by Ivy Pochoda
“I didn’t think you were coming. Ever,” I said.
“I don’t like being left behind.”
“You saved her.” I took Toby’s hands in mine.
The magician nodded. “But only in that world.”
“I know,” I said. “But we were strangers. That was the price.”
“We met again.” A smiled played across Toby’s lips. “You were pretty good on that bull.”
I laughed. “And you were handy with the ladies.”
“But there was only one lady I was interested in. And she left.”
I nodded.
“I told you I’d see you on the other side of that screen. I had no idea how far away that was.” Toby kissed away a tear. He refilled our glasses from Leo’s bottle.
“Do you remember now how things are supposed to be?”
“I’m not sure things are supposed to be one way or the other. But when you stepped into the screen and vanished, I knew I’d have to see you again.” Toby linked his fingers through mine and squeezed tight. “I reached out to pull you back, but you’d already gone. And when my fingers missed yours, that’s when I remembered.” He knocked back his drink. “Not just that we’d met before, but everything. It made finding you easy.” Now Toby looked into his glass. “I didn’t wait long to follow you. The guests at the party in Las Vegas were starting to whisper. They’d seen you go into the screen and not come out. It was like Eva all over again. I felt dizzy. I was in two places at once. I had two overlapping memories of you and of Las Vegas.”
I smiled, remembering my own seasickness as my Las Vegas experiences collided on top of the Stratosphere. “Now you know what it is like to be inside one of your own tricks.”
“I had to escape.”
“Into the screen?”
“I can’t imagine what they are saying back at the party.” Toby said. “The magician who made himself disappear.”
I lifted my glass to my lips and wondered if it wasn’t just me Toby was reaching out to in that screen, but also the ability to step into his imagination. I wondered how long it would be before he longed to go save Greta again. And with his customary conversational misdirection, Toby said, “Falling in love with you again was fun.” He lifted me in his arms. “Shall we join the party?”
Before I could reply, he kissed me and carried me out into the crowd.
We found one of the Christophs in the middle of the lawn.
“You remember Toby.”
Christoph’s face lit up. “The magician. At last,” he beamed, bowing slightly as he shook Toby’s hand. “Would you like to be holly or ivy?” He extended his arms, one of which was ringed with holly crowns, the other with ivy.
“I have no idea,” Toby replied.
“The two most important winter plants. I think you should be the Holly King.” He held out the arm with the holly.
“Are you sure?” Toby asked.
“He’s jolly and playful. A vegetation god. He’s part of the seasonal cycle, and you’re a magician. It’s all about transformation.”
The magician fingered the holly crown.
“And the ivy?” I asked.
“The cold gloom of winter. But evergreen nonetheless.”
“I’ll take ivy,” Toby decided.
“You’ll take the gloom of winter?” I asked.
Christoph wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “There are no bad choices. The ivy brings both good and bad luck. Although some say it represents mortality, the most common belief is that the ivy is eternal life and resurrection.”
“Resurrection?” Toby said, reaching for one of the ivy crowns. “The ivy.”
“I will, too,” I said.
“It’s the contradictions that appeal to you,” Christoph said, kissing my cheek. “It also represents wine, ecstasy, and bacchanalia.”
I returned his kiss.
“So when will the great show take place?” Christoph asked, turning to Toby.
“What is a bacchanal without magic?”
Toby looked around the tent.
With a synchronized stomp of their feet, the Finnish quartet began a waltz. A couple dressed as druids took to the floor.
“It looks like the last thing you need around here is magic,” Toby said.
Christoph clapped his hands, and the wreaths tumbled down his forearms. “Magic is exactly what we need. Tonight there will never ever be enough. We need to keeps the lights burning as long as possible. And from what I recall, you are the man who can play with fire.”
Toby smiled. “True.”
“We are all at your command,” Christoph said, bowing and stepping into the crowd.
The braziers roared and flickered. People were waving banners and dancing in circles. Toby and I accepted cups of hot wine from a man with elf ears and pointed shoes with bells. Another elf handed us skewers of meats on small plates.
