Rough Magic (an excerpt)

Author’s note: It begins with a chance encounter at an airport and ends with a crash that no one walks away from. When Dani crosses paths with Elektra, he believes it’s fate. But connection isn’t always the same as compatibility. Elektra lives by boundaries—rules shaped to honor their long-term partner, Max. As Dani navigates the fine print of Elektra and Max’s non-monogamous agreement—where even staying the night is forbidden—he finds himself aching for more: more time, more closeness, more of them. While eventually he gets what he asked for, it isn’t even close to what he needs.

Told through shifting timelines and piercing dialogue, Rough Magic traces the arc of a relationship as it flares, stretches, and eventually fractures. In conversation with titles such as This Is How You Lose Her, We the Animals, and Luster, Rough Magic is an intimate study of how hunger—once sated—can leave the body full but the soul starving for something it can no longer name.

23 days. No Contact.

I have this recurring nightmare. I’m on a plane and they’re the flight attendant. The pre-flight speech goes like this:

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching take off.

All armor has been removed from under your skin.

You have everything you need but nothing you are prepared for. 

Now is a good time to open your chest

And check your costume.

Is this you acting normal?

You want to let go and you want to hold on. 

These are the same. 

Finding truth is not the same as finding happiness. 

So sprinkle your little meaning dust wherever you are comfortable.

It’s what you do most and best. 

If you need special assistance, hold the hand of the person next to you. 

If you are lucky they will see you.

And, when waiting for your luggage—

Remember, you are the one who is waiting to be claimed.

* * *

I’m at the airport watching a game. I’m not a bar person, or a crowd person, or a spending money person, but I’m stuck here due to a hailstorm, and today is special: the New York Knicks (orange and blue skies), the team I’ve loved since I was a child, is the closest to greatness I’ll likely ever see in my lifetime. 

Anyway, I’m sitting at a table when I feel an itch at the base of my scalp. You know the kind, when it feels like there’s something you’re not looking at that you’re meant to see? And so I turn. 

It’s just some person about to order a beer.

But when we make eye contact, it feels like I’ve been swallowed by a whole universe. They’re the hungriest being I’d ever seen. Like something wild, someone who could never be domesticated, no matter what their freedom might cost them. I can see the pulse in their neck. 

When we make eye contact, it feels like I’ve been swallowed by a whole universe.

They order their beer. They register something in my face—or maybe it’s just the fact that I’m still staring—and they move closer.

I think about my acting teacher who’d always say, Before the first kiss, anything is possible. She’d say, If you get that close to someone, you better kiss them or slap them. . . . Build the tension; that’s what the audience came here for. Make the audience want it. Make them need the release.

I have these thoughts in order: 

Do I know them? 

They’re cute. 

Fuck, they’re beautiful.

* * *

They are beautiful. Here’s my issue with beautiful things:

Have you heard the story of when Notre-Dame was nearly destroyed but saved at the last minute? I first heard it in Before Sunset.[i] The scene takes place between the two main characters on a boat ride along the Seine in Paris. 

Notre-Dame, man. Check that out, Jesse (who is played by Ethan Hawke) marvels, gesturing at the cathedral in awe.

When the Germans were retreating from Paris, he says, they wired Notre-Dame for an explosion. Military leaders left a single soldier in charge of detonating the blow—but when it came time, the soldier couldn’t bring himself to do it. He just sat there, knocked out by how beautiful the place was, when the Allied troops came in, they found all the explosives just lying there, and the switch unturned. And they found the same thing at Sacre Coeur, Eiffel Tower, and a couple of other places, I think.

Is that true? Céline asks, played by Julie Delphy.

I don’t know, says Jesse, but I always like the story though.

Me too. 

There’s a certain comfort in the knowledge that beautiful things can elude destruction. Even when that’s what they’re meant for.

There’s a certain comfort in the knowledge that beautiful things can elude destruction.

The truth is, Notre-Dame was rescued—although the story is a lot less romantic than Jesse makes it sound. According to political historian Randall Hansen, a German general named Dietrich Von Choltitz was overseeing Paris as a military governor. Weeks before Paris was liberated, he received instructions to squash an uprising at the Parisian Prefecture—though striking it down would’ve taken out Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle as well.

During meetings with Swedish consul-general Raoul Nordling, Von Choltitz admitted that he was hesitant to pull the trigger, disturbed by the idea of burning down something so beautiful. Ultimately, a ceasefire was established. Von Choltitz claimed in his memoir that he defied Hitler out of heroic love for Paris. (Very sweet of him, but he’s also still a Nazi general . . .)

Likewise, Xerxes, the king of Persia, stopped his army for several days to admire the beauty of a sycamore tree. Several days. One of the most powerful, vicious men in history, leading an army of hardened men, stopped to admire the beauty of a tree. 

What I’m trying to say is, Beauty—whatever it is to you—can stop you in your tracks. Good luck. 

Pittsburgh