Tricks With Powders by Glenn Willmott

He was my first, the one with the scarf.

I edged gently off the bed. It wasn’t light but I could see my way around. I’d never been in a hotel before. Unless you count the hotel bar. Strange being so high up. I stood for a moment gazing out the window at a building opposite, a great grid of other windows, feeling briefly one of their elevated caste.

I took panties, but no more, from the stockings, skirts and stays slung over a chair back. He paid for the night. As he fell asleep he joked I’d never leave because I’d want to marry him. I said he’d still have to pay, I wasn’t tricked so easily. He told me I’d be surprised, his greatest trick was making girls disappear.

I did want to disappear—before dawn could betray the face in the mirror. A handcloth lay on the edge of the sink; nearby, a shaving brush and blade on a marble ledge. I wiped away ruined makeup and drank water from a glass. The small window, open a crack, gave faint sounds of hooves and farther off, a motor’s growl.

Back in the room, he sprawled like an Olympian sated by a nymph. He was handsome, which I guess was fortunate. I’d almost given up. My roommate got picked up in an automobile and she tried swinging a deal for the two of us, but no dice. When the music hall let out a block away, business improved, but not for me. I wondered what the show had been. I heard snippets—about believing him or not, how he did it, that he was a veritable master, by George. Chortles about doing what he could do with a woman, at the office or at home.

The street had nearly emptied when someone emerged from a lane alongside the hall, turning east with a confident step. He neared, stopped, and studied me. I’d placed myself partly in shadow, where my heavy makeup might look natural. Where one hand, tucked in my skirt, would escape notice. If something in you doesn’t want to show your face—your real face, the only thing that is really yours in this grasping world—and all they can see is where you’ve lost fingers to a fabric cutter, then employers will tell you they prefer girls more approachable, more capable. So I got no work in sales, in offices, in restaurants. And no suitors sought my hand. But in the dark magic of the night, masked in powder and paint, it was different.

“My dear thing,” he said in a suave midwestern voice, like Clark Gable. “Are you entertaining this evening?”

A silk scarf hung carelessly around his neck, so I named a steep price and called him Baby. He paused and something grim showed in his pursed lips. I thought I’d blown it. But he lifted his hand to my hair, brushed my ear with his fingertips, and showed me a silver dollar. “Will this do for a deposit?” It did.

He introduced himself as Marvello—as you must have guessed, a magician. He was the opening act for a big RKO flick about Houdini. But he didn’t act at all like a Houdini; he acted like a Carnegie or a Rockefeller. I don’t know what a magician makes but he must have spent most of it on that hotel room.

He stirred and grunted. I regarded his open wardrobe trunk. On one side, tight rows of shelves held a dozen bottles with Latin names on them. P. Lycopoda. Ergotia. Last night he’d translated some: flash powders (explosions, smoke), hand powders (sleight of hand and palming tricks), colorants (alchemical transformations), opium (countless uses, apparently), convulsives (I didn’t ask), etc. They were his équipement de guerre. All you needed to make the world your oyster. That and champagne. He’d winked, gesturing to the ice bucket.

“I didn’t know magic was so real,” I said appreciatively, after a couple of glasses.
“Nothing is real, my dear. It’s all tricks.” Leaning close, he purred, “Life isn’t real. Death isn’t real. Only you are real. There’s only you.” I wasn’t sure if he meant himself, or me. He began unbuttoning my blouse and it didn’t matter.

Idly now, I tugged at a tiny drawer on the other side of the trunk. Cufflinks, tie pins, buttons, a needle and thread. Another drawer with newspaper clippings. Reviews of his act. A notice of a missing woman—someone he knew perhaps. I rifled, curious. Another missing woman, a different one. Disappeared. Suddenly my heart started thudding. I closed the drawer and turned to my clothes.

“Don’t get dressed,” he said. He lay on his back, his eyes closed, smiling. “It’s still night, remember? Until I give the word.”

“I’m cold,” I said.

“Come here, then.”

“All right.” My throat was dry again. I coughed and my thoughts tumbled. “I’ll just get some water.”

When I came back his eyes were open and on me–and feral. I kept my damaged hand behind my back.

“You don’t have to hide it,” he said, no longer smiling. “This is when you show me everything, girl. This is the reveal.” He extended his arm as if we were on stage.

I slipped slowly into the bed next to him. Immediately he twisted on top of me, hands on my shoulders, pushing down hard. One hand went to my neck.

“The thing about magic,” he breathed, using his other hand to push down my panties, “is someone is always the dupe. The one who sees the girl is gone. It’s all about controlling who sees. The flash. The powder.” He smirked. “Only you know if she was ever there.”

His fingers crushed my neck. I lost breath and my chest heaved.

I freed the hand from my back and drew the razor right across his throat.

As I said, he was the first.

​© 2025 Glenn Willmott

About the author:

Glenn Willmott is a pulp magazine lover and fiction writer who studies modernity and wonder at Queen’s University in Canada.