The Last Illusion Read online

  After days and days of this, Zal began to notice that Hendricks and Asiya were in the apartment more and more, pacing around him, talking in hushed tones. He could almost feel the heat of their worry. One time, although deep in the world of canary bickering and veranda dusk, he thought he heard the sound of Hendricks snapping at Asiya—a forbidden sound—break through. By the time he shook that other world off himself, he found Hendricks in his arms suddenly, as if Zal were the woman, rocking his father back and forth, his father, who was crying into his son’s body, crying deep into him as if through the sobs he was trying to communicate with that one part of him he longed to, but could never, of course, hold: his heart.

  The meaning. It had been days, at least—weeks? It couldn’t have been that long, as much as August 2001 was on a sort of runaway slow motion, since he had wondered who was pulling those strings, where it lay, this-that-and-the-other, anything and everything even vaguely smelling of that thing: meaning. He was in his usual all black of that era, sucking on a Fantasia whose bold red suddenly looked more blood than sex, watching all his workers shuffle back and forth, making the thing, that One and Only, happen, apparently. The Silbertorium seemed to grow less and less peaceful by the day, and Bran Silber wondered if it had always been a bit like that—maybe once you became an observer rather than a participant, the world suddenly became all din and disaster.

  “You know that story ‘The Hungry Artist?’” were the first words he said that day, when Manning approached him, wondering if another day was going to go by with Silber in a sort of dead spell.

  Manning nodded. “It’s ‘A Hunger Artist.’ Kafka.” Manning loved Kafka.

  “It’s like the only story I have ever finished,” Silber said, “to be perfectly honest. I read it in high school, but I never forgot it.”

  Manning tapped his boot impatiently. “And? So what?”

  Silber took a drag and sighed. “I feel like the guy, the artist at the end of it. Like you’re all coming to my cage and you can’t even find me, because I’ve basically just turned into nothing. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m on the verge of being replaced—and by a giant, happy, fierce bear—”

  “I think it was a panther,” Manning corrected.

  “Whatever, a big fierce thing!” Silber hissed. “Isn’t that what’s going on here? Am I obsolete, Manning? Is this whole thing, what I’m making happen here, over before it even began?”

  Manning squinted his eyes, half in disbelief, half in disgust. He’d waited all these days for Silber to come out of his shell, for this? Some misinterpreted Kafka and a pity party? “I wouldn’t overthink it.”

  Silber snorted. “You didn’t want to do this anyway.”

  “But I did do it.” Manning sounded dangerous.

  Silber for once didn’t care. “It is an overstatement. What is it, pops? You tell me. What is this mess?”

  Manning shook his head and looked away, chuckling. “It’s money. It’s all money. I’m getting paid, you’re getting paid. Period.”

  Silber nodded, with a demented smile. “And that’s about as close as I get to meaning myself. World Trade, plus or equal sign, money. Those go together, right? That means something, right?”

  Manning nodded. “Sure as hell, it does. Nothing means more than money. That’s all we got.”

  Silber looked down. “Well, pardon my math, but that means the WTC is one big zero, if it all equals money and money alone, if you add money. But maybe that’s all there is. Maybe that’s all there should be.”

  “Look,” Manning snapped suddenly. “I don’t have time to philosophize. And neither do you. We have two weeks left, you hear me? You know what that is? That’s a zero. We got nothing. And it’ll be done, but right now, you and I are running on nothing. And in order for this to be about money, we gotta finish it. We’re not there yet.”

  “It’s like the nothing before nothing!” Silber cracked a crooked smile.

  Manning nodded. “Well said, asshole. The nothing before nothing. Now can you manage to get your ass up and make something of it or what?”

  Silber nodded, with a shy smile. He couldn’t help but be a little moved. It was the closest Manning had ever come to caring about him, even though Silber knew well that it wasn’t just him that Manning was caring about.

  Money, he kept thinking over and over. Maybe money is the key. And yet it felt like he was a bumper car, furiously bumping into a wall over and over, as if one of these days it would give. He knew as well as Manning, as well as whatever cruel god was presiding over that mess, that money was as much it as his work was real magic.

