The Magician's Lie (15 page)

It was the man who'd asked the question in Hartford and gotten his answer.

I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, the paper bowed in the middle and crumpled, torn from my hands. I looked up to see who'd done it. The person holding the remains of the crumpled paper was Adelaide.

“Bad luck to read bad news,” she said. “I'll take this.”

I knew I should remain silent, but I was still in shock. I'd never known anyone who died. I didn't really know this man—I had only ever seen him the one time—but I felt responsible for him somehow. I wondered if Adelaide felt the same way. She'd told him the woman he loved didn't love him. She'd said it flat out. It seemed he'd taken action, in the most terrible way.

“What happened?” I asked her.

I didn't expect an answer, but she gave me one, of sorts.

“Too much truth is dangerous,” said Adelaide. “For all of us.”

Janesville, 1905

Three o'clock in the morning

She looks distraught now. The tears on her face are different from her earlier tears. Her whole face seems to blur with sadness. He reaches out with his handkerchief to dab her tears without being asked. She doesn't thank him.

“Was it real?” he asks intently, standing over her, staring down.

“I thought about it a lot, for a while,” she says. “That man, that answer. I don't know how she could have known what he was asking, but she did. On the other hand, none of the rest of her magic was real, so why would that have been?”

“None of the rest was real?”

She nods. “Nothing she did onstage, none of her illusions. Lady to Tiger, the Dancing Odalisque, Light and Heavy Chest, all of them were mechanical. Different secrets, but knowable ones. Mirrors, misdirection, sets, costumes. She taught me the tools to manipulate the audience's reality. It's amazing how you can make people think they're seeing something they're not. Especially when they want to believe. Then there's nothing easier.”

He prods, “And then what happened?”

“After the second sight act?”

“Yes.”

Her shoulders sink. “Nothing was the same. Adelaide just—she just—didn't care anymore. She didn't say why, but it was obvious. Two people had died because of her words. Because of what she'd said to him in that theater. Had she said something different, or nothing at all, he might not have killed himself and that poor young woman.”

“She thought it was her fault? But she couldn't know for sure, could she?”

“She was sure enough,” she says grimly. “It was like a light went out inside her. She did all the same illusions, with all the same results, but they didn't make people want to stand up and applaud. Audiences lost interest. Somehow there was no magic in her magic. And of course, she never did the second sight act again.”

“But what happened? Did people stop coming to see her? Did she quit? Did something else happen to her, once she stopped caring?”

The magician gathers herself and speaks more crisply, shaking off the rough, wet sound of her earlier tears. “What happened was nothing. She performed the shows that were already booked, but she didn't book any new ones. She wrote off the future. I asked about it once, and she told me to mind my own business, that if she wanted to drop off the edge of the world, she'd drop off on her own time and thank you very much, so I never asked again.”

His exhaustion strikes him then, out of nowhere. The adrenaline and the story have been carrying him. But there's something about knowing that a successful woman like Adelaide Herrmann—the name sounds familiar, this part of the story must be true—could just crumple into nothingness. It reminds him that he, who is far less, has little to hope for.

He thinks about sneaking a look at his pocket watch but resists. He knows what he needs to know about what time it is. Evening is long gone and the night is headed toward morning. Time is running out.

He says, “She was like a mother to you.”

“She was. Like a mother isn't the same as a mother, is it?”

“No.”

She eyes him, saying, “Tell me about your mother.”

“She's dead,” he says. “She died in childbirth. I never knew her at all.”

“I'm so sorry, officer. I mean that. I can't think of anything sadder.”

“Oh, I'm sure you can,” he says gruffly and walks back to his desk while he collects himself. He makes another decision. He crouches down behind the desk, pretending to look for something, so she can't see. He unbuckles his holster and slides the whole thing, holster, gun, and all, into the bottom drawer. He uses the key from his belt to lock the desk. Hiding the gun leaves him defenseless, but he's not worried about that. He's far more worried about her using it against him. He can't think of a way she could possibly escape the wrist cuffs, but then again, he couldn't think of a way she could escape the ankle cuffs, and she's already done that. He has to calculate the risks, and based on the calculation, do the best he can.

