Magic Moment

Through no fault but my own, I became known, at work, for creating certain kinds of mainframe computer software systems. My programs surprised, and pleased people, and made them think about their work in a whole different way. This was back when not so many people were doing that.

Anyway, there was this guy, who was in the group I was in, but a couple of levels up from me, an associate director of something, but more sophisticated and refined than we usually got assigned to us, an Italian, but you wouldn't know it, just hearing him talk, all uptown New York, very relaxed, competent, and so friendly, in a real and genuine way, that you knew he had to be a snake underneath.

I liked the guy. At happy hour, he would always come up and kiss me on my forehead. I don't remember him doing that to any of the other guys. Or girls, for that matter. It just seemed to be a quiet gesture of friendliness between two confident men. I was impressed with him for that. It was the eighties.

Once, a group of us were at somebody's house and everybody was talking, and somebody started talking about magicians, so I told about how, when I was a kid, I liked to amaze people, doing magic.

This guy I'm talking about said, "You're still doing it."

Nobody heard him. Except me.

I never found the snake in that guy.