Tea

Tash Royal

Lewis had been taught by his mother to cry. She used to tell him it was a “cure for sadness”, that every tear was another bad memory slipping away. It was naïve, innocent, and probably saved Lewis from a lot of emotional internalisation in his childhood. The downfall of it all was, as always, growing up. Lewis was eventually intoxicated with the cynical views that suffocated his teenage and adult years. His mother’s old wives’ tale became nothing more than that; a naïve memory. And yet, that night as the sun dozed off in the early evening, he lay down and cried until his lungs got sore.

His phone buzzed, the sound muffled by his congested sinuses. Of course, he pulled his duvet over his head and ignored it, despite the sound drilling holes into his patience with every ring. Ultimately, his curiosity won, and he wasn’t at all surprised by the identity of culprit behind the messages.

Lewis had one friend, who had lots of other friends that he pretended were his own friends. He found that happened a lot; introverts become friends with extroverts who surround themselves with other extroverts – it was a common life trope. Lewis’s one friend was Kate, and she was the only one persistent enough to send him 12 texts in a row. Unsurprisingly, all of them were begging him to come out that night. The light on the phone screen was bright, scathing his eyes until he dimmed it down to a comfortable dullness. “im sick,” he replied in a monotonous message, before he padded over to the kitchen, scratching the salt from his cheeks. Rather than make the mistake of opening his fridge and being let down by the lack of food, he decided to sit. He slid to the floor, his sweaty back leaving a sparkling trail behind him where it grazed the fridge door.

His street-view window looked down at Lewis from the wall facing him. He didn’t stare out of it, just at it, entranced by the dirt and grime festering on the corners, the damp from his cheap walls spreading to the glass. He imagined it worming out of the wall, choking him.

He stared at this window almost daily with no change to the view, so it came as quite a shock when something disturbed the familiar image. A small stone flew into the pane, followed by another. He walked over and looked down and blinked in mild surprise. Standing on the street, three floors below, was Kate.

He opened the window and she called up, “You don’t look ill!” “I’ve got the flu.” “Come on then, let’s hear you sneeze!” “Biology doesn’t work that way, Kate. I can’t do it on command.” “That’s what she said!” The joke was juvenile and not really funny, but Lewis smiled anyway.

“Buzz me in, loser!” she insisted. And he did. He always did.

Lewis offered Kate some tea but she refused. “Oh no, I know this game: you go to put the kettle on, I ask how you are, then I blink twice, it’s three hours later, you’re in pieces and I never get my bloody drink. We’re going out.”

“Come on, I promise to get you any drink you want, right here.”

“Martini, on the rocks.”

“Okay, I promise to get you any drink that involves water and a tea bag.”

“Nope, that wasn’t in the rules.” She beckoned him towards the door, “You promised and now you have to deliver.”

It was very hard to say no to Kate. She was the female version of ‘tall-darkand-handsome’. Her eyebrows were angry but her eyes were smart, and her smile could kiss you from across the room. Of course, the real Kate was far less enigmatic.

Kate was a promiscuous alcoholic. She adopted a stray dog and spent more money on his food than her own. She slept with her forty-year-old landlord to keep the rent low. She ate beetroots before a night out to give her lips a tint because she didn’t have time for make-up. She wasn’t the stranger in the bar, but the one stealing from it. While Lewis was a mess, she was a disgrace. They made a fantastic pair. But Kate? She was a do-er, and dragged Lewis right along with her.

“Kate, I’m not up for dancing.” He watched her smile pull her features, her eyes squinted and her eyebrows rose until she was doing a very poor impression of The Shining.

“Who said anything about dancing?”

“Kate.”

“Yeah?”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Old enough to experience your first drunk magic show at a bar.” “That’s not a thing.”

Lewis crossed his arms in disapproval, trying to stare down Kate. She stood in front of the bar, the lights outside blinking at her and covering her in coloured speckles that bounced off her hair, and she ignored his paternal look. Kate’s roommate, Jess, had done something far too spontaneous for Lewis’ liking, as usual. Jess was younger than them, barely nineteen and all too naïve to be living with someone 4 years her senior, let alone going out drinking with them.

Kate shook her head excitedly at him. “No, it totally is: you get blasted and go see a magic show, and because you’re so hammered, it all seems a thousand times more impressive. Jess and I do it all the time.”

