Magic Men

From the day Laurie arrived at the small liberal arts college, a freshman from Evanston, Illinois, she’d been hearing about the Magic Men.

This upstate New York school, with its sandstone buildings and glass-domed gymnasium, seemed dull so far: pale-skinned blondes wherever you looked, no different from the people Laurie had gone to high school with. Week two, things started to look up. In her drama class, Laurie had been paired with a junior named Helen, and after their improv skit got laughs even from the prof, Laurie hoped things might get a little more interesting.

A week before leaving for school, Laurie had massaged a deep, shocking—just to her parents—purple into her long, sooty-blond hair. Yet Helen’s hair drew greater wows: magnificently bushy it was, and cauldron black. Helen was impressive to Laurie in other ways, too. She was big: big chest, big butt, big limbs, big personality. She wore spaghetti-strap leotard tops that revealed her booming cleavage. An impressive history of cutting—self-harming, as the counselors liked to call it—ran up and down the inside of her left arm. Laurie had heard about cutting. Who hadn’t? No one she knew would have been brave enough. Helen’s tidy line of cuts frightened Laurie. Yet she found herself wondering if they had been Helen’s way of keeping some sort of score.

It was Helen who revealed some specifics about the Magic Men, though what she said was all over the place. Helen didn’t filter the stories. She didn’t try to make them add up. The Magic Men lived in a stone house off campus that was a fraternity. No, it wasn’t a fraternity, but it had been one, until the Magic Men got kicked out of the chapter. Twelve guys lived there. Not so—there were six. No—there was only one, a sort of Erlking who ruled from under the mountain. Females were only allowed in the stone house between midnight and six in the morning. Females were never allowed in the stone house by rule, but it was always full of them. The Magic Men made a potion that changed you. “It’s magic,” Helen said. “It makes your virginity disappear.” (Laurie was not a virgin, not really.) The stone house was haunted. The basement. Helen said it again more ominously: the basement. There were parties all the time. All the first-year girls wanted to go to the parties. They were all afraid to go and none did. A very tall Black man who called himself Satan stood at the door and denied entrance to all but the most beautiful. Those who entered were forced—forced—to drink potion.

By the end of week three, Laurie had become half obsessed with the Magic Men. One day after drama class, she and Helen were walking across the groomed lawn of the main quad when Helen pointed over toward the bell tower. “That’s one,” she said. “That’s one of them there.”

The guy Helen’s finger aimed at had his foot on the step of the picturesque chapel, as if he were giving a lecture on the history of the stained-glass windows that flanked the front door. He was small with a bushy beard—Laurie flashed on the Seven Dwarfs. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go. But he wasn’t that small. Laurie recognized him. The bushy-bearded guy was in her American lit class. He had made a point about Hawthorne that morning that Laurie didn’t really get.

“You could totally crush him,” Laurie said to Helen. In her cowboy boots, Helen was 5’10” to Laurie’s 5’6” in flats.

“Of course I could,” Helen said. She had her books in a sack on her back, and the straps pulled her T-shirt so tight across her chest that Laurie could see the lace pattern of her bra through the fabric. Helen’s skin was translucent white and so smooth, it seemed unlikely she’d ever had a blemish. Though with the arm-cuttings, she’d made a few of her own. The sun came out of a cloud and reddened Helen’s cheeks.

“Have you ever used your karate on anyone?” Laurie asked.

Helen laughed. “Not lately. I told you. And if I’m late for Spanish. Again—”

“Okay, go, go.”

Laurie watched Helen jog around other students, her body—the word actually fit—majestic. Helen worked out and had a brown belt in Taekwondo. She’d grown up in Lake Placid, an hour from the college. Apparently, she’d had a choice between training for the Olympic luge and going to school. Laurie hadn’t remembered what luge was exactly, and Helen had explained that it was basically tobogganing for maniacs.

That was a Tuesday. On Thursday, after class, Laurie went up to the Magic Man. “Nick,” she said: she had learned that was his name. He did not respond. “Nick!”

