The Magician's Lie (11 page)

“My boardinghouse,” he said, pointing to it, and then, “and yours,” pointing two doors down.

That settled it. He'd be too near. I couldn't trust myself. I wanted to feel unmitigated hate for him, but it wasn't that simple. There was only one way to make sure he wouldn't charm me again, against all my judgment. I made my plan and acted. “I'm going to need some of the money.”

“What?”

Holding out my hand, forcing myself to smile lightly, I said, “I should really get half, you know. Of the betrothal money. I'll take less though. I just want to secure my rent.”

“Your first month is already paid. You don't need any money.”

“You'd leave me in the city without a nickel?”

“I'll take care of you. We'll meet up tomorrow, and I'll give you some then.”

“Now,” I said. “What if I want some supper?”

“I can't just hand you money out in the street.”

I kept my hand stubbornly extended. “You can so. I have faith in you.”

Grumbling, he reached into his pocket and struggled to peel off a couple of bills without exposing the money to the air. I saw his point—the street teemed with strangers, and it was unwise to wave money around in front of others who might want it—but I knew the danger if I didn't secure my part now. Perhaps he intended to meet me the next day and share the money as he said he did, but he couldn't be trusted. He had said he wouldn't keep his sentiments a secret, but that was exactly what he'd done with his false proposal, and he was guilty of it even now. I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. And because of that, I was hiding my true feelings and plans from him as well. Either way, I had to take advantage of the moment, since we might never share another one.

He leaned close to me and said, “Put your arms around me then.”

“Why?”

“Do you want it or not?” I belatedly realized he meant the money, not the embrace. I edged forward into his arms. His body was warm and his scent flooded my nostrils, and for a moment, I wanted desperately to sink into him and give myself up. But I felt his fingers discreetly searching for my hand and pressing the money into it, and the gesture brought me back to consciousness.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

“Come meet me tomorrow. Right here. Nine in the morning. All right?”

“All right.”

“We made it.”

“We did.”

“We'll talk tomorrow. And we'll find our way.”

“All right,” I repeated.

“All right.” He smiled a soft smile at me. How could he think everything was okay? Everything was not okay.

I watched him mount the steps into the boardinghouse and turned right toward my own destination.

I only stopped at the boardinghouse two doors down long enough to ask after the deposit. One had been placed, and when I explained my situation, the woman was happy to give me back three weeks' rent as long as I forfeited one. She gave me the location of her cousin's boardinghouse in the next ward over and swore not to tell my dangerous husband where I'd gone. Before leaving the house, I secured both wads of money deep in my undergarments. I couldn't afford to lose my stake to pickpockets.

Then I hoisted my valise and off I went, down the teeming street into the unknown.

Janesville, 1905

Half past two o'clock

“Didn't I tell you? I was a fool,” she says.

“That's not what it sounded like to me.”

“Are you even listening?”

“I'm listening.”

“So,” she says, “now you know one of my weaknesses. I believe the things people tell me.”

“I think we all have that weakness.”

She says, “I don't know. You don't seem to believe much of what I'm telling you.”

“Well, these are…extraordinary circumstances.”

She grins at him, almost like a friend. It disarms him. On one hand, that's not what he wants, but on the other hand, why should it matter? Why not tell her everything? It won't change what needs to happen. He needs to decide whether to keep her or let her go. Her feelings on that matter, he already knows.

He goes on, “So you fell in love and trusted someone. It happens. At least you learned his stripes quickly enough.”

“It felt like love,” she says. “Or what people had told me love was like. Was your wife your first love, officer? I asked you before, but you didn't answer.”

“She was,” he says.

“And how long have you been married?”

“Two years.”

“You're what? Twenty-two, twenty-three?”

“Thereabouts,” he admits.

“Then you've loved her longer than she's loved you.”

She's uncannily good. By now, this doesn't surprise him. “Why would you say that?”

“If you loved her in your teens, and she loved you in her teens, you'd have married in your teens. Isn't that the case?”

