Night Magic (27 page)

Michael had no doubt that he was being led somewhere, like a horse to water, and being led he was willing enough to drink. Belief, Wurlitzer had said, was not necessary, only the constant performing of the exercises, which through mere repetition would create a force of habit; and from force of habit would come other things. But what things? He was wandering in the dark, through a maze—the labyrinth, Wurlitzer had said—following the slenderest thread, and somewhere in that dark labyrinth lay confrontation. Of what? Theseus had tracked the Minotaur, slain it, followed Ariadne’s thread back into the daylight. But what if his, Michael’s, thread should break? What if he were left to wander alone down there in the dark, following the turnings of passages that led he knew not where, to discover around every corner some terror…

Wurlitzer wanted him to accept terror as a necessary hazard, something to be got through, as a sailor accepts the possibility of violent storms. They were merely conducting an investigation, the master had said, taking a little trip together. The Quest. Its setting was, after all, only the basement of the Little Cairo. Yet that underground expanse held its own mystery, and among those dim corners, those lightless rooms, those unexplored spaces, it was not difficult for the imagination—that was what the master had said:
use the imagination
—to offer itself up to fear; and beyond fear, terror, beyond terror—who knew? The abyss, the old magician had said. But the successful pupil must dare, dare to look, and dare to
do.
There was little Michael would not dare, little he would not do, if, daring and doing, he could find his way upward and outward, through the darkness and into the light. Light meant power, and power meant, among other things, that he could make a man act like a frog. Wurlitzer denied it, but surely the secret lay in some form of hypnotism?

Thus Michael, if he did not proceed headlong, at least proceeded, hesitating and recoiling, by fits and starts, a step forward, two back, day after day.
Piano, piano,
the master had said. It would come. It would. Let it come.

It was after three in the morning. Michael saw the luminous hands of his clock as his eyes came open. He had been asleep, in a deep, dreamless sleep that was his infrequent reward for hours of meditation in the pyramid and interminable rehearsals of magic routines. Awakening, he felt certain that someone was in the room. Somewhere in sleep he had heard sounds, someone moving along the corridor, stealthily, coming toward him, the door swinging inward, someone, something entering. He kept his head on the pillow, not moving; waiting. There was stillness again, yet he knew the door had opened. No sound came; he knew something was there, breathing—although breathing sounds weren’t part of it—using the air in the room. He moaned as if still asleep and dreaming, and threw himself across his pillow, angling his arm over his face so he could see around it. Saw darkness, then faint light leaking through the doorway, shadows in the room but nothing in the shadows, nothing casting them. And even as he looked out from under his lashes, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he felt sleep dragging him back. His eyes closed; he returned to where he had come from, slept. Or thought he did. For, sleeping, he thought he knew still that someone had come into the room. He turned his head, arm still flung across his forehead, and opened his eyes.
Jesus!
It was like looking into a mirror: the eye staring back at him. Close, so close he could touch it without reaching. He must have cried out then, he heard the sound he made, scrambling back to the corner and sitting up in one quick movement, clutching the pillow like a shield, knocking things off the night table, finally turning on the light.

E
MILY HARDLY RECOGNIZED HIM.
She’d kept her eyes on the entrance ever since arriving at the party, and she’d watched a steady stream of guests, some of them quite startling, emerge through the brocaded drapery; but none of these apparitions, however strange, had prepared her for the sight of Michael. She watched as he took a few steps and paused, cocking his head slightly as if to concentrate on the swirling Egyptian music that was pouring into the huge room from stereo speakers placed high on the walls. Through the crowd of party guests, she stared at him as if she were staring into a tunnel, heedless of everything but him, scrutinizing him for familiar features, straining to identify the reasons why he seemed so different, so changed. It wasn’t just that he had lost weight, nor was it the unhealthy pallor of his face. It was his eyes, febrile, glittering, oddly remote, as though fixed on something only they could see. The eyes of a consumptive, she thought, or maybe a maniac.

