The Magician

"Your wife? So you married again?"

"I did, Mavis was the love of my life."

"How did you meet this Mavis?"

"She was my assistant, 'Marissa Monroe', she called herself, but she was really Miss Mavis Elly Potter from Pinner. She was long-legged, blond and busty, but with soft brown eyes and a really sweet nature. I fell for her like a ton of bricks of course and didn't even think to use any magic on her. I was still in the magic business, but only made a couple of guest appearances each year on the tv. I mostly did one night only cabaret in small venues like church halls and provincial theatres here in the UK, but occasional higher profile places like Monte Carlo, Atlantic City and Las Vegas, not the top spots but good venues in those places. Then, through my booking agent one day I got invited to do a cruise again. I hadn't done one for several years, almost a decade, and last time I only did individual table tricks with cards, rather like you do, but to high rollers all done up to the nines, big tippers."

"And more high class wives looking for romance?"

"Yes. But not for me the second time around. I did more than enough of that first time around to be sick of it. Once we got away from that drowned island, I quit the booze but still hadn't taken fully taken stock of my life. One of the wealthy ladies, who was about my age, had already sampled what I had to offer and moved on to one of the more professional ballroom dancers. She had a young daughter with her, an innocent girl, who didn't realise how truly beautiful she was. So I clicked my fingers and she was my plaything for the rest of the week."

"What did her mum think of that?"

"She was pissed off, said she was a major shareholder of the shipping line and threatened to get me sacked. So I waved my hand and the old trout forgot I existed. Her daughter developed a crush and was quite distraught when we parted, so I got her to forget about me and she instantly treated me with the same disdain as before. That set a pattern for the next four months of cruising. Now, I had the pick of the crop of young ladies, I suppose I convinced myself that I was irresistible thanks to the magic, and that I posed no threat to husbands, boyfriends or the girls themselves. I was also greedy, so once I had the girl I wanted, I made her forget me while I pursued the next. All these beautiful daughters of the upper classes being seduced by one of the hoi polloi was a big part of the thrill for me, the sex itself was just sex, enjoyable recreation on a low level, so low that it became meaningless."

"So you used the power of magic to have a great time? I guess if I was single I'd've done something similar."

"You married Ty, right?"

"Yeah, to my sweetheart Jenny-Clare, we've been together since we were at school. We've got two lovely girls."

"Well, bring them round one morning, at the weekend and we can come here and you can let them splash in the lagoon."

"Jessie's only 3 and Mikey's 9 months —"

"Perfect time to learn to swim in a warm shallow lagoon, Ty. No shivering, no dipping toes tentatively, just the joy of cool water on a hot day."

"Tempting, I might take you up on that."

"25 Wellington Terrace, just off Brunswick Street," Moses said, "You'll have to come early, or contact me any time and book the next time I go."

"Thank you, that's very kind of you."

"I've a lot to make up for," Moses muttered, his lined face looking sad, "I was cruel on that cruise and that's when I stopped using the mind wipe. The last girl I seduced using magic was very beautiful, skin like peaches and cream, and was a sweet and lovely girl who looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Her beauty was eternal, the bone structure of her face, her shape, all great genes, she was a youthful vision of her glorious mother. Now, her mother was a multiple married movie star, in her late 40s, who I had bedded on the very first night of her cruise. I didn't need to use magic on the Mum, I just oozed confidence and she wanted me, she was very famous and she looked very good. I got her to forget me the next morning as there was a Brazilian wife of a nasty Argentinian polo club owner and millionaire who took my fancy. However, I later overheard the actress was disparaging me among her sycophants that I was a terrible lay."

"Your mind wipe didn't work?"

"No, not on her apparently, or maybe I only got her to forget the many orgasms she enjoyed so vocally the previous night. I was so pissed that I did the one thing since the drowned island that was absolutely unforgivable ... I dropped the Brazilian woman I had targeted and went for the actress's innocent daughter."

"This sounds ominous, Moses, are you sure you want to unload this, now, to me, someone you hardly know?"

