08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  “No, I’m not all right!” she cried, immersing her face in the sink, smearing on soap, sloshing and slobbering the water into and out of her mouth to cleanse herself. “I’ve been violated! I’ve been, I’ve been shamed!”

  “And you wanted to keep going?”

  “I told you, it’s my show!”

  “It’s my lounge.”

  She smeared on more soap and washed her face again. “No, I am not all right! What kind of town is this, anyway, they let people like that run around violating people right in front of everybody!” She was crying, even yelling in the sink, her voice bubbling in the water. She soaped her hands and face again.

  “This is Vegas,” Andy explained. “People can forget themselves—”

  “I am not all right, can’t you see that? And I’m not one of your stripper, show-it-off showgirl bimbo nincompoops! I’m Mandy Whitacre, Mandy Whitacre, and I have some dignity!”

  “You’ve already washed your face.”

  “Well, I haven’t!”

  “Listen, I should call a medic—”

  “No doctors!”

  “You should let them check you over.”

  “No, I’m not all right! Seamus should have known, he should have known this would happen. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m making sure—”

  “Well, try knocking!”

  “I came in here with you. You could hardly walk, remember?”

  “No, I am not all right! How many of you are there, anyway?”

  He shied back, hands extended as if she might attack him. “I’ll get a medic.”

  She saw herself in the mirror. “I gotta get out of this outfit. I gotta get out of here.”

  “Mandy, you’re upset, you’re beside yourself—”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “I’ll get someone—”

  “Get out of here! And you get out of here! And you, too!”

  Several Andys went out the door like a succession of instant replays. Mandy slammed the door shut, went to the mirror—the door slammed shut again, then again—saw her crimson, overwashed face and water-spiked hair with soap still in it; she’d splashed water and soap down the front of her costume, and there was a scary, psycho-banshee look in her eyes. If any medics came in here right now they’d inject her, take her away, and lock her up where doctors would give her pills, take away her clothes, her toothbrush, her freedom.

  … Get out of here! And you get out of here! …

  She toweled her hair, changed into her street clothes, and got out of there, leaving the place in a mess.

  She worked her way down the hall behind the lounge … and into the main casino, staying on the carpeted throughway next to the wall so the security guys wouldn’t bother her. She hurried by the banks of slot machines, the roulette table, her hand on the wall to keep from getting lost in the wrong world.

  … the roulette table …

  … changed into her street clothes …

  She couldn’t go home because she didn’t dare drive not knowing which car she was driving through which intersection and in what order. She thought she could sit in the Claim Jumper restaurant for a while, just have a salad, stay put, and wait out the storm. The restaurant was just off the casino floor, a short walk.

  She saw herself up ahead, hanging a left into the restaurant. Okay. It looked like it happened, or was about to happen. She followed herself.

  The hostess looked right through her, talking to somebody else. Mandy reached for a menu on the counter. Her hand passed through it. Wrong time. She ventured into the restaurant to do a quick visual search and spotted herself sitting in a corner booth, looking miserable and picking at a Cobb salad. All right, the corner booth. Now all she had to do was find the hostess who was here now.

  She went back to the front, and the hostess noticed her. “Good evening. Table for one?”

  “How about a corner booth?”

  “We have one.”

  When she got there, the miserable Mandy looked up and said, “I don’t want to talk to you! Go away!”

  “You go away!” She immediately had to tell the waitress, “Not you, I was talking to a bug.”

  The miserable Mandy dissolved. The booth was empty and the table was clean. Mandy sat down, ordered the Cobb salad, then anchored her hands to the tabletop to connect with the present world and wait until all the other worlds and times went away—if they ever did. The noise was terrible. Every voice, every spoken word, every jingle of a slot machine or clang of a jackpot was doubled and tripled upon itself, happening, having happened, going to happen, all at once. People walked by on their way to a table, then walked by again on their way to the same table, having the exact conversation as before. She overheard phrases from the tables around her several times before, while, and after they were spoken. Four people at one table sounded like twenty. She even heard conversations between people at tables that were empty, before the people arrived. She was sitting in the same restaurant again and again, all at the same time.

