8. Aus
AUS
Las Vegas. The city that never sleeps.
That makes two of us.
God, I’m so tired.
As I look in the foggy cracked mirror of my dressing room wearing the rented tux that’s two sizes too small, I wonder if it was all worth it for this.
I knew when I came to this town that I’d have to work hard. I knew it would take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to establish a career in a profession like magic—even in Vegas—not to mention a lot of luck and good connections with important people.
Those last two factors have eluded me. I’ve certainly put in the work.
Put together a tidy little magic show with all the greatest hits—sawing a lady in half, producing a bunny rabbit from a hat, making people disappear, the works.
I’m proudest of my house act, which is the best draw I have right now.
I bring out a small collapsible tent, the type a child might have in their playroom, which I set up on a turntable.
I invite a volunteer from the audience—an honest-to-God volunteer, not a plant who knows what they’re doing like a lot of the so-called greats depend on.
The volunteer sits inside the tent and I zip the front up, obscuring them from view completely.
I revolve the turntable to show there are no holes in the back of the tent, and a light from inside shows off the volunteer’s silhouette.
I ask them to make various gestures, like a peace sign, and then I ask for suggestions from the audience.
The most popular request is to flip the bird.
Then the light flickers out and I return the turntable so the tent is facing forward.
Without warning, a large set piece falls from the rafters—several pieces of plywood arranged into a cube with an angled roof that is painted to look like a cartoon house—which crushes the tent.
The audience gasps in horror, and I act as if this is a terrible mistake, that a rope must have snapped.
I try to lift the “house” off the tent, but it’s too heavy.
I then knock on the door of the “house,” which opens to reveal the volunteer unharmed.
The trick is in the turntable. Classic misdirection.
The tent has no bottom, so when I return the turntable to its original position, a trapdoor slowly unscrews within the turntable.
It’s slow enough that the volunteer doesn’t feel it, and they don’t see the tent moving away from them because of the darkness.
Once they’ve descended low enough into the safe space, a door closes over them to protect them from the falling house.
The next part happens so quickly that people can’t make sense of it.
All they know is that the tent has been crushed by a falling house.
Once the house is down, the trapdoor reopens and the volunteer, alerted by the sound, stands up and looks around.
They’re always in place by the time I knock on the door, and the crowd goes wild.
Well, they would go wild if I had more than a dozen people in the audience during my shows.
That’s the thing with Vegas. Everyone wants to go see David Copperfield, Penn and Teller, Lance Burton. The greats. No one is thinking “Gee, maybe I’ll support a working-class magician tonight.”
It costs a lot of money to rent the theater once every other week, and advertising eats up the rest of my budget.
Plus I still need to eat and pay my rent, so I can only afford to do my show every other Friday night.
During the day I work as a blackjack dealer at the Mister Joker casino off the Strip, and I also freelance as a DJ for bar mitzvahs and weddings on the weekends to make ends meet.
I spend all my free time standing on Las Vegas Boulevard with showgirls handing out fliers for my show, hoping to grab some stragglers who can’t afford tickets to one of the “good shows” after dumping their life savings into a slot machine.
The house act is pretty damned good. To date, no one has guessed how I do it, and I’ll get some word-of-mouth patrons in my audiences if I’m lucky.
Problem is, I perform my show so sporadically that people who get recommendations to see me have usually left by the time my next performance rolls around.
And I can’t afford to do my show any more often than I already do.
Damned if I don’t, damned if I do.
That’s what this life is beginning to feel like. And there’s no end in sight.
But I hold out hope. All it takes is one moment in the right place at the right time. The big hotels on the Strip are always looking for new shows, and I just need one of their scouts to dumpster dive into the slummy-ass theater I rent out for my show. Once they see the house act, they’ll be sold.
But that hasn’t happened yet. It’s been the better part of five years. And I don’t know how much longer I can do this.
I think the biggest audience I’ve ever had was about a year ago.
I caught a huge wedding party at the right time on the night of their rehearsal dinner, and they each brought a plus-one.
I had nearly forty people in the audience that night.
I felt like I was the king of the world.
Pretty pathetic, right? Copperfield draws in crowds of thousands every night.
I got forty and it was a career highlight.
Oh well. I check my watch. I guess it’s showtime.
Can’t keep my three audience members waiting.
I walk out onto the stage to tepid applause. It’s a smaller than normal crowd tonight, which is saying something. A grand total of eight bodies in the crowd. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.
