The Spirit Cabinet (10 page)

When Preston arrived at the Abraxas Hotel, his clothes were soaked through with sweat; he was puffy and hacking up sputum. Although the bus stopped right outside the huge gates (bare-breasted angels were sculpted above, blowing on long bugles and plucking at lyres), it was a long way to the front door. He’d paused by the fountain, twice as a matter of fact, to scoop out a palmful of water and splash it across his brow.

Preston grew up in Las Vegas—insomuch as Las Vegas is a geographical entity, insomuch as Preston ever grew up—and he had struck a truce with the city’s oddities and peccadilloes. But
the Abraxas Hotel had always disturbed him. It was themed by the notion of fairy tales; the hotel itself was castlelike, circumvallated by jagged, dark towers. Old women with warts and beaked noses were hired to scamper through the hallways, laughing hideously. There were knights in armour, complete with visors and codpieces. There were children trailed by goats, old men with thick spectacles and nightdresses. Preston knew none of the referents. His father had never told him a fairy story, and his mother had only told him one, the story of a young girl whose life was destroyed by a powerful and cruel wizard.

Preston waved off the oversized and disfigured doormen, throwing silver dollars into cavernous palms. (He produced the coins out of thin air, but the doormen were all too jaded to notice.)

Preston wandered through the endless Casino. Along the way, women offered him snacks, women with wide, empty eyes and voluptuous bodies. Preston paused long enough to toss three or four coins into a slot machine. He was rewarded with a handful of money, enough, he hoped, to get him a ticket into the Theatre.

A ticket cost ninety-three dollars. Preston wondered how they’d arrived at that figure. All he could think was that the hotel accountants were into numerology; “ninety-three” was both pleasing and potent. As luck would have it, when he unclenched his fist and allowed the coins to dribble forth, they totalled ninety-four seventy-five, leaving him busfare home. Preston grunted with vague satisfaction and went to claim a seat.

The place resembled a lecture hall, the tiers heavily raked, the chairs small and hard. There were even, between the seats, small trays that could be pulled up and folded down. These were to support the drinks that cost an average of twelve dollars each. Preston, who no longer drank liquor, certainly not at twelve dollars a pop, produced his own glass and placed it gently down.

Beside him, an elderly woman pulled out a cigarette and lit it with trembling hands. She was from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and was a huge Jurgen and Rudolfo fan. She thought Jurgen was the most attractive man she’d ever seen; every illusion he performed made her flutter internally.

Preston aimed his forefinger at the empty glass and it filled with a dark liquid. Ice fell out of the air, even a slice of lime, and when the semi-clad girl came to take his drink order, she was surprised to see Preston already sipping peacefully.

Darkness fell with a thud. This then was broken by lines of light, threading quickly through the room as though taking a head count.

The music began, enormous and assaultive, a legion of Roman soldiers sticking the air with lances and pikes. Most of the people in the audience removed their hearing aids. Preston, denied this option, plugged his ears with napkins and hoped this would stop the blood from trickling down and staining his shirt collar.

The music was familiar and unsettling, like an old friend troubled by mental problems. Or in this case, Preston thought, like an old friend who’d become a furry, slobbering geek.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” came a huge and beautiful voice, a voice such as God would have if He’d gone to community college and studied Radio Arts, “the Abraxas Hotel is proud to present the greatest show on earth … 
Jurgen and Rudolfo!
”

Preston sat forward in his seat and shoved his fat hands under his thighs. The
Siegfried Idyll
, he realized suddenly. Buried underneath the prehistoric frequencies of the music was the fragile piece that Richard Wagner had written for his wife on her birthday. When Cosima awoke that morning, Preston remembered reading, nineteen musicians were sitting on her front steps. Her husband conducted them tenderly, his eyes half-closed, his
mouth half-open. Now here the thing was, pumped up and snarling as though in the throes of ‘roid-age. Preston had to physically tug at the grey skin of his jowls in order to fashion a more profound scowl than the one he typically wore.

