Three Messages and a Warning (13 page)

Our hotel is luxurious and modeled on Greek antiquity. I start up the hot tub, where I find salts, foams, and champagne. “Make it quick! We’ve got a dinner appointment with my partners!” says my husband. I obey.

In one of the hotel reception rooms we find ourselves among couples that mirror my husband and me: a rich old man with a flabby body puts his arm around the waist of a young woman endowed with slim proportions and a firm body. There is only one couple that clashes: one of the old men decided to bring along his ex-wife, a woman only six or seven years younger than he. He doesn’t touch her. They walk separately.

“Ladies don’t gamble, it’s not elegant!” affirms one, the smoke from his Cuban cigar penetrating our silken gowns. One of the women says in an infantile and whimsical voice that men pay her to hear: “You boys go out now and win lots of money so we girls have something to spend!” Immediately, her fat patron rewards her, giving her a wad of one-hundred-dollar bills. My husband has no choice but to follow suit. I take the money from him and smile to myself, knowing that I should come back with no less than eighty percent of it and an explanation that I couldn’t find anything worth buying.

The couples separate. The men go to the best casino. The women—commanded by Evelyn, the eldest and the one with the most experience in Las Vegas—go to a magic show. “Who wants to go shopping?” she asks, and, without waiting for them to answer, she waves her arm bedecked in jewels and cosmetics that cover her age spots. Accustomed to always having others decide their destiny for them, they all board the limousine without replying. Jessica is excited. She likes all things related to luck. She hopes that the magician will be a fortune-teller, one who reads Tarot cards, but at least initially it appears that he belongs to the lineage of illusionists. “All of you, observe this coin,” he commands the public, “the price of happiness, as it disappears and reappears in the shape of your heart’s desire.” Jessica, who for the first time in a long time is interested in what is happening around her, thinks of the Tarot. She wishes to know her future, to know if there will be another man in her life, other trips. The magician’s coin is transformed before the eyes of all into a deck of cards: and as luck would have it, it’s the Tarot. It is all part of the act, of course, but Jessica insists on interpreting these events on a personal level. Her own thoughts caused the coin to reappear in the shape of the Tarot. She influenced the magician’s will, and her assumption is reinforced by the fact that he approaches her table. Of course, he must approach all the tables; it’s part of the show. But she doesn’t know this or doesn’t want to know it.

Jessica observes the ballerinas and remembers listlessly the time when she dreamed of being an actress in musical comedies. The stage lights change colors: the magician is going to bisect one of the plumed ballerinas. Smiling, the dancer climbs into a trunk. The magician opens and closes the hatches. All eyes are fixed on the young lady with the perfect body, not a single gram of fat or cellulite. Her curved and straight lines achieve such harmony that, at last, to the public’s delight, she is destroyed. The saw has carved the young lady in two. Though everyone is familiar with this act, they applaud enthusiastically: especially Jessica, who imagined her husband in the trunk in place of the dancer, first whole then split apart. A dye the color and texture of blood responds to the magician’s act of aggression. Some of the spectators grimace. The magician bows. The young lady reappears, repaired, while Jessica’s husband, too, remains
alive.

As they are leaving the show Evelyn abruptly remarks, “That was fantastic! Tomorrow we’ll come back with the men.” Jessica senses a small slip of paper in her closed hand and a glimmer of hope stirs within her. She can’t remember how it came to be there, but she’s certain of its significance. For the other women the magic show was interesting, even astonishing; for Jessica it was predestined. She knows that she will contact the magician, and she considers the favor she will ask of him.

The magician sleeps during the day. He dreams of his image appearing in the retina of a pair of formidable black eyes that gaze beseechingly. The number he wrote on that little slip of paper is dialed and his phone rings. He answers in Spanish because he still has not yet entirely woken up. Jessica thinks that this too is the work of destiny and she is happy, for her mastery of English is even more ludicrous than her mastery of her husband. “It’s me,” she says, and the magician understands. He imagines her in her bathrobe, pretending she is calling room service, while her proprietor soaks his fat body in the perfumed water of the bathtub. “Hurry up, Jessica!” demands her husband. The magician seizes the opportunity: “In the bar in the lobby of the Flamingos Hotel at noon.” “Right, and don’t forget the orange juice,” she responds.

At noon the magician is no longer the magician. It’s like meeting a movie star in a discount pharmacy. On the other hand, Jessica is as striking as always. She shines even brighter in the light: her slightly bronzed skin looks smoother; her straight black hair glistens from her bangs to her waist. Her charm is entirely natural, with the exception of her nose. She’s had plastic surgery, thinks the magician, who always wanted to be with such a woman and who, despite his recent string of good luck, has only enjoyed such women as spectators or for brief encounters such as this one. The trouble is that magic, though verging on the supernatural, never really manages to transform lead into gold.

“That trick with the saw,” she asks, faltering, “can it be modified?”

“What do you mean?” he asks, surprised that she would be curious about the technical aspects of the show.

She smiles nervously but stays silent. The magician encourages her:

“What sort of modification did you have in mind?” he replies, acting as if he were extremely interested.

Jessica expands on her question:

“Could it happen that the cut-up body doesn’t come back together again?”

“What? Oh, sure, sure,” he laughs. “That was done in France at the Grand Guignol.”

“But did the person really die?”

“What person?”

“Well, anyone, really. I mean, is it possible that the individual might really die and no one would notice because they would think it was all part of the act?”

