The Last Illusion (38 page)

“You know that story ‘The Hungry Artist?’” were the first words he said that day, when Manning approached him, wondering if another day was going to go by with Silber in a sort of dead spell.

Manning nodded. “It’s ‘A Hunger Artist.’ Kafka.” Manning loved Kafka.

“It’s like the only story I have ever finished,” Silber said, “to be perfectly honest. I read it in high school, but I never forgot it.”

Manning tapped his boot impatiently. “And? So what?”

Silber took a drag and sighed. “I feel like the guy, the artist at the end of it. Like you’re all coming to my cage and you can’t even find me, because I’ve basically just turned into nothing. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m on the verge of being replaced—and by a giant, happy, fierce bear—”

“I think it was a panther,” Manning corrected.

“Whatever, a big fierce thing!” Silber hissed. “Isn’t that what’s going on here? Am I obsolete, Manning? Is this whole thing, what I’m making happen here, over before it even began?”

Manning squinted his eyes, half in disbelief, half in disgust. He’d waited all these days for Silber to come out of his shell, for this? Some misinterpreted Kafka and a pity party? “I wouldn’t overthink it.”

Silber snorted. “You didn’t want to do this anyway.”

“But I
did
do it.” Manning sounded dangerous.

Silber for once didn’t care. “
It
is an overstatement. What is it, pops? You tell me. What is this mess?”

Manning shook his head and looked away, chuckling. “It’s money. It’s all money. I’m getting paid, you’re getting paid. Period.”

Silber nodded, with a demented smile. “And that’s about as close as I get to meaning myself. World Trade, plus or equal sign, money. Those go together, right? That means something, right?”

Manning nodded. “Sure as hell, it does. Nothing means more than money. That’s all we got.”

Silber looked down. “Well, pardon my math, but that means the WTC is one big zero, if it all equals money and money alone, if you add money. But maybe that’s all there is. Maybe that’s all there should be.”

“Look,” Manning snapped suddenly. “I don’t have time to philosophize. And neither do you. We have two weeks left, you hear me? You know what that is?
That’s
a zero. We got nothing. And it’ll be done, but right now, you and I are running on nothing. And in order for this to be about money, we gotta finish it. We’re not there yet.”

“It’s like the nothing before nothing!” Silber cracked a crooked smile.

Manning nodded. “Well said, asshole. The nothing before nothing. Now can you manage to get your ass up and make something of it or what?”

Silber nodded, with a shy smile. He couldn’t help but be a little moved. It was the closest Manning had ever come to caring about him, even though Silber knew well that it wasn’t just him that Manning was caring about.

Money,
he kept thinking over and over.
Maybe money is the key
. And yet it felt like he was a bumper car, furiously bumping into a wall over and over, as if one of these days it would
give. He knew as well as Manning, as well as whatever cruel god was presiding over that mess, that money was as much
it
as his work was real magic.

On that evening of Manning’s confrontation—when Silber, two weeks away from triumph or failure or whatever the difference was, took back the reins, slowly, gingerly, as if the thing would break if he went too quickly back to his old self—something more happened. Suddenly the Silbertorium seemed brimming with
event,
with
occasion
that all the illusion manufacturing in the world couldn’t compete with. It was one thing to have Bran Silber, after weeks, back on his feet, but it was another when the letter came.

It was Indigo—who was back at her old post—who interrupted the action, suddenly like the newer, graver Bran, also without the old affectation.

“Um, Bran,” she said almost ultrasonically, repeating it a few times, until Raj heard and tapped Silber on the shoulder.

He looked up at Raj, who pointed to Indigo. He looked at Indigo, who was looking down at a letter as if it were a ghost.

“What is that?” Silber went over, scrunching his nose at it. In the age of e-mail, they didn’t see paper letters anymore unless they were bills.

“Somebody really .
.
.” Indigo began, pale as a smoggy sky. “Somebody kinda crazy, Bran. I don’t know .
.
.” She seemed reluctant to give it to him, and it was making him reluctant to take it.

“The gist?” he muttered, backing away and yet trying to seem casual.

“It’s a woman,” she said, slowly, eyes still glued to it. “She needs you. She says something bad is about to happen. She needs your—she’s calling it a trick, but you know—to make it better, she’s saying. She’s making threats. She says you have to. Or else she’s gonna—shit. It’s about the WTC and making it disappear. She wants to make sure. Bran .
.
. it’s all in a crazy sort of English .
.
.”

“The gist,” he whispered, hoarse with fear.

“And she wants you to meet with her, that’s all. She says you have to or else she’s going to take matters in her own hands. Bomb the WTC, or us, or I don’t know, Bran, this is crazy—”

Bran snatched the letter out of Indigo’s shaking hands. She had done a poor job with the gist. She had, first of all, forgotten the line about the letter writer being “a friend of someone you know, who I can reveal once I meet you.” And, most important, she had left out the final sentiment:
I don’t know what it all means to you, but it means everything to me, what you’re doing. It means the world, and saving it, really, Mr. Silber, so I hope to hear from you before ASAP.
With much respect, urgently, Asiya McDonald.

The word
means
had appeared three times altogether. As horrified as elements of that letter made him feel, he also felt something mystical about it
.
This strange woman with the strange name, out of nowhere, somehow held the key to the meaning.

