The Last Illusion Page 5

  He basically, the article implied, knew how to fly. Had, in fact, mastered it.

  This interested Zal. Particularly the last one, in which a person—a normal person, or perhaps a not so normal one, one whose life had made him just barely not normal—could, for more than a few moments, in tandem, indeed experience flight.

  Dr. Rhodes, Zal’s longtime therapist, would have described Zal’s interest as an unhealthy and furthermore unnecessary indulgence and regression. But as the years went on, Rhodes had become a cartoon angel on his shoulder, blurring in and out of high beam, just as easily brushed off—stardust, dirt, moral nebulae, particles of judgment neither here nor there—as the cartoon devil on his other side, the one he’d one day come to understand spoke most devotedly to the impulses that made all men simply men.

  He sent the author of the article an e-mail immediately. Thank you for your most informative article on Bran Silber’s upcoming Flight Triptych. It is urgent I get in touch with Mr. Silber. I would like to work for him, consult with him, volunteer, or do anything affiliated with this production. Since you have quoted him in your very informative piece, I think you know how to get in touch with him. I am not a student, I am not just some kid or obsessive stranger. You may have actually heard of me, though perhaps not, since the story is old. I have links below to my story in any case. It should make my interest in this stunt of his very clear. I thank you for your time. Most sincerely, Zal Hendricks

  To his surprise the journalist had written back the next day, with the e-mail and number of Silber’s “press people.” The journalist had added a note: And I’m sorry to say, I have never heard of you, but my God. What a story. To be honest I could not endure finishing the big article. It was too much. To say I am moved would be a real understatement. God bless you.

  Zal did not write back, but instead wrote the press person. And again wrote the press person when he didn’t hear for days and days. And called and left a message and called again and finally got a young woman who said she’d pass the message on to his assistant.

  He had basically given up when one evening Silber’s assistant called him.

  “Zal Hendricks?” She pronounced his name the way many did, as rhyming with “Al.” “This is Indigo Menendez, from Silber Studios, calling—”

  “It’s Zal, like ‘fall.’ Thank you so much for your call, Ms. Menendez.”

  “Indigo, please. Anyway, I’m just his assistant. He was kinda sorta interested in that e-mail you sent our press chick, Betsy. You can come to his first show, the magic carpet one, with a backstage pass, how’s that?”

  On the one hand, it was exactly what he wanted. On the other hand, it was not the show he wanted, although he wondered whether, if he went to the first one and then met him, he might be able to go to the second and third.

  Zal tried to hide any traces of disappointment. “It’s a dream come true,” Zal said, which it still was. “How’s that?”

  “Peachy to the max,” Indigo said flatly. “Bran will love to hear that. What’s your address, dude? I’ll overnight you the ticket. It’ll be worth the Vegas trip, trust me!”

  Vegas trip. Zal did not say another word, just nodded into the phone, waiting until the dial tone to type the words into the search engine of his computer.

  Early December 1999.

  Zal, who had never flown since that fateful trip from Iran—Rhodes, though not against the idea, had advised he take some extra courses of therapy to manage planes in general, but aside from that Zal really had no interest in getting inside the belly of a giant roaring aluminum-alloyed bird—and suddenly he was on an Amtrak from New York City to Las Vegas, Nevada.

  It took nearly sixty hours. He slept only here and there, half sleeps of sorts, filled with semi-lucid dreams, the dreams he’d normally shake off at home, dreams that were as abstract as they felt historic, even ancestral—the rush of air, swatches of perfect blue sullied only by a few puffs of transparent white, the stillness of atmosphere, endless canvases of black speckled with glimmering white-hot intangibles. In the nowhere-land of the train, he let himself go, fully go, into that other world, the world even his dreams sometimes resisted for their very dangerous dazzle: the what goes up that does not come down.

  He barely registered Las Vegas—he simply took a cab to the hotel and checked in and stayed in. He had a full day to kill before the show that night. He spent it in bed all day, eating from the minibar, lunches and dinners made of M&M’s and Dr Pepper and cashews and Doritos and tomato juice, all at prices Zal had also not registered. He was still in his dreams. His heart raced when he thought of what lay ahead.

