NORTHEAST OHIO SPOTLIGHT

Creatures of Habit, Habits of Creatures

Fiction by ​​Lisa Ferranti

The magician loves the swish of his black silk cape when he bows. Savors the echo of applause off the upholstered walls of the auditorium, the awe on the faces of those close up, the ones who hoped they’d glimpse his secrets. He relishes the feel of the rabbit’s scruff in his palm as he holds it high, before placing it on the pedestal in time for the return of the two doves that flew from his sleeves with a flip of his wrists during the finale. They circle above and then back to him, their spindly feet grasping the extended finger perch on his left hand. He grandly sweeps his right caped arm toward his lovely assistant, requesting that the crowd show her love, too, just as he does, although never publicly, of course. For him to love her requires the most skillful sleight of hand of which he is capable.
 
He looks at the two empty seats in the front row, stage left. One is perpetually unfilled now that his mother has passed, but he insists on the vacant spot at every show, a symbol of his gratitude to her for setting him on this path. The other is where his wife should be, would be, if she hadn’t decided not to come, even though the venue is driving distance from their home. His assistant blows a kiss to the audience before she walks off. The clicking of her spiked heels beckons him, and for now he’s willing to forego the elixir of applause, worried his tight nylon pants will give away his next act, which he will perform backstage.
 

 
The magician’s wife rarely cries, but she’s always close to tears. Tonight, she decided she would not show up, not play the devoted wife in the front row. Not watch the assistant’s adoration of the magician’s tricks. The ones the wife used to allow herself to be amazed by but now sees through. She sits on the sofa, pours another glass of wine, cinches the cashmere throw under her neck like a cape. The magician’s dog whines at her feet, somehow sensing, she suspects, that the magician is near. She takes care of the dog, but he’s always loved the magician more. She wonders if the dog will catch the magician’s scent, run the 50 miles to the hotel next to the auditorium where they’ve reserved a room so they wouldn’t have to drive home after the late show. Wonders if the assistant has joined the magician in what was to be their suite, or if he at least had the decency to go to her room.
 
She closes her eyes, hears only the sound of the dog panting, a barely perceptible wince between breaths. She wishes for the cries of babies, but the magician didn’t want children. He’d made no secret of this, and yet she’d conjured an illusion, sure he’d change his mind. She opens her eyes, surveys the glass tables, silk-covered chairs, polished wood. Everything shiny and glittering and slick. The tears are close, but she swallows hard. One slip and, like a house of cards, it could all come crashing.
 

 
The magician’s rabbit huddles inside the plastic igloo within her crate, where she hides from the audiences, the crew, the assistant, who sucks her teeth and chirps through the bars, which is more attention than the rabbit gets from the magician offstage. Onstage, he strokes her head, shows her off. But she’s most comfortable in silk-lined pockets, dark compartments that barely hold her. Because she knows what comes next. His attention. And she aims to please. She’s seen the rabbit foot that hangs from the keys on his belt. Only the foot. White and soft, just like hers, only dingier, and she imagines that once the foot had been snowy white with three others that matched. She knows what can happen if she doesn’t perform.
 
 
 
The magician’s assistant changes from her costume into the lace teddy she brought for after the show, in the hotel. She recalls the thrill she got buying it earlier that week, imagining the magician stripping it off of her, making her stomach do a little flip. But when he comes to her room, he stays in the doorway, tells her he’s going home for the night. It’s so close, it would be suspicious otherwise. He kisses her, says he’ll see her in the morning at rehearsal. She won’t give him the satisfaction of a pout. Won’t act like the other woman. She consoles herself by counting the hours she spends with the magician, all the time on the road, compared to the little time he spends with his wife. But now she’s alone, naked beneath the white terrycloth hotel robe. Her stomach flutters again, and she counts, this time how many days since her last period, knowing it’s too many. Knowing this is not in the cards for the magician. That if pregnancy tests were still done the old way, a rabbit would most certainly die. If she takes a stick test, the plus-sign will appear. She can only hide it for so long, only has so long to decide. She wishes she could consult the magician, and that he would either welcome it or use his magic and—poof!—make it disappear.
 
 
 
The doves cuddle next to one another on the perch in their gilded wire cage. The cloth has been lowered for the night. In the dark, they confer on the same subject, over and over, but they can never come up with a satisfactory explanation as to why they don’t fly away. When the magician releases them from his shirtsleeves, why, why do they circle and come back to him? Just once, why don’t they hover in the rafters, wait for a door to open, find a cracked window? They suspect it has to do with the comfort of the cage, the always-plentiful food, with the hand that feeds them. Or perhaps it’s the instinct to return that’s too strong. They nestle closer, their feathers pressed together, looking almost as if they’re one bird with two heads, two bird brains, that can’t seem to puzzle the answer.
 
 
 
The magician pulls into the driveway, quiets the engine. The house is dark, his wife most likely asleep, and he’s unsure suddenly if he will enter or turn around and return to the hotel, to his assistant’s bed. Which to wake, one or neither? He knows it’s selfish, but he needs them both. Although he uses his key, he feels like an intruder, tiptoeing to the kitchen, trying not to wake the dog. He lays his keychain on the counter, strokes the rabbit’s foot—once, twice—always the same ritual. His mom was superstitious, passed it on to him. She bought him his first magic kit when he was seven, with the plastic wand and the collapsible silk top hat. He mastered the rings in one day, poured over books of card tricks all summer, won the talent contest at school that year. He was gifted, his mother said. As good as he got, he could never make his father reappear. He wonders now if his vision at six of his father pulling out of the driveway is just that, a vision, made up by a little boy.
 
By the time the magician was a teenager, his mother was booking him at local parties. Then gigs on the road after high school. Bigger venues from there. She’d bought him his first rabbit when he was 12. He named her Gigi, and she was part of his act for seven years. When she died, his mother took Gigi to a taxidermist, had her foot fashioned into a keychain. “For luck,” she’d told him. He’d loved that rabbit. Of course he replaced her, has had many rabbits since, but he can’t bring himself to name them. He leaves the keychain on the counter and walks to the bathroom, showers and lets the hot water wash away the memories. It’s the rest that’s harder to slough off. The guilt that stains.
 

 
The magician’s wife stirs from a drifting sleep. The shower runs. Water rushes. The magician is home. She wasn’t sure he’d come, thinks maybe her imagination is playing tricks on her. If he’s really here, she wonders why, why not with the assistant?
 
She’s considered changing the locks, barring the doors. But the magician is like smoke, able to wisp through the tiniest of crevices. Like grains of sand sifting through the slightest slope of an hourglass. Like fog. Mist. Vapor. He’s Houdini, an escape artist, a contortionist, a shapeshifter, able to mold himself to her contours, however they might change and change and keep changing, and she thinks of the rabbits and the rabbits and the rabbits, slipping through her hands as she tries to stuff them into hats, and she’s not sure if she’s awake or dreaming, but she keeps her eyes closed, just in case.
​

Lisa Ferranti

Lisa Ferranti's fiction has been a finalist in a Glimmer Train Family Matters contest, twice short-listed for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and a Reflex Fiction contest finalist (BSF 2019 nominated). Her stories have appeared in Spelk Fiction, New Flash Fiction Review, Literary Mama, Lost Balloon (Wigleaf Top 50 2019 Longlist), and elsewhere. She lives in Akron, Ohio with her husband, son, and daughter. ​