“Beef spiced from Africa,” the second elf explained. “You might as well eat frankincense and myrrh.”
Toby laughed. “I’ll stick to cardamom and cinnamon.”
“Me, too,” I agreed. We left the elf.
“After all, we are not the baby Jesus.”
“That is what you sign up for with Leo. You get the true freaks, the fake freaks, and those who simply relish the hidden pleasures of the everyday.”
“The elf,” Toby said. “A little over the top.”
I nodded.
The Finnish quartet was replaced by a motley band of a drummer, accordion player, flutist, and fiddler who were roaming the lawn playing gypsy music. Toby and I linked arms, and together with Leo we joined a group of dancers who had formed a circle on the grass. As we spun and twirled, Olivia appeared at our side and took Toby by the arm.
“Where are you going take us tonight?” she asked.
“I don’t know what Mel has told you,” Toby replied.
“Everything and really nothing,” Olivia said.
Toby looked at me.
“She’s exactly right,” I said, reassuring him that I had kept most of his secrets.
Toby took two cups of the mulled wine from a passing tray, handing them to us. Then he clapped his hands, and a third cup appeared in his palm.
Olivia stood on her tiptoes and kissed the magician before twirling away into the crowd.
The tempo of the music escalated. I could feel the lawn pulsing beneath my feet. Toby grabbed me and headed toward the heart of the party. I followed. He walked with his palms clasped together. When he opened them, a burst of fireworks shot upward. He spun his arms over his head, spinning streamers of silk from his fingers. I struggled to keep up as he proceeded down the lawn.
“A magician,” someone said, falling into step behind us.
Toby waved his arms, and the streamers came together, taking the form of a Chinese dragon that flew upward, then disappeared into the sky.
More people began to follow. Toby quickened his pace.
He reached up into the air, palms opened wide. Two large multicolored balls descended into his hands. He tossed the balls up. When he caught them, they began to unravel into bright ribbons that trailed behind the magician and got tangled in his growing crowd. As they unwound, the ribbons changed to vines of ivy that flew from Toby’s hands and wreathed his audience. The partygoers gasped and walked faster, hoping for more.
Toby was moving toward the river.
“More,” someone from the crowd cried.
He didn’t turn around. He simply reached back and began to withdraw more objects from the sky—golden candlesticks, a censer, a bough of rosemary and holly—passing each one to the crowd.
“Quick,” he whispered to me under his breath.
The dance and jingle of the audience and their delighted cries were closing in behind us.
“Quick,” he said. He tossed a handful of golden coins over his shoulder.
We were running now, outstripping our pursuers, who were caught up in drink, dance, and Toby’s magic. “The real show will come later,” he sh
outed to the throng. He reached into the air one last time and, in one of those pockets visible to him alone, found a large brass ring. He twirled it; then he tossed it high into the air. As it rose, it became a ring of fire that soared away into the longest night.
Now the magician wrapped his arm around my waist, and we continued our tumble forward until we’d almost reached the river with its fairy lights.
“What will you show them later?” I asked.
Toby shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
At the water, we turned left and walked in silence, letting the tumult of the saturnalia recede. Eventually we came upon a long wooden dock I had never seen before. It extended far out over the river. Toby leapt onto it, then offered me a hand. At the end of the dock, we sat dangling our feet over the river.
Even in the dark, I could tell he was smiling. The light of the party in back of us illuminated the sky. But as I pulled close to Toby, I felt a familiar tingle. I held up my hands. “Snow,” I said. “It’s going to snow.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can feel it.”
Toby raised an eyebrow.
“What? You can’t?”
He shook his head.
“Can’t you feel the air get heavier—the cold get heavier?”
“When is it going to snow?” he asked.
“Soon. Sometime tonight. Maybe even in the next hour.”
“Shall we wait for it?”
“At least for a little while,” I replied.
