08 Illusion (40 page)

And all she was doing was auditioning.

She gave it her best, as she always did, and maybe it was the total strangeness, the fantastical bigness, the mind-blowing color, light, and show-offishness of this city that provided the rush to get her through it. For sixty minutes she let the routines carry her along, let the pasts and futures and other places pitch and roll around her as she reached, moved, animated, levitated, and commanded her props, birds, and her own body from inside and outside herself, inside and outside of here and now. It was the same old madness that had dogged her for months but it got her work, and right now work was all there was.

Her closing tableau with hoops, birds, bottles, and cards was as good as some of the fountains she saw around town—did anybody else in Nevada have water?—and right on cue, the big automatic curtain dropped and the stage became a box.

She relaxed, deflated with relief, and stood quietly, letting her other worlds play out around her. Scenes from the ranch happened through: the shop with the tractor and the home-built stage passed over her; she could stand on the path outside the barn and look up the hill toward the house—the lights were on in the kitchen but she couldn’t see anyone; just a thought of the snowy meadow made it sweep past her like an ebbing ocean wave up to her knees. Hospital hallways—they always showed up for some reason—flashed across her vision in fast motion and then vanished, as they always did. An earlier version of herself, so solid and real they could have collided, danced around her doing stunts with the hula hoops, then broke into pieces and faded away. Suddenly, rudely, the casino just outside the lounge doors surrounded her, slot machines jingling, warbling, ding-a-linging. She braced herself, startled, as she, or part of her, or another one of her, raced past a row of elevators.

Doris Branson rode the elevator alone, mildly bored by the quiet until the door slid open and the pleasant sound of money and more money being raked in sang in her ears. It was like walking into a factory with hundreds of machines running except that the machines didn’t produce anything, they just transferred it. It was a business doing pleasure with these people.

Oops! She nearly collided with a pretty girl in a blue costume and holding a hula hoop. Great. A cabaret girl who hadn’t learned the rules: no costumed performers on the casino floor. She ought to know that!

“Miss! You don’t belong out here!”

The girl looked astounded that Doris would even address her, which only raised Doris’s temper another notch. “Don’t look at me like that!”

Where was Vahidi? She grabbed her cell phone from her pocket …

Well, now she felt silly and couldn’t remember the number. The phone was blurry and the floor was moving—

The phone dropped to the floor as Doris uttered a truncated scream, lurched and twisted with arms flailing, then toppled to the floor, an arm and a leg broken and blood trickling from her nose and mouth.

A lady vacationer screamed. Security personnel came running. Before she passed out, Doris dizzily searched for the girl in blue. “Not onna casino floor …”

But the girl was gone.

Did that lady really see me? Was I really there?

The girl in blue sank to one knee, her hand on the floor, and worked to keep her balance until there was only the stage and it wasn’t moving. She thought she heard a distant scream from the fading casino floor—somebody must have hit a jackpot—but after that, the only sound was her own windedness.

It was alarmingly quiet on the other side of the curtain. There was no applause at all, just a muffled conversation between two voices. With a mere whisper of a thought she reduced her twelve doves down to the original four—Carson, Maybelle, Lily, and Bonkers—received their cage from a stage guy, and tucked them safely away. She set the hula hoops aside, left the bottles, silks, and cards in a heap, and peeked through the curtain.

The place was empty except for Seamus and the hotel’s entertainment director, Mr. Vahidi, sitting at a center table just a few rows back from the stage.

“Don’t come into the lounge area, miss,” said Vahidi. “You’re underage.”

“She knows,” said Seamus. He had his planner open on the table in front of him.

Were they working a deal? She sat at the edge of the stage, trying to see their faces. The stage lights blinded her.

They were muttering, talking about dates, weeks available, dollar amounts. She heard Vahidi say “one-fifty,” then Seamus said “three hundred,” then Vahidi asked, “What’s she gonna wear?”

She looked at her blue pants outfit with gold embroidery. It was her newest and best, reminiscent of a certain blue gown. “This.”

Vahidi looked her over and told Seamus, “For three hundred you should get her into something striking.”

