A stark bright light blinded him. He was prepared for the spotlight, having had it aimed at him during the dress rehearsal, but it was still unnerving to hear the audience applaud and not see a single person. He pulled his cane from the hidden slot in his pants, making it appear to have jumped into his right hand from nowhere, tossing a spray of fireworks to his left as he did so.
The audience gasped at the fireworks, and as they fizzled out, the spotlight slowly dimmed while the more general stage lights arose, so Jeremiah could finally see his first audience.
His heart was pounding with excitement, and he puffed his chest out in pride.
“Thank you!” he shouted. His voice croaked a bit. He was wearing a thin wire microphone and the acoustics of the wonderful old theater carried his voice to the back. He knew from the earlier sound checks that each person in the audience would hear his every whisper.
“It’s wonderful to be in Boise in the great state of Idaho! I feel like you’ve all been so welcoming to me and my team. And I hope that tonight I can repay some of the gracious hospitality I’ve seen in the past couple of days.”
The audience clapped politely.
From the wings, the three girls hurried out, two on his right, Suzette on his left. Suzette attached a cape, suspended by invisible wires, around Jeremiah’s neck. Jeremiah bowed and then ran toward the front of the stage and jumped as if off a diving board. Several people in the first few rows screamed before Jeremiah started to fly, just like Superman, around the audience.
The cheers got louder as he reached the back of the theater and turned to head back to the stage.
This is my life, he thought as he grinned down to his audience.
Over the course of the next hour, Jeremiah played out some of his best tricks. He did small magic (card tricks were still among his favorites) and large (various ways of making his assistants disappear).
He loved it. It was a night he would never forget.
Suzette was clearly enjoying the attention, too, gleefully beaming at the end of each trick. The other girls blended into the background, but that was okay.
Jeremiah watched as the girls rolled two large wooden cases on stage, pushing them together to form a coffin-like box. Then he grabbed Suzette, now dressed like a captive in scruffy shorts and a ripped T-shirt, surrounded by chains. He pulled on the chain, seeming to drag her against her will into the casket, snapping her feet into blocks that kept her from moving. At the other end of the cases, he pulled the chains, forcing her arms out of two small holes, then closed the tops of the cases and shut them.
The helpers turned the case in circles, showing that there was nothing beneath.
Then Jeremiah brought out the chain saw.
The trick was nothing special. Most people had seen a girl supposedly cut in half before on TV, but he knew that, in person, it was still one of the more effective tricks.
Suzette only had a few seconds to twist her feet, slip her legs out of their trap, and to pull her legs up to her chest before the saw came down.
And she had no way to tell Jeremiah if there was a problem. As with all tricks of this type, both magician and assistant knew the risks and practiced many hours without the saw to make sure nothing would go wrong.
This time, though, maybe the bright lights slowed her reaction, or the audience murmurs hypnotized her. Nobody would ever know. The blood spewing up on the chain saw was the first sign of disaster.
Jeremiah yanked the saw up and stared aghast at the blood spilling down.
“Oh my God,” he said. He stared to the left of the stage. “Get the doctor!”
Two stage hands came running out and pulled the casket behind the curtain. Suzette was screaming in pain.
Silence enveloped Jeremiah. He stared at the audience, not seeming to have control of his body. Shortly, the curtain fell, separating him from the six hundred people who had just watched him cut his chainsaw into his assistant.
* * *
Suzette was in the hospital for two weeks. She hadn’t been able to free her feet in time, and the chain saw had cut deeply into her thighs. The doctor who was on hand for the show had been able to staunch most of the bleeding, and he gave her a shot for the pain.
At the hospital, they patched her up, but one bone was chipped and she needed two transfusions to get her blood levels back to normal. Physical therapy slowly helped get her back on her feet.
Jeremiah only visited her one time, the day after the accident. Suzette’s mother and father were also visiting, and they tried to convince him to leave.
“No,” said Suzette. “It was my fault. I wasn’t fast enough.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jeremiah said.
Her father was biting his lip, his face red with anger. Jeremiah knew he’d just as soon punch him as look at him.
“I’ve told the administrators that I’ll cover the bill.”
“I would certainly hope so,” whispered Suzette’s mother.
The bill was $48,000. At the time, Jeremiah had $485.03 in his bank account. At the age of twenty, it seemed that his magical career was over.
Chapter 7
2012
Alannah Clark loved Seattle. It’d been four years since she and Savannah had left upstate New York and followed I-90 to the west coast. Although they had no notion where they’d end up (well, truth be told, Alannah knew that she had no clue, but sometimes Savannah surprised her with plans Alannah had no idea about), they hopped out of their last hitch-hiked ride in downtown Seattle, and when they climbed out and Alannah smelled the salty Puget Sound, she knew she never wanted to leave.
They found a temporary place to stay at a youth hostel and then rented a basement apartment a few miles from the core of the city.
A week after that they had a job. A shared job, because their rent was low enough and they could afford to live quite easily on one salary.
