The Last Illusion Read online

  Zal nodded slowly. What did he mean? Did he mean—oh, God. He bit his lip, so as not to ask. He wanted to respect the surprise, the potential even of the surprise. He looked to Indigo, who was genuinely grinning—happy, actually, it seemed, though not enough to stop managing her boss: “Eh, Bran, we have to bounce in negative two min, so chop-chop.”

  “Thank you,” Zal inserted quickly. “See you backstage then?”

  “Count on it!” Silber said. “Worth the ol’ wait! Sayonara, baby!”

  Zal, of course, had not forgotten what everyone in the audience had not forgotten, having read up on this widely talked-about stunt, the crowning glory of the Flight Triptych: an audience member’s flight with Silber. And apparently, if he could interpret Silber’s comment correctly, he stood a very decent chance of being that audience member.

  Zal made himself throw up twice before the show. He was feeling sick with anxiety, plus all the minibar odds and ends inside him made him feel heavy and slow and unable to even fathom taking to the air. He put on his suit and tried to remember what Dr. Rhodes always said: When in doubt, just breathe.

  He breathed. He breathed; he breathed; he breathed; he breathed.

  The usher took him to his seat—this time, front row. Of course. He spotted Indigo, dressed up this time in a ruffly shirt and with what appeared to be lipstick, several aisles back, and she waved more warmly than usual. Signs. People seemed to be looking at him. The usher had said My absolute pleasure, not just plain My pleasure. “This is gonna be something tonight!” the older woman in the glimmering green dress next to him suddenly hissed his way. He nodded long and hard. Signs.

  He prayed his asthma, hypoglycemia, prolapsed mitral valve, migraines, thyroid, gallstones, pinched nerves, carpal tunnel, chronic anxiety, panic disorder, etc. wouldn’t act up tonight—just not tonight, of all tonights.

  Darkness; lights. There was a golden glow in the audience. The curtains were drawn, revealing a screen the blue of a spring sky. Suddenly across it: the image of a bird, blacked by the distance. Zal felt his hands grow cold and wet. Suddenly more silhouettes of birds flapping, here and there and everywhere. For a moment he had to close his eyes. In the living room of his mind, echoes of his heart, knocking, knocking. He focused on the sound: piano music of an abstract sort he could not recognize. He was determined not to lose it.

  He heard a breath next to him quicken and he opened his eyes. On the stage, the dancers wore masks, black masks of bird faces, all beak and glassy eye. They were wingless. Zal could feel the migraine coming on, the heart condition. This was not what he had imagined, but if anything was a sign, this was it.

  They danced to the manic offbeat upward and downward whims of the weird piano. This was less accessible than Silber’s usual stuff, definitely avant-garde, and yet for Zal, way too close for comfort. Of course, knowing his role now, he wondered to what degree this was all about him. If the whole audience knew. If this was all tied to his presence, his history, his story. He was not one to be self-centered, ever—in fact, he was mostly self-un-centered—but he had to wonder if the whole thing was about him.

  Off and on he closed his eyes.

  Finally Silber appeared—no bird mask, thank God—in a black cape that he supposed could resemble wings, over black leather pants and boots. He swayed from one side of the stage to the other, staggered almost, like a drunk, like someone on strings, helpless, confused, maybe even horrified. He did not smile.

  Zal swore Silber met his eyes at least twice.

  This bizarre dance, an alarming tarantella, went on and on, until finally the music shifted into something far more orchestral and majestic. An orb of light—no doubt a symbol of the sun—appeared blindingly bright in the far left corner of the stage. Silber turned to it as if in worship, and without any notice, suddenly he rose and rose and rose.

  Silber was more than levitating this time. Silber—no matter how you saw it, you had to admit—was flying.

  Applause! Applause! Applause! Immediately the specter of string-cynicism was butchered as the bird dancers came out with giant hoops of gold and ran them over and around him and he jumped—soared—through hoop after hoop without a hitch.