I leaned my head against the scratchy wool of Toby’s collar and listened to its banjo twang. The sky had split into two levels. In the background, a drape of blue black had fallen. In front of this curtain, gray-tinged snow clouds had appeared. They flew so close to the river, I felt that if I climbed one of the trees on the riverbank, I might be able to reach out and comb them with my fingers.
Directly above our heads, the snow clouds were tied into a line like a chain of paper dolls. They looked like the skyline of a fairy-tale Arabian city. Domes and fortresses were clustered on one side. A lengthy barricade with an ornate watchtower sat in the foreground. Behind it was a steep hill dotted with small houses. A brief gust of wind shifted the pattern. Part of the fortress wall vanished, and more domes appeared.
“You’re cold?” Toby asked.
“Yes. But I like it.”
“Did you see Constantinople?”
“Babylon.”
“Perhaps it was Moscow. The Kremlin.”
“It was Mesopotamia.”
“The Taj Mahal.”
“No. Persia.”
“Or maybe, it was the Taj.”
“The casino in Atlantic City?”
“Or Disneyland. That magic castle or whatever it’s called.”
I laughed and turned back to the clouds. “Maybe it’s Vegas,” I said.
Toby smiled.
“Will you miss it?” I asked.
“Of course. But it’s still there.”
I nodded. Toby pulled me tighter. “And you’ve already gone back and done what you needed to do.”
A long, thin breath escaped through Toby’s lips. “I don’t know.”
“The problem with being a magician is that you seem to love things more in their absence.” This was why Toby had come back—this and something else, I was only beginning to understand.
We turned back to the sky. For a while, my clouds took the form of ocean liners trundling through a lightless sea. Then they were massive suspension bridges. Then a lobster. Then a swimmer. Then a phoenix. I looked over at Toby and wondered what he was seeing—what form his clouds took.
“Do you think that you find the shapes in the clouds or that you shape the clouds with your mind?” I asked.
Toby shrugged.
I looked at the sky. I saw mesas rising from a desert—the same titanic tea tables Toby and I had driven past on our way to Intersection. And then on top of one of the mesas, a head emerged and looked around. From underneath the head, an adolescent body unfurled—the teenage waitress.
The cloud bank lowered until it was almost at the level of the river. The cloud-form Greta was standing, one hand on her hip, in front of the blue ranch house. I felt a strange tingle and looked down to see that my ring had changed to cloud gray. The waitress beckoned to us. Toby stood up. He pulled me up, too. The cloudscape grew wider and more detailed. A highway stretched behind the house. There was Jim’s Big West Donut. And at the end of the road, I could see the Las Vegas Strip.
As the clouds rolled past, I saw the road leading into Vegas. The famous WELCOME sign. I saw the Laughing Jackalope Motel. The panorama came to a halt in front of the Winter Palace. Fireworks the color of crystal were shooting out of the onion-domed turrets. I could just make out the distant sound of the St. Petersburg Orchestra tuning up inside. And suddenly I knew that the moment Toby and I set foot in this cloud-world, it would take shape, solidify into his perfect desert, his perfect Vegas. He would be back to the scene of his mistake.
He tugged at my hand. “We won’t have to be strangers now.”
I shook myself. I knew that once Toby discovered the possibility of gliding from one world of his imagining to the next, he would never rest. He would always be leaving me behind, returning less and less often, until one day, he would cease to appear.
“I belong here.”
Toby didn’t need to save Greta anymore; it was that he could. And this possibility and all the possibilities it led to were that undeniable calling that had been summoning him since the day his blocks had first opened his eyes to magic. It was only now that the voice had solidified and grown insistent. He would live between the worlds of his imagination, saving Greta in one, Eva in other. Testing the limits of his craft, rewinding time, and doing it again. I don’t think he planned to stay in one place for long. Not even the Las Vegas stage could hold him. He would save his greatest magic for himself, skipping between places summoned by his fantasies and dreams.
