The Last Illusion Read online

  We’re almost free.

  You saved my life. Over and over. I owe you my life.

  Zal’s words swirled through Hendricks’s head all evening. He could not get over the feeling of finality in those words. The gratitude, the tenderness, the deep warmth—it was not the usual Zal, the Zal they had until recently still believed incapable of expressing a love like that. Just when he’d become the son he’d always dreamed of, Zal was gone.

  You mean free, Tony, free, he reminded himself. The point of saving Zal in the first place was freedom. His son was finally free. Hendricks hated admitting that freedom scared him.

  He poured himself a glass of red wine in hopes that it would melt the worries into drowsiness, but he felt haunted. He tried to keep his eyes closed, but all he saw were other eyes: Zal’s, Nilou’s, it was hard to tell which. They were his family’s eyes: Iranian eyes, large deep dark brown orbs, that looked back unblinking and unguarded, heavy with history, overburdened with imagery, bold receptacles of set and scene changes from stories he’d never quite know.

  But the stories I do know . . . and he turned to the only place he ever turned to for comfort: to the Shahnameh lying there, in the same place he’d left it that last night he had read to Zal. He went back to his favorite passage, where the giant mythical bird, the Simorgh, frees the warrior Zal and restores him back to his kingdom, but not without one more offering of ultimate caretaking: Take these feathers of mine with you, so that you will always live under my protection, since I brought you up beneath my wings with my own children. If any trouble comes to you, throw one of my feathers into the fire, and my glory will at once appear to you. I shall come to you in the guise of a black cloud and bring you safely back here . . .

  It was over, the end—Indigo had known that weeks before. The arresting of Bird Boy’s bride had been the final straw. She had thought being a personal assistant to a magician was a matter of keeping appointments, maybe dry-cleaning tuxes and top hats, buying trick boxes and handkerchiefs, but no, especially not that season. She knew the best day to quit would be the end of the day of the illusion. First of all, he’d undoubtedly do several somethings to drive her nuts that day; he’d be the same wreck he always was when he was finally about to poop out the illusion. She could pretend it came out of nowhere and just snap and say, That’s it, Bran, no more! I’ve had it! Please mail me my last check and see you never. She’d say it without a single Silberism, too. But it would also be a perfect day because once the illusion was over, he’d be in the phase he lived for—that short-lived period in which anyone and everyone around him was in a constant state of gush and coo. He’d be glowing with self-love, and so losing Indigo Menendez, first assistant who had walked out before—but this time it’s for real, Bran!—would be “No big whoop, bitch!” as she could imagine him saying. Plus, it was a clean finish. She knew he had said that it would be the last illusion, but she didn’t trust him anymore. She’d have to walk out before he could even rethink the future of Silber Inc.

  So she wrote him a letter. It was four paragraphs and two pages long, a decent length, she thought. She took the advice her mother once gave her: When breaking up with a boy, write them a letter, but instead of a focusing on all the things they did wrong, go on and on about all the things you’ll cherish. Everyone deserves a consolation prize! So she dug and dug and spit out whatever she could come up with. They weren’t all lies. She would miss the job; she would miss him. She did have no idea what she would do. And she did, for the record, think meaning and symbol and theme and all that shit were overrated, and she was sad to see that it had made their last weeks together so empty. She added one P.S., the only sentence she couldn’t fully stand behind, but it was better than ending on a passive-aggressive note: The FOT [Fall of the Towers] was so awesome today! Better than anyone thought even! They were moved, they were blinded! Mission accomplished, all hail the chief!

  When Shell Hooper was back to her usual thousands of miles away, she thought to herself, for the first time, that it was too far. She started calling Zachary, the only child she really had left, she had to admit, over and over to make up for the distance.

  Distance was met with distance. For a while he did not answer. He didn’t know how to answer. It took him a while to even realize it was his mother. He had never heard her cry before—at Willa’s funeral, she had kept her crying completely silent, wary of making a scene even when a scene required a scene.

  But on the night of September 10, 2001, he finally called back, even though he knew it was the middle of the night in Hawaii.

  She answered and started crying the moment she heard his voice.

  “I need you to take care of yourself,” she kept saying. “You’re all I’ve got, you know!”

  “Oz’s not dead,” Zachary grumbled. He had to admit he felt a tinge of pride for having a sister who was doing time in the slammer. She was tough, and she’d come out tougher, or so he was telling himself.

  “I don’t want to talk about Daisy right now! I want to know you’re okay. Are you okay? Are you happy? Do you have everything you need?”

  “We’ve always had everything,” he snapped.

  “Yes, and that’s good! I want you to have it all! I want you to be filled with it all!”

  “Mother, I have to go,” Zachary said, though he didn’t, of course.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Oh, Zachary, be nice, now of all times,” she pleaded.

  “Let’s talk another day.”

  “You know we won’t!”

  “So shoot.”