“She had another suitor, for years,” he says. “A steady.” Perhaps the story will help her think of him as a young man in love, not just a police officer. Help her open up. Tell him more of the truth, especially when and where it counts.

She cocks her head and smiles up at him. “The young man who came in first at everything, when you came in second?”

“The very same.”

“But you came in first when it mattered. She married you.”

He shakes his head. “Because he married someone else first.”

“Who? And why?”

“A girl named Prudie. The sweetest you'd ever meet. She moved to Janesville when we were all twenty, and the whole story was written from the moment she arrived. Mose would be the leader and she would follow.”

“And your wife—Iris, was it?—isn't that way? A follower?”

“Not at all,” he says with a fond smile. “She's like you. She speaks her mind.”

“But you love her and she loves you. Isn't that all that matters?”

“It should be.”

“It isn't?”

This part is harder to be honest about. He's never said it out loud to anyone. “I was always her second choice,” he says. “I can't forget that. She settled for me because she couldn't have what she really wanted, and I was the next best. Is that anything to build a life on? And now…”

“Now you're injured,” she says, catching on.

“As soon as they find out how bad it is, they'll dismiss me. Force me out. What good is a police officer who can't physically catch a criminal?”

“You caught me.”

“I was lucky,” he admits. “You're smaller than most criminals anyway. And now I want to hear more about your magic.”

“What else is there to say? At Biltmore, I suspected that my healing was extraordinary, but I didn't truly believe in it for years. I know how easy it is to make tricks seem like magic. But I asked Adelaide once if she'd ever heard of people with healing powers, and she had some astounding tales to tell. The mind is stronger than the body, and some minds more than others.”

He's confused. “Who's Adelaide?”

“Didn't I tell you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Her face is stony.

After their easy confidences, her coy resistance now sets him off.

“Listen,” he says, jabbing one finger at her for emphasis, “stop dancing around it. If you want any chance of leniency, any chance at all of not going to prison, you're going to need to work with me, not against me.”

“You think I'm working against you,” she says.

“Yes.”

She kicks a little against the cuffs. They rattle and tighten against the legs of the chair.

“Let me show you how agreeable I've been,” she says.

She locks her gaze on him, stares into his blue eyes with her blue-and-brown ones. Setting her bare heels against the ground, she begins to lean back, slowly, carefully.

The front two legs of the chair scrape against the floor and rise into the air. Not by magic, just leverage. She shuffles one foot forward then the other. Then she shifts her weight forward again, setting the chair back down.

He gets a sicker feeling in his stomach.

The cuffs are no longer locked in position around the front legs of the chair. Her ankles are linked to nothing. She has lifted the chair legs right out of the cuffs. In barely half a minute, if even that.

She crosses one knee over the other, and the circle of a steel-gray cuff dangles from her slim ankle, swinging gently back and forth, hanging empty in the air.

“There's no way to lock the cuffs around the legs of the chair,” she says. “When the seat is bolted straight onto the legs like this, there's nowhere to catch them. A different kind of chair would work, one with a bar between the front legs closer to the floor, but not this one.”

He forces himself to keep his eyes on hers instead of glancing down at the chair legs to see what she's talking about. He doesn't want to get up from his perch on the edge of the desk. Moving would mean she's had an effect. He has to remain calm, or at least appear that way.

She goes on, “If I were going to run, I wouldn't have shown you the weakness in your plan. I would have manipulated you into adding more weaknesses until your entire plan was weakness, until I could easily break free.”

She'd known from the beginning that the ankle cuffs were useless, and he hadn't seen it. He wishes he were thinking more clearly. He needs to. To hear her story, to make his decision, to turn this situation to his advantage. So he doesn't lose what little he has.

“It's not enough, of course,” she says, jiggling her foot so the empty cuff bounces in the air. “I'm still cuffed to this chair. Even if I could get free of three pairs of handcuffs, which I can't, you'd just tackle me like you did before. I'd be right back where I started. And that door is still locked. Isn't it?”

