08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  “And now I see this same girl”—Arnie balked, waiting for words—“the blond hair. I just—”

  “It’s her natural color.”

  Arnie waved his hands as if erasing everything and starting over. “Okay. Umm, let me just spell it out for you and then you tell me if I’m wrong, okay? Friends?”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Hear me anyway.”

  He would have to. There was never any turning Arnie around. “Go ahead.”

  Arnie tiptoed, one word at a time. “You’re a widower, you’re lonely, you miss your wife, you have money and connections … and then, somehow, this young, good-looking, ambitious girl catches on that she resembles your wife.”

  Dane shook his head in dismay. “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You have no idea.”

  “That performance I saw today. That was Mandy. Move for move, the gags, the expressions, the hair, everything! She’s done some homework, she is into the role.”

  “Arnie—”

  “Dane. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, and so have you, come on.”

  “I coached her, remember.”

  Arnie rolled his eyes heavenward, seeking wisdom with a frustrated pat on the table. “All right. Let’s start here—and then you can talk me out of it. I’ll let you try, okay?” He took a breath and tried again. “Nobody can look and act that much like Mandy without really trying, and it’s easy to see that she has an emotional effect on you and knows it. She’s an incredible performer, but given what I’m seeing, I don’t trust her, and because I don’t trust her, I don’t like her, and because I don’t like her, I can’t be her agent. All right. Let’s start there. Go ahead.”

  Arnie took a bite from his barbecue beef sandwich and waited.

  Dane tried to think of a gradual way to ease into it, but finally resigned himself to the one overarching question in his mind. “What if she is Mandy?”

  She trailed the long central vacuum hose behind her as she moved up the stairs one riser at a time, running the brush head back and forth.

  Once upstairs, she ran the hose down the hall to the upstairs vacuum outlet, just past Dane’s bedroom door.

  The bedroom door was open.

  She looked in from the hall. Wow. It had its own fireplace—propane, neat and clean, with a carved mantel. Classy-looking dresser and a full-length mirror. The bed was made. Beautiful bedspread with big, fluffy shams against the headboard.

  Would there be—was it snooping?—a picture of his wife anywhere? She leaned in.

  Off-limits, Shirley’d told her.

  The closet door was open …

  She gasped, fingers over her mouth. Oh, no, you’re killing me.

  The gown—the blue gown from her vision on Christmas night—was hanging right there and looked exactly as she’d seen it: floor-length, a skirt that would float and billow when she spun, full, sheer sleeves, sequins that could throw diamonds of light upon the walls and ceiling, metallic embroidery about the waist and bodice. She knew that gown, every detail. She’d worn it in another world, another time. Hadn’t she?

  And she was dancing, wasn’t she?

  Ten steps in and ten steps back out again, that was all it would take. She wouldn’t touch anything. She darted to the south windows and looked toward the long driveway. Shirley’d gone home to take her son Noah to the dentist. Dane and Arnie wouldn’t be back for at least an hour.

  I’m not being sneaky. I just … it isn’t everybody who has visions like I do and then sees something … just a few seconds and I won’t touch anything.

  The step through the bedroom door brought a pang of conscience; the step through the closet door brought the fear of divine judgment.

  But her fingers took hold of the sleeve—just to lift it outward and have a look at it—then the shoulder—yes, same material—and then the skirt of the dress, feeling, remembering, and it was all so real, more than déjà vu. She held the sleeve beneath her nose and inhaled a scent she vividly remembered. Taking the gown on its hanger, she held it against her body—just her size.

  She put it back. No, better not.

  “She grew up on a ranch, she raised llamas, horses, and doves, her father’s name was Arthur, her mother’s name was Eloise. She knows how to do carpentry and how to fix a leaky faucet, her favorite coffee is a nonfat mocha—”

  Arnie held up his hand. “Dane, stop. Hold it a second.”

  “She dances like Mandy, she laughs like Mandy, she gets the same look in her eyes—”

  “Dane?”