  The world, they said, was about to end—there were fewer than thirty days until the new millennium—and all he wanted to do was the one thing in that other life, as well as this life, he was not able to do: fly.

  He was supposed to be over that. And yet. But Zal had always justified it to Rhodes and others most simply, Who doesn’t want to fly? Take the Wrights. Take Bran Silber! It’s every man’s dream. This isn’t the result of me being a— and he only mouthed the words, other people’s words, words he could never get himself to own or even hit the air with in all their outrageously brazen odd audio—“feral child.”

  His father had messengered him a suit, a hasty lunch-break buy in Midtown, when Zal announced his intention to go to Las Vegas, his first solo trip, just days before he’d embarked. Hendricks had asked him again and again, even asked Dr. Rhodes again and again, if it was really and truly okay. Zal was twenty-one, almost twenty-two, but his real age, Rhodes had estimated, was something more like fourteen, though Zal—who had turned the study of feral children upside down with his precociousness, a miracle of adjustment in a world of malformed and mush-minded freaks—was maybe, just maybe, more like seventeen. They had consented, even if a bit reluctantly.

  In the hotel room, Zal laid out his suit and shirt. There was also the tie, the same tie Hendricks had over and over in the past few years taught him to tie, but his fingers and mind could simply not agree on executing the knot. He took a shower and put on the suit. He did not look in the direction of the mirror, which he had gotten rid of immediately anyway, covering it with a sheet. He remembered his Niagara Falls trip with Hendricks, where he had realized one thing all hotel rooms had in common: big full-length mirrors. Hendricks had taught him to fling a full sheet over them and just take a deep breath.

  When Zal got to the MGM Grand, he did as he was taught—always ask—and a gruff guard, bewildered by his lack of comprehension of simple right-left directions, begrudgingly walked him to the show space. An usher—the opposite sort, who approached him to help—took him to his seat, calling him “Mr. Hendricks” and saying over and over “pleasure,” as if it were a magic word. His seat was not in the front row, as imagined, but at least a dozen rows from the front and to the far left.

  It didn’t matter. He was at a Silber show, and the man was about to fly.

  The room darkened; Zal bit his lip to keep from making a sound, weaved his fingers together to avoid making a move. The curtain teasingly blew to the left and right under suddenly purple lights, as if a mystical midnight breeze had overtaken them. Then, sound—sounds Zal, thanks to Hendricks’s years of gradual Persian cultural immersion, vaguely knew belonged to some part of his original culture. In came the mournful whine of the Persian violin, the kamancheh, the wobbly bass percussion pulse of the goblet drum called tonbak, the haunting reedy coos of the ney flute, the angelic metallic chatter of the santur dulcimer, the rollicking mellow warmth of the tar lute. (This one he knew best of all, as Hendricks had prescribed tar music in huge doses during Zal’s worst depressive, insomniac phases, always referencing the instrument’s ancient music therapy role. For centuries, apparently, the mere sound of a tar was thought to be a panacea for all diseases of the spirit.) The music was nice, but as much as Zal wanted it to, it did not have that to-your-bone familiarity Hendricks always hoped it would. Its beauty was about as exotic to him as it was to the rest of
the audience, if not more.

  It went on and on. They were supposed to be someplace else, somewhere far, sometime long ago, after all.

  None of it was what he imagined. Zal had never seen a magic show, he reminded himself, but he did not expect all the singing and dancing and laser-light-show antics, the camels and their outfits, the painted snakes and their equally painted charmers, the elephant powdered white and decked in tassels and bells (no birds, he noted, mostly happily). He did not expect all the women, symbols of the harem, he supposed, these scantily clad, glittering, shimmying, grinding, belly-dancing women of all color—blond and gold, black and brown, white and red—that he supposed were simply those famed Vegas showgirls. He did not expect Silber to come out in a blue metallic turban held in place by handfuls of jewels, Silber shirtless with flowing pink silk pants, brandishing with little conviction a very large and curved and no doubt fake sword, leaping from this point to that, twirling the girls, riding animals, doing everything but . . . magic.

