by Ivy Pochoda
“You’re coming?”
I nod.
“Before it was only a maybe.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
A gold-embossed envelope is waiting for me in the suite. It contains an invitation to A SOIREE OF MAYHEM AND MAGIC. At the bottom of the card is my name and the explanation GUEST OF THE MAGICIAN. I recognize the name of an established Hollywood actress and one of the fabled private venues in Las Vegas.
The private salons of Las Vegas are the refuge of tycoons, royals, sultans, and sheiks, where women come and go through hidden doorways and their customers vanish through underground tunnels. It was to one of these that Toby had summoned me.
I iron my only cocktail dress, a black silk sheath that had once purred like a sultry lounge singer. I twirl before the mirror. The dress looks bland. Toby unwittingly deprived it of its best feature. I’m dressed too early and pace around the suite. I finger the edge of the silent drapes and look over the expanse of desert that stretches away from the Strip toward the ranch house that will never be ours. I’ve spent my last night in the Cherry Orchard Suite. I’ve already thrown a few things into a suitcase that I’ll probably leave behind. Anyway, I don’t know where I’m headed, and I’m not sure I want to take anything with me.
I glance down at the Strip, now the setting for two conflicting tales of Toby and me, two divergent love stories heading in the same direction, but never reaching the same place. I will always know the magician better than he knows himself. Tricking myself into forgetting would be the only way to move forward. But there is nothing about my life with Toby I will ever willingly let go of. I let the drape fall, then close it altogether, blocking out all the landmarks of our various paths and our uncertain future. Then I sit, relaxing into my choice. I wonder how long I’ve known that this was the only possible ending.
If I could ask my brother one question it would be this: Did he wake up that morning in Bermuda and decide, Today is the day I swim away? Or did something in the water call him with a voice so sweet and insistent that he could no longer come up for air? I have a feeling he had known all along, ever since that day he survived the nighttime river. If I had my quilt, the complete quilt I’d left at Leo’s, I would search it for a clue to the moment I knew that Toby and I had come to inhabit different worlds. This realization doesn’t floor me or send me reeling to the chair with stomach-punch force. It creeps in, a slowly rising tide, on which I’m eventually going to float away. But, like my brother, I have a feeling that this ebb and flow will bring with it a melancholy freedom.
Sandra gives me a look as I pass through the lobby. I’m carrying the invitation in one hand.
“Where you off to, hon?”
“A party. A magic show.”
Her eyes narrow. “Lots of magic this week.”
“Guess Vegas is growing on me.”
“Join me for a drink first.” Sandra looks over my shoulder toward the Red Square bar, then at the envelope in my hand. I glance at my watch and shake my head.
“Suit yourself,” she says, waltzing off to the bar solo.
I present myself to the concierge at the establishment mentioned on the invitation. I give him my name and am escorted through a maze of hallways to an unmarked and unremarkable door. The door opens to a small foyer piled high with silk cushions. A woman in Moroccan robes, refashioned to allow for an improbable amount of décolletage, takes my hand and leads me through another set of doors to a dimly lit room decorated in a grab bag of oriental and Middle Eastern styles. Chinese lanterns hang from a ceiling that’s tented in Arabian Nights fabric, barely illuminating hookahs and Japanese tatami mats. Eight pointed Moroccan stars hang next to stencils of Hindu deities. Ostrich feathers fill ceramic vases while ornate shrines are set up to revere nothing in particular.
About thirty people are scattered through the room, reclining, drawing on hookahs, sipping green drinks. I recognize the Hollywood star, the hostess for the evening. She’s in a silky red dress buttoned up to the throat. She’s sprawled over cushions, extending her bare feet into a small crowd of admirers who silently consider their cocktails and suck on bubbling pipes.
