Darryl the Magnificent

Vincent and Georgia Davis hated magic. In most families, this would not be a major problem. Unfortunately, their son Darryl wore a top hat, purple cape, and performed every Friday night in the living room. And from the very first show, Vincent—a baggage handler at LAX—treated Darryl’s tricks with the same verbal disdain he showed to every fancy white suitcase that rolled down his conveyor belt.

“Not impressed,” was his standard response.

Georgia Davis didn’t even attend Darryl’s performances. She sat in the kitchen and scrolled her phone looking for videos of fat people getting stuck in embarrassing places. She did this because she enjoyed other people’s shame, but also because she was quite fat herself and watched the videos in order to make a mental note of activities she shouldn’t attempt, like close-tubed water slides and spelunking.

The behavior of Darryl’s parents was really just an overflow of their behavior toward each other. They had slept in separate beds for years, and in their two-bedroom house a few blocks east of the airport’s south runway, that meant Georgia got the bed and Vincent got the couch. A few times a night, after the roar from the landing planes subsided, Darryl would wake to a dull THUD, the sound of his father hitting the floor next to the coffee table, followed by a drowsy “dammit” as his dad climbed back onto his favorite cushion.

When Darryl couldn’t go back to sleep he pulled up magic shows on YouTube. As he studied the stagecraft, he found himself equally drawn to the audience, where grown ups—men and women mostly his parents’ age—sat mesmerized. He longed to see his mom and dad enjoy anything together, and hoped that his fledgling talent might rouse their mutual interest, and that in time it could become a springboard to actual affection and maybe even love.

So Darryl kept practicing. For hours upon hours, he shuffled cards and bounced coins from finger to finger. When he turned thirteen and received a big birthday check from his wealthy aunt up in Baldwin Hills, he bought a wooden box from an online magic shop and convinced the Guatemalan girl from across the street to be his assistant. After practicing together in the garage for weeks, Darryl wheeled Consuelo into the living room and cut her in two pieces, an illusion that gave Vincent pause, but only for a brief moment.

“Those ain’t her real feet,” he told his son with a satisfied grin. From the kitchen, Georgia cackled at an obese man trapped in an MRI machine.

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Darryl put Consuelo back together then walked her across the street. When he turned around to face his house again, he noted its unmistakable aura. In the same way that people grow to resemble their pets, they also become an embodiment of their home. As for Darryl’s house, everything in the yard was dead or dying. A blue tarp flapped on the shingled roof, covering a hole no one cared enough to fix. A basketball backboard hung sideways over the garage, its rim ripped off by one of Vincent’s co-workers years ago and never replaced. One afternoon of hard work would have done wonders. But this was a house without wonder. And in order to break that most cynical of spells, Darryl would need to pull off the best trick of all time.

For over a year Darryl didn’t introduce any new illusions to his routine. Each week it was the same mix of card tricks and ring tricks and cup tricks and handkerchief tricks. And for that he had to endure endless taunts from his father.

“Seen it.”

“Don’t care.”

“Unoriginal.”

But finally, on a late summer evening that brought a rare thunderstorm to Los Angeles, Vincent walked into his living room to see a seven-foot-tall, egg-shaped orb sitting near the front door. It was painted a glossy black with a smattering of bright gold stars. In the front was a small round door and a porthole-sized window. From dozens of pinpoint holes in its frame came wisps of smoke.

“Now we’re talking,” Vincent said as he settled into his favorite recliner and popped a beer.

A steady drum beat rose from a Bluetooth speaker and, to Vincent’s surprise, Darryl rappelled into the living room from a rope he had anchored to the ceiling.

“What the—” Vincent yelped.

Darryl was in full performance mode. With his wand, Darryl pointed over Vincent’s shoulder and a strobe light began pulsing from the corner of the room.

“Georgia, get in here!” Vincent yelled, taking ownership in the fact that his six years of verbal abuse was finally paying off in some genuine homespun entertainment.

Georgia lumbered in from the kitchen. “Where’d that big ol’ egg come from?” she yelled over the music.

“Hell if I know,” Vincent answered, watching Darryl as he twirled and spun around in time with the music.

After warming up the audience with some never-before-seen dove tricks, Darryl finally moved over to the smoking orb. He opened the door and, from the cramped space inside, grabbed one end of a long section of shiny anchor chain. Darryl spun and spun until he had more or less mummified himself in metal, then used what little hand movement he had to secure it with a padlock.

“If I gotta call a locksmith for this trick, you’re paying for it,” Vincent yelled over the music, still trying to make his dominance known.