Toby extended one leg. His foot hovered between the river and the clouds. He let go of my hand. He had not come back to me; he’d come to say good-bye. I looked back at the villa, at the warm light just barely visible through the tree. Then I sensed a movement at my side. I turned back and saw the clouds close around the back of Toby’s wool coat. And without a word, the magician disappeared. Like Greta and Max, he didn’t say good-bye.
I remained at the edge of the dock. The cloud cover lifted, rising to its accustomed height.
“Toby,” I said quietly. But there was no response. I lay on my side. I closed my eyes, feeling the sting of tears. Before I left the dock, I took off my ring and dropped it into the river. Then I clenched my hand tight, and when I opened it, I was holding the key to the blue ranch house.
On the great lawn, an enormous bonfire was burning. The revelers had joined hands and were dancing around it, the flames highlighting their holly and ivy crowns. I worked my way into the circle, letting the dancers lead me around and around until my head spun. Eventually the ring of hands broke apart, scattering the dancers across the lawn. I found a seat underneath one of the great braziers. I leaned against it, turning my back to the party.
Cradling a cup of mulled wine, I listened to the escalating merrymaking. Soon a voice clamored to be heard above the crowd. “The magician,” it called. “It’s time for the magician.”
Others joined in, clapping and calling for Toby.
The lawn was a tumult of cries for magic. People began darting to and fro, peering into the dark for my vanished husband.
I pulled in closer to the brazier’s pole, wanting its heat to melt me. The cries for Toby grew louder, some now tinged with disappointment.
Then a shadow stretched across the brazier’s orange glow. “He’s gone, isn’t he?” Leo asked, leaning down and kissing me on the head.
I nodded.
I sat on Leo’s lawn until the last of the lights died out. As I felt the dark rise, I remembered the swell of the ocean after it had ta
ken Max. And although the loss and the sadness were beyond expression, I knew that this time I would not wait for Toby. I would not look or listen for his footsteps. Unlike Toby, I would not attempt to undo what the magician chose for himself.
It has been three days since Toby left, and I’ve been wandering around Leo’s villa between the winter-blooming plants and a soft feather bed made up for me in the room next to Olivia’s. Often I go into the studio. My fingers guide me through Erik’s fabrics, choosing the ones that will tell of the rest of my adventures in Holland and elsewhere. Their voices had returned the minute I broke through the other side of Toby’s trick, comforting me in the magician’s absence. I can make out Piet’s and Olivia’s voices. Eventually, I’ll come across Leo and maybe even Theo. Maybe one day, I’ll hear Toby again.
Despite the cold, I often walk along the river. I wear one of Leo’s coats and a wool scarf Olivia made for me. The water is marbled brown and gray. I look at its surface, searching for the first crystals of ice, and I remember that I promised myself I’d be home by the time the Delaware froze. I always imagined that I’d bring Toby with me, but now I’ll make the trip alone.
One day, I take a thermos of coffee and sit on the dock where I last saw Toby. I comb my fingers through the air, searching for the portal of his escape. It’s late afternoon, and an early darkness is settling along the riverbank. Here the river is narrower, and despite the fading light, I can still make out the small road on the far side. In all my time at Leo’s, I have never seen a car or a bicycle on this road. So I am surprised when the silence of the falling dark is disturbed by the faint purr of an engine.
I look upstream and watch a car come into view. The engine sounds tired and lugs slightly. When the car is directly opposite the dock, it stops. Even in the failing light, I know it’s a brown minivan. No one gets out. The engine continues to idle. I lower my feet over the river and trace the toe of one boot through the cold water. There is no sound except for the rhythmic swish of my shoe in the water and the irregular drone of the engine on the other bank.
I wonder how cold the water will be if I decide to cross. And if I cross, I wonder if the water will remain water at all, and on what bank I will arrive. I close my eyes and remember how happy I was when I turned around on a deserted Nevada highway and saw the van for the first time. I remember the tingling in my fingers when I tried to brush them over Toby’s as he put the van in gear. Even without magic, the desert landscape appeared to me to be enchanted.