At length, he turns back to her and says, “Adelaide's magic wasn't real then. But yours is.”

“Not what I do onstage.”

“Even the man you heal at the end of the Halved Man?”

“No. That's a trick. I told you already.”

“Always?”

“Always. But you would believe me if I told you it was real, wouldn't you? You believe in magic.”

“Does it matter?” he stalls.

She says, “It's interesting. I just wouldn't think it of you. A practical young lawman. I would've thought you more—skeptical.”

He's surprised when an explanation comes easily to his lips. This, like the truth about feeling like Iris's second choice, he's never told anyone. “My mother believed in it. I was told so, anyway. Small magic. The idea that people can sometimes do little things, for themselves or each other, that make life easier. Soothe babies. Encourage crops. Calm disagreements. Each according to their particular gifts.”

“Did you get Iris with small magic? Pry her away from her suitor? Put the other girl in his way?” she asks with a glint of mischief.

He knows her motives. He knows she wants to distract him, get him off the subject of her healing powers. He looks down to where her wrists are still linked tight to the chair and allows himself to feel superior for just a moment. Concentrating, he keeps a neutral expression on his face.

“She knew how I felt about her, even when she was together with Mose. I was patient. Then after Mose's family announced his engagement to Prudie, she became much more receptive. I saw my opportunity, and I took it.”

“I think she's better off with you,” she says, which surprises him, largely because it's certainly not true.

Had she chosen Mose and he her, Iris would be married to a county sheriff instead of the only lawman in a one-horse town, a lawman who might not even keep that position for long, given what's happened. Their family is still just the two of them, two years after the wedding, and she'd give anything for the baby that Prudie has. No, she's not better off at all. He recognizes the magician's empty flattery for what it is.

“Oh, ma'am. Don't be obvious,” he says.

“Just so.” She bobs her head, a quick nod of acknowledgment. It doesn't seem to bother her at all to be found out. “But right now, I'd like to ask you to do one kind thing for me. Would you?”

He braces himself but asks innocently, “What thing?”

“Take one pair of cuffs off my wrists?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you're kind. Because they're cutting me. Because there are still two left, so it doesn't make any difference. It's a favor. If you could do me just this one favor, I'd owe you, wouldn't I?”

“Do you ever expect to be in a position to do me a favor?” he asks. Then his heartbeat begins to speed up as he answers the question for himself before she even speaks.

“Never know,” she replies.

“It would have to be a big favor, wouldn't it?”

“I imagine it would.”

He knows it's unwise, but his mind is churning and churning. If she can do the favor he wants her to, it will change everything. Too soon to ask now, but not too soon to start laying a foundation. Doing her a kindness can't hurt his case. If they can be cordial with each other like this, it's a breakthrough.

Pulling the key on a long string from his belt, he unlocks the bottom cuff from her right wrist, then her left. Now only two steel circles are stacked on each wrist, with two chains stringing the distance between them.

“Thank you,” she says softly.

He's relieved she didn't try at all to kick or bite him or dash her skull against his while he was so close to her. She knows the exact spot of his weakness, that bullet hiding in his back, waiting to kill him. Either she genuinely trusts him or she's playing a longer con. As much as she's told him, he still doesn't know which is more likely.

Right now, she looks helpless. Bound to a hard chair in a small room with a locked door. Trapped, pinned down. Fragile in her useless finery.

As if she can feel him trying to read her, she says, “You still think I'm some kind of monster, don't you? A dangerous creature? But I'm not. I'm just like you, trying to get by.”

“You're not like me.”

“You're a good person,” she says with enough force that he almost believes she means it. “So maybe not. You gave me that whole apple to eat instead of keeping it for yourself, which was a kind thing to do. You took off the cuffs when I asked, and I appreciate that. My wrist feels much better, by the way. I could sit the rest of the night like this now. So let me do something for you.”

“No.”

“You don't even know what I mean to say!”

“Then say it.”