I scan the crowd. Lots of people wearing T-shirts and shorts—par for the course since it’s perpetually summer in Vegas—including a family with two kids that are way too young to be up this late.
But then my eyes stop as they land on a beautiful woman in the front row of the theater.
She’s wearing a sleek crimson evening gown, smoking a cigarette from a long holder like Cruella de Vil.
Pouty lips, long eyelashes, and a shock of red hair that would shame Little Orphan Annie.
And she’s covered in head to two in red gemstones—rubies, maybe?
I get through the show, and I’m hoping the woman in the gown will volunteer for the house act.
But she doesn’t and I end up doing it on one of the other audience members.
The kids in the family of four raised their hands, but I wanted to spare the parents from thinking one of their children was crushed by a giant plywood house, even momentarily.
“Thank you, ladies and gentleman! You’ve been a great crowd!” I wave at them. “Please tell your friends about Aus Waverly, the Wonderful Whiz!”
Yes, that’s my stage name. Now, I didn’t consider that “whiz” is a slang for piss.
Not that it matters. None of these people will tell their families about me. They’ll forget about me the same way you forget about the oil change light in your car the second you’re parked.
The crowd departs, and I walk into the stage-left wing of the theater and grab a drink of water. These shows always leave me parched.
“Excellent show, Mr. Waverly.”
I nearly choke on my water. No one’s back here. I’m the only one in the theater. I have a non-union stage manager, and he always ducks out the second the show concludes. His only job is to drop the house and work a few light cues.
I turn around toward the silklike voice. It’s the woman from the audience, the one wearing the long gown. She’s even more beautiful up close.
Did she walk right up onto the stage? There’s a single cordoned-off staircase leading from the audience to the stage, but she must not have seen the sign saying it was for emergencies only. Or she ignored it.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’re not supposed to be here.”
“Oh, I think I’m precisely where I’m supposed to be, Mr. Waverly.” She offers a gloved hand. “My name is Rouge Montrose. Do you have time for a quick word?”
Fuck that bitch. Rouge Montrose.
Not just for what she made me do in Vegas—though mostly for that—but also for killing herself and leaving me the sole person to attend to the Jade Sanctum while I’d much rather be romancing Thea Storm right now.
Instead, Wick fucking Blackwood has left his post at the bar of the West and is now seated next to her in East.
My blood is boiling.
If it were a patron, I wouldn’t mind. If it were any other employee of mine, I wouldn’t mind.
That’s a lie. I would mind, but I wouldn’t be full of rage like I am right now.
Who the hell is attending to West? I glance back for a minute. Leo has taken up the helm.
Okay, that’s fine for now. But that doesn’t change the fact that Wick is going after Thea and—
Shit! He just touched her.
Okay. He shook her hand.
That’s all he did.
For now.
But Wick really ought to be doing his job. That’s an objective fact, untainted by whatever I’m beginning to feel for Thea.
I check my watch. I only started my set twenty minutes ago. People are dancing. If I stop now, it’ll ruin the flow of the entire evening.
Fuck!
The Jade Sanctum can’t afford to ostracize its clientele, and the people here love to dance. Our house-made liquors are our main draw, but the music is a very close second.
When Rouge Montrose’s organ harvesting plot was exposed, all her employees who had done nothing wrong were fucked over.
A lot of patrons stopped coming altogether because of the bad press, and a lot of our infrastructure was taken care of using the money Rouge got from the black market.
Bianca ceded control to all the clubs under Rouge’s control—besides her flagship, Aces Underground—to their new respective owners.
She said at the time it was because it was the right thing to do, but now I’m wondering if she just knew these other clubs were a lost cause.
We’re in a much more precarious position than we were under Rouge.
Not that I fault Bianca. These clubs are adjusting to being run legally for the first time since they opened.
I don’t usually mind scrounging to meet the bottom line. I’m in a much better position than I ever was in Vegas. But with the stability of my new life here in Chicago comes my obligation to place my patrons’ needs first during club hours.
Which means I can’t leave my post at the DJ booth. Not now. The club and my employees—even the ones I’d like to knock upside the head for talking to beautiful women I’d like to keep for myself—need me.
So the show must go on. For now, at least. I can take a break in thirty minutes or so.
In the meantime I’ll face away from East. Keep my mind off Thea as much as I can.
Wick is a creep. A smart girl like Thea wouldn’t go for him in a million years.
At least, I hope that’s the case.
I just met Thea tonight.
I don’t know her at all.