The Magician's Lie (24 page)

“Then what did you mean?”

“If I could—not cut you apart, no, but if I could, I'd divide you. I'd have part of you with me every day on the road, lying down with me, loving me. And I'd have part of you back in New York keeping the books and building both our careers. You understand? I'm sure you wouldn't mind dividing me too. Making me two separate people. Your business partner, and the woman you love.”

He leaned in then, placing his forehead on my shoulder, and I wrapped my arms around him, tight. I could feel his heartbeat, his breathing, the heat of his skin. He was my love, my whole love. He was not divided.

I asked tentatively, “Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

I said, “You're my world, my golden world. I need you. If I can only get half of you sometimes, that's what I'll take.”

“You're right,” he said, cradling my cheek. “It's not fair. I want to be with you too, all the time. My whole self.”

“We can't have the impossible.”

He said, “Someone will have to compromise.”

I tried to think of what else I could do, but I didn't know how to fix it. Finally Clyde was the one who spoke.

“Then I'll come with you,” he said. “We'll find someone else to settle the apples.”

I hadn't expected him to say it, and at first, all I could think of were reasons why not. “But you're the best. I don't know who else I could trust.”

“I'll still be responsible. You'll still be in my hands.” He smiled at the double meaning. “But I know a young man who needs an opportunity, and he can answer the telephone calls and balance the accounts. We're established enough I don't need to go knocking on doors anymore. Our door is the one getting knocked on.”

I had to ask one more question. “And what about your theater?”

“It can wait a little longer,” he said. “I don't want to be divided anymore. I want to be with you.”

“Thank God,” I said and held him forever.

***

He booked me on the Beauregard circuit, a guaranteed three months of shows, one last act as my business manager to settle our future, undivided. At night, our safe little self-contained world, our movable home, rode the rails through the dark from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids, Gary to Richmond, Charlotte to Charleston. We played to sold-out crowds. Local dignitaries, mayors and governors, attended in seats of honor. On the second night in Washington, DC, there was a rumor that a well-disguised President Roosevelt entered Ford's Theater and watched the show from the back of the orchestra level, and whether or not it was true, it brought us all great joy.

If I thought that the weeks of my life where I stopped traveling and spent my days with Clyde were wonderful, it was even more wonderful to have him with me all the time. He was there with me when the sun first began to peek through the curtains in the morning. He was there when we arrived at each dark, empty theater and transformed it into a thrilling place of magic, a carnival of color and light. He shared in that tense moment in every performance after the first flourish—
ta-da!
—when you hold your breath for what seems like an eternity, waiting for someone, anyone, in the audience to begin applauding, praying this won't be the time when the entire crowd just stares at you in hollow, awful silence. Most importantly, he was there with me, to wrap his arms around me, when I donned my nightgown and crawled under the covers to sleep. The bed in the railcar was small, and there was always some part of us that hung off. One arm or another, sometimes my feet, sometimes his head. But we managed. We were in love.

It was that simple. At least, I hoped it was.

Janesville, 1905

Half past four o'clock

“You said you wouldn't marry him then.”

“Yes, that's what I said.”

“But you married him later?”

“That would be reasonable. But you know not all of this story is reasonable.”

“To say the least,” he says wryly. It all seems so plausible, and she tells it so smoothly. Reasonable, no. Believable, yes. But is it true? Now it seems he will never be sure. But his decision isn't about that anymore. Whether he believes her innocent is less important than what she can do for him now. It's the simplest of all trades: a life for a life. If she saves him from the bullet, she will save him from everything. He'll keep what he has, what he treasures. That's all he wants.

He says, “And now I want to ask you for that favor.”

She doesn't look at him. Her eyes are downcast, modest. She says, “Virgil. You don't have to ask.”

“Yes. I do. Very much.”

“That's not what I mean. I know exactly what you want.”

“All right then, tell me.” The situation is so absurd but so vital that it starts to make him light-headed. This can't be happening, yet it will change the course of his life. He lets himself be a little sarcastic. “Give me your second sight act, Madame.”

“Not like that,” she says. “You've all but said it. The bullet.”

“Yes,” he admits. He can feel his pulse quicken at the mere thought. “The bullet.”

“You want me to heal you. To put my hand on the small of your back, make a wish, and draw that bullet out. Science has failed you, so you need magic.”

“Yes. I need magic.” It's a relief to admit it, to say it so nakedly. In front of anyone else, he'd be embarrassed. In this way, as in so many others, she is an exception.

“Because science has its limits.”

“Yes.”

There is no emotion in her voice, he realizes, and it worries him. It's as if she's reading someone else's words from someone else's script. There was passion in every word when she was telling her story, but now she tells the facts: bald, cold. “Magic has limits too.”

