Max pushed off the refrigerator, moved to the huge stainless-steel-sheathed island unit.
Once, under his spell, she had envisioned that kitchen accessory as a stage prop, and herself as an accessory to magic upon it. The little lady who may be sawed in half, or who may just be feigning truncation. Now it looked like an altar.
The magician was part actor, part policeman, part priest. She remembered Professor Mangel quoting Edmund Wilson on the subject. Part deceiver, part detective.
"My family." Max declaimed the words like the title of an essay; an exercise in school.
Something distant. Academic.
"I went back for Sean's funeral. Have your ever been the One Alive when you should have been the One Dead? We went as two on our teenage jaunt to the Old Country. One came back dead, one came back alive. Or did he? Everything that appalled me, that killed Sean in the Old Country became instantly real in the New Country. Why him? Why not me? His family never said it, my family never said it. But they both felt it. I felt it. I saw then there was no place for me here."
" 'Here?' The U.S.? With your family?"
"Both."
"But you were barely seventeen years old."
"I was a hundred years old. I'd survived, and he hadn't. And there was no way to explain it."
"So you've never gone home for Christmas since then?"
He shook his sleek head as if tossing off invisible droplets. Of water. Of blood. "It would have stirred up the blame."
"Do you blame yourself?"
"For surviving when he didn't, yes. For doing what I did at the time, no. We were ignorant boys. But we died as men. That's what Ireland, north and south, does to you."
"Died? Both died?"
Max nodded.
"That's why you retreated back to Europe; you had brought the Troubles back to your own home town."
"Back to my own family. I saw in a nutshell how four hundred years of strife had divided a whole population. And ... I was dangerous to those closest to me, even if some of them hated my guts."
"Dangerous because you were in danger?"
He nodded again. "From the IRA, from the government forces. When I turned in the IRA men who had bombed the pub and killed Sean, I was an instant wild card no one wanted. Except those who deplored all terrorism. Gary Randolph was my first mentor. I began as an apprentice to Gandolph the Great, but magicians have a perfect cover, and our European appearances were always more than magic."
"Why are you letting me interrogate you?"
"You ask good questions. And you deserve any answers I can give you."
"Okay. Enough for now. What have you got to show me?" A pause, a very long pause. "Not that! I mean the advertised mysteries. What was hidden in Gandolph's magical mystery supply of tricks? What did the computer files reveal? Where is the hidden staircase?"
Max grinned and took her hand. "Follow me, and all will be revealed."
The room, or rat hole, in which resided the new object of Max's affections, the computer and its attachments and various arcane guides to them all, was as crowded and messy as when Temple had last seen it. Only someone who knew the extreme, catlike meticulousness of Max Kinsella, as Temple did, would have been surprised by that.
The glowing computer screen was a window into a lurid Halloween world inhabited by squadrons of bats flying over haunted houses and graveyards.
"The Halloween screen saver is still on," he noted. "Would you care for something Christmasy? Flying Santas?"
"No. No, thank you." Temple hadn't mentioned the Santa slaying in New York. She thought she probably never would.
"You're right; it's a little late for Christmas. I suppose I could find something for Martin Luther King Day."
"Flying freedom marchers in outer space, no doubt. No thank you. So. What's to see here?"
Max sat in the swiveling office chair, swiveled, and plucked a two-inch-high stack of papers from the top of a pile that leaned like the Tower of Pisa.
Temple hefted the stack. "Half a ream. Impressive. What is it?"
"Gary's book. My book. I hope, your book."
"Really? You finished a draft of Gandolph's expose on false psychics? Already? He must have been an interesting man, always a secret crusader. Did he die because of what you two did in your common past, or because of his late-life campaign to expose psychic fraud? I wonder if his mystery will ever be solved, or how much you can reveal in a book. I realized why you wanted to finish his book, but for a nonwriter to actually accomplish it " She regarded Max with respect.
"I'm . . . amazed."
She flipped through the neatly typed pages, surprised and somehow gratified to see Max dealing with a process she had always understood; not special effects and illusions, but ideas made into the flesh of words. Paper work. Writing.
"Gary's part of the story was mostly written down already. I tried to give it context. I don't know if I succeeded."
"Modest Max."
"Yes. You know I'm hoping that you'll read it. Make suggestions. Edit. Cut me to ribbons, if you like."
"Oh, not ribbons. Whose byline?"
"I don't care, personally. Gary's, I suppose. And yours if you want."
"Pity he wasn't as well known as David Copperfield, or even you."
"Gary gave all that up to follow his quest. He really was a knight in shining . . . drag, I guess.
It's almost hard for me to believe. I added some sections on disguise to explain his success."
"Makes sense. I'll read it and give you my expert opinion, buttressed by the publishing observations and consulting opinions of my aunt the historical novelist."
"Really? That rather elfin lady writes those big heavy tomes of yesteryear?"
"Er, yes." Temple would be damned before she'd clutter the discussion with that put-down word of all put-down words, historical "romance."
Why was every novel in the nineteenth century considered a "romance," and in the twentieth century a "romance" considered "a bodice ripper?" From what she had heard of mid-twentieth-century popular literature, male writers were the main practitioners of bodice-ripping scenes.
"I'll take the manuscript home and study it assiduously."
"Manuscript. That has a nice sound."
" 'Book' is even better, but the jury is out on that."
Max's long fingers hit some keys. The screen saver vanished as if swallowed by Dracula's inky cloak. Temple recognized the Windows program, but Max's fingers flitted from screen to screen too fast to follow.
"I've come across traces of unauthorized entry."
"In your computer?"
"It was Gandolph's. From what my long-distance friends can determine, someone has been watching Gandolph's literary progress and mine."
"Looking at the book?"
Max nodded. "I've been given safeguards and procedures. But sophisticated defenses beget sophisticated offenses. I take it as a given that this computer is not fully secure."
"And . . . this house?"
He shrugged. "Any house is vulnerable. It depends on who wants to break into it how badly."
"You said something about Gandolph's illusions."
"Illusions. Always the best place to attack. In this case, quite literally. Can I take you to a scene of the crime?"
"Fine." Temple left her tote bag by the computer and followed Max out into the single-story home's bedroom hallway.
He led her to the room filled with magic, with painted boxes and curtained mirrors and other arcana.
"You know how valuable these artifacts are?" he asked.
"I guess. They must be custom-made."
"Temple! They are magician-made. They're worth literally thousands and thousands of dollars. Each magician's tricks are his stock-in-trade. When he retires he can sell them to one inheritor. Never more than one. It's the professional code. We never betray each other. We perfect our signature acts in solitude and keep their workings secret. We're worse than the Masons used to be."
"Sounds creepy."
"It is creepy. But I inherited Gandolph's equipment, and I've been exploring it. In this--,"