I Know Your Secret

Rain beaded and trickled down the cold glass of the bistro’s front window, distorting the street and city skyline. Cecilia watched the taillights of cars leaving the theatre district. Her breath fogged the glass while the last fuzzy points of red light bobbed away in the darkness.  

No one else would come into the bistro tonight. Not in this weather.

“I’ll close,” she told the cook, and he nodded, already untying his apron.

Thunder rumbled and sheets of rain lashed the front window, rattling the Behind the Scenes Bistro sign. Cecilia sat alone at one of the white-skirted tables in the small dining room and carefully folded cutlery into cloth napkins.

An empty bistro was unusual. Other nights, a glib theatre crowd straggled in from the restored vaudeville around the corner or the new theatre complex nearby. Patrons sat at the small round tables for late dinners and ordered menu specials like duck confit. Cast members came, too, but clustered in the row of cracked red leather booths along the brick wall, ordering drinks or sandwiches.   

Now and then a cast member recognized Cecilia. She dreaded those moments, with the mandatory hugs and the peppering of questions: Where have you been? Are you handling it? Do you need anything? In those moments, Cecilia delivered her best performances. She took any hugs offered and backed away quickly, promising to call soon.  

Some nights Milo also showed up, his dark eyes following her from table to table. He never tried to hug her. He never even spoke to her. He just nodded, solemnly, when their eyes met. Sometimes she had to step out back, into the alley behind the bistro, and stay there until she could stop trembling. When she came inside, he was always gone. 

Being alone was easier than that, she told herself. She almost believed it.

The lights flickered as she dumped the last of the coffee and cleaned the coffeemaker, but the power stayed on while she ran through the closing checklist. She was about to count cash in the register drawer when she noticed a customer sitting in the end booth nearest the front door.

Had the bells on the front door jangled? Maybe thunder had muffled the sound. 

Cecilia headed toward the booth, hoping he didn’t want coffee. Then she saw the deck of cards in his hand. 

* * *

“I know your secret,” her magician said to her the first night, over the clink of glasses and the chatter of a dozen conversations in the dining room.   

The bistro was warm and packed, redolent with garlic aioli and bacon and a savory seafood bouillabaisse. Cecilia had to wind past portly fellows who pushed their chairs too far back and laughed too loudly, and a large group of slender, silvery-haired ladies in smart coats and glittery diamonds who set their handbags on the floor.

His eyes, blue like tumbled quartz, made it worth the effort. “OK, Magician. What’s my secret?”  

“You’re like me,” he said, fastening those remarkable eyes on her. “You don’t want to be alone.”

“Let’s hope you’re better at magic than flirting,” she said.

His response made her concede he might be pretty good at both. With a flourish, he snatched up his soup spoon and set it dancing on its own up his forearm. It twirled, catching the bistro lights, before it vanished.   

“Viola!” he cried, splaying his fingers, and the spoon reappeared, dancing down his other arm.  

She grinned helplessly. 

His name was Julian. He asked her to go for a drink when her shift ended, but she had an audition early the next morning.

“You’re an actress?”  

She could have said yes. But from the beginning, Julian had a magnetic pull that made her want to share everything. “Just a wanna-be. I get so few roles I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

“Magic is believing in the impossible,” he said, and winked.

When he came in again, Cecilia was sorry to see he was not alone.

She noted the red heels first. A flash of annoyance interrupted her warm flush of pleasure at seeing Julian’s face again, smiling at her, from the same booth. The red heels were attached to well-turned ankles and slender legs, and the woman sitting across from him wore a red linen suit that matched the shoes. She offered Cecilia a friendly smile.

“Meet my new assistant,” he said. “Francesca.”  

“Does he make you twirl or just disappear?” Cecilia asked. A blush crept beneath Francesca’s tousled strawberry-blonde curls. 

* * *

A good magician never shares all his secrets, but Julian liked to talk craft. Sometimes, when the bistro was slow, Cecilia sat across from him while he taught her to read cards. She could have left early, on those nights, but what was there at home? She didn’t even have the cat, then.

Julian wore an antique ring, gold and studded with garnets, and used perspective and sleight of hand to make it disappear and then reappear on his finger. Cecilia watched his hands move as he talked. They were strong and square, with neatly trimmed nails. She wondered what his hands might feel like on her.  

“This part is the most important,” Julian said, tapping the ring after it reappeared on his finger. “The return is the payoff. We call it the prestige. The audience loves it when things disappear. But when the magician brings them back -- mind blown!"

He asked if she wanted to see his studio in an old warehouse a few blocks from the bistro. He'd been sleeping there, he confessed, to save money. “So I can afford to eat at a certain bistro!”