He looked at her, and it was as though he was looking at nothing else, thinking of nothing else. He had, for some reason, taken off his shoes during class, and he was standing there in blue-and-white striped socks. Without his shoes, he was almost ridiculously short—heigh-ho, heigh-ho—an inch shorter than Laurie.

“Aren’t you Nick?”

“My mother calls me that,” he said. “My last name’s Dadinski. Everybody calls me Daddy—except my mom.”

“They call him Big Daddy.” Another guy had materialized beside Nick. This guy was tall and lanky, Aryan-looking. It appeared he’d been born in a swimming pool.

“Big Daddy?” Laurie gave her best skeptical look.

“There’s a Little Daddy at the house,” said Nick. “Bet you can guess what he looks like.”

The house. The stone house. They were talking about it.

“Can I come?” asked Laurie. Daddy gave a gentle mock leer.

“Can you come?” Nick asked. “There are a lot of sketchy answers to a question like that.”

“Can I?

“If you can,” Daddy said, “you can.”

“How will I get in?”

Daddy put two fingers to his lips and tenderly kissed them. He reached forward and touched Laurie in the middle of the forehead. “That should do it,” he said. “If Satan can’t see it at the door right away, tell him to use the magic light.”

“Tonight?”

“Any night.” Daddy slid into a pair of shoes with broken backs and went off with the nautical Aryan.

Laurie texted Helen to tell her they’d been invited to the stone house. “When?” Helen asked, which Laurie thought was weird. “Tonight! As soon as possible,” Laurie answered.

Thursday night, Helen and Laurie had tryouts for a play. Friday night, Helen texted that she didn’t feel up to the stone house. Laurie was let down, but she used the time to write her first anthropology paper. When Saturday night came, Laurie wasn’t taking chances. She showed up at the off-campus house that Helen shared with two carpenters, grads of the college who, Helen had told Laurie, rented rooms to female undergraduates so they’d have a steady stream of girls to date. Helen had apparently dated both, even though the semester had barely begun. “Nice guys,” she’d said. “No, really they are,” she added, as though Laurie had given Helen a skeptical look. If Laurie had given Helen a skeptical look, she hadn’t meant to. Laurie had a 16-year-old brother who was a sweetheart, everyone said, but only a sister would know if it was really true and, as it happened, it was. It had never occurred to Laurie to doubt that most guys were nice guys. Laurie was beginning to understand that there were tons of girls, girls like Helen, who assumed otherwise.

Unfamiliar electronic music floated from the upstairs bedroom of Helen’s house. The front door was unlocked, and Laurie bounded up the stairs. Inside, the wide-open windows in Helen’s room invited a cool October wind to swirl. The walls were decorated with severe pencil drawings of ordinary objects—bowls of fruit, vases, candlesticks—sketched, presumably by Helen, on huge sheets of paper that flapped noisily in the cross-breeze.

“Hi there,” Laurie said.

“Look at this?” Helen answered and pivoted her computer toward Laurie as though she’d been expecting her.

What Helen showed Laurie on the computer was bizarre.

“Play it again,” Laurie said. She needed time to take it in. It appeared that Helen had filmed herself shaving her face, as if shaving a beard of foam from a female face were the most seductive act imaginable. The strange, awful part was that after each stroke of the razor, Helen opened her mouth wide and licked it as though the razor head was a delicious lollipop.

“Oh my god,” Laurie said. “How did you not totally cut yourself? Let me see inside your mouth.”

Helen giggled and opened her mouth for Laurie to inspect. Everything looked fine inside.

“There wasn’t actually a blade in the razor, you idiot—it just looks as though there is. It’s the point. What’s happening onscreen is determined by our expectations. Besides,” she added, “no sharp-sharps allowed in proximity to you know who.”

“It’s the electronic background music—it’s so creepy. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Of course I am. Do you like the video? I just posted it, and it’s getting tons of attention. It’s probably going in my portfolio for grad school.”

Laurie wasn’t sure whether she liked Helen’s video, but she decided that discussing Helen’s portfolio right now might keep them from getting to the stone house. She said she thought the shaving video was dope.