  Oh, God, help me.

  The waitress brought her salad, but it wasn’t there yet. She came again with the same salad, but Mandy could see the table through the leaves and plate. The third time, the salad was real. The fourth time she ignored it and paid attention to the third.

  But she could hardly touch it. How many times would she take the same bite, how many times would she swallow it? Maybe this was going to be one of those mythological hells, sitting in the same restaurant eating the same salad over and over again, bite by repeated bite, for all eternity, full and hungry at the same time, the plate empty, the plate full. She almost laughed, she felt like crying. From outside herself she was getting a kick out of this comedy, but inside she was the hapless foil it was happening to, and that girl was quietly, privately losing her mind over a plate of salad.

  She forked a few leaves into her mouth and chewed.

  Someone approached the table. It was she.

  Oh, why doesn’t she just leave me alone! “I don’t want to talk to you! Go away!”

  The other Mandy felt just the way she did, she knew. “You go away!”

  Mandy joined the other Mandy in telling the waitress who wasn’t there, “Not you, I was talking to a bug.”

  The other Mandy dissolved.

  The Mandy still sitting there slid the salad aside and propped her head in her hand.

  Tears came to her eyes. She let them flow down her face, but she was too exhausted to cry.

  She reached in her bag for her cell phone but withdrew her hand, leaving the phone there. It was just a thought: Call Dane.

  But that was over, didn’t she remember? She would never see the ranch, hear his voice, or feel his touch again.

  She picked at her salad because there was nothing else to do. If she stayed here and didn’t go anywhere else or interact with anyone, she shouldn’t be a danger. The medics or security or the police would find her eventually and take her where she couldn’t hurt anyone. Pills would make all the fear and hurt and disappointment go away.

  This bite tasted new, like she hadn’t had this one before.

  “Excuse me?” It was a quiet voice, just one, right here, right now. She looked up into the face of a lady she didn’t know. “Are you doing all right?”

  Mandy noticed it was quieter. The only people talking were the people who were really there, having conversations as they happened. The restaurant looked and felt like the only one happening. She looked again at the lady, a gal in her fifties, she guessed, still dark-haired, well built, and fully aware of it. She had a man with her, no doubt her husband. He was bald and, well, retired-looking, but he took good care of himself and looked proud to be in her company.

  Mandy wiped her eyes, feeling no need to mince words. “No, I’m not doing very well at all. Thank you for asking.”

  The lady put her hand on Mandy’s. “We saw your show tonight. Listen, kid, you were entirely in the right and we were proud of you!”

 
The man said, “If you hadn’t decked those guys I would have.”

  Fresh tears came to her eyes, but Mandy didn’t care. There would surely be a pill for it.

  “No, no,” said the lady. “Don’t do that. You’re an incredible performer! Just incredible! We were so proud!”

  You haven’t met the real me, whoever she is.

  The lady was still talking. “We were surprised that more people hadn’t heard about you.”

  “That’s going to change,” said the man with a smile.

  “Oh, I’m sure of that,” Mandy said glumly.

  Now the lady sat in the booth, opposite her.

  “Especially … well, maybe you won’t appreciate this, but you …” The lady shook a finger at her, wagging her head. “You look so much like …”

  “Mandy Collins. I know.”

  “A lot of people remember her, and you could be her daughter.”

  “I’m not. I’m Mandy Whitacre.”

  The lady smiled—in awe, it seemed—and exchanged a look with her husband. “Well, even that, that was something that caught our eye, your name, and then your face …”

  Mandy started to say something about needing to finish her dinner and go home, it was nice to meet them, blah blah blah, but she only got as far as “Well, anyway—”

  —before the lady kept going. “This is something only Terry and I would know about, our own little secret, but we used to know a Mandy Whitacre way back before you were born, and she was a magician, too, believe it or not, and that’s why we came to see your show. Your name was just so familiar, it was even spelled the same, and we just had to come and see, you know, what this Mandy Whitacre was like, and then”—the lady shook her head in wonder—“this is going to sound so unbelievable, but you look just like the Mandy Whitacre we went to school with. It’s just incredible.”

