The Magician's Assistant (41 page)

Sabine begins to fight her way to the greenroom. “I’m the assistant,” she says, pushing her hands against the shoulders of the people in front of her as if she is trying to peel them apart. “I’m the assistant. Let me through.” Inch by inch, she works her way forward. Even the people who want to help her can’t. There is no place for them to move to.

She is exhausted, her hips caught between two men who have their backs to her. She is still a good twenty feet away when the door to the greenroom opens and Phan comes out, looking worried. She waves and calls to him, but he cannot hear her for the noise of the crowd. He scans the room and just as he is about to give up he finds her. His face is lit with joy and relief and he waves, his arm going madly overhead. “Sabine!”

Phan in his white dinner jacket and black tie looks like no other man in the room. He glows like Parsifal in the painting. He holds out his hands to her and she stretches towards them. He steps into the crowd as if he is stepping into water. The people part for him and flow around him, and he comes to her easily and takes her hand and pulls her back with him towards the shore. “We’ve been frantic,” he says in her ear. “Parsifal said he thought maybe you were angry, maybe you weren’t going to come.”

“I’ve been stuck out there,” she says. “I couldn’t find you.”

“It’s all right now.” He squeezes her hands. She thinks that both of her feet have left the floor, that she is being handed forward through the crowd.

“Is he here?” she calls.

Phan nods. They are delivered, pressed against the door. “He’s nervous, though. This is a big night for him. He needs you.”

“Are we going to do a show?”

“We’re in a real hurry.”

“There are so many people.”

“My family is here.”

“What?” Sabine calls. They are so close and yet it is impossible to hear anything.

“We can’t talk out here,” Phan says, and tilts his head towards the door. “Inside.”

They step through the door and everything is different, everything is quiet. So many flowers. An entire spray of tiny white orchids. White calla lilies; three dozen yellow roses, each as big as a teacup; pink globes of peonies dropping petals on the dressing table. Gardenias float in a shallow glass bowl. There are as many flowers in this room as there are people in the other, and the smell of them all together is complicated but not overwhelming, as if the flowers have been instructed to keep themselves in check. Phan keeps a tight hold of Sabine’s hand. She keeps a tight hold of his.

“Look who’s here,” Phan calls.

“Really?” Parsifal’s voice comes from behind a dressing screen.

“I’m here,” Sabine says. It all feels so easy now, not like Paris. She is not overcome, not surprised. She is only happy now. She is back with her family.

Parsifal steps out tentatively. The top button of his white tuxedo shirt is undone and the black silk ribbon of his tie rests loosely against his shoulders. His studs are the set of opals he bought in Australia, rimmed in gold. He is not wearing a jacket. His dark hair is as thick and as shiny as How’s. He is as beautiful and whole as any man has ever been. “Look at you,” he says.

“Me?” she says, and laughs. She crosses the small room, flowers brushing her bare shoulders, and opens her arms to him. “Look at you.”

They hold each other. This is exactly what it was like to be held by Parsifal. She presses her face against his neck. “I miss you so much,” she says.

He runs his hands in circles across the top of her back and then leans away from her so that he can see her face again. “But everything’s worked out, hasn’t it? It’s all turned out so beautifully. I thought it would, but I didn’t know for sure. And even when I imagined it I never imagined it going this well.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Things with my mother and Bertie and the boys.” He smiles, his head tilted, his eyebrows slightly down. It is the smile he gives her when the two of them understand something secret together. “Kitty.”

“What?”

“Parsifal,” Phan says from the door.

Parsifal looks up at him. “Oh, come on. She knows. I know, you know, she knows. There isn’t a whole lot of time.”

“Why isn’t there a lot of time?” Sabine says, feeling slightly nervous. “What about Kitty?”

Phan shakes his head as Parsifal hugs her again. “Kitty is fabulous. Don’t worry about Kitty. Besides, this isn’t even the reason that you’re here.”

They never had flowers like this before a show. It’s like being in some strange sort of garden where things grow out of tables rather than the ground. “So why am I here?” Sabine says. She doesn’t think there needs to be a reason. They haven’t seen each other in so long. That they are together now is reason enough to be anywhere.

