08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  “Yeah, I guess, when I’m feeling up to it …”

  She leaned, resting her elbows on the counter—she was so short it wasn’t much of a lean. “If I may …”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  She nodded. “You’re dragging so much you’re scuffing the floor. You need to get out of here and just do something. Go into Coeur d’Alene, look around. There’re some malls, there’s Eddie Bauer, there’s Inland Outfitters …”

  And there was the Pendleton Wool Store on Sherman Avenue in the heart of the town, one block up from the lake, two blocks over from the big resort. It was an embracing little store that made him feel warm just going in the front door.

  “And just what are you looking for?” the nice lady asked.

  He had no clear answer, and he felt like a fool. What the heck was he doing in here? What was he doing in Idaho? “Uh … I guess I need some warm clothes for winter.”

  She got him started on the basics: socks, gloves, a casual, not-too-fancy sweater that had pockets and zipped up the front, two hats: a wool cap—without a ball on top—to wear out in the yard, and a very male western hat for looking studly. He picked out a scarf to go with the hat, something that would give him that rugged, Louis L’Amour look once he got a hefty, fur-collared coat. “I’d try Borris’s Western Wear for that,” she said. “Up on 95. And if you need long underwear, try Inland Outfitters. They have a whole line of polypros, a lot less bulky. And boots, too—and I don’t mean galoshes, I mean a man’s kind of boot.”

  So there, he’d done some shopping after a whole lot of traipsing. He stepped out onto Sherman Avenue with the western hat on his head, the gloves on his hands, and the rest of his new stuff in a shopping bag, feeling as much better as new stuff could make him feel, which wasn’t a whole lot.

  The wind moved up the street, fluttering the leaves still on the ornamental trees and scattering those on the sidewalk, and there was that October chill, a little warning nip on his face to trouble him, Are you ready? Are you ready?

  “No,” he answered.

  He knew where he’d parked his newly purchased, low-mileage, extended cab Dodge pickup with four-wheel drive—his replacement for the BMW—but he just plain didn’t want to go there. That rig, just like the hat on his head and the bag in his gloved hand, struck him now as so much a part of this whole reefing, wrenching, uprooting change that he’d only made worse by moving here in the first place. What in the heck was he thinking?

  The cold wind nipped at him again. No, he wasn’t ready. He might never be.

  The wind swept the heat from him; he could feel the cold through his light jacket, his Vegas jacket. Fine, he would go pick up a coat, maybe some long underwear and boots, and then head back home to his big, stupid, empty house.

  “Hey, meester! Vould you li-eek to see a treek?”

  The tacky street Gypsy with her card tricks. He’d seen her across the street earlier, flourishing those cards and accosting people for tips. He’d managed to avoid her until now.

  She fanned the cards, then held them like a fan, undulating in a standing dance, her long skirt trailing after her hips, and her arms making snaky moves. She thrust the cards toward him, her bracelets jangling. “Seelect a card, eenee card!”

  This was so bad. The Spanish blouse and secondhand shawl, the cartoony flowered head scarf, the cheap jewelry and stage makeup as thick as a mask—in October, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho? From here he could see maybe four people out on the street, certainly en route to somewhere indoors. No one was lingering on the sidewalk benches, and the eating establishments had pulled in their sidewalk tables and chairs. Maybe this town didn’t have any busking ordinances, but for this poor girl’s sake it should. She was in sandals. She wasn’t wearing a coat, only her costume. Her hands were red from the cold, and a drop was forming on her nose.

  Oh, all right, he felt sorry for her. He pulled a card from the fanned deck.

  She waved her hand in front of his face in a magical, hypnotic gesture, “Do not let me see eet! Study zee card! Write eet een your my-yeend!”

  Six of clubs.

  She’d squared up half the deck and directed him with a witchy finger to place his card on top. As he stood there, drawing upon his dwindling patience and getting a bit cold himself, she went through the routine, shuffling, counting, flashing cards around. He knew the trick, and she wasn’t doing it very well. The six of clubs was in the stack of cards she placed in his hand, not in the five—actually, four—she kept.