“Don't be coy,” he says. They're so close now. He's so close. She can't hold out on him; she can't. “I said it's a favor, and it is, but I'm not asking you just to do it out of the goodness of your heart. I'm asking it as a trade.”

“I understand perfectly. If I heal you, you'll set me free.”

“Yes.”

She sounds almost disappointed. “So I'm telling you all this for nothing. My story makes no difference to you.”

“It's a fascinating story. Truly.” He wants to put his hand on her arm but doesn't dare. He can only hope his words will be enough. “But how could I care about your life more than my own? That's what I'm asking you to give me. My life.”

The moment she waits before answering him is days, months, years long. It stretches on far longer than he thinks he can bear.

Then she finally raises her blue-and-brown eyes, meets his gaze, and says in an almost whisper, “Would that I could.”

“But you can! It's easy! Heal me. Draw the bullet out and you're free.” He raises his hand, snaps his fingers. The sound in the small, bare room is as loud as a gunshot. “Nothing could be simpler.”

She speaks slowly. The quiet night around them has never been quieter. It seems hard for her to choose her words.

“Virgil, when I—struck out at Ray, cut his throat—after the fire. You remember, I told you exactly what happened. I tried to heal him. It didn't work.”

“You were in a rush,” he says without the slightest pause. He's already thought of every reason. “You didn't take the time to do it properly. And you hated him anyway. Why would it work on him? You didn't really want him to get better.”

She shakes her head and leans slightly forward in the chair, intent. “I'd never been sure about the limits of my gift. After that time with Ray, I suspected I'd found them.”

“That was just—”

“Hush,” she says, not unkindly. “So I tried it out. People are always getting injured on the road—not through any acts of mine. It's just dangerous to be moving all that equipment, especially in a rush. Since they were my family, my company, it wasn't odd for me to insist on taking a look at their injuries. So I'd put my hands on them and whisper a little something under my breath. They thought it was a prayer. It was a wish.”

She takes a moment, squares her shoulders.

He has to prompt her. “And…?” Even then, he trails off. He both does and doesn't want to hear the answer, to know where the story goes. If it were good news, she wouldn't be so slow to tell it.

“I've tried to heal broken fingers, bruised ribs, bloody toenails, every injury large and small and in-between. It never worked.”

“But you said—bruises, cuts, broken bones—”

“
My
bruises.
My
cuts.
My
bones.”

The air goes out of his lungs.

She swallows, as if she doesn't want to say what comes next, but she goes on anyway. “I can't do it, Virgil. I can't help you. My own body, I can do anything. Someone else's body, I'm powerless.”

He feels like he's fallen from a great height. This must be how she felt, being thrown from the hayloft and crashing to the floor of the barn all those years ago. Like there isn't anything to breathe, and nothing to breathe it with.

“I'm sorry,” she says, but she doesn't sound sorry, not at all, and her indifference is what finally leads him to reach out and put his hands on her.

He puts both hands on her shoulders and shoves her backward, and the chair tips over with a crash. The sound echoes off the wall.

The crash of the chair is the only sound. She says nothing. Doesn't cry, doesn't scream, doesn't move.

She lies still.

For a moment, he's afraid he's killed her. Any normal person would have screamed. She just lies there on her back, the chair underneath, her eyes open and staring up. The only other woman he's ever seen lying on her back is Iris, and the sight disturbs him so much he reaches down and rolls the magician over on her side and the chair with her.

She still makes no noise, and he watches her for a moment, watches the side of her neck, until he's sure he can see the pulse beating there under the skin. She's alive. The noise he heard, the cracking noise, wasn't her skull. Thank God.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

In a very small voice, she says, “I understand.”

When he bends down next to her, behind her, he sees what's happened. The middle bar of the chair has snapped off. That was the noise, the sound of wood snapping. Both pairs of handcuffs were laced through it, and now they aren't. She is barely restrained at all. He grabs the chain of the handcuffs in his fist before she notices that her wrists can move farther than they have in hours.

“I'll right you,” he says, as if she weren't completely free of the chair, as if nothing at all has changed.

He takes her silence as assent. He bends down and picks them up together, her body and the chair, to right them again. He can feel her heartbeat against his shoulder. He smells the sweat of her neck, an earthy, salty smell, not the same as his wife's, and that tickling scent of citrus from earlier. His body holds hers in place, and his breath stirs her hair. She remains silent.

When he settles her feet and the chair's feet both squarely back down on the floor, he releases everything but the handcuff chain, which he grips so hard his knuckles are white. Luckily, she can't see his knuckles.

