Millroy the Magician by Paul Theroux
‘And you know a trick or two,’ Millroy said.
Fredette’s smile gave him a bigger scarier face, with hunger showing on it.
‘I could teach you control over two or three more bodily functions. Ever juggle?’
But Fredette was thinking about his diner. He said, ‘The rotten thing about food and beverage is the hours. I never get to bed before two. I’m here again at six, heating the deep fat in the Fry-O-Later, revving the salamander, defrosting the hamburg, slicing baloney, mixing up the juice, making the batter.’
From the look of distress on Millroy’s face you would have thought he was being forced to taste these things rather than just hearing the words.
‘You could put that all behind you.’
Fredette was not convinced, but he was thinking.
‘You could sell up and relocate.’
‘I’ve got a good mind to,’ Fredette said, and looked as though he wanted to kick the wall and leave, slamming the door.
‘Florida’s lovely.’
‘Maybe sit on the beach.’
‘Or work magic. With your juggling and your control of functions and the right motivation you’d have enough skills to put on a show. And think of the financial resources you’d have as a cushion from the sale of your diner.’
‘It’s more a question of who’s going to pick up the rest of my lease.’
‘Whatever,’ Millroy said. ‘With that money you could invest in your future. Buy some equipment. I’ve got props I could sell you – caskets, pedestals, boxes, cabinets – top of the line illusion aids. I’m talking tricks here – it’s like learning a language, and you’ve already got the basic grammar.’
Fredette was smiling but only with his mouth. His eyes were squinty and sad.
‘Now name me the sucker who’s going to take over the lease on a greasy spoon that’s losing money.’
‘You’re looking at him.’
Fredette recovered and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got location. Students from UMass. Bus station people. Overflow from Legal Seafoods on most weekends. We’ve had some great years here. It’s a kind of institution – the potential is unbelievable if you put a little money into renovation, float a loan.’ Then he became small again and he said, ‘You serious?’
‘Maybe I want to be you for a while, Norman.’
‘Lots of luck.’
Millroy put his arm around the man. ‘And how would you like to be me?’
I heard a goose-honk from Norman Fredette’s nose, and did not have to wonder what it meant because it was such a serious sob. It was hardly a human noise but it was a clear snort of pain. The man did not say anything more. He simply stood in front of Millroy and stared and then he wagged his head and moved the way I had seen people do at the county fair Fun-O-Rama in front of the twisted mirrors in the funhouse.
And while he was looking at Millroy this way, Millroy was repeating like the words of a prayer, Tell them I’ll listen. Tell them they can reach me at my new premises. Tell them you found me.
That very day he wrote Norman Fredette a check, buying the rest of the lease, and when the diner was Millroy’s he closed it.
‘This was meant to happen,’ he said.
In the cold quiet days between Christmas and New Year’s he began gutting the place.
‘It is also a way of giving thanks.’
The planks gulped and howled as he used a crowbar to crank them off their nails and he splintered them when they would not give.
‘I used to go to church on Christmas with Gaga.’
He was looking at the jumble of cracked and broken lumber he had hacked.
‘There are all sorts of churches,’ he said in a whisper, and he looked meaningfully around the gutted insides of what had once been Norm’s Diner.
He began hacking again, this time with an axe. I had seen him create before, bring forth birds and vagrant eggs and lengths of bunting and missing children. I had never seen him destroy anything. He did it swiftly and with accuracy, bringing down the walls of the diner.
‘I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to be able to purge this place,’ he said. ‘Just empty it and clean it top to bottom –’
Into the dumpster went the counter and the stools and the flooring and most of the kitchen equipment. It was worn-out and sorry-looking stuff, stained and chipped and clogged with grease, smelling of cigarette smoke. Millroy sold some of the hardware, the walk-in refrigerator that smelled of rancid hamburg, the sticky Fry-O-Later, the burned-out salamander, the blackened griddle, the large scorched oven.
‘– release all this blockage,’ he said, grunting as he yanked out the chrome stools and the rotted strapping that held the appliances in place. ‘Flush it away.’
In a very short time it was an empty shell, and Millroy blocked out more rooms in the back, one for sleeping, with a foldaway partition – my bunk on one side, Millroy’s on the other – and a restroom with two sets of fixtures. The restroom he finished first – all blue tiles, with a shower, two tubs, two sinks and two wide hopper cubicles.
‘You need space in a restroom most of all – room to move your elbows and swing your knees,’ he said. ‘You notice I’ve got heat lamps all over the place. Warmth is a critical factor. You recognize this, don’t you, muffin?’
I said yes.
‘From the Airstream?’
It was a close resemblance to the restroom that filled the whole front end of the Airstream – biggest restroom ever installed inside a trailer home, Millroy said. This was similar – big and blue and warm, with a skylight.
‘I guess anyone who saw this would immediately think of me,’ he said. He was looking proudly at it. He jammed his foot on the flush pedal and the water got sucked down with a thrust like a rocket. ‘It’s a kind of signature.’
