Grandma stacks the deck

I wasn’t one of those kids that started doing magic tricks as soon as I could hold a deck of cards. I had a rather strange introduction to the art of sleight of hand.

My Grandmother was my first teacher in handling a deck of cards. She didn’t teach me magic, she taught me but how to cheat at cards. In her little ground floor apartment in Thames Ditton we would play the simple card games all children play. She showed me how to look at the bottom card and deal it when it was most useful. She taught me how to ‘lose’ an ace during a shuffle and ‘find’ it during the next game. These were simple things that seemed easy and fun, I was a good student, and it gave her enormous pleasure to watch me as I progressed in this dubious art. She was quite a piece of work my Granny, unusual by any standards, and stranger than I realized as a child. She had walked a fine line all her life, if the expression ‘pushing the envelope’ had existed during her lifetime then that is what her more generous contemporaries would have used to describe her. As a young red haired schoolgirl she attended a school for the daughters of distressed clergy. Which fairly accurately described her background and circumstances. She was expelled from this haven of gentility at the age of fourteen when she used a penknife to carve a word on the piano in the school hall. I don’t know what this word was, but it was scandalous enough that the entire rear of the piano had to be covered with thick cardboard to shield the refined sensibilities of the other daughters of distressed clergy. Both the piano and my Granny were quickly removed from the school. The piano was refinished and returned to the school, Granny did not return. By the time I knew her, she was no longer a wild young spitfire, she had developed chronic arthritis and was partially bedridden. Her confinement to bed seemed to end in the late afternoon, when after several pints of cider and a drop or two of scotch she faced the day. Or to be more accurate started the night. After she finished dressing she summoned a taxicab to take her to “The Angel” her local pub.
She remained there until the pub called ‘last order’ at eleven o’clock. The taxi was then re-summoned to transport her to her Bridge Club in the West End of London. This was when her day began in earnest, and she played bridge until two or three in the morning. This was high pressure, high stakes bridge with some of the best gamblers in the city. For many years whenever the movie actor Omah Sharif was in London filming she was his only bridge partner.

Mr. Sharif was more famous for his acting but was considered by those ‘in the know’ to be one of the most astute gamblers in the world. Finally her arthritis progressed to the point where an occasional visit to “The Angel” was all that remained of her nocturnal pursuits. Life must have seemed very dull in the small flat she shared with my Grandfather. If life was less bearable for her in these later years she was determined to make it equally so for Grandpa. There had been quite a scandal at the end of World War Two when Grandpa had failed to return from Egypt. He wasn’t injured or unable to return, he just didn’t want to and eventually my Great Uncle Odder was dispatched to deliver him back to England. I remember Grandpa as a sweet and kindly silver haired gentleman whose chief delight in life was chopping things up. It didn’t matter much to him what he chopped. His creed might well have been ‘I chop therefore I am’. He would spend most afternoons tidying things up in our back garden. Well in theory he was tidying but often he was chopping up useful and sometimes essential items, he once chopped up my cricket stumps and bat. He would then spend the remainder of the day stoking a large bonfire at the rear of the garden. Then he would come to the backdoor of our house, remove his boots, come into the kitchen and drink strong tea and munch on burned toast.

When he finished his meal he put his boots back on, secured his flapping trouser cuffs with bicycle clips and cycled home.
Looking back, I think that eating chestnuts smothered in butter and cheating at cards with Grandma were the roots of my magical life. I don’t believe she was a card sharp herself, however, she certainly knew how and what to do and she wanted to share it with someone. When you have knowledge then you must share it is a rule of the Universe. Maybe that is really what life is all about and your little piece of the hologram contains the entire big picture for someone else. She certainly was a character my Granny though.

Mr. Riddle and Me.

During my first twenty-five years in magic only once did I think about giving it up and doing something else. A call from the Magic Castle had put me in touch with a producer who resided in the Laurence Welk Towers in Pacific Palisades. I never did discover whether Mr. Welk’s Towers involved champagne and bubbles, but it was a good indication that this was going to be a fairly conservative event.