But Darryl didn’t acknowledge him and shimmied over to his mother to have her test the strength of the bindings. “Oh yeah, he’s stuck all right,” she affirmed with a nervous look to her husband.

Giving a regal nod with his top hat, Darryl danced around the egg a few more times before he stepped inside and closed the door with the toe of his polished black dress shoe.

“It’s go time,” Vincent declared as he wiggled forward to the edge of the recliner.

On cue, the music grew louder and smoke from the orb began to billow from its holes. Through the tiny window of the egg came FLASHES of lightning and electric ZAPS as Darryl’s stoic face disappeared behind thick fog. Vincent leaned over and patted Georgia on the thigh. “All part of the show,” he assured her. The flashes become almost blinding and Darryl thrashed about inside the egg until a giant POOF shrouded the room in a veil of grey and the music cut out mid-beat, leaving them with no other sounds than the distant rumble of thunder.

“Hell yeah,” Vincent whispered in quiet appreciation.

After a few seconds, the smoke lifted and the door to the orb fell open limply. Inside was nothing but Darryl’s magic wand.

Vincent leapt to his feet in delight. “That’s what I’m talking about!” he yelled out, causing some neighbor’s dogs to bark in reply.

Georgia stepped forward cautiously, peering into the smoky egg. “How’d he do that?”

Vincent finished his beer and placed it back in the recliner’s built-in cup holder. “We don’t know. That’s what makes it good magic,” he explained like an expert.

Then the two of them returned to their seats and waited in anticipation for Darryl to return and take a bow.

When he didn’t appear after a minute, Vincent took it upon himself to make it happen. “Okay, Big D, come on out.”

“Anytime,” his mom joked.

They waited another few seconds before Vincent started to get annoyed. “You need help with that lock?” his dad called out.

No one answered.

After another minute, his mom checked her phone and let Darryl know that “I do have other things to do, ya know.”

Darryl didn’t return.

Running short on patience, Vincent strutted toward the orb. “Enough of this crap,” he said and looked inside. “Where you hiding?”

Darryl was not inside the egg. Georgia walked around it and knocked on its shell. “This thing is solid wood,” she remarked.

Vincent resented looking like a fool, especially in front of his own wife. “All right, you dumb jerk, guess you don’t want dinner!”

And with a silent nod to his wife, Darryl’s parents retreated to their traditional spots: Vincent to the couch and Georgia to the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, when she pulled their frozen meal from the oven and slapped it on the counter, Darryl had yet to resurface.

“That’s it…” Vincent fumed. Off he went to do a more thorough search of the house. Georgia followed with her iPhone flashlight on full beam. They checked every room. Every closet. They walked the perimeter. Their son was gone.

“Do we need to, like, call somebody?” Georgia asked.

Vincent rolled his eyes at her suggestion. “The boy’s just trying to trick us, Georgia. Besides, they don’t even start lookin’ for somebody till they been gone twenty-four hours,” he reasoned. “You watch, that little turd’ll be in his bed tomorrow morning wearing a dopey grin. And when he is, you better believe I’ll show him a trick or two of my own.”

Despite his confidence, neither Vincent nor his wife slept well that night, listening for a creak on the floor or the turn of a door. When the sun came up, they met in Darryl’s doorway to find that his bed was still empty. “I’m gonna kill him,” Vincent muttered.

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Georgia was worried that he was already dead, possibly incinerated through some sort of freak orb malfunction. “I’m calling the police,” she declared.

Thirty minutes later, a weary officer at the end of a twelve-hour shift showed up to take their statement. “And where did you last see your son?” the policeman asked.

“When he went into his magic egg,” Vincent said, pointing to the object which still sat in the middle of the living room.

“Got it. And what was your son wearing?”

“A top hat and a purple cape and thirty pounds of anchor chain,” Georgia answered. He jotted it down without any reaction, making Georgia wonder if this was the officer who covered all magician-related crimes.

“Did your son seem distressed when he disappeared?”

Georgia nodded her head. “Oh yes,” she explained. “There were flashes and smoke and it looked like he was being electrocuted.”

“Electrocuted?”

Vincent waved off Georgia. “Don’t listen to her. That was just part of the act.”

Georgia locked eyes with the officer. “Well it looked pretty convincing to me.”

“Uh uh,” Vincent chuckled. “Next thing you’re gonna tell us is you think Darryl actually made himself disappear.”

“I mean… it’s possible,” Georgia declared.

“I can’t. I can’t,” Vincent said, holding up his hands and leaving the room.

The officer clicked his pen and slipped it back into his shirt pocket. “We’ll put out a bulletin and tell the neighbors to keep a lookout. Honestly, I wouldn’t worry too much about this. My guess is he’ll come back when the time is right.” Then he folded his leather notebook and loped back to his squad car.