  Finally the finale: the endlessly long Persian rug was unrolled by two men, also shirtless, covered in an inhuman dark bronze shimmer to convey foreign skin and a certain sweaty sultriness, Zal could only imagine. The music quickened its pulse, and Zal heard a few members of the audience gasp before anything had even happened. When it did, claps: the carpet, the size of the stage, was floating inches above it, perfectly levitating before their eyes. Magic, Zal thought, squinting his eyes as he looked for wires, which he of course could not detect. Zal clapped, though only for a third of the applause period. But when the rug dropped and Silber laid himself out on it—laid himself out and began to roll ecstatically all over it, roll and slither and worm and almost love, as if to say This carpet, folks, is so real I could copulate with it—Zal rose in his seat and did not blink, even to squint. After a few minutes of Silber’s horseplay-with-Persian-rug, he turned on his back and, gesturing toward the heavens as if to say up up up and away, the Persian rug became a magic carpet that was levitating, downright floating in thin air.

  Enter applause—resounding, delirious applause. Enter fog and lights, pink and purple, which Zal found frustrating, until the bronze men came out again with their long swords and swatted at the air underneath the carpet and just over it, as if to say Look, no strings. Silber himself got up and took out his sword and swung it 360 degrees as he twirled on his toes on top of the carpet, the thing only marginally bowing to his weight, as if the whole act were suspended in water.

  Zal noticed his hand was resting over his heart. He had to admit: it was good. It was in fact one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

  When Silber finally came down, there was a standing ovation. Zal stood the entire time, sweating in his suit, his heart still racing so hard that he worried it could explode. Like every part of his body, it seemed, it had a condition. But the excitement—what he saw, plus the idea that he was now about to meet the man—was almost too much.

  When the usher brought Indigo to him—not what he imagined, a no-nonsense big-boned, short-haired blonde in frayed and flared old jeans and a sweatshirt, at a show like this!—she shook his hand, lacklusterly and quickly, as if in the spirit of business one had to get over and done with as quickly as possible, and led him to the dressing rooms of the theater.

  “Please be quick; just say your thing—thanks, it was cool, nice to meet you, bye—and then leave him alone. He’s really busy. I had to beg him to agree to this. So, like, return the favor, dude, ’kay?”

  Zal agreed, nervous suddenly, sure he couldn’t muster more than a handshake.

  Silber was in the hall, still not in his dressing room, covered in towels and sweat, making ecstatic banter with some old women, rapidly signing programs and napkins and it appeared the back of one older woman’s neck. Everyone was clucking and gushing and cooing and purring and screaming and guffawing. Zal could make out no words. Plus he was horrified at Silber close up—he looked like a monster in all the makeup, somewhere between circus-clownish and horror-movie-nightmarish. Zal avoided Silber’s heavily kohled and sparkle-smudged eye region when he said, “I just wanted to thank you for inviting me, Mr. Silber. It was an honor to see it—”

  “Who’s this, Indy?” Silber, frowning, immediately snapped, not even looking at him.

  “Bird Boy,” he heard Indigo shoot back in a raspy whisper, quickly covered by an embarrassed smile to Zal and a shrug, as if to say Sorry, homey: shorthand. She very expertly began to push the crowds of women out of the doorway.

  Zal nodded, defeatedly.

  “Oh my fucking God!” Silber shrieked. “How cool! How fucking cool! So, so, so, my main man, what did you think?”

  “It was the greatest—”

  “Oh, tremendous! You coming tomorrow? Next night?”

  “I don’t have a—”

  “There is no don’t, no no—Indy, hook it up, pronto maxi­munto!” Silber winked to Indigo, who nodded, just blandly irked. “See you tomorrow and the next night. Come back here tomorrow—”

  “You can’t tomorrow—remember Mitzi,” Indigo snapped.

