Natalie said, “That's got to be fake,” for the third time since to show began.

I was getting tired of her not believing the evidence of her own eyes, or, perhaps more accurately, that she kept telling me. This time I had an answer; “If it's fake, how is it done?”

“How am I meant to know? I'm not a magician; but I'm sure it can't be real.”

“Why don't you offer to go up when they ask for another volunteer. You'll find out how real or otherwise it is; and if it isn't real, you'll probably learn how it was done too.”

“I'll do that,” her voice conveyed a determination I rarely heard.

“Don't come running to me if they cut your legs off.”

She thumped me, but when I took a look at her I could see a steely resolve to find out what was actually happening on stage; or at least some of it. Later, after having volunteered and been passed over for a leggy blonde nearer the front of the audience, her resolve hardened, especially when the blonde was sat on a stool and a headbox placed over her head and then removed to leave her body headless and moments later her confused head was revealed to be still in the box once it was deposited on a table several feet from her body. This unusual state of affairs was quickly reversed and she returned to her group of friends at another table.

Natalie's response was, “She must have been a plant.”

The next time the magician asked for a volunteer she took matters into her own hands, by standing up and walking to the front, before the magician could chose anyone else.

The magician was visibly surprised to have someone volunteer so assertively. Natalie was greeted at the top of the steps up to the stage by the assistant and guided to stand next to the magician before she disappeared backstage.

After asking her name, he asked, “So, Natalie, you seem to have been very definite that you wanted to volunteer; why?”

“I feel sure that the magic in the show is fake, but I was getting frustrated by being unable to work out what was really happening. So my boyfriend suggested that I volunteer to get close enough to find out what's going on.”

“Alright. I appreciate your honesty. When I asked for a volunteer my plan was to have someone from the audience to check things were solid and help me move a few items when the time came. Now, I feel challenged to let you do the illusion; you'd like that wouldn't you?”

“But I don't even know what illusion you are going to do; let alone how to do it.”

“Not a problem. I'll be here all the time. All you'll need to do is follow my instructions and if you need some help, just ask; ok?”

“OK.”

“Here comes Shelly. We'll not tell her that it won't be me doing the illusion; it'll make her nervous.”

“Ok.”

The assistant came on in a new costume; she was now wearing a knee-length pleated skirt, a tube top and boots that reached mid calf. She was pushing a cabinet as tall as she was and evidently divided into four sections, judging by the four sectioned door on the front and the fact that each section was a different colour.

“We shall be performing 'dividing a woman in four'. Don't worry, Shelly will be the one inside the cabinet, but why don't you open the doors and check inside, while Shelly fetches the blades?”

Natalie opened the doors and had a check inside, but evidently found nothing. Her inspection was interrupted by Shelly's return, wheeling a trolley stacked with blades.

“Ok, Natalie, please help Shelly to enter the cabinet and then close the doors.”

Natalie offered her hand to the assistant and guided her to the cabinet. She allowed the assistant to step into the interior and waited for her to be standing still and seemingly relaxed, before beginning to close the doors from the bottom and latching them shut.

“Good, now open each of the doors in the doors, one at a time, starting at the bottom; closing each before moving on to the next. We want the audience to be sure that she hasn't hidden away or escaped somehow.”

Natalie did as instructed, although she appeared suspicious that opening only one door at a time was intended to hide something. To me it seemed that what this achieved was to let the audience know what was supposed to be behind each inner door, which if they remembered would make it harder for the magician and assistant to pulled the wool over peoples' eyes.

With each door opened then closed, the magician then instructed Natalie to pick up the first blade on the trolley and slide it into any slot on the side of the cabinet, with the only proviso being that if it went into a lower slot of a pair the strip of lacquered wood that served as a handle should be pointing down and it should be up if in an upper slot.

“Why's that?” challenged my girlfriend.

“Because if you get it in the wrong way up, it will make putting the other one in much more difficult.”

Rather than taking the magician's word for this, she measured the blade against the cabinet. She found that the blade was an inch or two longer than the cabinet was wide and barely narrow enough to fit into the slot. She also discovered that the handles were thicker than half the gap between the slots.

She lifted the blade to slide it into the slot in the bottom of the top section. “Be careful to only put in  a couple of inches and then get the next blade. Keep going like that until you run out of blades. That way you have had a free choice of which blade goes in which slot, except, of course, the last one.”

Soon the box had three pairs of blades sticking out of the side. “Good, now, you will show Shelly to the audience by opening and then closing the doors in any order you choose. After that, as soon as you like, shove the pairs of blades through the box. If you meet some resistance just keep pushing; Shelly sometimes doesn't line herself up quite right, but it only makes it a bit more difficult for the person pushing in the blades; it doesn't hurt her at all.”

Natalie paused to think if there was a proper order, but for whatever reason chose to show Shelly from head to toe. She stood, placed her hands on highest pair of handles and pushed. About three inches into the box she encountered the resistance that the magician had mentioned. She seemed conflicted by this feeling; did she continue pushing and possibly harm Shelly, or follow her instructions and blame the magician for any harm that the assistant may suffer, because if there was something she should be doing, but had not been told about, then the magician was at fault.

A moment later, my girlfriend had decided to press ahead; later she told me that if Shelly had made any sound of pain or protest, she had been ready to stop. After another couple of inches the resistance increased, so Natalie leaned on the handles to keep them moving. A moment later the resistance reduced again, but Natalie did not react fast enough to stop the handles of the blades banging against the side of the cabinet.

“Well done! Now repeat for the other blades. By which I mean push them in, in their natural pairs; not to the 'show Shelly to the audience by opening the doors' part.”

“Why not?” Natalie asked.