Still, as she began to make her way toward him, she had to admit that he looked striking, even beautiful, with his ethereal paleness and his hectic gaze, and something tightened in her chest. Michael’s costume, apparently modeled on the impeccable wardrobe of Mandrake the Magician, included a lustrous black dinner jacket, a silk top hat, and a short black velvet cape with a crimson satin lining. Emily groaned inwardly as she recognized behind Michael the tall, unmistakable figure of the Great Wurlitzer, whose formal evening attire, complete with tailcoat, was complemented to particularly sinister effect by a black eyepatch, a large, floppy-brimmed slouch hat, and the black cloak, operatically long, that hung from his shoulders almost to the gleaming uppers of his patent-leather shoes.

The two magicians, young and old, began to move slowly into the thronged room. Clutching her flute with both hands, Emily stepped toward Michael, blocked his path, and waited. Her heart was beating hard, and then at last those feverish eyes, the eyes of a stranger, came to rest on her. She spoke firmly, though perhaps somewhat louder than necessary, “Hello, Michael.”

His immediate smile of delighted recognition disarmed her. “Emily,” he said, measuring the syllables as though he relished the sound of her name. He moved rapidly to her, and she raised her head to accept his kiss, sagging against him a little as he embraced her. “It’s great to see you,” he murmured.

“It is?” she asked, genuinely bewildered. “Then why has it been so long?”

Michael’s smile turned rueful, but instead of answering he stepped back, opening the space between Emily and Wurlitzer. “Let me introduce you,” Michael said. “This is my teacher, Max Wurlitzer.” He turned to the master. “I don’t believe you’ve met Emily Chang.”

The slouch hat inclined briefly in her direction, and from under its brim came the sepulchral sounds of the old man’s voice. “Our paths have crossed,” he said.

Emily heard the mockery in his words, perceived the sardonic flickering of his shaded single eye, and a scornful smile spread over her face. “They certainly have,” she said. “But this is the first time I’ve seen you when you weren’t in a hurry.”

“Indeed?” came the hollow voice. “As a matter of fact, I’m in more of a hurry than ever before.” He nodded again, curtly, dismissively, and appeared to shift his attention to a spot beyond her shoulder.

“So who are you?” Michael asked her, looking at her tights, her cape, her huntsman’s hat, the flute in her hands. “The Pied Piper of Hamelin?”

“I gave that some thought, but actually I’m Tamino, the prince in
The Magic Flute.
” Swiftly raising her instrument to her lips, Emily struck up the opening measures of the melody with which Prince Tamino charms the birds. When she stopped and raised her head, she saw a look of pleased surprise on Michael’s face, as though he were delighted to discover that she played the flute. His eyes, however, remained restless, always on the point of turning aside; he seemed to be making a conscious effort to hold them in check, to keep them away from what they really wished to contemplate, so that the effort itself became an object of contemplation. He might as well be wearing dark glasses and a Walkman, she thought. She reached for one of his hands, held it, squeezed it. “I really miss you,” she said before she knew it; then, as the words stubbornly remained in the air between them, she added, “And I wonder if you miss me too.”

“Of course I do,” he said in a weary voice. Despite his pallor, he looked extremely hot, though none of the warmth radiating from his forehead and his eyes reached her. “I told you when we had breakfast. I’ve got to…I can’t take my attention away from what I'm doing.”

“You mean you don’t call me because you’re afraid I might, heaven forbid,
distract
you?”

He turned to her with the air of one just back from a long trip. “Isn’t that what you want to do?” he asked. There was a time when such a question would have been a defiant joke, a provocation calculated to cause outrage or laughter or, preferably, both, but that time had evidently passed into oblivion. No joking now, no outrageousness, at least none of the deliberate kind. Emily imagined a sign displaying the word
IRONY
inside a red circle and crossed by a red line. The image brought a smile to her lips, but before she could formulate a response appropriate to Michael’s new, humorless state, stentorian Southern tones announced the irruption of Miss Beulah Wales into their midst.

Miss Wales was costumed as a well-fed witch. A broom on an unusually stout stick, obviously designed for heavy loads, was slung like a rifle across her back. “Well, well,” she gushed, paddling their hands, “the magic man and his lovely lady. If you two ain’t the handsomest couple I’ve ever seen! Does Sami know you’re here?”

