Practicing Malevolance
Chapter Two
by Jesse Aaron
October 10th – Carrie’s fifteenth birthday. We needed something fun to do out of the house. We checked the newspaper. Nothing great going on. No good movies, but the wonder magician was in town doing his show. Although it didn’t sound that special to me, Carrie and I got dressed up and off we went. There’s one thing you must understand before I go into the rest of this. She may have turned only fifteen that day, but she was a smidgeon under five feet, seven inches tall with long, blonde hair, her father’s good looks and appeared to be about twenty-four when she was dressed up. I, on the other hand, am short with short, dark hair. I was lucky enough to have maintained a very youthful appearance, as my mother had – praises be for great genes. When she was in her sixties, she’d looked to be about forty. I, pushing forty at the time, and was often mistaken for a twenty-five year old. People never guessed that Carrie and I were mother and daughter. We looked nothing alike and too close together in age. We were usually mistaken for college-aged friends.
The show was in a large lecture on the local college campus. We looked right at home. We went in, bought tickets, found our seats and the show started as we sat down. Except for a couple of TV shows he’d done that I’d flipped past without half a glance, I still had not paid any attention to this man’s performances since he was fifteen and I was eighteen – twenty-some years ago. He walked out on stage and, with complete composure, managed to captivate every person seated there. The gawky boy I’d seen was now (although still scrawny, it helped with those escape acts, I supposed) a heartbreaking doll. Long, thick, black hair topped a beautifully chiseled face with riveting black eyes. He bewitched each member of that audience for nearly two hours with a constant display of his illusionary art, as well as charming us with his refreshing and refined sense of humor. His sexy moves weren’t bad either. He had every woman in the house fascinated with his boyish yet sullen good looks. He could have accomplished this feat if he’d simply stood there for two hours. What had I been missing on my TV all those years as he grew up and turned from goony to gorgeous?
His act had also matured to include nearly every facet of live stage presentation. Music, dance, comedy, romance, sexual innuendo – it was rather like a perfectly orchestrated Neil Simon play-become-musical with MAGIC. I was stunned, to say the least. In college, I’d studied every aspect of theatre – set design, construction, lighting, directing, performance, costuming, makeup, on and on. I’m not an undisputed authority on theatre, but this man’s show covered the gamut! In particular, it had HIM.
With two lousy marriages under my belt, men rather made me sick. Not Paul. I was entranced, enthralled, enchanted and all those other “en” words.
As the show wrapped up, Carrie and I made our way to the lobby. She wanted his autograph. Nearly forty-five minutes elapsed before the man showed his face. During that time, I read the program and looked closely at his photographs – what a babe. I’d again regretted having changed stations so many times just because of the word “magician”.
Finally, he arrived in the lobby preceded by part of his entourage clearing a path for him – how customarily sappy. But that’s show biz, and people can be obnoxious. He came right past Carrie and seated himself in front of the couple just ahead of us. I took one look into his face and realized that this must be the end of a tour. That face appeared to be well over fifty years old. He’d been working too hard for too long. I knew from the year and age given in the program that my memory hadn’t failed me. He was fifteen when I was eighteen, making him thirty-six. My heart immediately went out to this man. I suppose it was because so many people I’d enjoyed – Elvis (my hero), John Belushi, Freddie Prinz and so many others – had come to such disastrous ends thanks to the careers they’d chosen. Something told me this man could meet the same fate. I managed not to cry, but I somehow began to feel his weariness. My legs weakened. I grabbed hold of Carrie’s arm to help hold myself up. I assume she thought I was overcome by his presence – not so – yet.
The couple ahead of us had two small children. The daddy held up his six year old daughter and asked Mr. Malevani to give her a kiss, which she was graciously given. Not to be one-upped by a cute, little kid, Carrie looked him square in the face and demanded, “If she gets a kiss, so do I.” She also received a kiss and walked away but not without a verbal response.
“Get back over here. I don’t give kisses without getting one back.” It appeared that she’d neglected to return the favor.
One thing you should never do to Carrie – offer up anything that sounds remotely like a dare. She walked back and gave him a kiss as he gave her another, cheeks to lips.
