Night Magic (38 page)

Lena came up to him at once. “Where are they?” he asked urgently, ignoring the insistent clapping, shouting, and foot stamping on the other side of the curtain.

She seemed about to falter, but her voice was firm. “I don’t know, Michael. I’ve looked everywhere backstage. Unless they’re…” She hesitated, turned slightly, and simultaneously their eyes focused on the Chinese cabinet. Michael walked upstage toward it as Lena murmured, more to herself than to him, “But they couldn’t possibly…”

When he grasped the handles of the double doors, his heart was already like a lump of lead in his chest, and the foreknowledge of what he would see flashed upon him the second before he saw it: Emily lay in an ungainly heap on the floor of the cabinet. “Emily,” he gasped, and then the dread burst inside him, in his throat, and for several moments he couldn't speak. He reached inside the cabinet, shifted her carefully so he could get his hands under her arms, and drew her out onto the stage. A sob opened his throat, and without taking his eyes off Emily he said to Lena, “Get a doctor.” She started offstage, but he was concentrating now, he knew how to concentrate under pressure, and he said to her in a tone of clearheaded command, “No. Not the telephone. Dazz was in the front row. He’s with a doctor. Get him.”

Obeying wordlessly, Lena passed through the curtain. Michael removed his coat, folded it into a pillow for Emily’s head, shrinking from her blank, wide-open eyes. Both her hands were clenched into fists, one resting on each breast; Michael felt in vain for a pulse or a heartbeat. Her skin was cool. He wanted to go and find something to cover her with, to keep her warm, but he couldn't bring himself to leave her, so he knelt wretchedly beside her, uncertain of what to do. He passed his hand in front of her staring eyes; there was no response, and, pressing his fingertips on her eyelids, he drew them shut. She must be in shock; she couldn’t be dead.

It seemed the applause had stopped a long time ago, he could hear the sounds of people leaving the theater. The curtain moved, and he looked downstage to see Lena enter, followed by the tall blond man Michael had seen with Dazz and Sami. Pale blue eyes, horsey face, not particularly friendly on the few occasions when they had met. What was his name? Mortimer, that was it, Mortimer.

With a curt nod, Dr. Mortimer knelt beside Emily, facing Michael across her body. He felt for her pulse, put his fingers on her throat, her temples, pulled back one of her eyelids, shone into the eye a small flashlight he had taken from an inside pocket, shut the eye again, moved her hands aside and laid his ear against her chest; then he looked at Michael with an expression of mingled rage and dismay. “I’m afraid she’s dead,” he said.

Lena cried out softly and knelt beside Michael, her hand on his shoulder. Michael shook his head, returning the doctor’s stare. “She can’t be,” he said evenly. “It’s not possible. How can you be sure?”

“In some cases it’s hard to be sure, but I’m sorry to say this isn’t one of those.”

“But how? What could have killed her?”

“That I can’t tell you. But we’ll find out.” He rose to his feet and loomed over them. “Meanwhile I must inform the proper authorities. Where was she when you found her?”

“In the cabinet.”

“Ah. And where is the older gentleman, the one I take to be responsible for this”—he paused briefly, but seemed unable to restrain himself any longer—“this outrageous spectacle?”

“I don’t know. I can’t find him,” Lena said in a voice broken by sobbing.

“I suggest you try again. The police will certainly want to talk to him. I’ll come back shortly.” He started to turn away, but stopped and looked sadly down at Emily’s body. “What a terrible shame,” he said, not attempting to disguise the anger in his voice. “Please cover her up.” He gave the two of them a contemptuous look and left the stage.

As the doctor exited, Michael turned to Lena. “Have you looked upstairs?”

“No,” she said weakly.

“I think you should take a look up there,” Michael told her, patting her hand. “Maybe that’s where he went.”

“Maybe,” Lena said, unconvinced and tearful. Bracing herself against Michael’s shoulder, she rose heavily to her feet and padded toward the wings.