“No, we just arrived,” Michael said.

Miss Wales seemed perplexed. “That’s strange,” she said to Emily. “I thought you came in with Dazz, honey.”

“I did,” Emily said, and felt chagrined by this trivial confusion.

“I meant the two of
us,
” Michael explained, pointing first to his own chest and then to Wurlitzer’s long, narrow back. The master stood facing away from them, scanning the crowd like a roosting hawk.

Miss Wales, knowing but benevolent, shook her head as she glanced from Emily to Michael. “You two tryin’ to make each other jealous?” she asked. Emily found the comment tiresome, though not so tiresome as the hooting giggle that followed it.

“No,” Michael answered, having considered the question. “This is my teacher. I’ll introduce you.” He murmured something Emily couldn’t hear and touched Wurlitzer’s shoulder.

His black cloak flaring behind him, the master spun around in a single, swooping motion and fixed his sudden eye on Beulah Wales. The leftover mirth vanished from her face as her tiny china-blue eyes widened in fear. Gulping audibly, she took a step backward.

“This is my teacher, Max Wurlitzer,” Michael said with a hint of pride. “And this is our host’s friend, Miss Beulah Wales,” he went on, apparently not noticing her deepening distress. She was now nearly six feet away from Wurlitzer, standing in a kind of huddled crouch with her eyes locked on his face and her mouth resting open atop her pile of chins. Emily watched in amazement the triumph of a proper Southern upbringing over stark terror. Miss Wales quavered, “Pleased to meet you,” and held out one plump and dainty hand. For a few seconds it trembled there, exposed and alone, as all four of them stared at it; then Miss Wales snatched it back to the safety of her bosom, said in a stuttering whisper, “I’ll go fetch Samir,” and fled away toward the elevator.

The look of sovereign contempt on Wurlitzer’s face galled Emily. “Don’t you think it’s warm in here?” Michael said. She couldn’t tell which of them he was addressing—perhaps neither, because he answered himself. “I do. Let’s go find something cool to drink,” he said to them, then turned and led the way through one of the gilded archways.

Emily followed him immediately, not waiting to see if Wurlitzer was joining them, though the erect hairs on the nape of her neck signaled that the old man was right behind her. As they were passing through the milling guests in the next room, she was aware of a sort of release, a slackening of tension, as though the distance between herself and her nemesis had increased, and she turned to see him standing near the elevator and looking at a colorful reproduction of an ancient Egyptian tomb painting, stylized figures in procession through serried ranks of hieroglyphs. Relieved, she stood next to Michael in front of a table in yet another room and asked the uniformed bartender for a large, stiff drink.

“Where’s the master?” Michael asked.

“The ‘master’?” Emily echoed incredulously. She took a long pull at her drink, not wholly certain that she wasn’t about to start screaming. “The
master,
as you call him, is admiring some of the art in the other room.” She wagged her hand toward the door they had passed through.

“I’d better go get him,” Michael said.

She caught hold of his sleeve. “Are you afraid he’ll misbehave?”

“No, it’s just that he doesn’t know anyone.”

“Oh, as for that,” Emily said airily, “there’s no problem. I’m sure such a charming man makes friends wherever he goes. Michael, when will I see you again? When you left my apartment that morning, I had no idea it would really be this long. And you haven’t even called.”

She paused and looked at him. He said nothing, but stood looking around nervously.

“At first I was angry,” she continued. “I told myself I didn’t care, but I couldn’t stop thinking of you. I’m worried, Michael. In some ways I’m even scared. When will I see you again?”

His eyes met hers for a second, then seemed to lose focus. “I’m not sure,” he admitted haltingly, like a man confronting a perplexing problem.

She released his sleeve, felt equal proportions of sorrow and anger enter her bloodstream and rise to her face. “How can you answer me like that?” she asked him. “What’s happened to you?”

“Nothing. I mean, of course, a lot has happened, a lot, I told you”—he drifted away, frowned, came back—“but none of it has anything to do with you.”

“Good. Come spend the night with me and tell me all about it.”

He seemed to be doing his best not to writhe. “God, Emily,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I just can’t…”

“Can’t what?”