  Oh. Right. Went to school with. Okay, now it made sense. By now there were so many Mandy Whitacres out there, one of them was bound to bring along some old friends to liven up the party. Mandy could guess the answer even as she asked, “What school?”

  “North Idaho Junior College in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Of course, it’s called North Idaho College now, NIC.”

  Sure, of course. That’s where Mandy Whitacre—at least the Mandy Whitacre she thought she was—went to college, and of course some old friends from NIC would just pop up in a restaurant in Las Vegas at this late hour and they’d run into each other. Mandy went with it. At least when the medics arrived and saw her talking to people who weren’t there, they’d know they’d found the right person. Funny, though, how all the Mandys were the same age as she but these two friends were old, and there was something about the lady’s voice … something about her husband’s voice …

  “Terry?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, extending his hand. “Terry Lundin.”

  She gripped his hand and stared at him unabashedly, reconstructing his face from a memory only months old: wild, red hair like an explosion, black, horn-rimmed glasses, skinny like a road runner … he used to drive a Road Runner. They called him … “You’re … you’re Road Runner!”

  He was taken aback, astounded. He looked at the lady, she looked at him, and they reacted as if they were seeing a magic show again. He said, “Yes, that’s right!”

  “You are so amazing!” the lady exclaimed, and now the eyes, the wide grin, the naturally gaga expression, were unmistakable. Yes, Terry Lundin was her boyfriend in the summer of 1970. They were getting serious.

  And yes, it was her voice! Mandy did recognize it, and now the face … absolutely, positively, of course! “Joanie?”

  chapter

  * * *

  42

  The lady stared back at her. “How do you do that?” She looked at Terry. “How does she do that?”

  “Mentalism, right?” said Terry, delighted.

  Mandy smiled at what she was doing to herself. It was a great show, good enough to sit and watch. “Sure, what the heck. And I suppose I got it right?”

  The lady nodded. “Yes. My name’s Joanie. This is so weird.”

  “Joanie Gittel, right?”

  Now Joanie shifted backward, more than astonished. “How did you know that?”

  Even Terry was crinkling his brow. “She hasn’t been Joanie Gittel for thirty-nine years.”

  Mandy had no ill will against these nice folks. How could she when she was the one who created them? It was just the whole dumb situation, just being a total loon that made her start playing around with it. She looked carefully at Joanie, as if plumbing the depths of her mind. She even waved her hand in little hypnotic circles in front of Joanie’s face. “I see … I see … Coeur d’Alene High School … and Coeur d’Alene Junior High, and before that, Baker Elementary. Right?”

  Joanie was really stunned now, and that face, boy, it was the same face she made in Mr. McFaden’s class when she heard Kennedy was shot. She could only nod.

  “Oh, wait! Now I see a big gray house on Howard Road—except it’s green now and it’s a real estate office.”

  Joanie pointed at her, getting a spark of an idea. “You must be from Coeur d’Alene!”

  “Sure. Born in Spokane, raised in Hayden, went to school in Coeur d’Alene.”

  So they all laughed and said, “How about that?” and enjoyed the amazing coincidence and how small the world was.

  “But,” Joanie double-checked, “you’re not Mandy Whitacre.”

  Mandy arched a wizardly eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I mean, the one I knew.”

  “Well …” She went all mental again, closing her eyes as if seeing visions, wiggling her fingers as if picking up vibes from the great beyond. “That big gray house … your father had a ’57 Ford in an old garage next to the place, and there was a Gravenstein apple tree in the front yard, and you used to wait at the bus stop and catch the same school bus with Mandy every morning. You and Mandy were in the same class together in fifth grade … the teacher’s name was … Mr. Fleck, and, and, and … you and Mandy got in a fight once over who was going to marry Tom Burnside.”