Belly dancers, masseurs, tarot readers, and a hypnotist move around the room, whispering their offerings into the ears of the guests. It seem as if drugs and alcohol are not sufficient to charm the revelers’ minds into submission. They require another type of out-of-body experience and need their futures to be laid out in vivid pictures. Behind a DJ booth, a man in a fez spins slow hypnotic grooves. After a couple of days back in Las Vegas, I realize how tired I am of these false enchantments.
I didn’t see Toby enter. But he’s at my side, wearing a black silk shirt with black embroidery.
He loops his arm through mine. “Would you indulge me before I make my rounds?”
“With what?” I let him kiss my cheek.
“A quick trick.” Toby passes his hand over mine. I look down and see my green drink—absinthe and citrus—turn the color of the ranch house. He winks and is off.
I settle into a pile of cushions, not really caring that I have no one to speak to. I’m happy to watch Toby work, stretching out his elegant frame alongside revelers on Thai meditation pillows. I can’t hear him, but I can imagine his voice as he asks if they would like to see his magic. I know the looks of surprise as cocktails are transformed into smoke, which then curls upward, taking the shape of Far East dragons.
Toby’s routine is similar to the one he performed at the Castaway, but now it’s tinged with Eastern mysticism. He transforms money into prayer papers, makes animal shapes appear inside the Chinese lanterns, causes the hookahs to billow multicolored plumes of smoke. Toby charms with updated classics, making an orange tree grow from an empty vase, plucking enamel carp from the air, transforming napkins into doves and then back again.
In this dark chamber, hidden away in the bowels of Vegas, it’s easy to submit to the magician’s charms. If we could lead our lives sealed in such boxes, staying with Toby, even in this world of his conjuring might be possible. But eventually the door will open and reality will leak in. Something will go wrong and the magician will resort to magic to repair the damage. I can’t blame him, I think, as I watch him turn a woman’s cuff bracelet into a iridescent lizard, before restoring it to a cuff.
Toby takes his time with the actress. He sits close to her and whispers in her ear. He holds one of her hands in his own, using the other to conjure an array of objects that might amuse her. She has an ostrich feather in her free hand and is using it to trace lazy circles in the air, keeping half an eye on the magic appearing next to her. Coins and tarot cards, birds of paradise, and hammered silver jewels arrive in her lap. Her drink turns to smoke, which then coils around her neck and solidifies into a silk wrap. Toby removes the wrap from the actress’s shoulders and crumples it in his hands. He unfurls it, then he claps, folding the fabric together. As he does so, the silk vanishes, replaced by a tall green-and-orange flame, leaping upward from the magician’s palm.
Toby’s on his feet, making room for the hypnotist, who’s been waiting to enchant one of the actress’s companions. Soon the man leaps from the group, swirling and bobbing, sinks to floor, and, with a word from the hypnotist, is released from his spell.
I follow the magician to a corner of the room, where a four-paneled Moorish screen leans against the wall. He brings the screen into the center of the room and arranges it into a diamond shape with a small opening between the two end panels. He returns to the actress and her friends and extends an arm. The hostess allows herself to be lifted to her feet and led to the screen. Toby whispers something in her ear and escorts her into the space inside the panels. She vanishes from sight.
When she emerges, she swears she’s been away for hours, transported to another world. Her friends line up for this new enchantment, each one emerging with a fantastic tale of a landscape far away. My heart leaps as another partygoer steps into this trick. Toby’s success at the Winter Palace has clearly embol
dened him, and he invites the entire crowd to be part of his magic.
Then it’s my turn. Toby beckons to me, drawing me to his side. He passes an arm around my waist, and we stand in front of the screen.
“Wait.” I step away from the magician.
“What is it?”
I take a deep breath, willing the words to come out. “I can’t stay.”
“The party isn’t going to last forever.”
“I can’t stay in Vegas. My time here is up.”
I see Toby’s eyes cloud. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t expect you to.” I look into my hands, searching for a way to explain.
“We’ve met before. But there’s no way you’d remember.” I pause. “It was at another time. One that seems never to have existed.”
