Contents
ILLUSION
chapter
1
M
andy was gone. She went quietly, her body still, and Dane was at her bedside to see her go. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat.
It happened more quickly than anyone expected.
She was an organ donor, so she had to be removed immediately for procurement. Dane touched her hand to say good-bye, and blood and skin came off on his fingers.
A nurse wheeled him out of the room. She found a secluded corner out on the fourth floor patio, a place with a view of the city and shade from the Nevada sun, and left him to grieve.
Now, try as he might to fathom such feelings, grief and horror were inseparably mixed. When he wiped his tears, her blood smeared his face. When he tried to envision how she gladdened whenever she saw him, how she would tilt her head and shrug one shoulder and her eyes would sparkle as she broke into that smile, he would see her through the blackening glass, crumpled over the steering wheel, the deflated airbag curling at the edges, melting into her face.
A handkerchief made careful passes over his face below and around his eyes. Arnie was trying to clean him up. Dane couldn’t say anything; he just let him do it.
The smell under his robe found his attention: sweat, antiseptics, gauze, bandages. His right shoulder still felt on fire, only, thanks to the painkillers, on fire somewhere else far away. Not a serious burn, they told him, so he kept telling himself. The bruises ate away at him, little monsters sequestered against his bones, festering under all that blued flesh in his side, his right hip, his right shoulder. It hurt to sit in the wheelchair; it hurt more to walk.
He broke again, covering his eyes to ward off the vision of her hair crinkling, vaporizing down to her scalp, steam and smoke rising through her blouse, flames licking through the broken glass, but it remained. Oh, God! Why? How could He change her so instantly from what she was—the woman, the saint, his lover with the laughing eyes, wacky humor, and wisdom of years—to what Dane had just seen perish on a bloodied gurney behind a curtain, sustained by tubes, monitors, machines? The images replayed. He thought he would vomit again.
Arnie brought the pan and a towel close under his chin.
He drew in a long, quaking breath, then another, then centered his mind on every breath that followed, commanding, controlling each one.
Arnie put the pan aside and sat close, silent.
Dane gave his weeping free rein; there could be no stopping it even as his bruises tortured him with every quake of his body. The moment passed, not in minutes but in breaths, thoughts, memories, wrenchings in his soul, until somewhere in his mind, just slightly removed from the visions, the soul pain, the hospital smells, and the painkillers, he took hold of what he already knew.
He could hardly place the breath behind the words. “I am just so much going to miss her.”
Arnie blew his nose on the same handkerchief he’d used to clean Dane’s face. “You may never finish saying good-bye. Maybe that’s okay.” He cleared his throat. “If it were me, I could never give her up.”
Dane noticed the move of the breeze over his face, the warmth of the sun on the patio. Birds flitted and chattered in the arbor. Mandy was about things like that.
“I suppose there were many who loved her,” Dane said. “But it was my arm she took to go to parties; she wrote her love notes for me; she chose to share my future when I didn’t even have one.” His vision blurred with fresh tears. “How did a guy like me rate a woman like her?”
Arnie touched him on the left shoulder, the one that wouldn’t hurt. “That’s the stuff you wanna remember.”
Arnie Harrington, his agent but mostly his friend, a little on the heavy side, still had some hair but not much, and had to be as old as Dane but didn’t look it. How he found out there’d been an accident Dane would have to ask him later. It was only now that Dane fully recognized he was here.
He drew a breath to calm his insides and touched Arnie’s hand. “Thanks for coming.”
“Got a call from Jimmy Bryce over at the Mirage. He thought it was a rumor so he called me. I suppose I can call him back, but it’ll be all over town by now.”
“Guess it’ll be in the papers.”
“Guess they’re already writing it. I’ll handle all of that.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Dane followed Arnie’s gaze toward the Las Vegas Strip, where every structure, object, entrance, and electric light vied for attention. It was no great revelation, but after all the years he and Mandy worked here, all he could see, all he cared to remember was the woman who remained real in such an unreal place. “I got way better than I deserved.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Forty years.”
“Like I said …”
“Forty years …” The fact came alive as he lingered on it and salved the horrors from his mind, at least for now. With no effort at all the unfaded image of Mandy first setting foot in his life played before his eyes, the dove girl sitting in the front row who caught and held his eye … to the swelling, carnival sound of a gilded merry-go-round.
chapter
2
W
hatever that organ-grindy tune was, Mandy had heard it so many times that day that she could sing along, with some harmony—“Da da da daaahh, tada da da bup booda WAA!”—as she clasped the silver anklet around her ankle. It cost her fifteen bucks, her limit for the day not counting an upcoming chicken basket from the Spokane Junior League booth. She and Joanie and Angie were looking through the old Shoshone Indian’s wares when the wings of two silver doves glinted in the sun and caught her eye.
Doves. Her favorite. She raised them. Bonkers, Maybelle, Lily, and Carson were even now strutting their stuff in their cages over in the Poultry Barn, basking in the glory of two blue ribbons and a red.
Doves. In the Bible, a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
And Joanie, her best friend since first grade, loved it. “It’s perfect! I love it!” Of course, she was still hyped out of her mind from her third ride on the Chair-O-Plane. Right now she loved everything.
Mandy let the anklet hang with a gentle curve about her ankle, the doves on the outside, and straightened, clearing her blond hair from her face with a brush of her hand and flip of her head. She repositioned her headband, tresses properly in place, and looked down. All she could see were the flared bottoms of her faded jeans and the toes of her sneakers. “Well,
guy
, you can’t even see it.”