  Dane stopped. He was running off at the mouth and knew it.

  “Dane, Mandy is dead. Pardon me for asking, but are you aware of that?”

  The answer stuck in his brain and wouldn’t go through.

  Arnie pressed in. “I was there with you at the hospital the day she died. When she died she was fifty-nine. This girl is nineteen.”

  “She’ll be twenty on the fifteenth.”

  Arnie’s voice rose despite his effort to keep it down. “What the—what difference does it make? She’s still a different girl, Dane, a different girl who is”—he lowered his voice but he was shaking— “who is forty years younger. Forty years!”

  Her jeans, shirt, and shoes lay in a neat pile on a chair next to the fireplace.

  The black formal slid over her shoulders and hips and conformed to her body like it was made to be there. She turned in front of the full-length mirror, holding a diamond necklace against her skin to see how it looked with the dress. She’d never worn anything so lovely.

  She found a pair of shoes that matched. They slid onto her feet like the glass slipper in Cinderella.

  The feeling!

  A white, sparkling gown and matching slippers fit just as well, draping from her body in such graceful lines that she had to dance like a princess, circling the room in front of the mirror as the skirt swished through the air and the jewels and sequins sparkled.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Dane admitted.

  Arnie’s sandwich lay half eaten on the plate. A waitress had come by to check on them. Arnie quickly told her they were fine, thank you. “Crazy. That’s right.”

  “But how else do you explain it?”

  “That’s what I’m warning you about.”

  “I got her four doves just to see what her reaction would be. She named them Lily, Maybelle, Bonkers, and Carson.”

  “Research, Dane. She’s smarter than you think.”

  “Those were the names of the doves Mandy had clear back at the Spokane fair. There’s no way she could have known that.”

  “She’s a magician, Dane, a very good one. She found out. Listen, there are things she does that neither of us have been able to figure out, but that’s how magic works, that’s the whole point.”

  “She has a way with doves. It’s how we met.”

  Arnie touched Dane’s hand and looked into his eyes. “Dane. Explain it to me. And listen to yourself as you answer.”

  “I can’t explain it. I’ve never been able to explain it.”

  “I’ve explained it. Now, can you come up with something better?”

  Dane’s mind had never been able to land on anything that made sense. “I only know what I know.” He was still amazed by the next fact even as he spoke it. “She has the same teeth, the same smile. She even smells like Mandy.”

  Arnie’s eyes stayed on him for one more brief moment, but then a gradual change like the sun going down came over his face. He eased back on his bench at a loss, disbelief and despair clouding his face. “Dane. Have you really come to that point? Have you really gone crazy?”

  A snappy pink dance outfit—his wife must have used it for the jazzier dance numbers and the contorted box illusions—slipped on as if made for her. The stagey shoes, the pants and cute waistcoat got her moving, finding a groove, and God help her, there was just something so right about it, as if in some way, in some nearby other world, the clothes were old friends, her music was their music, her moves their moves.

>   Arnie didn’t finish his sandwich. He didn’t finish the conversation either. “I’d better leave, right now!” he said, standing and stepping free of the bench.

  Dane had never seen his friend this way before. “Arnie, it’s so hard to explain—”

  “Stop. Don’t say another word. Don’t drive any more nails into this coffin.” Dane tried to say something but Arnie leaned down, finger in Dane’s face. “I’m saying this to your face, all right? Remember that I told you to your face: you have lost your mind and she is going to break your heart. She is going to use you, and then she is going to discard you.” He tossed some bills on the table. “And after she does, and you are the real Dane Collins again, a man with some sense and some kind of future, I’m not sure what, please give me a call. I’ll help you pick up the pieces.”

  “Arnie!”

  “Not another word!”

  “Book her on Preston’s show. Just that much. I’d consider it a real favor.”

  “And a monumental abuse of friendship!”