My bedroom was a cupboard similar to that in the trailer, with a bed-shelf that folded out of the wall, just my size. The sliding partition gave us both privacy. I had noticed that whenever Millroy had a chance he protected me – built a box for me to crawl into, and made me safe.
He hammered and sawed, doing most of the carpentry himself, and he talked as he worked.
He said if your shoes were too tight it was like having hooves and your body got poisons fed back to it because your feet could not breathe properly. He said we would soon need people to help us here, and that I would find them in Boston the way we had found children for the show, and maybe those same youngsters would be interested, and we would treat them like sons and daughters.
He hired some workers to help him, but hardly spoke to them because they ate badly: an electrician named Roger, a plumber McQuinn, a tile man Tom Hackle, and the men who disposed of the dumpster, Vinny and George.
People who were bad eaters were misshapen, Millroy said, they gave off the smell of carbon monoxide. That was why he was developing a machine for doing emission tests, monitoring levels of gas from the sweat and the effort and the bad food, like exhaust fumes from a car.
‘What have you got here?’ asked Roger, when he saw the box and the tubing and the probe, and the others stopped to listen – they were all curious.
‘The germ of an idea.’
He said no more than that and he told me why: ‘These men are too old and it’s not a serious question and it’s too late for them.’ They were so weak and badly fed that they went pop-eyed from struggling to lift a little plank, he said.
Even so, it surprised me that he did not tell them what he was doing. He did not tell them that he was Uncle Dick from the canceled TV program, or that his name still appeared in the newspapers. It surprised me even more that he said so little about this project to me. Every now and then he muttered, ‘I’m still listening.’ And he kept busy.
Each evening when I went to sleep he was hammering and painting, and when I woke up at dawn he was still at it, more was finished. I was used to his working magic, so at this rate he seeme
‘I eat right,’ he said. ‘If you eat wrong you get tired.’
I was trying to figure out how this whole thing was going to end up and I remembered him saying There are all sorts of churches.
‘This is how the pyramids got built.’
He was hoisting a steel box into place, and it might have been an oven, or it might have been the tabernacle box with a swinging door in the middle of a church altar.
‘Endorphins,’ he said, and punched himself in the stomach.
I had thought from what he had said to Norman Fredette that he wanted to make plans for a new TV show, but even after ten days he was still working here in what had been Norm’s Diner – painting it now, the interior, the trim, with white floor tiles, white ceiling, white enamel fixtures.
‘We first of all need a safe haven – a restroom, a kitchen, a place to sleep,’ he said. ‘But so does everyone.’
That was what churches were supposed to do, I was thinking – take people in and give them rest, offer them a place to pray, play music, even give them food at times.
‘This is a way of tangibilizing what I stand for,’ Millroy said.
It was bright and warm and safe and clean, all the old smells gone – purged and flushed, he said – it was like a little chapel, with chairs and a long altar-like counter.
‘Anyone who comes in here will know me,’ he said. He had a paintbrush in his hand. ‘This is who I am. This is what I do.’
He had sent the other workmen away and now he was finished, having imagined it all himself.
‘This is how we will be delivered.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a diner, angel.’ He lowered his voice, as though he wanted me to do the same.
‘What are you going to call it?’
‘The Day One Diner.’ He whispered the name as though we were in a holy place.
We were in the middle of the deliveries that made it look like a diner – the bright fixtures, new tables, napkin-holders, plates and bowls, just out of their crates or newly unwrapped from their bandages of bubble wrap – and the sun was streaming through the front windows onto Millroy’s renovation that made the diner look as clean and simple as an eggshell, and there was a knock, the clink of metal on the front window that now was painted Day One Diner.
Two men were waving from the other side of the glass, and they both had the serious beaky look of people who want something badly.
‘We’re not ready for customers yet,’ Millroy called out.
‘We’re from the network,’ one said.
And so Millroy let them in. One was Walter Hickle, the other a man named Hersh. Hickle had a big pink face, and a bright gob of shaving foam in one earhole, and Hersh had Smoker’s Face and was sweating, even though this was a cold bright January morning in Boston.
‘It’s like I told you on the phone,’ Millroy said. ‘We’re currently tied up.’
Hersh looked wildly behind him at Walter Hickle and thrashed with his hand and then said, ‘We didn’t call you.’
‘Must have been someone else – some other network,’ Millroy said. ‘Will you excuse me? I have a few panels to deal with. Take a seat. You’ll find them very comfortable and form-fitting. I hate stools. Rusty?’
In the back he said, ‘This trim needs a new lick of paint.’
But while I was looking at the trim Millroy read my mind.
‘Those gents are not going anywhere. They’ve got a lot to think about.’
He began painting and not whistling but blowing air between his lips.
‘Hersh worries me most. That face. Lungs full of toxins. I’d love to hook him up and monitor his emissions, just to show him the print-out. Hickle’s body’s too big for his suit – it’s as though he’s been sealed into it. You know his feet are swollen.’
Twenty minutes later the men were still there, Hersh fidgeting because he had seen the Thank You for Not Smoking sign, and Hickle on a chair, seated with his knees apart.
‘Now I can offer you my full attention,’ Millroy said.