  She paused. It was amazing to her that these words were so hard to get out, words that should feel more natural than any words on earth, especially to her son. But was he her son? Had he ever been? For years, her children had been unknowns to her. And now she was losing them all—but could there be such a thing as too late when it came to family? All these thoughts roamed through Shell Hooper’s head as she paused—and eventually Zachary quietly put the phone down, hoping that the gentleness of his click would soften the blow, but he had warned her—until something snapped her out of the nightmares of her neuroses and she just let it out, I love you, son, not realizing she had said it to no one, just a dial tone.

  If there was one person she still wished she could be with just one more time, it was, of all people, Zal. And if there was one thing Willa would tell Zal, it was that it took her being gone for her to remember. She still could not remember the face of the man who had harmed her, but she remembered the ending of the story that had kept her alive.

  And the girl held the valentine and said, “This is my heart.” But the man put a fist to her chest and said, “No, this is your heart.” And she said, “I mean no disrespect, sir, but you have no idea. Believe me. Take this heart of mine wherever you go.” The man laughed. “Why would I do that? It’s just a piece of paper!” She said, “Because one day you’ll be in danger. That’s the truth. One day we’ll all be in danger, but on your day, you will be protected.” The man laughed again, but this time because her words made him uncomfortable. “Trust me. When you are in danger take this heart and then take your matches and just burn it, just like that. Then you’ll see: I’ll protect you . . .” And the man said nothing, stunned, because he could not imagine that such a small girl would know that he also needed protection.

  Bran Silber did what he did every night before an illusion, never mind that this was the Last Illusion, the name that had replaced the admittedly dull Fall of the Towers in his head: he stayed up all night. But his mind-set was altogether different. He sat on the balcony outside his bedroom, smoking but not chain-smoking, staring at the glittering skyline of his city—and he did not for one moment even think he was about to alter that skyline. He just looked at it, admired it, and felt okay. That was his first tip-off that something might be different here: he felt relaxed, peaceful, good even.

  It was not a feeling to be trusted, he told himself, and yet he could
not shake it off.

  Before he knew it, he was saying I love you in his head and eventually out loud, to no one in particular.

  He would be haunted for ages by those three words that had, like a curse, stamped themselves on his illusion, himself, them, everything somehow, but it would be many more hours until he even had the luxury of recollection.

  Because when he walked out of his home that still-dark Tuesday morning, it was like any morning before an illusion. All was well. Silber felt a giant, monstrous confidence—after months of doubt—welling up inside him, gearing to explode. There was no choice but to win, and no one to win for but everyone, no one to win against but himself, he coached himself.

  And Bran Silber even mouthed to his reflection as he always did before the big show: You, love, are a god. Now go kill them.

  Showtime: Silber inhaled and cued the music. At first it was all wind chimes and drums, and then came the violins, layer upon layer of shrieking violins. It was the most manic dirge he had ever heard, perfect in a way no one could guess for his last illusion.

  Everything—and he meant everything—was perfectly in its place, he would insist and insist and insist again until the day he died.

  Before he could even consider the inevitable nerve or two, he was spotlit on that already blindingly bright day, on the platform’s platform, waving at more masses than any of them could have dreamed—another record for the records, Silber thought, a bit tearfully. The dirge drowned out by the roars of cheers and applause.

  All was as it should have been, he’d tell and retell, cross his heart and hope to die.

  At the very most, one aspect possibly could have been interpreted as off: seconds before the illusion, he felt the familiar sense of fate catching up with him, like sensing an earthquake seconds before it hits, and he felt himself go in and out and in and out until he was sure he was gone. But, professional that he was, he immediately went on autopilot and heard himself belt into the mic: “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us! Behold the greatest illusion of our time, New York City, the Fall of the Towers!”

  Everything went quiet. No more violins, just the mere twinkling of the wind chimes plus a sparkle or two of xylophonics.

  And the moving and blinding, Manning’s key to the illusion, commenced to a stream of genuine steady gasps—no gasp track this time; Silber had been that confident in the end—honest-to-God gasps from the thousands of spectators, who had little idea what was in store for them.

  In this way, Silber was also a spectator among his spectators.

  The last thing he remembered before the illusion took hold was the rehearsed thumbs-up—plus an extra congratulatory wink—from Manning in the wings.

  Green light. A-OK. Ready-set-go, 3-2-1.

  He waved his arms to the whole world, and the glitter-infused fog flooded the platform as planned.

  And just like that it was gone—

  Though not as planned.

  There was to be three whole minutes between the disappearance and the reappearance. Silber took his position next to Manning at the wings, where the mirrors would be dropped and the rotation halted and the Towers would, to the relief of the audience, be restored.

  But something was impossibly off.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Manning growled at the controls. “What did you do? Is this some sort of last-minute addition, you motherfucker?”

  But Silber, nowhere near comprehending, just shook his head, suddenly drenched in sweat, shaking like he’d never shaken before. He, like his audience, was gasping to the point of hyperventilating, but still unaware of the true enormity of it all.

  By the end of the three minutes there was no denying it, no matter how hard they tried. “Oliver, it’s gone,” he whispered. “The towers are fucking gone.”

