Only the opening act

[Terrance]

...for some curious short pause, it seemed like they exchanged lives,
and it was Flash who'd lost her long ago but couldn't forget her, and
Zoyd who'd been soldiering along the decade and more, maybe by her side,
both would be  quick to complain but never really with her.

"So, I was only the opening act," he reminded Flash, "don't go thinkin'
we ever got to know each other or nothin'." 

VL.372


With a self-referential mode of narrative, Melville provides an
important thematic structure of metafiction to The Confidence-Man,
arranging stories and frames in mirror-like relation to one another,
almost endlessly qualifying what is conveyed in the work as it calls
attention to how it is conveyed.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/atkins/cmintro2.html