Now it’s Parsifal who looks nervous. He glances at Phan, who looks at his wristwatch.

“It is late,” Phan says. “We have to get things going.” Phan opens the door a crack and looks out down the hall. “It’s a madhouse,” he says, still watching the crowd. “They’ll tear this place down if you don’t go on soon.” He lifts up on his toes, leans his head out into the crowd, and then spins around. “Oh, my God. Parsifal, Johnny Carson is here.”

“No,” Parsifal says, and rushes to the door.

“You can’t go out there now,” Phan says, blocking his way out. “They’ll eat you up. You can see him after the show.”

Parsifal puts his hands on Phan’s shoulders. For a second Sabine isn’t sure if he’s going to embrace him or push him aside. Parsifal leans forward, kisses him. “I’m scared,” he whispers.

“You’ve done it a hundred times in practice. It’s brilliant. You’ll be brilliant.” Phan buttons the top button of Parsifal’s shirt and begins to tie his tie.

“You’re going to have to tell me what’s going on here,” Sabine says. “You’re making me crazy.”

Parsifal turns to her, Phan’s hands still at his neck. “It’s a new act, I guess you’d say. I’m going to show it here tonight. It’s amazing, Sabine. It’s beautiful. I want you to be the assistant.”

“But I don’t know it,” Sabine says.

Phan looks at his watch.

“There’s nothing to know,” Parsifal says. “You look stunning. We’re a team. You’ll be absolutely fine. Just follow my lead.” He hands her a black-and-gold lipstick case from the dressing table.

“I have to know what the act is,” Sabine says, drawing on her mouth in red.

A young man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a headset comes in the back door without knocking. His eyes are frantic. “Now,” he says, pointing to the door. “I’m sorry, but right now.”

“Go, go,” Phan says, giving them both a quick kiss. “I need to get to my seat.” He is out the door.

Parsifal puts on his jacket and takes a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. “We have to go.” He does not say this to Sabine. He mouths the words. He takes her hand and pulls her down the back hall to the edge of the stage. They are standing there together in the dark, side by side, as they have been on any one of a thousand nights before. Sabine doesn’t ask him anything now. It’s too late. You can never talk this close to the stage, but Parsifal turns and takes her face in his hands. He kisses her and says, “Remember this, okay? You’ll love this.”

Sabine has never been onstage before without knowing the drill, without having practiced the trick backwards and forwards for months on end. Then she remembers that first night at the Magic Hat, when he called her up from the back of the room, the waitress holding the Manhattan. She went with him then. She followed his lead like they were dancing. Now, at the Magic Castle in the pitch-black dark, Parsifal takes her hand. Their arms are twisted together and they lean into one another hard, the way they always did before a show, their mutual wish for good luck. He leads her onto the stage.

The second their feet touch the polished wood, the light floods down on them. They can see only each other. Sabine can tell the size of a crowd by its roar, and the roar tonight is huge, bigger than Vegas, though that’s impossible since none of the theaters at the Castle is anywhere near as large as the Sands. They are screaming his name. They are stamping their feet against the floor. They are applauding and the noise it makes is like an airplane splitting apart in midair.

Parsifal raises his hands to soothe them. The light reflects from his palms. “Thank you,” he says. His voice is humble, genuinely overwhelmed. “My name is Parsifal.” And they begin to scream again. He waits, he shakes his head. “And this is my beautiful assistant, my wife, Sabine.”

She looks at him as the crowd calls her name. He has never introduced her as his wife before. Until that moment she has completely forgotten she is his wife. Parsifal lifts her delicate hand high in the air and she bows to the audience, to him. The sea-foam green of the satin combines with the pink lights to make her skin luminous.

“Tonight—,” he says, but they are still roaring. “Please,” he says, “please.” He waits until they are quiet, but even the quiet is volatile, living. There is a charge in the air, as if anything might set them going again. “Tonight I will attempt to perform a feat of magic that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been attempted on any stage, at any point in time, anyplace in the world.” This notion, that they are about to be placed in history, makes them cheer again. The audience loves them so desperately that Sabine feels frightened of their love.