He gets up, then picks up her discarded boots and carries them away, setting them next to the front door, off to the side. He thinks about twisting the knob to make sure it's locked, but she's watching. It'll be all right, he tells himself. No one will interrupt them from the outside, and from the inside, he's doing everything he can.

“Isn't it?” she repeats to his back.

Enough
, he thinks. Instead of answering her, he draws himself upright, all business.

“Tell me about this Adelaide,” he says. “Now.”

1896–1897

The Bullet Catch

New York City was not an easy place to live in 1896. Maybe it never has been. Life there is dark and noisy and crowded. The only smell I remembered from my grandparents' house was plum pudding at Christmas and clean sheets the rest of the year; in Tennessee, I had become acquainted mostly with the smell of dirt and horses and hay; at Biltmore, grass and soap and roses. Here every smell was on top of every other, good or otherwise. Garlic and perfume and manure. Silk and smoke and mud. Voices came at you the same way: a trilling woman's soprano shouting out the price of oysters, overlapping with a Sicilian shopkeeper's dusky accent and two German teenagers arguing at full volume, blotting out a whispering group of Irish girls on their way to work.

Positions were not hard to find. The engine of life needed to be fed. Boardinghouses needed to be run, the stately mansions of Fifth Avenue needed servants of all stripes, and restaurants needed people to cook and serve food. But running away from Biltmore gave me the opportunity to try something new, and the theaters all up and down the city needed performers on their stages every night, to feed the people in a different way. I wanted to dance on the stage for the people of New York.

I was out of practice from my journey up the coast. I'd been exercising every day, but in a stealthy and halfhearted fashion, trying to keep quiet. A
port
de
bras
was silent and so was a
rond
de
jambe
, so I'd kept those up, but I'd neglected anything noisier. I could feel the difference in my body, the weakness in my ankles where there had previously been strength. Once in New York, I quickly resumed the Cecchetti exercises as if there were someone watching me do them, as if someone were keeping track. On the rare occasions that the hallway in the boardinghouse was empty, I practiced my
chaînés tournes
, but the rest of the time I practiced in my room, tuning out the smell of boiling cabbage and the impassioned cries of my neighbors as best I could. That way I regained my full range of motion:
temps
levé
,
fouettés en tournant
, my full vocabulary of
battements
.

I'd taken a shared room at the boardinghouse that the other house's proprietor had directed me to. I thought about moving again, in case Clyde convinced her he wasn't the abusive husband I'd made him out to be. His charm could undo my hastily made plan in a snap. Unfortunately I knew almost nothing of the city, and even staying where I was, I knew the money I had would last exactly four and a half weeks. So instead I threw myself into the search for employment, and miracle of miracles, I found it. I did what I most wanted to do and found a job dancing onstage every night.

The show was
The
Belle
of
New
York
at the Casino Theater, a musical about a modest young Salvation Army worker in love with a playboy who believes he loves someone else and then finds he loves the modest young lady after all. Toward the end of the show, she somehow becomes more noble by singing a horrendously naughty song. The entire enterprise aspired to elegance while also satisfying the audience's need for vulgarity. It was a huge hit. A dancing chorus filled the stage first as sober soldiers and later as flouncing tarts, and I was one of the chorus, though I was more impression than actual person, dancing as far back as I did. I never got to watch the entire show and be swept up in it like the audience did, but there were still moments that whisked me away. The playboy's first entrance, radiating confidence and charisma as he settled a white rosebud into the buttonhole of his fine evening jacket. The modest young lady's ballad, sung alone in a tight spotlight on a huge and deserted stage, the longing in her voice exquisitely pure and painful. Their kiss at the close of the show, brief and merry, a perfect tableau of celebration and romance and joy.

The girl sharing my room was a young Englishwoman named Clara who worked the night shift at a garment factory south of Canal. Her pay was better than mine, and she offered to get me a job at the factory, but I couldn't stand to be stuffed up like that. And I'd found what I wanted as a dancer. As much as my feet ached and my cheap costume itched, I was a performer, dancing for a theater full of people, for their joy, for their applause. There was a thrill in that I had never felt anywhere else.