The magician’s expression is blank. He’s used to the inexplicable, so he lets me continue.
“I loved you there, too.” I can’t meet his eye, so I look into the opening between the panels. “We’d done so much together.”
“So, why do you need to go?”
“I am inside one of your tricks. Like Eva, I’ve fallen victim to your magic. I want to leave before it happens again.”
“Eva.” The name catches in Toby’s throat.
“You haven’t seen her.”
“Not since—”
“If you love me, maybe you’ll follow me.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe to Amsterdam, where we parted. Maybe back home to my parents.” I shake my head. “I have a feeling you’ll remain with your magic.”
“I can take my magic anywhere.” Toby’s voice is overrun with its strange static.
“We can replay this scene hundreds of times in hundreds of different places, but I have a feeling you’ll always choose magic in the end.”
“I’m a magician. Am I supposed to choose anything else?”
I shake my head.
“So?”
I stand on my toes and press my lips against Toby’s. His kiss is cold and distant. His lips are hard and trembling. I know that he’s trying to navigate between anger and despair.
“I’ll see you again,” Toby says, and points to the other side of the screen.
I step into the opening of the screen. I turn to see Toby clasping his hands together, searching for some magic to bring this moment under his control. I shake my head and tell him that I’m sorry. He reaches out to me. But I step farther into the opening inside the four-paneled screen. I close my eyes and wait. I have no idea where he’ll send me. I wonder if in a few moments I’ll step back into the party and find my temporary place with the actress and her friends, or whether I’ll wind up somewhere else entirely. Soon I feel the familiar static rush. I wonder where the magician is sending me. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
Nineteen
Piet’s house was boarded up. His magical memorabilia had been packed into boxes. I recognized the address on the labels as that of a famous magic museum in Nevada. The only illusion that remained was the Dissolving World, and I stepped out of it into the empty workroom. I had no idea how long I’d been gone.
All trace of Toby’s and my passage in the house had been removed along with everything else. When I stepped into the screen in Las Vegas, I had been prepared never to see the magician again, but I wasn’t ready to have all physical memory of him taken away. I’d hope to run my fingers over his black dress shirts and flip through his library of books on magic and anatomy. But most of all, I hadn’t wanted to let go of the saltshakers and ashtrays he had palmed during our first days together. Like my quilt, I had always imagined that these souvenirs would help me retrace my steps to wherever I’d left Toby, even if only in my mind.
I left Piet’s, and this time an usually clear Amsterdam evening was lost to tears. The streets sparkled with a wintry sheen. The canals glistened, reflecting the stars that rarely showed themselves above the city. Streamers of white lights in the shape of snowflakes framed the openings of the alleyways, foretelling the approaching holidays. Circus wagons selling freshly made doughnuts had popped up on busy intersections and alongside popular parks. The sound of Christmas music filled the air, accompanying me on my walk to the train station.
Olivia was waiting just inside the gate of Leo’s villa. Before I could say anything, she threw her arms around my neck. “We’ve been so worried,” she said. “No one’s heard from you for weeks. We haven’t been able to call the magicians.”
I’d been gone for only a couple of days. But Toby’s magic has a way of transforming time to suit itself.
“But you’ve come just in time.”
“For what?” I asked. I was too tired to notice Olivia’s outfit—a red-and-green velvet dress with synthetic pine needles at the collar and cuffs. I looked over her shoulder to the villa. It was lit up by hundreds of candles. A bonfire was burning on the lawn.
“It’s Leo’s saturnalia. The best party of the year.”
“I’m not up for a party.”
Olivia kissed my cheek, mulled wine on her breath. “Of course you are. It’s the longest night of the year. So we stay up, beating back the darkness with candles and fire.”
She linked her fingers through mine and began pulling me toward the festivities.
“It wouldn’t be the same without you,” she said, looking back over my shoulder.
