It was Wednesday, and I was in my home office taking notes. Tired of feeling trapped by the silliness of all the fiction I'd written up to that point in my life, I'd decided to pursue the Serious Book that had been turning over in my head for years like a cold, oddly-shaped bottle of refreshing Orangina.

Just as I closed the notebook I was scribbling in, an awful thumping started downstairs, each thud preceded by cartoon-style "conjuring" words ("Abracadabra! Hocus pocus! Alakazam!") and followed by strings of curse words.

Obviously, it was Citizen Jim. What he was doing, though, I had no idea. Finally, the thumping and swearing stopped. A weak voice said, "Stimpy? Can you open the door, please?"

The Magician's Assistant Ann Patchett

I opened the door to find Citizen Jim rubbing his forehead with one hand while the other was fumbling to untie the ribbons from the neck of a black cape he was wearing over his t-shirt and shorts.

"This is a nice surprise!" I smiled.

He quit rubbing his head and glared at me. "SHUT UP and HELP ME HERE!" he yelled, yanking at the knot touching the base of his throat.

While I tried to get the knot out, Citizen Jim did nothing but moan and complain. "Let me tell you what you should never do," he said.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Don't ever buy anything on sale from Uptown," he said. "Because it'll probably be defective."

"Why would you even be shopping at Uptown, silly?" I asked, trying not to laugh at the very idea. "That's the most expensive ladies' dress shop in Fairhope."

"Well, that's true, but they've got the best looking sales girls, too," he said. "The point is, I was walking around thinking about how I'm tired of working at the bookstore and how I want to write more and deal with the public less."

"But you have to work," I said.

"I KNOW THAT!" he yelled. "So I got to thinking about WHAT I COULD DO TO MAKE MONEY while I'm trying to finish my book."

"Okay," I mumbled. "And?"

I finally got the knot untied and the cape fell away and slid down his back in a pile on the ground behind him. He took one hop backward and jumped up and down.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Miss Corte said if I wore this stupid thing I'd be able to walk through doors and walls and she said I'd be able to fly through the air!" he yelled, still stomping at the ground. "WORTHLESS PIECE OF MAGIC CAPE SHIT!"

"Calm down and tell me your idea," I said, leading him upstairs after he gave the cape a few more kicks.

Still red-faced and breathless, Jim continued when we went inside. "Well, when I saw that cape with a big, orange reduced for quick sale sticker on it in Uptown, I realized what I could do. That's why I'm here, because you're gonna help me."

"Help you with what?" I asked, sure I didn't really want to know.

"You're gonna be my assistant," he said. "I'm gonna be a magician!"

"You don't know anything about magic," I said.

"The hell you say! Give me a deck of cards, a blowtorch and a couple raw eggs and I'll show you what I know about magic, Miss Thing," he said.

"That's all right," I said. "I'll take your word for it."

"Then pack your shit because you're going on the road with me," he said, turning to leave the room.

"Why me?" I whined. "Why not Martin or Sonny?"

He spun back around with an angry look on his face. "Magicians have to have GIRL assistants! That's the way it works," he said. "You ever hear of someone sawing a handsome man in half? Or throwing knives at a beautiful guy?"

"No, but—"

"Well, then, shut up! Besides, Martin's too nervous to have knives coming at him, and Sonny's too fat to fit into the box I have to saw in half for my act," he said, then removed a shiny black top hat from his head. "Now, watch this!"

He reached down and pulled out of his tube sock a black wand. As he swirled its white tip over the top of the hat, he chanted: "Hokey pokey shazam dagnabbit. . ." Then he threw the wand behind him and reached into the hat and yanked his arm out a second later. "Watch me as I pull a rabbit—"

Hanging before us by the scruff of his neck was my cat, Mister Meme, tufts of fur and one white, floppy rabbit ear hanging from his blood-covered mouth. When he hissed at Citizen Jim, the rabbit ear fell on the floor, followed by Mister Meme when Jim dropped him with a shriek: "AAAAAACK! Your psycho cat ate my magic bunny!"

"Sorry," I said. "Jim, come on. What ever made you think you could be a magician?"

He sat on the floor, picking at the toe of his wrestling shoe and pouting. "Well, Martin was telling me about all these writers he likes who do magic on the side," he said. "Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and that Allende babe from Chile? Martin says they make tons of extra money from their magic acts."

"Jim, I think Martin's got you mixed up," I said.

The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende

"Bullshit! What the hell do you know about writers?" he fumed. "You get James Joyce and Joyce Carol Oates confused half the time. You're the same idiot who thought J.R. Ackerley wrote The Hobbit before he was the star of 'Dallas.'"

"I may not know much," I admitted to make Jim feel better. "But I do know that those other writers you're talking about aren't magicians. They write magical realism!"

"Oh, says you! I've never heard of such a thing!" he said.

"Be that as it may, there's a big difference between a magic act and magical realism."

Jim stood up and made a fist, coming at me. "Oh yeah?" he yelled. "You just keep it up, Missy, and I'm gonna show you the big difference between standing there looking stupid and getting your face bashed in!"

"Don't be mad at me because Martin's misinforming you," I said. "You need to stop believing everything he tells you, Precious Lamb."

My Dog Tulip J.R. Ackerley

A pair of tears sprang from the corners of Jim's eyes, flying across the room to land on the wall against which I leaned. A moment later, matching stone gargoyle heads creaked out from invisible openings in the drywall on either side of my head. The gargoyles' eyes blinked rapidly while their thick tongues lolled out of their mouths.

"Howdy do!" the gargoyles said in unison.

I sighed. "If this is the best you can do, you better keep your day job and just hope you can finish that book before you're too old to type."

"Fine!" Citizen Jim yelled. "I'll go back to Fairhope and see if I can't get ******** or *** ****** to be my assistant. But they'd never be as good as you, you awful BEAST!"

Read a random GC installment!

Complete Archive