08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  After a quiet, watchful moment she was able to sigh and tell herself, Well, this isn’t the first time. Take it in stride. Live with it.

  But why today, of all days? What if things got really heavy like the other night, and she couldn’t tell the difference between real and weird right in front of Shirley or Mr. Collins?

  She went into the next stall and got to work. It was all she could do, the best she could do. She dug in, pitched the hay out the door, raked some more, pitched some more—

  Until she heard someone in the previous stall, pitching and raking. Oh, please. She wilted, rolling her eyes. Well, okay, live with it, but no messing around this time! Pitchfork still in hand, she dashed over and looked in the stall.

  It was all cleaned out, just the way she’d left it, and no one was there.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself. Just keep your mind and your eyes in the real world and don’t go anywhere else, especially today.

  As she showered, she tried to experience nothing but the hot water drenching her head and streaming off her nose and chin. As she stood in front of the bathroom mirror she tapped the side of her face to see if her reflection would do the same. Still there? Still Eloise? So far.

  Okay. This is real.

  What if he asks me how I do what I do? What if he expects me to levitate and I start seeing … he’s going to think … oh, bummer. I can’t go there.

  She put out a hand and touched the wall next to the mirror. You’re in the bathroom in the shop building. You have fifteen minutes to get down to the house and have lunch with Mr. Collins. It’s down that gravel path, the same one you came up with Shirley. Stay with it now.

  Dane had prepared a small lunch for himself. He’d set the breakfast nook table for two, just functional, not fancy. He was heating up some chocolate syrup to make a café mocha, not for himself but for Eloise, and for no other reason than to see if she liked them. Mandy always did.

  As he punched in the settings for a double shot—that’s how Mandy liked her mochas—he reassured himself once again that he was being rational. Yes, there were emotions involved, but he was aware of them, they were on hold, and he would deal with them with no denial. Yes, the very notion that she could be … that she was somehow … well, it was madness, self-delusion, a trick of emotions, hormones, and/or painkillers, but he was approaching this whole thing logically, at minimal risk. In his orientation interview with her that morning he’d slipped in perfectly acceptable, nonpersonal questions for an employer to ask and gotten a string of yeses: Yes, she’d worked on a ranch, had worked with horses, could drive a tractor, had done some plumbing and some carpentry, and this was information that would not have been publicly available—just like her beverage of choice. This café mocha would be another question, a tiny, risk-free inquiry. If she didn’t care for mocha he could always drink it.

  Oh! There she was, freshened up, in a clean change of clothes, hair shampoo-soft, looking timid, as if she were a troubled student and he was the vice principal. His first impulse was to smile and try to set her at ease. “Well, hello. How’d your morning go?”

  She returned his smile, but it wasn’t her real one. “I think it went fine. I got four and a half stalls done.”

  “Would you like a double-shot café mocha—decaf?”

  Now the smile was half real and the eyes widened with surprise. “Wow! That’s my favorite! Thanks.”

  Bam! Another yes.

  The look on his face made her look herself over. “What?”

  He got over whatever it was and laughed at himself. “Oh, nothing, I’m just … amazed. Boy, did I guess lucky! Have a seat.” He nodded toward the breakfast nook. She gravitated to the far chair facing the kitchen and checked by pointing at it. “Yep.”

  The table was set with plates, silverware, and paper napkins. She pulled her chair back and placed her sack lunch next to her plate.

  He brought her mocha as she sat down. “It’s dirty work, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  He had half a sandwich prepared for himself—a nice-looking stack of wheat bread, tomatoes, pickles, and what appeared to be prime rib, along with a cup of nonfat strawberry yogurt and a cup of coffee. He took the chair across from her. “Well, right, you’ve worked on a ranch before.”

  Well … in a way. “Uh-huh.”

  “Was that your home?”

  “Uh …” Come on, Eloise, answer the question. How? “Um … most of my life. I think.”

  “So you raised horses. Any cattle?”

  Her answer was a totally dumb-sounding “Uh-huh,” and it sounded so guilty a cop would have arrested her.

  “So I guess your dad was a rancher.”

  The answer stuck in her throat.

  “Oh, would that be too personal?”

  “Um … it could get that way.”

  “I understand.”

  She groped in her lunch sack and found some celery sticks with peanut butter. She bit off half of one just to stuff her mouth. He took a bite from his sandwich and there was sweet, safe silence.

  Not for long.

  “I knew some folks who raised llamas,” he said.

  It wasn’t even a question, but it stopped a stick of celery halfway to her mouth, and the look on her face made him check himself for a drool or a spill.

  “We raised”—she had to clear her throat—“we raised some llamas. Isn’t that a trip?”

  Now he had to mind what his face might be doing. Oh, yes, it was a trip, all right—and the vernacular had not gotten by him. “You—you really did?”

  “And my dad was an architect. We did ranching because we loved it.”

  “So that’s where you learned to drive a tractor and do carpentry and all that?”

  “My mom died when I was thirteen, so it was just Daddy and me to run the place. But Mom used to do all that stuff, and Daddy told me, ‘When you get married and have a family of your own, you’ll need to know all this stuff too so you can take care of them.’”

