The Illusionist Read Online Free

told me.
    As I moved close to where he lay, I could hear the even sound of his breathing. Suddenly, as I stood there, his eyelids fluttered, and he shifted onto his back. His body jerked, as if he were fighting something, as if I had startled him, and I stepped away.
    I returned to my room and waited for him to wake up. Eventually, I heard the floorboards creaking in the other room, and then a burst of water from the shower. A few minutes later, Dean emerged from the bathroom, his hair damp, his skin clean, fully dressed, as usual.
    *  *  *
    He just stayed. He moved his stuff in, his magic books, Modern Magic, and Magic Secrets of the World, a duffel bag with some old clothes, his ditty bag. In the morning, he would go to work, chucking down Skittles for breakfast on his way out.
    We lived like two bachelors. The place was a mess, we never cleaned. But then we didn’t really have to clean, because there was almost no furniture.
    Those first few days, I rarely saw Dean. At night, sometimes he wouldn’t come home till late, till after I was in bed. Or else he’d sit at the table, practicing magic tricks, one eye on his book and the diagrams on the page, the other on his pile of cards, or his glass and quarter. I never saw Dean any other way but fully clothed, in his jeans and his two shirts, one on top of the other, though I saw his bare feet, the long, soft toes, the high, delicate arch.
    After a couple of days, when Dean got paid, he gave me $120 cash for half the rent—he didn’t have a checking account, he said. He was planning to get one, but he’d had some trouble upstate with an ATM and he had to wait.
    I didn’t ask more.
    What did I know then? Only what I wanted to know. That he was a strange and beautiful creature, living in my house. I didn’t pursue what Brian had said. Yes, he might have been a pervert—some in-between creature. But he was clean and intoxicating, and I was lonely. I was too young, or too stupid, to frame the question. I was only intrigued. And I was afraid that if I asked too many questions, he would flee, and I would be ordinary again, living alone, going at night to the Wooden Nickel, doing my homework at the end of the bar.
    *  *  *
    A few days after he moved in, I gave him an old denim shirt of mine that had shrunk in the wash. Dean was smaller than me, an inch or two shorter, and maybe ten pounds lighter. He was delicate next to me. “Try it on,” I told him.
    He went into the bathroom and shut the door tight. A couple minutes later, he reemerged, holding the shirt in his hand. “Too small,” he said, looking at me, a question of sorts, a little smile on his face. I allowed my eyes to focus on what I didn’t want to see, the two faint mounds on his chest, where his breasts would be.
    The imponderability of it all was too weird.
    â€œDean,” I said, “what’s that?” I pointed to his chest. “Those breasts or something?”
    He was suddenly straight-faced. “No. It’s a deformity. I’ve always had them. Don’t worry. I’m all guy.”
    â€œSo—how come you got—those?” I asked, nodding at the bumps.
    He was serious, his large eyes cool. “I got them on the top. Inside I’m a man.”
    I was confused. “So—you’re like a—lesbian?”
    â€œNo,” he said, calmly. “I’m not a lesbian.”
    â€œSo, what are you then?” I asked.
    â€œI’m not a lesbian. A lesbian is really a woman. I’m not. I’m a man,” he said. “I’m a real man.”

C HAPTER 4
CHRISSIE
    I waited. From down on the street below came the sound of Saturday morning business, cars driving by, voices, the clatter of footsteps on the concrete sidewalk. Dean was not smiling now. “It’s like another state of being,” he said. “If they did an operation, they’d see men’s things inside.