Encore

The performance ended in the same way it began: with a flourish, a flash of light, and a puff of smoke that filled the theatre with the smell of spent gunpowder and a whiff of ozone. When the resulting haze cleared, the stage stood empty save for the same shining, brass figure that occupied the stage when the curtain first rose -- a black top hat sitting on its head, its shoulders draped with a red-satin-lined cape.

The crowd sat in awed silence for two heartbeats before erupting in thunderous applause that continued fully five minutes before the crowd realized that no amount of cheering would bring the magician back for an encore.

In all that time, the brass figure stood still and quiet -- its arms stiff at it's sides, its eyes closed, its perfectly sculpted brass lips unsmiling while it waited, and the crowd's applause faded into murmuring.

"Is the performance over?"

"I should think the curtain would have fallen by now."

"Should we wait a bit more?"

"Perhaps he has one more surprise for us. He was so full of surprises, was he not?"

"Oh, yes! He certainly was amazing!"

Eventually, even the murmurs faded along with the rustle of expensive satins and the crinkle of crinolines and the polite conversation that accompany the dispersal of a crowd, but still, the brass figure never moved. Still as a Grecian monument in the dimness of a lost temple, it waited until the only sound in the theatre was a faint ticking like that of a gentleman's pocket watch.

Tick, tick ...

The last of the audience drifted out of the theatre's wide, double doors.

Tick, tick ...

The voices from the lobby began to fade as the audience floated away into the chilly twilight in search of a nightcap in front of a cheerful fire or a brandy and cigar in the seclusion of a gentlemen's club.

Tick, tick ...

Tick ...

"Come now, Mister Abernathy," a jovial voice called from the shadows of stage left, "are you going to stand there all night like some great tin soldier?"

The magician stepped once again onto the stage and squinted in the glare of the new electric floodlights. Even out of his usual costume -- he had removed his coat as soon as he left the stage and left it, along with his own cape slung over the back of the shabby chair that occupied one corner of his dressing room, and his black top hat he left perched atop a mannequin head on the dressing table -- the magician quickly found himself over warm and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up over his elbows. In four long strides he reached the center of the stage and stopped in front of the metal man.

The figure opened its eyes.

"Ah! There you are, my friend! Now let's get to work or we shall be all night."

The ticking increased as Mister Abernathy turned. With one white-gloved hand, he reached across his chest to the opposite shoulder. With a snap and a flourish, the cape was whisked away. In a swirl of black and red satin, the metal man turned and flung the cape over an ordinary table that stood behind him. He paused, touched the brim of his hat, waved a hand over the table and whipped the cape away revealing two brooms.

The magician applauded as vigorously as any of the audience members who so recently cheered for him, then picked up a broom.

"Well done, Mister Abernathy! Well done."

Mister Abernathy removed his hat and took his bow to the continued clapping of a broom against the wood of the stage.