Free MAGIC by William Goldman

bad.”
    “I’m sorry kid; y’are.”
    Corky put his cards away in his Windbreaker jacket.
    “What’s your name again?”
    “Corky Withers.”
    “Withers—look around you. This pit is my home. The Collier Brothers would be happy here, but I’m not.”
    Corky glanced around. It was a small apartment, living room, a bedroom, kitchenette and bath. And crammed. Corky had never seen so much magic apparatus in his life. There were shelves full of magic books, boxes piled all over. Vent dolls and egg bags and top hats and gimmicks, fakes and pulls, escape boxes, silks of every color and size.
    Corky thought it was kind of terrific.
    “Magic’s on the skids, Withers. Before my dumpling died last year—” he pointed to a photo of a round, smiling woman “—we had to travel ten months a year to survive. Ten years ago we had to travel four. Once I could stay right here in Los Angeles and eat steak whenever. So what I’m telling you, kid, is why not get yourself an Edsel franchise, you’ll do a lot better. Corner the market in cable cars, if you want. But ride clear of this.”
    Corky shook his head.
    “I’m talking to you ’cause you’re a handsome kid, you got a sweet look, you made me coffee. I’m leveling, believe that. I, Hymie Merlin, Jr., am as good as the game. That’s no shit gospel. I been forty-two out of fifty years in magic. And why have I failed?”
    “You haven’t failed.”
    “I’ll trade you bank accounts blind, the Rockefellers wouldn’t make you that offer. Why is because of what magic is and that’s one thing and one thing only:
entertainment
. Why can’t I entertain? I’m charming, I got good patter, the magic’s as good as the game.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Take a peek at my face, Withers.”
    Corky looked at the huge nose and the wide eyes and the wild hair and the bad mouth with one corner always turned down.
    “I’m ugly, Withers; I got a puss stops clocks. I can’t get on the tv, I can’t do schtick with kids, I survive on a limited market. Now, how do we know that if you get great like me, if you spend those
years
, maybe you won’t be ugly but maybe you won’t have charm. Maybe you’ll eat your guts out seeing guys who can’t do shit getting all the marbles ’cause they got charm. You got charm, Withers?”
    “Nossir.”
    “Then good-bye.”
    “I came to you because it began with you but there’s a million others.
You can’t stop me.”
    “I’m just trying—”
    “—I’ve-got-to-do-this-thing!”
    Merlin looked across. “Hey, you’re crazy, aren’t you, Withers?”
    “… yessir …”
    “How old?”
    “Be nineteen.”
    “How much you got; I cost.”
    “Three thousand dollars.”
    “From what?”
    “My dad helped run a health club in San Diego the last couple years. It’s his life insurance money.”
    “We’d have to start from the top, unlearn all the shit you picked up.”
    “I’m a terrific learner.”
    “You also thought you were a terrific magician.”
    “Okay I’m a shitty learner.”
    A nod from the giant. “You just started learning.”
    Lesson number one was holding cards in your hands. That was all. Corky couldn’t believe it. But those were the instructions. You went to sleep with a pack of cards in each hand and you woke up that way and when you took the bus, you carried the cards and you carried them to the cafeteria, putting them down when you ate but that was all, and in the movies you carried them and ran your fingers along the edges, getting the feel, getting the feel, you weren’t going no place until you had that feel, and Merlin told of Baker, the Princeton kid who was the greatest hockey player of them all and how he used to flash across the rink in total darkness, guiding the puck blind, because if you had to look for it, if you didn’t feel without seeing, forget it.
    Merlin lived in what the real estate people called an “interesting” area between Wilshire and Pico near Fairfax, but what it really was,