“It's like the 'Will they; Won't they' in any rom-com; we all know that it will turn out for the best, but we enjoy the suspense and thrill of journey. In this case, we all know that Shelly will be alright, but there is always the uncertainty of whether this time will be when it goes disastrously wrong. That feeling is greater today, because you are doing it, instead of me; I must be very confident that nothing can go wrong, but there is always the possibility that you might do something that I haven't considered.”

It seemed to me that Natalie considered this to be hogwash, but did not challenge it. She stepped back to the middle blades and shoved. The resistance started earlier than for the upper blades, but there was the same interval of higher resistance leading a sudden release and the handle banging into the side of the cabinet.

Natalie knelt down to get into a good position to push the lowest blades through the box. The shove had two points of higher resistance. Then she stood up again. “Ok. Now what?”

“Now you unstack the cabinet to show that it has been divided into sections that are too small to contain Shelly in one piece, so she must have been divided in four. If you find any of the sections too heavy, I'm here to help.”

Natalie reached up and took hold of the topmost section of the box and lifted. The way she made two attempts to lift the head section implied to me that she had expected it to be a lot lighter that it actually was. She lifted the box down to waist level where it was more comfortable to hold. “What do I do with it, now?”

“Put it on the floor near the front of the stage; where everyone can see it. Please put it down gently; we don't want to give Shelly a headache. Then do the same for each of the other ones. You may find that the next section is the heaviest.”

Natalie asked the magician to help with the next section having tried to lift it on her own. The next section after that was also very heavy, but she moved it on her own, before wheeling the bottom section to join the other three sections at the front of the stage.

“That's great. Now, do you think that any of those parts of the cabinet is big enough to contain Shelly.”

“Not sure. I think I've seen people, contortionists, getting into improbably small boxes. But they do seem to take a long time to do it, but I'm not sure if that is showmanship or because it's difficult to do. I don't think Shelly got enough time to pack herself in a single section.”

“If Shelly is in one box she is probably very uncomfortable,” admitted the magician. “But then again if she is divided between the boxes, she is probably not having the best of times. Either way she isn't much use as an assistant packed in four small boxes scattered about the stage. It's time to put her back together, because anyone can chop a person into four pieces, but it takes a magician, or a very good surgeon, to put her back into one piece.”

Natalie moved the bottom box back to the centre, then, with a little guidance and help from the magician, she restacked the boxes to reform the original cabinet. Then she was instructed to show that Shelly was back in one piece, even if she was still divided by blades. Under instruction from the magician Natalie opened the inner door of the second from top box, showing Shelly's bust wrapped in her tube top and framed by her upper arms. The next door to be opened was the bottom one, where the boots jiggled in time to the quiet background music. The top door was the next in the sequence, but instead of Shelly's face, her skirt clad hips were on view.

“Oh dear! We'd best open the last door,” the magician suggested.

Natalie squatted down to open the hip-level door. Inside was Shelly making a cheerfully frowny face.

“Well, that's not right. Shelly can't assist me like that, but I haven't time to fix her now. Would you be a dear and move her over there, while I work out what I can do until the interval, when I can put her back together properly. And close the doors please; I can feel her stare making me feel guilty.”

While Natalie pushed the cabinet to the rear of the stage and closed the doors, the magician had an inspiration and rushed into the wings returning a moment later carrying a cloth covered hoop which he dropped on the floor.

“I've had an idea, Natalie. Why don't you be my assistant until the interval?” In response to my girlfriend's uncertainty that this was a good idea, he added. “It's easy, just bring me whatever the stage manager hands you. I promise that is nothing difficult, dangerous or embarrassing; you might even learn how something is done.”

“Ok, I guess I can do that. But what's with the hoop?”

“Well, because you're not dressed as an assistant, you're not giving the right vibes; too formal (which was fair as Natalie was wearing an evening gown that hugged her curves). I thought we could change you into something more assistant-y. All you have to do is step into the hoop and raise your arms above your head.”

Evidently puzzled by the instructions, Natalie stepped onto the cloth the covered the hoop and raised her hands. The magician stooped down and raised part of the hoop concealing my girlfriend from the audience with the curtain that was attached between the two parts of the hoop, He raised it high enough to pull the lower part from the floor, showing that the hoop had been made into a bag of sorts, but not high enough that the audience ever lost sight of Natalie's hands.

When the magician lowered the hoop, Natalie was no longer in her gown, but a stereotypical red velvet bustier with satin swags for a skirt, fishnet tights on her formerly bare legs and ballet-style slippers replacing her moderate heels.

Natalie looked down and blushed. She did not get time a appreciate her sudden costume change, because the magician said, “I've had another idea,” and raised the top of the bag again.

Natalie yelled, but it was suddenly cut off and when the hoop was lowered again, Shelly stood there looking a little surprise. She gave the magician a 'what just happened there?' look, but then heard something behind her. She stepped out of the hoop and went back to the cabinet, quickly flinging open the inner doors to reveal Natalie inside the cabinet and looking put out.

“Hey! What's the big idea?” shouted Natalie.

“Well, I wouldn't want you to miss the rest of the show, so I thought you would rather be in the audience. This way I get Shelly back and you get to see the rest of the show.”

Shelly had pulled the hinge pins on the inner doors and removed those doors. She picked the top section filled with satin swagged hips and brought them to the front of stage, calling for me to come and collect them. After a bit of toing and froing I had Natalie's hips and torso boxes stacked beside the table.

Meanwhile, she was asking the magician, “How long will I be like this?”

“Until the end of the show, I'm afraid. I can't put you back together in the interval, because, you know, magic on magic takes longer to put right, but rest assured that you'll be going home in one piece and I'll even throw in the magician's assistant's costume as a thank you for being such a good sport.”