The Illusionist (11 page)

Abruptly, Dean clambers to his feet. Dean's movement catches my eye. And suddenly, Dean grabs Terry's arm, pulls her out into the middle of the room, and he starts to dance with her.

You can see the burst of joy shoot through Terry's whole body as he summons her. And as they dance Terry is like a young tree swaying in the wind, tossing her hair back, arching her body, kicking out her long legs as she dances.

I'd never seen Dean dance before. . . . His cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth, his eyes squint from the smoke. So cool! He's got a special, unique way of doing it. . . .

The way he dances hides his body. He draws his elbows in close to his ribs, darts his head out from side to side like a bird pecking. Doesn't make any eye contact with Terry. Little flash of gold in his ear. Soft hair sticking up at the top, sideburns, little tail behind at the neck.

People at the party glance at him out of the corner of their eyes—they're not sure. And even if they are sure—they're fascinated. Who
is
he?

It's midnight. I bring in the birthday cake, candles blazing. I'd bought it at Food Mart, stuck in on a plate with a doily. We all sing “Happy Birthday—Happy Birthday—” “Hey, Dean,” someone says. “Do some magic tricks!” Humoring him.

“Yeah, Dean. Do some magic!”

And they stand around him while he does his routine. He folds his handkerchief around a quarter, then shakes the handkerchief loose. Nothing falls out. The handkerchief is empty, the quarter has disappeared.

He curls a dime around his fingers and it changes into a penny. He covers a shot glass with his handkerchief, removes the handkerchief—the shot glass has evaporated into thin air! The partyers watch him, mocking smiles on their faces, skeptical. They only half believe what he's doing is magic. They've seen his tricks
before. They know he's an imposter and a con man. But at least for tonight, they
want
to believe. And they love him anyway! Dean is entertainment.

He finishes his act. People start dancing again, laughing and flirting in the shadows of the room. They go in and out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind them, busy in there.

Two figures drift together across my line of sight and block my vision. For a moment, I can't find either Dean or Melanie.

Then, there's a shriek of laughter from somewhere. The bodies in front of me part. And next thing I know, Dean is sitting on the futon, right up close to Melanie.

He's leaning in toward Melanie, saying something to her, and making her laugh. And Melanie's bending her head down, listening intently to him, the side of her face hidden by her fine hair. And I can see Brian standing against the wall across from them pretending not to look, but knowing everything, seeing everything they do.

At Chrissie Peck's place that night, the new boy didn't even say hello to me. He just looked deep into my eyes. Didn't even introduce himself. As if he'd been waiting for me all along. “You
are
beautiful,” he said, as if confirming something, as if he already knew all about me. So direct. So frank. He had oval eyes, I could see the light shining through the moist green lens, long, dark blond lashes with the pale tips curling on the high cheekbone. White teeth, ridges on them gleaming like white coral. I saw a soft brown mole above his upper lip, like a tiny patch of velvet.

“You
are
beautiful,” he said again, as if satisfying himself. That was all.

And then, just as suddenly as he'd sat down beside me, he stood up from the futon, and he walked away.

And now there was a gap of air, a sudden, cool space. I felt weird. I wasn't used to being left at parties. There was always someone trying to talk to me.

The music beat through the crowded room.
This wild heart . . . it beats for you . . . my wild heart . . . it weeps for you . . .

I tried to follow him with my eyes through the fumy red air, through the crowd of partyers. I tried to keep my eye on his thin, small frame in the loose jeans, the little tail of hair in the tender groove of his neck, the clunky cowboy boots. I always thought that magic tricks were hokey; you know the magic isn't real. But
he was so fast—the way his long, tapered fingers moved and you couldn't keep track of them. Everyone around here was such a bunch of dufuses, never did anything but drink and play computer games and watch TV and smoke dope. At least he could
do
something!