  On that evening of Manning’s confrontation—when Silber, two weeks away from triumph or failure or whatever the difference was, took back the reins, slowly, gingerly, as if the thing would break if he went too quickly back to his old self—something more happened. Suddenly the Silbertorium seemed brimming with event, with occasion that all the illusion manufacturing in the world couldn’t compete with. It was one thing to have Bran Silber, after weeks, back on his feet, but it was another when the letter came.

  It was Indigo—who was back at her old post—who interrupted the action, suddenly like the newer, graver Bran, also without the old affectation.

  “Um, Bran,” she said almost ultrasonically, repeating it a few times, until Raj heard and tapped Silber on the shoulder.

  He looked up at Raj, who pointed to Indigo. He looked at Indigo, who was looking down at a letter as if it were a ghost.

  “What is that?” Silber went over, scrunching his nose at it. In the age of e-mail, they didn’t see paper letters anymore unless they were bills.

  “Somebody really . . .” Indigo began, pale as a smoggy sky. “Somebody kinda crazy, Bran. I don’t know . . .” She seemed reluctant to give it to him, and it was making him reluctant to take it.

  “The gist?” he muttered, backing away and yet trying to seem casual.

  “It’s a woman,” she said, slowly, eyes still glued to it. “She needs you. She says something bad is about to happen. She needs your—she’s calling it a trick, but you know—to make it better, she’s saying. She’s making threats. She says you have to. Or else she’s gonna—shit. It’s about the WTC and making it disappear. She wants to make sure. Bran . . . it’s all in a crazy sort of English . . .”

  “The gist,” he whispered, hoarse with fear.

  “And she wants you to meet with her, that’s all. She says you have to or else she’s going to take matters in her own hands. Bomb the WTC, or us, or I don’t know, Bran, this is crazy—”

  Bran snatched the letter out of Indigo’s shaking hands. She had done a poor job with the gist. She had, first of all, forgotten the line about the letter writer being “a friend of someone you know, who I can reveal once I meet you.” And, most important, she had left out the final sentiment: I don’t know what it all means to you, but it means everything to me, what you’re doing. It means the world, and saving it, really, Mr. Silber, so I hope to hear from you before ASAP. With much respect, urgently, Asiya McDonald.

  The word means had appeared three times altogether. As horrified as elements of that letter made him feel, he also felt something mystical about it. This strange woman with the strange name, out of nowhere, somehow held the key to the meaning.

  What he was about to do actually meant something to someone. For a moment, he was so happy he forgot to be worried.

  Indigo watched Silber put the letter into his back pocket and rejoin the workers. He had an extra spring in his step, his eyes were suddenly shining, his words back to quips; Manning gave the transformation a raised eyebrow followed by a thumbs-up. She couldn’t believe it.

  Something had been happening, and it wasn’t good. And she couldn’t depend on Silber, who in the past few weeks seemed too mired in a sort of nervous breakdown to save them or even himself. She was the only one who knew there was something happening, and she knew she had to stop it as soon as possible.

  She scanned the Silbertorium, bust
ling with its entire cast of characters, all hooting and hollering, bitching and snapping, whistling and humming. It was a circus. And yet: it was a circus in danger. Who could be trusted out of all those interns, assistants, and underlings?

  And as if on cue, she saw Manning wave a middle finger at a red-in-the-face intern of his, who promptly burst into tears.

  “No fucking way! I’m not on some Silber slave ship to watch it all go to shit,” Oliver Manning was shouting at one Bran Silber in the break room later that evening. “And I’m not worried about my ass! Do I seem like the kind of guy who’s worried about staying alive? I don’t give a flying fuck! And it’s not your life I’m sweating, either. It’s that thing!”

  He pointed to a wall, on the other side of which was the illusion, in its unwieldy, mammoth, very material form.

