the fabric bunched up to the spot where my jeans stopped and my skin started. His hands rested there, two fingers in contact with my skin, my pudgy middle that never felt so fine as it did in his grip. My whole body reacting like it had never been touched by another human being in its entire existence. My madness begged me to bend down and press my mouth to the hollow where his neck and shoulders met, where the hair was fine, almost fawn brown, and baby soft. I imagined touching my tongue to his spine and feeling the electricity and power of his body rushing through mine.
As if he could read my mind, and I wasn’t entirely sure he couldn’t, I heard the barest moans growl at the base of his throat.
Barely, he dragged my hips an inch towards him until his forehead touched my belly and we held suspended in time and space, connected so very far from all the important erogenous zones and yet I’d never felt so naked, so intimate, so bared to another person as I did at that moment on my knees, caressing the back of his neck with my thumbs.
Not trusting the strength of my voice, I murmured softly, “You need to sleep.”
“I don’t sleep.”
His voice vibrated against me. He inhaled, tightened his hold on my waist and pulled me closer until his eyes were pressed tight against my stomach. Encouraged by his closeness I allowed my hands to travel beneath the collar of his shirt, to the coil of lean muscles that made his shoulders so strong. They jumped as if ticklish to my touch. He sighed and mmmed against me.
I closed my eyes and reveled in the sensation of his body. The back of his neck, his shoulders, my stomach, these were suddenly the most sensitive, alluring centers of pleasure. I wanted to kiss him madly, the kind of kiss that leaves a person lightheaded because they stopped bothering with breathing.
I hardly know you. It was a heartbreaking thought, but it didn’t diminish my want. My need. I found myself pulling lightly at him, urging him closer, and he responded by dragging his hands up my bare skin, onto my back, clasping me to him so I couldn’t get away if I wanted to. The cool tent air licked against my exposed spine and it felt wonderfully indecent.
“Serafine,” he exhaled, a painful sound that preceded the softening of his hold on me. I weakened. “I can’t. I…you cannot be another distraction.”
He didn’t pull away altogether, and neither did I. We moved in small allowances, like pulling off a Band-Aid. Afraid of the pain of ripping it off too fast and going too slow just to make it hurt longer.
“He haunts you, doesn’t he?”
He sighed. “Every minute of every day for the last twenty-two years. He’s never bothered to seek me out before now.” After a moment, he added, “He’s close. He’ll come for me again and soon, I think.”
“For the key?”
He murmured yes, but it was little more than an exhale.
I knew the answer before I asked the question, but I asked it anyway to give him the chance to surprise me. “Will you tell me why he came after you and how you think he is still alive?”
Eli’s hands returned to the first position, scraping the edge of my bandage to hold my hips. I ran my hand down as far along his back as I could reach, the other stayed in his hair, a feeble attempt to keep him from pulling away.
“You do not think he’s dead or you wouldn’t be so cavalier about having been the one to kill him. Even if your logic gets in the way, some part of you believes it.” He lifted his head and brought his gaze to meet mine. It was unsettling, having him see the want in my eyes. “And no, I won’t burden you with more than necessary. Some secrets are better left dead.”
I settled my hands on his shoulders. He sat up so that they slipped onto his biceps and brushed the edges of his tattoos. “Will he? Leave them dead?”
“No, but I’ll leave them be as long as he’ll let me.”
Someone near the tent flaps cleared their throat pointedly, traces of annoyance giving away Alistair Rook’s presence even without me turning around.
Eli removed his hands from my waist and as if I hadn’t had my hands all over him moments before, he pulled my hands off his arms and lowered them between us. Briefly, before he let go, his thumbs caressed my palms. A secret, intimate touch we wouldn’t speak of.
“You should go.” The soft, sleepy, wanting voice was gone like a switch, leaving behind the lieutenant voice he reserved for orders and carnival business.