  They relooped the music, which made little sense, violins flooding nothing but the audience’s multiplying unease and rippling impatience, a desperate cacophony struggling to patch up an inconsolably empty, gaping space, impossibility of impossibilities.

  The illusion had not gone right, but it had not gone wrong, either. It had gone real.

  For a while they faked it—more and more and more music, praying it could drown out the groans and protests and eventual full-fledged boos—but soon the police and fire trucks were involved. Soon there was yelling and screaming and the threat of riots, men and women insisting their loved ones were inside, and if you don’t bring them and it back, you’ll be gone too; workers protesting the absence of their workplace, their livelihood, you fucking rich-bitch magician; a group of children at the command of their own morbid imaginations, hugging fire hydrants, lying atop the earth beneath them, crying for New York to please don’t away, please; dogs from all corners of the city suddenly howling like agonized women in an opera. And eventually everyone, including Silber Studios and company, was running for their lives.

  And Zal—who in that instant of the magic’s reality felt like a character in a video game, one likely designed by his former lover—ran with them, if anything to ensure that no one would suspect his connection to a premonition that alone seemed to have given birth to this most sinister of all possible atrocities.

  And he kept running, never stopping, until something fell in front of his face, bringing him to a halt. He jumped back, afraid of any and all possibilities, but he noticed it was simply a feather. A massive white feather, like the feather of a gull, but larger than any gull he had seen. He caught it and noticed part of it was singed.

  He held it, held it against his heart.

  For a moment he paused the whole scene, tried to write himself in, muscular and massive and a warrior, raised by an avian god, defender of kingdoms and homelands, a hero—but the light went out on the image as quickly as it had appeared. He focused on the freeze-frame of what was actually in front of him, all that was still and frozen, with Zal at the center of it all, thinking one thing: I exist. I am here. I am real.

  And it had happened.

  Zal had awakened to his own image, as if his own reflection had shaken him to consciousness. It was his face and body, but several stories high and wide and distorted to the point that he looked more monster than man.

  He was before a giant mirror. New York was before a giant mirror. Mirror Room was the first thought that whispered itself into his brain. He was trapped in one large Mirror Room.

  It was barely light, and there was Silber’s team, fussing with props and chairs and lights and, indeed, huge mirrors, on top of all sorts of foreign, futuristic-looking equipment. Zal had tried to make out Silber or Indigo or anyone else he knew, but he could see no one. Just a lot of efficient, angry, shouting guys, making something, something big, happen.

  A police officer had tapped his shoulder just then, as if he’d been waiting for him to wake up. “Wakey-wakey, buddy,” he said. “This is off-limits.”

  “I’m already up,” Zal said. “I don’t want to be here anyway.”

  The police officer had already walked off, with bigger problems that morning than some pale guy in a suit, likely just another Wall Street banker who’d had a rough bender and made an accidental overnight of it.

  Zal had started to walk off, but to where, he did not know. He suddenly felt worried, especially with his reflection ensnared among the mirrors, no matter how far he walked, it seemed. What was going to happen? Was he to stick around? Was he to leave? What was he to do? He suddenly had no idea. What was coming, anyway? He tried to conjure up that peaceful image of his swami girlfriend in her cage-cell, but suddenly he couldn’t see her. All he could come up with was a stick figure, crudely drawn, standing in for her. The only image he could see with any vividness was one he’d never seen: Willa, big beautiful Willa, standing upright for a brief moment and then walking, almost floating, to her bedroom window, and out.

  And so he, still sore from the night’s walking, set to more walking, pacing even. As the day lightened into a big bright blue-gold, the crowds seemed even worse than they were during
the evening rush hour. People were busier than ever, all their senses of purpose and destiny and fate entangled against his none-at-all.

  He could not stop looking back at all that mirror.

  He was lost.

  Somewhere a second hand was ticking, madly, but he couldn’t hear it.

  He had lost his nerve.

  His body bobbed and lingered and ebbed in that crude indifferent reflection. He could not get rid of himself, that disdainful monster rendering, no matter what he did.

  The next hour and a half was unrecoverable for him, a blur of walking, passing faces of all ages and genders and races and affiliations, at hyper-speed, being pushed and shoved, and yelled, helloed, and hissed at. It was a fever of city workday life. He could not get ahold of any of it. He wandered like a character in a dream, soulless, on someone else’s strings, waiting to evaporate with the waking of the dreamer.

  Wake up, he thought, wake up. But to whom?

  The suspense was killing him. Suspense was bad enough, but it was a horrible match for being lost.

  And as he heard the Silber music in the distance—similar to the Flight Triptych, a bizarrely flashy dirge, slightly avant-garde, brassy, garish, heart-stopping, a chaos of orchestrals—he started to feel like he was getting closer.

  And then, seconds before it, he felt the familiar sense of fate catching up with him, like sensing an earthquake seconds before it hits, and he felt himself go in and out and in and out until he was sure he was gone.

  When he came to, he was doing what they were all doing: running. The sky was falling. The whole city was screaming in sirens, police and fire trucks and ambulances all talking over one another at different intervals, the only sounds, because the men and women who were running seemed mostly silent.