Getting a referral call from the Castle it was like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never knew what you were getting. The only thing you did know was that Jean, the human nerve center of this Mecca of magic, had quoted a fee. The fee never varied it was always two hundred dollars. It didn’t matter whether it was entertaining a thousand people in a ballroom, spending a month as a magical adviser on a movie or entertaining six people with a few card tricks at a restaurant. The fee was two hundred dollars. Sometimes you were working far below the market value and other times you made a killing. This gig fell somewhere between the two and while it didn’t make me wealthy I certainly made a professional killing.

Every year Ross Perot gave a banquet for the returned prisoners of war from Vietnam. It was a nice thing to do for a group in which even the casual observer could notice severe stresses and tensions. This year Mr. Perot had decided that a magician would be just the thing to complete the bill. It was quite a bill. The guest of honor was ex-governor and future president Ronald Reagan, in those days Ross Perot was still a king maker in the political field and not the candidate! This year the after dinner show featured: Carol Burnett, Edgar Bergen, Mike Curb’s Congregation, Sammy Davis Jr. and Tony Bennet. Our musical director for the evening was Nelson Riddle, who brought along with him his forty-two piece orchestra. I guess I was there for the star power. The most intimidating part of this was not having to follow the great Sammy Davis Jr. who had to leave early for his evening performance in the revival of “Stop the World I Want to Get Off” at the Schubert Theatre in Century City. No, what stopped my world was doing a band rehearsal with the great Nelson Riddle. I had an eclectic taste in music giving equal attention to Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground, Rod McKuen and Frank Sinatra.

When it came to Sinatra and Nelson Riddle no one said it better than Van Morrison; “When Frank Sinatra sings with Nelson Riddle strings, take a vacation!”
When the time came for my band call I walked onstage to Mr. Riddle who was seated on a piano stool in front of his grand piano and what seemed like an endless orchestra. To say I was nervous would be like saying Mike Tyson was aggressive. In my hand were my band parts or ‘dots’ as they are known in the biz. I had always been very proud of the jazzy arrangement of “Rule Britannia” that a bandleader from a cruise ship had written for me. There were band parts for ten instruments and some of these parts I had never even heard. However looking at this gigantic orchestra they seemed very, very inadequate.

“Mr. Riddle….” I began.
“Call me Nelson.” He replied. I really appreciated his gesture but in all honesty it was all the nerve I could summon just to call him Mr. Riddle. Nelson looked at my meager stack of music and smiled. “Nick, unless it is very important to you, maybe you can leave your intro and bows music to me.” He said with a friendly grin. “I am sure I can come up with something for the band.” I agreed gladly and that was the end of my band call. The band was itching to start their rehearsal with Tony Bennet. The mutual love affair between Mr. Bennet and the musicians was so apparent during his rehearsal it gave you a real understanding what the word harmony really means.
When the Show began that night I was standing in the wings, wearing my tuxedo with a fashionably frilly shirt, guarding the table that my props were placed on. People did speak to me but I really don’t know who or what they said. I listened as Sammy Davis sang several songs by another of my heroes Anthony Newley.

Sammy did some shtick, danced a little and then was gone. My turn. I stood in the wings and for the first time wondered what music would bring me out onstage. This was the summer of “Star Wars” and everywhere you went the movie was in your face; the characters, actors, images and best of all the, wonderful soundtrack by John Williams. When I was introduced, Nelson Riddle and his entire ensemble broke into the fanfare from Star Wars. “DA DA DADA DA DAAAAH DA….” Every single one of those forty-two musicians was playing his heart out. Strings were soaring, timpani was booming, horns were blaring and best of all there was ‘Nelson’ sweeping up and down the keyboard tying it all together. Just for a moment I stood there in the wings, took a deep breath, and realized that in my short career there had never been a moment like this. I also realized that there probably would never be another quite as good again. Just for a moment it ran through my mind that I should just not bother walking out onstage. I could have quit right then and there because it just doesn’t get any better than that, right there at the top of the mountain. Then I took another deep breath and walked out onstage.