“It looks like this one has been cutting into your wrist,” he says. “I'll fix that.”

He unlocks the right wrist, laces the chain through one of the remaining bars, and relocks it in place. He hustles to do the same with the other set of cuffs, unlocking it from the right wrist, lacing the chain behind the bar, then locking it to the wrist again. Now she's set, back in two pairs of handcuffs holding her tight to the chair, fully secure.

Her silence and lack of resistance since the fall begin to worry him. It's getting later, and he's getting more vulnerable. He's sure she must sense that. Maybe she hit her head harder than he thought.

“Are you all right?” he asks. He comes around to the front of the chair so he can look into her eyes when she answers. He's seen a man kicked in the head by a horse so hard his eyes never did both look in the same direction again.

She locks her eyes on his. They are the same. Three-quarters blue, one-quarter brown, a strong fierce gaze, boring into him like she can see into his brain. He doesn't know what she sees there.

“There's really only one question. Do you believe me?” she asks.

He's tempted to make her spell it out, but he knows what she means. The murder. She's been telling him all night she's innocent. All night, he's been resisting that fact. “I want to.”

“But you're not sure.”

“No.”

“Lies are harder than the truth,” she says. “They have a way of falling apart. So tell me. Have I contradicted myself yet? Slipped up? Have you caught me in a lie?”

“Not yet.”

She raises her chin. “You remain hopeful. I can tell.”

“Well,” he says, deciding to tell the truth. “Your story is awful. You were abused and attacked, terribly. And it all ends in murder. So yes. I hope it's not true.”

She seems to smile a little at that, in the midst of her sadness. “I wish it weren't. But this is life, and when bad things come to us, there isn't much choice. You survive them or you don't.”

“And you hope to survive this one.”

“Dear God, yes,” she says intently, “I do. I do.”

He doesn't know what to say to that. When he doesn't reassure her, she seems disappointed. But it would be hypocritical, given his role. Hours ago, she asked if he would be her executioner. He denied it, but she was right. If he turns her in, he might as well use his own two hands to fashion the noose. Don a black hood and be done with it.

He wants to know the truth. He needs to know.

He circles around behind her. She doesn't even lift her head to look. The night has been long. And whatever happens, one way or another, it's almost over.

He inspects her hands and says, “You're not wearing the ring.”

“No.”

“There was no ring, was there? Just one of your many inventions. You haven't been able to prove a single lick of your story all night, and this is no different.”

She says, “In the valise. The muff. Put your hands in it.”

He feels both foolish and excited as he does what she says. He retrieves the muff, which appears to be rabbit fur on the outside and silk on the inside, and positions it on the desk. Of course, he's never placed his hands in something like this before and is surprised to find it isn't just a hollow tube but has a shaped lining that draws tight around each hand. The fingertips of his left hand strike something round and cool.

Gingerly he draws out the object. A ring. Exactly as she described it. A beautiful blue stone with a brown flaw. Eerily like her eye.

The feeling that floods him is overwhelming. If her story is true, if the man she loved was neither her husband nor her victim, that gives him something to hope for. He doesn't want her story to just be the old sad tale of a man and woman whose love turned to poison. He wants something better, something more.

“Arden,” he says. “Please. If you'll finish the story, we can settle this, and I can go home to my wife, who you're so curious about.”

“To Iris.”

“Yes, to Iris.” That's all he wants. To go home to Iris, as soon as this is over. To be done with this and return to his life, however much of it is left to him. He needs to be home. As soon as the sun comes up. He's been away too long. He's spent too much time chasing an impossible dream of erasing what's happened to him, when what he needs to do is accept it and move forward.

“Well, I'm truly sorry to keep you from her. But I have my limits. I won't admit what I didn't do.”

“But now you're getting into the right part of the story. How you got a husband. Tell me how you came to hate him. And then, how you planned and decided on murder. Was he unfaithful? Were you in a rage? How did it happen?” He doesn't add
now
that
I
know
it
matters
. Most of the night, he's been planning, hoping, thinking he knew how this would all end: healing, and release. Now everything has changed. Now he needs to be a police officer again. Not the Virgil Holt who's terrified of death coming upon him without warning; instead, a man of the law following the rules, searching for the truth.

“The answer is the same,” she says. “I didn't kill him.”

“Then tell me that, if it's true, but tell me the whole of it,” he says, softening his voice. “Maybe you didn't swing the ax, but you were there. Maybe you only saw it. Were you there when he was murdered? Did you watch your husband die?”

“Clyde was with me every night until he wasn't,” she said. “And that's when it happened.”

“The murder?”

“No,” she says. “Worse.”