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Uh-
uh
.

Hang on…

I suddenly sit bolt upright.

Korine!

I must ring Jalisa and see if Korine was involved. Because this idea really
smacks
of Korine. That bizarre and unsettling conflation of cynicism and simplicity…Isn’t that
just
his style?

The more I think about it the less I
like
this whole rainforest/Haiti element. Because what’s Blaine saying, really? What’s he trying to make us think? In some senses he’s undermining the culture of these peoples (because we know he’s just performing tricks, but to them, magic and mystery are a part of the dark side. They’re real. They’re life-threatening).

Effectively he’s telling all us complacent Western viewers that these ‘primitive’ people are fools (I mean they’re so honest, so
credulous
!) but at the same time their fear is informing us, subconsciously, that magic is real, that
his
magic is real, that it
can
be serious. And Blaine is the route between these two worlds. Blaine is the short cut. He proposes himself as the bridge by which we cross back and forth (from cynicism, to disbelief, to naivety, to believing).

Hmmn
.

Interesting journey.

I suddenly need to get up.

I go for a piss. I stand by the window. When I look at the clock it’s 2 a.m. and I’m fucking
wired. Hot
.

Next thing I know, I’ve pulled on some jeans, a T-shirt, grabbed my trainers, my portable CD-player, my jacket, and I’m heading out of the house and towards the river.

And there she is. Aphra. Sitting quietly on the wall. Alone. Chin jinked up. Ankles crossed demurely. Hands resting on her lap. Tupperware bag on the floor by her feet. Like a riddlesome Sphinx. Totally rapt.

I’m up on the bridge–in a light sweat, a feverish
fug
–staring down at her.

She has eyes for no one but the magician. She doesn’t see me there. So I lean over (gradually catching my breath), and watch her, watching him. And then I watch the magician (to try and tap into her fascination–but he’s fast asleep, tucked up inside his sleeping bag, not moving). And then I watch her again.

It’s quiet, except for the occasional van horn (some cheesed-off Monday-morning joker on his way to the early shift), the buzz of the lights on the bridge, and the wet sounds of the river.

Eerie
.

Only me, and her, and some tramp huddled up in a blanket on the floor, and three security guards (but they’re miles off, in a far corner of the compound, chatting over a flask and a fag), and (but of
course
) there’s David Blaine, the International Superstar.

Eventually I make my way down on to the embankment and hitch myself up casually on to the wall a short way along from her. She doesn’t seem to notice me at first and I dare not speak. She’s in some kind of trance. But peaceful. Just sitting on that wall, staring up at the box. Lips slightly parted. Breathing shallow.

When ten long minutes have ticked by she glances over and says, ‘You don’t smell right. You’re ill.’

‘Had the flu,’ I confirm croakily.

‘Still got it,’ she says, then takes my hand and sniffs at the palm. She pulls a face. ‘Wank,’ she says, then tips her head, speculatively, ‘at about eleven o’clock last night, I reckon…’ She sniffs again. ‘A blackcurrant Lemsip at twelve…’ She pauses, frowning, then inhales for a final time. ‘And you stroked a
dog
. A male dog. A
big
dog. Just before you came out.’

How’d she
do
that?

I leave my hand resting in her hand.

‘How’d you
do
that?’

‘It’s my job,’ she says, matter of factly.

‘It’s your job to know I had a
wank
at eleven?’

‘I’m reading your book,’ she says.

‘
Shane
?’ I stutter, slow to catch up. ‘You are?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you enjoying it?’

‘I’ve reached Chapter six,’ she says, ‘the summer’s almost over and Fletcher’s back. He’s got a big contract. He wants the Homesteaders off his land…’

‘Ah.’ I nod, sagely.

‘I feel a little sorry for him,’ she says.

‘How’s that?’

‘Because he used to own it all, the entire
valley
, then he had some bad luck after the drought and hard winter of ’86.’ She sighs: ‘And everybody started moving in on him, stealing his grazing…’

Typical
girl
, eh? To get everything the wrong way round.

‘It’s the American
West
’, I explain. ‘That’s how the nation was
built
–individuals, staking their rightful claim…’

‘Rightful?’ she looks quizzical. ‘Fletcher was there first.’

‘The Native Americans were there
first
,’ I hiss. ‘If you want to get all pernickety about it.’