The sleeping giant

A few miles down the coast from Portrush was the famous Giants Causeway. This natural wonder is a giant rocky glimpse into the mathematical mind of creation. Millenniums before, molten lava had trickled to the coastline and upon contact with the cooling waves of the water had formed a gigantic ridge polygon shapes. These columns range in diameter from fifteen to twenty inches and measure up to eighty feet in height.

The stones had five to seven irregular sides and these columns make a magnificent sight. It is almost impossible to gaze at the Giants Causeway and not ponder on the mathematical nature of the creative forces. The entire structure continues under water to the tiny Scottish Island of Staffa and end up in an area known as Fingals Cave. Local folklore has it that the entire structure had been created, for reasons of Love or Theft, by a giant named Finn MacCool.
As you approached the Causeway along the rugged Irish coastline if you looked away from the sea, to the neighboring mountains, you could see the Sleeping Giant. Well, you had to use a touch of imagination and squint a bit, but there he was! A series of mountains stretched across the skyline looking very much like an immense figure stretched out across the hilltops. A gigantic rocky figure; looking like he had wandered out of a storybook, had one to many pints of Guinness, and was sleeping it off before returning to his fairytale chums.
Local legend had the giant guarding the entrance to the Causeway, but to me it looked more like an afternoon nap that had been frozen in stone.
My mother was what is now known as a ‘rock hound’ and loved to collect interesting stones and rocks during our family travels. To her just wandering around this 50 million year rock formation was seventh heaven and a site to be visited more than just once. In fact on the last day of our visit, my parents decided to make one last pilgrimage to the Causeway to photograph it yet again for future family holiday slide shows. We passed the Giant on our right, and then took the small uneven road that branched out towards the sea and wound its way down to the foot of the Causeway. Just before you arrived at the base of formation was a dirt-covered field that served as a parking lot.
We got out of our car and started to walk towards the Causeway. Along the path was a wooden bench; sitting on it was a local who seemed to be totally involved in keeping his briar pipe lit. My dad greeted him in a friendly manner and we began a typical tourist conversation about weather and the uniqueness of the Causeway. “Did you know?” he said. “How the Causeway began?” we listened as he explained some things we knew and some we didn’t. One of the things that we had not heard was that this entire formation of seven sided stones was based around the very first rock created as the stone had crystallized. “That’s the keystone.” He said “The magic rock that brought the others to life. It is the only one that has six sides instead of seven.” My Dad asked him where it was so that he could add a picture to his all ready extensive collection of Giants Causeway photos. “Ah,” he replied, “ A magic rock it is, and can only be found by a magician.”
“Oh, I can find it!” I said, and walked away towards the heart of the Causeway. After climbing and scrambling a while I stopped at one section and called out to my parents; “It’s right here!”

Then I looked down around my feet and there it was. A solitary six sided stone amidst a jig saw puzzle of seven sided ones. It didn’t look much different from the others, except for the obvious and indisputable fact that it only had six sides. Well it took my parents a while to make there way over to where I was standing. When they arrived they counted the edges of the stone and agreed that there was definitely one side less than the standard seven sides of its neighbors. My father was a chartered accountant or as he would be known in America a CPA and numbers were his game. He walked around this six-sided oddity counting the sides of all the other stones and soon my mother joined him. I remained where I was, standing on the Magic Stone. I had said I would find it, and found it I had. Now, I would like to tell you I had walked directly to it but the uneven terrain made any such thing impossible. There I was standing on the rock with a happy smile on my face. My parents wandered further and further away somewhat bewildered to realize that this did indeed seem to be the only six sided stone within the geometrically arranged mass of almost identical seven sided ones. After a while, they tired of the search and rejoined me and decided to take my photograph standing on my discovery. There were only two shots left in the camera and Dad, after his customary lengthy preparations used up the remainder of the roll shooting downwards on my feet and the magic keystone beneath me.