Moms and their kids generally have things in common. I was not to be outdone by a pretty teenager. I told him, “Then Mommy gets one too.” He did a double-take, I assumed he was trying to figure out whose Mommy I could be. He indicated that I could have that kiss. I put my cheek near him. He took hold of my face in both hands, turned me to face him, and kissed me fully on the mouth. Again, my knees went weak – for a reason that I wouldn’t understand until a few weeks went by. I normally don’t react like that. You know the phrase, “He puts his pants on one leg at a time”? Well, I have another: We all have to take a shit eventually and there’s nothing dumber-looking than a person sitting on a toilet. No matter how important someone else thinks he is, each of us is as important as the next guy. However, I was acting like the love-struck teenager, not Carrie.
I had to grab Carrie’s arm again to walk out of the place. She pulled me toward the door. We’d parked far away, not being familiar with the campus. She practically carried me to our van. I climbed in and damned near couldn’t drive home. I could not get the pictures of his face out of my mind. The beautiful one in the program and the captivating one on stage, side by side with the old man who’d landed a mushy one on me in the lobby. Something had happened to me – something strange and alarming. For days I remained intensely depressed, as if being away from him was too much to take. I’ve always made fun of people who were “depressed.” What a crock! However, I had no other term to attach to the way I felt and acted. I was far past the stage to have a teeny-bopper lust-for-what-I-can-not-have. Furthermore, my negative feelings toward men in general were still strong and healthy, to say nothing of the fact that I’d always been attracted to the Arnold Schwarzenegger type – muscles, rugged, six-pack, stacked. I liked to play with the big boys. Why was I mooning around like a lost puppy over a wispy little man with fewer and smaller muscles than my own? I wanted to kick myself in the ass, but I didn’t have the energy.
Over the course of the next week, I found it more and more difficult to get up in the morning. When I was in the shower, I felt no better. A couple of times I nearly fell asleep while standing in the shower and just about knocked myself unconscious when I collapsed. At work, I felt so drained that I couldn’t handle simple things like remembering customers’ names – important ones who came in often, spent lots, and were offended by my memory loss. One very wealthy lady called to complain, indicating that she’d never be in again, thanks to me. Needless to say, the boss-man was none too happy and made sure I knew it. I began missing work – couldn’t sleep, but couldn’t get out of bed. Soon I quit work altogether. Carrie was worried. This was not the way her fiery, high-spirited mother acted. Nothing stopped Mom. I could tell she was having a hard time, but I just couldn’t do anything about it. She began missing school. She was afraid to leave me alone. I was becoming so weak that my legs wouldn’t support my dwindling weight – I’d also quit eating. I couldn’t get back and forth to the kitchen or the bathroom alone. I wasn’t able to fix anything to eat anyway. Picking up a pan to put it on the stove made me so dizzy. I’d ended up just sitting in front of the oven door, pot in hand, no way to get back up. Most of the time I couldn’t get through a meal even if I tried. It was too much effort to pick up the fork. Chewing was out of the question – just too much work.
Several weeks later, I wasn’t able to do anything except lie in bed. Luckily, there was a branch of our bank in walking distance, and I’d shown Carrie how to use the automated teller and how to write checks. She was able to make sure there was food in the house and the bills were paid. The money in the checking account was dwindling, and there wasn’t much in savings. We were down to nearly our last dime, and the drain on my energy seemed to increase as time went by.
I began to realize that that was all it was – a constant, steady drain, as if I were being tapped. Carrie wanted to call a doctor. I refused to see one. She wanted to call a psychologist. I refused that too. Something inside me told me what was wrong and where to find some answers. The problem was, I’d never had any experience with things of that nature. I needed to know more about what I was experiencing. I sent Carrie to the library. I wanted books on psychic phenomena, parapsychology, anything she could find that sounded remotely like metaphysics. I was sure she thought I’d lost my mind along with my stamina. We’d certainly never covered these topics in any conversation we’d ever had. However, something kept telling me that the answer lay within that context.
I knew when this had started and who was present at the time. I had to know how to stop it.
