Look inside the world's unlikeliest magic shop

• Emory Williams Sr. performs for customers and has 1,000 tricks and novelties for sale in a 13-foot by 18-foot trailer.
• An intriguing coin trick sparked the love of a lifetime.

VAIL — Long after civilization has surrendered to the desert, when respite is found only at the next off-ramp, and odd shop appears out of nowhere.

Miles east of Tucson, amid a handful of businesses depending on weary travelers, it stands out like a mistake, as if a trick of the eye.

Illusion? Or a mirage?

Parked in a dusty lot on the side of the road, bold black lettering reveals the secret of the trailer that doesn't belong. "Magic shop," it reads, and only when you notice a figure behind the counter do you realize it's not merely unreal.

It's open for business.

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70 years of fooling the skeptical

Emory Williams Sr., wearing one of his 30 or so magic-themed ties that may or may not be rigged for an illusion, spreads a deck of cards on the black-velvet pad at the front of his not-so-mobile magic shop.

Calling it a shop is giving it the benefit of the doubt. It is nothing like the store the 82-year-old once owned in Tucson. That brick-and-mortar spot held more than 6,000 tricks in roughly 2,000 square feet, a destination for amateur and professional magicians throughout southern Arizona.

This shop, parked on a dusty gravel lot roughly 50 feet back from the road, is a 13-foot by 18-foot trailer, modified with solar panels providing power to the TV, radio, computer and air conditioner. Inside are 1,000 tricks and novelties. Some visitors can’t quite believe what they are seeing, as if the bold black letters that say “Magic Shop” must be, well, an illusion.

But it's no mirage, as shown by the tourists who stop just long enough to take a photo, as if Instagram posts could pay Williams' bills.

The story of how the trailer wound up here, along a road leading past this rest stop and to Colossal Cave Mountain Park, is filled with twists and turns.

Should anyone ask Williams why a trailer in Vail, he'll ask them to pick a card. But the important thing for Williams is that it exists, as solid as any coin he's pulled from behind a kid's ear. Because as long as it's here, he can keep the magic alive, even if only between the hours of 3 and 6 p.m. Saturday or Sunday — the only time the magician appears.

Any card.

Suitably distracted, visitors won't learn the not-so-magical tale of a recession and failing fortunes. Instead, eyes are focused on the chosen card — a six of clubs — and a determination to follow the magician's every move.

Williams knows that look and smiles, confident his hands move quicker than any eye.

This is a man with more than 70 years of fooling those certain they can't be fooled. That desire goes back three quarters of a century to a barn outside Caruthersville, Mo.

The youngest of an even dozen (Williams uses his fingers to tick off the names of his seven brothers and four sisters, all but one deceased), he was perhaps 5 or 6 when he watched his dad entertain the locals with some sleight of hand.

He recalls one trick vividly, when a volunteer gripped a pencil firmly on each end. His father held up a wedding ring, tapped it once, twice on the pencil.  After the third tap, the ring spun in the light, firmly attached to the pencil.

“I’d learn all of his tricks,” Williams says. “But not that one. I have an idea but I don’t know for sure. It was one he refused to share.”

While many of today’s practitioners are eager to share, posting videos of how tricks are done, Williams believes in the sanctity of secrets. When his own son was 5 or 6, he made him wait outside the magic shop while purchases were made.

“I wasn’t old enough to keep a secret, to respect a secret,” Emory Williams Jr. says. He's a third-generation magician who runs a magic shop in Trail Dust Town, a tourist attraction in Tucson. “That’s how he was. Today, most people may think that doesn’t make any sense.”

Williams’ heightened sense of secrecy was evident when he was 9 or 10 and, taking a break from his sweeping job at a jewelry store, dropped in yet again on the cute clerk working at the dime store.

Only this time, he noticed something different behind the counter.

A coin trick. Intrigued, he inquired as to its price.

“Nineteen cents,” the high-school clerk said.

Pretty steep for a dime store, but the deal was done. Williams ripped open the package, examined it for a few minutes, and asked how many more of these tricks were on the rack.

A quick count revealed 11. Williams said he’d buy them all.

“Just put them behind the counter,” he said. “Next time I get paid, I’ll pick them up.”

The next week, he plunked down more than 20 percent of his $5 salary. He was the only one in town who'd know each trick's secret.

The investment was well worth it, considering the role that simple coin trick eventually would play in making love appear. But at that time, it led only to an interest in illusions.

In middle school, Williams was that student always doing tricks in the hallways. When teachers invited him to put on fundraisers, he worked up a shtick. (“In magic, the way you perform is far more important than what you perform.”) By high school, he was appearing in front of hundreds at social clubs.

