"Think of a card."
Dennis Kyriakos is leaning over the table, holding the deck of playing cards about a foot away from his victim, who had expected the traditional "pick a card, any card" spiel instead.
Kyriakos (pronounced Key-ree-AK-kos) is in his element, a professional magician working up close, where he can look into your eyes, clearly watching for only-he-knows-what with a confidence that, before the trick even starts, tells you you're about to be had.
T-H-E T-W-O O-F D-I-A-M-O-N-D-S hits the table right on time.
Closeup magic is seductive because the audience members invariably think they can find the trick.
"Closeup magic is much harder than stage magic," Kyriakos said. "If you could get on stage and look in the box, you could probably figure out how the trick was done. You don't have that distance when you work close up, so it's harder.
"If I can do magic close up, then doing it on stage will be easy."
Kyriakos is parlaying a life long love of prestidigitation — he's been practicing since childhood and bought the first of the 150 magic books in his library with his first credit card — into a budding career.
He is working the corporate and private party circuit, having performed shows for companies like TIAA-CREF, Perdue, Sun Microsystems, Borders Group, New Line Cinema and Ferragamo USA.
He owes it all to his parents.
Growing up in Whitestone and Astoria, Queens, where he lives with his wife, Ana, Kyriakos got the magic bug from his father's horses.
His parents, Costas and Elaine, ran a flower shop in Astoria most of the year, but each summer they would pack up Kyriakos and his brother Chris and hit the carnival circuit, running a mechanical horse-race game in amusement parks and fairs across the state and country and Canada.
"I grew up in amusement parks and the flower shop," Kyriakos said. "It was a family affair. Rye Playland, the Jersey boardwalk, upstate, Canada. We went everywhere. We'd be in one spot for 10 days, then pack it all up and move to another. Sometimes the truck would break down on the road and we would be stranded."
One unexpected benefit of all this was that, during his off hours, Kyriakos could roam the midway, invariably ending up in the tent where the hypnotists, jugglers and magicians worked.
"I made a lot of friends," he said. "Magicians are like a fraternity. When they saw I was interested, they started encouraging me and showing me stuff."
Jamy Ian Swiss, who has performed around the world and appeared on David Letterman's show, among others, is Kyriakos' friend and mentor and helped show him the city's burgeoning community of working magicians.
After earning a business management degree from St. John's University and working as an actor/director in theater and television, Kyriakos heeded his heart's advice and jumped into the sleight-of-hand profession full time.
Now he practices tricks hours a day — the classic cups and balls is one of his favorites — and calls on an actor's concentration and control to pull off his tricks.
"It's all about misdirection and getting the audience's attention," he said. "When you get their attention, you learn to focus it so they look where you want them to look when you want them to.
"People want to be amazed. They don't want to feel stupid. I don't try to make people feel like idiots. I want them to feel like a kid who just saw something that made them go 'oooohhhh.'
"People like that feeling."
DOMAIN OF LEGERDEMAIN
You can catch Dennis Kyriakos every Friday from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Melting Pot restaurant, 14 Grove St., Darien, Conn. For bookings, call (917) 841-1476, or go online at www.miraclemagic.com.
Originally published on January 8, 2006