I was outside in Tribeca on a crisp March day waiting for my broker to show me an apartment, which I quickly learned did not allow dogs, including the one I was wearing in a bag across my chest. It was then that I made eye contact with him. I quickly identified them as the eyes of the famous magician known to defy death and repulse many. He was accompanied by an older gentleman in his seventies with long disheveled hair. His brown eyes lingered on me (or was it the dog I was wearing?) and I kept mine on his. A few minutes later, he was walking back with the same man, this time holding four coffees on a tray. He came over to me, and we started chatting. He asked me if I wanted a coffee. I took the one with almond milk and accepted his invitation to go to his office nearby and see some magic tricks, but first, we had to stop to pick up a pair of leather boots from the repair shop around the corner. He gave one of the four coffees to the cobbler and as he performed a card trick for him the older gentleman bent close to me and whispered, “he doesn’t know who he is”, referring to the repair man. After inspecting the boots and paying, we walked a few blocks, turned into an alley, walked down some steps, and went into his lair. It was dark and filled with memorabilia. We all sat down at a table and chairs, and he began his trick. He told me it was a new trick, one he had only performed six times; this would be the seventh. He asked me to think of something important to me. I thought of my photo album. Then he asked me to think of an object from my childhood, something specific. I pictured a stuffed toy frog I received from my mother as a reward for completing my swimming lessons when I was seven or so. I hated swimming lessons. Then he took out a deck of cards that had photo images on them. The images were all cropped so that they appeared as abstract lines rather than photos of objects. As he held out the deck and told me to pull out four or five cards, I noticed he had the most beautiful hands I had ever seen. The nail beds were big, and his fingers were long and elegant. I took out four cards and placed them on the table. He asked me if any of them related to my childhood object. As I inspected the cards, he got out a small notepad and began drawing something but didn’t show it to me. He then tore the paper out, folded it a few times, and placed it on the table in front of me. After staring at the cards, I told him none of them were related to my object. He then gently rotated the first card around, and I noticed that the lines formed in each photo appeared to be letters. The card he turned was a cropped image of a fence and appeared to be the letter “F”. I stood back and realized that the four cards spelled “FROG”. I gasped. Then he handed me his notepad and asked me to draw the first object, the one that was important to me. Despite the minor success I had experienced as a visual artist, the result was a very crude line drawing of a photo album that consisted of two large rectangles with six squares inside each rectangle (two across and three down), the top and bottom of each large rectangle with a slight arch. Then he asked me to open the folded paper he had left on the table. I opened it to find the exact same drawing I had just made. I told him he was a witch. We exchanged phone numbers, and he gifted me a tangerine, a signed deck of cards, and the autobiography of a Holocaust survivor. I left feeling like I was high on something. I felt electric. My mind had never been blown like that. Unfortunately, my bliss was short-lived as I quickly learned from my roommate (who immediately Googled him) that he had been accused of rape by not one but two women, one of which was drugged. My brain knew I should stay far away from him and that I was lucky to have come out of that dark basement with nothing but gifts, but I was so drawn to him and didn’t want to believe the horrible accusations could be true. Also, I was running low on self-worth so I suppose there was a part of me that believed I deserved to be with a man who had been accused of rape. A few days later, I texted him to inform him that the numbers I (hastily) tattooed on my inner left wrist years before coincidentally happened to be the last four digits of his phone number. He called me immediately and asked if I wanted to come to his office that night. He said he was having some magician friends over. I said yes, but later texted that I was going to stay in. I knew I shouldn’t go. Instead of texting back, he called, but I didn’t answer, fearing my knowing roommate would crucify me for speaking to him. I did however “happen” to be walking my dog in his neighborhood later that evening but, as soon as I texted him to get his address my stomach started to knot up and I had to run home to avoid shitting my pants. It was like my body made the executive decision to threaten explosive diarrhea in order to keep me safe. I never made contact with him again. The signed deck of cards is sitting in a box under my bed. Do I sell them on Ebay? I still have his phone number, but I promised my stomach I would never use it.