The Last Illusion (9 page)

Indigo: “He was at the show—”

Silber clapped his hands together. “Oh, mental! Was it something or was it something?”

Zal nodded quietly.

“Bran, it was phenom,” Indigo overcompensated, unconvincingly. “People can’t stop talking about it. And tonight!”

“I am so excited about tonight,” Zal quickly interjected, breathlessly.

Silber took off his sunglasses as if to survey that strange little blank pale smile-less face. Zal was struck by how gold his eyes were—not hazel, not yellow even, but pure gold. The color had to be fake. “
You
should be!” And he winked, a wink that was like the flash of a gold coin tossed in the air.

Zal nodded slowly. What did he mean? Did he mean—oh, God. He bit his lip, so as not to ask. He wanted to respect the surprise, the potential even of the surprise. He looked to Indigo, who was genuinely grinning—happy, actually, it seemed, though not enough to stop managing her boss: “Eh, Bran, we have to bounce in negative two min, so chop-chop.”

“Thank you,” Zal inserted quickly. “See you backstage then?”

“Count on it!” Silber said. “Worth the ol’ wait! Sayonara, baby!”

Zal, of course, had not forgotten what everyone in the audience had not forgotten, having read up on this widely talked-about stunt, the crowning glory of the Flight Triptych: an audience member’s flight with Silber. And apparently, if he could interpret Silber’s comment correctly, he stood a very decent chance of being that audience member.

Zal made himself throw up twice before the show. He was feeling sick with anxiety, plus all the minibar odds and ends inside him made him feel heavy and slow and unable to even fathom taking to the air. He put on his suit and tried to remember what Dr. Rhodes always said:
When in doubt, just breathe.

He breathed. He breathed; he breathed; he breathed; he breathed.

The usher took him to his seat—this time, front row.
Of course
. He spotted Indigo, dressed up this time in a ruffly shirt and with what appeared to be lipstick, several aisles back, and she waved more warmly than usual. Signs. People seemed to be looking at him. The usher had said
My absolute pleasure,
not just plain
My
pleasure
. “This is gonna be something tonight!” the older woman in the glimmering green dress next to him suddenly hissed his way. He nodded long and hard. Signs.

He prayed his asthma, hypoglycemia, prolapsed mitral valve, migraines, thyroid, gallstones, pinched nerves, carpal tunnel, chronic anxiety, panic disorder, etc. wouldn’t act up tonight—just not tonight, of all tonights.

Darkness; lights. There was a golden glow in the audience. The curtains were drawn, revealing a screen the blue of a spring sky. Suddenly across it: the image of a bird, blacked by the distance. Zal felt his hands grow cold and wet. Suddenly more silhouettes of birds flapping, here and there and everywhere. For a moment he had to close his eyes. In the living room of his mind, echoes of his heart, knocking, knocking. He focused on the sound: piano music of an abstract sort he could not recognize. He was determined not to lose it.

He heard a breath next to him quicken and he opened his eyes. On the stage, the dancers wore masks, black masks of bird faces, all beak and glassy eye. They were wingless. Zal could feel the migraine coming on, the heart condition. This was not what he had imagined, but if anything was a sign, this was it.

They danced to the manic offbeat upward and downward whims of the weird piano. This was less accessible than Silber’s usual stuff, definitely avant-garde, and yet for Zal, way too close for comfort. Of course, knowing his role now, he wondered to what degree this was all about him. If the whole audience knew. If this was all tied to his presence, his history, his story. He was not one to be self-centered, ever—in fact, he was mostly self-un-centered—but he had to wonder if the whole thing was about him.

Off and on he closed his eyes.

Finally Silber appeared—no bird mask, thank God—in a black cape that he supposed could resemble wings, over black leather pants and boots. He swayed from one side of the stage to the other, staggered almost, like a drunk, like someone on strings, helpless, confused, maybe even horrified. He did not smile.

Zal swore Silber met his eyes at least twice.

This bizarre dance, an alarming tarantella, went on and on, until finally the music shifted into something far more orchestral and majestic. An orb of light—no doubt a symbol of the sun—appeared blindingly bright in the far left corner of the stage. Silber turned to it as if in worship, and without any notice, suddenly he rose and rose and rose.

Silber was more than levitating this time. Silber—no matter how you saw it, you had to admit—was flying.

Applause! Applause! Applause!
Immediately the specter of string-cynicism was butchered as the bird dancers came out with giant hoops of gold and ran them over and around him and he jumped—soared—through hoop after hoop without a hitch.

When he came down, he came down on his back, as if in collapse, and was scooped up by a bird woman. The lady next to Zal knowingly whispered, to seemingly nobody, the word “Icarus.” Zal knew the story and shrugged back at the same seemingly no one. Then there was an apparently erotic dance, during which Zal mostly lowered his eyes.

But the music crescendoed again, as it always did in a Silber production when things were going to get good again. The blue of the background darkened into the deep violet of twilight, stars speckled the background, and the sun sank into a huge full moon. With a few flourishes of his black cape—now glittering, apparently bejeweled with black sequins this whole time, which required only moonlight to illuminate—Silber rose up again and into the “night sky” and eventually over the MGM Grand audience.