  With that he hurried to the front of the restaurant and spoke with the hostess. Dane caught the words “cab” and “airport.” It occurred to him that Arnie had left his travel case back at the ranch in the guest room, but … oh, well. He was Arnie Harrington. He’d never go back for it now.

  chapter

  * * *

  31

  There was still the blue gown. She told herself she wouldn’t touch it, but then her hand just fell on all these other things and one thing led to another and …

  The gown was in her vision, after all, and the embrace of love, the encounter with herself that came to her that night, were here now, in this room, in these clothes all hung according to color and occasion, in the jewels neatly arranged in little drawers, in the beautiful shoes in neat rows on two shelves.

  She ached for that blue gown as she looked at the clock beside the bed. Could she try it on and put it away in five minutes, ten at the max?

  Dane remembered seeing Arnie standing in the front window of Rustler’s Roost watching him go. He remembered giving Arnie a pitiful little wave as he opened the door of his car, and wondering how long it would take Arnie to get a cab of any kind in northern Idaho. From that moment to closing the door of his car in his own garage, the drive up Highway 95 and all the way back to Robin Hill Road was by rote. He didn’t remember it. His mind was elsewhere, everywhere.

  He hadn’t lost a friend, he knew that. That was precisely why Arnie had cut their visit short, to save the friendship. They’d bailed on each other before to depressurize and were always able to put it back together. Still, that didn’t remove the fact that this was one bleeding, messy feeling he had, as weighty as lead, and it wasn’t likely to go away until …

  Until what? Until he denied every little treasure he’d found in the girl, every flame of hope she’d lit inside him, every undeniable fact he’d gleaned that anchored his heart to hers? Until he slapped himself awake from a dream he’d always wanted, that wonderful, wishful state of heart that came uninvited, unexpected, and brought cleansing joy to his darkened state of mind?

  Such was love, he supposed. Love only made sense to a point, and beyond that, didn’t answer to logic or practicality, it just went on making people complete in its own mysterious way.

  And where would he be without it? That answer was easy. He’d been there already, and going back was not a happy option.

  As for what lay ahead, only God knew, so maybe he didn’t have to. It would all make sense someday.

  As he slipped quietly in the back door, just being home made him want to see her again, even if she was dusting the shelves or running the vacuum in her same old shirt and work jeans, even if the topic was emptying the vacuum canister or rotating the garbage cans. This house—and he—needed the sound of her voice, the prodding of her plans and intentions, the promise of her friendship.

  Her VW was parked outside. She had to be in the house somewhere.

  The golden-haired lady in the full-length mirror, glorious in her blue gown and shimmering jewelry, was too lovely, too regal to be she. From wherever the lady had been—and it must have been many wonderful places—she looked back into the bedroom at the cleaning girl and whispered what seemed impossible: “Mandy Whitacre.”

  And the cleaning girl whispered back, “I want to be you.”

  She clutched a fold of the dress and gracefully lifted it, striking a pose as the belle of the ball, and circled in place, a hint of a waltz, her feet barely lifting from the floor. From somewhere in her memory, the strains of Offenbach’s “Belle Nuit, o Nuit d’Amour” began to play and she began to sing the melody, stepping lightly, eyes closed, dreaming …

  There was a man in the doorway.

  She jolted and yelped as with an electrical shock, hands trembling before her face, insides so stressed she felt sick. “Ohh …” she said, and thought, I’m dead. Totally dead. Oh, God, I’ve ruined my life, I’ve ruined everything.

  The sight stunned him speechless, motionless. She was trembling, a cornered animal, trying to cover herself with her arms as if to hide—and the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on, just as she’d always been. Memories of Mandy in that dress came flooding back—the shows they did, the dance numbers, the illusions, the curtain calls. He’d kept it just for those memories, and now …

  She was back, standing right before him.