Every night, the curtain came up and the curtain went down. Beforehand, I was lost in the itch of the costumes and the smell of the greasepaint and the bustle. Afterward, I was fully exhausted, as if I'd been dancing for ten hours and not just two. In between, things were a blur. But the blur in the middle was the happiest, most amazing blur, and I felt truly myself at every moment.

For nearly five months, all I could think of was survival. That was enough. The show's schedule was punishing, nine shows a week, including the weekend matinees. To condition my body to better handle the two hours of dancing, I needed to rededicate myself to practice and exercise, which also took time. There was always something to do, even if the range of things that needed doing was much narrower than it had been at the Biltmore. It was exhausting. The weather outdoors went from a hot summer stink to a cold winter chill, and as the months passed, the sun began to set before I left for the theater instead of after the last show ended, but other than that, little changed day after day after day.

By December, I was more settled. They raised my salary at the theater, which very nearly shocked me into a heart attack, since all they'd told any of us since the day we started was how worthless and weak we were. But apparently, I wasn't too worthless and weak to be promoted straight up to second line, and with second line came fifty extra cents a week, which made a world of difference to my body and my spirit.

I thought of my mother then, for the first time in a long while. She had probably assumed the worst. I should have left her a note when I fled or written her a letter sometime after. It crossed my mind a hundred times, but I didn't put pen to paper, even though it would have been such an easy thing. Had she seen the note that Mrs. Severson sent, or did she still wonder what had happened to me, with no news from any quarter? I should have done things differently. But now I felt it had been too long. I couldn't quite brush the thoughts away, but as the days passed, they occurred to me less and less often, and I made peace with myself again for a time.

The theater was dark on Christmas Day, so I spent the day at a roof garden sipping at cups of eggnog with Clara, who referred to me charmingly as her flatmate, and several of her coworkers. She and I had paid for the eggnog between us, and every time one of the coworkers downed another cup, I winced. I was calculating figures in my head the entire afternoon. Clara and her friends gossiped about people I didn't know and fell deep into discussions of methods for sewing and stretching and cutting fabric that I could barely understand. It was not as festive a holiday as it could have been. But the eggnog was warm and rich. I could see the buildings of the city arrayed like dollhouses below. And at the end of the day, we strolled home arm in arm, our cheeks pink with cold, caroling our voices hoarse.

The new year began as the previous one had ended, in a busy city with no particular friends but no particular enemies, and all told, I was happy, in my way.

Then January came.

Days that change your life don't always feel momentous. It's hard to know when or where the whole world will shift into something new. You can only stay alert and watchful and take things as they come.

The year 1897 was an eventful one in the world. It was Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, a huge celebration. Mr. Stoker published a novel called
Dracula
, the artist-pervert Oscar Wilde was released from prison, and in New York, they held a ceremony to dedicate the tomb of President Grant.

And I saw a woman shot in the face, to wild applause.

January started gray and bitterly cold. By the second week, it began to warm, and there was no snow, which gave me the opportunity to save streetcar fare by walking to and from the theater. The days were short, and it seemed always dark. One evening when I exited the stage door of the theater into the usual darkness, someone was waiting in the alley. I caught the smell first, a sweetish smoke, and then a blur of motion caught my eye.

I moved closer, carefully, and the shape resolved.

There was a man in the shadows, in light-colored clothing, smoking a large pipe. He spoke to me in a bright high voice, saying, “Good evening, young lady.” I couldn't place the accent.

I said, “Good evening,” and started walking past.

He said, “Wait a moment, please. I'd like to speak to you.”

“I need to get home, sir.”

“Ma'am,” the voice corrected, and I took a closer look. Despite the breeches, the smoker was a woman. A large woman. Not fat but simply large, like an Amazon, built on a grander scale. My fear lessened somewhat without draining fully away.

“I'll get right to the point. My name is Adelaide Herrmann,” she said, tapping the bowl of her pipe against the heel of her hand. “I have a show. I think you might be suited for it.”