Silber received the most thunderous applause of his career as the audience clapped on and on, looking up and back and around and side to side, waiting for the inevitable: one of them would not only be touched by Silber—a thing in itself, to be touched by magic, real magic, in the flesh, and what flesh—but really and truly (well, “really and truly” to most)
fly
.

Zal gripped his seat, both in fear and anticipation—he imagined springing out of it and into a real night sky, by the real moon. As his eyes followed Silber and his teasing swirls, like the circling of vultures over prey, his whole body began to shake in a sort of rhythm, and for a moment he had the irrational worry the bird in him was bursting out.

No. I am not a bird,
he told himself, as he had told himself several thousand times before.
I am a man. Not a bird not a bird not a bird .
.
.

And he knew no part of him wanted to be back with the birds, back in the cages, back to the birdseed and the beaks and the water feeders and the messes. No. The part of him he missed the most was the part he never possessed: wings.

Zal wanted to fly more than anything. And apparently Silber shared this longing. And here they were.

Silber came lower and lower, swooped toward them, in and out, while Zal tried to meet his eyes—at one point he even reached a hand out. He was not the only one. The audience was filled with longing—it was in the gasps, the moans, the nervous giggles, the idle chatter. Everyone was suddenly incredibly audible, everyone involved, everyone implicated.

As Silber swung lower and lower, the music broke, except for a thin wispy flute sound. Silber reached out, both arms wide and ready, reached them out like a black-winged angel-savior, and came
down down down down
to the front row—
Zal, my God, my name is Zal, I am yours, hands out, heart down, when in doubt breathe breathe breathe
—until his arms were just over and then around a waist.

The waist of a thin blonde in a long white dress who made what could only be called a soft scream, almost a singsong holler, as he scooped her into his arms and up.

Silber rotated her as the audience applauded even louder and faced her and embraced her and for a moment everyone wondered if they were kissing or more.

It was hard to say.

On the ground, Zal watched with a red face, eyes overflowing, his hands in fists without his knowing it. He left for the bathroom while Silber and his volunteer—his stooge, no doubt, Zal would later learn to call her—were still up in the air.

He stayed in there until he was sure the show was over—men flooded the bathroom with
Well, that was somethings,
and
Did you see thats,
and
By Georges,
and
Holy shits
—and finally people were out. When he left, Indigo was pacing outside, waiting for him.

“What the hell did you do in there?” she snapped. She did not look at him any differently than before.

It was possible the potential and therefore the disappointment had all along been in his head only.

“Did you like it?” she asked. “Out of this world, right?”

Zal nodded slowly.

“Ready to go back? There’s def an after-party, but I’m not sure—”

Zal pretended to look at his watch. “You know, I’m exhausted. These past three days have been a lot for me. I’ve never in my life really traveled like this. And I have my train tomorrow, pretty early.”

Indigo looked at him with wide eyes, but it was clear she wasn’t going to insist. “Okay .
.
. well, dude, I just waited for nothing. Nice meeting you, have a sweet life!”

“Indigo,” Zal said suddenly. “Will you tell Mr. Silber I am so grateful? And that if he needs any help or anything at all, or will even take me as volunteer or apprentice or whatever is possible, I would be most glad to help. I was very much interested in his act tonight. I’d love to be, you know, involved.”

Indigo nodded, softening for a second, then flashing a smile he took to be real. “Gotcha. He likes you. He’ll be in touch.”

“I’ll write him, too,” Zal said as Indigo passed him one of his gold cards, the third time she’d done it in three days. He kept every one in a different spot, in case.

Zal did not know exactly what love was, but if he had to guess he would say that it was love he felt for Silber that trip. And that love had to do with possibility, he guessed. So it made sense to him that night why he felt, as he walked home alone, heartbroken and lovesick and consumed by, more than anything, wishes, real wishes.

And so Zal’s fascination with Silber had germinated in a season of a particularly contagious strangeness, when he was acting off, but then the whole world was, too: Y2K season. When he’d announced to Hendricks he was going to Las Vegas to see his favorite magician, Hendricks had been so caught off guard that he’d almost just shrugged at it.

Then he’d paused. “Really? You feel that your first trip alone could be to Las Vegas, of all places, and it’s fine?” he had asked. “Do you know about Las Vegas?”

“Yes,” Zal had replied. “I have read about it. I understand the pros and the cons. I know what I am getting myself into.”

Hendricks had looked deep into his eyes, searching, a near-impossible task with Zal, even for his father. “You’re sure, Zal? You can tell, I’m sure, that I am not comfortable with this. You’re really, really sure?”

Zal had thought about it for a few seconds more. “I think so. I would have imagined you would have thought this is one of those perfect opportunities for me to come into my own.”

“Yes, I suppose .
.
. Your
favorite magician,
though? I didn’t know you had one.”

His tone had irked Zal. Why couldn’t he have a favorite magician? “There is a lot you don’t know.” It had sounded harsher than he’d meant. “Well, I don’t mean that.” Even though he mostly had. “I mean, I’ve been following this one guy and saving my allowance, and I think it would be nice to get away.”

Something in Hendricks’s face had softened. The words
get away
were almost surprising on Zal’s lips for their absolute banality. Hendricks often wanted to
get away;
people he knew did, people on TV did, everyone really. It was a most universal thing that had never occurred to him could belong to Zal. Why would he deny him that? “Of course. It’s been a trying period, huh, Zal?”