Her eyes widen. ‘Then maybe Fletcher should give the land back to
them
,’ she says, ‘not just a random bunch of greedy white settlers.’

‘The point of the book,’ I growl, ‘is to celebrate the struggle of the underdog.’

‘Well maybe they’re celebrating the
wrong
underdog,’ she persists.

‘There’s no right or wrong in fiction,’ I mutter, ‘the story’s just the story.’

She’s quiet for a moment.

‘And the mother’s a bloody
tramp
,’ she suddenly says (cheerfully ignoring my meta-textual input).

‘What?’

‘A tramp,’ she reiterates.

‘Marian? A
tramp
?’ I gasp, snatching my hand back. (The
sainted
Marian? She of the deep-dish pie?)

Aphra nods, then she grins. ‘You have a problem with that?’

I shake my head. ‘Of course not. You’re just…’ I struggle to find the words (I’ve got
flu
, remember?). ‘You’re just
merciless
, that’s all.’

She’s wide-eyed.

‘
Moi
?’

Ha
ha
.

‘The whole
point
of the book is this wonderful sense of the subtle interplay between the three adult characters,’ I crisply lecture. ‘Marian is attracted to Shane, but she loves her husband. It’s a dilemma. It’s interesting. It’s subtle.’

‘Life must be pretty bloody dull…’ Aphra concedes, kicking out her feet (purple-suede eighties-style pixie-boots with lethal-looking three-inch stiletto heels) ‘on that dusty old Homestead…’

‘Precisely.’

‘Just stuck in a shack all day with an infuriating
kid
…’

‘What?’

My back straightens (now this
is
fighting talk). ‘You think
Bob’s
infuriating?’

She shrugs. ‘He just never stops talking.’

My eyes bulge. ‘But he
narrates
in the first person. The boy
tells
the story.’

She bursts out laughing.

‘I
know
that,’ she says, nudging me. ‘I’m just
kidding
.’
Oh
.

She gazes up at the magician for a while, then cocks her head, inquisitively. ‘Was it a good wank?’ (Is nothing sacred?)

‘So
was
it?’ she prompts.

‘A little feverish, perhaps,’ I sullenly mutter.

‘
Everybody
gets horny when they’re ill…’ she says. ‘Remember that angry old bastard on Oxford Street who used to march up and down with his neat little placard saying “Less Protein, Less Lust”?’ I nod.

‘He was
right
,’ she says. ‘Too much meat. Too much sitting down. That’s at the heart of it.’

‘And you’ve been sitting here
how
long?’ I flirt.

She clucks on her tongue, then glances up, then falls deep into her trance again.

‘D’you think
he
gets horny?’ I ask, a few minutes later, ‘just lying there all day.’

‘Of course he does…’

She frowns. ‘But then after a while
everything
gets imbued with it. The original urge just filters down into each movement. Each spasm. Each blink…’

‘How very Zen,’ I say, tartly.

‘The way the box rocks,’ she sighs ‘His breathing. The
hunger
.’ She falls quiet again, smiling.

‘You love watching him,’ I murmur thickly.

‘When he’s sleeping,’ she says, slowly nodding. ‘Yes I do. When it’s quiet…’

(Is that a subtle hint, perhaps?)

‘Are you a fan of his magic?’ I ask (already knowing the answer).

‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not especially. And it might sound ridiculous, but I never really
intend
to come…I mean, sometimes I’m on my way somewhere else, and then…’ She shrugs.

‘You get distracted?’

‘You probably think it’s pathetic,’ she mutters, glancing over at me for a moment, then straight back up at Blaine (as if she’s driving the
car
of Blaine- has to keep her eyes on the road at
all
times), ‘but being here while he sleeps, before he wakes,
as
he wakes…’ She grimaces, ‘It just makes everything feel better. Feel
whole
again. And often- if I concentrate really hard-I can hang on to this feeling for the rest of the day-this quiet, this hopefulness. I can cook and wash and go into work…’

She smiles. ‘Remember Christmas time, when you’re a kid, and the presents are all laid out under the tree? Nothing opened yet? Just
pure
anticipation?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s like that.’

Okay
. I nod.

‘And it’s the
tiniest
things…’ she continues (warming to her subject now), ‘the way he
holds
himself as he sleeps. I find such amazing
comfort
in that. And in all the insignificant stuff. All the details.’

