Read: Heather McCalden's Short Story About an Encounter with a Magician

"I wanted to murder whoever had written it by taking a knife to their throat and pressing it tautly against the grease of their skin. It was boiling, an electric 33ºC, the sky so overblown it vibrated like one elongated camera flash. Gravity pulled distinct droplets of sweat down my spine into a vivid line, making me hesitant to move in case a negative of it transferred to my white blouse."

"I was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Gaucho Grill with The Magician waiting for a table. We were told it would be 20 minutes at least, so I slumped against the NO PARKING sign, its thin blade of shadow falling between us, the only shade for miles. He stood may be around a meter tall, his stout frame enclosed in, of all things, a dark herringbone suit. Inexplicably, I felt we formed a mismatched set of salt and pepper shakers."

"The Magician was world famous for his sleight of hand work. On YouTube I watched him chuck an Ace of Diamonds clean through a pencil, slicing off its eraser half. In another clip, he sat blindfolded at a table with a dagger in hand and a deck of cards spread haphazardly before him. He then proceeded to successfully stab the cards people shouted out from the audience. One could do worse in terms of subjects to profile, though the circumstances surrounding this lunch were eroding the chance for it to be any good."

A narrator reads a sticker on a NO PARKING sign that provokes violent anger. Heat and humidity make the narrator physically uncomfortable and self-conscious about sweat staining a white blouse. A paternal admonition—"Shut up and get on with it"—frames a forced professionalism. The narrator waits outside the Gaucho Grill with The Magician, who is unusually short and dressed in a dark herringbone suit, creating a visual mismatch. The Magician is renowned for dangerous sleight-of-hand stunts seen on YouTube. A recent argument with a documentary director led the magician to storm off set, degrading prospects for a successful profile.

Read at AnOther