The stage filled with acrid grey smoke. Jurgen and Rudolfo appeared suddenly, each caught in his own spotlight. For a long moment they did nothing, merely stood upon the stage, their hands on their hips, staring into the audience. Their costumes were of the same design—skin-tight jumpsuits, high leather boots—but Jurgen’s was black and Rudolfo’s white. The audience burst into applause—the old woman beside Preston clapped so furiously that she was winded within seconds—but the two stood there without response. Then they brought their hands up, pounded their palms together—these actions exact and simultaneous—and extended forefingers at the crowd. They smiled now, briefly, and got down to business.

The stage—about the same dimensions as a football field—became even more illuminated. There were huge geometric shapes arranged upon it, all rendered out of gleaming, pebbled aluminum. There was a metallic cube, an eight-foot pyramid, a ring with a wall three feet high, a few monoliths and a huge globe, perhaps twelve feet in diameter. The globe rolled forward now, as if of its own volition. Jurgen and Rudolfo corralled it, shoving it playfully back and forth, until they and the sphere achieved the centre of the stage. They placed their hands upon the globe and caused it to spin; the pebbled aluminum exploded the light and sprayed it throughout the auditorium. Jurgen stopped the ball abruptly and pointed to a small latch on its smooth surface. Rudolfo, standing on the other side, pointed to another. Each worked one of these, then together they lifted the top half of the sphere, hinged at the back, to reveal the emptiness inside.

Miranda arrived onstage now, dressed in what appeared to be cellophane. Many of the men in the audience dribbled rum
and coke onto their shirt fronts. Miranda smiled at the crowd and then climbed into the silver ball. Jurgen and Rudolfo relatched it, spun it around, rolled it toward the front of the stage. Then they both took a step away from the orb and stared at each other, deeply, as though forgetting what they should do next. They clapped their hands—again with improbable synchronicity—and ripped open the latches.

Samson leapt out of the silver ball, howling fiercely.

Jurgen and Rudolfo looked inside the ball and then turned to express their astonishment to the audience, because there was no sign of Miranda.

The crowd erupted in applause, and Preston joined in eagerly. What he found most impressive was the cost of the gimmick itself, the huge aluminum ball, maybe a hundred thou right there. There was a hidden compartment, of course, and what hid it was a third piece of aluminum, tooled painstakingly to reflect exactly the inside of the half-circle above it. When the globe was flipped, this piece would move, freeing whatever was hidden there (a huge albino leopard, in this case) and allowing something new (the miraculous Miranda) to take its place.

The old woman from Winnipeg shook her head, so awestruck by what she’d witnessed that her first inclination was to disbelieve that it had happened at all.

Samson bent his head low and forced his front legs to bend. He was taking a bow, although it had the look of undignified servility. Then the big white cat turned and trotted offstage.

Jurgen and Rudolfo each placed their hands on the silver ball and made it go around in a circle, trotting beside it so that they each disappeared from view, momentarily, over and over again. Finally the globe was revolving at a furious clip (light attacked from all directions and was repulsed with luminous savagery) and neither Jurgen nor Rudolfo was anywhere to be seen.

The huge silver ball abruptly rolled toward the back of the stage and was swallowed up by the shadow. Jurgen and Rudolfo appeared, their hands cocked on to their hips. In a few seconds, the boys had managed to change costumes, to actually
exchange
costumes. Jurgen was now wrapped in a white bodysuit, Rudolfo was black-clad.

The lights began to dim and a black velvet curtain descended from above, separating the apron of the stage. Preston grunted with satisfaction, causing alarm to the elderly woman from Winnipeg.
Pretty clever
, Preston thought, as Jurgen stepped forward, his arms raised, his lids pulled apart, his dark eyes glowing like hot coals. What Preston appreciated most about the costume reversal was the way its true purpose was masked by another. Which is to say, people would assume that the switch was made so that Jurgen would stand out, for this was clearly a kind of solo or aria. From his raised hands came animals, first the small doves and Bengalese finches, then larger birds, rose-breasted cockatoos, and then raptors and giant carrion-eaters. But—more importantly in terms of the act—Rudolfo’s new outfit of black made him part of the darkness. Rudolfo had merely pulled on a hood, tugged gloves over his hands and was busily feeding his partner the animals. That old Black Magic.

