The meanest Flood

throaty sound into her voice, like a jazz or blues singer, someone who has smoked a lot of marijuana and has sore and inflamed vocal cords.
    ‘I do, yes,’ he said decisively. ‘I like you. I find you a pleasant and interesting person to be with.’
    ‘And what’s my name?’ she asked.
    God, there it was again. One minute he was taking control and less than a minute later she was running rings around him. ‘Name?’
    ‘My name, yes. A magician like you should know my name.’
    She’d been in Nottingham. He would have asked her her name then. But that was hopeless. He’d never remember. ‘Josephine,’ he said, hoping for a miracle.
    She studied his face. After a time she said, ‘My name is Marilyn Eccles and you know it very well. You can call me Josephine if you like because Josephine was an erotic woman and a disciple of passionate sexuality.’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you Marilyn... Marilyn, very nice name.’
    The Metro train pulled into the airport and Danny grabbed his bag. Marilyn ran after him. ‘Where are you going?’ she said. ‘Take me with you?’
    ‘I can’t do that,’ he said, running up the steps to the airport concourse. ‘I’m working away for a few days. We’ll have to sort things out when I get back.’
    She slowed down, let him get away. Good riddance, he thought. Go bother someone else. But as he looked back she seemed to be shrinking away. He couldn’t understand how she could have frightened him on the train. She was all vulnerability and loneliness and reminded him of himself as a child.
    He checked in for his flight to Oslo. Yes, only hand luggage he told the receptionist at the Braathens ASA desk, a plump girl with a permanent smile and sparkling eyes. He was only going for a couple of days, quick business trip.
    ‘Enjoy your flight, sir.’
    The magician smiled and nodded. Of course he would enjoy it. He had never been on a flight that he didn’t enjoy. Soaring above the earth like that, it reminded him of the contest between Simon Magus and Peter, how they had conducted their magic battles in the air above Rome.
    Danny would have liked to be alive then, when the profession of magic was held in high esteem. The time when his own knowledge would have led to respect and acceptance. He had never reconciled himself to the fact that his destiny had borne him into a time when respect and adulation were only awarded to pop stars and footballers and computer geeks.
    When he thought about it he would rather have been alive at any time in the past. Not only because magic and the profession of magic were better understood and appreciated but because it seemed to Danny that earlier incarnations of society were better regulated. The Ten Commandments were an absolute code which left no room for error or misinterpretation. They were a yardstick by which people could measure their contribution to the community. Well into the Middle Ages the Church continued to offer a stern but just moral landscape in which the battle between good and evil was clearly delineated.
    But wherever one looked now there was only a confusing array of data. Everything of value in the world had been deconstructed. There was no narrative any more, only a series of meaningless snap-shots. Marilyn Eccles was everywhere you looked.
    The in-flight magazine had a photograph of a one-legged black toddler and explained that the amputation had been inflicted as a punishment by a teenage commander in one of Sierra Leone’s rebel armies. The crippled child stared at the camera with huge round eyes and it was as if the curtain of Maya was lifted at the exact instant that the photojournalist depressed the shutter on his camera. The child becomes an actor in his own drama. Another crippled and starving African child who will do nothing except harden the hearts of his Western audience. To reach them he has to offer more and in that instant he is filled with the consciousness to provide what is needed.
    A magic moment occurs.
    It is not enough that the child is maimed and hungry. He also has to be pretty and brave. And the child not only knows this but he knows how to accomplish it.
    Magic.
    He turns his head slightly while keeping his eyes on the camera, and although he doesn’t smile he contrives to suggest with his lips and the set of his jaw that a smile is not beyond him. I am not only a helpless amputee, he says. I am also attractive, quaint, fascinating, clever and keen-witted.
    He’s three years old