  Silber gulped and nodded. “Chief, listen, I’m not reading it that way. I was just thinking, we get the girl in here, hear her out—on the off-chance she actually has something real to say, something that might supplement the thing—and then we make her sign something and then send her out. And then rat her out! And so, in my mind, the thing is only enhanced by this.”

  “Fuck you,” Manning groaned.

  “I mean, it feels too perfect, like this was an answer to a prayer almost. I mean, look, I know you probably don’t believe in God—”

  Manning punched that same wall. “Fuck you doubly. What gives you the nerve to say that?”

  Silber stared at the floor like a scolded schoolboy. “I don’t know. You seem more, I don’t know, angry than the average believer?”

  “I’m a Christian, Sil,” Manning said, lighting a cigarette. “Christ: angry dude. The Jewish God: angry as hell. I don’t see what that has to do with—”

  “Exactly. My point was that it seemed easy to dismiss the letter, when its timing was, dare I say it, almost miraculous! I mean, it’s probably nothing. But if there’s the slightest possibility there could be some added miracle, some new dimension—I don’t know. Can’t we just call her?” He wondered why he was even asking Manning’s permission, but was too afraid to say it, which answered his question.

  “Hell, no. You’ve lost your mind, man. You think this terrorist is a miracle from God? No way. I will not have some crazy psycho stalker in here putting my boys in danger and, more importantly, that motherfucking thing we’ve been slaving away on for ages. I’m getting a paycheck, Sil, and I’m getting a paycheck because that shit is going to work.”

  Silber nodded glumly. “Could a phone conversation hurt?”

  “Oh, there’s gonna be a phone conversation, all right,” Manning said, leaning back against the wall and pausing to blow three perfect smoke rings. “We’re gonna have a talk with the cops!”

  “Oh, God, you want to anger her? You want to piss off a woman who sounds like that?”

  “That’s why we’re calling the cops and not the fucking Tooth Fairy, you ass. Because of that, precisely. That chick is danger, and we need the big boys on her.”

  “We have security!”

  “We have security the day of. She’s not talking about the day of. She’s talking before, and before starts now—it started before now. She could be on her way. You want that?” He looked down at the letter one more time. “I mean, motherfucker, she says she’s gonna bomb the World Trade if we don’t make it disappear first! Isn’t that a pretty important confession, or at least threat? Now, I’m not painting my life as precious, some big thing of value, but I’m willing to bet you do.”

  Silber said nothing. Lately, the truth was, he hadn’t. Not even close. All he had was the image of the back of his eyelids, as his face sat in his hands for hours at a time. What sort of life was that? And, as Manning was implying, it had made him less afraid of things like a threatening letter. Months ago, he would have wanted the National Guard in there over it. But now, some woman with presumably a gun and some rapid-fire crazy talk didn’t worry him. It would probably do more for his name than anything else, he even thought, at a particularly low moment in the long pause.

  “I don’t want to call the cops,” Silber finally said.

  “Nobody’s asking you to, asshole. I’m on it.”

  Normally, Manning taking charge would have a warming effect on Silber, but this time it felt chilling. “I think it’s a bad idea. Don’t ask me why! I just do. Not that you care.”

  “I don’t, frankly,” Manning said, pulling an old-fashioned-looking cell phone of walkie-talkie proportions out of his back pocket. “And you know why? Because I’m done.”

  “You’re done?”

  “This has been a nightmare. We’re done after this, Bran Silber.”

  Silber snorted. “Oh, that’s all you meant? Well, fine. But I beat you to it, because there’s nothing to be done with.”

  Manning cocked his head to the side, not understanding.

  Silber got up. He didn’t even want to be in the room for the phone call. As he opened the door to leave, he looked over his shoulder—still one to love a gesture with sky-high dramatic flair—and snapped, “Believe it, Mans. There’s nothing after this one. You’re done because I’m done. The end!”

  To capture them in that era, a still would do: a young couple, closed mouths, apart—in the same room, but their bodies so very apart—frozen in a New York City apartment. It was always Asiya’s apartment those days. She, suddenly in better spirits—they seemed in a perpetual seesaw of spirits, her down, him up, her up, him down—had ordered Chinese, a stir-fry that she claimed she had made, if only to make it more special. She had meant to make it, only she couldn’t sit still those days, not enough to focus on vegetables and measurements and cutting and cooking.