Preston appreciated that sort of thing. Like Houdini’s chains. The chains were always part of Houdini’s submersion escapes; his hands would be tied, his ankles bound, and finally a mantle of locks and chains would be draped across his shoulders. They looked as though they would make the stunt more hazardous, the escape more complicated. What they really did, of course, was quickly pull Houdini down to the bottom of the river or pool, so that his rather pedestrian little tricks could not be observed.

Miranda ran onstage, this time dressed in tiny triangular pieces of material that covered all the important bits and her
navel. Preston found himself consumed by a fantasy concerning Miranda’s navel when all of a sudden there was a huge explosion. He looked back at Jurgen and saw that he had produced, as a grand finale, two young cheetahs. He held them high in the air, by their scruffs. Preston burst into applause, not because of the illusion, but rather for the classic bit of misdirection. The way Miranda was dressed, the cheetahs could have been led onstage by an usher wielding a flashlight.

The stage went black, there was a sudden needle of light and in its centre stood Rudolfo, newly costumed. Preston was becoming awfully impressed with these costume switches. It took him much longer to even get his fat fingers on the zipper tug-tag. Mind you, Rudolfo was not wearing that many clothes, just a pair of tights that clung to his legs. His upper body was naked and oiled, his muscles so large and defined that he looked like an animated anatomical chart. The light bounced off his body with as much spectrum-smashing violence as it had bounced off the aluminum globe.

Jurgen suddenly descended from above—a clumsy bit of stagecraft that nonetheless earned a storm of applause—and spread his arms wide. He, too, was shirtless. Jurgen’s muscles, especially those in the upper arm, were, if anything, bigger than his partner’s. And, unlike Rudolfo’s purely decorative bulges, Jurgen’s seemed actually servicable, the accoutrements of an athlete.

This time the silver cube moved forward. Even though it looked about five feet by five, Jurgen picked it up and showed it to be without bottom and empty. This action made his nipples pop and flutter (which sent the old woman from Winnipeg groping for her drink). Meanwhile, Rudolfo and Miranda were hauling the thick silver ring forward. Jurgen placed his cube inside the ring; Rudolfo stood the ring on its end and showed it to be empty. They then replaced it around the cube. Jurgen and
Rudolfo looked at each other, their faces frozen into practised half-smiles, and clapped their hands hard. Samson came out of the cube, lazily vaulting over the aluminum perimeter.

Cheap trick
, Preston thought. When Jurgen was showing the cube to be empty, Samson was hidden within the ring. When the cube was put inside the ring, it covered up the big cat, allowing the ring to be acquited,
acquitment
being the technical conjuror’s term for—in its most popular form—showing the sleeves to be empty. The illusion relied on quickness and practice and a large dollop of
chutzpah
. But the crowd went wild, driven to a frenzy by a strange combination of things—the music, the ghostly leopard, Miranda’s near-nakedness, Rudolfo’s perfect glass body and Jurgen’s black-eyed solemnity.

The music stopped abruptly and Jurgen stepped forward. A microphone stand blossomed from the stage; Jurgen tore the instrument out of its clip and slapped it against his thick red lips. “Okay,” he muttered. “Is time for Up Close and Personal.”

“Hoo boy!” said Rudolfo, coming now to stand beside his partner. He, too, touched a microphone to his lips. “
Ja
, Jurgen,” he continued, “what nice person are we talking to?”

Rudolfo took a few determined strides forward; he squinted and stared at the faces in the audience. His eyes brushed across Preston’s face quickly; a moment later they returned. Rudolfo may have even nodded at that point, but so subtly that the action was impossible to decipher. Was it a greeting or a lofty dismissal?

Rudolfo’s eyes finally settled upon a middle-aged woman three rows from the front who sat clutching her handbag. There was nothing remarkable about the woman; she had brown hair and eyes, was perhaps twenty-five pounds overweight and dressed in a steel-blue outfit. When Rudolfo pointed at her, she rose as though hypnotized. She made no motion toward the stage, however, until the man beside her placed his fingertips on her backside and pushed her forward.

The woman climbed the stairs slowly and with trepidation, almost as though she were on her way up the hangman’s scaffolding. Rudolfo smiled and offered a hand, which the woman latched on to immediately, with all the force she could muster. Rudolfo brought her forward and deposited her in front of Jurgen. Jurgen’s dark eyes flickered like a matinee idol’s. “Darling,” he asked, “what is name?”