"The only other person I've ever told of this is Mavis and, being the angel that she was, she forgave me. She absolved me of my shame, but it was touch and go for a while as we were still in the early stages of our relationship but it was already intense and we were committing ourselves to each other. This was one of those 'for better for worse' moments, you know? I had to tell her and, for some unknown reason, I feel I should tell you. You've been acting in awe of me for the last hour and I need to disinvest you of that, because I am really a weak and foolish man who just happens can do tricks that no one else can do."

"You're worrying me now Moses. If you've only ever told this secret to the one you love, well, I'd just like to point out that I only bat for the one side."

"Ha! Of course you do, Ty, you arse! Anyway, if you insist that you really don't want to know...."

"Hey, man, it's not that I don't want to know, I just wanna be sure that this is something you want to share. I mean, you've shared the wonder of this fantastic magic with me. Hell, I can see it, feel it, all my senses assaulted by it all around me. The least I can do is hear the flip side of this magic. Carry on, Moses."

"Well, this lovely girl was really quite exquisite, with the looks of her beautiful mother but completely without all the hard cynicism and wanton self-destructive sexuality. I turned on the magic which made that sweet girl receptive to my wooing and I bedded her, only to find to my sobering shock that I took her virginity. I just assumed, knowing she was about twenty and living in her mother's sex-soaked world of make-believe, that she wasn't as innocent as she looked. I took away the innocence of that lovely girl, just so that I could get one over on her mother."

"You didn't know that she was a virgin at the time?"

"No, I didn't, but that was not much consolation to either of us. I was an ugly old man who used the overwhelming power I had at my fingertips to take away a beautiful girl's innocence and I did it with barely a thought for my victim. That privilege to deflower her should have gone to someone who cared about her, loved her, cherished and protected her, and someone she was in love with. It was date-rape, Ty, only using magic to fog her brain with desire instead of drugs. I just wanted to empty myself into her and discard her like a smelly old sock. I ... I tried to atone as much as I could by making her forget me, forget what happened to her. I couldn't assuage my guilt nor could I physically change what happened to her, but I thought I could make her forget it ever happened."

"And did she forget?"

"Yes, at first she did. But I had deliberately marked her, for her mother's benefit, with a prominent hickie on her neck, while getting her passions aroused, steamed up ready to bed her. I marked her out of malice, I wanted her mother to see it, to know it was me that did both mother and daughter. Maybe she wouldn't know it was me but it was one of my ways of getting back at her."

"Did the mother assume it was you?"

"I think so, although I did my best to conceal the fact. Once I had come to my sense of what I had done, I tried my best to mitigate at least the surface consequences of my actions. Every morning for the rest of the trip I disguised the hickie by magic, but it was one of those bits of magic that would vanish as soon as I fell asleep and my influence stopped. Alone with my thoughts I hoped the hickie would fade by the time the cruise ended."

"Did you drop off to sleep too soon and the girl and mother realise?"

"No. Quite unexpectedly, the girl was too much like her mother, she actually remembered what happened to her. She remembered how I seduced her using some sort of power which had overcome her natural revulsion to me, an old man over twice her age, and forcing her against her will by removing her resistance. She actually thought I had used drugs and accused me of that."

"Wow, that was bad, Moses, both what you did to her, but also bad for your reputation. How did she overcome your magic forgetting spell?"

"I really don't know. Was it the constant use of magic I used to disguise her hickie, that undid the mind wipe, or was it some natural resistance she inherited from her mother? The mother had already abused me by remembering at least some of what I had tried to wipe from her memory. All I know is that the girl found her way to my tiny staff cabin in the bowels of the ship the next day and unloaded her anger on me with her tiny fists until she collapsed in inconsolable grief at losing something so precious to her that she had resolved to save for her future beau."

"In complete contrast to her slut mum," Ty understood what Moses had done.