The job application, interview, and other hiring steps were all done using the Internet. There were actually two interviews, one with some flunky in Human Resources and the other with a manager in the Call Center. The single job was supposedly for Savannah, but they just took turns. Who would ever know? Or care?
It was the perfect job as far as Alannah was concerned. They were Customer Service Representatives for Millipad, a reseller of Apple iPads and other computer equipment. The entire business was virtual, with no store front, no factory, no sales team, no board rooms. Everyone from the CEO on down worked from their own homes. The company had almost no expenses other than salaries, allowing them to charge lower prices, compared to their competition.
Savannah (or Alannah, with no one being the wiser) was expected to answer one hundred customer calls over seven and a half hours. Every person she talked to was subsequently e-mailed a survey. As long as her customers were happy and she met her daily quote, nobody from the company would ever bother her.
It was perfect.
* * *
Alannah stretched her arms and clicked her phone off for the end of her shift. She could see the counter at the bottom of her screen showing that she’d helped 121 customers today. She yawned, feeling a buzz in her head from the sudden silence after talking on the phone all day. She placed her headset on the desk and stood to stretch.
A quiet Wednesday in May, she thought. Time to go for it.
She sipped the glass of water she kept on her desk and then walked to the apartment door. She locked the door behind her and headed across the street and down a block to a small strip mall.
She was nervous. Her entire life she’d been the nervous one, tentative, shy, and introverted. Talking on the phone was one thing, but this was a big step.
It was cool out, but she was wearing a sweater and jogging pants so that didn’t bother her.
The strip mall wasn’t new, but it was convenient for picking up groceries and (from Savannah’s perspective) the occasional bottle of wine.
Alannah walked quickly to the dance studio that had opened three months earlier. She’d bee
n too chicken to go any sooner. Today was the day she’d forced herself to find the courage.
The business had an open reception area. From the door, Alannah could see three studios where dance lessons would be taught, glass-walled so parents could watch the children’s lessons. Curtains inside each classroom provided privacy for adult lessons.
“Can I help you? You look lost.”
There was a woman behind the counter in front of Alannah.
“Hi. I’m—”
She hesitated, all of a sudden not so sure this was a good idea.
“It’s okay. I don’t bite.”
“I’m just not sure what I want,” whispered Alannah. She could feel her heart beating, and her head felt light.
“Honey, I’ve been hunting for a decade to find out what I want. At the moment, it’s running this place. Don’t ask me to tell you if I’d give you the same answer in another ten years.”
She laughed loudly, and for a moment, Alannah felt jealous that the woman could be so comfortable with a complete stranger. She nodded and bit her lip. This was a really bad idea.
The woman came over and reached out her hand. “I’m Nickie. Owner, teacher, receptionist, accounting . . . pretty much the whole ball of wax.”
“My name is Alannah. I’ve always wanted to study dance.”
She smiled, but it was forced.
“Never taken any classes? How old are you?”
“Twenty. Well, I will be in two months. No, no lessons. I guess you’d say I’m self-taught.”
“Well, let’s see what you’ve got. Ballet? Jazz?”
“More just a modern mix. I’m not really sure what you’d call it. I’ve just kind of thrown things together.”
Nickie walked with her to the closest classroom. There were mats on one half of the room, while the rest was naked hardwood. She waved her hand, indicating that Alannah could pick whichever side she wanted.
The room smelled faintly of sweat. Alannah took off her sweater and jogging pants. Beneath, she wore a black leotard.
She took a long breath, trying to convince herself not to run away.
“Take your time, sweetie. I’m not in a hurry. I don’t have a class for another hour. I’m here early every day, but mostly I just push paper around.”
Alannah stared at the teacher, eyes big and bright. She nodded and walked to the hardwood side of the floor before turning back.
“Do you have music?”
“Oh, of course.”
Nickie pranced to a corner of the room where a small A/V center was set up. She looked at the setup and pressed some buttons.
“’Time of My Life.’ That okay?”
Alannah nodded. She remembered watching Dirty Dancing and loving the song.
As the music started, she closed her eyes and started to nod to the beat. She lifted her arms from her sides and rose onto her toes as she gently promenaded to the middle of the room. Her face tilted from one side to the other and back and then she stopped, reached up toward the ceiling, stretching as far as she could.
The music changed to a faster pace and along with it, Alannah ran to the far end of the room, swiveled, and then started a series of cartwheels, four in a row, before doing a flip without touching the floor at all. She landed solidly on her feet and reversed, doing several backward flips.
When the music slowed again, she fell to her knees and pantomimed reaching above her to some unseen entity. Emotions poured from her face as she went through her routine: love, fear, hatred, sadness, and joy. Each of these expressions was perfect, and she knew it.
She slowly rose to her feet and leaned over backward, bending until her hands touched the floor just behind her feet. With no apparent effort, she lifted her legs and flipped over to land normally.
She spun in a pirouette, her arms gracefully touching above her head. Twists, spirals, and glides followed, as she mixed in some jazz movements.
Alannah almost forgot Nickie was there. She was dancing only for herself, the safest place she’d found in her entire life.