  “Oh, fuckity-fuck, then the last night! Backstage, last night?”

  He and Zal both looked to Indigo; she shrugged Sure.

  Silber winked again at Zal. “Till then, baby!” He grabbed the ticket stub out of Zal’s shaking hand, signed it with his ever-ready purple pen, and handed it back.

  Zal could not believe the thing he had most hoped for was happening. As if he had wished it into being, here he was, and not just that: he was going to be there for the whole thing. Zal caught himself skipping out of the hotel almost, a definite spring in his step, at least, as he deciphered those ever appropriate, huge arabesques of Silber’s grand hand:

  Dream dream dream

  yours, Bran X Silber

  Night two of the Flight Triptych was titled The Present: Down to Earth. This time they were outside the MGM Grand, by the hotel’s Signature Towers, from which Silber would fall and land, without a string or pack or anything—supposedly. Indigo, who had found Zal cluelessly roaming the old auditorium earlier, rolled her eyes every time she talked about this stunt. “Whatever you do, don’t look too closely,” she said.

  But you couldn’t look anywhere, at anything. The whole tower area was blindingly lit. All they saw was a little man in a helmet on the thirty-eighth-story roof and some dance moves and some music—plain instrumental rock ’n’ roll, the stuff of NASCAR and beer commercials, Zal recognized—and then a drum roll, some fireworks, and the man disappearing in layers of sudden smoke and fog and, Zal swore, some glitter too . . .

  Suddenly: an applause that Zal was sure came from the speakers and not from the audience, who were largely, like him, just waiting, confused. But apparently they had missed it: there was Silber on the ground with his dancers, all in helmets and skimpy shiny space gear of some sort, and another twenty minutes of pirouettes, pas de bourrées, stag leaps, pivot steps, apple jacks, box steps, corkscrews, lame duck turns, ­illusion kicks, and other moves Zal had never seen but did not care for.

  When it was over, he quickly dodged Indigo. He was relieved Silber was too busy to receive him backstage that night.

  Besides: tomorrow night was his night, the night he’d have more than enough to say to Silber. For more dazzling than Silber’s descent was Indigo’s revelation that they had just confirmed a one-night variation of the show in New York later that month, a surprise show. Zal just nodded, trying hard to keep his cool at the huge news, without asking her what was on his mind: involvement of some sort, of every sort.

  Day Three had begun especially auspiciously. Zal, bored in his hotel room, had dressed early for the show, early by three hours. He could not wait, and waiting for the sake of waiting was getting infuriating. He was wandering the casino aimlessly when he suddenly saw Indigo following a man in a dark suit and sunglasses. It was Silber—Silber without his usual flash and trash, Silber and Indigo, with three or four other guys in simpler, cheaper suits who were apparently sh
owing him around.

  Zal, as if on autopilot, not wanting to miss a chance, walked straight into them, no plan, no idea what to say, no time even for shame.

  “Watch it—” Indigo and one of the men unisoned without bothering to look at him.

  “Hi!” Zal raised a hand in the pose of American Indians trying to assert their peacefulness.

  “Oh God, it’s Zal! Hey, stalker!” Indigo laughed and glared at the same time.

  “I really was not stalking. I was just—” Zal began.

  Indigo: “Jo-king, nerd!”

  Silber smiled at him, a big smile, a smile he thought was real. “I didn’t see you at the show—”

  Indigo: “He was at the show—”

  Silber clapped his hands together. “Oh, mental! Was it something or was it something?”

  Zal nodded quietly.

  “Bran, it was phenom,” Indigo overcompensated, unconvincingly. “People can’t stop talking about it. And tonight!”

  “I am so excited about tonight,” Zal quickly interjected, breathlessly.

  Silber took off his sunglasses as if to survey that strange little blank pale smile-less face. Zal was struck by how gold his eyes were—not hazel, not yellow even, but pure gold. The color had to be fake. “You should be!” And he winked, a wink that was like the flash of a gold coin tossed in the air.