The Department of Card Tricks and Close Magic

• Magic
• Physician-patient relations

In 1974 the School of Magic Arts, directed by Mr. Frank Moreno, rented a suite at the Ramada Inn on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 52nd Street in Manhattan. I began taking classes there every Tuesday evening, in the department of card tricks and close magic. According to school regulations, beginners were not permitted to take classes in stage magic—things like sawing a woman in two, or making an elephant in a crate disappear—so I had to start on a smaller scale.

Mr. Moreno was a remarkable magician and an excellent teacher of card tricks. He taught with abundant patience and offered us valuable advice that would be of great help should we become pedigreed magicians. Mr. Moreno would lecture us about the vital importance of using full concentration, and he would forbid any conversations irrelevant to the subject at hand. He told us to remove all watches, jewelry, and rings from our hands so that nothing would obstruct rapid movement, maximal dexterity, and perfect performance. Over and over again, Mr. Moreno would drill the same message into our heads: “Execute, execute, execute!” We knew that only extensive practice would bring us up to the level required to pass the final exam—the prerequisite for advancing to the courses in stage magic.

Toward the end of each class, after we had all voiced a sigh of despair at the prodigious amount of homework that had just been assigned for the coming week, Mr. Moreno and our close-magic teacher, Benjamin Curtis, would sweeten the blow by giving a 10-minute performance. One night, Mr. Moreno began by holding a deck of cards and asking Curtis to pick out a card. Curtis did so and discreetly showed us the card—an ace of clubs. Then in front of our eyes, Curtis tore up the …