  He went for it. “And I’ll bet you raised doves.”

  All right, now, that was just plain creepy. Was it happening again? Her insides hurt the way they used to when her folks would catch her doing something wrong; her fingers were quivering as she groped for her lunch sack and peered inside. “Did you … ? What did you say?”

  He was studying her. She felt very looked at. “I said, ‘I’ll bet you raised doves.’”

  “Is, is this a magician thing you’re doing?”

  “A magician thing?”

  She pulled out her apple and cheese slices and didn’t take her eyes off them. “You know, uh, mentalism? Reading my mind? You’re really good. You’ve got me shaking.” She took a big bite. It was easier than talking.

  It was time to back off. “Oh, oh, no, no. It’s just luck, just probability. You grew up on a ranch, I just started guessing the animals on it. And the doves”—she never really answered that one, did she?—“well, doves are a staple for most magicians, you were a magician in your youth, on a ranch, so I thought you may have had some doves. I think we’ll be working with doves at some point, so I asked.”

  She looked relieved but kept on chewing.

  “So … you had doves?”

  She looked as if she hated to admit it, but finally she nodded, one cheek still full.

  Well, that was enough load for either of them to bear for now and still maintain the agenda that brought them together—oh, yes, there was that, wasn’t there? He took a bite from his sandwich and gave them both a break to depressurize. She took several more bites; apparently she was going to extend the silence as long as she could.

  Now he cleared his throat. “Anyway, getting around to my little opening sermon …” She was chewing and receptive. The pressure was off for now—soon to return, he feared. “I’ve seen you perform at McCaffee’s twice, and there was that time on the street …”

  She winced a little and said, “Right.”

  “So I’ve seen you as a Gyp
sy, I’ve seen you as a Hobett, I’ve seen you as … well, let’s call her the Enigmatic Damsel in Distress … and I’ve seen you as a Secretive Attorney’s Client hiding behind, oh, let’s call it the Downey Doctrine: ‘Teach me and coach me and help me to be somebody but don’t ask me who I am.’ But that issue right there is the one I keep coming back to. Through all of this, I find myself constantly having to face the same fundamental question: who are you?”

  She’d run out of apple slices so she had no excuse for her silence. Even so, not a speakable word came to her. She thought, I’d love to know, but dared not tell him. She could only stare at him, tilt her head, and stare some more. One of her minds, one of her brains, one of her selves might know, but by now they were all so mixed up, like scrambled eggs.

  And maybe that was his point.

  Oh, thank the Lord, he’s going to keep talking. “You have to be sure about that for two big reasons. Number one: because knowing who you are, and liking who you are, are going to read right through to your audience. If you’re hiding from them, they may not be able to pin down what it is they feel about you, but they won’t be able to connect, and if that’s the case, you’ll never rise above that sea of magicians out there who all bought the same trunkful of tricks from the same catalog. Maybe you’ve noticed how a great trick in a bad magician’s hands can be a same old thing, klutzy and boring, while a mundane trick in a great magician’s hands can be a thoroughly entertaining experience. That should tell you something: the magic is in the magician.”

  He stopped and looked away, and the silence was awkward. He looked to her again, tried to speak but had to look down, stroking his face. “Anyway …” She got teary-eyed watching him. He drew a deep breath and tried again. “Anyway … getting to my point … you’re a natural. You can connect and charm and enchant better than some of the best performers out there. But I still get the sense you’re working a little too hard to get through and it’s because you’re hiding. All the characters you’ve tried—the Gypsy, the Hobett, the Client—they’re not you. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but any performer who knows herself and isn’t afraid to show it can wear any outfit and be any character and still come through. I’m sensing that you’re afraid to do that, that these other faces are there so you don’t have to be. If we can, I’d like to see if you can drop that barrier and touch your audience directly. You have the nature within you, the wonder, the joy of the experience. We need to turn those things loose so they flow right through without a bulletproof shield in the way. Am I making sense here?”

  Now, she was trying not to cry. He’d not only described her work; he’d also described her life. Her fingers went over her mouth, an unconscious gesture, as if she could bar her real self from bursting out and saying … well, such things simply could not be said.

  Dane had been piecing together this little speech for quite some time, gathering it like fallen apples from every moment he’d spent with her up until now. He knew it was right for her as a performer, which justified delivering it. That it was right for her as a person he hadn’t wanted to address, but now her silent gaze, her glistening eyes told him he’d addressed it anyway. His own emotional investment aside, maybe it was still for the best.

  He pushed ahead. “The second reason you need to know who you are is the nature of this business. Mark my words: if you ever achieve the level of success I think you’re capable of, you’re going to find yourself in a world that wants to repackage you and make you something you aren’t; they have to sell you, so they’ll put a face and a name on you that will be bigger and more glamorous than you really are. They’ll dress you up, stand you up, light you up, and print you up with the specific aim of squeezing every last possible dime out of you, and if you do not know who you are, you’ll make the same fatal mistake so many others have made: you’ll believe them. You’ll buy what they’re selling, thinking it’s you, and oh, the euphoria, the cloud-nine high you feel!

