by Ivy Pochoda
The line dancing ends. The siren calling someone to ride the mechanical bull wails. I am about to stand up, move on, get my bearings, and figure out what to do next. And then, the magician is standing in front of me. He’s still in his Western shirt. A few streaks of stage makeup are visible along his jawbone.
“Toby.” His name nearly gets caught in my throat.
He looks at my dress, then smiles. “Sandra’s friend. Mia?”
“Mel. Mel Snow.”
“Toby Warring.” He smiles as he takes my hand. It’s the smile he left behind in Nevada. “Mind if I sit?”
I shake my head and pat the barrel next to mine.
“The desert is no place for someone named Mel Snow.”
“I’ve heard.”
Suddenly two beers are in front of us. Toby catches my eye to see if I’ve noticed this trick. I pretend not to. I simply accept my drink as if the magician brought it with him from the bar.
“Is the desert a good place for magic?”
“That’s quite a question,” Toby says, swigging from his bottle. “Some places out here are, and some aren’t. In the desert, you have to pay attention. Things have a way of going wrong.”
“I know.” I look down my bottleneck. “You’re from back East,” I say. “Mid-coast Atlantic?”
“How’d you know?” Toby’s eyes sparkle. He moves his barrel a little closer to mine.
“Are you a magician?”
He nods.
“I bet you don’t reveal your secrets.”
“I don’t have any.” He replaces his bottle on the wagon wheel table. “Well, I have one. But I’m not telling. At least not yet.”
His one secret—a magician who can actually do magic. I’m wondering how long it will take this time before he tells me.
“You’re not from Vegas either,” the magician says with one of his trademark conversational swerves.
I shake my head as we once again discover that we grew up along the banks of the same river back East.
“So you came to Las Vegas to work for a casino?” Toby asks.
You brought me here, I want to say. But in this world, I have no idea how I came to the Winter Palace. “I’m a textile consultant.”
Now the magician stifles a laugh.
“You’re looking at my dress?”
“What color is that?” he asks.
“I think the official name is Key West Coral.”
“Some things should stay in Florida.”
I looked down at the dress—its color, an awful match for my complexion. “I’m not so fond of sateen or crystal beading either.”
“It kind of makes you look like a broken-hearted beauty queen,” the magician says.
“When in Vegas,” I say, quickly raising my bottle in front of my face.
Toby lifts his beer to meet mine. There is a clink of glass, and for a moment it seems as if time has stopped. The music is gone. The dancers frozen. And once again, everything telescopes to me and the magician. When I look up, the crystal beads on my dress have become irregular turquoise stones.
“I’m not going to ask.”
Toby smiles. “As long as it makes you smile.”
“So,” I say, rolling my beer bottle between my palms, “shouldn’t you be celebrating your Vegas debut back at the Winter Palace?” What fresh coincidence has caused us to collide this time in another improbable location? Did Toby once again conjure me to his side, or did I pull him to mine?
“The show is the satisfying part. The aftermath is a letdown.”
“It didn’t seem too disappointing,” I reply, thinking of the women encircling the magician.
“In the end, the audience wants something I can’t give them.”
“They all want to know how it’s done?”
Toby nods.
“But in your case, the explanation is impossible.”
I ignore his surprise. I just smile and pat his knee. “In another lifetime, I spent a lot of time around magicians.”
For a moment, Toby cannot speak. Instead he snaps his fingers, and two more beers appear. We raise them to each other. “To things better left unexplained,” the magician suggests. And then Toby tells me about his childhood blocks that taught him about magic.
It doesn’t bother me that I’ve heard this all before. Soon we are on our feet, dancing to revved-up hoedown music. Between songs, I ask, “Why did you come here tonight?”
Toby shrugs. “Why not?”
Next to us, a woman has climbed on top of a barrel. She’s looped her shirt into an impromptu bra-top and is bending her knees, grinding her way down to her feet.
“You don’t strike me as the cattle-call type.”
“I’m not.”
