The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 (22 page)

Those brilliant black eyes held me transfixed. They searched my face; they searched my soul. They interrogated me, asking questions that I sensed but could not articulate. Standing on his threshold in my neat skirt and sweater set, clutching my folder of head shots, I suddenly felt stark naked.

His silent scrutiny seemed endless. Finally I could bear it no longer. I held out my hand. “I’m Myra O’Toole. I’ve come about the job.”

Slowly, as if waking from a trance, he grasped my hand. His hot skin made me wonder if he had a fever. “Myra. Welcome. Thank you for coming. Please, come inside.” That voice. I could not resist it. I followed him down a shadowy corridor, into what must have been the front room.

If his appearance did not exactly jibe with my idea of a magician, his flat certainly did. The windows were all draped in heavy black velvet. Candles provided the only light, dozens of them, tapers stuck in bottles and squat votives burning in glass dishes. There were books everywhere, not only on the shelves that lined the walls, but in piles on the chairs and in the corners. I noted other oddities, too: an antique model of the solar system, a stuffed owl on the marble mantelpiece, a grimacing mask fashioned of beads and feathers. There was a faint, strange odor. I thought that I recognized sage, and perhaps sandalwood.

He gestured for me to sit in a tattered Victorian-era arm chair and settled his bulk into its mate. There was another long silence, during which I squirmed under his appraising gaze. At last he spoke.

“I am Magister Aleister.”

“Like Aleister Crowley?”

“A distant relative, I’ve been told. And you are Myra O’Toole.” He leaned forward, his lips parted to reveal sharp white teeth. “Tell me something of yourself, Myra. Where are you from? Are you married? What prompted you to answer my advertisement?”

“I’m an actress.” I held out my portfolio to him, but he ignored it. “I thought that working as a magician’s assistant might – broaden my perspective.”

He did not speak, expecting more.

Despite my best efforts, a bit of my frustration and despair crept into my voice. “I need the work.”

He nodded, silently inviting me to continue.

“I came to San Francisco from Pittsburgh nine months ago to live with my boyfriend. He’s a poet.”

“And?” Magister Aleister prompted. I hesitated, not wanting to get into the sordid story of Dylan’s drinking problem.

“It didn’t work out.”

“So, you are currently on your own?”

I nodded, wondering what possible relevance this question had to the job. Almost as if he could read my thoughts, he answered my mental question. “This position will demand a great deal of you. We will be working intensively on your training. Day and night. Thus, it would be best if you had no encumbrances, no competing claims on your time and energy.”

This made sense. I almost relished the thought of work so encompassing that it could make me forget about Dylan.

Brilliantly talented, irredeemably bohemian Dylan. Unshed tears gathered in my throat as I recalled our all-night conversations and our funky passion. The way he had showed up at my door that first night, with his torn dungarees, droopy moustache and bottle of Stolichnaya. When he came to the City to seek his fortune, I followed like a moth to a flame, though New York or Los Angeles would have been more logical places to pursue my theatrical ambitions.

After a few months, his dingy basement apartment in the Tenderloin had begun to feel like a prison. He was my jailor, sitting up until five a.m., writing, chain-smoking and guzzling cheap vodka, while I tossed alone in our bed. Finally, I left to save myself, knowing that I could not salvage him.

I swallowed my regrets and turned my attention back to the magician. He still watched me as if he would strip away my masks and lay me bare. Suddenly, he reached out and with one blunt finger touched the little gold cross hanging around my neck.

“Are you a believer?” he asked. Memories shot through me: my childhood awe as I knelt under the cathedral arches; my first communion, colored light through the windows staining my bride-like finery; my mother dying of cancer, asking for my prayers.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I used to be, but now . . .”

“And what about magic?” he asked with that ironic half-smile on his full lips. “Do you believe in magic?”

My heartbeat inexplicably quickened. “I don’t know that, either.”

“There is much in common between religion and magic. Both are grounded in faith and love. The essence is a trust in things unseen.” I thought this a peculiar observation from a practicing conjuror. Surely the essence of magic was manipulating expectations and perceptions. Show business. “I have something to show you,” he continued.

He removed the dusty velvet cloth shrouding what turned out to be a combination television and VCR. It must have already had a tape loaded; as soon as he hit the button, it began to play. “Watch closely,” he said.