  “But it’s all a lie, and lies don’t last. When the commodity they have made you has outlasted its marketability—when the stores start returning all the T-shirts and school folders and posters and lunch boxes and coloring books that have your face on them—when nobody wants to buy ‘Eloise Kramer’ anymore, they’ll pitch her into the nearest Dumpster, they’ll recycle all the paper and cardboard, and they’ll make room for the next big star, and then who will you be?

  “Ask those who have gone before you, the ones who thought the business, the crowds, the applause defined them. It’s no picnic betting your soul on a personality, an image that is other than you, because when you lose the bet, you end up sitting alone in your room and there’s nobody there.”

  She was wiping her eyes with her napkin. He could plainly see he’d stirred up all kinds of little ghosts inside her. Once again, it was time to back off.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Now, I do remember what you said about thinking you’re somebody else, and I wonder if, at least as long as you’re around here, you might not trouble yourself about that? You are somebody. Just be that. That’s how I’m going to play it. During all your training, I’m going to assume that you are not the Gypsy or the Hobett or the Attorney’s Client, or any other face that comes along, but yourself, however you may emerge over the days and weeks. And if you need permission, if you need someone to tell you it’s okay to be who you are, I’ll do that for you. Can you look at me, please?”

  Her blue eyes returned from a moment of reflection and he saw in them a longing she’d never shared before, a hunger so deep it seemed a life’s store of wisdom and answers might never satisfy it. “When you are here on this ranch, when you are working, when you are learning from me, you may be yourself. It’s all right. It’s perfectly safe. Do you understand?”

  She broke into sobs, her voice quaking. “I don’t know who she is.”

  Pay dirt. He got a little excited and pointed. “That. That right there, whoever’s crying right now, whoever’s feeling, whoever just said that, that’s you. Let’s work with her.”

  chapter

  * * *

  25

  Daddy used to say one of the big rewards in life was looking back at a job well done, and you had to have done it to know. Cleaning out a stall in a barn was not glamorous, definitely not cushy, but in Eloise’s frame of mind on a snowy Tuesday morning, the work had a good old feeling to it, stirring something deep inside that left her better than she would have been.

  Being solitary was part of it, by herself in a place by itself, raking, lifting, and pitching, her thoughts free to relay through her mind and no sound in that barn-tainted air but the rustle of the straw and the soft chime of the pitchfork tines.

  The memories were part of it, memories this place brought back from not so long ago. They were Mandy’s, but Eloise had permission, so she let them return and drank them in: the quiet nicker of the horses, the steam on their breath, and the thumping of their hooves; the continuous, brown-eyed stare of the llamas; the cooing and head bobbing of the doves; the smell of tractor exhaust and diesel and the black smear of grease on her gloves.

  Permission, yes, permission was part of it. Wow. Never mind whether Mr. Collins had the power or right to change the rules, he just did it, and ever since yesterday’s session warm little fires began to glow inside her, thawing things out, waking things up. What had she thought that night when he first came to see her perform, that he was some kind of window to somewhere she’d been? Though she hadn’t a clue whatever gave her such a notion, her first day under his tutelage made her all the more a believer.

  Mr. Collins started with conventional stuff right there in the breakfast nook, going through palmings, flourishes, loads, and steals, just talking, teasing, loosening up over coffee until he had an idea what she could do and she had time to get comfortable. He never said that was his plan, but it probably was, and it worked. After an hour of gentle guidance and good laughs, she was sure he wouldn’t bite her and she wouldn’t have to die of embarrassment.

&
nbsp; When she was ready, they moved into the makeshift restaurant in his dining room, three tables with tablecloths and dishes set out as if someone were sitting there eating or having coffee. He took a seat at one table and became her audience.

  Before she could start she had to know—and she was afraid to ask, “Do I … do we need to talk about how I do the tricks?”

  To her surprise, he didn’t care to know. Apart from proper technical execution, he said, the “how” didn’t matter. What mattered was the “magic,” what her audience experienced. If all they brought away from her performance were question marks, she’d shortchanged them. It was never to be a case of “I can do something you can’t” but rather “I’m glad to be with you so we can have a grand time together.”

  “It’s not about you or your ego, it’s about them,” he told her. “To categorize it, you’re after three things: rapt attention, laughter, and astonishment, and all three of these have one big thing in common: they’re human. They’re about unique moments and feelings. They create memories, and that’s what good showmanship is all about.”

  And that was his guiding principle as she did her show and he commented.

  “I love the wonder in your eyes,” he said. “Never lose that. You might do the same trick a thousand times, but if you never lose the wonder, you’ll always pull them into the experience and they’ll feel it with you.”

  “Oops, watch your body position; you just lost this table over here. There! Play in that arc right there! Now we can all see you.”

  She faltered the first few minutes, but he cured that by giving her attention, laughter, and astonishment, as if he’d never seen her act before. Maybe he was role-playing for teaching purposes, but she bought it and drank in everything he told her.

  “Hold the cards up about chest height so I can see them over all these heads in front of me. That’s beautiful. See? Now I can enjoy your facial expressions at the same time.”