  When he came down, he came down on his back, as if in collapse, and was scooped up by a bird woman. The lady next to Zal knowingly whispered, to seemingly nobody, the word “Icarus.” Zal knew the story and shrugged back at the same seemingly no one. Then there was an apparently erotic dance, during which Zal mostly lowered his eyes.

  But the music crescendoed again, as it always did in a Silber production when things were going to get good again. The blue of the background darkened into the deep violet of twilight, stars speckled the background, and the sun sank into a huge full moon. With a few flourishes of his black cape—now glittering, apparently bejeweled with black sequins this whole time, which required only moonlight to illuminate—Silber rose up again and into the “night sky” and eventually over the MGM Grand audience.

  Silber received the most thunderous applause of his career as the audience clapped on and on, looking up and back and around and side to side, waiting for the inevitable: one of them would not only be touched by Silber—a thing in itself, to be touched by magic, real magic, in the flesh, and what flesh—but really and truly (well, “really and truly” to most) fly.

  Zal gripped his seat, both in fear and anticipation—he imagined springing out of it and into a real night sky, by the real moon. As his eyes followed Silber and his teasing swirls, like the circling of vultures over prey, his whole body began to shake in a sort of rhythm, and for a moment he had the irrational worry the bird in him was bursting out.

  No. I am not a bird, he told himself, as he had told himself several thousand times before. I am a man. Not a bird not a bird not a bird . . .

  And he knew no part of him wanted to be back with the birds, back in the cages, back to the birdseed and the beaks and the water feeders and the messes. No. The part of him he missed the most was the part he never possessed: wings.

  Zal wanted to fly more than anything. And apparently Silber shared this longing. And here they were.

  Silber came lower and lower, swooped toward them, in and out, while Zal tried to meet his eyes—at one point he even reached a hand out. He was not the only one. The audience was filled with longing—it was in the gasps, the moans, the nervous giggles, the idle chatter. Everyone was suddenly incredibly audible, everyone involved, everyone implicated.

  As Silber swung lower and lower, the music broke, except for a thin wispy flute sound. Silber reached out, both arms wide and ready, reached them out like a black-winged angel-savior, and came down down down down to the front row—Zal, my God, my name is Zal, I am yours, hands out, heart down, when in doubt breathe breathe breathe—until his arms were just over and then around a waist.

  The waist of a thin blonde in a long white dress who made what could only be called a soft scream, almost a singsong holler, as he scooped her into his arms and up.

  Silber rotated her as the audience applauded even louder and faced her and embraced her and for a moment everyone wondered if they were kissing or more.

  It was hard to say.

  On the ground, Zal watched with a red face, eyes overflowing, his hands in fists without his knowing it. He left for the bathroom while Silber and his volunteer—his stooge, no doubt, Zal would later learn to call her—were still up in the air.

  He stayed in there until he was sure the show was over—men flooded the bathroom with Well, that was somethings, and Did you see thats, and By Georges, and Holy shits—and finally people were out. When he left, Indigo was pacing outside, waiting for him.

  “What the hell did you do in there?” she snapped. She did not look at him any differently than before.

  It was possible the potential and therefore the disappointment had all along been in his head only.

  “Did you like it?” she asked. “Out of this world, right?”

  Zal nodded slowly.

  “R
eady to go back? There’s def an after-party, but I’m not sure—”

  Zal pretended to look at his watch. “You know, I’m exhausted. These past three days have been a lot for me. I’ve never in my life really traveled like this. And I have my train tomorrow, pretty early.”

  Indigo looked at him with wide eyes, but it was clear she wasn’t going to insist. “Okay . . . well, dude, I just waited for nothing. Nice meeting you, have a sweet life!”

  “Indigo,” Zal said suddenly. “Will you tell Mr. Silber I am so grateful? And that if he needs any help or anything at all, or will even take me as volunteer or apprentice or whatever is possible, I would be most glad to help. I was very much interested in his act tonight. I’d love to be, you know, involved.”

  Indigo nodded, softening for a second, then flashing a smile he took to be real. “Gotcha. He likes you. He’ll be in touch.”