I gaze up at the magician myself, hunting for the minutiae. I see a dark blob in a bag. The lights. The glass.

‘Either he’s flat on his back…’ she says, observing my interest, and (much to my delight) responding, ‘and I imagine him just gazing up at the sky, at the stars, at the vapour trails at dawn, or having these astonishing
dreams
. Oh my
God
. The hallucinations…Can you imagine how wild they must be by now?’

She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Or else he curls up, on his side, like a boy. Like a little kid. And there’s something so fragile about him. So lonely…’ Her voice is softer, almost tender.

‘Then as he actually
wakes
,’ she continues, her eyes sparkling now, with a real sense of drama, ‘he moves his hand. Just this
tiny
bit. And then he adjusts his head on his pillow. And then he rubs his fingers through his hair–you’ll have noticed his hair is getting longer, and curlier…’

(Oh will I?)

‘And then he has a little scratch. Of his beard. A real root around…I mean it’s nothing significant, just trivial details. Things you wouldn’t notice if he was right there in bed with you. You wouldn’t
see
them then. Or you might even find them irritating…’

She ruminates on this point for a while. ‘Or maybe if you
knew
him, they’d just be a part of a picture which was already
drawn
–if you know what I mean…’

She glances over at me. A nod appears necessary, so I nod, accordingly.

‘But there’s so much in so
little
here…,’ she says, her eyes sliding back again. ‘When he wakes, for example, he wakes very quickly. He has a lovely no-nonsense approach to rising. He’s like,
yup
, I’m awake. Let’s sit up…And then he sits up…’

Her voice is full of wonder: ‘And his eyes are so
innocent
. Like he’s washed
clean
. And then almost straight away he sees us watching him and he feels a moment’s anxiety–you can sense it, this tiny
tremor
–then he responds. He lifts his hand. Very weakly. Automatically. The hands are beautiful. I
love
to see his hands–I know it’s kind of corny–but his hands say everything about him. They’re the way he
speaks
. They’re his
tongue
…’

She inspects her own hands for a moment. ‘After two seconds, maybe three, he switches off. He picks up his pen and his notebook, looks down, frowns. And it’s a lovely moment, somehow, that brief closing off. And really
necessary
. Because often when I see him in the day–when I’m wandering past on my way out shopping, or to the hospital–he’s so empty. Just open. Resigned. Everything’s simply flooding in. But at that moment, when he awakens, he’s entirely
himself
, and you get to see all this confusion and sweetness, this incredible
unease
…’

She smiles.

‘That’s why I come.’

I sneeze (I’ve been holding it back for a while, now, not wanting to ruin her moment or anything–I mean God forbid I should impair her charming description of his delicate
hands
with my barbaric, phlegm-racked expostulation).

‘Bless you,’ she says.

‘So you never saw him do a trick?’ I ask.

‘Nope.’

‘That’s weird.’

She shrugs.

‘He cut off his
ear
…’ I say, wiping my nose, ‘at the press conference.’

‘Did he?’

She’s barely even listening.

‘It was like he was going out of his
way
to kill his credibility,’ I bumble on. ‘And when he’s finally
finished
–all this grunting and groaning, all this false blood and gore–some guy in the press corps goes, “What about the
other
one?”

‘I mean to pull a stunt like
that
. And right
then
. These are hardened professionals. These are probably the same people who laughed at David Copperfield for flying around on wires, pretending like he was Peter fucking Pan.’

She frowns. ‘David
who
?’

Oh dear.

‘In one of Blaine’s films,’ I say, suddenly
determined
(more than anything) to make her interested, ‘there’s this little kid, just walking along a New York street with his mother, and Blaine goes up to the kid and says, “Hold on a minute…” and reaches out and pulls a strand of cotton from the collar of his sweater.’

I inspect the collar of
her
sweater and pull off a stray hair.

‘Why’d he do that?’ she asks (glancing down, worriedly, at her own shoulder). I don’t answer.

‘So Blaine shows the kid this strand of cotton,’ I continue, ‘and then puts it into his mouth…’

‘Into the
boy’s
mouth?’

‘His
own
mouth. He chews on it for a while–really concentrating–then he swallows, then he opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue to show the kid that the piece of cotton’s not in his mouth any more…’