It was a recording of one of his performances. At first, I did not recognize him. He was clad all in black, with glittering rhinestones at his collar and cuffs. He moved with a grace and economy that negated his bulk. There was no sound.

He offered a few deft sleight of hand tricks as warm up. Then he was joined by his assistant, a slender, raven-haired Latin beauty wearing a scarlet evening gown. How could I compare? I wondered. As if he heard my thoughts, he commented. “Roxanne. Exquisite, isn’t she?”

“What happened to her, that you need a new assistant?”

His face darkened. “She suffered an unfortunate – accident.”

Roxanne lay down on her back on a trestle table. The magician draped her with purple satin. He passed his hands over her, clearly speaking some incantation. The draped figure began to rise, until it hovered level with his chest. The mage then removed the table.

The illusion of levitation, I thought. Cleverly concealed wires.

But then the scenario began to veer from the standard. Magister Aleister whisked the drapery off Roxanne’s prone body. He picked up a full-length oval mirror and held it above the immobile figure, moving it up and down her body in a manner that would have effectively interrupted any possible attachment of cables from above. I could see her reflection in the glass, and faintly, a misting from her breath. Her eyes were closed. Then he crouched and moved the mirror underneath her, as if to prove that she was not supported from below. He released the mirror, and it hovered below her form, halfway between her body and the stage.

The mage now made some passes over his assistant, his hands elegant and evocative. Her body began to rotate. First, she floated in a lazy circle around the vertical axis, her head and feet changing places. Then, very slowly, she rolled over, so that she was facing downward, once more face to face with the mirror. The video was clear; again, I could see the marks of her breathing.

I was impressed. I could not understand how such a trick could be accomplished. What arrangement of wires or hidden frames could provide so many degrees of freedom? The next trick, however, amazed and horrified me.

The magician gestured and Roxanne floated to a standing position, her crystal slippers barely touching the ground. Her eyes were still closed. He did not wake her from her trance. Instead, he pulled from the wings a framework of wrought iron, rather like an oversized bird cage. It was hinged along one side. He opened it, pulled it around Roxanne’s body, and snapped it shut, then applied a padlock to the latch. I could almost hear the clang of metal on metal.

A heavy cable slithered down toward the stage from above. He fastened it to a loop on top of the cage, and gave an almost imperceptible signal. The cage, with Roxanne within, rose about a foot off the floor.

Now what? I wondered, as he disappeared offstage again. He returned with a rack of swords.

He was talking during the entire performance, though I could not read his lips well enough to determine what he was saying. He chose one of the blades and swished it through the air in a swashbuckling manner. Then he appeared to plunge it between the bars of the cage and through Roxanne’s body.

She did not flinch. She did not move. Aleister seized another sword, circled behind her, and impaled her from back to front. I could see the tip of the blade emerging from her body, just below her breasts. There was no blood.

I did not want to watch the rest of this performance; the illusion was too perfect, too disturbing. But I could not look away. The magician skewered her with a half a dozen more blades. He spun the cage in a circle so that the audience could see Roxanne from every angle. Unlike the usual sword gambit, there was no opaque box within which the assistant could hide or contort her body to avoid the sharp instruments. Everything was clearly, awfully visible.

Finally, Aleister removed the blades, with great care, in the opposite of the order in which he had inserted them. He lowered the cage to the ground, and clapped his hands once. Roxanne’s eyes flew open, and her lips curved in an enigmatic smile. Aleister unlocked the cage and handed her out of it as if it were a royal coach. They bowed deeply, in synchrony. Then the tape went blank.

My heart was pounding uncomfortably hard. The magician re-covered the television, then turned to me. “Well?” he asked, fixing me again with those unnerving eyes.

I took a deep breath and tried to meet his gaze. “That’s – unbelievable. Remarkable. Not to mention very creepy.”

“Convincing, isn’t it? Makes you wonder what kind of power I really have.” There was an edge to his politeness, the slightest hint of arrogance in his well-tempered voice. He smiled in a way that I suddenly saw as seductive. “Do you still want to audition?”

