A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  He threw it and watched it spin on the breeze, losing sight of it against the bright blue sky.

  Farewell.

  His third night at sea, he’d had enough of his own company, fed up soul-searching and just about done feeling sorry for himself. He decided to check out the onboard entertainment. It would be a waste not to: Albert Fleet had worked hard to earn the money that was paying for this, after all.

  The assistant has retreated offstage, leaving the Great Mysto to run through a few tricks on his own. Watching him work – clunky and struggling – Zal is feeling a strange disquiet, a restlessness of spirit. It’s growing like a goddamn itch. He observes Mysto go through the motions and can’t help but remember sitting in a lounge in Vegas, watching his dad do all of this so much better: so, so much better. Even hungover, even half drunk, his father was several classes above this shambles, and probably several classes above Mysto even when the latter had been at the top of his game. He remembers the view from the side of the stage, once he was a little older, after Mom died and Dad straightened out, when his old man employed him behind the scenes. He feels the restlessness turn into a twisted longing that churns him up inside. He’s recalling the conflict within, the price he paid for a denial borne out of spite and blame and anger and grief and all the things a boy his age could neither comprehend nor contain.

  ‘This stuff can be taught, son,’ his dad stated. ‘I was taught, and I had a great teacher. But you’ve got something natural, something that cannae be taught. You could be among the best, son, way above my league.’

  Time and again his dad would tell him this, and that angry, hollow part of him enjoyed hearing it because he knew how much it hurt the old man. Not becoming a magician, not realising his own potential and his father’s dreams, that was his revenge for how the old man had failed him and Mom, his payback for the neglect and selfishness of the alcoholism that caused Zal to blame his dad for her death as much as the asshole drunk-driver who killed her.

  Yeah, he really socked it to him with that shit. If you really want to hurt someone, hurt the one he loves. Zal’s revenge had been an ongoing act of self-harm.

  Seeing the not-so-Great Mysto right now, it all comes back, though the memory of his anger is transmuted into sadness and regret, and it is the feeling his anger was in conflict with that comes through strongest. He felt it when he was seven years old, he felt it in his teens, he felt it even as he told his dad he wanted nothing to do with his profession, and he felt it every night he pulled a crowd in the Dracon Rojo.

  The Great Mysto completes a passable cup-and-balls routine. Zal watches his thumb and forefinger, his wrist action. The appropriate joints are still supple enough to turn the moves, though there’s an awkwardness about his grip that would be jarring to a more attentive audience. Zal flexes his own digits, feels the absence of a coin like it’s the absence of a finger, and reaches to his pocket to remedy this. He flips it, turns it, passes it, repeating the moves absently like a nervous habit as the show limps on.

  Mysto procures a volunteer, picking on a parent near the front, knowing an adult will be too polite to refuse. Zal wonders what he’s going to attempt, and is set on edge to see the magician break out a deck of cards. The woman briskly approaches the stage with the same combination of the dutiful and sheepish, as though she was retrieving her errant toddler from having strayed into someone else’s cabin. Mysto executes a three-quarter circular fan of the deck, which looks graceful enough in motion, but fairly ragged and uneven by the time he’s presenting it to his ‘volunteer’. He offers her the fan and asks her to pick a card, which she must show to the audience but not to him. It’s the ace of diamonds; Zal’s guessing a force, given it’s a big card, wonders if it might even be a forcing pack.

  He fumbles slightly as he closes the fan, inviting her to place the card where he has cut the deck. Zal wonders for a second whether it’s a mask for his technique, the moment of clumsiness creating the offbeat in which to execute a switch, but no: this isn’t a trick, it’s a tragedy. The legendary Cardini feigned being drunk, but that was an intrinsic part of his act, a running gag between him and his audience and thus part of the charm of his act. This, by contrast, is merely painful to behold, and of the audience, only Zal is even capable of noticing.

  The lady scuttles hurriedly back to her seat, while Mysto walks to the front of the stage, cutting and recutting the pack.