“Right.” I climbed off my knees and risked a glance down the aisle to where Rook stood. He clutched his cane in front of him and once he had our attention, he started his slow, stately hobble up the aisle to the stage. He didn’t look pleased, but that might have been normal for him.
“Serafine.” I turned at the stairs to face him. Eli produced a pack of cards from thin air and tossed them to me. “Perhaps later you can teach me more of your kiss bought tricks.”
I smiled and turned the deck over to see the top hat design on the back. I hated reading fortunes, but I loved the feel of cards between my fingers.
“Perhaps. After you’ve gotten some sleep.”
“I don’t sleep,” he reminded me coolly.
Eli approached the edge of the stage to meet Rook whose default setting had slipped from none too pleased to you are in serious trouble.
“Good day, Serafine. I take it you are getting on alright?” Rook said as I hurried past.
“Oh, yeah, thanks. And thank you for letting me stay, by the way.”
He nodded. “And Serafine?” I stopped at the door and turned. He tilted his head and narrowed his sharp, bird-like eyes on me. “For god’s sakes, no more brawling.”
15
__________________
Before.
We made paper crafts on Mondays to sell outside the tent as souvenirs. This was before the fighting and the blaming, back when I thought my mother called the moon into the sky every night and granted wishes and cast love spells on tourists.
We didn’t go to the market on Mondays, the traffic was always too slow to bother, so instead we covered the kitchen table in paper and glue and made things that didn’t exist before.
While I worked on a mobile of origami cranes, she made something else, something secret. She wouldn’t let me see it until she was done, but I caught sight of her pressing silver brads through layers of cut paper when she thought I wasn’t looking.
When I was done I hung my mobile in the tiny kitchen window in our apartment that stared out into a trash alley between buildings. Light changed through the colored paper and the cranes turned as the flew in sweeping, measured circles.
When my mother finished, she stood with a crossbar of popsicle sticks between her fingers, fine white thread dangling from each of the four corners. She curtsied and lifted her paper doll into the air for me to see.
My mother had created a paper marionette.
In my memory the light coming in through the window was buttery yellow and on it floated dust motes that fell and settled on the bl
ue Formica kitchen table. I smiled and sat on the edge of the window bench and watched the tiny paper arms sashay, the waist bend, the dancer rise on tiptoes. The way the light struck Cora’s lovely black hair made her seem so much younger than she ever was.
Before the dancer finished her number, my mother’s fingers twisted and I saw that there wasn’t just one set of crossbar sticks, but two, and with a turn the dancer became not one, but two, joined at the hip to her sister. Four legs performed several quick degagé steps, then two legs performed an arabesque, their outside legs stretched long at the hips.
“Olivia,” she said, fluttering the left girl on toe-point, then the right. “Suzette.” They were identical dolls except for their eyes. Olivia had wide round orbs and Suzette’s were narrow and seeking. My mother waggled her fingers and both dancers performed a series of jumps.
“I knew them once,” she said. “Conjoined twins from Avignon. One of them loved easily. The other one lied easily. I adored them both.”
16
__________________
A woman in a high blonde ponytail and black square-shaped glasses with a clipboard surgically clutched to her chest, stood in the middle of a cyclone of fabric and half naked girls. Correction, we stood in the middle of a cyclone of fabric and half naked girls. She took up the smallest amount of space possible and seemed twenty seconds away from a meltdown that only tranquilizers would cure. Tufts of very blonde hair haloed her small face, giving her the look of a chronic abuser of forks and electrical sockets.
She cleared her throat as if it would help her be heard over the clamor of girls freaking out over lost boob cups and ripped Spanx.
“You’re going to help the girls with their quick changes in the burlesque tent tonight.” A balled up scarf smacked the side of her face and she closed her eyes briefly but did not unclutch her clipboard. “Have you ever laced a corset?”
“No,” I glanced at a girl in a pair of Aladdin style pants and almost nothing else stalk by waving a chiffon turban in her fist and screaming about someone stealing her glitter shit without asking. “I can’t say that’s ever come up before.”