  She was falling apart, as if she’d been assembled with nuts and bolts and every nut was coming loose, every bolt was falling out, and every piece of her—her mind, her heart, her hopes, her ability to put one doggoned sentence together—was clunking to the floor. Her hands, though they tried, could never conceal her, never hide her. They finally went to her face, closing her in and covering her shame. In the dark behind them, she managed a broken, high-pitched lament, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her hands slipped down, uncovering her eyes—he was still there, still looking at her. She said again, “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t say a word and hardly moved except to sink into a chair near the door, never taking his eyes off her. He didn’t look angry. He looked … lost … broken.

  His lingering gaze made her look at herself, touch the lovely material, gently grasp and animate a fold of the skirt. “It’s just so pretty …”

  Then, meeting his eyes again, she read it, sensed it: he was looking at her, in no unkind or improper way, but in a way, she just now realized, she would have wanted—did want, as if the mirror were telling the truth, as if she really were the beautiful lady, as if she really could be …

  With a wag of his head and wonder in his eyes he said, “Mandy.”

  He could have hit her in the forehead with a beanbag. Her head jerked up, her eyes widened, and she gasped. What was this, another yes to another question?

  “I was going to tell you,” she said, her voice trembling.

  He felt for her. She was scared and in trouble. He smiled, and that helped. She quit trembling, drew some breaths to steady herself, and then smiled ever so sheepishly, her fingers over her mouth, a nervous giggle bubbling out. With decorum and honesty he looked her up and down, cocked an eyebrow, and sent her an approving nod. Those also helped. She let go a breath in what had to be relief, her smile broadening but still apologetic. Lifting a fold of the dress with each hand, she rotated once around, letting the dress rustle and billow in ladylike, ballroom fashion. She completed the turn with a repentant shrug, eyes anxious and asking.

  And how else could he tell her?

  He rose from the chair and came to her, eyes gentle and voice safely academic. “As you can imagine, this dress is best suited for a waltz.”

  Her left hand went to his shoulder by itself as his hand rested gently against her back. Her right hand took his left, and immediately, spirit-deep, she felt safe. The fear was gone.

  “What was that tune you were humming?” he asked.

  She sang it to him, and the steps just came, one-two-three, one-two-three, in a safe little box. He knew
the tune as well, and sang it with her note for note as he widened the pattern into an idyllic carousel about the room. The steps flowed without a thought as she followed his lead, the walls, windows, and furniture of the room passing like scenery behind him.

  When this room became many rooms, when her other worlds arose in this time and place with their shifting depths, bending dimensions, and blurring colors, his touch became her fortress, his shoulder a bulwark. From within his arms she could watch without fear where she was, where else she was, where she’d been, and where she’d be. Over his shoulder, for a fleeting shred of time, she saw her apartment—the windows, the kitchenette, her bed, and her watching them dance. Full circle, she thought. The other side of the mirror. Hi, Eloise! It’s me, Mandy! You were right! I’m dancing in the dress, with him!

  Completeness. The other half of every emotion. All he’d lost so tangibly present, as if the past few months had never happened.

  He might have drawn her in with an unconscious lead of his hand, she might have chosen it herself, but as the music faded from their voices and the waltz stilled from their awareness, her arm went around his neck, she rested her face against his shoulder, and he welcomed the firm closeness of her body against his, the curves of her waist and hips, the cashmere-soft warmth coming through her dress.

  Not reliving, but still living; not like then, but like always.

  She could have stayed here forever, real and timeless, no matter when or where or which world it was. The dance had fallen behind them, slipping into one of her forgotten pasts. While worlds and times swirled around them, she and Dane became the sun, the unmoving center of it all. She clung to him as to life, caressed his back and with a slight bow of her head kissed his hand, then kissed it again. He kissed her on the cheek.

  And this time she only had to turn her head.

  It was meant to be. It had to be. It was and he surrendered to it, incredulous and thrilled, remembering then, living now, lost in the taste of her lips and the scent of her hair, tracing the delicate shape of her neck, her ears, her face.