  ‘In order to find your card, madam, I’m going to perform a special shuffle. It’s one that takes years to perfect, so don’t anybody ask me to teach them it afterwards, and don’t ask me to repeat it, because at my age I’m lucky if I can get it right once. Okay, here goes.’

  Zal leans forward on his seat, the coin between his fingers suddenly held still in suspense. This is even worse than the basket illusion. Mysto cuts the deck once more, taking a half in each of his gnarly and slightly malformed hands. Though he feels like he ought to be watching through his fingers, Zal’s eyes are locked on to Mysto’s own digits, his thumbs springing tension into the cards, preparing a horizontal spring riffle.

  The magician’s hands suddenly spasm and the cards explode from the collapsing cradle of his fingers, spraying, spinning, fluttering about the stage like crisp autumn leaves stirred from the gutter by a sudden gust. It is not a flourish, but a fumble, a moment of startlement. A trick derailed, an unscripted incompetence. Some members of the audience gasp, others fail to stifle giggles. The muted laughter is horrible: a cringing combination of being embarrassed on the faltering magician’s behalf and being embarrassed by being present at such a tawdry spectacle. But can he recover, that’s the question? Does he have an out?

  The Great Mysto looks up once the last of the cards has fluttered to the ground, then gives a grin.

  ‘Told you I can only do it once,’ he says, eliciting a couple of sympathetic laughs. ‘But I did also say it was magic. What was your card, madam?’

  ‘The ace of diamonds,’ the lady replies.

  The magician turns side-on and gestures to the rear of the stage. Sitting on the brass cradle, where the lump of coal was resting the last time anyone cared to look, is the card she named.

  ‘And what do you know, it turned into a diamond in the end.’

  The magician takes his bow, joined shortly by his assistant. There is applause, mostly out of relief that the show is over. Zal, however, offers his more sincerely. The Great Mysto might be failing and ailing, but kudos to him, kudos indeed, as he really drew Zal with that last trick. He liked everything about it, everything it represented. Zal guessed the assistant had reached through the curtain and performed the switch during the disastrous spring riffle, which was poetry: his revenge on his debilitation, and the only moment he’d shown a genuine twinkle in his eye.

  The house lights come up and the audience begin to bail before Mysto and his assistant have even left the stage. Not everybody makes for the exit, however: Zal spots a man in a suit, with a laminate clipped to his breast pocket, standing just inside the door, leaning against the wall, arms folded. Having had his eyes on the stage, Zal doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there or how much of the show he’s seen, but from his expression, figures an accurate estimate would be ‘enough’. He waits until the performers have retreated from sight and begins making his way towards the front, treading on to the stage and through the curtains with the unmistakable proprietary air of officialdom.

  Zal remains in his seat, the only spectator left as a couple of cleaners enter the room with a cart and begin moving through the rows clearing trash. He figures the popcorn boxes and candy wrappers aren’t the only things getting shit-canned right now.

  The guy in the suit emerges only a few minutes later, pausing for a moment to let out a long sigh before heading for the main door. He doesn’t look like he enjoyed what he just did, so give him that much.

  Serendipity: is it being in the right place at the right time, or are we frequently in the right place at the right time and serendipity is the nam
e we give to those rare moments when we have the vision to realise it?

  Zal waits for the guy in the suit to leave, then makes his way on to the stage and slips behind the curtain. The area beyond is deceptively large, far deeper than the view from the front suggested. The Great Mysto has draped it to control the sight-lines, bearing in mind the two pillars, and delineated a small performing area, leaving an unused space at least three times the size of what the audience can see. For this reason, neither he nor the assistant notice Zal slip through the velvet and stand still, taking in the plethora of props and equipment ranged untidily about the place; some of it deposited haphazardly during the performance, other items veteran remnants of shows gone by: artefacts of the Great Mysto’s magical history, uncatalogued museum pieces, impeccably preserved but gathering dust.

