A radio began playing as he began a new series of tricks. Roman looked to the speakers, assuming it was a malfunction, expecting it to cut off again. But the club’s manager gestured for him to carry on and Roman understood that the club felt some accompaniment was necessary.

Roman was bombing.

And when he looked into the faces in the booths, he saw he didn’t have them at all. They observed him with humor, sympathy at best.

The faces of his first crowd.

Roman, unable to stop the rising tide of shame within, turned red under the red light, bringing a devil’s countenance to his already angular visage. He ended his show without a word and left the stage as silently as he’d taken it.

Young man, the promoter said, whispering to Roman by the bar. You got another twenty minutes to fill.

Roman latched his box shut and exited the Comedy Canteen, his blood burning scorched earth in his veins. He knew what he’d overlooked in those vacant buildings, those two thousand rehearsals alone: The crowd didn’t want magic tricks, they wanted a magic show.

He needed an angle. A lady. A better costume. A joke. A bit. This was all as clear as candy to him as he drove home from his first performance. And yet he was never able to make those things happen. Never able to think of the right changes in the first place. No matter how many nights he told himself what he needed to do, the next day he’d only practice, learn new moves, stare into the mirror at a face that didn’t have any more answers than he did.

And the face in the mirror aged.

Roman floundered in this way for the next twelve years. He played a handful of clubs, brief shameful moments in which he believed he’d gotten good enough at his craft not to need the silly gimmicks so beloved in the magazines. And so he needed someone else to imagine him in a new way, someone else to tap him on the shoulder and say,

If you do this, you will succeed.

Those kinds of meetings, Roman knew, were as rare as brilliance. In which the artist meets his propeller, the engine who sends him motoring across the sea of his most coveted waters.

Then, twelve years after his bombing at the Canteen, Roman met his propeller. And the sharp, strong blades chopped him into so many pieces that he no longer recognized himself for all the blood.

12

Sleeping in an apartment above a Laundromat, a dozen years after his initial flop, Roman woke to the sound of someone knocking at his door. He had no friends, no family, and he was up to date on his rent. Perhaps there was a fire, he worried. A criminal in the lobby. Could it be the police calling to ask questions about his neighbors? Maybe it was a neighbor at the door. He got out of bed and cautiously peeked through the eyehole and saw nobody there. He looked again, thinking a neighbor had a guest who’d knocked on the wrong door before realizing their error.