Intricate masks lined his studio walls, some glittery and gold, some feathered or beaded, and some with animal faces. They hung alongside bright scarves and metal hoops of all sizes, overlooking a room filled with an elaborate Victorian bird cage, an oversized rocking horse and some dressmaker dummies wearing kingly capes. One sported a full lion costume. Bolts of fabric leaned against lacquered screens, and a long table was filled with jewelry boxes and trunks, wands, pointers and hats.

Cecilia picked up a top hat and flipped it over, half expecting a rabbit to leap out.

“The most beautiful magic tricks are simple,” Julian said, and opened the hidden compartment. “They just can’t look that way. They have to hint at things that are bigger, and much more complex.”  

He set the top hat on her head. His fingers trailed down her cheeks, slowly, and lingered on her chin. His touch was everything she had imagined. Electric.

“Deep in their hearts, most people want to believe in magic,” he said. “We all have this instinctive yearning for it – and when you make things look complex enough, the heart will overrule the mind and believe.”

“Stop talking, Magician,” she said, looking into his eyes and feeling her own instinctive yearning.

Somehow, she kept the hat on during their kiss, and even afterward -- at least for a time. Julian was magic. The warehouse and all the props around them were magic. Even the cramped cot where they lay for hours afterward felt like something much bigger and more complex.

But with no kitchen facilities or proper shower in the studio, it just made sense for him to move into her place.  

* * *

Rain hammered the bistro. 

Despite herself, Cecilia slid into the booth across from him. She had forgotten how blue his eyes were. Striated shades of blue. They looked at each other wordlessly. Then Cecilia reached out and took the cards from him, fanning them across the table. 

“Choose,” she told him.

“I make bad choices, Cecilia. I’ll pass.”

She scooped up the cards and reshuffled. 

“Then why are you here?” she asked, and began to layout out the cards again, one by one.  

“Because I know your secret. Remember?”

* * *

Until Milo came into the bistro and locked his intense gaze on her, Cecilia believed she could do the impossible: the hard magic of forgetting. She filled her moments slicing lemons and wiping down menus. She garnished house pate and plated cheeses and learned to make her eyes crinkle as if her smiles were genuine.

She fed a stray cat in the alley until she could coax it into a box and take it home.

And then, viola! There was Milo, with his dark, knowing eyes. She thought he would confront her. She waited for him to approach her, but he didn’t. 

The third time, maybe the fourth, that Milo sat watching her like that, Cecilia had an epiphany. Magic won’t work without complicity, Julian had said.

Milo did not watch her so warily because he knew her secret; he watched her because she knew his. They needed each other’s complicity for this feat to work.

* * *

“I’ve hired someone,” Julian told her.

She snuggled against him on the sofa in the apartment where they had lived together for months. She liked the closeness of him, his energy. He smelled invigorating, like the air before a thunderstorm. She hated that she needed to leave for work soon.   

“His name is Milo. He has no personality, really. You’ll wonder what I was thinking, when you meet him. He doesn’t talk much; it’s more like he grunts. But he’s brilliant! He has seriously good ideas.”

“YOU have good ideas,” she said, nibbling on his ear, beginning to have a few good ideas of her own.

“Well, I’ll need some engineering help if I’m going to make them happen,” Julian said. He was working on an elaborate new act, The Fall of the Rose, with aerial levitation and an exploding vase.  

“Can you afford him?” Cecilia asked, frowning. What she really meant was, Can we? Her card was maxed. She’d worked extra shifts lately so he could rent a few sessions at a local gymnasium to work on the new act. His studio couldn’t accommodate aerial rehearsals.   

“I’ll have to,” he said. “I need him to make that vase explode when Francesca reappears. What kind of a magician would I be if I couldn’t bring her back with a bang?”

She must have looked doubtful, because he kissed her on the nose. “Don’t worry. He’s not charging that much. I think he’s in love with Francesca.”

* * *

The week before the new show opened, rehearsals moved to the theater.   

The Fall of the Rose required a lift mechanism with cables to suspend Francesca and the magician midair. Julian made her disappear and a single large rose appeared in her place. There was some misdirection, while Julian clutched the rose to his chest and descended to place the rose into a vase. The rose exploded in a shimmering burst of color moments later as Francesca triumphantly reappeared.  

“Bravo!” Cecilia cried, clapping, after watching the run-through from the back of the theatre. “Spectacular!”

They demonstrated to her how the lift worked, with its cables. Francesca zipped backward through a slight overlap in the set wall before dropping to the floor on the other side. She had just moments to wriggle through another, lower opening. Then Milo’s own magic came into play, with the multi-colored explosive which masked Francesca’s reappearance.

“This guy!” Julian cried, dropping an arm across Milo’s shoulders and squeezing while Milo grimaced. “This guy’s a freaking genius, is he not?!”

Francesca joined the hug. She kissed Milo on both cheeks and then on the mouth, and he glowed. Then she kissed the magician, too. 

* * *

On opening day, Cecilia left work a few hours early. It would be a late night, and she was exhausted from all the extra shifts lately. Maybe she could nap before heading to the theatre, she thought, as she slid her key into the apartment door.