  Mysto and his assistant are a good ten yards away, the magician sitting on a closed trunk, his back to Zal, blocking him from the girl’s line of sight. Zal figures he could be right next to them and they’d not notice, as they seem isolated in their own intimate little world of despond. Zal hears the man cry, sees his shoulders shake with a sob, sees the girl’s arms move around him, the top of her head visible as she leans over and presses her face against his chest. Zal hears her sniff.

  ‘Oh, please don’t cry, Dad, you’re setting me off now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love. I’ll be fine in a minute. Don’t know why I’m like this: I knew what was coming, we both did. It’s just... well, I’d like to have known it was my last show before, you know? In advance. Not find out like this that it’s already gone. Best part of forty years and it all ends just like that, with a whimper. My bloody whimper,’ he adds with a bitter laugh.

  ‘Just remember that the best part of those forty years wasn’t on this bloody tub, Dad.’

  ‘Aye, that I know, Lizzie. And it’s a mercy, really. You ought to be spreading your wings, girl. Not stuck here propping up an old fossil.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Dad. Besides, nobody’s been battering down my door, either.’

  ‘Well, more fool them. Ach, I should have given up ages ago, that’s all I’m saying. Never dragged you along after I ought to have realised my time was up.’

  Lizzie sniffs again. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it, Dad,’ she says.

  Zal is conscious of his apparent invisibility and decides he ought to draw attention to his presence before he feels any more voyeuristic. He has been inspecting the contents of a well-travelled but formidably constructed wood-and-leather trunk, so lets the lid drop closed. The bang is cushioned, testament to the craftsmanship, but audible enough for Lizzie to stand up straight and look over her father’s now slowly turning head.

  ‘Can we help you?’ she asks, with an aggression that instead states: ‘Can we help you rapidly fuck off out of our privacy?’

  Zal understands what he’s just walked into and knows he has to defuse it. He also knows that simply being here and derailing their grief is already half the battle. He now just needs a little of the conjuror’s stock-in-trade: misdirection.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, bending down briefly and passing an appreciative hand over a device on the floor, rolled back there and discarded during the performance. ‘This flower cascade looks like a Bautier deKolta. It’s not...surely not an original, is it? And if my eyes don’t deceive me, that looks very much like a cocktail bar set-up after Alan Wakeling.’

  Lizzie comes stomping towards him, wiping a tear but indignation thoroughly erasing the grief from her expression.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she mutters to her father. ‘That tosser Henderson tipped the wink to some bloody collector before he even informed you. Of all the disrespect...’

  ‘I’m not a collector,’ Zal informs her calmly.

  ‘Wasting your time if you were,’ says Mysto, getting off the trunk he was sitting on and turning towards Zal. ‘They’re neither of them originals. Made ’em meself, but you could call them reproductions.’

  ‘I’m betting you made the trunks too. The deKolta is first class, great to see something like that still in action.’

  The old man can’t help but smile, as much at a shared appreciation of the golden-age apparatus as at Zal’s compliment to his craftsmanship. Lizzie stands vigilantly with her arms folded, like a bouncer waiting for the nod to kick Zal out into the street.

  ‘I did have first-hand access to the originals,’ Mysto says. ‘Collector got me to manufacture a working copy of the cascade so he had a functional model as well as one actually crafted by the man himself, and I just made two. For the Wakeling copy, I had to procure a private examination.’ He raises his eyebrows involuntarily at this, the memory of a doubtless dubious undertaking. ‘Haven’t used it in a while, though. It’s my hands, you see.’

  Zal nods.

  ‘Bet it worked beautifully back in the day, though.’

  ‘Oh, what? Brought the house down,’ he says with a sad smile, which turns that bit brighter and prouder as he adds: ‘Though not as much as my deKolta Expanding Die.’

  ‘You gotta be kidding me. Jesus, didn’t even Houdini covet the secret of that trick? And you made one yourself?’