  “I’ll write him, too,” Zal said as Indigo passed him one of his gold cards, the third time she’d done it in three days. He kept every one in a different spot, in case.

  Zal did not know exactly what love was, but if he had to guess he would say that it was love he felt for Silber that trip. And that love had to do with possibility, he guessed. So it made sense to him that night why he felt, as he walked home alone, heartbroken and lovesick and consumed by, more than anything, wishes, real wishes.

  And so Zal’s fascination with Silber had germinated in a season of a particularly contagious strangeness, when he was acting off, but then the whole world was, too: Y2K season. When he’d announced to Hendricks he was going to Las Vegas to see his favorite magician, Hendricks had been so caught off guard that he’d almost just shrugged at it.

  Then he’d paused. “Really? You feel that your first trip alone could be to Las Vegas, of all places, and it’s fine?” he had asked. “Do you know about Las Vegas?”

  “Yes,” Zal had replied. “I have read about it. I understand the pros and the cons. I know what I am getting myself into.”

  Hendricks had looked deep into his eyes, searching, a near-impossible task with Zal, even for his father. “You’re sure, Zal? You can tell, I’m sure, that I am not comfortable with this. You’re really, really sure?”

  Zal had thought about it for a few seconds more. “I think so. I would have imagined you would have thought this is one of those perfect opportunities for me to come into my own.”

  “Yes, I suppose . . . Your favorite magician, though? I didn’t know you had one.”

  His tone had irked Zal. Why couldn’t he have a favorite magician? “There is a lot you don’t know.” It had sounded harsher than he’d meant. “Well, I don’t mean that.” Even though he mostly had. “I mean, I’ve been following this one guy and saving my allowance, and I think it would be nice to get away.”

  Something in Hendricks’s face had softened. The words get away were almost surprising on Zal’s lips for their absolute banality. Hendricks often wanted to get away; people he knew did, people on TV did, everyone really. It was a most universal thing that had never occurred to him could belong to Zal. Why would he deny him that? “Of course. It’s been a trying period, huh, Zal?”

  Zal had nodded. “For everyone, it seems.”

  Everyone. His son was slowly but surely becoming everyone. Hendricks had looked down before he thought Zal might see the wetness gathering in his glance.

  So Hendricks had given his blessings and Zal went. But every time Zal had been cut off from cell phone reception on his Amtrak ride, Hendricks had felt a despair like he hadn’t experienced since his wife’s death. The thought of losing Zal, who of all people was constantly in danger of being lost—in spite of the advancement and progress and the whole miracle of him—had been much too much. He could not imagine living through that.

  But Zal had made it. And when he’d come back, they’d had lunch at a local vegan diner they both liked. (For a while, Zal could not endure normal diners because of the plethora of egg options and hovering egg dishes and smells, a horrific concept to him that he didn’t need to explain to Hendricks.) But Zal had seemed not at all energized or refreshed but rather somewhat exhausted and confused.

  “Well, come on! What did you see?” Hendricks, who had never been to Vegas, kept asking.

  “I mostly stayed in the hotel and then I went to three magic shows. Except they weren’t really the magic I thought they might involve.”

  Hendricks chuckled. “Illusion, they call it, right?”

  Zal shrugged. “Something. It was strange. I made friends with Bran Silber, though.”

  Bran Silber—Hendricks, unaware of most popular culture, had forgotten to look him up. “Well, that’s astounding! You and the Bran Silber! Did he know about you?”

  Zal’s face tensed up and he sighed it out, as he had been taught long ago. “Yes. I told him.”

  “Well, great! A real wow!”

  “We’ve been e-mailing. But, you know, I don’t think he has much use for me.”

  Hendricks frowned. “What do you mean, use for you?”

  Zal for a moment looked flustered, but then quickly shrugged to gloss over it. “I don’t know. I thought maybe I could work for him. Like, intern, as you once suggested I do for someone out there. But he seems more interested in dinners.”

  Hendricks raised an eyebrow with movie-detective-like curiosity, a look of his Zal was fond of. “So he’s interested in you? Your story, I’m sure?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Anyway, I just wanted to do something amazing . . . for me.” Zal looked down, embarrassed at the grandiosity of his words.