“He’s not coming.” I drew a deep breath, filling my lungs with the scent of wood smoke, pine needles, and roasting meat. “Toby sent me to a place where we were strangers. I don’t think he’s coming back.”
Olivia wiped away tears from my cheek with her palm. “I wouldn’t count on that.”
The villa and the lawn behind it were glowing like a sunset, each window shining with a shade of red, orange, or purple light. Streamers flew from the gables and Eastern European dance music filled the air. The evergreens had been strung with white lights, reaching from tree to tree until they disappeared into the depths of Leo’s property. A trail of lanterns illuminated the path to the villa.
I followed Olivia to the lawn, which was lit with dozens of braziers. Several pits had been dug into the earth. These were filled with glowing coals for the skewers of meat. I looked down to the river where fairy lanterns were being launched downstream on tiny boats made from bark, their small flames bobbing and glittering in the dark water.
The yellow tent had been transformed into a dance floor. The shadows of the dancers dipped and wove in between the oriental flowers painted on the tent’s exterior. The Christophs passed through the crowd, swinging censers filled with rosemary. One of them wore a crown of ivy and the other, holly. The rest of the revelers—satyrs, Roman courtiers, jesters, Elizabethan ladies, unfamiliar pagan deities—filled the tent. Olivia and I stepped inside. The Eastern European music stopped, and the dancers were clearing the floor, making way for a string quartet in Louis XIV costumes. Their faces were powdered as were their wigs.
“Finnish,” the Belgian Christoph said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Apparently, back home, they even own a reindeer.”
“Have you seen Leo?” Olivia asked the Christophs.
“The house,” one of them replied. “More light.”
“There will never be enough candles. Come, Leo will be so happy to see you,” the other Christoph said.
Before heading toward the villa, Olivia and I helped ourselves to cups of warm, spiced wine. I could feel the alcohol bring a glow to my cheeks. She noticed and put her hands to my face. “That’s better. Your face wasn’t just pale. It was empty of color.”
I finished my wine as we wove through the party and up the stone staircase that led to the terrace at the back of the villa. Boughs of holly, ivy, and other evergreens hung from each lintel and transom, as well as framing every window.
We found Leo in the kitchen stooped over a tray of candles floating in tiny finger bowls. He was dressed in a midnight blue velvet suit embroidered with the rings of Saturn. The gold embroidery was caught b
y the candlelight.
His face lit up when he saw me. “Aah,” he exclaimed, “I knew you wouldn’t be far behind.”
“Behind what?” I let Leo embrace me.
He released me and held me by the shoulders at arm’s length. “Behind your husband.” Then Leo narrowed his eyes to mine. “You didn’t know.”
I shook my head.
I felt Toby before I saw him—an angular shadow in the back of the room. I turned. The magician stood in the doorway, framed by candlelight. He was smiling.
“Toby.”
In an instant, he crossed the room and wrapped me in his arms. “You didn’t think I would come,” he whispered in my ear.
I pressed my head into his chest.
“Thank you for having me,” Toby said to Leo.
“We haven’t had magic here in years. But before anything we need more light. The party lasts until the last light—candle, fire, coal, whatever—burns out.” He put a finger to his lips. “But be careful not to extinguish any yourselves. That is bad luck. It summons the dark too soon. Please?” He handed us each a lighter and pointed to a side table laden with pillar candles.
Toby waved his hand over the candles, lighting them all at once. Their flames rose upward in shades of green and blue, bringing the stars and planets embroidered on Leo’s coat to life. Leo ran his fingers over his sleeve. “Saturn for my saturnalia,” he said, then took us each by the arm. “Let us head into the night. But first, a toast.” He pulled three small glasses off a nearby shelf and filled them with a thick brown liquid. “Sailor’s drink. Wards off the dark, cold night.”
We lifted the glasses.
“To everlasting life and everlasting bacchanalia.” With these words, he vanished.
Toby and I stood alone in the kitchen.