She turns her fierce gaze on him, three-quarters blue, one-quarter brown, and says intently, “Ask me one question and I'll answer. Yes or no. Any question at all.”

Without the slightest pause, he asks, “Did you kill your husband?”

“Absolutely not.”

“How do I know you're not lying?”

There is a pause. The beads on her dress clack softly as she shifts position, tucking her legs demurely to one side, one ankle crossed over the other. She looks down at her ankles and the silver cuffs still attached to them and back up into his eyes once more.

Then she says, “I said one question, not two.”

“All right,” he says, resigned and exhausted. Maybe they haven't made much of a breakthrough after all. “Tell me what happened to Adelaide.”

1900

Woman on Fire

After a final show in New York, an empty road stretched out ahead of us. Not the right kind of road, to say the least. Emptiness, loneliness, poverty, and worse, no bookings. The business lived and died on bookings. Every single person in the company could tell you of a case where that was literally true. Everyone knew someone whose act fell apart when they couldn't get booked, ended up in the poorhouse, and then one way or another—starvation, illegal behavior, bad company—met an untimely demise.

I didn't want to become one of those people. But I didn't know how I would go forward, how I would forge a new life. I didn't want to give up the nightly ritual of applause, which had become like air to me. I needed to be onstage. Perhaps I could find another job dancing on Broadway, but I wouldn't be content in the fourth row of four anymore, and I was older now than the average chorus girl. I had turned seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, all without fanfare. If I couldn't perform, I might be driven back to service, but that was also a poor answer. My skills onstage were unusual, maybe even unique; I was far less remarkable in a parlor or a laundry room. Given all this, I sank into a sadness. I knew a happy ending wasn't the only kind of ending I might have.

***

We returned to New York for Adelaide's last show. The city had changed in the years I'd been gone. Where there used to be a reservoir on Forty-Second Street, now they were building a great, huge marble palace. I couldn't tell what it was going to be, but it was going to be grand. A new terminal for the Grand Central Railroad was also under construction, and there were so many electric lights that the city seemed to glow at night in every direction. There was more of everything. I found it just as overwhelming as I had when I rode into the city for the first time, yet the energy was undeniable, and I could understand why people gravitated toward this place.

Our last show, at the Casino on Broadway at West Thirty-Ninth, was a celebration. Adelaide seemed to regain all that she had lost, just for the night. It was beautiful. The crowd was our happiest crowd, and our peaks were our highest peaks. Our magic was flawless, our dances magnificent, our music enchanting. Adelaide was generous and beautiful and impressive. The audience clapped for us, appreciated us, loved us.

We closed the show with the Navajo Fire. It was not our most elaborate illusion, but it always pleased the crowd. There were five of us dancers in buckskin fringe with feathers on our heads, but we looked like a lot more, whirling in a circle with long scarves. We pantomimed capturing Adelaide and tying her to a tree then danced around her in celebration, whooping and stomping. But we, foolish tribesmen, hadn't reckoned on her magic. She got one arm free and raised it. All she needed to do was snap her fingers, and the dancing Indian nearest her vanished in a plume of fire, leaving nothing but smoke. We danced on, seeming not to notice, until she snapped her fingers again and another of us disappeared. By then it was too late: snap, snap, snap; gone, gone, gone. At the end, Adelaide stood alone. Usually, she clapped her hands and the rope holding her to the tree fell away, freeing her in a flash, and she strode out to the apron of the stage to do either the second sight act or one final card flourish to close the show. But this last night, instead, she snapped her fingers a sixth time, and she too became fire and then smoke, and she too disappeared.

The audience's thundering applause in the dark was the loudest, most welcome sound in the world.

Everyone dispersed afterward, almost immediately. No one even lingered to say good-bye. But I knew where Adelaide would be, in her railcar. It was parked in the Grand Central yard for the night. And when I knocked on the door, she answered and poured me a brandy just like hers, halfway up the glass.

“Where will you go?” I asked.

“I'm moving out to a farm on Long Island,” she said. “No more road. No more travel. None of this.”

I began to cry.