Chrissie Peck's place was packed. No room hardly to dance or sit down. The green canvas blinds were drawn over the windows so no one could see in. People were standing on the landing in the hallway. Someone had brushed up against Chrissie's Mariah Carey poster and torn it. Now it hung down from the wall at a weird angle, Mariah Carey's face cut in half, one of her big eyes lopsided and staring out.

The smoky air stung my eyes. I glanced up and suddenly, Brian was standing right above me, very close. I hadn't seen him approach. He was leaning back against the wall, his eyes focused across the room, pretending he didn't even know I was there. And Jimmy was lounging next to him. As always, waiting for Brian to tell him what to do, attuned to Brian's every need.

Brian pretended he just wanted to be my friend, just wanted to hang out. He'd discovered there was a party at Chrissie's place, and he'd offered to give me a ride. I didn't have my own car because I had no right to own a car as I didn't have a job. So I had said yes, you can drive me.

Now he was standing above me, silently waiting.

I searched through the crowd of partyers for the new boy, Dean, the boy with the lick of hair, and the two shirts, one on top of the other.

I glimpsed him standing by himself in the corner on the other side of the room, drinking a can of Mountain Dew and smoking a blunt. Had he forgotten about me so fast? After that big intro, he didn't want me anymore. Somehow, I hadn't measured up. Usually, people didn't walk away from me like that. I knew I was lucky that way, that everybody loved me. And realizing it didn't mean I was stuck up or anything, or conceited. It just meant that because
people love you so much, you have an extra responsibility to them.

But now, this new person had aroused my curiosity and I wanted to know more about him.

Around midnight, I stood up to leave. Brian, who had been standing over me, came to attention. “I guess I'll go home,” I said. “It's late.”

And I knew Brian had waited all night for me just so he could take me home.

Brian drove me home from Chrissie's party, big old silent Jimmy in the back. As we rode through Sparta, the snow-covered streets glittered in the headlights. This city was so lonely at night, so empty, all boarded-up buildings, all the people who remained living on Social Security and welfare. Its size was so limited. You knew everyone, and yet you were lonely, and the night, when the streets were deserted and all the antique shops on Washington Street closed, their hollow windows lit up, only emphasized the loneliness.

Brian beside me, hands on the wheel, silent. Jimmy sitting in the backseat. The earthy, mildewy smell of Jimmy filled the air of the car. I knew Brian was simply grateful to be with me, to be able to transport me home, because then he would know exactly where I was tonight.

Brian was like a shadow in my life, always present, attached to me by this thin, dark strand, expandable. Mostly, he tried not to be obtrusive, just hung in the background, but I could sense him there. Always.

When we were in kindergarten, Brian would sit at the back of the class. He'd sit there blinking blinking like he was flinching at a fist raised against him. No one would sit next to Brian, or play with him, because he smelled of dried pee. “You stink, Brian,” they told him.

But I defended Brian. “Leave him alone. Go away. Stop it.” Something in me made me always come to his defense. Brian looked like an angel with that blond curly hair. Maybe because I had been so lucky in life, God made me pretty, gave me my mommy—though God had taken my daddy away from me—anyway, I wasn't afraid to stand up to the other kids, because I was already popular.

One time, in the schoolyard, I found Brian sitting alone on a swing, sitting in a square of too-hot sunlight, blinking blinking all alone. I said, “Brian, why don't you
wait
to go to the bathroom? If you have an accident, you should change your clothes.”

He said, “Don't have no other clothes.”

“You do too, Brian. Why do you do it in your pants instead of waiting to go to the bathroom?”

“Cecil, he hit me on the butt til I pee. Then he makes me wear my dirty pants to teach me a lesson.”

“Cecil? Who's Cecil?”

“He's my mom's boyfriend. He lives with us.”

I wondered what kind of person would do that to a boy. I was so lucky, so loved, I couldn't understand it. I knew his secret, and it was a mystery to me.

Being loved made me strong. Now sometimes when the other kids excluded him, I'd sit down by him in the cafeteria, in defiance of his tormentors. And when we had to choose a group for a class project and nobody picked Brian, and he was sitting there all alone pretending he didn't care, I'd feel sorry for him and invite him into my group.