A new song starts. We’re shouting now. “I wanted a moment alone,” the magician says.
“This is a strange place to come to be alone.”
He nods in time to the music and turns to face me. He puts his hands on my hips and pulls me in close. “And why did you come?”
I laugh. “Same reason.” Falling in love with Toby is easy.
We dance, stomp, and tumble along with the music. The crowd throws our bodies together. It’s a comfortable collision. And then we are in front of the mechanical bull. Toby catches my eye. I shake my head. “No way.”
But he’s insisting, and in an instant, I’m lifted over the wooden railing and waiting to be helped onto the bull.
I get in the saddle, and my dress rips. I grab the pommel and wait for the ride to start. A crowd gathers, hooting as the machine underneath me comes to life. Toby and I lock eyes. The machine revolves in small circles, then pitches forward slightly. I grip the pommel tighter. The magician doesn’t blink as the bull accelerates. Soon it’s spinning and dipping wildly. The crowd is whooping, their voices outdoing the music.
Then the Double Down Saloon gives way to a magic lantern show of our shared experiences. I see the Old Stand and the Laughing Jackalope Motel. I watch as the Rio and the other casinos we visited on our honeymoon spin past. I see the canyon and our picnic on the marriage blanket. I watch the Desert Princess chug into a corner of Lake Mead. I see the ranch house pop up between two mesas. Soon the illusion is shattered, interrupted by applause. The ride is slowing; then it stops. Two of the Double Down’s employees leap into the ring and lift my arms in the air. The crowd is chanting, “Beat the bull!”
“Giddyup,” the woman on my left yells, “we have a winner!”
“First person to beat the bull in months,” the woman on my right says. She pulls a Double Down crop top over my head. “Five hundred dollars even,” she adds when I’ve got my head through the neck hole. And she hands me five crisp bills. The crowd is chanting and cheering as I’m passed back to Toby. The magician takes me in his arms. “Who knew you were such a cowgirl,” he says.
“What were you thinking when I was on the ride?” I ask.
“I was thinking whether you’d let me see you again.”
A tall mustachioed man in a cowboy hat leans between us. He nods toward the bills I’ve got clenched in my hand. “Should be about enough right there.”
“For what?” Toby asks.
“For a Vegas wedding. A girl can ride a bull like that’s a girl worth holding on to.”
I hesitate for a moment; then I shake my head. “I don’t know about marriage, but I’m happy to see what comes next.”
The night passes in a swirl of neon, fluorescent cocktails, and flashing lights as Toby and I wind our way down the Strip. Then, of course, there are the small touches of magic that make even the glitziest parts of Vegas shine a little brighter. In the presence of this Toby, it’s easy to forget the gloomy magician I’d last seen in Piet’s workroom. Finally, we arrive back at the Winter Palace. The opening party has evaporated into the general buzz of another Las Vegas night. At the entrance, Toby puts his hands on my shoulders. “I’m not good with people,” he says.
I know, I want to tell him.
“But being around you
comes naturally to me.”
I close my eyes, waiting for his kiss. And when he kisses me, it does not, as usual, lift me up into the sky, make me float above the desert or wherever it is we are; it keeps me on the ground, as if this is precisely where I’m meant to be.
“I’ll find you tomorrow,” Toby says as I spin through the revolving door.
When I turn to wave, he is gone.
The artificial light of the endless Winter Palace day erases the intoxication of my night with Toby. I walk through the lobby, unsure of which employees to greet. I head for the front desk, where clerks dressed like Hussars guard the telephones and the reservations system. I find a female receptionist, give her my name, and tell her I’ve lost my key. She eyes my ruined dress—a frayed time line of my recent trip across the Strip. “Big suite for one gal,” she says, passing me my card. “But I guess it’ll be filled with high rollers now that we’re opening.”
I nod and thank her. I’m being shipped out.
On my way to the elevator, I pass the Red Square bar, where Sandra and her friends are stretched out, ordering everything the harried waitress can bring them.