The music continued, and she pushed herself and her abilities, wanting to try new moves and new ways to show her buried emotions, and with every move she made, she felt the music deep inside her heart, and she lived her real life.
* * *
The music was stopped for almost twenty seconds before Nickie finally spoke. “Wow. You learned all that yourself?”
Alannah nodded. Her forehead was glistening with sweat, but she hadn’t thought to bring a towel and she didn’t want to wipe it away with her arm, so she tried to ignore it.
“My parents couldn’t afford lessons, so I watched sometimes. Through windows, just like what you have here. I watched how other people learned, and I tried to do some of the same moves. I’d go to the school gym after class, but only on days when there were no sporting events. I’d have the place all to myself lots of times.”
“You’re very thin.”
Nickie walked over and stared at Alannah.
“I don’t condone eating disorders.”
Alannah laughed. “Don’t worry, that’s not me. I just have a lucky metabolism. I can eat pizza, McDonald’s hamburgers, steaks, or whatever else I want and my weight always manages to hover right around 110. I’m five foot two, but I love eating. I’m just one of the fortunate ones who don’t put pounds on.”
Nickie kept staring.
“And my sister is the same,” Alannah continued. “We’re twins and we’re both skinny. My mother was the same.”
Nickie nodded. “Let’s talk about what we want to do with you.” She smiled and took Alannah back to the reception area. They sat in cozy armchairs facing each other and worked out a training schedule.
* * *
Savannah Clark also adored living in Seattle, almost as much as her sister. She loved not having to deal with snow and ice over the winter, not having to deal with frigid temperatures, and for that matter, not having to deal with the stifling heat of East Coast summers.
The rain got to her sometimes, but it wasn’t a big deal. She would imagine the rain turning to snow and, all of a sudden, it wasn’t a big deal any more.
The job-sharing with Alannah was working perfectly. Savannah didn’t mind the job, but listening to people complain on the phone all day was a little difficult, so alternating days with sis kept them both sane.
Savannah also liked the freedom that having their own apartment provided. The day after Alannah found the dance studio, Savannah finished work and then stared at the small white board she’d attached to her bedroom wall, which listed the letters A through Z in her neatest handwriting. There were names beside twelve of them: Alex, Cody, Dennis, Franklin, George, Jack, Norman, Otis, Paul, Timothy, Victor, and Walter.
Fourteen more and I’ll have the whole set.
Savannah smiled. Collecting men wasn’t normally considered a wholesome hobby, but what the heck. She liked to fuck. She’d started the list on New Year’s Day, four months ago.
She glanced at the group again, knowing it would be hard to find a Quentin or an Xavier, but . . . she had eight more months in the year.
Dinner that night consisted of fried wieners cut up and mixed with a box of Kraft Dinner. She scarfed it down with a Coke and tossed the dishes in the dishwasher. It was only half full, but she started it anyhow. Alannah would unload it when she got around to it.
The closest bar was two blocks away, but she’d been there a lot lately and felt like a change. She found another one ten minutes in the other direction.
The next morning she wanted to add Nick to her white board but she already had an N. She shrugged and wrote his middle name, Martin.
* * *
A month later, Savannah sat on the toilet and shook her head.
“No, can’t be . . .”
But it was. She held the little plastic stick in her hand, and the bright red line told her she was pregnant, that missing her period wasn’t some weird fluke.
“But I can’t be . . .”
&
nbsp; Three days later, her doctor confirmed that she’d be expecting a baby sometime near Christmas. She didn’t know who the father was.
That night she cried herself to sleep and felt lonelier than she had ever imagined. She wrote about her feelings in the diary she shared with Alannah. She talked about her fears, her despair, her humiliation, and most of all, her uncertainty.
“I don’t know what to do,” she wrote.
Alannah did.
The next day, Savannah found a brochure on the dining room table that talked about how to make the choice she faced. She read the notes and made a list of pros and cons. She wrote them all in her diary.
Three weeks later, the baby was gone. Savannah knew it was the right decision, but that didn’t make it any easier. Part of her felt like she’d lost a connection she might never have again. Her baby was gone. Nobody would ever know what special abilities he or she might have developed, nor what kind of bond they could have had with their mother.
Savannah cried more than ever, but she eventually stopped and decided that she needed to move on with her life.
She erased the white board and took it off the wall.
In her diary, she wrote, “Thank you,” knowing that her sister would read it one day.
Part 2
The Magic Show
“It is the unspoken ethic of all magicians to not reveal the secrets.”
—David Copperfield
Chapter 8
2014
Jeremiah Moore celebrated his fortieth birthday by finding a new place to live, moving to Seattle after ten years in San Francisco. It wasn’t that he had anything against the city, not exactly. He just felt antsy (a word he got from his grandmother, who, when Jeremiah was young, used to say he must have ants in his pants). He had visited Seattle many years ago and had fond memories of sitting on a park bench overlooking Lake Washington. He remembered walking to Pike Place, visiting the first Starbucks, watching fish being tossed fifty feet in the middle of the market amid the oohs and ahhs of dozens of fascinated tourists . . . and the seed was planted that finally grew fruit.
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