“Stop that,” she said. “If you let this be the end for you, you're not the girl I think you are.”

“I just want one night to be sad.”

“A night's too much,” she replied. “You have three minutes.”

For three minutes, we sat in silence, sipping our brandy. The artwork on the wall was familiar enough now that I felt the painted ladies and gentlemen were my good friends. It seemed I would never see their faces again.

She flipped open her pocket watch, which had been Alexander's, and said, “Time's up. How do you feel?”

“Not sad anymore,” I lied.

“Good.”

I sipped my brandy again.

“Because I have something I want to tell you,” said Adelaide.

“Yes?”

“Vivi, I'm proud of you.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying hard not to cry again and failing.

“Oh, toughen up. It's not the end of the world.”

“It's the end of my world,” I said.

“And you don't think it's the end of mine? I've been at this a lot longer than you. I've lost a lot more than you've lost.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I understand, chérie,” she said gently. “You're young. When you're older, you'll understand. Life is long. If you're lucky. You never know what it will bring.”

I replied, “So you think there could be other things as wonderful as working in your show?”

“For you? Absolutely.”

“Such as?”

Raising her glass, she said, “Working in your own show.”

“I don't think I'm ready,” I said.

“You're ready.”

“But I'm not like you,” I said. “I'm not strong enough. I can't fake it. I can't build a world out of nothing.”

“You don't have to. You've already got it.”

“I've got a fat goose egg,” I said, frustrated.

“Don't be stupid,” she said. “Listen to what I'm saying. I'm giving it to you.”

“What?”

“I'm not proposing you make something out of nothing. I'm proposing you take over what's already here. I'm handing the company over to you.”

It was starting to sink in. I was overwhelmed. “Truly?”

“Close your mouth. You'll catch flies,” she said. “Honestly. You're smart enough, Vivi. I assumed you'd thought of this.”

“I didn't,” I said, but I realized I should have. I'd been too busy mourning our demise without stopping to check first if we were dead. Adelaide leaving the business didn't mean the show couldn't go on. Not if someone else was willing to step up and be Adelaide.

And she wanted that person to be me.

“No guarantees,” she said. “If things fall apart, things fall apart. I won't come to rescue you. If your employees desert and your animals escape and the audiences throw horse apples on the stage, that's your own problem, not mine.”

“I understand.”

She said, “I'm doing the best I can for you. You can have the sets, the illusions, the whole noodle. In return, I want a cut. Twenty percent.”

“I'll give you ten,” I answered quickly.

She roared with laughter, wiped her mouth, and said, “That's adorable. I'll take twenty.”

“Thank you. I don't know what to say.”

“Don't say anything. Just make good at the box office and keep me happily retired.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Oh,” she said. “One other condition.”

“What's that?”

“I hired you a manager,” said Adelaide. “A sharp young man. You're great onstage, but you're ignorant of the business.”

I couldn't disagree.

“He'll protect my investment, keep an eye on you, book your circuits. Cut the checks and all that.”

“Experienced?”

“Not as much as some. But he knows what he's doing.”

And just like that, there was a knock on the door.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“Magic.” She smiled, going to open it.

I heard a low voice, a man's voice, in the darkness. His tone was light and teasing. Adelaide laughed and said, “Yes, perfect, right on time.”

The low voice rumbled again, but I was seated too far from the door and couldn't hear his words. I sipped at the last of my brandy.

“Well, come on in then,” she said. “Come and meet my protégée. Or should I say, meet her again.”

He stepped up into the railcar, and my world tilted on its axis.

The first thing I noticed was his dark hair. It looked like it was wet. And though I would never have been able to describe him to a stranger, once I saw him again, I recognized everything. The familiar slant of his shoulders. Thick fingers and forearms that showed his ability to dig. The way he leaned forward a little, even at rest, as if something interesting were always right in front of him. The intensity.

And that smile. I knew that smile.

“It's good to see you, Ada.”

“It is not good to see you, Clyde.”

“You jackass,” Madame said to him. “You said she liked you.”