Their eyes meet. The magician’s gaze captures each frame of her body’s motion as she crosses her legs: her black high-heel shoe rises, traces a half circle around her shin and comes to rest about a foot from the bar floor. The magician’s imagination takes over from there, recreating the same motion on his bed where Jessica sits nude, stripped even of her stockings, wearing only her high-heel shoes. He swallows his saliva.

“How long will you be in Las Vegas?” he says.

“Two days,” she answers in a manner reminiscent of a princess in a fairy tale held hostage by a dragon.

When Jessica glances at her watch the magician is confirmed in his everlasting belief that he himself lacks attractiveness, that magic is the only magnet that attracts women to him, and he resorts to a trick. He takes out a deck of cards, allows her to check it for normalcy, and asks Jessica to pick one. She picks a Queen of Hearts and hides it under both hands. “Was it this one?” he asks her, spreading out the deck with consummate skill. All the cards have become the Queen of Hearts, to the delight of his audience. Jessica smiles and forgets her haste. For about twenty minutes the magician performs one trick after another and Jessica loses track of time. When he stops, she remembers that she has a husband and must go.

“I can change your destiny.”

“Really?” she murmurs sweetly, “You’d really do that for me?”

“So long as you do something for me in exchange . . .”

Jessica flips back her hair. She imagines herself a widow, free, saved by a trunk, a saw, a pair of swords, and a beguiled magician . . . Well, at least it won’t be as unbearable as doing it with my husband, she thinks as she and the magician ride the elevator to his room.

During sex none of his movements deserve to win a film contract, much less a prize. He is only thinking of himself. Jessica, however, is thinking of her husband. And for the first time, thinking of him makes her happy.

Back in their Greek-style hotel, Jessica’s husband argues with the wives of his business partners.

“You just don’t lose a person like you lose track of a package,” he says furiously.

A bellhop hands him a wireless phone and, ill-humored, her husband takes it.

“Where are you? The other woman came back over half an hour ago . . . all right . . . all right, then!” he shouts. He presses the end button and orders a taxi to pick her up some three streets away from a shopping mall where, according to Jessica, she was waiting for the other women.

“She says she was window-shopping and you all left her behind.”

None of the women contradict him, nor do they dare raise the subject amongst themselves.

It’s nearly dawn. Some gamblers, clustered around a roulette table, hold their breath: her husband among them. He’s bet twenty rectangular chips each worth five hundred dollars. His stubby reddish fingers rap on his gold lighter. I hope he loses. I hope they all lose. Damned luck: why does it always favor the rich? “Are you happy, Jessica? Your husband’s a winner, sweetie,” he’ll say. I hate it when he calls me sweetie. Then he’ll have to celebrate, of course. He’s going to take me up to our room, where he’ll want me to . . . but no, not this time: my luck hasn’t run out entirely.

Jessica’s husband has been losing at the roulette table for a while now, who knows how long? But he doesn’t stop betting. He doesn’t want luck to show up when he’s not around to seize the opportunity. He keeps going on and on. His bet remains the same. But he won’t be successful tonight. He realizes that when he has already left a merciless amount of money on the plush, green, felt-covered table. He’s depressed. He hasn’t even lost one percent of his wealth, but he can’t stand losing. He turns to his spouse. “You’ve cost me more,” he tells her resentfully. Jessica sighs.

Destiny, which according to Jessica rules all our lives, has led them precisely to the bar where the magician will perform. She prefers not to recall her pact with him. It was Evelyn who decided they should return. The magician is not there yet. When he finishes his show at the Fitzgeralds he will come here, sleep fifteen minutes in the dressing room, and then take his place two stories above the stage. He will observe Jessica with the very same group of Mexican women, and, of course, her husband will be seated beside her this time, flushed with whisky. “These shows seem to be getting worse every year, but for some reason they never go out of style,” remarks Evelyn’s ex-husband.

This time he will perform an escapist act in the great tradition of Houdini. A huge vertical aquarium in the center of the stage receives the magician who falls into the water, wrapped in chains, from the second story. He will have three minutes to free himself. Some people become distressed; others chat nonchalantly. “I’ve seen that trick a thousand times on television,” says Evelyn’s ex-husband, slurring his speech.

Another magician, a comedian, follows the escapist act and has the audience laughing. Jessica isn’t paying attention. She is trying to guess how the magician will get her husband in the trunk—not because of his fatness, he already promised her he would resolve that difficulty, but because her husband is not the type to freely participate in a stage show. Maybe he’ll hypnotize him, she thinks. She never for the slightest moment considers that the magician will not comply with his side of the bargain. She is convinced that her attractiveness will always cause men, in the end, to do what she wishes. When the magician (her magician) spins the empty trunk around for public inspection, Jessica is overjoyed. Her desires are perfectly fulfilled. The magician doesn’t ask his assistant to get in the trunk, rather he requests a volunteer, while turning deliberately toward Jessica’s table. The magician invites her husband, who waivers, but his wife insists, “You have to!” Emboldened by the whisky, Jessica’s husband gets up on stage. The magician imagines himself at the Grand Guignol and exerts himself to the fullest, pulling strings capable of creating for an instant a fictitious reality that will fool the eyes of the beholders. All those present will swear to having seen the fat man get in the trunk and be cut in half. From the saw drips a liquid the color and texture of blood. Jessica, accustomed to others shaping her future for her, impatiently awaits the rising of the curtain. She feels nearly free, nearly in control of her destiny, when the magician (who belongs to the lineage of illusionists) snaps his fingers and restores her husband to life . . . to Jessica’s life.