“You go to magic shows all the time?” “Well, not just magic shows: poetry slams, operas, art galleries, town council meetings. Really, anything can be fun when you’re drunk.” Kate’s optimism constantly did a number on Lewis, as did her clear emotional dependence on alcohol.

“I don’t think I’m going to be a fun drunk at the moment,” Lewis insisted, hoping the bout of self-pity might dissuade Kate from pushing further. “Well, you can hold my hair while I vomit.”

“Sounds like a riot. Still want to go home.”

Kate didn’t roll her eyes like she usually would. She instead gave a small smile and took his hand. Though he would much rather have been in bed than standing in the cold outside a bar, the fact that Kate was with him gave a little spark of warmth in the breeze.

“For me.” She rubbed his hand with her thumb and leant into his side. He enveloped her in his arms and sighed heavily, trying to huff out all of his doubts in one breath. Lewis had always thought that in another life, he might be dating Kate, in some twisted world where he wasn’t gay. But that wasn’t his life.

“Okay, fine. For you. But it’s gonna be an early night,” Lewis promised. Kate’s resigned look made him think that, just for a moment, he had won, but that was shattered by her following sentence.

“Might change your mind after you see the entertainment,” she teased, avoiding his eye but letting him catch her smirk.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lewis mumbled. In all honesty, he didn’t really want to know what she meant. It was likely a sexual innuendo, or something illegal considering Kate’s slightly immature sense of humour. She raised her eyebrow in reply and buried her hand in her back pocket yanking out a crumpled flyer; it showed a man in a smart scarlet suit, holding a hand out towards the camera, a playing card slotted between his fingers.

Something about the picture fascinated Lewis, and he studied it a moment. Unseen by him, Kate smiled.

“Is that the magician?” Lewis asked, trying to sound casual.

“Yeah. Jess knows him, apparently,” Kate replied, trying not to overplay her hand.

“They went to sixth form together or something, bit of a loner, his brother was the popular one, but Jess got along with him pretty well,” she leaned over his shoulder and smiled at the picture, “and he’s clearly matured wonderfully. A masterpiece, if I do say so. Though Jess said that I’m, shall we say… not his type,” she winked, beginning to head inside the bar, nodding to the bouncer as she did.

“You coming?” Kate asked, spinning to face him in the doorway. Lewis barely heard her.

“He’s...” Lewis didn’t know what he was. The man’s eyes were dark, and judging from the umbra around them, he hadn’t slept in a month; his hands were slight and his hair wasn’t quite black, but as close as it could be, tousled in a way that could be considered an art form. There was a fine line between jealously and lust and Lewis wasn’t sure where he fell.

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

The bar was small, but not crowded; ‘The Scarlet Sorcerer’, as the magician styled himself, seemed to be none too big a draw, despite his flyers declaring him as ‘Amazing...Truly spell-binding!’. During the walk inside, Lewis eyed the small stage that had been constructed at the far end of the bar, a simple raised platform covered by a ruddy red curtain. The five short rows of plastic chairs that observed the ‘stage’ looked out of place in the bar, yet despite the mismatch in the interior design, it was almost calming.

Jess had bailed. Nobody was surprised. Teen angst had gotten the better of her with her ex back in town. Kate spent their first 10 minutes at the bar complaining about teenagers, cursing herself for once being one. Despite the lack of Jess, she was still sure they could use the connection to meet the magician.

Kate wasted no time in downing three Martinis. He closed his eyes and prayed to every deity he knew that the show would begin before she started slurring. “C’mon, we gotta get sood geats… good seats! Good seats, ha, I’m a little tipsy,” she chatted on, gripping his hand with warm, sweaty fingers. He suspected that she had sneaked in a few shots in between her cocktails, judging by her lazy feet that danced to keep her upright as they made their way to the front row. He wanted to call a cab and take her home, but his wayward mind took too long to decide; the lights dimmed before he was ready to make a choice. He looked at Kate who had planted her head on his shoulder, and by the time he looked back, the young man from the flyer, resplendent in the same red suit, had appeared on stage, the spotlight drawing every eye in the room to look at him. Everyone applauded and Lewis looked for a trap door or perhaps a secret entrance from behind the stage through which he could have entered. As hard as he looked, however, he saw none.

