Cat In A Leopard Spot

Much as Max blamed himself for Sean’s death, Sean in his dreams never haunted him. Never showed the bombed-out fracture of a face he might have flaunted. Max always awoke in calm nostalgia, almost as if he had received a benediction.

But then other remnants of his dreams began paying court to his dawning consciousness. A nameless man in a leopard-spotted mask. The Cloaked Conjurer, obviously, seen far more recently than Sean Patrick Donnell Kelly.

Max found the Cloaked Conjuror’s memory erasing the pleasant tension of his smile as Sean’s never had. In the dream the Cloaked Conjuror had transformed into Gandolph, Max’s dead mentor in the art and illusion of magic. Gandolph had been all the family Max had allowed himself to have. Since Sean. He wished the old man were still here, in this house that Max rattled around in alone like a single die on an empty baize-covered table.

He wished Temple were here. He never had dreams like this when he slept with Temple.

But he hadn’t slept with Temple—routinely, all night, with nowhere to go before and/or after—for months. Sean had died too young to understand why “sleeping with” was a euphemism for having sex, for making love. Sleep and the satisfying security that came afterward made having sex into making love.

Max’s memory jolted him with another unpleasant dream image from the motherland, that long-ago Ireland that he and Sean had visited as naive returning sons.

A memory of having sex. First sex. With an Irish colleen named Kathleen O’Connor.

And then, with a dream shift that was only in his head, he finally remembered the dream’s parting illusion. Peace dissolved. He had awakened not seeing Sean but copulating with a corpse.

Max left the coffeemaker clucking and drooling under the kitchen fluorescent lights and went into the dark yard to retrieve the newspaper.

Only 4:00 A.M., but the newspaper lay there like a dirty leg bone, a pale oblong encased in clear plastic that reflected the distant streetlight.

Max never ventured outside without scanning for lurkers. Sometimes he wished he owned a dog that could fetch. Leaving the house in the predawn dark was the most dangerous thing he did all day. A man on his front lawn in the wee hours was like an astronaut on a space walk: isolated, vulnerable, cut off from shelter and safety, so near and yet so far.

Millions of suburbanites did it every morning, but they didn’t have Max’s past.

Inside the house, he poured the black coffee into a white mug, then sat on a stool at the huge island counter and spread the paper wide as he skipped the usual front-page headlines—endless foreign talks and sports results—and paged through the rest.

Las Vegas papers always sizzled with entertainment news. Max found himself perusing small items on openings and closings and newly contracted acts, the longer features on the old standbys, as if he were still an up-and-coming performer with a professional interest in these constant comings and goings. As if he still harbored the unsinkable illusion of a career.

He missed the intense physical, mental, and social stimulus of doing his magic act, almost as much as he missed sleeping nightly with Temple. For the year they had lived together at the Circle Ritz apartment building while Max performed nightly at the Goliath Hotel, his life had seemed real for the first time since Sean. Imagine…the surreal atmosphere of Las Vegas making him feel so normal.

The next steps, and he had seen them clearly then, marriage. With children? A house, he could afford a nice one. A long-term contract with one of the spectacular megahotels always rising from the Vegas sands these days like the new Atlantis exchanging a watery mythological grave for a gravy train run on the glittering sandbox of the Strip here and now. What a magic show he could dream up for a place called the Atlantis! More than a magic show, a post—Cirque du Soleil and Eau mélange of sophisticated circus acts with a futuristic accent….

Max sipped a fragrant distillation of the other, legal, and less lethal export of Colombia: the innocuous bean. His career had always been a cover, not his real job. He was dreaming to think he could resurrect it. Dreams are only in your head. With Sean.

Still, he felt a bit…wistful? Envious? Professionally curious? He reread a veteran columnist’s spiel about the latest hot Strip magician, who happened to be someone Max had introduced himself to only recently in the line of his other work. And had dreamed about only minutes before. According to Gene Igo, the Cloaked Conjuror’s brand of now-you-see-it, now-you-know-how-it’s-done magic show violated every unspoken tenet of the magician’s code but was packing them in at the New Millennium Hotel and Casino.

Max read about the multimillion-dollar, multiyear contract, the CC’s desert retreat/fortress and dedication to “unmasking the mystery of magic” in a “thrilling, dramatic fashion.”

The next paragraph outlined the other magicians’ wrath at the CC flaunting trade secrets for fun and profit.