Seamus began explaining her choices in costume, how she didn’t normally present herself “that way.”

“Hey, this is Vegas,” said Vahidi. “She’s competing with some big shows out there, and she’s got what it takes. You kidding me?”

“We’ll discuss it,” said Seamus.

Come on, Seamus, do what you do best: look out for me.

The stage lights shut down and the house lights came up a little. Now she had a better view of Vahidi, a man who must have been raised on cheeseburgers and Crisco, with a face like a road map and a very expensive watch. Besides the wrinkles and folds on his face he had two scars he must have gotten from a street disagreement in his youth.

“So how’s she bill herself?” Vahidi asked.

“Eloise Kramer,” said Seamus. “Or the Amazing Eloise—”

“Mandy,” she said.

Seamus paused. Vahidi waited.

“What?” said Seamus. “I thought we were—”

“Mandy Whitacre.”

Seamus leaned toward Vahidi, “We can let you know.”

“It’s Mandy,” she said. “M-A-N-D-Y.”

Seamus gave her a corrective glare, which she bounced right back at him. He said to Vahidi, “Eloise Kramer is her legal name; Mandy Whitacre is a stage name. She’d like to use the stage name.” He threw her an inquiry with his eyes,
Okay?
and she threw him back an answer,
Guess it’ll do for now.

Vahidi shrugged and wrote it down. “Does she do escapes?”

“Sure she does,” said Seamus.

Escapes?
“Sure I do,” she said.

“We need something big to set up out front. Not just chains and handcuffs,” said Vahidi. “Everybody does that. We need something outrageous to get her in the papers, get her known by the tourist and visitors bureaus, get her in those, those whaddayacallits, the what-to-do loops they play in the hotel rooms. She’s got a great show, but people aren’t going to know if they don’t come in and see it.”

Oh. She had a great show. That was nice to know.

“We’ll come up with something,” said Seamus.

“End of this week? We have to premiere it the same day as she premieres, make a big splash.”

“We’ll get right on it.”

“All right, all right,” said Vahidi, scribbling with his pen. “We’re looking at three weeks starting next Saturday, two shows a night, six days a week, three hundred dollars a show. Sound good to you?”

It did sound good. Seamus was nodding at her. “Sounds good,” she said.

“Sounds good,” he told Vahidi.

Vahidi stood as he told Seamus, “We’ll work out the details and get you a contract.” He and Seamus shook hands.

Mandy sat there watching her life being managed, her flesh being peddled. So human warmth wasn’t part of the business down here. Well, okay. She’d live with that. She’d make the best of it. She’d show them.

“And don’t go out on the casino floor either,” Vahidi reminded her. “You’re underage.”

chapter

35

D
oris Branson was tucked away in a private room at Clark County Medical Center, stabilized and sedated.

Dr. Margo Kessler, medical director, stood by her bed going over her chart. “Bruising over her face with swelling …” From the air bag, she thought but didn’t say. “A 3.5 linear laceration of the right shoulder overlying the deltoid, running transverse to the axis of her arm and extending down to the muscle fascia.” From a loose object in the vehicle. “Right knee is diffusely edematous, but without evidence of joint space effusion. There is deep ecchymosis in the suprapatellar region.” Just like last time. Interesting that the patient’s clothing had no tears even though the shoulder was lacerated.

She looked at the patient’s face, the expression marred by the bruising and troubled by the dispute over what really happened. The paramedics said she’d fallen down some stairs, but they got that from witnesses on the scene. The patient herself, seemingly intoxicated and erratic, insisted otherwise. For now, Kessler simply noted, “Obtunded mental status secondary to presumed concussion.”

She looked at the crew standing by. “All right, let’s do a CBC and chem panel, and …”
Now, this should be interesting
: “Let’s get a urinalysis for blood ethanol and drug screen.” She checked the IV. “What’s she getting?”

A nurse answered, “IVD5 normal saline with 20mEq of KCl, 100 MLs per hour.”

“That’ll do for now. Let’s line up a CT scan of the head.”