“Good evening!” The Scarlet Sorcerer boomed despite his slight frame. He looked younger in person, or maybe it was just his expression, holding a joy that only children have. He wasn’t short, but he was lithe, his smirking pixiegrin oozing confidence. Lewis wasn’t surprised. A face like his, he had a right to be confident.

“Good evening,” the audience called back with varying levels of enthusiasm, the most enthusiastic of all being from Kate, who had perked up from her sleepy slant on Lewis’ shoulder.

“How are we doing?” he asked merrily, walking across the stage, shoes catching the light as he did, “Are we good?”

The small crowd responded with a lazy, collective, “yes”, as though they all actually felt okay. Lewis said nothing.

“Good, good. Everyone’s happy? No-one’s sad? No-one’s crushingly depressed?

No-one’s overwrought with the tragedies of existence?” Here, Kate turned to look at Lewis, and he wondered if maybe Jess had told the magician they’d be in the audience.

The Scarlet Sorcerer continued, “I’m asking because life isn’t always easy, it isn’t always fair and it’s seldom pretty. For example, ma’am,” he skipped to the front of the stage and leaned down to Kate’s level, the spotlight following him to cast a brief glow on Lewis and Kate, “You have a centipede in your drink.”

As one, the audience turned to look at Kate’s glass and saw that indeed, there was a great black centipede curled along the rim. Kate jerked, looking like she was about to cast the glass aside when the magician plucked it deftly from her hand, picked the bug off, and stepped back, luminous as he examined it in the light that had once again followed him.

“Oh, sorry, my mistake,” he said airily, “it was but an olive.” He turned around his hand to show them and everyone gasped: only a single black olive sat in his palm.

“Still; waste not, want not.” He downed the cocktail in one concise gulp and handed the glass back to a stunned Kate, along with the olive. “Here. Don’t fret; there’s a replacement under your seat, on the house.” Kate reached down and found two full glasses waiting for her. She looked up, cautiously confused.

”And one for your friend,” the magician added, winking at Lewis. He would have blushed under any other circumstance, but was far too shocked to comprehend the flirtation.

The show was, admittedly, amazing. Lewis didn’t need the alcohol to enjoy it – every trick was impressive, every move disarming. Somewhere in the show, the magician asked for a volunteer, and although Kate grabbed Lewis’ hand and held it high in the air, shaking it madly, the magician picked an elderly lady in the third row, seemingly making her disappear into thin air and then rematerialize in the window of the tiny lighting booth a few metres away from the stage. Lewis found himself confounded by his mastery of stage magic.

When the show ended, everyone in the audience stood up whooping and applauding wildly. The magician bowed, smiling with bright eyes and called over the cheers, “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, but what I could really use is some more money!” The noise abated. Well, that shut you up, didn’t it?”

Everyone laughed. A comedian, too, Lewis thought.

“We’ll buy you a drink!” someone called, and it took him a minute to click that the voice had come from right beside him. His neck cracked as he turned to look at Kate. Her eyes glanced sideways at him and she gave a devilish smile. “Done!” The magician replied and in unison, the audience laughed and clapped again. The Scarlet Sorcerer dismounted the stage and stood in front of Kate and Lewis, clasping his hands together.

“What are we waiting for?”

As they were leaving, people patted the magician on the back, or grabbed his hand, shook it violently and told him how much they enjoyed his show. Some were kind enough to slip him a couple of fivers, which the magician twirled in his fingers until they magically vanished. His sleight of hand was impressive, even up close.

“What’re you guys having?” Lewis asked, directing the question at both his companions, but his eyes remained fixed on the magician. ”Vodka, neat,” he replied, a practiced half-smile flashing at Lewis. “A margarita,” Kate piped up. The bartender, keen-eared, had already started on their orders.

“And for you, good sir?” the magician asked, his voice still full of all the showmanship that he had on stage. Lewis smiled at him, feeling very young as his nerves did an acrobatics performance in his gut.

“Uh, just a rum and coke, please.” The magician smiled at him knowingly. Lewis was all of a sudden self-conscious of his predictability.

“Is your name really Scarlet?” Kate asked as they sat. She may have sobered up during the show, but she was at the very least tipsy enough to embarrass herself.

He laughed, dropping his theatrical bravado. “No. It’s Will.”

“I prefer Scarlet.”

“So do I – that’s why I chose it.”