  Something, she could feel, was happening. Hotter, closer, more than ever.

  Zal was as pale as it was impossible for summer to render a human. He was sitting hunched over an empty bowl, chopsticks poised, ready for something that was not yet coming. The already cooked meal was cooking just a bit more in a pan, for authenticity’s sake.

  Asiya watched him carefully. He didn’t know.

  Zachary had moved back a few weeks ago, and, just minutes after they’d shown up at the house that evening, when Asiya was sure he wouldn’t be around, he had come in and seen Zal there. Zach shouted some profanities and threw a couch pillow Zal’s way, and then he left with a slam of the door. The whole time Zal had looked down at his bowl, on the same seat, same pose, same stupor.

  If he knew, he wasn’t letting on. But he didn’t, she thought—how could he? Not yet at least.

  She brought the steaming stir-fry over and scooped some on his plate with rice, and they sat silently, eyeing their food. Two sounds broke through the silence: the central air on an intense blast as it had gotten so very August, more than ever, in August’s final days; and the sound of Willa, laughing or crying, her soft voice somehow tumbling down the staircase to their table.

  Asiya blocked it out, sure she was crying.

  Zal tried not to hear it, sure she was crying.

  It had been that type of August, a time of the bloodiest angst yet for all of them.

  Asiya got up from the table and took a plate of food up to Willa, whose sounds stopped the minute she entered. There was nothing but silence up there, Zal noted, and the moment Asiya left, there was just more of it. No more sobs. But also, no clatter of silverware against ceramic, either. Willa had started to eat less and less, for reasons no one could pinpoint.

  He could know, and what could he do with the knowing but pretend he didn’t know, she thought. She had done it, and that was that. It was all going to be over soon.

  She took a bite, recoiling a bit at how hot it was, in temperature and in spice. She put her fork down and tried to meet Zal’s eyes, still on his untouched food. “Zal,” she said gently, a few times, and finally, less gently, “Zal.”

  He had looked up slowly, ever so slowly, and suddenly she thought, My God, he does know.

  She shook off what she was going to say and faced w
hat was in front of her. She looked away and said, with a harshness that was not intended, “And so what? It’s a good thing, you know. It could have been the end.”

  PART IX

  Once, the sky was free of hardware . . .

  —Nostradamus,

  on the early 2000s

  Asiya, to Zal’s amazement, never stopped believing in God. During those weeks from late August to early September, she talked about God more than ever. And in those same conversations, she admitted something she never really had before: She was terrified of dying.

  And she knew that someone who believed in God should not be, and that made it all the worse. She was constantly, it seemed, having panic attacks, in the company of Zal or alone, and she was sleeping less and less, until it seemed like she didn’t sleep at all. The extreme sleep deprivation led to more panic attacks, but also to hallucinations, more of what she thought might be valuable information about what was to come. She was constantly asking Zal how it was that everyone on earth wasn’t preoccupied with death, the inevitable it. How did they eat their meals and have their sex and go for their jogs and cuddle their pets and watch their television and meanwhile, at any given moment, it could strike down upon them, take them or their loved one or all of them, without even the tip of a hat to logic or reason or rationality, not to mention decency or generosity or humanity. How did they keep going in the face of it all? Why was it like a plane in turbulence, every single man and woman feeling it, feeling it very strongly, and yet never raising their chins to look up from those Condé Nast Travelers or whatever they were reading, never risking actually admitting they were scared, perhaps worrying that acknowledging it would have a domino effect, that everyone else would be forced to acknowledge it, and then what? How could they possibly endure their fear, that perhaps the only thing keeping them going was that very denial, perhaps the only thing worse than cold black death was the facing of it, the looking it straight in the eye, not when it was near, but before it was—though it always was before, wasn’t it? Reality was just one big prelude to the very end.