  “Now”—she backed away for the big finish—“I haff not touched you, no?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me eef you feel somezing.” She tightened her lips, got buggy-eyed, and flexed the cards in her hand with an audible snap. “Zere! Deed you feel zat?”

  Well. What would he want his subject to say? “I think maybe I felt something, yes.”

  “Look!” She spread out the five cards faceup—except now there were only four. “Oh, what ees zees? I have only four cards!”

  He could have acted more surprised. “Oh, well, look at that.”

  “I have dawn eet! I have sent your card to yoo!”

  He raised an eyebrow for effect and looked down at the deck in his hand.

  “Look through zem! Now!”

  He fanned through the cards, all facedown except …

  “Hey!” The six of clubs, faceup among the others.

  “A good treek, yes?”

  He smiled at the cards in his hand, then gave them back. “Yeah. Good trick.” He turned to leave.

  She had a can on a lanyard around her neck, and gave it a little shake, jingling some coins. From the sound he could tell business had not been good.

  He reached for his wallet. “Aren’t you getting cold out here?”

  That must have made her think of her nose. She dabbed it with a corner of her shawl. “I do not my-yeend.” Her other hand was holding out that can expectantly, and her eyes were full of hope.

  He fumbled his gloves off, then pulled out a twenty and dropped it into the can.

  Her eyes got big—they looked even bigger under all that eye shadow. Obviously a twenty was a new experience. Maybe paper money was a new experience. “Ohh! Sank you! Sank you, sir!” She was starting to hunch her shoulders and cross her arms against the cold.

  “Better call it a day. You’re going to catch pneumonia out here.” He turned to walk away.

  “Oh, but wait!”

  Now he’d done it. She was following him. “Vould you lie-yeek to see anozair treek?”

  He wanted to say no without slowing or turning around, but that would have been mean, and here she was all by herself and the Bible always had something to say about caring for the poor, and … He stopped. She caught up with him, wielding that deck of cards and looking up at him with imploring eyes. Blue eyes on a Gypsy!

  “I know anozair! You weel love eet!”

  He studied her face under all that makeup. She was very hard not to like, and so young. He shouldn’t be encouraging this. “Gal, you really need to find another line of work. You shouldn’t be out here on the street all by yourself.”

  She must have been very hungry, too. She was starting another trick already. “Zees ty-yeem you just touch a card, eenee card …”

  He held up his hand. “Wait.”

  “Eet ees a good treek!”

  He grabbed his wallet and fished out another twenty. “Let’s do that other one again.”

  That befuddled her. “Oh, meester, I cannot—”

  “Do the same trick twice, I know. But … if I may …”

  She was looking at him warily, her weight shifted away from him. He planted the second twenty in her tip can. She still looked suspicious.

  “Your fingers are getting cold, aren’t they?”

  She looked at her hands and gave a little shrug of denial.

  “I could see the steal when you were counting.” He looked up and down the sidewalk. There was nobody close enough to see or hear anything. “Th
e rest was okay—well, you drew a little attention on that double undercut—don’t watch what you’re doing so much, look your audience in the eye, get them to look at you and not the cards.” He reached tentatively for her hands. “May I?”

  She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no either. He showed her a better dealer’s grip, moving her fingers into position around the deck—her fingers were like ice. He showed her how to fan out half and control the first card returned on top of the selected card. He adjusted her little finger as it held a gap in the cards near the back of the deck. “When you set up the break—I know it’s cold out here, but try to use just the tip of your little finger and don’t let me see it. You see there? Tilt the pack up toward my eye level so I don’t see it, and watch for the people on your right. Use your right hand to cover. Now …”

  Slowly, one step at a time, he guided her hands through the moves. “Okay, try the count again, and move in deeper with the right hand. That’s it. Right hand covers the steal. Oops, don’t let that edge hang out. Try again. Keep that left hand moving so it draws the heat. They’ll tend to watch the hand that’s moving. There, that’s it!”

  He took her through the routine up to the finale, the selected card mysteriously transferred into his hands. She’d have plenty of homework to do, if she did it.

