The Real Thing

by Marina Simcoe

  We would both move on past the argument — never actually resolving anything — until the same issue would come up again. This way, my mother and I ended up going in circles for years, driving each other insane.

  Well, living with Emily was an entirely different experience for me. She couldn’t stand my sulking and didn’t let me get away with it. When I got upset about something that made me stomp into my room and shut the door with an intention to stay there for the rest of the day, Emily would barge in after me and wouldn’t leave until we talked it through, hugged, and apologized to each other.

  She proved to be a fiercely loyal friend and earned my absolute loyalty in return. I would do anything for her, absolutely anything… I would give up a kidney for her without a second thought!

  Except that she wasn’t asking for my kidney at the moment, was she? All she wanted was for me to come to Las Vegas for her party next month and for me to accept that she, the bride-to-be, would pay for my trip.

  “Please say yes, Angela! How am I supposed to have a bachelorette party without my maid of honour? It won’t even cost that much! Mikey is flying us there on standby using his work benefits. A whole bunch of us will be sharing hotel rooms. It’ll be next to nothing, really!”

  Mikey was an airline pilot. Flying standby on his benefits would cost very little, but it would still cost something…

  Nothing felt worse to me at that moment than taking money from them like that. I never talked to Emily about my family’s financial situation. This was something I couldn’t discuss even with her. However, I was sure that Emily suspected something wasn’t right. She knew that I refused to quit my part-time job at the shoe store even after I got the full-time job. She had seen me reduce my fun times with friends to next to nothing because even the cheapest things still cost money.

  I hardly had any time left to socialize anyway, working over seventy hours a week. Emily remained pretty much the only friend I still kept in touch with.

  “Come on, Angela. How am I supposed to deal with Lily if you’re not there? Who is going to deflect all her clever remarks? Remember she told me at my engagement party that interracial couples often face additional challenges in marriage? At my engagement party! That’s it... If you’re not coming — I won’t go either! It would never be the same without you anyway.”

  Emily was pulling all the stops and used her most effective weapons — blackmail and guilt.

  “I just won’t have a bachelorette party then. There are plenty of brides out there who do fine without them, I’m sure.”

  Who was I to deny my best friend a bachelorette party that she had always wanted? The party that she most certainly deserved more than anyone else in my opinion?

  I would have to find a way to come up with the money to pay her back, even if it took me years, even if I myself ended up eating Lannister’s food from now on.

  “Ok. Please don’t cancel the party. I’ll go…”

  “Yes!” Emily yelled triumphantly and launched forward to hug me across the table, knocking over my empty coffee mug.

  “You! Are! The! Bestest! Friend! Ever!” She kept giving me hug after hug, squeezing me harder and harder each time until I could barely breathe.

  “No, Emily, you are,” I managed to say, squished in her arms.

  She totally was the bestest friend ever, definitely worth a kidney.

  ***

  I swear I didn’t think about it until I got back to the office on Monday and opened my laptop.

  The last page I viewed earlier was still on the screen. It was my favourite picture of Marcus.

  It hit me in a rush.

  I was going to be in Vegas for three days next month. Marcus had his show running in Vegas. Of course, Emily and her party were my unquestionable priority on this trip, but maybe, just maybe, I could get a little bit of time for myself to see his show while I was there? Or maybe, Emily and the rest of the girls would like to come with me?

  I stared at the picture on my screen, remembering my feeling of awe and wonder while watching Marcus walk across the night sky of New York.

  He wasn’t on stage on this picture, neither was he levitating or shooting light rays from his fingers. This was still a promotional picture, but it was the most casual of them all.

  Marcus stood in a relaxed pose with his hands in his pockets. He was dressed in a black button-down shirt with a few buttons open from the top, exposing his collarbone and the top part of his chest.

  His long black hair was blown by the studio fan in the picture but not in any overly dramatic fashion. He looked straight into the camera with the eyes of the same photoshopped cerulean-blue. His posture was relaxed, and I could still read the typical bored expression on his face behind the mask. However, to me, the underlying tension in him was more prominent here. Some hidden energy seemed to be churning just beneath his composure, ready to burst out if he only let it. He reminded me of a wild horse, captured and restrained.

  I touched the screen, tracing one long strand of his hair blown across his wide chest, and wondered if his hair would also feel thick and heavy like a mane of a horse if I touched it. Did the girls he took home at night get to run their fingers through it? Did he like it when they did?

  I had yet to find any pictures of him without the mask. There weren’t any of him backstage, at home or on vacation either. It was as if there was no man behind that mask, as if he only existed as Marcus the Magnificent.

  I had watched his interviews over and over again, even though they were short and scripted. Any questions from interviewers outside of the script were met with “No Comment” from Marcus. I saw them enough times to warrant counseling if I only admitted that I had a problem, which I refused to do. I had memorized his every gesture and could recognize his voice anywhere.

  He liked to sit with his right ankle resting on top of his left knee. When he was nervous or impatient, he tapped his thumb against his thigh or against the arm of the chair. When answering questions, he didn’t look completely indifferent to the way his answers would be received; however, he never tried to be charming. He didn’t even seem to care whether he was liked.