They took Brian out of his home, away from his family, put him in a foster home for a while, but then they gave him back to his mother and Cecil. All those Perez kids were trouble. They all looked like angels, with that curly blond hair and those pale blue eyes, seemed like they all had tans, but if you looked close, their skin was covered with a thin film of dust. They were all learning disabled and truant, always getting in trouble. Brian should've
been a beautiful boy, but was not because of that blank, hard look on his little face.

The family lived in that strange, blue-colored house underneath the big fuel tanks by Sparta Utility. The front yard was always littered with toys and old engine parts.

One day when we were ten, Brian arrived at our house. He had on the blank-faced look, his flat, bony face was streaked with dirt. He had only his jeans on, his skinny little chest was heaving, his ribs sticking out through the skin, the muscles on his shoulders and arms tight and sinewy even then.

“What's the matter?” Mommy asked him.

“They locked me in a room, Cecil did. They won't give me nothin' to eat. I escaped. Climbed out the window.”

Mommy took him in, gave him a bath, and called B.C.W. and they removed him again, and placed him in a group home. At school, he was put in Special Ed, and we didn't have any classes together after that.

When we were in junior high, Brian was always sitting on the bench outside the principal's office, white-blond curls framing his face, slitty blue eyes blinking blinking. “Now what've you gone and done, Brian?” I asked.

“Mohammed says I pulled a syringe on him.”

“A syringe is a lethal weapon, Brian. Somebody could get AIDS. That's negative attention, Brian.” I was a conflict mediator now and we'd studied “negative attention” in Conflict Resolution Workshop.

His eyes darted to me. “You're my only friend, Mellie,” he said.

Around then was when he first started setting fires. The first one was in the basement at school, he and a group of boys set fire to a cardboard box and watched it burn. It set off the alarm and we were all evacuated for twenty minutes, and he got suspended. I don't know what it was in Brian that loved fire, the warmth of it, the light, the power it gave him, to create something beautiful, to destroy.

You must love the weak and the destitute, Mommy said. And I was a Christian, or trying to be.

“When you get mad, Brian, just count to ten,” I told him. We'd learned that in workshop too. “Just sit there and meditate. I'll show you how.” I touched him on the shoulder and suddenly his skinny body froze under my fingertips, all tense with love, I knew even then. “Breathe deep . . . one—two—three,” I told him. “See . . . how relaxed you feel . . .”

Later on, after he started really getting in trouble, after he got arrested for setting the fire in that apartment building on Washington Street, where he and Jimmy were squatting, Mommy said to stay away from him, but he would come around or I'd run into him, because he was waiting for me and I'd give in out of pity.

In a way, Brian was saved because he became a stud. As he got older, he got handsome. He was tall and thin now, with a nice long line to his torso. A lot of girls liked Brian—but they were trash girls. He'd date them a few times, then abandon them. He was always hanging around me, but I only cared about him like a brother, or like my child.

He'd turn up at my house suddenly, just like that. Want to talk. Pour his whole heart out to me, his voice all breathless, as if he'd been storing up all those feelings for months. And I'd try to talk to him about Jesus. “Jesus accepts the most pitiful sinner,” I said. “ ‘I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.' John eight, twelve.”

“Fuck,” he said. “I'm too far gone for Jesus!” And he laughed.

Last August one night, he turned up at my house in his car and begged me to go for a ride with him. He'd just gotten fired from his job at Allbright's Auto Shop. They'd accused him of stealing parts. “Fuckin' bullshit man, they had it in for me right from the beginning!”

I let him drive me out to the Wooden Nickel. He parked the car in the lot overlooking the river, and we sat there, the summer air around us thick with heat and moisture, kids standing in the
shadows, darting in and out of the trees. You could hear the sound of voices rising, falling, car doors slamming, the sound echoing off the palisades.