“Dope? I’m not going with you to the stone house if you use words like that,” Helen said, but she said it mildly. Laurie blushed pink. It was the second time Helen had schooled Laurie on a word she wasn’t to use. The word bitch had been the first. According to Helen, sorority girls at the college called each other bitch, like, all the time. Hearing certain kinds of white girls copycat an insult because they thought it was cool made Helen want to turn them upside down in pairs, hold them by the ankles, and hit their heads together. Laurie didn’t doubt that Helen could pull this off if she wanted to.

“What are you going to wear?” Laurie asked Helen, stepping past a can of Gillette shaving cream on the green carpet and opening Helen’s closet door.

“I am as I am,” said Helen, who stood up and gave a lion’s hungry yawn. Laurie thought that Helen’s leotard straps might break. “What you see is what you’re not going to get.”

Big breath. Mock hungry look—then a new yawn so big, it could have devoured the first.

“Probably. Maybe. Unless you’re really, really good.”

“And even then—” said Laurie.

“Even then, you never know.”

Laurie had trouble keeping up with Helen as they traveled to the stone house in the semi-dark, Laurie in heels and Helen, as usual, booted.

“Comfortable footwear,” Helen told her. “You’ve got to be able to run. After that, wear whatever you feel up to wearing.”

Laurie looked at Helen’s skimpy top and her short spandex skirt, which exposed almost all of Helen’s bare, muscular thighs. Laurie’s outfit was way more conservative: skinny jeans and a silk blouse. Laurie found herself wishing she’d gotten Helen’s advice about footwear before she’d decided on the wedge sandals.

Helen’s dark hair floated behind her. An almost full moon shone above the tops of tall thin trees lining both sides of the street. Laurie felt giddy. Helen’s chunky boot heels, first one and then the other, struck the asphalt. Right left right left. Laurie took off her wedge sandals, and the two girls walked down the middle of the road. Six, seven blocks away, cars going both directions on a much busier road flashed by.

“You sure you know where it is?” Laurie asked.

“Everyone knows where the stone house is.”

“But you’ve never been?”

“I know—weird, huh?”

They turned onto a dead-end road, heard music, and saw people milling outside a house: the stone house, the only stone house around. As they came closer, they saw that the house was lit up from within and seemed to be vibrating. Helen twirled as though jitterbugging with her shadow. Then she raised her hands over her head and sang full out: They all do it the same way.

“The Magic Men are so retro,” Helen said. “Their taste in music is like—I mean ‘Ants Marching’ is one of my dad’s favorites.”

“Is that the name of the band?” Laurie asked.

“We need to get you a drink,” Helen said. “Don’t say too much—just saying—”

But by the time they made it to the front of the stone house, something strange had happened. All the people who had been in the front yard had gone inside. Laurie and Helen were alone at the front door, and there was no man, Black or otherwise, standing guard. It seemed they could just go in if they wanted. Laurie wanted to, but Helen didn’t. Not yet.

Helen took Laurie’s hand and led her around the side of the house. “Put your shoes on,” Helen said, “there’s gonna be all sorts of stuff you don’t want to step in.” Laurie did as she was told. They went down some stone steps. Laurie asked where they were going, and Helen answered that she just wanted to see if something she’d been told about the stone house and the Magic Men was true. Every first- and second-floor window of the stone house was lit, and yet it was surprising to Laurie how little light there was in the back yard. She looked up at the moon, half-imagining Helen might tell it to direct its shafts there or here. She bumped into a bicycle wheel and said yikes. Helen shushed her.

Then Helen dropped down on her knees and began peering into a basement window. She took out her phone and angled its flashlight so she could see more. “I heard about something they’re supposed to have here,” she said, more to herself than to Laurie. “I heard about it, but I won’t believe it until I see it with my own two.”

“What is it?”

“Get down here. I think it may be. Oh shit, I think it is.” The brass was gone from Helen’s voice. It was as thin as cold water threading from a faucet.

“Oh shit,” she said. “It is.”

“It’s what?” Laurie was down on all fours too; her purple hair draped one of the panes.

Laurie saw bicycles, what looked like a moped, garden tools, a foosball table. “What’s the big deal?”