  But now her eyes were tearing up as she slowly shuffled the cards. He hurt her feelings. “You okay?”

  She just nodded. “I am veree sankful, sir!”

  “I hope I haven’t offended you.”

  She shook her head emphatically. “Oh, no, no sir! I am just so glad zat you cared … to show me. Eet ees just as my faw-zere used to show me.”

  “Well, I showed you the trick, but …” He hesitated. “But, uh …”

  She was listening, her eyes on him. And she was shivering.

  “You need to get home, you’re freezing. You live around here?”

  “I am staying at—”

  “No, no, don’t tell me. Never tell a stranger where you live. Uh … oh, brother, just hold on a second.” He dug into his bag and pulled out the wool sweater. “Here.” He draped it around her shoulders. It was big on her, but right now that was a good thing. “Listen, I gotta go. You’re getting cold and I have some more stops to make, so just let me tell you for your own good—I’m being honest, okay? This … this gig is all wrong. You’re going to freeze out here and the season’s over—if there ever was one.”

  She just listened, dabbing her eyes and pulling the sweater close around her.

  “You need to get some indoor gigs, maybe kids’ birthday parties. Kids are always having birthdays and parents talk to each other so they’ll be your best advertising. You work as an independent contractor, you set up your own gigs, you do your own payroll and taxes. It’s great experience, it can be good money—not great money, but good money, and steadier than this. Warmer, too. But you need another persona, a better shtick. This, this Gypsy fortune teller thing, the costume, the accent … it’s not marketable. Moms and dads won’t want you around their kids and the businesses—the fun zones, right? Chuck E. Cheese, a theme park, a, a family center—they aren’t going to want you in their establishment because you’re not … you’re not ‘family,’ you know what I mean? You represent deception, dishonesty, maybe a little bit of temptation, you know?”

  She looked as if she were trying to be brave even as tears came to her eyes again.

  “No, no, please, I’m all for you, you understand? I want you to come out of this thing a winner. But the other thing about the Gypsy shtick is … well, it just isn’t you. You’re just not wearing it well. You need to be yourself. Find who you are and be that, and then—”

  He saw a city police car coming their way down Sherman. “Do you have a permit?”

  “A permeet?”

  “Did you get a permit from the city to be out here doing business on their sidewalk?”

  That stung her. “I didn’t know about zat.”

  “Ehh, you don’t look like it.” He went for his shopping bag again and produced the wool cap. “Better put this on, right now.” He put it on her, covering most of her head, her scarf, and her face. “Take this bag and walk with me.”

  She picked up the shopping bag and walked alongside him, face toward the storefronts as the police car passed by.

  “I don’t know what the rules are in this town, but you’d better find out. You don’t want to get in trouble with the cops. But I was starting to say, magic isn’t just tricks. It’s a whole experience; it’s a story, an adventure that draws people along. You’re not going to hold people’s attention as long as you’re performing in fragments, just, you know, tricks. Did you notice how you had to run after me? The people see you do one trick, they think you’re done, they move on, and you get nickels and dimes instead of dollars. And you think they’re going to spread the word about you? They need to see a show, something to hook ’em and make ’em stay even if it’s only five minutes long.”

  He stopped and looked into those eyes. “Listen. I wish you the best. But keep learning, and …” He indicated her Gypsy outfit. “Don’t settle for this. You find … find the real person inside you, the one God made. I think people will like her.”

  She thought that over a moment, a strange sadness in her eyes, and then she stopped and shed the sweater. “Sank you so much. I should go.”

  “No! No no, you keep the sweater, keep the hat.”

  She pulled off the hat. “No. I cannot be owing to you.”

  “No! Keep ’em. Please. I’m going. I don’t want anything else from you. I’m just … I’m going. End of encounter.”

  She looked at him, the tears starting to streak her makeup. “Are you sure?”

  “You’re going to take good care of them, right?”

  “Always.”

  “All right then. Square deal.”

  She worked on that a moment, but apparently the cold—and now being able to protect herself from it—persuaded her. With a quaking sniff, she pulled the sweater back around her body and the hat back on her head. “Sank you,” she said in a feeble Gypsy voice. “You are so very kind.”

