Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise, I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago
–David Bowie
Hatter went to the Magic Club that night prepared for just about anything. He knew without a doubt that the old con from the night before had been there to check him out. He just didn't know whether he was about to get jumped and beaten to a pulp or…. something else.
Friday nights were usually pretty good nights. Thursdays were quiet, but Fridays and Saturdays, the club was a fairly popular spot for the before-theatre crowd, the after-theatre crowds, and the 'we-haven't-got-theatre-tickets-let's-just-go-out' crowd. Hatter was halfway through his first rounds when he glanced up and spotted the same older man at the bar. This time, the suit was black, still baggy, pinstriped, and the black fedora had a white satin band.
Hatter tried not to let it faze him. He continued his routines, flirting outrageously with a table of half-drunk women, lifting a man's watch and cufflinks only to give them back moments later, amazing the club goers with his slight of hand card tricks. But all the while, he watched that oldster watch him. He avoided that end of the bar as well, a deliberate move to see if the man would summon him, or let it slide.
Two dogs circling one another, Hatter mused as the time grew closer and closer to midnight.
Then one of the waitresses, a long-timer called Barbara, grabbed his arm as she went by. "Damn, Hatter! Harry the Hat!"
"What? Who?" Hatter asked, startled.
Barbara indicated the old con at the far end of the bar. "Harry the Hat. The man's a legend! How in the hell can you be a card-sharp and not have heard of him?" She shook her head. "I mean, you've just taken his schtick and moved it a step forward, and you don't even know who he is? I keep forgetting you're not from around here."
"Love, not only am I not from around here, I didn't even know there were legends to be heard of," Hatter said with a jaunty grin, but inside he was as nervous as a two-tailed cat in a rocking chair factory.
"Well, he doesn't come up this way often anymore, and he's retired, but he's an old friend of Jerry's, so I have to assume that Jerry told him to come check you out. Harry's like a… a grandmaster. He's done television shows. As the host!" Barbara imparted that last bit with reverence.
That was a level, Hatter had come to understand, much higher than grifting the tables at some club. All the stage magicians seem to have two goals – to go to someplace called Las Vegas, and to be on television. The sum total of Hatter's ambitions was to support himself and Alice. He didn't care about the Las Vegas place or the noisy picture box. This job left him with all his days free to read and sip tea, and most of his evenings to revel in the company of his Alice, and that's all Hatter was interested in.
"Barbara," Hatter asked quietly. "He's not gonna be pissed, is he? That I'm playing his con?"
Barbara laughed. "Are you kidding? He might adopt you!" She winked and picked up a tray of replenished drinks, off to deliver them to her tables. Yet when Hatter looked back down the bar, the mysterious Harry the Hat had vanished.
Now his curiosity was aroused. This obviously well-known retired grifter had apparently made a particular trip up to the city just to see Hatter play his games? That didn't seem right to Hatter, it seemed a bit too much. More likely, the man had his own reasons for being in town, and stopped by the club to remember old times, and it was just Hatter's luck that the man was a card-sharp.
Finally, it was midnight. Hatter patted down his pockets to make sure he hadn't inadvertently kept something from a patron, then made his goodbyes to the bartender and waitresses. But as he headed for the door, a flash of a coin in the light caught his attention. He turned, and there was the mysterious Harry seated at a corner table, alone.
The old con was performing a coin roll, a relatively simple trick of flipping a coin back and forth over the tops of his knuckles. His eyes came up to meet Hatter's gaze, and with a flick of his long fingers, he silently invited Hatter to sit.
Hatter did, watching Harry's fingers perform an intricate dance with the coin, which vanished and reappeared at the manipulator's will. Then suddenly the coin was enlarged to three times its size, a trick Hatter knew well, but it required having a phony coin hidden somewhere. Then the large coin was converted into three smaller coins, and the silent show ended with a small juggle and the coins vanished completely.
The older man's gaze was slightly challenging behind his tinted glasses. Hatter obligingly pulled his deck from his pocket. I've shown you mine, now lets see yours, was how this went, and Hatter was going to follow the rules for once in his life. He had a sense this was extremely important.
