The Magician - Part 3

Two years later

"Ladies and gentlemen, will you please put your hands together in a warm round of applause for our first guest this evening, Mr Frank Spinelli!"

Just off-stage Spinelli straightened his suit and stiffly walked out into the spotlight. He waved a half hearted wave toward the audience and smiled laconically as he made his way across to the seat beside the presenter. He shook the hand of the presenter and, awkwardly, bent his bad leg into a comfortable position as he sat down.

"It's great to have you on the show, Frank, can I call you Frank?" the presenter asked, straightening the cue cards in his hand.

"Spinelli, please." Spinelli replied.

"Spinelli it is then!" The presenter said, not missing a beat. "Now, you first came to prominence about what? A year and a half ago, two years now? Where had you been hiding before then?"

"Well, Jack, I wasn't hiding, as such, I was just working on my act, you know. The thing is that in today's society everyone thinks they can get ahead by just being in the right place at the right time and to be fair, sometimes you can, but mostly" Spinelli paused for dramatic effect, and smiled at the audience's silence "but mostly it takes a lot of hard work. A ton of effort. Multiple knockbacks and an indecent number of failures before things finally start clicking for you."

"So what was that click then that worked for you, that moment when things finally started going your way?"

Two years ago

"Mr...Spinelli is it?"

The bright light burned Spinelli's eyes as he opened them. His arms felt heavy and he struggled to lift them and block out the fluorescent light of the hospital ward.

Through bleary vision he could make out the indistinct figure of a woman.

"Mr Frank Spinelli?" the woman asked.

"Yes?" He croaked, his mouth dry.

"How are you feeling today?" As Spinelli's eyes adjusted he could now make out the doctor's coat, the clipboard in her hands, the appraising look of her eyes in contrast with her easy smile.

"Thirsty...how long...how long have I been here? Where is here?" Spinelli asked.

"Saint Jude's hospital. We brought you in about ten days ago now, well, over ten days, closer to eleven now actually." The doctor looked down at her phone, tapped on the screen and then looked back at Spinelli. "A nurse will be along with water in just a moment. My name is Doctor Ingles, this isn't the first time we've spoken but the last time you were in such a dreadful state and then you've been slipping in and out of consciousness for the past week and a half."

"I was? I have been?" Spinelli closed his eyes.

"Mr Spinelli?"

"Yes," he opened his eyes, "sorry, I'm still awake, just the light...it's very bright."

"Sorry about that, I'll get it for you." Doctor Ingles walked across the room and turned a dial, dimming the light. "Better?"

"Much, thank you."

"No problem." She smiled, and then went on, "I'll be back shortly to check up on you."

She left the room and Spinelli pushed himself up into a sitting position. A great pain shot up his left leg and he gasped sharply. Gingerly he lifted the blanket and saw why he'd felt such pain; attached to his leg was a rod a few inches long which was apparently bolted through the flesh and to his shin bone.

"I see you've found your external fixator." said a voice from the door. Spinelli looked up and saw a nurse standing at the door. "Hi, I'm nurse Roberts, I'm here to help clean the open wounds on your leg."

Spinelli nodded grimly and Roberts entered the room properly.

"It's not too bad," said Roberts, "I wouldn't look so worried about it. You just take these swabs and basically gently scrap around the bolts. Stops bacterial growth because, you know, it's an open wound and all essentially."

Roberts opened a pack of sterile swabs and sat at the foot of Spinelli's bed.

"While you're in here, I'll be doing it for you, but I'll show you to be doing it properly for when you get out of here."

"How long does it have to stay on for?"

"Can't really say," Roberts said, putting on a pair of surgical gloves, "however long it needs to be, could be a month, could be six. Could be even longer. Can I be entirely honest though?" He looked around conspiratorially, Spinelli followed his gaze and then nodded. "To be honest, I'm surprised you've still got a leg in all fairness. I was here the night they brought you in, your leg was mangled to bits, I've never seen a leg in as bad a shape as yours without the person losing it. Don't know what was going on with the surgeons, normally with something so bad they'd have just chopped it, maybe they just felt like a challenge or something. Seriously good luck that it's still attached and doing so well."

"It doesn't feel like good luck." Spinelli said through gritted teeth as Roberts started dabbing at the first bolt.