  “I’m so sorry if I hurt you.”

  “No, no, eet ees not you. You have not hurt me. You have helped me. Sank you.” She gave him a little bow.

  “You’re very welcome,” he said.

  “You are right. Eet ees cold. I should go home now.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Get warm.”

  “May God bless you.”

  “And God bless you, too.”

  “Sank you again, so much.” She gave him a polite bow and started up the street, wiping her eyes, quickening her step to get away.

  He watched her go until he thought he might be staring and looked down at his shopping bag, hanging open. He grabbed it up. Much lighter now. He looked up the street again, but she was gone.

  chapter

  * * *

  11

  The girl who called herself Eloise stepped quickly, keeping her face toward the storefronts and away from the street. That was all she needed, another run-in with the cops, and dressed very, very far from normal—as usual! So much for playing a Gypsy. She was playing embarrassed now, and vulnerable, and awkward, and … well, naked wouldn’t be that far off. This didn’t feel much different from that day on the fairgrounds. She hung a left and took the first cross street to get off Sherman.

  Who was that guy? Out of nowhere, in no time, he hit all the right buttons to make her cry: he gently touched her, taught her, reminded her of her father, told her to find the real person inside. And she didn’t even get his name!

  Keep walking, keep walking… .

  She found any excuse to scratch her neck, brush her hair from her face, hold her cap on her head, anything to block a view of her face from the street.

  A few blocks north, a right turn, two more blocks, and she made it safely to Sally and Micah Durham’s place, a halfway house run by the nicest family on the planet and her
home for the past two weeks. She felt safe once she got inside the door—“Hi, it’s Eloise, I’m home!”—safer once she chucked the Gypsy outfit, and safest of all after a shower where the Gypsy face went swirling down the drain.

  Standing in front of the bathroom mirror in a white camisole and blue jeans from the thrift store—God bless them!—she looked at her washed face, now a blank slate, a blue-eyed question. Who was she? Who should she be? Mandy Whitacre was a fugitive from the nuthouse who might or might not be who she thought she was and would do best not to talk about herself; the Gypsy Girl was only a role and a not-so-great idea, since she wasn’t family-friendly or even legal on the streets.

  She’d better just stay with Eloise.

  Eloise was nineteen, born January 15, but in 1991; she was young and pretty. Her hair, now towel-dried and tousled, was cut short, layered, and colored brown. Her reflection in the mirror looked troubled because she was.

  She claimed she had no family and was running from an abusive boyfriend she would not name and preferred not to talk about. She had no ID, no driver’s license, no way to prove who she was … but no one could disprove it either, so far. The Durhams and the two other girls staying here knew she was holding out on them, not telling them everything, but for now that was okay. She could talk about things when she was ready—which she supposed would be never.

  Eloise knew about computers, DVDs, CDs, cell phones, digital cameras, and MP4 players—at least, that’s what she wanted people to think, so she was faking it until she really did know. She’d been catching up on who was president, where the latest wars were happening, what some of the popular songs were, and what TV shows people were following. She noted that only older folks used words like “bummer,” “far out,” and “heavy trip,” and only as leftovers from their younger days. “Cool” was still around, but now “like” and “I’m like” got stuck in everywhere, at least as much as “you know” used to be.

  Eloise, like the other girls, was supposed to be looking for work if not employed, but—of all the years to land in!—2010 was a bad year for job-hunting, especially for a girl who’d been majoring in theater and was mainly skilled—well, maybe not so skilled after all—in magic. She could type but knew nothing about computers (her little secret); thanks to the father her other self must have had somehow, she could fix things around the house, knew quite a bit of carpentry and plumbing, could give a car a tune-up if it wasn’t built too long after 1970, was a good cook, and knew how to take care of horses, llamas, and poultry, including doves. She was good with people and, she figured, could do fair to middlin’ as a waitress, a housekeeper, a live-in domestic, a ranch hand, a cook, a bottle washer, a feather duster … just give her a job!