Alone with Emily, Michael knelt quietly beside her and stared at her body. A line he had read somewhere came to him: “No motion has she now, no force.” How could she be dead? She looked beautiful, he realized, more beautiful than ever; her face was serious and serene, her lips tightly closed, her jaw set in that determined way she had, her hair startlingly black against the pallor of her skin. Overcome by sadness, Michael rocked back on his heels and moaned. He remembered what the master had taught him about the magic will, how the magician must perceive the will of others and attune his own will to theirs. He seemed to feel the strength of Emily’s will to live, even as she lay there lifeless, and he closed his eyes and concentrated, focusing his entire consciousness, every ounce of his force, on the single object of his desire: that Emily might live. He could feel the power radiating from him, flowing out of him in a surge that burned his cheeks and blurred his eyes, and he leaned close to her ear and whispered her name, once, and waited, and then again.

He squeezed his eyelids together to clear his sight, and when he opened them again he saw that her lips were slightly parted, and when he moved his face close to hers he felt something warm, like a soft puff of breath, against his cheek. Straightening up a little, he saw that her eyes were still closed, but at the edge of his vision one of her arms twitched. He thought his brain would burst with the effort he was making, he clutched at his throat, at his clamped jaws, and raised his head, and then her eyes opened, not fluttering, not blinking, but all at once; he saw anger in them, and something like disappointment, but when they met his they filled with joy and a smile of ineffable sweetness spread over her face. “You’re safe,” she said. “I’m so glad. I thought you were hurt.” Her voice was strong and natural, a hint of color tinged her cheeks.

“I’m safe,” he said gently. “But what about you?”

“I’m all right. Just a little tired.”

He put his hand over her breast and felt its soft curve, and underneath, her beating heart. “I was afraid you’d left me.”

“I’ll never leave you, Michael,” she said. “But I think I have to rest a little.”

“No!” he cried. “Don’t! Stay here with me!”

She raised her left hand and stroked his cheek, then slowly drew her fingers across his lips. Her eyelids looked heavy. “Just for a little while,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”

She closed her eyes, and her body seemed to stiffen slightly under his hand. He tried to concentrate again, tried to will her back into consciousness, but he was exhausted, the power had drained from him. He snatched her up in his arms and knelt there swaying, rocking her gently, cradling her head against his chest as his tears fell onto her face.

There were sounds, footsteps, movement. Tenderly, he laid Emily’s head back down on his folded coat. When he looked up, Dr. Mortimer was standing over him again. “The police will be here soon. Why haven’t you covered her?”

“She was alive, Doctor,” Michael said hotly. “I mean—she
is
alive. She opened her eyes and spoke to me.”

“Please,” Dr. Mortimer said. “This whole affair is absurd enough.”

“But she spoke to me.”

“She’s been dead for at least half an hour,” the doctor said, crouching down beside her. He touched her clenched right fist, paused, began to pry open her fingers. “What’s this she’s got in her hand?” Grimacing a little, he released the object she was clutching, but it eluded his grasp, fell to the stage, bounced, rolled a few feet, and stopped, shining dully in the lights. Mortimer, drawn by curiosity, stepped over to it, bending down to pick it up. While Michael watched him, the doctor extended his hand, then abruptly pulled it away, as if unwilling to touch the thing, whatever it was. From his place beside Emily’s body, Michael scrutinized the object for several seconds before, with a shudder, he recognized what he was looking at: the master’s glass eye.

T
HERE WERE PLENTY OF
offers, but after two frustrating though successful outings, Michael made up his mind; he wasn’t doing television. It was like having a stone wall between himself and his audience, he told Lena. He needed to hear them breathing.

He did a few interviews for magazines, with the understanding that Emily’s name was not to be mentioned. Sometimes these were gratifying. The interviewers were well informed about the history of magic and enthusiastic about Michael’s place in it. “Your work is definitive,” one wide-eyed young woman told him as they sat over yet another cup of coffee in the little place across the street. “There hasn’t been anything, I mean anyone, like you in a hundred years.”

He toured for a while, greeted at each stop by two or three of the best magicians in the area, and these were often charming, competent performers, typically much older than Michael, but deferential, even respectful. His reputation preceded him, and there were times when he tired of the role assigned him, the wunderkind, the young master. After such excursions he was eager to get back home to his quiet, simple room at Lena's, to her heavy meals, endless cups of coffee, dull evenings in front of the television.