Kate rested her elbows on the table, propped up her head in her hand and gave a light sigh, gazing unapologetically at Will. “You’re really pretty.” Will smiled and gave a seated bow, but said nothing.

“We’re friends of Jess,” Lewis commented, steering the conversation away from Kate’s drunken dreamy-eyes.

Will took a sip of vodka (which baffled Lewis, who couldn’t even smell straight vodka without his eyes watering) and nodded, “I know – she told me to look out for you.”

“What did she say?” Kate asked, her eyes sparkling still.

“’Look for the drunk Asian and the tall slab of sadness,’” he quoted bluntly, giving her a sympathetic look as her face lit up at her own description.

“That’s us!” Kate clinked her glass against Lewis’ in jubilation, an emotion which Lewis was hardly ready to reciprocate.

“I’m not that tall,” Lewis said.

“Ah, but you are that sad,” Will observed.

In the silent moments where Will and Lewis stared at each other, Will smiling and Lewis hypnotised, Kate stood up and left the bar, heading for the door leading to the back. Lewis eyed the purple lighter that protruded from the back pocket of her jeans.

“Something I said?” Will asked, eyebrows raised as he watched her leave.

“Oh, no, she just pretends she doesn’t smoke.”

Will nodded vaguely, briefly catching Lewis’ eye again, playing with the gaze and dropping it again, all while Lewis was totally defenceless.

“Did you like the show?” Will asked, placing down what was left of his drink. Lewis was unable to hold back his awe.

“It was amazing. Incredible, even! I don’t know how you did half of that...”

“Maybe I’m really magic,” Will suggested nonchalantly.

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Lewis sighed, staring into his glass. Will stared at him, a little bemused.

“Wow, you really are sad.” He scanned the blond man inquisitively before turning back to his drink. As he did, his eyes caught the light, becoming a kaleidoscope of every brand of whiskey on the shelf. Lewis finished his glass in one bitter gulp.

“And somehow I’m still sober.”

Will apparently found this quite amusing, giving a bark of laughter before raising his hand to get the bartender’s attention and pointing at his glass. “I’m paying.” Will explained as he ordered a shot each for the pair.

“You – you are?”

”I’ve got a tab. They’re never gonna make me pay it back. And besides,” he picked up a coaster, put it over the top of Lewis’ drink and then tipped the glass over. Even though there had been an inch of liquid left, nothing fell out; the glass was empty. “You need something stronger.”

“Don’t tell me what I need.” Lewis could feel his voice waver in meek defence of his integrity. Maybe it was wrong to snap. Will was just trying to be kind, wasn’t he?

“Okay, you tell me: what do you need?” Lewis was silent. Will shrugged and pushed the shot that had materialised in front of him over to Lewis, the glass gliding straight into his resting hand. He picked it up, swilling it around for a second.

”Shouldn’t Kate be back by now?”

“Yes, but she’s hoping I’ll hook up with you. If it helps, I will.”

Lewis felt a spike in his stomach. “Oh.”

This man was forward, rude and attractive; a dangerous combination to meet in a bar. For the second, maybe third time that night, Lewis found himself at the mercy of Kate’s plan.

“Right here?” he asked. Will smiled and shrugged in return.

“If you like. It’s really up to you.”

Lewis took a sharp breath in and, in a greatly non-Lewis-esque fashion, poured his shot down his throat. It stung, but it was temporary. He looked at Will square in the eyes, forcing himself not to grimace.

“Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see where it goes.”

Kate found them making out in the smoking zone several hours later, holding a cigarette that she insisted wasn’t her own.

“Oh for the love of – really? Here? You dirty bastards…” she grumbled, tossing the cigarette to the ground and piercing it with the heel of her shoe.

“Well, you’re a sober-er gal!” Lewis slurred, falling backwards as he tried to push himself off the ground that he and his tipsy companion had been frolicking on. Beside him, Will was laughing his life away; his once stylish suit now looked more akin to a red and grey Jackson Pollock painting. But there was something magical in his smile that somehow painted over the grey dirt patches.

“Yes. Yes I am. And I’m calling a taxi, for both of you. Sleepover at mine, boys.” Kate snapped, dialling aggressively into her phone as she shook her hair out of her face. If Lewis had been a little more sober, he would have pointed out the lipstick smears around her mouth and called her out for being a hypocrite, but he was far too busy eyeing up a different pair of lips. The scene was a fantastic caricature of friendship, really. Two of them pissed, one of them angrily calling a ride, and one of them missing entirely. Lewis giggled, for the first time in a long time, at the thought of how degraded he would feel the next morning.