Time was passing and the sun was sinking fast in the sky and we had to leave to catch the car ferry that would return us to the English mainland. As we were making our way back across the rocks towards the rustic car park, on an impulse I said; “Let me go back and look at it one more time.” I retraced my steps, but, I could not find that stone. I had so confidently walked to it when I didn’t know where it was but now I could not find it for the life of me. My parents joined the search and they too were baffled. Eventually the darkening sky made us abandon our efforts and returning to our car we completed our journey. The ferry took us away from that enchanted country to English soil, and since that time I have yet to return to the Emerald Isle.
The pictures never came out. They were the only exposures on the entire roll of film that did not develop into prints. Maybe, it was too dark? I don’t think so. When I look back after forty odd years I am more than ever convinced that something different had happened. Years after the event I read about the alchemists strange and mysterious Philosophers Stone that shows itself when it is ready to do so and vanishes just as quickly. The stone that I stood on certainly didn’t look like it could change into gold. All it had was one missing side, and that was all that it needed to transform its surroundings. Looking back it wasn’t that I really wanted to find it, it was more of a feeling that I knew I could. Would a photograph have made this experience more real for the three of us? No, we didn’t need it because we were there. One thing for certain within a couple of years I did start working on my magic and have been a magician ever since. Coincidence? Maybe.

Look in to my eyes........

Magic was the furthest thing from my mind when I accompanied my parents on our annual holiday to Portrush in Southern Ireland. It was your typical family holiday with ice creams, Cadburys flakes and speedboat rides. The thrill to me was not sandcastles, bucket and spades or swimming in excessively cold water. No, it was here I had my first taste of live show business. My epiphany came in the form of a hypnotist named Edwin Heath.

He had a full evening show in the local theatre just blocks away from our hotel. I loved that show and everything about it! Men barked like dogs, women imagined that their clothes had disappeared and all manner of mayhem was unleashed twice nightly. The piece de resistance (which was not, as Mr. Heath pointed out, a French girl who struggles!) was when an audience member was suspended between two chairs while the hypnotist sat on his unsupported stomach. This feat amazed me and seemed unexplainable unless you believed in his strange and wonderful powers. Little did I know that this trick was to come back and haunt me in the years ahead. Again and again I begged my parents to take me to the show. Spoilt child that I was, again and again they obliged me. I sat in the dark and dusty auditorium enough times to realize that the members of the audience that appeared onstage were different every time and there was no sign of trickery. It appeared to me then, as I know fully believe, that it was indeed hypnosis. At the beginning of the show Mr. Heath performed a test with the entire audience to select those most susceptible to his hypnotic skills. This test involved clasping your hands together and by his persuasion being unable to unclasp them. I tried it and got suitably stuck. I dashed to the front of the theatre, but when I went onstage for the unclasping I was no sooner unstuck than I was returned to my seat. As a hypnotist, he was no idiot and the last thing he wanted was a ten-year-old boy onstage. This was my first experience with hypnosis, but in years to come another professional hypnotist would reach through the years and do more than just entertain me.

During this same vacation I also watched a movie that would be a huge influence in years to come. It wasn't so much the movie of Elmer Gantry that knocked me for a loop but the tour de force performance by Burt Lancaster in
the title role. This is a performance that isn’t afraid to ask more questions than it cares to answer. I have now included a form of faithealing in my show for nearly thirty years and each time I feel a little like Elmer Gantry doing Edwin Heath’s act. I guess since I’ve been doing it for thirty years I must like the feeling.

The start of the begining.

It is not always easy to say when something happens. It is more accurate to say when you notice it has happened. My first indication that I was going to be a magician happened when I was ten years old. I was a very normal kid. My father was British and my mother Scottish. Which made me half English and half Scottish so I should have grown up hating myself! However that was not the case, I was a very happy, non-athletic boy with a love of reading and playing elaborate imagination games with myself. Born in 1952, I was very much pre-computer. For me if a game came to you in millions colors it meant you were playing outside. Dungeons and Dragons were very much in the future.

