The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett

She put no stock in dreams. To her they were just a television left on in another room.

Suddenly to have the privilege of wearing your own skin, the headlong rush of love, the loss of the knifepoint of loneliness. That was the true life, the one you would admit to. Why even mention the past? It was not his past. He was a changeling, separated at birth from his own identity.

For twenty-two years Sabine had told her stories to one person, so that the action and the telling had become inseparable. What was left was half a life, the one where she lived it but had nothing later to give shape to the experience.

“No one will tell you otherwise, but just between the two of us I have to say I admire you for not having any. The ways they break your heart, Jesus, and it never stops. I mean it, it simply does not stop.”

She felt a rush of that privacy that comes not from being alone but from being with the one person you are completely comfortable with.

Most people can’t be magicians for the same reason they can’t be criminals. They have guilty souls. Deception doesn’t come naturally. They want to be caught.

Magic was less about surprise than it was about control. You lead them in one direction and then come up behind their backs. They watch you, at every turn they will be suspicious, but you give them decoys. People long to be amazed, even as they fight it. Once you amaze them, you own them.

It was the thing that Sabine believed in, more than passion, more than tradition. Find a man you love who is good to you.

You want to stop doing something, you have to get away from it. You have to put it behind you.”

The things that went into keeping people together and tearing them apart remained largely unknown to the parties immediately involved.