“Look there,” Helen told her, “in that far corner. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Helen was an actress—should Laurie call her an actor? Laurie wasn’t sure what was cool and what wasn’t.

“It just looks like some kind of box, a big box.”

“It’s no box,” Helen said. “That’s a cage. That’s the cage.”

“Cage? The cage?”

“Have you ever been in a cage?” Helen asked. “Have you ever?” The karate champ, the luge lady, the booming presence that Laurie had once called a “personage” instead of a person, stood and was trembling.

“I haven’t ever, I don’t think, have you?” Laurie replied.

“It’s horrible,” Helen answered. She put her phone down and placed her head into her hands. “It was only, like, for a few hours—at the place I told you about.” She lifted her face out of her hands. “I think we should leave.”

Laurie wasn’t ready to give in. She knew Helen had had a hard time in high school and had done a couple of short solitary stints in places Helen called the “hard box” and the “soft box.” Still, Laurie didn’t want to go, not yet.

“But how do you know—”

“That’s a human being–size cage down there, and I’ve heard things. Look. It’s fine. You stay if you have to. Far be it for me to hold you back, but I’m out of here. Text me when you leave. Pretend you recognize every song and don’t drink anything they give you.”

Helen stood and picked up her cell with its beacon of light still on. Laurie considered following her, but then Helen did not turn in the direction of her house. It seemed to Laurie that Helen was heading yet deeper into Magic Man territory.

Laurie got up, brushed herself off, and used the light from her own phone to pick her way through party garbage and on to the front walkway. She would find out about the Magic Men on her own.

The house thrummed with another song she didn’t recognize. It turned out that growing up surrounded by classical music (she’d been principal flutist in her high school orchestra, one of the best high school orchestras in the state) put you at a disadvantage in college.

Laurie decided she wouldn’t knock. She’d been invited. She knew Nick.

No one in the living room looked up when she walked in. There was no transitional space, no entranceway, nowhere to hang a coat. Helen had told her not to bring a purse either, and so, she hadn’t, but what the heck was she supposed to do with her hands?

She counted 10 or so people in a room with several couches, a room with a huge stone fireplace—no fire—two groups of five, a mix of guys and girls, no one Laurie knew. She walked between the two groups into the dining room where about eight guys—the only Black guy had an elegantly long torso (could he be Little Daddy?)—were playing cards. None of them wore signs that said, I’m magic. None of them offered her a drink.

“Are you Binky?” one of them asked her.

Laurie shook her head and walked past.

None of them was Nick.

In the kitchen, two blah-looking girls—both white with highlighted hair—said hi and Laurie said hi back, just as fake. A curtain hung over the basement door. Going down there was out of the question. The music seemed to be coming from behind a closed door on the first floor. Laurie took the only other option available and climbed the stairs.

On the second floor, the door to what appeared to be a tiny bathroom swung open. No one came out. A tower of toilet paper rolls, still wrapped, formed a pyramid outside the door. There seemed to be three bedrooms—two of the bedroom doors were closed, but a cement lion the size of a cat held open a third. Laurie stared ahead. What amazing luck. She’d found him. Nick, Daddy: barefoot, cross-legged on a tatami mat, reading a book. A book!

“Nick,” she said.

“Ye-es,” he answered, looking up as if from reading glasses, much the way her father did when it was clear he would prefer to continue with his New York Times. But of course, Nick wasn’t wearing reading glasses, and it was up to Laurie to draw his interest. She mostly succeeded with her father. Why shouldn’t she succeed with Nick?

“Do you remember me? American Lit.”

“How could I not remember you,” he said, putting his book aside. “Come on in. Have a seat. You don’t have a drink—”

“Oh, I’m fine—”

But he was already up off the mat and ripping down the stairs. She looked around the room. He had real bookshelves made out of real wood, filled with real books, not only for class. She picked up the book he’d been reading—Death and Monotheism—and a minute later, he was back with something brown in a real glass.

Did it make her special that she rated more than a Solo cup?

She took the drink to avoid being rude and sat as he sat, cross-legged on the tatami mat.

“Are you part Japanese?” she asked.

He laughed and regarded her purple hair.

“Are you part People Eater?”

