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as if he’d forgotten something, and stepped into the shadow of a building. He pulled his cell phone off his belt and lifted it to his ear. As he spoke, smiling from time to time, the way people do on mobiles, he gazed around him casually, also a common practice for cell-phone users.
    He was not, however, actually making a call. He was looking for any sign that he’d been followed from the music school.
    Malerick’s present appearance was very different from his incarnation when he’d escaped from the school earlier that morning. He was now blond and beardless and wearing a jogging outfit with a high-necked athletic shirt. Had passersby been looking they might have noticed a few oddities in his physique:leathery scar tissue peeked over the top of his collar and along his neck, and two fingers—little and ring—of his left hand were fused together.
    But no one was looking. Because his gestures and expressions were natural, and—as all illusionists know—acting naturally makes you invisible.
    Finally content that he hadn’t been followed, he resumed his casual gait, turning the corner down a cross street, and continued along the tree-lined sidewalk to his apartment. Around him were only a few joggers and two or three locals returning home with the Times and Zabar’s bags, looking forward to coffee, a leisurely hour with the newspaper and perhaps some unhurried weekend morning sex.
    Malerick walked up the stairs to the apartment he’d rented here a few months ago, a dark, quiet building very different from his house and workshop in the desert outside Las Vegas. He made his way to the apartment in the back.
    As I was saying, our next act will begin shortly.
    For now, Revered Audience, gossip about the illusion you’ve just seen, enjoy some conversation with those around you, try to guess what’s next on the bill.
    Our second routine will involve very different skills to test our performer but will be, I assure you, every bit as compelling as the Lazy Hangman.
    These words and dozens more looped automatically through Malerick’s mind. Revered Audience. . . . He spoke to this imaginary assembly constantly. (He sometimes heard their applause and shouts of laughter and, occasionally, gasps of horror.) A white noise of words, in that broad theatrical intonation a greasepaintedringmaster or a Victorian illusionist would use. Patter, it was called—a monologue directed to the audience to give them information they need to know to make a trick work, to build rapport with the audience. And to disarm and distract them too.
    After the fire, Malerick cut off most contact with fellow human beings, and his imagined Revered Audience slowly replaced them, becoming his constant companions. The patter soon began to fill his waking thoughts and dreams and threatened, he sometimes felt, to drive him completely insane. At the same time, though, it gave him intense comfort, knowing that he hadn’t been left completely alone in life after the tragedy three years ago. His revered audience was always with him.
    The apartment smelled of cheap varnish and a curious meaty aroma rising from the wallpaper and floors. The place had come lightly furnished: inexpensive couches and armchairs, a functional dining room table, currently set for one. The bedrooms, on the other hand, were packed—filled with the tools of the illusionist’s trade: props, rigs, ropes, costumes, latex molding equipment, wigs, bolts of cloth, a sewing machine, paints, squibs, makeup, circuit boards, wires, batteries, flash paper and cotton, spools of fuse, woodworking tools . . . a hundred other items.
    He made herbal tea and sat at the dining room table, sipping the weak beverage and eating fruit and a low-fat granola bar. Illusion is a physical art and one’s act is only as good as one’s body. Eating healthy food and working out were vital to success.
    He was pleased with this morning’s act. He’d killedthe first performer easily—recalling with shivery