"Well, relatively speaking it's good luck." Roberts picked up a new swab. "What were you doing out there anyway, they say they picked you up in the middle of a deserted street."

"I was walking home, it was a shortcut..." Spinelli paused, thinking about the old man in the house, he decided not to mention that detail, "I thought I saw something in one of the abandoned houses but I must have imagined it. The staircase fell in when I was coming out and I gashed my leg pretty badly, I guess, though I didn't think it was this bad. I made it out and must have made a call but I don't remember."

"See, that's the weird thing, people have been talking," Roberts looked around again to make sure they were alone, "an old man made the call to the ambulance service. Mate of mine works up in the dispatch room, said it was right weird. An old man, sounded welsh, called and said something like 'the idiots injured himself, can you get up to Prendergast Road, he's bleeding out on the pavement. Now the call came from a landline, but like you said that entire area's abandoned, has been for years. Right spooky it is, if you ask me."

"It was probably just a passerby or something," Spinelli grimaced as Roberts wiped the pus from the open wound. "If he was old probably didn't have a mobile phone, must've hurried home and made the call."

"Maybe, maybe." said Roberts, sounding sceptical. "Still bloody weird though. They found you next to a suitcase of magician crap as well."

"Ah." Spinelli turned crimson, "That would have been my case...I'm something of an amateur magician. I was actually on my way back from a gig."

"Really?" Roberts said, enthusiastically, "I love magic, always have done. Would you be against doing a trick for me?"

"What, now? And also, I'm not very good, it was mostly coin and card tricks, I tried doing an animal bit and I was actually..."he tailed off as he saw Roberts rifling though the pockets of his scrubs, "what are you doing?"

"You said coins right," Roberts handed Spinelli a couple of coins, "do a trick!"

"Seriously, I've only just come out of a coma or whatever?"

"Please, come on man, I'm cleaning your wounds for you."

"Yeah, but that's your job."

"I know, but still..."

Spinelli looked at the pleading look on Roberts' face and sighed.

"Fine, one trick." and to himself he added "I'll just do a piss poor trick so he'll not ask again."

 He picked up the two coins and presented them. Waving one hand over the other he dropped one of the coins into the passing hand as it went by, then opened the first hand to reveal one coin had gone missing. He then threw that coin up into the air and caught it in his other hand. He opened his hand to reveal...three coins.

"What..." he glared at the three coins in his hand, where had the other one came from.

"Hey, that's pretty good. Where'd you get the other coin?"

"I...a magician never reveals his secrets." Spinelli said, handing the coins to Roberts.

"Do you mind if I get some of the others in here to see you do that?" asked Roberts.

"I...no, I wouldn't mind, I wouldn't mind at all." Spinelli said, before realising that he had no idea how he had performed the trick.

Within ten minutes, Spinelli's room was filled with patients, doctors, nurses who all gasped and marvelled at his trick. They clapped enthusiastically each time. They hung onto his every word, laughing with, instead of at, him. He smiled, he had no idea how, but he was finally where he wanted to be.

Present day

"Before you go, Spinelli," the presented beamed a smile, "it would be remiss of me to let you leave without asking to see the trick that made you so famous in the first place."

Spinelli smiled a plastic smile.

"Of course," he said. He stood up, and performed the same simple trick, the only trick his audience wanted, the only trick the audience ever desired from him. Still, they loved and applauded him for it and still, he had no idea how it worked.

"Thank you," said the host to Spinelli, and then turning to the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Frank Spinelli everybody!"

The audience clapped furiously and Spinelli bowed slightly and limped off stage. The second he was off camera, his face took on the haunted, grim look it wore when no one was looking. This was not what he had wanted, this was not what he had wanted at all.

He left the studio. The driver tipped his cap to him as he opened the door of the car that was to take him back to the hotel before tomorrow's journey to London, and then to America, Germany, Japan, the world was his and everyone loved him for something he had no control over. He looked at the future and despaired when suddenly, it occurred to him.

"Driver?" he said.

"Yes sir?"

"...Before the hotel, can you take me to Prendergast Road?"

"I don't know where that is, sir." replied the driver.

"Don't worry, I'll give you directions." said Spinelli, reclining into the back seat of the car, it was finally time.