“The family is waiting to see her,” a nurse told her.

Kessler nodded approval and got out of the room before her facade faltered. A safe distance down the hall she slipped into an alcove, punched a number on her cell phone, and fidgeted until her party picked up. “This is Kessler. Yes, the patient is Doris Branson, the injuries are exactly the same, and”—she nearly raised her voice—“I will need an explanation.” She listened, huffed a flustered breath. “I’ll see you in my office in five minutes.” She caught an elevator to the main floor.

When she reached her office, immediately adjacent to the emergency room, Dr. Martin DuFresne was there waiting for her, expression calm as always, something Kessler found aggravating—that, and DuFresne’s ghostly way of appearing for updates, briefings, and consultations, then disappearing into the bowels of the medical center, never to be seen. As usual, he wore scrubs and a white coat with the CCMC logo on it, something else that aggravated her. As far as she knew, he had no affiliation with the hospital, only that secretive bunch of ghouls in the basement—as if she were not one of them, especially now.

She closed the door and the blinds, then stood facing him down. “Well?”

He spread his hands and perked his eyebrows as if he were asking her the same question.

“Were you listening? I’m sure you’re fully aware by now, Doris Branson just came through the ER—again.”

“I would say she’s had another accident—”

“Don’t insult me. I could show you the chart from her automobile accident three months ago and it would be identical to the chart she has now, the same injuries in the same places, apparently by the same causes. So history has repeated itself and I’m sure you know what I mean even as I don’t.”

He paused, the same mild look on his face.

“Don’t stand there thinking of a clever answer. Just tell me what went wrong down there.”

He gave her half a smile and conceded, “We don’t know. Not yet.” She threw her head back and sighed out despair. “But the Machine is down so the only medical options are conventional. I can assure you, we’re working on it.”

“You said that about Mandy Collins.” She sank into the chair behind her desk, closed her eyes, and breathed, clinging to control.

He leaned over her desk. “As I began to suggest, she had a second accident. She was drinking again, she got disoriented and took the stairs instead of the elevator, she fell down the stairs and then stumbled as far as the casino, where she collapsed and her people found her.”

“
Your
people, you mean, covering your backs every moment, but I predict her UA is going to come up zero; no blood alcohol.” He gazed at her as if he could communicate with eyes alone. Maybe he could. She got his drift and rolled her gaze away in disgust. “So you just assume I’ll rewrite the lab report.”

He gave her one, diminutive nod. “And bear in mind, she was never told what her injuries were the first time. She thought she didn’t have any, so for her, history has not repeated itself.”

“Yes,” she said, slightly reassured. “Yes, that’s an important point.”

“And you’ve sedated her, so that will help to fog her recollections. No one actually saw her until she fell and drew attention. By the time she wakes up she will have slept off her intoxication and … you’re the doctor. You can tell her what happened. Your explanation is the only explanation.”

She thought it over.
It could work. Maybe
. “What about Mandy Collins?”

“She’s the reason the Machine’s malfunctioning. But we know where the problem’s originating, so it’s only a matter of time—pardon the pun. Don’t worry, you won’t be seeing her again.”

The thought. The horrendous, unspeakable thought
. She blinked it away.

“Let us know how things go with Ms. Branson.” And with that, the ghostly DuFresne slipped quietly out her door and out of her sight.

The intercom on her desk came to life. “The salesman from Baylor Pharmaceuticals is here.”

She cursed, something she rarely did.

“He had a two-o’clock appointment?”

She grabbed a bottle of water from a minirefrigerator. “Yeah, send him in.” She uncapped the bottle and gulped half of it down. Pharmaceutical salesmen. If it weren’t for the free lunches …

A tap on the door.

“Come in.” She touched up her hair even as the door swung open.

“Hi,” the man said. “I’m Willard Chatwell from Baylor Pharmaceuticals. Not really.”

He sat down in a chair opposite her desk, a briefcase in his lap, and smiled at her, just smiled at her without a word.

If there was a God or gods, they had to have come up with this. Her insides felt pummeled, her face hot.
Payday. The time of judgment
.