Though magic was his passion, he never thought it could produce his one and only true love.

But even a magician can be fooled.

Lifelong love affair is no illusion

So many years have passed, more than 60, that Nathailia Williams has a difficult time remembering exactly when she fell in love with this tall, angular fellow five years her senior.

But she recalls precisely when the magic began.

With a trick, of course.

It was a coin trick, simple yet elegant.

Magic led Nathailia to first notice the boy who commanded small audiences in the school hallways. He seemed so friendly, so outgoing. And very handsome.

As she grew up, those feelings evolved from crush to something much more complicated. At some point he noticed her, too. One day, he handed her a coin and told her to make a mark on it.

Nathailia remembers that trick as the first one he ever performed for her. It was soon followed by their first official date, the junior-senior prom.

Their love was as simple as the time. They eloped, so romantic in 1953. Later, his parents hosted a reception for the couple. They ran out of dishes, there were so many people. His mom and dad had to share a coffee cup.

For 61 years, Emory and Nathailia have had plenty of coffee mugs, yet they drink from the same one, a tribute to Williams' parents.

Nathailia soon joined her husband on stage as well as in life. She’d play the piano as he made coins vanish or pulled handkerchiefs from thin air. She was a capable assistant, though she happily moved from the spotlight when the family act was joined by a third partner, son Emory Jr., who would prove as magically adept as his father.

For years, the couple ran a pet wholesale/retail business in Caruthersville. Williams performed on the side, ordering new tricks out of a catalog, sending cash in the mail when such a thing was normal rather than reckless.

One day, Nathailia had an idea. What if they carved out a little piece of the pet store to sell magic?

Her husband soon ordered $200 worth of illusions, hoping customers would make them disappear. She had more faith than he did.

“I was pretty worried,” Williams says. “I knew they would be tough to eat if we didn’t sell them.”

The illusions did sell. Magic nearly sawed the pet business in half, then made it vanish. Quite a trick, Williams thought. Nathailia wasn’t surprised in the least.

When it was time to retire, the couple moved to Tucson, where magic beckoned the couple into the spotlight. Their store on 22nd Street did well, and led to an online business, which still operates today.

The 22nd Street store exists only in memories and photos, though Nathailia recalls it fondly each time she accompanies her husband to the magic trailer, settling in the back to watch TV or listen to the radio.

When a customer or two drops by, she peeks over her husband’s shoulder to take in the show. Watching a trick she’s seen hundreds of times, she beams as if it's the first time.

Her husband hardly limits his performances to the magic shop. Whenever the two leave the house, he invariably has a trick, or two or three, tucked into his pockets, waiting for the right time.

And it’s always the right time.

She tells the most recent story, pausing only when a train rolls by on a nearby track, its horn wailing. (Trains pass by so often that the trailer once was parked next to the tracks to take advantage of the line of cars waiting to cross.)

“Last night, he about gave the Walmart cashier a heart attack,” Nathailia says, patting Williams on the shoulder. “Go on, show the trick. You know you want to.”

Williams digs into his front pocket and plucks out a quarter. He takes a bite of the coin, restoring the missing chunk with a light puff of air. Closing his fist around the quarter, he drops it on the black velvet mat, inviting inspection.

Once the solidity of the coin is verified, he pops it into his mouth and, cupping his nose with his right hand, the coin appears to drop from deep inside his nasal passage into his left hand.

He tosses it on the mat. “Want to check it now?”

Nathailia laughs. “The cashier wouldn’t touch it either. He does that kind of stuff all the time, wherever we are. He always want to do something somewhere. Magic is his joy.”

She doesn’t say it, but her eyes let on: She adores every vanishing coin, every magically appearing handkerchief, every sleight of hand.

Though Nathailia knows the secret to each illusion, there is still magic between them.

'My mind is blown'

Stryder Nix is confident he can’t be tricked. After all, he’s 7, way older than his easily fooled 4-year-old half-brother Gunner Voss.

But as he examines the clear plastic bar embedded with six tiny multicolored gems — gems that turned solid red and back again before his eyes — he faces the truth.

“My mind is blown,” he says.

Those four words explain why, at the age of 82 and no longer dependent on a job, Emory Williams Sr. continues to practice his craft.

“There is nothing more gratifying than seeing the smile on someone’s face when they’ve been buffaloed,” the magician says.

He wants to see each face, preferring to perform before an audience of five or six rather than 500 or 600.

