This marked the period in Roman’s magic education when he learned the beauty of being the only person in the room who knew the trick was on display. It was a sensation he came to adore. At a friend’s house he pretended to lift silverware with his mind when only the friend’s grandfather was watching. At school he talked to a fellow student, deftly slipping their things into their desk, giving them a little jolt when they turned to find the tabletop empty. He pulled jewels from his aunt’s pocket, feigning surprise as real as her own.

Roman was well past the point of it all being just a phase. He came to loathe the word hobby.

The thought he put into it, the emotional upheaval it sparked in him, and the grace with which he handled it were the markings of a man who’d heard his calling, and not the fancy of a child playing imaginary games. It was healthy for him (he would be tortured without it) but it was grave, too. He respected it more and more with each passing session…each practice…each new trick learned. And soon this respect swelled into reverence. Magic was a living thing he could identify with more than he could his own father. A beast. And when he rode this beast, the reins comfortable in his hands, his name blazed in his mind as if on fire above infinite clubs across the globe.

ROMAN EMPEROR!

A real man of magic. But not yet a man of real magic.

9

The day Roman told his father there was no need for him to enroll in college was the day his father’s most paranoid fantasies became real. Roman said he was going to be a magician, and that there was no schooling better than his own.

His father cursed the man in rags from so many years ago. Then he burned a ten of hearts in the kitchen sink.

Roman challenged him to a game of chess.

If you beat me, I’ll enroll. But if I beat you, you must give me your blessings for this journey.

His father agreed. And Roman knew that to beat his father, he’d have to employ a little magic.

The two sat down at the kitchen table, facing each other in the light from the fireplace.

Roman had to be patient. He couldn’t start performing his tricks until the pieces on the board were spread out enough to cause diversions. Cover. If he could remain in the game long enough for that to happen, he had a chance.

He was able to play it safe long enough to watch the two sides advance toward each other slowly. And then, heart racing, in front of his father’s open eyes, he deftly switched two pieces from where they stood. Then he stole an extra pawn when he was supposed to take just one. His sleight of hand was so deft that his father made no sign of noticing the changes. The disappearance and reappearance of the pieces under the nose of an expert was, for Roman, the greatest performance of his life to date.