As far as role-playing went, to me it meant pinning a towel to your back and pretending to be Superman. In fact Superman was very much my hero. A snappy dresser and all round good guy. However due to the non-athletic qualities that helped define my bodily being I was, unlike my hero, more likely to move faster than a tall building and be shot by a speeding bullet.
My earliest exposure to magic was a hand puppet on television called Sooty, who along with his friend Sweep, performed magic shows that went desperately wrong. This seemed to exasperate the elderly gentleman who always hovered at an arms length from them. I don’t remember much of what they did but it was loud, fun and messy! That was just fine by me. When Sooty waved his magic wand it would often cause bodily injury to the elderly gentleman who’s name I later discovered was Harry Corbett. The magic words Sooty used to achieve his grand illusions were; “Abracadabra”, “Hey Presto” and my favorite “Hocus Pocus Fish Bones Choke Us!” To this very day I gleefully use the “Fish Bones Choke Us” in my magic show and it still gets a good chuckle. This was the extent of my early exposure to the art of prestidigitation and as far as I remember it left me with no burning desire to grow up as either a magician OR a hand puppet. No, I had it pretty clear in my mind that I was going to emerge from childhood as a caped crusader who could change outfits in a phone booth and became unrecognizable when I put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Several years later when it was discovered that my short sightedness necessitated the full time use of horn-rimmed glasses, my dreams of being a super hero were dashed. Until the advent of contact lenses I was stuck as Clark Kent.

Burying the dog, not the bone

Throughout life we acquire bits of knowledge, some are useful and some are not. The tricky part is realizing which is which. In life it’s usually not the answer that matter but the questions you ask. That’s the ultimate skill of a politician, if he can get you asking the wrong question then it doesn’t matter what answers he gives you. They can even be true. However if you don’t have an eye for the big picture, it doesn’t mean a thing. The plus side to this scenario is that like a hologram, if you see the truth in a small piece it contains the entire picture. Glimpses of truth can lead to the Real World.
What confuses many people is the belief that there is only one truth. There are as many truths as there are people.
I believe my dog has a fine handle on the truth but it’s dog truth, from a specialized canine viewpoint. The question that haunts him is; “If I do my doggie thing, will my master still feed me, love me, look after me?”

The answer is maybe. Most dogs are smart/dumb enough to leave the matter right there. Dogs have natural instincts that run through the entire species. What are human instincts and if we follow them why should we reach any other answer than maybe? If you take away technology, what has humankind achieved that can’t be instantly removed by technology? Very little that doesn’t fall into the universal folder labeled Art. True art isn’t in the eye of the beholder it’s in the eye/mind of the artist. The rest of us just get to make a stab at interpreting it. At least it allows us to use our imagination in a fairly harmless manner. In fact we sometimes get to step out of our own personal reality tunnel and see the big picture. To be more accurate we maybe get a glimpse of the artist’s version of his big picture. Pretty passive stuff really; “Fetch boy, fetch!”
What are the questions we could/should ask? If we can’t decide that question for ourselves then the answer doesn’t matter one little bit. If you trace them back to their roots Religion, Science and Magic are actually one and the same thing. They just developed a little differently. From Religion came art, from Science technology. In those far of days it was Magic that was the Holy reconciling force that bound them together. The job of a magician is to wake up people who don’t know they are asleep! While Religion and Science continually oscillate between negative and positive forces it is the state of awakeness that reconciles them. Maybe.

Music and fruit in Edona

The Music on Edona is a somewhat mutated form of reggae. It is actually closer to rock steady, which is the slightly older brother of guitar driven reggae. With rock steady the groove is the beat, but it doesn’t try to beat you to death with the instruments. Everywhere you go on the Island there is a musical backdrop going on, music spills out from cars, bars, houses and homes. The songs are different but the beat goes on. 130 beats per minute (bpm) gets you up and running in the morning and wakes you up. As the day winds down, 90 bpm’s mellows you down for the night.
The beat is so constant that there could be a ministry of music, except they would screw it up. It works just great the way it was so why throw a Spaniard in the works. Politics on the Island is an apparently non- existent issue and just kind of rumbles along in the background. Just like the music. The islanders are very happy with the status quo when it came to politics. Why not? The literacy rate on Edona is nearly 100% and there is computer literacy that would give them a run for their money in Silicon Valley. Everyone who wants to work has a job and those who don’t want to work don’t. The food is fresh and good with almost all the items grown or raised on the deep red volcanic soil.
Fresh fish is caught, covered in locally grown spices, cooked and served on a need to eat basis. Even the coffee is locally grown in the southern mountain ranges that surround the volcanic peak that is the focal point of the Island. The coffee is good and rivals the Costa Rican and Colombian beans that end up in your local Starbucks. In fact the most astounding thing about the Island is how very self sufficient it is when you compare it to similar islands. Probably the only Island in the world with a larger selection of locally grown produce is Madeira but then people will tell you that this tiny island is one of the only visible peaks of Atlantis that remain. Hey, the fruits and vegetables should be good if it really is Atlantis.