I walk away, hoping to make it upstairs unnoticed. The elevator glides up so quickly that it take a moment for my heart to catch up. The key card opens the Cherry Orchard Suite. Everything is as I would have left it. My clothes are folded. My books and magazines sit in orderly stacks next to the bed. My shoes are lined up under the window. The only thing missing is a sign of Toby. But of course, I expect that.
Without the magician, the suite is enormous. The king-sized bed envelops me. I press my ear to the bedspread, hoping to hear its stiff synthesized song, which used to comfort me during Toby’s late-night shows at the Castaway. The bedspread is silent. So are the crisp cotton pillows. I stand up and explore the room. The fire-proof curtains, with their cherry motif, no longer sound like caged woodwinds. The deep oboe notes of the plush pile carpet are barely audible.
I find my suitcase at the back of the closet. My quilt, the one made during my travels in the West, is neatly folded at the bottom. I open it on the bed. Of course, the gingham napkin from the Old Stand Saloon is absent. In its place are several fabrics I don’t recognize as well as a couple from the Winter Palace. I trace my fingers over these, trying to imagine what part of my own history I’ve missed. Each fabric that I’d sewn onto this quilt had at one time sung or spoken to me, contributing its notes or story to my own. I lie down on top of the patches, imploring them to come to life. But there is no noise, only the blood-rush seashore in my own head. The fabrics are dead. I feel as if I might drown in their silence.
Without my fabrics, I don’t know where to turn in the hours that stretch before me. My quilt is nothing more than a jumble of patches, a haphazard collection that runs in place. Looking at it, I understand why Eva cannot stay in any one place for long. My presence has been removed from what were once familiar surroundings. I feel myself written out of my own past. I have no idea how to catch up with this present.
Still lying on the quilt, I fumble for the telephone. I dial Leo’s number. I need to hear a familiar voice, even if, in this world, we are strangers.
It’s Olivia who answers, her voice warm with sleep. “Hello?”
“It’s Mel,” I say.
I’m met with silence at first. “Hello?”
“It’s Mel. You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Mmmm.” I can imagine Olivia scrunching her eyes and wrinkling her nose, trying to tease my name out of her memory.
“Or maybe we haven’t met.” I suggest.
“Maybe not. That would make it hard to remember you.”
I want to tell Olivia all the things I know about her. I want to do anything to keep her voice pressed into my ear. But then she says, “I think you have the wrong number.”
“I probably do.” The line goes dead, adding its silence to the fabrics’. I let the receiver tumble from my hand and dangle toward the floor. Soon I can hear the rhythmic buzz of the busy signal. I let it go on.
Eighteen
I’m lying in the middle of the king-sized bed, legs and arms spread wide. A castaway on a raft floating in the empty Cherry Orchard Suite. There’s a knock at the door. I pull on one of the plush bathrobes with gold braided belts. I expect to see the magician. Instead I find one of the bellboys carrying the clothes I’d abandoned in Sandra’s office.
Out on the Strip, the neon illusions of the Las Vegas night are gone. The harsh sun reveals the city’s trickery, exposing the miniature skyline outside the New York, New York and the small Eiffel Tower in front of the Paris for cartoonish approximations. I weave between slow-moving tourists and pass the Mirage, where the volcano’s lava roar is still sending more heat into the baking day. Finally I come to Fremont Street and enter the covered esplanade. As I knew it would be, Fremont is empty save for a few hard-nosed gamblers still at the tables since last night and those who set their alarms to catch their lucky dealers.
The Castaway is a swamp of cigarette smoke. The carpet is sticky with spilled drinks and trampled ash. I pass through the pits, listening to the hollow drop of coins. Men and a few women are hunched over at the tables, considering their cards. I arrive at the door to the small theater and push it open. Inside, I find a tangle of discarded furniture. Three-legged craps tables are turned on their sides. One-armed bandits stare blankly from the dusty dark. I look at the stage where the Ladies’ Magician had performed. It’s a jumble of fallen stage lights and discarded gels.