“She did,” he said, a familiar softness in his voice. “Very much.”

“Once upon a time,” I said frostily. “Madame, this man doesn't keep his word. He can't be trusted.”

“Addie,” he said, “have I ever steered you wrong?”

She looked back and forth between our faces, reading us both. “You haven't,” she told him.

“But he was—he once—” I searched for the right words. “He broke my heart.”

“Did I?”

I said, “He told me he would be honest, and then he deceived me. On an important matter. How could I trust him to have my best interests in mind?”

Adelaide replied, “Well, that's very odd to hear, considering…”

“Considering what?”

Clyde said to me, “I told her who you were and where to find you. Back when you were in the chorus. It's why she hired you, and why you're here.”

I turned to Madame for confirmation, and she nodded. “He did. He suggested you, insisted I go to watch you dance, said you were perfect for the company. When your predecessor had to leave the business.”

“The pregnant girl?” I asked, suspicious, eyeing Clyde.

“Yes.”

He caught my look. “Good God, Ada, it wasn't me.”

I shrugged.

Adelaide said, “Here's the trick to it, Vivi. The deal's already done. You take the company, I take my cut, he's your manager. It's a solid deal. If the two of you can't work together, fine. It would be a tragedy, of course.”

“Because?”

She said, “I would be very sad that you'd decided to leave a business that suits you so very well.”

I knew what she meant. I was still reeling from all this—Clyde Garber not only in my present, but also more involved than I'd known in my past and with a proposed role in my future—but I wasn't slow, despite the brandy. If the deal was done, it was done. And just because it wasn't what I expected didn't mean it wasn't good for me. Rushing to say yes and rushing to say no were mistakes in equal measure. I needed to think it through.

At length, I said, “All right.”

“You two will have a lot to talk about.” She stood. “I'm going to go for a walk.”

“A walk? Are you sure? In the dark?” I asked.

“Aren't you sweet,” said Adelaide. “I am walking as far as the next tavern, because I am going to get good and drunk just once more in New York City before I leave it forever.”

“Thank you,” I told her as she left, and she did the most typical thing she possibly could have done: she pretended not to hear me at all.

Then Clyde and I were alone again, together, for the first time in years. He smiled at me the same, the shape of his body under his clothes was the same, the warm look in his eyes was the same. It was so familiar that it hurt.

“So,” I said. “You again.”

“You again,” he echoed, grinning.

“I don't see why you think I should be happy about this.”

“Because your life is coming up roses?”

“An interesting way to put it. So you're not a gardener anymore, I see.”

“A lot has happened to both of us,” he said. “Look. I understand why you were angry, why you ran away. It took me a while to figure out. I hurt you. I didn't mean to, but I did, and I'm sorry.”

He sounded sincere. Of course, he'd sounded just as sincere, years before.

“But we were kids then,” he said. “Weren't we? Just stupid kids.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Okay. Two of us were kids and one of us was stupid. Me. You can let it go now. Water under the bridge. You have to find a way to trust me.”

His insistence made me push back. It was a reflex. “No, I don't.”

“Ada,” he said. “Please. For once. Don't resist.”

“The hell I won't. What's to stop me from firing you?”

“Addie says you have to work with me.”

“Addie knows how good I am at what I do.” My confidence was bolstered by the brandy, and I let myself be bold. “I'm not replaceable. But I bet you are. And I bet I can convince her of that.”

He extended his hands, palms up. “Maybe you could. Or maybe not. Why take the risk? Wouldn't it be easier just to work with me? And let the past be past?”

“I don't know.”

“This is a good opportunity, Ada. No, an amazing one. Addie thinks you're incredible, and I'm inclined to agree with her. If you don't do it this way, you'll have to build your own company from the ground up. Are you prepared for that?”

“Sure,” I lied.

“But this would be better. So much better. And you'd be willing to let that go because of a teenage grudge?”

“You make it sound like it was nothing,” I said hotly. “It was not nothing.” His argument was solid and logical, but the history between us was beyond logic, and I wanted to be sure he wasn't taking me lightly.