“Katie-Kate. Thank you for draggin’ me outta bed. This is a beautiful man,” he reminded her, one arm slung around the magician, who sat straight and shook his head in dismay.

“I agree, but we really need to be getting to the cab, doll-face. C’mon,” Kate pointed out, grabbing Lewis’ right arm as Will grabbed the left, the two of them hauling him towards the road where a taxi sat waiting for them.

“I’m not that drunk, gerroff,” he insisted, shrugging off their help and instead wrapping an arm round either of their sides and strolling along with minimal stumbles, though the effort it took not to fall was very evident.

After guzzling three bottles of water, Lewis, although desperately in need of the toilet, had sobered up enough to make tea, which was his usual state of being at 4:00AM after a night out.

“Tea?” Lewis asked to anybody listening.

“I don’t drink tea,” Will said from behind him. Lewis turned as he flipped on the kettle to see that it was just him and Will. Kate must have headed to bed, or perhaps a shower.

The lights in Kate’s flat gave the room a dim haze, acting as a make-shift sunrise that weaved into Will’s hair, bathing him in a copper glow.

“Just for me then.” Lewis pulled out a mug and popped in a tea bag before walking over to the sofa. “I drink almost nothing else.”

Will looked around the flat. “People kept on giving it to me when my brother died. I can’t drink it now. Unconscious associations.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” ”

No great loss: it’s only tea.”

“I meant about your brother.”

The magician sat down at the table. “He was a little wayward. Overdosed before I went on stage a few years ago.” There wasn’t emotion in Will’s face. Melancholy, maybe, but nothing close to grief.

“That’s awful.”

“It’s funny – I’ve given up tea but not on performing. You’d think it’d be the other way around.” He said this without sadness or even apparent regret, a small smile on his lips.

Lewis didn’t know what to say. He sat down at the table and tried to examine Will’s face, but the spotlight was casting shadows in all the wrong places.

“You seem a lot sadder than me about this,” Will noticed a moment later. There was another pause as Lewis tried to find the words to reply, distracted by the silence. The light above them flickered out – the fuse had blown – but neither of them made a move to fix it.

At last, Lewis spoke. “I don’t know why I get so sad.”

Will gave no clue that he was listening.

“I just- I feel like there’s a blanket over me. A huge, suffocating blanket. And I’m trying to crawl out from under the edges, but it’s so big and so thick and so heavy and... warm. And I just want to lie down and let it bury me. And I hate it, but it’s so much easier than moving.” He turned to look at Will, still busied with staring at the ceiling. “And you, you have so much reason to be sad-”

“I’m not sad.”

“I know, but-”

“Neither are you. You’re depressed. There’s a difference.” Lewis looked at the other man’s face and saw the harsh etchings of what looked like anger, barely visible through the foggy darkness. “Are you – Did I say something?”

“Why should I be sad? Because of Thomas?”

“Was that his name? Your brother?”

“Yes. And it doesn’t make me sad. It happened, he’s dead. There’s nothing to be done.”

Lewis furrowed his brow. “How do you do that? How do you let go of things? How do you not just feel the weight of everything pressing down on you?”

“It’s easy. I’m not depressed.”

Not for the first time, Lewis was rendered speechless by the Scarlet Sorcerer. Will suddenly ascended from the sofa and drifted airily towards where he had left his shoes.

“Where are you going?” Lewis asked, his voice wavering. He bit his tongue, feeling a familiar swelling in his throat, yet still he could not cry. He only stared.

“Home. I’m a magician, not a therapist.”

Lewis blanched. “I don’t need therapy.”

“You don’t know what you need. You barely even know what you want, beyond the calls of your hormones.” His tone was harsh, his words were harsher, but his face was soft, lit by the moonlight that poked shyly through the curtains, as if scared to intrude. “Don’t feel bad. No one does.” He stood in front of the window, silhouetted by his own resplendent glimmer.

“You seem to.” Lewis retorted. The Scarlet Sorcerer smiled, showering Lewis in his afterglow.

“Yes, well. I’m magic.” Then, for his final obstruction of scientific law, he seamlessly, undeniably, magically, disappeared.