Nicola Barker - Clear - A Transparent Novel

He cracks up laughing, ‘I mean she was totally concerned for the guy. Just standing there, in her funny little shoes, open-mouthed, staring up at the box in sheer wonder. Like a kid at Christmas, pretty much.’

‘She’d never even heard of Blaine before?’

I’m shocked.

‘Nope. Says she doesn’t have a TV . Never reads a paper. Didn’t have a clue , I swear. Like she’d just landed here from Mars , it was.’

‘But now she’s here most days…’ I casually muse (Sherlock, eat yer heart out).

‘Most nights ,’ he corrects me.

‘Of course ,’ I murmur.

‘Only comes when he’s sleeping,’ he sighs, glancing up towards the magician who has — just that minute — lifted his head on to his hand and is now lying on his side, still warmly ensconced in his sleeping bag.

‘Arrives at around ten or eleven, most evenings,’ Seth continues, ‘then usually stays right through. Some of the other lads worry a bit about her — I mean it gets quite wild down here sometimes. But she’s fine . She told me once how she has a nice little flat just down the cobbles a way…’ he points.

‘She does,’ I confirm.

He gives me a straight look. ‘Been there, huh ?’

(And I don’t think he means the flat , either.)

‘Why,’ I ask (quick as a flash), ‘have you ?’

He slowly shakes his head (and not a little regretfully).

At this point one of his colleagues calls him over. He turns, waves his ready compliance, then glances, briefly, back at me. ‘Amazing nose , though, eh?’ he murmurs, in a strangely inscrutable parting shot.

Amazing nose ?

‘Yeah. Yeah , absolutely amazing …’ I bluster pointlessly after him.

And the tits aren’t half bad, either.

Did I just say that?

I charge into the office, crash down in front of my computer, and dive straight on to the internet.

Wham !

Amazon…

Bam !

Bookfinder…

After sniffing around for a while I pull out my Master-card and order:

(1) The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka (Vintage Classics, £9.99).

(2) Primo Levi, If This Is a Man/The Truce (Abacus, £8.99).

(3) David Blaine, Mysterious Stranger —‘ The Sunday Times Bestseller: His secrets will become yours’ Pan, £12.99).

I do a mite more surfing, but find out surprisingly little of personal interest about Blaine. The full-on autobiographical detail is sketchy, at best…

Born in Brooklyn, New York, 1973 (no actual date available).

First got ‘into’ magic aged four, when he saw a man performing conjuring tricks on the Subway.

His mother remarried when he was ten (no information about his real father or stepfather — although someone did mention something about his dad having died when he was very young) and the family moved to New Jersey.

As a teenager Blaine became an actor, attending a Manhattan acting school and then appearing in a few commercials and playing some cameo roles in a couple of soaps.

His mother died in 1994, when he was twenty-one.

He started doing ‘magic for the Movie Stars in Hollywood’, so consequently has many ‘celebrity fans’, including Leonardo Di Caprio, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

He sent an amateur video of himself to ABC and they responded by offering him a million dollar contract to perform what they called ‘street magic’ on TV (So he didn’t invent that phrase himself? Well this makes Solomon’s theories look a little dodgy, eh ?).

Apparently — now I like this — Blaine absolutely loves Tower Bridge. Always has. That’s why he’s doing the stunt here.

( Hmmn . Think this ‘loves Tower Bridge’ thing has that distinctively feculent aroma of a big ol’ pile of wheedling PR).

On one of the fan-sites there’s passing reference to Blaine’s (now almost legendary) ‘public demeanor of vacant detachment’, which strikes me as fairly interesting…I mean is all that very flat yet very deliberate slow-moving, slow-talking stuff just a public persona? (Does he jerk and buzz like Woody the fuckin’ Woodpecker in private?). More to the point: doesn’t everybody talk that way in Brooklyn?

Of course then there’s the reams of people trying to cash in on the whole magic side of his work (i.e. ‘Make all your friends gasp in astonishment…buy this video/ DVD/book…put your hand through a glass window…levitate…do a card trick…bring a fly back to life…’ blah blah ).

I also happen across Wakedavid.com, ‘the site dedicated to keeping David awake for 44 days and nights’.

God , I really dig that about the internet: you’re banging through an apparently endless, incredibly turgid pile of fan-shite one minute, then the next — and completely without warning — you’re suddenly entering a world peopled entirely by haters . And yet here they are, rubbing up benignly against each other, almost as if — underneath all that careful packaging — they’re actually just one and the same thing…

Which they are , effectively (i.e, two sides/same coin etc.).

‘Cos that’s Modern Life, huh ?

Wakedavid.com…

ENTER

Wow . It’s a flashy old site, though, for something so apparently ad hoc .

And the first thing I notice — apart from the unnervingly detached, yet effortlessly jocular tone — is how incredibly keen these people are to make it clear, up front, that their campaign against David Blaine has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of racial motivation–

Good God , no!

Never !

Uh- uh !

I call Bly over at lunchtime to take a quick peek.

‘You okay?’ she asks, in passing.

‘Huh?’

‘You look a little pale ,’ she says.

‘Did you see this before?’ I ask, pointing at the screen.

She puts her hand on to the back of my chair, leans in closer, and commences reading.

‘I had a boyfriend once,’ she informs me, a short while later, as we share a sandwich, walking along the river, ‘who was really into his four wheel drive Landcruiser…’

Okay …

‘…And you might well think that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the Blaine thing…’

Yes, I might .

‘And you may well be right…’

‘But?’

( Jeez . This girl’s certainly no Jalisa on the information front. It’s like pulling fucking teeth with her.)

‘But when I read that Wakedavid stuff just now it totally reminded me of the kind of tripe he used to download. The general tone ,’ she says, ‘and this particular kind of…uh… mind set…’

‘Was the boy a Nazi?’ I ask sweetly.

She slits her eyes at me. ‘At least credit me with more discrimination than that .’

We grind to a halt in front of a dazed if cheery-looking Blaine. I peer down at my half of the sandwich. It suddenly looks quite unappetising. And while there’s a chill in the air, I feel a little… phew …hot.

‘Oh fantastic ,’ Bly suddenly gasps (between urgent mouthfuls of her tomato and mozzarella ciabatta), ‘it’s Hilary, Adie, look …’

I turn to where she’s pointing (somewhat irritably — I mean when does she finally elucidate on the improbable 4x4/Wakedavid connection?) and see that the individual who’s generating such excitement on her part is sitting on Aphra’s bench, two spaces along from a currently blissfully dozing Punk’s Not (doesn’t this guy have a home to go to?).