  Joanie could hardly speak. “This is scary. You’re scaring me.”

  “We must have a mutual friend,” Terry suggested.

  Mandy kept going. “Mandy gave you her brunette Barbie, with a spring outfit …”

  Joanie shook her head. “Now, that I don’t remember …”

  “It had big flowers on it and came with a watering can and a little green shovel.”

  Joanie lit up. “The, the gardening outfit! You—Mandy felt sorry for me because—”

  “Because your dad ran over your Barbie with the lawn mower.”

  Joanie fell silent, visibly shaken. Terry slid into the booth and sat beside her, his arm around her. They were all eye-to-eye.

  “You went to NIJC in 1969,” said Mandy. “You weren’t sure, but you thought you wanted to major in business administration. And Road Runner was working in the business library, and that’s how you met.”

  The waitress came by. “Hi. Can I get you folks anything?”

  “Uh …” Terry asked Mandy with his eyes and she shrugged and smiled a yes. “Maybe a couple coffees,” said Terry. “Got any pies?” To Mandy, “Want a piece of pie?”

  Whoa. Hold on a minute. Time-out.

  Mandy dropped the mentalist routine. She looked around the room for anything weird, from another time, another place, anything nutty. She looked at the waitress. It was the same one, with Lisa on her name tag.

  Lisa looked back and said, “We have apple, blueberry, cherry, and pumpkin.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Mandy with a side glance at Terry and Joanie. “Can you … ?”

  Lisa perked an eyebrow, waiting.

  “Can you … see them?”

  “See who?”

  Mandy pointed at Terry and Joanie so directly it was probably rude. “Them.”

  Lisa looked at her funny. “I don’t get it.”

  Sigh, a little sa
d. “It’s nothing. How about a piece of cherry?”

  “Cherry it is.” Then she looked at Terry.

  “Apple,” he said.

  She wrote it down.

  “Wait!” said Mandy.

  “Apple,” said Joanie.

  “Wait,” said Mandy. “You can see them?”

  Lisa was flustered, detecting some kind of gag, but said, “I don’t get it.”

  Mandy dug out her cell phone and checked the time. “What time is it?”

  Lisa had a watch. “Eleven-oh-five.”

  Exactly what her cell phone said.

  Terry smiled at her, his usual likable self. “I think we’re all missing something here.”

  Mandy reached and gave his hand a little poke. Then she reached and poked Joanie, and finally Lisa.

  “She’s a magician,” Joanie explained, now eyeing Mandy warily as if expecting the next routine.

  “I …” Mandy couldn’t see through them either. They looked as solid as they felt. She forced a nervous little laugh. “Well, uh … may I have some decaf coffee?”

  “You got it,” said Lisa. She left.

  Joanie. Terry. Sitting right there, right in front of her, and the right ages for 2011.

  “You all right?” Terry asked.

  “You really are Terry and Joanie,” she said. “I mean, it’s, uh, it’s the, the mentalism thing, I was playing around, I didn’t know …” Struck speechless, stopped cold, she could only smile and give an apologetic shrug.

  “Well,” said Terry, “it was an amazing demonstration.” He gave Joanie a comforting squeeze. “You were so accurate it was disconcerting.”

  Joanie was disconcerted, all right. “Is this … is what you did really a trick?”

  Terry held her close. “Yes, of course it was.” Then he smiled at Mandy to show he wasn’t mad or anything. “I’m just amazed at the extent of homework you had to have done, and … I’ll never figure out how you knew we’d meet you tonight. It’s a real craft you have there!”

  No! Mandy cried out inside. It wasn’t a trick. She put her hands in her lap so the trembling wouldn’t show. “Could …” Her voice trembled. She drew a breath to steady herself. “What can you tell me about the Mandy Whitacre you knew?”