  And he never smiled. Ever.

  I wondered if that was an act too, if this severe, unsmiling image was a part of his onstage persona. From what I had learned from the internet videos, he rarely talked to the audience during his shows. He didn’t laugh and never joked with them, as so many other performers did. Were his smiles so rare that they never made it to the photos and videos? Would I be able to catch a smile of his, however brief, if I watched him in person during his performance?

  I opened the website selling tickets for his Vegas show to see if there were any available for the days I was going to be there. One look at the ticket prices — and I closed it again quickly. There was no way I could add this expense to the money I was already going to owe Mikey and Emily!

  I just couldn’t afford the ticket to his show right now. It wasn’t the first time I had to say no to things I really wanted, especially during the past few years. And I knew it wouldn’t be the last.

  “CN Rail is still on strike, Angela.” Barb, my manager, materialized out of nowhere right in front of my desk.

  I blinked, startled, but managed to minimize Marcus’s picture in time. I had a reputation to maintain at work. It wouldn’t do for anyone, especially my boss, to catch me daydreaming over pictures of mysterious hot men!

  I looked up at her and made an effort to smile with enthusiasm, ready for anything she threw my way.

  “One of the shipments that’s stuck in Vancouver needs to be here ASAP,” Barb tapped with one finger on my desk for emphasis. “The client needs it for the upcoming flyer.”

  “Sure,” I nodded. “What is it?”

  It absolutely didn’t matter what it was, and I had asked just to maintain the illusion of a dialogue, because most conversations with Barb tended to be one-sided: she talked and you were supposed to listen and nod then go and do what she told you to do. />
  “Paper towels,” Barb replied and lifted her eyebrow. “Why?”

  “No reason,” I shook my head, feeling sorry that I asked. “I’ll get right on it.”

  I opened a spreadsheet to find out the minimum quantity required by the client for the flyer promotion, and lifted the receiver of my desk phone to call Fleet Supervisor and talk him into finding a truck for me.

  Another problem to solve. Another crisis to avert. This was what made my job interesting for me, even if it was difficult. This was what I was good at. Saving the world, one shipment of paper towels at a time!

  5. Bellagio.

  Among many new things I learned in Las Vegas over the past couple of days, the following two were the most important right now.

  First, unlike Toronto, the weather in Vegas was already incredibly, unbearably, inhumanly hot in May.

  And second, my favourite candy-apple red peep-toe pumps with a cute bow on the back were not designed for sprinting along the Vegas Strip. Even though they were the perfect match with my vintage (aka secondhand) red polka-dot sundress, I wished for a pair of running shoes instead as I dashed down the Strip in the sweltering afternoon heat.

  It didn’t help that my head was still a little fuzzy from all the partying we did last night and from all the shopping we did this morning. Emily, Lily and the other two girls in our party were all asleep in our hotel now, recuperating. After the two fun-filled days in Vegas, we all were so exhausted that I expected them to sleep for a while yet. I, on the other hand, had so much adrenaline pumping through me that if it weren’t for the blisters on my feet, I would have flown along the Strip with the speed of a bullet!

  Like any self-respecting celebrity stalker, I followed every one of Marcus’s social media accounts, and just about twenty minutes ago I got a Facebook notification about his unscheduled performance near the fountains of the Bellagio. My heart soared: I will get to see him perform after all! For free! If I made it to the fountains in time.

  We stayed in a small hotel off the Strip, and taking a cab was out of the question for me of course. So here I was, running as fast as my kitten-heels would carry me, and sweating through the polka-dots on my dress. I knew better than anyone in this town that Marcus the Magnificent didn’t do lengthy introductions or pre-shows. If I wanted to see him at all, I had to be at the fountain pool the moment he showed up.

  I strained my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the fountains in the distance ahead of me. We drove past them in the limo last night, and I caught a little bit of the water show then. However, I couldn’t see any water jets at the moment and realized that they were shut off as I got closer.

  A fairly large crowd had already gathered along the railings surrounding the fountain pool when I arrived. These people must have been much better runners than me to get here that quickly on the extremely short notice. Either that or they could afford to take a taxi, of course.

  The fountains were indeed turned off, and the water surface was now smooth and undisturbed.

  I made my way through the crowd, unceremoniously using my elbows and even “accidently” stepping with my heels on a foot or two of people who wouldn’t move out of the way. This was my one and only chance to see Marcus perform up close, and I wasn’t going to waste it by staying politely in the back.

  I made it to the railing as the first women dressed in gladiator costumes walked out of the huge tour bus with tinted windows that was parked along the Strip. Epic music blasted from a speaker somewhere.

  The women walked in pairs, holding long spears with gold silk ribbons tied to the tips. They all wore leather-looking armor that covered one arm from the shoulder to the wrist and was attached to a breastplate barely larger than a bra. Their flowing mini-skirts were made from the same gold-coloured silk as the ribbons on their spears.

  Perfectly choreographed, the first pair marched their stiletto sandals to the edge of the fountain before the pairs split up, stepping away from their partners to form a corridor leading from a black limo parked next to the tour bus all the way to the railing around the fountains.