  Hendricks reached over their plates to give him an affectionate rub of the shoulder. “Zal, give yourself time. You will have it all, my boy, you will have it all. Look at everything you have now, how far you’ve come.”

  Zal nodded. He had heard it so many times. He got up and said it was time to go home, that he had a TV show (he did not mention nature show) that he liked to watch. Hendricks embraced him long and hard, as usual, taking a few steps backwards to face Zal for just a bit longer as they went their separate ways.

  Days later, Silber performed his Triptych-in-One in New York, and Zal got further disillusioned. The audience volunteer was again a stooge, another young woman, a famous New York City hotel tycoon’s daughter, a socialite heiress with whom the whole city was in love that season and that season only. The applause felt deafening, but Zal had only slapped his thigh weakly through it all, instead of properly clapping. And he had exited quickly, walking home alone, feeling emptier than he had in ages, as if it were Vegas all over again.

  He was due to attend Silber’s NYE party, but he was at best ambivalent; as much as he flipped coins for it, he did not think he could bring himself to go. Silber had disappointed him, had become another dead end, and Silber’s reciprocation of interest bored him more than anything. Silber was another person who was dazzled by the most undazzling—or so Zal insisted—life of Zal Hendricks. It had in some ways turned him off from not just Silber but the possibility of magic, of unassisted human flight even.

  In the end, skipping the NYE party was less his choice. It was that very day, after all, that Zal met someone who, once and for all, took him outside of all the considerations—who saw him as something more than his miracle story and his name and his oddities and even the hint of his private fetishes—and saw him, it seemed, as wholly normal, a normal adult human man. Or at least he suspected this, because of the accidental nature of the encounter, the purity of it, the lack of question marks and exclamation points.

  It was, of all beings, a woman. And while she didn’t seem like the most normal woman—there were things that were different about her, that he knew from first sight and then first speech and soon first touch—she was an adult human woman at least all the way. At the age of twenty-one, Zal Hendricks had his first contact with the thing that he had read of in the stories of his namesake, in all stories really, from book to trash-TV plots: a “love interest.”

  The more the flying act was beh
ind Silber, the more flying was behind him. But in many ways, no one else let go of it. It was widely recognized as Silber’s greatest show, the pinnacle of his career, though nobody guessed it was his penultimate one. And so at his epic New Year’s 2000 party—which Zal was invited to but did not attend, to Indigo and the assistants’ shock and to Silber’s only mildly irked registering; while the guests drank and drugged themselves to a numbness that they joked was in case the end of the world was coming; as the clocks upped themselves in their ultimate double digits that the guests took too much and then not enough heed of, on and off, throughout that bottomless night—Silber tossed around his new idea.

  “I want to make New York fucking disappear!”

  People laughed and made jokes and had clever quips, and Silber teetered and drank and snorted and locked lips with a few different women and even a man or two, and he clarified.

  “Not New York exactly, but the New Yorkness of New York, what’s more New York than New York, a symbol of New York . . .”

  Nobody knew what he was talking about. Silber only had a clue.

  The next morning, as life, same old life, went on without a hitch, and everyone felt embarrassed about their boarded-up stores and stocked-up kitchens and gas masks and kits and provisions, Silber was the only human at his party who remembered what he had revealed. The rest had dismissed it as party talk.

  But it was going to be his biggest stunt yet, a stunt so much bigger than him and them and bigger, even, than itself.

  It was terrifying. For the first time, a feat of illusion worried him. He was terrified.

  It was everything the Triptych was not, this one darkness to its light, destruction to its hope. This one was the opposite of flying, taking down something high and proud and towering and reducing it to dust, or worse than dust: nothing at all.

  PART III

  At the end of the twentieth century people were not certain whether they were to celebrate the beginning of the new millennium in 2000 or 2001. It was important for people who were waiting for the end of the world, but most people did not believe in the end of the world, so they did not care. Other people were waiting for the end of the world but thought it would happen on any old day.