“What kind of show?”

“Magic,” she said.

My first instinct was revulsion. Magic made me think of Ray, who had been convinced he and I both had magic in us and had tortured me for it. But then I realized she probably wasn't talking about real magic, if in fact it existed. She'd said
show
. That was a different animal.

She was looking at me very closely. She put her hand out and gently turned my shoulder, turning me toward the streetlight. I could feel the warmth of the light on me, against my cold skin.

“You have a very classical face, did you know that?” she said.

“I suppose not.” No one had told me I had a classical face. Not even the underhanded Clyde, who had admired me, in his way.

“You could do a lot with that face.”

“I'm sorry?”

“It isn't about the face really, of course,” she said. “I need a dancer.”

“What kind?”

“Your kind. I saw you in the show, and I think you can do what I need done.”

“Which is?”

“Better that I show you. Come with me.”

She turned down Broadway, and after only a moment's hesitation, I followed. The scent of pipe tobacco was more pleasant than most of the smells of the city, so I was happy to trail behind her in that cloud. I shouldn't have trusted her, but I did.

There were people on the streets, which usually made me feel safe, but these weren't the people I was used to. It was full dark. Nighttime revelry had begun. There were policemen around, but it didn't look like they were doing much policing. At least one had a girl in one arm and a drink in the other. I tried to keep myself to myself as we went and trailed Madame Herrmann like a shadow.

Ten blocks later, she turned left onto a narrower street and left again into an alleyway, and we went in at a small door.

The stairs were narrow and dark, and I followed her pale shape up through the darkness. The room behind the stage was large and mostly empty, except for several trunks lined up against one wall. Madame Herrmann rummaged in a trunk and threw a few things aside. Two kinds of cloth and something furry. I didn't look too closely. The next thing she found, she held out to me. Long blond ringlets dangled from her clutched hand.

She said, “Put this on.”

“Ma'am?”

“Put it on,” she said. “I may have a very important opportunity for you. But I need you to put on this wig so I can see you in it.”

I tucked my hair underneath the horsehair cap and yanked the wig down over the top of my head. It smelled of old sweat. I held in the gag. I knew whatever opportunity this woman was offering me would rely on my doing what I was told, and I had a strong feeling it was an opportunity I wanted to know more about.

“Go over there,” she said, pointing toward the brick wall. When I faced the wall, she said, “Turn around,” so I did and faced her.

“Should I—”

“Just stay still,” she said.

I left that ratty wig on my head and didn't even blow the hair out of my eye although it itched something awful, and I stared at a brick in the wall that the mason had nicked and overgrouted to make up for it. I only blinked on occasion, because when a powerful woman who smells like rosewater instead of dung tells you to stay still, you know everything depends on exactly how still you can stay, and for how long.

After a few minutes, she said, “Well done, you can move now. What's your name?”

“Ada Bates.”

“Eh, no good. We'll change that,” she said. “You'll start overmorrow.”

“What will I start doing?” I asked her. “You haven't said.”

“Young lady, you are going to have the most wonderful life with us. You have no idea.”

She was dead right, on both counts, as I would later discover. I didn't think to ask her how she had picked me out of the crowd. I was no more prominent in the show than a dozen other girls. I was the one she had waited for, and I was a fool not to inquire why. But it was an unexpected, mad night, and I was caught up. And perhaps there was a part of me that was afraid it was too good to be true and asking questions might break the spell.

“Fifteen dollars a week, first week in advance,” she said and pressed two bills into my hand. Real money. I only made ten fifty in the chorus. If I'd been a giddier girl, I would have run off right then, but I was levelheaded enough to know why Adelaide had given me the money up front. She wanted me to know there was plenty more where that came from.

“I still need to know what the work is,” I said.

“What you'll do for this money, it's nothing you need be ashamed of,” Madame Herrmann said matter-of-factly. “Tell you what. Tomorrow night, come to the Metropolitan Opera House. You'll see something amazing. And you'll understand what my magic is about.”