Vanishing Act ✔️

9

After each show, Sean would wait while Mr. Lot packed up back stage. He would watch as Mr. Lot counted out his share, and then grabbed a drink from the bar - a gin and tonic, always a gin and tonic.

His Dan Lot was over speaking with the doorman now, waiting as the man counted out each bill. At last, Sean stood up and made his way to the bar. The college girls had left, but the bald man in the polo shirt was still there. Sean set as far from him as he could, and then he waited. The bartender came to take Sean's order, but Sean was not ready. Not yet. He eyed his magician at the door.

Sean's legs quivered, and at one point he found himself balling his fists against his thighs, trying to stop them. He wrapped his feet around the legs of the stool, steadying himself out. A great fear was building, and with it came that pulsing dread that he had felt so long ago. Tonight, however, he would not waver. Sean slipped the paper from his pocket and set it face down on the bar.

Finally, the doorman handed his Mr. Lot the cash. Sean lifted his hand and motioned the bartender over.

"One double shot of Maker's Mark, straight, and one gin and tonic." He handed the man a twenty, paying him up front. He didn't want any more interruptions than were necessary. That was a mistake.

Sean turned back to the door to look for his magician, but much to his surprise, Dan Lot, Eric Solomon, the magician whomever he was, was already sitting beside him.

"Hello, Mr. Garrett," his magician said. "What a pleasure to finally meet."

The man – in this instant he was no longer his Mr. Lot, or his magician, or even the magician, but only the man (and how could Sean have ever thought of him as anything else) – grinned his long yellow-toothed grin.

Sean felt his bowls tremble.

"Please, Sean," the man started, "I'll call you Sean, Mr. Garrett is so formal and you and I, we are closer than that, like brothers one might say, not I, but one – please, Sean, tell me what it is that you have to say."

Sean could form no words; his mouth had gone dry.

"Speechless. Yes, I get that at times, Sean. It is rather rude though, don't you think?"

Still Sean said nothing. He couldn't have spoken even if he had wanted to, though now that was the farthest thing from his mind. Now he just wanted to run. This man could have his sister. He could have the man in the polo at the end of the bar. He could have the jackass in the jacket and his horny girlfriend. He could have the waitress and the bartender and the doorman and every damn drunk he wanted from this bar and every dive between here and Raleigh for all Sean cared at that moment. The only thing that was important was that he not have Sean.

"You follow me from show to show, you follow me for months - and let's be honest, it's more than months, Sean, you've been following me your whole damn life, even here to Los Angeles – and Sean, kiddo, after all this time I do feel close, but I'm afraid if you don't say something I am going to be offended. Do you want to offend me, Sean?"

"No." This was little more than a stammer, but it was the best that Sean could muster. The word drifted out of his throat, like sand on a dry wind.

"No, of course you don't."

The bartender returned with the drinks. The man grabbed his gin and tonic, and then motioned towards the tumbler of whiskey.

"Don't make a man drink alone, Sean."

Sean grabbed the tumbler and brought it quickly to his lips, only he could not open them to drink. A tiny dribble of whiskey ran down his chin.

"Not so fast. We should toast first, but what should we toast to?" The man looked at Sean expectantly. Sean could say nothing. His hand shook, spilling another dribble of whiskey.

"Aw, yes, I have it." The man lifted his glass. "To Your Secret, to Our Secret, and to our dear Miss Carrie Anne Garret."

"To Our Secret," Sean managed, but nothing more. He stared at his glass as he spoke, unable to look at this man beside him.

"No, no, no, Sean. Don't you know you have to look one another in the eyes when you toast? It's rude not to look one in the eyes. No, you really must try that again."

Sean's heart was racing, pounding in his chest, aching and moving in rhythm with the fear and the dread, the ever present dread, now a force of its own beating within him. Any moment now that dread would punch a hole straight through him and he would explode like a melon, like one of those melon's that the comedian, Gallagher, used to hit with a hammer back in the eighties, only, this time the hammer was coming down from inside smashing him open from within.

Sean looked the man in his eyes and what he saw multiplied that dread ten fold. His chest would surely burst, leaving Sean nothing but a bloody smear on the patched carpet of this wretched bar. Those eyes were darker than the blackest ink; they had witnessed decades and centuries and even – yes even – millennia of pain and fear and violence and war and lust and pride and sin beyond measure; they had torn through the souls of countless mortals, tearing the spirit like a child ripping paper. Those eyes were not the eyes of a man but of a thing – and how could he have ever thought of it as a man – and that thing was looking into the darkest recesses of Sean's soul and it was devouring it whole.