As I sit down, I hear someone approaching from the back of the theater. I hope for Toby, but it’s Eva, gracefully negotiating the mess that separates us.
“You thought he would be here?” she asks.
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“Toby’s shows at the Castaway exist in a time that cannot come again.”
I nod while Eva lights a cigarette and takes the seat next to me. “So, you, too, were sent into one of Toby’s tricks.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because we’ve already met inside the magician’s imagination. I’ve seen it all before.”
“Seen what?”
“The show at the Winter Palace. The other outcome. And you were there.”
“That wasn’t his imagination. That was real.”
Eva shakes her head, sending smoke from side to side. “Maybe for you. For me, it was just another intersection of his tricks.”
I look around the theater. “All of this is an accident. Toby didn’t mean for me to follow him.”
“Follow him where?” Eva sounds uninterested.
“In Amsterdam, he discovered a trick called the Dissolving World. It can take him to any point in his memory.
“Toby never needed a trick to do that. He’s done it before. Except it was me he sent there, not himself.” Now Eva laughs with a sharp, cutting sound. “And after all this, he chooses to come back here.” She shakes her head and squints into the dust. “I guess saving her life is more important to him than fixing mine.”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” I give her a cool look.
Eva exhales toward the ceiling.
We are silent for a moment. Then Eva kicks up her legs and places them on the seat in front of her. I watch dust settle on her patent leather heels. She smooths her stockings. “He came back here, but he doesn’t know you. But you know him. Maybe your love is just stronger than his.” There’s a sharp edge to Eva’s voice.
I shake my head. “He didn’t know I was coming. He told me not to follow him.” I looked down at my hands. “I guess he never imagined that I’d be part of this world when he stepped into it. He didn’t create a place for me here. But we’ve met again.”
“And it’s all running so smoothly.” Eva doesn’t want a response. “Don’t get too comfortable. You are always going to be an outsider. But you must have already figured that out. Your memories and Toby’s can’t line up. Your worlds will always be slightly different.”
I don’t
reply. Despite last evening with Toby, I know Eva’s right.
“The more time you spend here, the more edges will blur, corners will melt, and places will vanish. Because you are meant to be elsewhere, you will not be able to remain in one place for long. When Toby banished me to the mesa, the trick eventually broke. I was returned to reality. But I’d been gone for so long, reality and I no longer clicked. For your sake, I hope this trick ends sooner rather than later.”
“What if I don’t want that?”
Eva narrows her eyes into the dim light. “What happens when something goes wrong for Toby this time? Will he rewind time, send himself somewhere else, forget about you again?”
“Toby didn’t mean to forget me.”
Now Eva places a hand on my leg and grips hard. “But he did. Even if it was an accident. Every accident is the manifestation of a secret intention. Toby banished me because he wanted to test the limits of his magic. And he knew that when he discovered what he could do, he’d leave me behind.” She finishes her cigarette and tosses it onto the ground. I watch the ash burn down. “He’s chosen magic over you.”
I shake my head. “He loves me.”
“Maybe,” Eva says. “But he loves magic more.”
“Last night was like starting over.”
“Maybe.” She doesn’t buy it.
I look at her profile—her sharp coif and angular chin—and I remember a question I’ve been meaning to ask her. “Eva, where did you go that night on the mesa?”
“Somewhere else. Elsewhere.”
I shake my head at this unusually imprecise response. “Tell me.”
“I went to find Toby.” Without looking at me, Eva says, “I was worried you wouldn’t get through to him. And I was right. I told him, no matter what happens, he should never involve you in his magic.” She puts a new cigarette to her lips, lights it, and exhales. “If he loves you. You should thank me.”
“He listened to you.”
“Until now.”
“He didn’t mean for me to follow him,” I tell her again. “How do I make it stop?”
Eva shrugs. “Convince him. Convince him that things are better elsewhere.” Then she shakes her head. “I don’t think you have much chance.” She’s on her feet. I know better than to ask where she’s going.