He started with a flashy shuffle, nothing any halfway bored college kid couldn't master with time, tossing in a few single-handed cuts. Then he upgraded to a deck roll on the table top, integrating a pass. A number of spreads followed, incorporating a variety of palms and steals and passes. Slowly Hatter upped the ante, to the point where The Hat was obliged to participate, selecting cards with a tap of his long finger, which allowed Hatter to produce ever more involved tricks, making the selected card come out on top, or levitate out of the deck, or one of his best moves, a particularly flashy trick that popped all the cards from his left hand to his right, with the selected card falling out to land face up on the table in the midst of the move. Hatter's particular skill was that the rest of the cards flew in a perfect arch, something that no oyster could replicate, as it required the special skill with the cards that only a native of Wonderland could develop.
That trick caused The Hat to quirk a brow, a silent acknowledgement that the Hatter had skill, and the trans-dimensional transplant felt a slight relaxing in his guts.
"So what's your story, kid?" The Hat asked quietly, the first words spoken between them at the table.
Hatter shrugged. Going for broke, he pulled out a trick he'd been hiding, not sure if it would pass the scrutiny of this master, or if it would give away his entire game. "I came through the Looking Glass of course," Hatter explained with a flourishing shuffle. At the end of it, the Queen of Hearts was scowling up at The Hat. "You folks talk about the Queen like she's a goddess of Love, but actually, she's a controlling bitch."
He whisked the cards together, then set another elaborate layout, all the cards in their proper order around the Queen. "She controlled all the Suits." He ran through another shuffle, laying all the cards face up, then flipping the end, so that they all turned over in order, to display the uniform backs. But the last card that broke free became face up, bearing the picture of a young girl in a pinafore dress. "But then Alice came to Wonderland."
Leaving the image of the Tenniel Alice alone, an image his own Alice assured him was extremely well-known, he quickly assembled a house of cards. "I helped her, of course," he went on, and with a seemingly random motion, he flicked a new card, an image of the Mad Hatter, across the table to land next to the Alice card. "She bought down the whole house of Cards again," and with that, the quickly assembled house came down in a controlled fashion. He was able to easily sweep the cards together into a deck. "Afterwards, I followed her back here, to her world, where we live happily ever after." He swept the two images into the main deck, and with a fast shuffle, he placed a spread face up on the table, where no extraneous images appeared, just the original fifty-two cards of a standard deck.
Harry the Hat leaned back in his seat when the story was over. He contemplated Hatter for a moment, then said, "Alright, if that's the way you want to play it. Teller doesn't talk, you're the real Mad Hatter. That's fine." The Hat took a sip of a drink that had appeared next to him, then went on. "I'm in the market for new talent. Jerry said I should come give you a look over. He said I might like what I see. And I do."
Hatter controlled the sigh of relief he wanted to release. He had really been worried that he would lose this job too, one that he actually really enjoyed. But now it seemed whatever sort of unannounced audition this had been, he'd passed it.
"I'll arrange for you to come out to Vegas next month. There's a meeting. If you're approved, we'll use you in a TV special that's being put together. Just two short bits, a couple minutes, a trick or two. Maybe that storytelling thing. We'll see."
Hatter blinked. "Can I bring Alice?"
The Hat smiled. "Is there really an Alice?" When Hatter nodded, the Hat chuckled. "Sure kid, you can bring your girl. It's no problem." He stood, and produced a business card from thin air, a bit of purposeless magician flash. "Call this number, tell them I sent you, and give them your contact info. They'll make the arrangements." He handed Hatter the card, gave a casual tip of his hat, and walked away.
Only then did Hatter realize that most of the club's staff had been watching. When he looked up at them, the only people in the closed club, they broke out into applause. Barbara bounded over to give him a huge hug.
"You did it, Hatter! You're going to Vegas!" she cheered.
ToBeContinued
AN: Yes, I'm borrowing "Harry the Hat", whom I have loved since 1982. My portrayal is adapted from the actual magician, of course.
AN 2: Wow, I totally just dated myself.