But the thing about Grant’s show: I could tell. As soon as he walked onstage, something happened. A charge lit the air, a crackle of anticipation. It wasn’t just me—a few people around me shifted to the edges of their seats, leaning forward, eyes wide, unwilling to miss a second. The air felt magic. But then, maybe even that was an illusion: create an atmosphere in which your audience felt like they’d been removed from space and time, make them feel like what happened before them was otherworldly, and of course they’d believe it was magic. They’d tell all their friends, and Odysseus Grant would have a full house every show.
Just wearing the perfectly tailored tuxedo and top hat gave Grant an air of authority. He was well dressed, so of course he must be a magician. It was all illusion. I had to keep reminding myself that. He moved to the center of the stage. He didn’t speak but looked out at his audience and asked with a raised eyebrow—you see? Here, nothing up my sleeve, yes? He didn’t have to say anything, because anyone who’d seen a magic show, or even their Uncle Bob at their eighth birthday party, had heard all these questions before. Grant used our prior experience, like he was saying let’s cut through the chatter and get to the illusions.
He held three silver rings, each a foot in diameter. Again, this was a
familiar trick. The rings were solid. He banged them together, making them ring, showing us. Then the third time he hit them, bang, they slipped through each other and became intertwined. He spent only a minute showing us this. It was an old trick, and he knew it. Why waste time.
Then he did the impossible. When the rings were separate again, he started one spinning on his hand, like a coin on the surface of a table. Okay, that was cool. Then, somehow, he started a second one spinning on top of the first. I wasn’t even sure what I was seeing at first. I had to squint, studying it. He held his left hand perfectly flat, about waist level, with the ring still spinning—not slowing down, not wobbling at all. A second later another ring was spinning on top of it, at a different speed. The two rings together made a chiming sound, strange and pleasant. Then he set a third one spinning on top of those.
The image, those spinning silver rings balanced perfectly on his hand, was simple but disconcerting. There was probably an easy explanation, even if I couldn’t figure out what it was. But goose bumps covered my arms. I gripped the edges of my seat. I couldn’t even blink. It was like looking through a doorway into another world. I could almost see something inside those spinning rings. He had worlds balanced on his hand. A voice whispered from my hindbrain, This is real. Part of me wanted to run away. Because if this was real, it also meant this was dangerous. Wolf kicked a little, prompted by the instinct to run. I told myself this wasn’t really dangerous. It was stagecraft, that was all.
With a gesture, he presented the image, his singing spheres, to the audience. Everyone cheered because it was marvelous and beautiful. With a quick toss of his hand, the rings jumped into the air, separated, and fell. Effortlessly he grabbed them, juggled them a moment, then bowed.
A dozen other tricks followed, simple, old-fashioned, yet still magical. Scarves pulled from thin air, floating tables, canaries from sleeves, all of them performed with simple panache. He cracked an egg into a pitcher. With a wooden spoon, he gave it a few stirs. After setting the spoon aside, he covered the pitcher with a silk scarf—just for a moment—then drew it aside. Inside the pitcher now was a live, cheeping chick. The audience aahed with appreciation.
Then came the box. The one that beautiful stage assistants disappeared inside with the wave of a magic wand. This one, like the rest of the show, came from another age. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out the box really was an antique from an old 1920s magic show. Painted matte black, it had Egyptian hieroglyphs scattered among tangles of vines and flowers painted along the edges. It was tall and narrow, just large enough for a person to stand inside. The wheels—I assumed there were wheels—were hidden.
He didn’t have an assistant. He turned the box around himself, showing off the artwork on all four sides, proving that there were no hidden compartments, mirrors, or other tricks aiding the illusion. Then he called for a volunteer from the audience.
I could be forgiven for assuming the volunteer was a plant. She was too stereotypical to be real: a housewife type in a floral shirt and pastel-colored slacks, permed and dyed hair, too much makeup, and a wide smile. On vacation from the Midwest with her midlevel bureaucrat husband. She hurried to the stairs leading up to the stage, blushing and twittering. Grant assisted her, offering his hand and bowing in old-school gentlemanly fashion. This made the volunteer twitter even more. He asked for her name.
“Mary,” she said, hand to her cheek, as if she could still her blushing.
“Mary. Thank you for helping me this evening. Now, you agree that this is an ordinary box?” He led her to examine the box up close.
“Well, I wouldn’t say ordinary. It’s much too nice for that.”
“But you agree that it hasn’t been tampered with in any way?”
“It looks normal.”
Grant opened the front of the box, revealing the black, featureless interior. “Mary, would you mind stepping inside? I assure you it’s perfectly safe.”
Mary giggled, moving into the box as she’d been asked.
He stood in place and turned the box. In the absence of big music and flashy lighting effects, I could hear the box’s wheels scratching on the stage’s wooden surface. Then he stopped the cabinet, steadied it, and opened the door. The box was empty.
Like many of his tricks, this was familiar. I expected the box to be empty. Still, the effect of seeing that empty space was eerie. Grant stepped into the box to prove that it was empty, that it wasn’t a trick of mirrors. Strangely, that made me even more nervous. In spite of myself I wanted to know, where is she? Where’d she go?
Grant stepped to the edge of the stage. “Where is Mary’s husband? Sir, would you like me to bring your wife back?” Soft laughter—nervous laughter—rippled through the audience. I couldn’t see the man, but presumably he nodded yes. Grant smiled. “One of these days a husband is going to say no. Then where will I be?”
Again he turned the box, opened the door, and there stood Mary, wide-eyed and a little breathless.
Grant asked, “Madam, are you well?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And how was it?”
“It—it was very dark in there.” She looked over her shoulder at the inside of the cabinet. Was that a little bit of fear in her eyes?
That, more than anything, made the illusion a success. Any magician could make someone in a cabinet disappear. But I had never seen the disappearee look at the prop afterward with trepidation. What had happened?
Grant sent her back to the audience, which showered applause over him. He accepted it gracefully, with a thin smile and short bow. Then he left the stage, and the curtain closed.
I sat in the theater for a long time, staring at that closed curtain, wondering what it was I had just seen. A magic show, yes. But that wasn’t all. Couldn’t have been all.
Only one thing for it: I sneaked backstage.