Nobody has ever confused Edona with Atlantis; it doesn’t look high-tech enough until the backbeat of the Island gets into your blood. Then you think digital.

Thank you U.S.A.

I woke up this morning and read what I typed last before. I don’t remember much about the later part of the night, but I made it home and so did my wallet and computer. This is one of the perks of living on the only Caribbean Island with a crime rate of zero just the occasional tourist with light fingers or a taste for the wild life.
Now if I am going to tell you about myself the first thing I should tell you about myself is that my real name isn’t Jim but that’s what they call me here. As a matter of fact Edona isn’t really Edona either but it will do here.
In fact I should really begin with Edona. When I first visited the Island I was shocked. People reacted very differently to me here. The first time I walked thru the tunnel into town I was followed by a slightly crazed Rasta type who kept talking to me in German. The only English words he said were; “You’re the German one, I know you are.”
Later on a man without the Rasta hair, but with a very cool pair of shades approached me and said; “You’re with the forces aren’t you. I recognize you. Is it England or America?”
I didn’t know what to say because although he wasn’t making any sense to me on the level I was listening on, he did make sense on another whole level.”
The island had had an interesting past. Discovered by Christopher Columbus, it had been battled around by a number of nations usually the English and the French. Once the entire indigenous male population had been killed and the women left as wives, mistresses and slaves. Eventually the French left and created the French Canadian population in Northern Canada. These were an interesting and tough set of Islanders. They were so ready for the “God” force that they didn’t even really need the fluoride in the drinking water, they would have been spiritual with just the toothpaste. By the way, I hope you know about buying toothpaste from the dollar store, be very careful about what country it was made to be sold in. I won’t say more but read the labels and do your homework.
There is a very good reason for people walking up to you in the street and knowing you have secrets you may not be
Aware of. Some of the locals have moved a little to far into their own worlds and wander the streets talking to them selves. They look like urban crazies in any city upon the globe. They just look a little more out of place in paradise.
The zero point for Edona arrived when a motley crew of Edonians, Cubans, Russians and Libyans tried to take over the country. There wasn’t much to take over at that point in time. The Edonians certainly didn’t receive much help from the Commonwealth they belonged to. Maybe the spice filled volcanic island had less to protect than the wind and sheep scattered Falkland Islands. It certainly didn’t take long for the free world leader to re-instate democracy. To this day you can see “Thank you USA” graffiti across the island. You don’t see that many places around the world.

Overheating in the tropics

My name is Jim and I’m going to tell you what it is we are all really waiting here for. I won’t tell you my other name.
I have a past too. In fact I won’t tell you everything I know, just enough to make it dangerous.
All this began for me on an uneventful day when Heart smiled at me, smiled at me and said; “Always remember, my boy, if you get them asking the wrong questions it doesn’t matter what answers you give them!”
He sounded like some crazy
Professor, crazy like a fox, but never forget that M.I.T. spelt backwards is T.I.M.
Jack was so right. Looking back on it now I realize the only thing we know for sure about Jack Heart is that his name isn’t Jack Heart. This could become confusing.
I have a better idea; it is getting uncomfortable hacking away at my computer. The sound of the music is messing with my mind, who needs HAARPS when you’ve got steel drums. I’ll wait for the music to stop I’ll slug a couple of shots of tequila and a beer. I will just drink till my power book cools down. These G4’s don’t have fans in them and it’s very easy to get overheated in these tropical nights. It even happens to me. You sometimes need to cool awhile. Chill.
If you are going to understand this story I’d better start at the beginning. I won’t tell you everything I know, just enough to make it dangerous. That will make it more fun. If I am telling this story I’d better slug more beer and damage the tequila. Then I will start writing this story tomorrow, on a New Morning. It’s that kind of story.