Curiosity and fear, wonder and terror, warred in me. I stared at my hands, distinctly uncomfortable. Then I had a vision of myself in that red dress, smiling at the audience, basking in thunderous applause. I almost felt the heat of his hand in mine. I looked up at him and tried to sound brave. “Of course.”

“Excellent. Come with me, then.” He opened a set of French doors, and gestured for me to precede him. When I saw what the room contained, however, I faltered.

No one can live in San Francisco for more than a few months without becoming somewhat familiar with the trappings of sadomasochism. The room that confronted me was obviously furnished as a dungeon. I noticed wooden frames fitted with steel rings, chains affixed to the ceiling, a wide variety of whips and paddles neatly mounted on the far wall. I also recognized the trestle table and iron cage from the video; I suspected that the rack of swords was somewhere about, also.

“Go on, Myra,” urged the voice behind me. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” Hardly realizing what I was doing, seduced by his voice, I entered. He followed close behind, and fastened the draped glass doors shut. “Sit, please,” he said, pointing to a high-backed wooden chair in the center of the room. I felt paralyzed by fear and suspicion, yet I found myself obeying him. As I seated myself, I noted the leather straps fixed to the massive arms.

He stood before me, surveying me frankly. “This may seem unorthodox,” he said, “but in order to determine if you are right for this part, I need to bind your wrists and ankles. May I do this?”

I was silent. Inside, I churned with mingled terror and excitement.

He leaned forward so that he could look deep into my eyes. “Trust me, Myra. No harm will come to you, and you may discover something wonderful.”

Slowly, I nodded my assent. It seemed that I could not refuse this strange man. My practical side screamed, danger, beware, but as should be obvious from the fact that I was here in San Francisco at all, from the fact that I was in this musty flat in this bondage chair, skewered by his fabulous, knowing eyes, I often ignore my practical side. For better or worse.

“Remove your sweater, please.” I did so, shivering a little in my silk shell, though the September afternoon was warm. His hot fingers brushed my skin as he fastened the bonds. Goosebumps traveled up my arms.

He knelt in front of the chair. Next I felt him nudging my ankles apart and circling them with leather. This time, when he touched me, there was a stirring in my sex. Despite my nervous uncertainty, this peculiar, awkward, powerful man aroused me. I blushed at this realization. As if he sensed the blood rushing to my cheeks, he looked up at me from underneath that dark mop of hair, and gave me a smile that turned my limbs to rubber.

He turned away for a moment, then returned with a leather blindfold. “This will help you to concentrate,” he said. I nodded, not daring to speak. I blushed again at my reaction to his brief touch as he slipped the blind over my head. Everything turned velvety black, black as his curtains and his eyes. Now there was nothing but darkness, darkness and his luminous voice.

“Myra, I want you to relax and trust me. Listen to me. Focus on me. Let me fill your consciousness, until you know nothing but me.” As he spoke, I thought I felt his fingers, dancing lightly over my body. Yet I could tell from the sound that he was standing several feet away. He began to chant in some language that I did not recognize. His musical voice rose and fell in a soothing rhythm. I felt a stirring of air around me. Little by little, the tension leached from my body. Warmth flowed in like honey to take its place, thick and sweet, coalescing into a dampness between my thighs. I could not understand what he was saying, but his intonations gradually took shape in my mind, whorls and eddies of vibrant color that held me spellbound. I hardly realized it when his incantation ended. Then I smelled sulfur and heard the snap of a match bursting into flame. My fear flared in response.

“Myra,” he said softly. I could tell that he was closer now, right beside the chair. “Trust me. There will be no pain.” I felt intense heat against the skin of my forearm, smelled paraffin and singed hair. Yet he spoke truly. I felt no pain, only exquisite warmth that began in my extremities and raced toward that swelling center below my belly, which seemed to have become the center of the universe.

“I choose you,” he intoned. “I anoint you. I consecrate you to my service.” With each phrase, he sprinkled burning wax onto my skin as if it was holy water. I smelled the incense of my childhood, and felt the ancient awe. Yet at the same time my whole self hummed with lust. I was aware that the evidence of my desire leaked from me, staining my business clothing and scenting the air. I did not care. Shame had left me. I hung on to his voice, rising and falling, eagerly awaiting the next blissful, fiery benediction.