"Completely. It made me a pig, taking something precious from her for no more reason than because I had the power to do so. She was in my tiny cabin, sobbing her heart out on my shoulder as I held her. I had to hold her to prevent her collapsing to the floor in her grief. She didn't struggle, it was as if she had just given up on her future. I sat down on my tiny cot with her in my lap, then laid down holding her. Eventually she fell asleep in my arms and I stayed holding her all that next night. I didn't know what to do, what could I possibly do to make her better? I hardly slept myself, knowing from my island experience that when something has been destroyed there's no way to permanently put it right by the magic I could use."

"What happened to the girl?"

"She was so distraught because she got absolutely no sympathy from her mother, the girl told me through her sobs. Her mother held even her daughter's precious virginity to be worthless, just a passage everyone goes through like a baby's first word, first steps, first tooth under the pillow for the fairies to find. At least I understood what I had done to her and desperately wanted to comfort her. We actually became friends, kept in contact for many years, she found a good bloke within a couple of years and I not only gave her away at her wedding, I'm godfather to two of her four children. I won't mention her name because to do so would compromise trust, but she is a successful screenwriter and artist and her husband is an Oscar-winning film director. She came to Mave's funeral, because they became best friends together and she shared her tears with me over my loss just as we had over hers all those years ago. Lovely girl, well, she's probably over 60 now, we lost touch after Mavis died, but a lovely person, with the strongest marriage and family you could ever wish for."

"So, it was after that incident with the girl that you met Mavis your wife?"

"Yes, maybe seven or eight years later. Mave was the love of my life. But you don't have to hear me rabbit on about her, it'll be dark soon and we need to go back."

"Hey, I'm enjoying this glorious sunset without a care in the world at the moment, still trying to take in all the magic stuff ... so, please tell about Mavis."

CHAPTER 3

MAVIS

"You're a glutton for punishment." Moses shook his head and began, "My agent got me a cruise gig just at a time when I was starting to hate the constant travelling in the UK, Australia and North America."

"Hey, cruise ships are constantly on the move, man."

"Yes, I know," Moses chuckled, "but aboard ship your hotel room is constant and everything you need is within walking distance of your cabin, it's travelling but without all the one-night stand upheaval. But this time they wanted a traditional magic cabaret stage act with magic trick stuff like sawing the assistant in half, throwing hatchets at a young scantily dressed lady on a revolving board, making her disappear after surrounding her with a curtain, all that kind of act. So I needed a permanent assistant."

"Ah, one that didn't disappear overnight when you slept?"

"You got it. On board ship I couldn't get away with using an imaginary assistant, which I had used for several years of touring. I interviewed several candidates through my agent but Mavis had worked the magic scene before, was pretty enough and supple enough to do the escapology tricks and, well, I just liked her as soon as I started talking to her."

"Liked her? How old were you and she?"

"Hey, I only liked her as an assistant I could work with, who would also be a necessary distraction for the audience. I had absolutely no designs on her, I'd given all that up by then. Yes, I liked her straight away, she was sparky and bright, but sweet too, like the girl next door but with a smile that could set Hollywood alight if she had a mind to. We even got on well together personally. Sure, she knew she was gorgeous, but she was no dummy prepared to just get by on her looks, nor did she expect star treatment. Yes, there was a large age difference, she was 22 and I was 55, but I had the magic at work inside me and I looked about 40, ok, 45. I only found out that I was a magician when I was about 45, so not only did I only age about one or two years in that decade, my body was fitter, my hair thickened and darkened, I was physically stronger and my confidence gave me a certain presence that I probably always lacked before."

"So you had become a catch for the ladies?"

"For the middle-aged widows, divorcees and wives out for a good time, a one-night lover only, sure, I was MILF catnip, but I wasn't at all interested in them any more, I'd had my fill of sowing wild oats a decade earlier, for reasons already explained. None of the women on those cruises, mothers or daughters, could hold a candle to my new assistant Mavis and I simply wasn't interested in anyone who couldn't match up to Mavis. She was way outside my league, so I had no wish to embarrass myself with her but I was determined to be the best older friend to her that I could possibly be to build her up for her next partner."

"Yet somehow you both fell in love and you married her?"