Magic absorbed and sustained him, as he had always known it would. He kept to a schedule of two shows a month at the theater. This seemed adequate to satisfy his faithful audience as well as the steady supply of newcomers, tourists, mostly, who had read about him, and students. He concentrated on refining his act, making it cleaner, using fewer props, less patter, but at the same time his love of theatricality kept him constantly on the alert for more dramatic effects. His audience was never bored, no matter how often they saw him. There was always something new, unexpected, and startling in his performance.

One evening, after a quiet dinner with Lena, he went to the theater downstairs, and then backstage, where he decided to go through his growing collection of music tapes in search of something delicate and suggestive for an illusion he had perfected, which used candles and mirrors. He never could, Lena said indulgently when he showed it to her, stop playing with fire. It was true, he thought, pulling out a rack of tapes he hadn't looked into for some time, he never tired of fire. Its paradoxical appeal was irresistible to him, as it was both a source of comfort and of danger, the perfect metaphor for magic.

The tapes were dusty from disuse, but he saw at once that they were unlikely to contain what he was looking for; they were all operatic overtures. He pushed the rack back into its space on the closely packed shelf, but it didn’t go in all the way, something was blocking it. He pulled it out again, then reached into the space, fumbling at the back of it. As he suspected, there was a loose tape. He grasped it, pulled it out. It was dusty, like the others. As he turned it over to read the label he felt his heart sink, for in the moment before he saw the words
Grand Finale,
in Lena’s fine, careful handwriting, he knew what it was.

Though he tried never to think of it, and refused ever to talk of it, Michael knew there was a way in which he never stopped thinking about that night. It had informed his life with two absences, a core of loss around which he fashioned a new life. He’d got through the inquest, the publicity surrounding the show, which, curiously enough, was largely positive, by saying as little as possible. Lena spoke for him when necessary. Max Wurlitzer was officially missing, though no one was really looking for him, and Emily’s death was determined to be the result of natural causes. Though it was certainly unnatural for a strong, healthy young woman to suffer a massive cerebral hemorrhage, such things happened now and then, against the odds.

It was one of Michael’s pleasures, one of the few, he thought, to sit at night on the stage of his empty theater and turn the music up so that it filled the place. He examined the tape in his hands, dusted it off against his pants leg, flipped open the plastic case. Why not, he thought, as he slipped the cassette into the player and adjusted the volume. Then he flicked the light switches so that the houselights were down and a single spot illuminated the center of the stage, like a disk of silver. A series of beeps issued from the powerful speakers as he dragged a wooden chair onto the stage and took his place, his familiar place, in the spotlight.

First came the stately, pompous
Music for the Royal Fireworks,
which the master had chosen himself as appropriate for their entrance. Michael could see him as he was that night, so confident, so pleased with himself, his hands flashing like precision instruments as he moved noiselessly across the stage to stand side by side with his protégé. His timing really was a miracle, or the opposite of a miracle, Michael thought, whatever that was. Then, as always when he thought of Wurlitzer, a sensation of bitterness mixed with awe made him clench his teeth. He battled down his anger and outrage at having been betrayed, because it was useless to be angry, as the master had taught him; anger diluted power, which was always focused and calm. Would he have gone through with it, the endless hours of preparation, the grueling practice, the concentration of will and energy that had resulted in the triumph of the Grand Finale, would he have done it if he’d known that on the other side of that triumph there was to be so much sadness, loss, and loneliness?

Probably not, Michael thought. But then there was the deeper question of whether he had really had any choice, ever, from that first moment when he had looked up into the wizened, comical face under the umbrella and pretended, for his own amusement, to be a frog. He still didn’t know where the master’s power had left off and his own begun. The music swelled around him, becoming more and more explosive, and Michael recalled the enormous satisfaction he had felt as he stood shoulder to shoulder with the Great Wurlitzer, the colored smoke billowing around them while the audience roared with pleasure.

There was a break in the music, then the cheerful fountain theme began, lighthearted and silly, as if to mock him.