What he was about to do actually meant something to someone. For a moment, he was so happy he forgot to be worried.

Indigo watched Silber put the letter into his back pocket and rejoin the workers. He had an extra spring in his step, his eyes were suddenly shining, his words back to quips; Manning gave the transformation a raised eyebrow followed by a thumbs-up. She couldn’t believe it.

Something had been happening, and it wasn’t good. And she couldn’t depend on Silber, who in the past few weeks seemed too mired in a sort of nervous breakdown to save them or even himself. She was the only one who knew there was something happening, and she knew she had to stop it as soon as possible.

She scanned the Silbertorium, bustling with its entire cast of characters, all hooting and hollering, bitching and snapping, whistling and humming. It was a circus. And yet: it was a circus in danger. Who could be trusted out of all those interns, assistants, and underlings?

And as if on cue, she saw Manning wave a middle finger at a red-in-the-face intern of his, who promptly burst into tears.

“No fucking way! I’m not on some Silber slave ship to watch it all go to shit,” Oliver Manning was shouting at one Bran Silber in the break room later that evening. “And I’m not worried about my ass! Do I seem like the kind of guy who’s worried about staying alive? I don’t give a flying fuck! And it’s not your life I’m sweating, either. It’s that thing!”

He pointed to a wall, on the other side of which was the illusion, in its unwieldy, mammoth, very material form.

Silber gulped and nodded. “Chief, listen, I’m not reading it that way. I was just thinking, we get the girl in here, hear her out—on the off-chance she actually has something real to say, something that might supplement the thing—and then we make her sign something and then send her out. And then rat her out! And so, in my mind, the thing is only enhanced by this.”

“Fuck you,” Manning groaned.

“I mean, it feels too perfect, like this was an answer to a prayer almost. I mean, look, I know you probably don’t believe in God—”

Manning punched that same wall. “Fuck you doubly. What gives you the nerve to say that?”

Silber stared at the floor like a scolded schoolboy. “I don’t know. You seem more, I don’t know, angry than the average believer?”

“I’m a Christian, Sil,” Manning said, lighting a cigarette. “Christ: angry dude. The Jewish God: angry as hell. I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“Exactly. My point was that it seemed easy to dismiss the letter, when its timing was, dare I say it, almost miraculous! I mean, it’s probably nothing. But if there’s the slightest possibility there could be some added miracle, some new dimension—I don’t know. Can’t we just call her?” He wondered why he was even asking Manning’s permission, but was too afraid to say it, which answered his question.

“Hell, no. You’ve lost your mind, man. You think this terrorist is a miracle from God? No way. I will not have some crazy psycho stalker in here putting my boys in danger and, more importantly, that motherfucking thing we’ve been slaving away on for ages. I’m getting a paycheck, Sil, and I’m getting a paycheck because that shit is going to work.”

Silber nodded glumly. “Could a phone conversation hurt?”

“Oh, there’s gonna be a phone conversation, all right,” Manning said, leaning back against the wall and pausing to blow three perfect smoke rings. “We’re gonna have a talk with the cops!”

“Oh, God, you want to anger her? You want to piss off a woman who sounds like that?”

“That’s why we’re calling the cops and not the fucking Tooth Fairy, you ass. Because of that, precisely. That chick is danger, and we need the big boys on her.”

“We have security!”

“We have security the day of. She’s not talking about the day of. She’s talking before, and before starts now—it started before now. She could be on her way. You want that?” He looked down at the letter one more time. “I mean, motherfucker, she says she’s gonna bomb the World Trade if we don’t make it disappear first! Isn’t that a pretty important confession, or at least threat? Now, I’m not painting my life as precious, some big thing of value, but I’m willing to bet you do.”

Silber said nothing. Lately, the truth was, he hadn’t. Not even close. All he had was the image of the back of his eyelids, as his face sat in his hands for hours at a time. What sort of life was that? And, as Manning was implying, it had made him less afraid of things like a threatening letter. Months ago, he would have wanted the National Guard in there over it. But now, some woman with presumably a gun and some rapid-fire crazy talk didn’t worry him. It would probably do more for his name than anything else, he even thought, at a particularly low moment in the long pause.

“I don’t want to call the cops,” Silber finally said.

“Nobody’s asking you to, asshole. I’m on it.”

Normally, Manning taking charge would have a warming effect on Silber, but this time it felt chilling. “I think it’s a bad idea. Don’t ask me why! I just do. Not that you care.”

“I don’t, frankly,” Manning said, pulling an old-fashioned-looking cell phone of walkie-talkie proportions out of his back pocket. “And you know why? Because I’m done.”

“You’re done?”

“This has been a nightmare. We’re done after this, Bran Silber.”

Silber snorted. “Oh, that’s all you meant? Well, fine. But I beat you to it, because there’s nothing to be done with.”

Manning cocked his head to the side, not understanding.

Silber got up. He didn’t even want to be in the room for the phone call. As he opened the door to leave, he looked over his shoulder—still one to love a gesture with sky-high dramatic flair—and snapped, “Believe it, Mans. There’s nothing after this one. You’re done because I’m done. The end!”