Written in the Cards. Maybe.

The messages we are sent from the things we cannot see.

I will not convince you of magic you can’t see. Part of what makes a magic trick work is that the person watching believes it is possible in the end. The truth is that in order to see the magic, you have to let yourself be tricked. Even though you know that what you saw is not possible according to the laws of physics and time, you have to break the conventions of reality in order to make what you see digestible.

We know that the magic trick really happened, but nothing of what you experienced was true. It is the possibility of being wowed that gets our attention, and suddenly we have a mental erection thinking about suspending belief for a while.

I was on a walk in Lisbon. It was the morning, which is my favourite time to walk around. Most of the tourists aren’t out yet, bumping into you while looking at their phones and posing for the social media no one gives a fuck about. You can’t hear the loud Americans demanding ice cubes in their drinks and asking why the menus aren’t in English. Before 9am, Lisbon is quiet while also being hurried.

Mornings are one of the rare times when Lisbon still feels Portuguese and classic. Everyone smells good on the way to their low-salaried jobs from the houses that they are afraid of losing almost every day. Everyone is welcome in Portugal, but not everyone is invited, and we are dealing with the guests who take up space, but leave no room.

I meet strangers in the eye, always have, always will. My ex-husband always told me not to do this, not invite strangers in, but I do it, of course, in spite of this, and because I am not afraid of people I don’t know.

That quiet morning in Lisbon, I let a man walking towards me look at me dead in the eyes.

I sit on a bench and notice he’s approaching. Based on experience, I know he will ask me for one of two things: money or cigarettes. I have change on me, but know better than to pull my wallet out in front of a strange man. So before he can ask me for what I will not give him, I offer what I want — a cigarette. Queres um cigarrinho? I ask him, and he says yes please, in Portuguese, and offers me a magic trick as payment for the smoke.

Of course I say yes. I believe in magic, even though I know it is a trick. Believe in something or fall for anything.

He pulls out a deck of cards.

It’s not a fresh deck but it’s not tattered either. And why would it be — it’s his work tool after all.

He tells me to pull a card from the deck. I have been on the receiving end of a trick just like this before, so I know he will spend the next few minutes recovering that exact card from different places to amaze me.

I find myself wanting to be amazed by this stranger.

I blindly pull from the deck as he suggests. The Ace of Spades, black. He tells me that’s a good one. I think so too. He says it has significance, but he will tell me at the end of the trick what it means, and that is the information I want to get, so he has me now, attentive.

The card starts to move around me, just like I suspected it would. It goes from the deck to his hands and into mine. I have seen this trick before, or something like it, but I am amazed at how he is making this card reappear and then go away so fast. So smooth. With confidence.

He has my attention, yes, and we are both enjoying the few minutes of suspended reality together.

To be entertained so early in the morning is an underrated pleasure I think, to talk to someone you don’t know and let them talk to you about what they know about a world that you cannot see, but know exists.

He lives somewhere, but not in a house. He is mostly a tenant of the streets. There is a young man not far from us looking at us occasionally. He tells me it’s his son and I believe him. It’s obvious they know each other well. The magic man says they were reunited a few months ago after years of being apart. He wants to be a good father now. His son is about 25 and the man doing the tricks is about double that in age. They are both so polite.

His son joins us and the trick continues to unfold.

I try hard to notice how he is making this thin piece of paper fly around us — in and out of the deck, then back deep inside, and each time he tells me to shuffle, pull, look, and confirm that I have miraculously pulled the Ace of Spades again. His eyes light up each time I discover it, and he knows I am the audience of one that will be impressed.

The way he talks and explains is as fluid as the motions he is using to make this card disappear. He has had a hard time in life, it’s obvious, and later reveals that his hardship started in the 90s, when the heroin came to Lisbon, to all of Portugal, and made the locals nuts.

Crime, drugs, violence and women were his vices, he tells me all of this, and I guess that these things still are. He does not ask me for money once, only my attention and the conversation, which, other than the cigarette, is all I will offer him. I give his son a cigarette too, and then we are all smoking, enjoying the trickery and honesty moving between us three in the sun.

The magic trick is done, and I applaud, smiling big and laughing too, again, such a pleasure before 9am anywhere, but especially in Lisbon, where my life has always felt more possible to me. It’s early September, the sun is out in full force, and the day will be beautiful, we all know it. This is Lisbon, after all.

He is very good at what he does, and remains the best street magician I have seen yet. I tell him this, and mean it, so he offers me one more bit of magic before I have to go.

“Pull one more card”, he says, so I do. It’s another good one he tells me, but different from the Ace of Spades, black, that I had.

He tells me the next one I pick will determine something for me before it’s even selected. Again, he promises to reveal the meaning of what the cards will bring at the end.

He still has my attention.

I pull the King of Diamonds, red, and he looks me dead in the eye and says “Oh, now this is a good one”, and I agree without knowing why.

He does the same trick, but faster this time, invisibly and elegantly moving the card around, telling me to shuffle, to look in my pocket, where the card appears out of nowhere.

But how?

I ask, but expect no answer in return, and he tells me that it’s me, not him and not the cards, doing the real magic now.

Again, I clap at the end, a big smile as I tip him and his son with another cigarette each. I am pleased.

“Now”, he says, as I meet his gaze, “I will tell you what it means”.

He asks me if I am single, a question I don’t welcome easily from curious men, but I say yes, I am.

“Well”, he says, “I do this trick often and it’s rare to see someone pull two of the best cards in the deck like this”.

The Ace, he says, represents the status of my life, and means that I will get everything I want this year; dreams will come true, and the things I have planned for myself will finally come.

“Are you ready for that?” he asks, and without a pause, I say yes, I am always ready for what is meant to be mine.

He tells me about the red one next: the King.

“This one is not about what will come to you, but who.”

And now he has the tightest grip on my attention.

I am a single woman so I hear this a lot, the hope from others that I will not be alone in the world anymore. But only people who are with someone, and still feel lonely, feel sorry for me in this way. Those who have learned to enjoy their own company, like I have, do not tell me that I will find someone some day, because they know that it’s not someone else that completes you, but the presence of another can certainly fulfill a part of us we don’t always name. A witness to the preciousness and magic of our life.

I tell him I am single, yes, but not alone, because I am free.

He says it’s destiny that has plans for me, not the cards; they are just a messenger to things that are already the truth.

“This card, the red one, means that someone is coming. You will get everything you want this year, and also find your king.”

I smile and also sort of laugh, because I am happy in my soloness.

He takes the Ace of Spades, black, and the King of Diamonds, red, and hands them both to me. A gift. His son gives him a look, because he is breaking up his deck of 52 for me. “He never does that,” his son tells me. His father, the magician, hands me the two pieces of paper that he believes hold my future self. An omen. A symbol of a wish he believes I have made many times before, quietly, to myself.

We talk a few more minutes, and this is when he briefly fills me in on his belief in magic, in the small things we don’t see, but feel and know. I believe him. He puts both cards in my hand and says, “keep these”, and I do.

We all thank each other for the time we spent making magic in the sun, and we walk away. I never see them again.

A month later, I meet someone at a party. A friend catches a photo of us in a rare moment, and the picture turns out red after someone flicks a lighter nearby, giving the scene a strange red glow.

This man in the photo has a name with two Ks, like the red king itself, and his last name means oak: strength, longevity, stability and protection. Qualities I realize I have been quietly wishing for inside.

Weeks later I am putting this all together, even as I write this now, believing in magic and what might be written in the cards. Maybe.