“Funny,” she said. She wet her lips with the brown liquid, and it stung.

“Purple hair becomes you. Has anyone ever told you that you look like what’s-her-name Targaryen.”

“Actually, yes,” Laurie said. “Especially before I dyed my hair—”

“I’ve never seen it—Game for Drones, if you ask me. But the guy I was with when we first met told me you were a ringer for her.”

“How do you know it’s a bad show if you’ve never watched it?”

“Touché,” he said. He’d trimmed his beard since she’d last seen him and somehow looked less dwarfish. Plus, his height wasn’t an issue when he sat. Nick looked directly into her eyes and asked, “How is it that you live and what is it you do?” She imagined this to be a quote from somewhere, but she had no idea where. He began asking all sorts of questions, questions she could answer, about her family, about her ambitions, about why she’d come to college in such an out-of-the-way place. That was something she’d been eager to explain to people she met, but she hadn’t even explained things to Helen because she didn’t want to seem conceited. Laurie had gotten into all the schools she’d applied to, even Wesleyan, which, all things considered, would have been her first choice. She’d accepted here to save her parents tons of money: the George P. Good scholarship provided a full ride plus funding for travel in the summers. Her father had clapped his hands together when she’d accepted.

Talking to this Daddy was like sipping on a drink. You had your straw down there in the concoction and slowly, slowly, you drew up on it and it was sweet, so sweet, but quietly sweet; you hardly knew you were drinking until Daddy looked away for a sec, and then it was like the straw slurped the bottom of the tall glass and you felt flat, a little alone, but then the kind eyes came back to you and the drink was full again, full to the top, and with mild gratitude, you began to draw up again. Was this the potion that she had heard about, the Magic Men’s drink that changed you? The drink that made your virginity disappear? But Laurie wasn’t a virgin, not really.

“You got a GPG scholarship?” Nick asked. He seemed impressed, and yet the truth was that everything Laurie said seemed to impress him. It was as if no one had ever listened to a word she said before now. She wanted to tell Nick things about herself that she didn’t yet know.

Nick looked away again, stared at his bookshelf, and once again the Magic Man thing, the magic stopped. She felt marooned on the little island that was herself. She wanted so much for him to look at her, listen to what she was saying, pull—like rabbits out of a hat—new ideas she’d suddenly have about the world and how she wanted to live in it.

When he looked at her again, his hand was on his beard. Was it a pose? Even if it was, it made him look pensive and wise. Laurie felt as though everything was fine and she could breathe and laugh again.

“I’ve been rude,” Daddy said. “I’ve been incredibly rude. Here it is: your drink is empty and I haven’t even given you a tour of the house.”

Nick stood up, small and compact and seeming at this moment very strong. How she wished Helen were here. If this were all okay, Helen would have tipped her off. Go ahead, take the tour, drink the drink, it’s only Nick, it’s just Daddy. But if there was something bad going on, wouldn’t Helen have protected her? Laurie had to admit that Helen had maybe tried to protect her.

Laurie thought of a word she’d heard during first-year orientation, which she’d mostly slept through. The word was grooming. That’s what the Title IX people talked about, grooming. Grooming was getting you ready for something you didn’t want to do by giving you drinks and attention and more drinks, by working some kind of magic on you, magic that could make your virginity disappear, magic that could maybe make the you that used to be go poof, to be replaced by someone more compliant, ready for anything. Laurie thought of Helen. Laurie thought of the cage.

“You’re worried,” Daddy said. How did he seem to know exactly what she was feeling? Someone told Laurie once that this was the definition of having soul, the power of knowing how someone else is feeling at the precise moment. Nick maybe had soul. And yet it was possible that what Helen had been suggesting was that more men than she might think had mean souls and some had dark, twisted souls. Laurie’s fair-mindedness kicked in. Even Helen wouldn’t deny that the better kind of male soul existed too. Laurie made a mental note: introduce Helen to her lovable little brother, not so little given that he was 16 now and almost six feet tall.

“It’ll be okay,” Nick said. “There will be nobody watching us.”

What did he mean by that, Laurie wondered: nobody watching us? Did he think she would do any darn thing he wanted as long as no one else saw what she did? Fat chance.

