"It's magic, you know." (May 2020)
The Card
He removes his top hat and sweeps out a grandiose bow to a smattering of applause, his captive audience already murmuring their indifference to the act's finale . He turns and takes her into a showman's embrace, pressing something into her hand. "It's magic, you know," he whispers.
She draws semi-curious glances as she makes her unsteady way back to her table, overhears a girl say to her companion, louder than she realises, "...obviously a set-up".
The cabaret continues but she sits, only staring at the playing card and what is marked, impossibly, on its face.
"It's magic, you know."
The (now sadly defunct) Idle Thumbs podcast Important if True is something of a favourite of mine. I'm a big fan of people who like each other talking about random things, especially if those people are as funny as the three IiT-ers are. One of the many nonsenses over the podcast's run was a discussion in response to the question of what it would be like if you were able to perform real magic but, to others, it just looked like bad stage magic 1.
I think their conversation was a lot more entertaining than the story above, but I'm quite fond of the story regardless.
While we're on the subject of Idle Thumbs, their podcast Something True is well worth a listen if you like quirks of history presented in a dryly sarcastic style...
Episode 28, I believe.↩