  ‘Houdini paid Goldston a fortune for it, yes, but then Goldston published the plans so Houdini wouldn’t have it exclusively, one of the few times a friend or a rival – and Goldston was both – put one over on him. Happily for the likes of me, the design’s long since been out there for those as have the know-how and the skill to give it life.’

  Mysto warms to his subject, already talking to Zal with an openness and enthusiasm that seems to have forgotten their circumstances. Lizzie hasn’t, and decides to intervene.

  ‘I really am sorry, Mr, eh...?’

  Zal turns to look at her, takes a beat. ‘McMillan,’ he tells her.

  ‘Mr McMillan. This isn’t the best time right now. Sorry to be brusque, but can you tell us your business, please? If you’re not a collector, then who are you?’

  Jolted out of reverie by his daughter, Mysto remembers himself enough to be suspicious rather than merely curious. ‘Aye,’ he says inquiringly. ‘What kind of man can recognise a deKolta, never mind an Alan Wakeling reproduction?’

  ‘The kind of man who saw Alan Wakeling use it live on stage, though I was very young, so I remember it better from seeing Earl Nelson perform later using Wakeling’s original rig. I’m a man very much like yourself, Mr...?’

  ‘Morrit. Daniel Morrit. Like me how? A magician?’

  ‘An out-of-work magician. One could in fact say, very accurately, that we’re in the same boat.’

  ‘If that’s the standard of your patter, no wonder you’re out of work,’ Morrit says grimly.

  ‘So you were tipped off,’ Lizzie observes.

  ‘No, I’m just a keen observer. Keen enough to spot that the Great Mysto can’t handle coins or cards any more, though not keen enough to spot you switching that ace for the coal.’ Zal smiles. ‘I liked that.’

  Lizzie’s arms remain folded but there’s a hint of pride in her face at this compliment. Zal can tell her defences are lowering, just a little.

  ‘I want to make you an offer,’ he says.

  ‘For what?’ Morrit asks grumpily. ‘The deKolta?’

  ‘No, for everything.’

  ‘Job lot? I don’t know, son. Some of this stuff I’d never sell, other of it’s not worth a wet fart. Besides, it’s too soon for me to be thinking about it. For God’s sake, I only just—’

  ‘When I say everything, I don’t mean your stuff. I mean the show: like a franchise. Or more like a partnership. I’ll confess, watching the performance, I was just planning to offer to buy you out, but when I came backstage and saw some of this stuff, I realised...’

  ‘Hang on a minute, son,’ Morrit says, screwing his face up like he’s trying to do trigonometry in a hurricane. ‘I think you’re forgetting what happened between you watching the show and you coming back here. There is no show. We’ve had our cards, remember? Henderson’s paid us off. Settled th
e rest of our contract but told us we’re not performing any more. Said we were bringing down the tone, not up to the class they want the ship associated with, and he’s not bloody wrong, either.’

  Zal nods, unperturbed.

  ‘Were you contracted for just this cruise, or a month, six months, what?’ he asks.

  ‘Just this cruise, but it doesn’t—’

  ‘That’s ideal. Means we can negotiate a better contract all the sooner. That’s assuming you and I can reach an accommodation. I’d need you to be my technical consultant as well as my craftsman, and I’m rusty on a few techniques so you’d be my tutor too. You’d retain ownership of all the materials but we’d be fifty-fifty on any new apparatus our collaboration happens to conceive.’

  Morrit starts shaking his head. The trigonometry face has loosened and given way to an expression of patient amusement at the ramblings of a fool. He steals a glance across at his daughter, whose incredulity looks neither patient nor amused.

  ‘What part of “we’re fired” are you having trouble grasping, Mr McMillan?’ she asks.

  ‘All of it,’ Zal shoots back, eyeing Lizzie with his own impatient sincerity. ‘Look, I appreciate that this is the bit in the musical where it looks like the show won’t go on, but believe me, it will. Your show is over, that part’s true, but this guy Henderson has a boatload of people to entertain, and if we stage a new show that puts asses on seats, that’s all he’s gonna care about.’