Free MAGIC by William Goldman Page A

was a slum on the make, though there were still enough old Jews and aspiring blacks and musicians and artists to make it bearable. Corky took a room at the nearest Y and bought a small mirror and a close-up pad, a thin sponge, and he satand stared at his hands in the mirror holding the cards and when lesson numbers two and three came, they came together, strengthening the ring and the pinkie. You needed the one strong for dealing bottoms and the other for any kind of decent pass and Merlin said that with most, the thumb was too strong if anything, the index and middles strong enough. But the ring and the pinkie were problems, especially with the left hand and both hands had to be the same if you wanted to be great, so Corky sat in front of his small mirror in his Y room and he did lifts with his pinkie, stretches with his ring, then reversed the procedures, over and over till his fingers started cramping. That was good, Merlin said, the cramping showed you were serious but you had to wash your hands awhile then, get them warm so the muscles would stop their rebellion.
    Then back to the mirror, back to the mirror, you had to get the pinkie strong, look out for the ring, work the pinkie, work the ring, forget the cramping, keep at it, keep at it, you had to keep at it if you wanted to be great.
    Merlin was great. Corky could tell that the second week of his apprenticeship when the giant brought him along to an Elks’ smoker in the Valley and Merlin did his close-up stuff, an escape or two, some terrific silk changes, but the audience liked it better when he talked. Merlin made terrible jokes about always getting mistaken for Cary Grant—his jokes seemed mostly to kid about his beauty—and they gave him a decent enough round of applause before they went back to their serious drinking and Merlin picked up fifty in cash from the chief honcho, then drove Corky back to the Y, on the way asking what he thought of the first Cary Grant joke and Corky said fine, why, and Merlin said I was covering a mistake, you always got to have something ready, Leipzig made mistakes, I make mistakes, remember the knife throwing story and Corky asked what that was and Merlin said it was from aplay where an actor had to throw a knife at a wall and what the actor said was, if the knife stuck, “I’m the best in town” and if he missed he said, “I used to be the best in town.” Remember that advice, and Corky said he would and when they were at the Y Merlin said, get lots of sleep, tomorrow we begin with the palm.
    There are coin palms and card palms. For coins you had to know the classic and the edge and the thumb, those were crucial, but the back palm and the back thumb palm were handy to have around too. For cards, you weren’t going anywhere without the diagonal palm and the swing palm, the top, the flip over, the crossways and the bottom.
    When you went on in coins you had to get your switches and your flips and then all the vanishes. Cards had a different world of sleights: lifts and deals, shuffles, slips and, naturally, the passes.
    Corky was good inside a year, good but not, no one needed to tell him, great, and his money was gone but that wasn’t as tragic as it might have been since Merlin had a little stroke after the tenth month and Corky moved in with the giant for what at first was going to be temporary, tending him, sleeping on the couch, talking magic, working magic, reading reading reading the bookshelves through, and when Merlin was around and active he liked the company, he’d always had it, he’d married the dumpling when he was still in his teens. So Corky stayed, and drove the old man’s station wagon to jobs, assisted with the act, and when it came time for the major swings up along the coast, Corky chauffeured and watched and packed and learned, when he wasn’t quite twenty, that he was, astonishingly, good at picking up girls in bars, secretaries and stews and clerks, and at first he thought it was some kind of