Did Father even know he was losing? It might not have concerned him if he had. His seventeen-year-old son had never shown the talent for chess that he hoped he would and every game ended the same. So when Roman calmly reached across the board and moved his rook (sliding Father’s king one space over in the process), he said something he’d never said before:

Checkmate, Father.

Father eyed the board for a long time. He eyed the pieces Roman had taken. Then he looked to Roman’s hands and Roman knew.

Father understood what happened.

Excellent, Father said at last. Truly.

Then Father cried and rose to hug his son.

Promise me, Roman, that you will never be a man in rags. That you will always present yourself with delicacy. That you will not magic for money.

The last part of the promise Roman made would eventually be stitched inside the very vest he wore onstage.

never magic for money

Within a month of the compromised game of chess, Roman Emperor was living in the back of the Caper Clothing warehouse, performing magic for mannequins.

His first crowd. Living or not, he gave them his all. Just as he had performed for Mother’s ghost so long ago.

Magic for the unliving. Magic for the departed.

Magic for the dead.

10

It wasn’t difficult for Roman to go unnoticed as he trained in the warehouse without permission. He slept during working hours, high up in a forgotten storage loft, as the Caper employees boxed coats and hats far below. At night, the place to himself, he rehearsed.

An oblong cedar chest was his bed. Forgotten fur coats, his blankets. And the mannequins below, his people.

He performed for three dozen mannequins nightly, choosing volunteers as eagerly as Finn the Fantastic did with flesh and blood, breathing members of his own adoring audiences in clubs across America. With the bald, peach, lifeless forms amassed before him, Roman practiced every trick he knew and began to discover others. He tried to levitate a mannequin, using thin fabric he hung from high shelves. He sawed another in half using mirrors gathered throughout the space. It was here that he decided not to hide his tricks, as the mannequins gave him no reason to be shy. Often he held the props inches from their lifeless eyes, a habit he would never break.

His new boots (found in the very box he slept in) clacked on the cement floor, and the sleeves of his white button-up shirts flapped in the cold, dark warehouse.

Mother, he’d call out, his voice sharp off the stone ceiling. Please inform the audience of the next illusion.

Even while speaking to the unliving, his voice did not have the weight he wanted it to and he longed for an assistant like the ones he read about in the magic magazines, the pages he never had money to buy.