Parsifal raises his hands. “This is, in all ways, an extremely difficult performance, and if it is to be accomplished, I will have to request absolute silence.” They are off like a light switch. There is barely the sound of their massive, collective breathing. He motions for Sabine to walk in front of him. “Sabine,” he says.

Sabine doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go or what is supposed to happen. She wonders if this trick will involve her body, if she is in some way supposed to pass through him or be cut into pieces or float in the air, and while she is apprehensive, she is not afraid. She knows her work. She knows work in the deepest part of herself, and she knows Parsifal. She walks ahead of him. She has not noticed the table before, but there it is, center stage. It is a regular table, not a trick prop. It is waist high, with slender legs and a thin, solid top the size of a record album. With its slight proportions the table reassures the audience that it is not designed to hide anything. All it has to do is hold one deck of cards, which it does.

A card trick?

“Please pick up the deck,” he tells her.

Sabine picks up the pack. It is absolutely good in its shrink-wrapped cellophane and its glued-down seal.

“Is the deck unopened and unmarked?”

“Yes,” Sabine says, and holds it out to the audience. Parsifal never used marked cards in his life.

“Please open the deck and remove the jokers.”

Sabine finds the tab on the wrapper and pulls it open. She breaks the seal with her thumbnail and pulls the deck out of the box, dropping the cellophane and the two jokers onto the floor.

“Please shuffle the deck.”

Parsifal steps aside and Sabine begins to shuffle. She’s glad she’s had some practice lately. She waits for his signs, his hand in his pocket, his right foot turning in, but none comes. There are no instructions on how to stack the deck and so she doesn’t. She shuffles for the art of it, for the form. She makes the cards move only in ways that are beautiful. When she is finished, there is a small swell of applause, but Parsifal silences it with a look. Sabine places the deck neatly in the middle of the table.

There must be a joke in here somewhere. It all seems a little portentous for a card trick, but when she turns to smile at Parsifal he is once again the man going into the MRI machine. He is Parsifal on the night of Phan’s death. He is pale and his face is shining with sweat. Sabine can see the veins rising in his temples, and she raises her hand to touch him but he shakes her off. “Silence,” he says, although this time he can barely manage the word.

He raises his right hand, as if he is lifting up the light scaffolding. The hand trembles beneath some terrible unseen weight. Then he lowers it slowly to the deck and taps the top card, one time, two, three. He stops to take a breath and Sabine wants to say to him, Forget this, whatever it is, forget it, but she is the assistant and she has to wait for his sign. He taps the deck for the fourth and final time. He sighs and smiles, a small, tired smile. He takes out his handkerchief and wipes his face again, making a slight nod of acknowledgment to the black hole that is the audience, because somewhere out there are Phan and Johnny Carson. “Turn over the top card and show it to the audience, please,” he tells Sabine.

Sabine does not know this trick, but she knows a show. She lets her hand hover in the air above the deck for just a moment as if she is afraid of what she might find. She is not afraid. She picks up the card and holds it in front of her, making a sweep from left to right, as if such a massive, faraway crowd can actually see this little piece of cardboard in the dark. “Ace of hearts,” she says, and puts the card face-up on the table.

“Second card, please.”

The deck is not stacked. She is the only one who could have stacked it and she didn’t. She holds up the second card. “Ace of clubs.”

There is a murmuring in the audience that even Parsifal’s looks can’t quell. His voice is weak. “Third card, please.”

They are waiting and Sabine makes them wait. She has never turned a card so slowly before in her life. “Ace of diamonds.” There is a gasp now, and Sabine makes part of it herself. The audience is on their feet. She can feel them trembling, straining towards the stage. Her own hand is shaking. She knows all the tricks and this is not one of them. It was not possible to stack the deck.

“Fourth card, please, Sabine.”

And when she lifts it up she cannot believe it herself. The audience comes on them like a wave, leaping onto the stage and sweeping Parsifal high into the air. They already know the answer. They do not need to hear her say it but she does, over and over again. “Ace of spades, ace of spades.” Someone tears the card from her hand. Parsifal is gone, riding out on the shoulders of the people. He turns, he tries to wave to her, and she waves to him, good-bye. The table has overturned. The cards are everywhere.