A familiar laugh came from within.

Her heart hung suspended like the twirling rose in The Fall of the Rose. Could that laugh be strawberry-blonde, with perfectly tousled curls?

It could, Cecilia decided, when she stepped through the front door and heard it again, coming from the bedroom. A laugh could also be a red linen suit, like the one on the floor outside the bedroom door, or the red heels lying askance, beside it.  

The idea came to her when she was sobbing hysterically in the elevator after she backed out of the apartment. She felt betrayed, fearful that he would leave her – and, worse, that she might beg him to stay. She could bear neither thought.

Then the crazy idea gripped her and wouldn’t let go. 

* * *

What a tragedy, they all said. A few of them were less circumspect. Right in front of the audience, my God! On opening night! It’s unbelievable!    

But the real tragedy, Cecilia thought, was laid out in the cards on the table between the two of them on this rainy night in an empty bistro.

This card showed her longing. The instinctive yearning he said everyone had for magic.

This card showed her complicity. Her willingness to believe in the magic of love.

This card showed her gullibility. How she paid the bills.

“These cards brought us together,” he said.

Then he tapped the next one. Loneliness. Tragic loneliness. The kind that could not be dispelled.

 “And this card brought me back to you tonight, Cecilia.”  

* * *

Colored balloons bobbing above her head, Cecilia wriggled past the heavy stage curtain, balancing a large bakery box in the crook of one arm, two bags of party supplies hanging from the other.  

“Champagne and cupcakes!” she said to Milo -- probably too brightly. Her voice kept slipping from the steely vise holding her emotions in check. It was too loud, too tight.

She averted her face so Milo wouldn’t see her swollen eyes, although she suspected he already had. “It’s a surprise, for after tonight’s show. Can you hide all this somewhere?” 

When Milo walked away, beneath the bobbing balloon cloud, she had three, maybe four minutes. Long enough to pull the knife from her pocket and saw away at a piece of cable. There was no time to determine precisely where the slice needed to be, but it didn’t need to be perfect, did it? The small section of faulty cable just needed to be well hidden.

Because the most beautiful magic tricks are always simple.  

* * *

Rain drummed steadily. Cecilia stared at the cards between them, feeling sad.

He'd made spoons twirl and birds fly from hats and her heart dance – but now there were limits. Magic won’t work without complicity – and there was no longer complicity between them for that sort of thing.

Tonight, he could only do what she allowed him to do.

It was not enough, but it was something. 

“Your secret, Cecilia, is that you can’t bear to be alone,” he said. “You never could.”

* * *

The best magic tricks of all, Cecilia thought, were the lies you told to make yourself happy: that you had found something special, you were well and truly loved, you could handle pain or loneliness.

The next best magic tricks were the lies you told to protect yourself.

No one was more surprised than Cecilia when it was not, after all, an aerial mishap that killed the magician and his assistant in front of a shocked audience on opening night.

It was a faulty exploding vase.

When Julian placed the rose into the vase as planned, Francesca did not reappear. Instead, the sizzling fireworks catastrophe that followed made both of them disappear for good -- and took half the stage with it.

Cecilia had learned more about magic, and misdirection, than she'd realized. She knew what to say to investigators.

“No,” she told them. “Milo couldn’t have known a thing about the vase or how any of that worked. None of us knew. Magicians are secretive, you know. They live by one important rule: Never tell! Who really knows what went wrong for Julian?”

And just in case there were questions about a certain sliced bit of cable, she reiterated: “Milo was hired strictly for the aerials.”

* * *

The rain became a gentle pattering. 

“We all have secrets, Magician,” she said. “You gave yours away."

“You’re the real magician,” Julian said. “You’ve made everyone believe the impossible, that the explosion was an accident on my part. Shall I shake your hand?”

She would like that, to touch him. But she dared not, in case her hand went through his.  

“I'm your most impressive bit of magic,” he said. “Because it’s never enough to make a thing disappear. The prestige is when you bring it back. And look. Here I am.”

"I'll tell you another secret," Cecilia said. "You're not really here."

She dropped her head into her hands and sobbed. 

* * *

The red neon OPEN sign buzzed off. Cecilia shut the front door of the bistro firmly. Thick raindrops fell all around, a thousand ink blots, a brigade of little Rorschach soldiers splashing across the dark pavement of the empty parking lot and out into the quiet road beyond.

She thought of the cat at home, ready to wind around her ankles and purr fiercely until she fed it.  She’d have a bath and dinner and curl up beside it.

Maybe she wouldn’t feel the dreaded loneliness. The prospect of another night of it soaked through her jacket, more insidious than the rain. It spread across her chest, a cold and creeping thing, and settled around her heart.

It was unbearable.   

“I’ll walk you home,” her magician said, beside her, and popped open his umbrella.