“That’s okay,” Joanie hinted.
She hitched up the leg of her jeans to expose the anklet—worn over her white crew sock. Yeah, it looked dumb.
“You should’ve worn a skirt and sandals,” said Joanie.
Mandy made a face at her. This was the county fair. She was helping her dad show his llamas, she was showing her doves, there was straw to pitch, feed to carry, poop to scoop—and ride the Chair-O-Plane in a skirt? Right!
“But doves,” said Angie, enraptured. Angie was a new friend from college, usually half on this planet and half not, depending on the moment. “It’s you, Mandy. Free-spirited, always flying somewhere.”
“Yeah?” said Mandy, admiring the doves once again. “Way cool.” Dumb she could do.
All around them was the carnival at the Spokane County Interstate Fair: the faithful, ever-turning merry-go-round putting out all that music; the ring toss, bag toss, ball toss, and dart toss booths making it look so easy; the crowds, kids, cotton candy, cheap prizes, stuffed toys, whistles, and windmills; one crying kid with one addled parent every hundred square feet; the rap-rap-revving of the gas engines that kept the rides spinning, lurching, tumbling, heaving; the screams—oh, Mandy and company had done their share of that already. What’s the carnival without screaming?
Like the screams coming from the Freak Out right now, getting louder with a touch of Doppler effect every time the huge pendulum swung through an arc and the eight kids riding it got another wave of adrenaline and nausea. The sights and sounds made Joanie unreasonable. “We gotta try that one!”
“Time check,” said Mandy, willing to consider it.
Joanie had a watch. “Oh, yeah! It’s, uh, ten to one.”
The Great Marvellini would be doing his amazing thing on the North Stage at two. Magic! Mandy did not want to miss that.
“I’m going for that chicken basket,” she said.
“Right on,” said Joanie.
“Where’d they get the chicken?” Angie asked.
Mandy broke into the County Fair Weave, a bent-kneed scurry she’d first developed as the After Church Weave and then the School Hallway Weave. It got her through crowds quicker—supposedly—and worked even better if she used her hot rod noise. “Brrrrrroooom!”
“Whoa, wait up!” came Angie’s voice.
Mandy checked over her shoulder. Joanie was in her slipstream, and Angie was catching up. The Spokane Junior League Chicken Basket booth was just across from the grandstand. Mandy made it into the line with Angie behind her and Joanie in third place, hopping, trying to get her sandal back on. Score two points for crew socks and sneakers.
Joanie secured her sandal and scanned the menu chalked on a blackboard. “I think I’ll take a look around.”
Angie was already scanning the booths for something grown without chemicals. “Where you wanna meet?”
Mandy wiggled her index finger toward the North Lawn, a grassy common with picnic tables under the trees. “I’ll grab us a table.”
Joanie and Angie turned and the crowd swallowed them up.
Mandy got her basket soon enough, the chicken still steaming, along with a diet soda in a Styrofoam cup, plasticware, and two paper napkins. Just like last year.
She made her way onto the North Lawn, looking for a table. The place was busy with late lunchers, so she opted for a grassy spot in the shade of a honey locust tree, a good place where she wouldn’t get stepped on. She sat, her back against the tree, her basket in her lap. A clock on the end of the Corn Dog booth said five after one. If she and her friends could cram their lunch down and get to the North Stage by quarter of two they could hopefully get a seat up close. She could take in the one-hour show and get back to the Sheep and Goat Barn to give Daddy a break with the llamas. Sounded like a plan.
The Great Marvellini.
She smiled as she chewed, amused. With a name like that and a gig at a fair like this, he probably wouldn’t blow her away. But then again, a chance to watch a real magician didn’t come often, and if she could just keep up with him, see how he did his loads, switches, and misdirections, that would be so cool. Would he tear up a newspaper? She could tear up a newspaper and restore it whole, and do it so smoothly it still had Joanie and Angie guessing. Rope tricks she didn’t care that much about. The cutting the rope in half trick was fun, but ehhh … who didn’t do that one? But … oh! Back-palming cards! Now, that still had her frustrated. She could do one card in front of a mirror or a few friends, but twenty cards at once, in front of a big crowd? If he could do that one and do it well, now, that would blow her mind. She’d been practicing—
Oh!
The tree moved, bumping her head, shoving her forward. She looked back; did something hit it, a car or a golf cart or something? Weird. She turned forward again—and saw white cloth with little blue flowers in her peripheral vision.
She stayed motionless, as if a bee had landed on her. She blinked. She rubbed her eyes, then opened them again.
Freaky. Very freaky.
Somebody’d thrown a cloth over her, something white with a pattern of tiny blue flowers. It covered her down to her knees, and with one movement of her arms she realized it had sleeves and she was wearing it.
Her chicken basket was gone. So was her drink, her paper napkins, her plasticware.
Her mouth was empty. She’d been chewing on chicken …
Bare feet. She looked about for her sneakers and her white socks, but nothing.
Not just bare feet. Bare legs. She raised her right foot: the anklet was gone. Her fingers shot to her earlobes. Empty.
But not just the anklet and earrings. She gasped with a little squeak as she distinctly felt the prickling of the grass against her bottom, the scratch of the tree’s bark against her back. Her hands shot down to secure the cloth, keep it down, keep it tight, don’t let it move …