  Two men in suits hurried along the corridor formed by the beautiful gladiators, carrying a shiny-looking ramp. They lowered the ramp from the stone railings, and it extended all the way into the water on the other side.

  The music turned down, and a male voice spoke through the speakers at a deafening volume, “Ladies and gentlemen! Marcus the Magnificent! One time only! The miracle of a man walking on water!”

  Then I saw him as he got out of the limo and walked along the corridor formed by the Amazonian gladiators.

  Despite the heat, he still wore the black leather pants and the heavy boots but traded his trench coat for a black leather vest open in the front.

  The first thing I noticed was that his eyes were not of that intense blue colour from the posters. I knew the colour was artificially exaggerated on the pictures but still felt a little disappointed that something I was used to about him turned out to be different in real life. His skin was also much lighter than the golden tan on the pictures. The pale, almost ivory colour of his skin was a stark contrast to the black leather of his clothes.

  The rest, however, was exactly as I had imagined, it if not better. He was tall, fit and undeniably handsome. His unbound black hair fell along his back and shoulders in a sleek, heavy wave, reminding me of a horse’s mane once again.

  Marcus walked with a purpose. He didn’t seem to hurry, but looked like he deliberately forced himself to slow down. His shoulders, raised and tensed, and his hands, squeezed into tight fists, further reinforced the image of a restrained wild stallion in my mind.

  He looked straight ahead, unsmiling like always.

  Then I realized that he was heading straight towards me since I stood right by the fountain pool, behind one of his Amazons. Suddenly, fear rolled over me that he would look at me, and the mere possibility that he would see me scared me somehow.

  I lowered my eyes to the ground immediately, avoiding any accidental eye contact with him, and chose to look at my shoes instead.

  I heard his boots hitting the ground closer and closer to me. So close, I felt my skin prickle with awareness of his nearness. So close, the faint smell of warm leather and spice reached me and caught me completely off guard. I didn’t expect the impact of his scent to hit my senses with the power of a tsunami.

  A wave of heat that had nothing to do with the weather flushed inside me, as impossible images flooded my mind: his hands on my skin; his masked face next to mine; his scent surrounding us…

  Now I had other reasons to avoid his eyes. I was afraid that if he took one look at my burning face, he would see the images in my mind, he would feel the heat inside my chest, and he would hear my heart thundering against my ribs. He would see all of me – and he would know everything.

  I took a few deep breaths in a desperate effort to regain control of myself. I came here to see him perform, dammit! This could be my only chance to see him up close, and I wasn’t going to blow it because of some sudden bout of shyness and nerves.

  I looked up just in time to see him jump off the ramp and into the fountain pool on the other side of the railings. I expected the water to splash under his boots, but it didn’t. It did look like his feet hit the water; his body came to a stop, and he straightened out from the jump, but there was no splash. Instead, his boots appeared to be standing on the water, without breaking the surface at all.

  Since watching Marcus at Times Square, I studied everything there was publicly available about his profession. I knew that the act of walking on water was accomplished by placing plexiglass fixtures on the bottom of the pool. Placed in water and filmed at a certain angle, they were practically invisible and created the illusion of walking on water when the person stepped on them.

  I’d seen videos of the act performed by other illusionists. They did it in a controlled environment, with cameras filming from a set angle and with hired actors to portray “random spectators.”

/>   Now, I carefully watched Marcus perform the same act, determined to get my answers once and for all.

  I couldn’t see any plexiglass in the water, no matter what way I turned and tilted my head, looking at the surface from every possible angle. My brain had fully recovered from the earlier emotional onslaught and was now working hard on the puzzle at hand.

  If there were one large sheet of plexiglass under the water, wouldn’t it be invisible since there would be no edge to reflect the light and give it away? Was it possible, though, to cover a large enough section of the enormous fountain pool of Bellagio with one solid piece of plexiglass? When and how could it be done without anyone noticing? There must have been thousands of people passing by along the Strip at any time of day and night. In any case, wouldn’t the movement of the water in the pool be different if there was a large piece of pleaxiglass just beneath the surface?

  Questions and possible solutions turned inside my mind like the multicoloured squares of a Rubik’s cube, not unlike my process of solving problems at work every day. I could get this one too! If I only looked more closely, if I only thought harder.

  Meanwhile, Marcus calmly walked about a hundred feet towards the middle of the pool then turned around with his hands up in the air, greeting the cheering crowd.

  “Jesus, man!” screamed a man next to me. He held up his two-foot long glass with a neon-coloured drink and waved it around. “Marcus! You are like Jesus, man… Walking on water!”

  The man was obviously drunk already and slurred his words, happy as could be. His friends cheered him on, also holding enormous drinks in their hands.

  Marcus completed his turn — still greeting people gathered on all sides around the pool — then continued on his way back towards me and the ramp at the railing.

  There still was not a shadow of a smile on his face, but he looked content now, more relaxed. His posture was straighter, and his head held higher, although the ever-present bored look remained in his eyes.