He’s been on larger stages, performing the same illusions with bigger props. Yet he and Emory Jr. (who has appeared many times at the prestigious Magic Castle in Los Angeles) decided long ago to forego their acts to sell tools of the trade, making a little money while supporting fellow magicians.

So it is that Williams’ favored venue is the small roadside trailer. The hum of traffic provides the background noise, punctuated by train whistles. Sometimes, someone stops, intrigued by a most unlikely shop of trickery.

That is how Stryder Nix has come to be baffled, bamboozled and perplexed.

For the two-plus hours prior to Stryder’s appearance, the only cars that pulled off the highway were destined for the taco shop, allowing Williams to relax and Nathailia to nap.

But now, with a rapt audience of four (besides Stryder and Gunner, there is Stryder’s sister Haili, 11, and mom Cheryl Voss), a familiar sparkle danced in the magician’s eyes.

Over the next 45 minutes, Williams turns pennies into dimes and back again. A ball disappears from a vase, emerging from a back pocket. A cord is sliced into three bits, only to be made whole. Tiny plastic swords are thrust through a half-dollar, yet the coin shows no sign of damage.

Each time the children ask, “How’d you do that?”

Each time Williams replies, “Quite well, I’d say.”

Voss and her husband Clint, who is stationed at Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, are the only ones to notice the real magic going on. In a world of smartphones and tablet computers, their children are mesmerized by a craft going back thousands of years.

Cheryl Voss had heard of the magic shop from a colleague, though her husband still couldn’t quite believe it when he saw it.

“I thought she was kidding,” Clint Voss says. “But you see some quirky things in the middle of the desert.”

When the impromptu show ends, Williams sells four illusions for $24.19, pulling the last quarter of change from behind Gunner’s ear.

As he shows them how to perform each trick, he makes them promise they will never share the secret with anyone. Each child nods, though Williams knows how rarely such secrets are kept. Still, there is always hope.

With the sun setting behind the trailer, Williams says he has one more trick.

“This one is very special,” he says. Nathailia smiles widely over her husband’s shoulder.

Because this is the trick, the very first one, that still holds a spell over her.

Williams hands Haili a quarter sealed between two sheets of plastic barely bigger than the coin.

“Remove the rubber bands from all four sides and take out the quarter,” Williams says. “Perfect. Now take this Sharpie — don’t cut yourself, it’s sharpie — and make your mark on the coin. Anywhere will do.”

Haili bites her lip and inscribes a tiny “Hi!” above George Washington’s head.

“Once you’re done,” Williams continues, “put the coin back as it was, making sure to attach the rubber bands to each side.”

Seconds after the coin and sleeve are back in Williams’ hands, they disappear. He reaches under the counter, producing a box the size of a stapler. A half-dozen crisscrossed rubber bands hold the lid in place.

“Why don’t you see what’s inside there?” Williams says.

Haili has a hunch, of course, and removes the bands one by one. Opening the lid, she finds —

Another box. Smaller, of course, but sealed with haphazardly placed rubber bands.

She opens that too, only to find an even smaller box, barely bigger than a quarter.

“No way,” Haili says, removing the rubber bands.

Inside is the quarter. Her quarter. She can see the tiny “Hi” through the plastic sleeve, though she removes the rubber bands anyway.

She holds the quarter up to her eyes.

“Is that your coin?” Williams asks, knowing the answer.

“How did you do that?”

“Quite well, I'd say.”

The family departs a few minutes past 6 p.m. Williams and Nathailia close up shop, working in tandem to have everything stowed and locked in five minutes.

They get into their SUV, Emory behind the wheel, and point themselves in the direction of home 7 miles away.

The two will return tomorrow, rain or shine, pulling up shortly before 3 p.m. to open up shop.

Maybe they will demonstrate that one very special coin trick, the audience having no idea just how special it is and the role it played in a lifelong love affair.

Now, that’s not to say 62 years of marriage is based on a single illusion.

But isn’t it magic to think so?

Williams Magic Shop

What: Visitors can select from 1,000 illusions, gags, novelties and magic kits at this mobile store.

When: Open 3-6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

Where: 13303 E. Colossal Cave Road, Vail. From Phoenix, head east on Interstate 10 and take exit 279, Wentworth Road. Turn left and follow Wentworth (which becomes Colossal Cave Road) for 1.5 miles to Williams Magic Shop on the left.

More details: williamsmagic.com.

Second location: The Williams family operates a shop in Trail Dust Town at Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse, 6541 E. Tanque Verde Road, Tucson. Open 5-9 p.m. daily. 520-790-4060.