But Darryl didn’t come back. Not that night. Or the next. Or the night after. For a whole month his parents held their breath every time someone approached their front door, hoping it was their long lost son. It never was.

Vincent was too proud to admit it, but Darryl’s absence created a hole in his life. He began to realize how much he enjoyed those Friday night magic shows, as mediocre as they sometimes were. As he watched suitcase after suitcase roll out the belly of a 757, it reminded him of Darryl’s endless handkerchief trick. When he power sprayed a dead seagull out of the wheel well of an MD-11, he thought of the trick where Darryl squished a dove in his top hat. And when a piece of luggage opened on the tarmac and jet wash blew someone’s underwear halfway across the airport infield, he reminisced about all the times Darryl had dropped a deck of cards and spent the rest of his performance picking them up.

Georgia couldn’t hide her mourning half as well as her husband. The viral videos which used to make her laugh no longer brought her any joy. Not compared to Darryl’s egg trick. And every meal reminded her of the final dinner that her son never showed up for, making it nearly impossible for her to eat anything at all.

Eventually and separately, Vincent and Georgia came to the tragic conclusion that Darryl was indeed gone. For good.

That night, having lost all hope, Vincent made his traditional midnight walk from the bathroom to the couch when he stopped outside Darryl’s bedroom. The empty bed was still made from months before. Drawn by a force he couldn’t name and couldn’t resist, he stepped into his son’s room and fell face first onto the bed. As his head hit the pillow, he felt something flat and stiff.

Vincent stuck his hand inside the pillowcase and pulled out a spiral notebook. He sat up and turned on the light. “Darryl the Magnificent’s Magnificent Book of Illusions,” it read on the front. He opened it to find a detailed handwritten description of each of Darryl’s tricks. From the simple to the complex. All of them complete with drawings and helpful hints.

Vincent stayed up late reading, every page a revelation that brought Darryl back to life, if only for a moment.

The next morning, he poked his head into Georgia’s bedroom before he headed to work. “I’m gonna learn all of Darryl’s tricks,” he announced.

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“What do you know about magic?” said Georgia.

“That’s why I gotta practice,” said Vincent.

And practice he did. While waiting for planes to arrive and on his lunch break and at home. He worked his way through the notebook page by page, not moving to the next trick until he felt he had a grasp of the previous one.

Georgia was his audience, and unlike him, a good one. When he dropped a ball, she pretended not to notice. When he picked the wrong card, she pretended it was the right one. And when he finished, she always applauded.

Within a year, Vincent had mastered Darryl’s one-man tricks and needed an assistant for his bigger illusions.

“You wanna help me?” he asked her. Georgia couldn’t remember the last time he asked her for help with anything.

“Sounds fun,” she said.

Every night after work the two of them would meet up to rehearse, with Georgia becoming adept at spinning rings and stacking cups and providing misdirection at the perfect moment.

Little by little, they were becoming a team again, relying on each other’s gifts and talents to become something better than they could ever have been on their own. Georgia even agreed to try the box trick, even though it played to her greatest fear.

“If you get stuck, I’ll get you out,” he promised.

The symbolism of Vincent cutting her in pieces then putting her back together again was not lost on Georgia, and when it was time to go to bed that night, she left plenty of room for him to squeeze in next to her. Neither of them could remember the last time they had slept so soundly.

After a few more months, Vincent arrived at the end of Darryl’s notebook. He could do all of his son’s tricks. Well, all of them except for the one trick that wasn’t in the book. That one remained a mystery.

Feeling bittersweet, Vincent looked down at the last page of the precious notebook, not wanting to close it. Knowing that would be the final goodbye. Knowing that he would have to move on. But at least he had Georgia to move on with him. Perhaps, in a way he was only now realizing, that was Darryl’s greatest trick of all.

The revelation brought a tear to Vincent’s eye. He hadn’t cried once since his son disappeared. He was overdue. The tear slipped down his cheek and landed with a quiet splat on the empty last page of the notebook.

As it did, a word appeared in purple ink. “Abracadabra,” it read.

Vincent looked down at it, unsure of what he had just uncovered. But then—

“GEORGIA!”

Vincent ran to the bathroom then sped back with a wet washcloth in his hand and his wife on his heels.

“WHAT?!”

“I found Darryl’s missing trick!”

Without hesitating, Vincent rubbed the washcloth across the top of the page until Darryl’s words shone through in bright invisible ink:

“The Magic Orb.”