The Missing Science

This is the story of a science that went missing almost as soon as it was discovered. If you are interested in reading further I will explain where the research was heading when it just disappeared like smoke and mirrors.
If you are looking for a central figure you don’t need to look too hard. He is sitting at the table across the room from me.
Jack Heart is his name and he is the owner of “Tricks” the small cabaret we are sitting in. Heart is a retired magician whose work as a magician and ties with a British agency have kept him traveling to some of the worlds must exotic and hottest locations. Currently he is living here on the “Isla de Edona”. Edona is a volcanic rock in the Caribbean seas, the kind of fading Island Paradise that has a statue of Graham Greene on Market Street.
No one mentions Jack’s non-magical career but he is usually respectfully addressed as the Colonel. As he sits at the bar drinking a can of Coca Cola Jack pretends to be happily retired from his past life and just running his club and perfecting his card tricks. Jacks tricks aren’t the only ones being performed in the club. Unacknowledged and seemingly invisible to all, the young dancers and actresses filling the club each night have long lost their desire for dance classes. These dancers know all the moves plus some that Ginger Rogers never knew about. The girls move around the club from table to table passing time with the regulars and the Hawaiian shirted tourist.
Regulars in the cabaret all have different stories and different backgrounds but plenty in common. Anyone sitting in this bar without a ‘past’ is as likely as a Mexican taxicab without a cracked windshield.
No two nights are the same at “Tricks” as the locals mix and mingle. Some nights it’s “The Sopranos” meets “Our Man In Havana”. Other nights the bar is tourist logged and filled with Jimmy Buffet dress-alikes who wander into the bar and are intoxicated by the movie set they have walked into. Some even half expect to see Sam playing it ‘one more time’ from behind a white piano.

Never one to disappoint a crowd Jack has a glossy movie still of Dooley Wilson in a pewter frame on the wall behind the bar. There are stills from Jack’s movies and television appearances scattered around the walls and posters from Jack’s favorite movies. In the far corner was a small semicircular card table it covered with an expensive green cloth. This is where Nick performs his magic. Two or three times a night Nick strolls over to the table and a crowd quickly forms to watch his amazing sleight of hand. The bar is really designed as a miniature theatre to perfectly frame and stage Jacks cabaret show
Pedro is the manager of the club is short and nervous. He is wearing a worried look and a cheap gray suit. In fact, when you hear the expression “He was all over him like a cheap suit” this is the suit they are talking about. He has an open collared white shirt, snakeskin shoes. The worried look on his face is just like the one on every other manager in hostess joints around the world. Pedro would be even more nervous if he knew Lilly was 5 months pregnant with his brother’s baby.
The bar managers ex-wife Lilly is the bar manager and runs the complicated finances of the bar. If she didn’t do her job immaculately Pedro would like her to be his ex- bar manager too. Nobody knows what went wrong in his or her marriage but it is generally assumed to have been his fault. The waitress is named Blanca but she long ago changed her name to Rose. Jack Heart has a special involvement with Rose, at least in her opinion she does. Jack just believes in the Corleone truth of keeping your enemies close at hand and you’re bar staff even closer!
What thread is it that bind this group together? Not an easy question and one with no easy answer. Their mutual involvement is neither simple nor clear; it involves the abduction of a science that was silently removed from the minds of not only the public but also politicians and scientists alike.
Who is pulling the strings?
Why was everybody arriving on the Island at the same time, some very fascinating people who might meet each other once or twice in a lifetime were sitting around in groups of fours. That is what I’m here to discover.
I don’t do much; mostly waiting and watching, like the guy in that Robertson Davies novel who just counted sets of train wheels. He saved a lot of lives. I know I read the actual report.

The journey begins......