"We respected each other from the outset, but we also worked hard together. Using a human assistant I had to use the usual professional props and tricks, and we both showed a lot of pizzazz doing it. What a buzz that was every performance! We just worked so well together, like we produced something better than the sum of our two parts and I only used the magic very sparingly, so everything was perfect. And a month or so into the cruise season, although neither of us were interested in sleeping with anyone, we were really comfortable with each other, even spending all our spare time together. We ate meals together, relaxed in each other's company, took the odd shore leave tour together."

"It sounds like a romance."

"Yes, it felt good, I looked forward to seeing her as soon as possible after I got up every morning. Although our relationship was based on the work and neither of us were slackers, we needed to relax and rest and we just enjoyed being with each other. Mavis always seemed keen to meet up and I certainly never complained. We rehearsed and modified all the elements of the act until it was absolutely first rate. As our confidence and trust grew, we tried trickier stuff, going as close to the edge as we could and then, one day, something went seriously wrong."

The old man paused, his head filled with memories, a tear escaped and ran down his left cheek.

"What happened Moses?"

"We regularly did a water tank trick as our finale, where I was covered in padlocked chains and fully immersed in a glass fish tank behind an all-enveloping raised and lowered curtain, which was lifted once during the act to show the artiste was still under water then closed again ready for the finale. By the time we open the curtains that first time, the swimmer would have already released the initial padlocks, opened the padlocked lid and taken a breath out of the top of the tank. As the curtain was lowered again, I would be seen franticly searching for the right key to the padlock securing the chain among a pile of 50 keys in the bottom of the tank. When the curtains were finally lifted the tank would be empty with me either standing up on top, or disappeared into thin air; actually hoisted away to the deck above, from where I would run down the stairs and run through the audience to the stage, still dripping wet."

"I've seen the trick, it's quite dramatic."

"Mavis persuaded me to switch places, with Mavis in the tank instead of me. Only on one occasion she couldn't get out, the trick clasp on the tank cover had jammed so she couldn't open the lid and take that essential first breath. Although the pins had been removed, the mishandling by stage hands had slightly distorted the clasp and she couldn't release it from the inside, she didn't have the strength. She was trapped under water for at least three minutes."

"What did you do?"

"I said 'Oops' to the audience, calmly dropped the curtains down for two seconds and magically waved her back to my cabin. I thought she would appreciate more my floor being wet than hers. In fact, my whole cabin including my bed got absolutely soaked. The twenty gallons of water around her must've exploded when she materialised. The staff cabins on those cruise ships are really just oversized cupboards and everything got soaked"

"How did that go down?"

"Oh well, overall the reaction was what you could call 'mixed'," Moses laughed, "firstly, the audience absolutely loved it when the tank was empty. I and I alone got a standing ovation and two curtain calls. As for Mavis, well, no, she liked it ... nowhere near so much. She missed her curtain call bow to the audience and only caught up with me just as I got to the dressing room. Staff cabins are a long way from the civilised part of the ship. After she roundly smacked me in the face twice, once with each hand, she collapsed in tears. She thought she was going to die in that glass tank and she couldn't understand how I managed to drag her to my cabin and dump her there."

"Isn't it usually the magician that gets into the water, not the assistant?"

"True, and that's how the trick was when the cruise started. But some of the audience had seen the act several times during the cruise and she wanted to rehearse doing it with her taking my place. She demonstrated that it was safe and we rehearsed the hell out of it behind closed doors without any mishap. One day I had a really heavy cold, there was always some bug floating round those ships and the crew and entertainment staff caught everything going. I couldn't breathe that well so she begged to perform it on stage instead. So we did. I ham acted my part, with me playing up the coughing fits, so she was acting really sweetly in her concern for my welfare, getting the audience to buy into it and highlighting the risk to this slightly built and very lovely lady. We did that switching roles on an every-other-time basis and she always got a standing ovation. She loved it and I loved seeing her being treated like the star of the show."

"So suddenly transporting Mavis to your cabin gave your game away to her?"

"Yes, and I couldn't even consider wiping her memory. I had long stopped doing that."