Laurie was scared, and she wanted to go home, wanted wondrous Helen with her, wanted to get back to looking at Helen’s portfolio and talking to her about her strange art.

“Come on,” Nick said. “I’ll show you the house. I’ll even show you the famous cage.”

The cage! Oh my God. He was going to show her the cage. Might he try to get her to go inside the cage? Maybe he’d force her to go in.

She could leave now. Really, she could. She could up and run out of Daddy’s room with its fancy-pants books and hipster bed. Why didn’t she? Why?

“Okay,” she said, feeling a small surge of defiance. “Show me.”

In no time, Laurie and Nick had passed down the stairs from the second floor to the first. He took her hand and led her through the rooms—Hi, hi, the blondies said. He remembered about the tour and started pointing like a crossing guard.

“Fireplace-slash-living-room, poker room. Ta da: the kitchen,” he said. “A couple of the guys I live with think the kitchen is merely the room where the unboxing of pizzas takes place.”

“But not you,” Laurie said. “You sauté, like, shiitake mushrooms and spinach.”

Nick laughed and squeezed her hand.

“I like you,” he said. He smiled, and he looked almost handsome.

He directed her toward the hallway that led to the closed door from where music continued to blast—some kind of hybrid rap, she guessed. For a second, she thought that’s where they were going, into the music room, but no. He swung the curtain back and tipped on a light. Steep basement stairs appeared.

“You with me?” he asked.

She followed him down the stairs to the basement. Just as she’d thought, the basement floor was made of dirt.

Why the heck was she following him? What was in her head? Surely there were spiders down here, big-time spiders. And a cage. The cage.

And then there they were heading toward it. He had her hand again, and she started to resist.

“What’s it for?” Laurie asked, defiant. She’d made her voice extra loud. She shouted to compensate for nervousness.

Nick pulled on a string hanging from the ceiling. The basement filled with the unpleasant light from a single bare bulb, and he turned toward her. “It’s a chick cage,” he said in a whisper. “People who see it think whatever they’re programmed to think. When I built the cage, I built it to hold chickens. It’s a cage for, you know, we used to have these chickens—”

“You mean like cluck, cluck, cluck chickens—”

“Yeah, exactly like that. My aim was to have fresh eggs every morning, but then one by one, the furry little things died, and then it took on …”

Now Laurie could see it over in the corner, the cage, looking like a being in itself, a sort of hunchback, waiting, eager.

“Oh. My. God,” Nick said, “Ho-ly fuck.” He followed with a string of inventive expletives the likes of which Laurie had never heard. No more shaman on the mountain. No more Erlking under the pile of enchanted stone. Laurie stared at Nick. Amazing. He had morphed into a pissy sort of guy whose joke had fallen flat, who’d had his beer ripped off, who couldn’t figure out a way to cheat on the next econ exam without getting caught.

Laurie took a step closer. What she saw wasn’t a cage anymore. The wooden slats had been snapped, the wire (chicken wire?) had been crushed, and the door, off its hinges, lay on the floor next to an axe, the wood frame in splintered pieces.

“Cock-suck-er!” Nick yelled, his newly husky voice straining to make each syllable emphatic. He picked up a loose two-by-four and slammed it against the wall. Big Daddy was Little now.

He said the c-word again, in a hoarse whisper this time. It suddenly struck her that the often-used—though not by her or anyone she knew—word actually had a meaning. Underneath the silk blouse, her arms went cold with goose bumps. She allowed herself a full shiver.

One thing was certain. Laurie was not going to stay to soothe him or to parse the misunderstanding about the cage—girl chicks versus real chicks—a misunderstanding the men in the stone house surely already knew about and exulted in. Plus, no way was she going to stick around to suck his anything. Yuck. She saw that the basement door was open—the door that Helen had no doubt left ajar after she finished working over the cage. She’d come down into her bad place, Helen had: she’d come down to save Laurie from the Magic Men.

Laurie stumbled through the back door and ran up the outside steps, hopping up to freedom, off to thank the formidably alluring Helen, give her a hug and a kiss and then—who could say?