For the past year, Darryl had been living in a secret room beyond the back wall of his bedroom closet. The idea first struck him as he was standing across the street looking at his depressing house and noticed a forgotten patch of dirt completely blocked from view by a dead shrub.

The trick came to him in a flash. After making some rudimentary sketches, he started building, saving his loudest construction for those couple of hours after school when his parents were still at work and the planes at LAX roared every ninety seconds. Ace Hardware didn’t question Darryl’s comings and goings, assuming that he was creating a new and elaborate illusion. Which, in fact, he was.

First he poured a basic slab of concrete and then he put up metal siding, matching the house’s faded paint color to the outer wall of his hideout. Once the roof was on, he broke through his closet wall and connected the two living spaces. Then he moved in a sleeping bag and a flashlight and a pile of library books about Harry Houdini. As far as he was concerned, it was the first upgrade anyone had made to the house in his entire life.

The biggest challenge for Darryl would be the escape, which required getting from the magic orb to his secret new bedroom without being seen. He considered cutting a trap door in the egg and using the crawl space under the house to make his exit, but he knew that would be his dad’s first guess. He needed something better.

Instead of going down, Darryl went up. Waiting until the music and strobe lights and smokescreen were at their peak, Darryl released a hidden latch in the egg and crawled out the top, attaching himself to the anchored rope he had used to make his over-the-top entrance.

He knew that he would not have time to free himself from the padlock and chains, which meant he would be pulling himself up carrying an extra thirty pounds of weight. To prepare for this, Darryl had spent every school lunch in the gym building his upper body strength.

The trick went perfectly and his parents never saw him emerge. However, the smoke dissipated much faster than anticipated. When it did, Darryl had barely made it to his perch directly above Vincent and Georgia’s heads. There he hung, completely exposed and holding on for dear life. But he summoned his strength, firm in the belief that the only way his parents might learn to love each other again would be if they could first learn to love his magic.

But since a magician never reveals his biggest secrets, Darryl didn’t include any of this in the notebook he hid in his pillowcase.

“This isn’t helpful at all!” Vincent cried after wetting the entire page.

“What does it say?” Georgia asked, looking over his shoulder.

Vincent read the instructions: “The Magic Orb is the most dangerous trick ever attempted. For with the Magic Orb, one can disappear and reappear quite quickly. But unlike other tricks that require misdirection and illusion, the power of the Magic Orb relies entirely on supernatural forces outside the magician’s ultimate control.”

“It doesn’t tell you how to use it?”

“No! It just says, ‘To make something disappear or reappear, stand inside the orb, close the door, think of the object, and say Abracadabra.’”

“So let’s try it,” Georgia said.

“Do I look like an idiot, Georgia? I know magic and that’s not magic!” argued Vincent. “That’s… sorcery.”

“Or maybe, Vincent, at some point you just gotta stop being such a naysayer and believe in something even if you can’t see all the moving pieces!”

Having said her piece, Georgia stomped down the hall. Vincent grumbled and followed her to the orb. Like every other piece of furniture in their house, it had not moved an inch since it arrived. When they reached the small door, Vincent pointed inside. “You do it,” he ordered.

“Me?” She shook her head. “You’re the magician. I’m the assistant.”

Vincent huffed then stepped inside. Georgia followed him. When he turned around, they were nose to nose.

“Maybe you should wait outside,” he suggested.

“No way. If this egg takes you to wherever my baby went, you bet your bottom I wanna be there.”

Georgia kissed Vincent on the forehead, then closed her eyes and grabbed hold of his hands. “I’m ready,” she declared.

Vincent nodded. Then he closed his eyes and, as instructed, thought of Darryl. He thought about the smile on his son’s face when he pulled off a trick. And the way Darryl kept going when he messed up. He thought about the way Darryl always looked at him, longing for affirmation. And how he rarely got it. Vincent wanted to fix all that. He wanted a redo. But he could only have one if his son came back.

Vincent gave Georgia’s hands a firm squeeze and then—

“Abracadabra,” he said.

To their surprise, the orb started to shake. Sparks filled the egg. Smoke surrounded it. For a few brief seconds, Vincent and Georgia weren’t sure if they were blasting into space, dropping through the Earth’s crust, or splintering into a billion tiny particles.

Then the shaking stopped and the smoke lifted and the door to the Magic Orb opened. Standing in their living room, an inch and a half taller but still wearing his top hat and his purple cape, was Darryl.

Georgia burst from the orb and covered her son in a lifetime’s worth of hugs and kisses. Vincent wept at the sight of him and grabbed on tightly, the three of them consumed by a love bigger than time or place.

“My boy…” he cried. “My magnificent magnificent boy.”

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