‘Nice loaf,’ Hickle said.
‘That’s showbread,’ Millroy said. ‘You can’t eat that. It’s a sacrifice. But try this.’ He handed Hickle a hunk of some bread he had just baked in the new oven.
‘Tastes great – you’ll have to give us the recipe.’
‘It’s in the Book of Ezekiel, four-nine.’
At first they laughed, but immediately stopped when the echo reached them, realizing Millroy had not cracked a joke. They went on chewing the bread hunks harder, as though trying to please him.
Hickle swallowed and said, ‘I guess you know how famous you are.’
Millroy’s smile was like the iron gate in front of a big house you did not dare enter, and by not saying anything he confused the men.
‘When they pulled the plug on your kids’ show it left morning viewing with a gaping hole. Sesame Street is romping.’
At first Millroy said nothing and still stared with a cold iron smile.
‘There is no such thing as a kids’ TV show,’ Millroy said. ‘I’m not even sure what you mean by “kid.” Big people and small people watch TV indiscriminately – there’s a huge cross-over audience. Big people watch cartoons and small people watch late-night news and talking heads. I could give you the demographics.’
‘We have a particular program format in mind,’ Hersh said.
‘So do I,’ Millroy said. ‘But what use is a format if you don’t have substance?’
He turned his back on Hersh and Hickle and began opening and closing cabinets, filling containers, sliding pots and jars, and peeling factory labels from the legs of the new chairs. He did it all with silent efficiency, the way he prepared complicated tricks.
‘And you need the face for it,’ he said. ‘If you’ve got the wrong face you can’t sell anything. Tell me, do I have the face? Charisma is a vibration but it is also profoundly physical.’
Was it Hersh’s Smoker’s Face that made Millroy mention this?
‘We are thinking along the same lines, no question,’ Hersh said.
‘I could go into detail,’ Millroy said. ‘Some people get constipated just worrying about doing the right thing. Why tie yourself in knots?’
‘We might need a little detail,’ Hickle said. ‘Step by step.’
‘I call that “paralysis by analysis,” ’ Millroy said. ‘There’s only one measure of a TV show and that’s the viewing figures. You got sponsors?’
‘We’re talking to people. We’re looking at cable. You don’t get yanked on cable for saying “toilet.” ’
‘That’s not a taste issue,’ Millroy said. ‘It is a matter of life and death.’
‘America has some growing up to do,’ Walter Hickle said.
Millroy winced. He took America personally and did not like hearing that the country might be immature.
‘Not everyone will love me,’ Millroy said.
He had lined up a set of large canisters on the counter, and he was lifting them, showing that they were empty.
‘But I am simply a messenger. My viewers appreciate my message, because it teaches them how to like themselves better and how to live longer.’
‘We might need something on paper,’ Hersh said. ‘Something about your plans, something about money.’
All this time, Millroy had gone on manipulating the five empty canisters, arranging them in a row, moving them with his fingertips, and then flourishing their shiny lids and pressing them on top.
‘These are my plans,’ Millroy said, holding his hands above the canisters as though conjuring. ‘Want to do me a favor and open them, very carefully, one at a time?’
Hersh was nearest to the canisters. He took off one lid and looked in, and then another and another, until he had opened all five. Millroy stood aside, seeming pleased with yet anothe
‘They got stuff in them,’ Hersh said, looking in. ‘What is it, some kind of trick?’
‘Loaves. Fishes. Seethed grains of barley. Pottage. Melon balls.’
‘Is this the detail you were talking about?’
‘Call it documentation, call it nutritional engineering,’ Millroy said. ‘Call it manna. Because you’ve got coriander in it. And the color of bdellium. That is, yellowish.’
‘What happens now?’ Walter Hickle asked. He was restless and fidgeting, glancing around, the way hungry people behave just before they eat.
Millroy handed them forks and spoons, and kept a fork for himself.
‘But before you dig in’ – the fork he held upright to gesture with began to go rubbery and twist forward as he stroked it with his thumb – ‘you might want to say thank you.’
Their eyes were jammed sideways at the fork in Millroy’s hand coiling like a clock-spring.
Knowing that he was distracting them with his fork, Millroy said, ‘Thank the source of all our health, or if you inclined to put it into one word thank God, or, as I like to think of the Almighty, “Good.” ’
As he spoke, he put down the twisted fork and emptied two of the canisters, a fish in one, a loaf in the other. Then he placed the single fish on one platter, and the loaf on another platter. And he opened two napkins and covered them – flapping them casually, hardly paying attention, with the lightness that meant magic was not far off.
‘This day is different from any other in my life on earth.’
Hersh and Hickle repeated this, speaking together, like two big boys, their voices nudging.
Lifting the first napkin, Millroy uncovered a stack of fish – they were hot and had dark grill-marks ribbing their sides. Jerking the second napkin, he showed the men about ten small wheaty dinner buns, just like the single loaf that had been there before.
‘This is not a miracle,’ Millroy said. ‘This is deliverance.’ But he could see that the men were amazed. He smiled and said, ‘This day is different from any other day of my life on earth.’