He checked every pocket in his jacket, ready to resew or tear the seams of anything he needed to. But it was perfect, as, in a burst of industry three days ago, he’d lovingly stocked his clothes. With the familiar black wool suit around him, and his black tie done just
so
, the final step was to adjust his turban, just
so
. He felt around the folds of damask, ensuring nothing hidden was about to drop onto the stage.
When he was quite finished, he shot his sleeves, and looked at himself in the mirror again. He saw an unremarkable man from whom he would not expect miracles.
But it was only 7:45. Somehow, he’d prepared too quickly. He had nothing to do for fifteen minutes. Immediately, an anxiety so potent it had its own color—it seemed pinkish—rose in his chest and shoulders.
To combat that, he let out a contented-sounding sigh and put his feet up on his dressing room table in an approximation of looking relaxed. He attempted nostalgia: Ah, when had he last seen this dressing room? Four or five years ago, he’d had a nice week here, and he’d headlined here twice when he was still on Keith-Orpheum time. And 1911, now that was a remarkable show. He remembered his parents hovering over him here just before he’d debuted Blackmail, and how he’d exasperatedly wished they would just stay away on opening night.
They weren’t here tonight. He couldn’t in fact remember the last time they’d seen his show. They’d meant to come when he was in Rio nine months ago. He shrugged: he had James and Ledocq and a burgeoning romance, and yet, he’d once hoped to impress his parents, long ago. When you got older, did you actually need your parents less or did you just learn how to replace them?
The stage would be empty. He could go there. He folded up shop in the dressing room, turned off the lights, and closed the door. He walked down the narrow corridor, stagehands and property men shuffling past him and whispering to each other. He kept his head down until he passed Ledocq, whereupon he muttered that he was going to work now.
“You have your wallet?”
Carter patted his trouser pocket. “Yes.”
“Good. Always take your wallet onstage.”
With that ritual finished, Ledocq patted him on the back.
The stage floor was built at a cunning angle, two degrees oblique from the audience point of view, so that it looked shallower, as if there would be no room for hiding, say, assistants or a second set of boxes. It was a
collage of tape, traps, and marks to hit, and Carter could feel as he strode across it which places gave way slightly and which were reinforced.
He stood dead center, by a small X fashioned from electrical tape beside which Albert had written, “Here standeth our boss.” He smiled. There was a fire curtain behind him, green velvet, and, before him, a pair of musty draperies that would part in just minutes and show him off to the audience.
Carter was perfectly alone, and the isolation appealed to him. The orchestra was playing its preshow selections, a medley of waltzes and popular tunes. They came through the curtains muffled and mixed with the sounds of the audience, happy sounds, Carter thought. He fought back the urge to crack his knuckles.
“Hey.” Phoebe’s voice. It took him a moment to locate her—she was standing in the wings, stage right. She was holding on to a handrail. Carter could hear the orchestra finish its final waltz. There was some applause, probably from the higher galleries, where the audience was unafraid to be excited. “I’d kiss you for luck,” she said, “but your makeup smells awful. Dear God, is that Society by Max Factor?”
“Shhh.”
“Have you tried Helena Rubinstein? She’s very clever.”
He half-listened, unsure whether he had a deck of cards. He patted his jacket pocket, and found them.
“Is there any trick you do tonight that’s dangerous?”
“Didn’t you ask me that? They’re all dangerous.”
“No, I mean,
severely
.”
He looked over his shoulder. When had the overture begun? It was in full swing now, and he had but a moment left before curtain. “I’ll have knives hurled at me at eight fifteen, and at eight twenty-five—”
“Please don’t say that. I can’t hear that kind of thing.”
“Well . . . bullet catching. That’s the dangerous one.”
“Why is it?”
The music was swelling to a crescendo. Thirty seconds left. “It’s killed a few men onstage. Basically, there’s a loaded gun, but you switch it with one that fires blanks. Chung Ling Soo used—never mind, we have a foolproof method to—”
“Please don’t do it.”
“It’s safe, Phoebe.” He touched her arm. “Really. I don’t take risks.”
She wrapped both her hands around his. “I’m not letting you go until you at least consider it.”
He looked from her to the curtain, then back. The whole
bullet-catching gag took two minutes and was deep into the third act. In fact, it was yesterday’s business, a simple repeat of an effect he’d held over from last season. “I can leave it out.”
Her shoulders dropped. “I owe you something.”
“And what would that be?”
“The music’s stopped,” she said, and smiled at him.
The lights slowly dimmed and a single bonbon spotlight was brought up so it shone on the red velvet curtain. The focus drew narrower, tightening as there was a final explosion of kettledrums, and then, for the first time since the decade began, the grand draperies at the Orpheum Theatre parted for an evening-length show.
The spotlight fell on empty space. Carter the Great came to his mark from stage right, making small, sultanic salutes to the audience as the orchestra played the most familiar bars from “Pomp and Circumstance.”
Between the time he found his mark and the time he spoke, he surveyed the audience in full. He had been through many opening nights, more than he could remember. On few of them had he felt like this. He mentally brought out the old checklist, . . .
am I too hot, no; am I too cold, no
. . . attempting to name the feeling, and then realized that the oddity was simply that he was
feeling
. He could feel Phoebe in the wings—he hadn’t had someone waiting backstage for him in years. And there, the very back of the house, he saw empty seats. The sight struck him with weird urgency, as if his duty to entertain were quickly tripled.
The applause died down. He put his hands in his pockets. He curled and relaxed his toes inside his well-polished shoes.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming tonight.” The curtain closed behind him, so he was left on the apron to perform in-one. “This is a very large theatre, and it deserves only the most massive and splendid illusions that cost many thousands of dollars to construct. I invite you all to witness this stupendous effect, an awe-inspiring spectacle ne’er before seen by human eyes. It will stun you. Behold,” he held on to the pause, “a deck of cards.”
He showed in his right hand a deck of green Bicycle cards. There was almost complete silence of the uncertain sort, as it seemed an unassuming way to begin.
“May I have a volunteer from the audience?”
Carter picked a man from the fourth row, aisle seat, who trotted onto the stage as if he owned it.
“Good evening,” Carter said. “What is your name, sir?”
“Patrick Smyth, with a ‘y.’ ”
“Mr. Smyth with a ‘y,’ please pick a card.” He fanned out his deck. “Any card, of course, not just the card I want you to pick. Now don’t show it to me. Thank you. Please put it back in the deck. Excellent.” One second later, Carter held up a nine of spades. “Is this your card?”
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“Thank you, thank you,” Carter said, bowing completely out of proportion to the effect on the audience. The applause was akin to the sound of a newspaper rustling in the breeze. He came to a full upright posture, looking into the house with one eyebrow flexed. “You know,” he said, as if in confidence, to Mr. Smyth, “the audience doesn’t strike me as thrilled.”
Smyth shook his head.
“And it is my job to thrill them.”
“Indeed.”
“It did seem awfully easy, didn’t it?”
“It wasn’t a remarkable trick,” Smyth allowed. Carter had picked well, a man who had helpful critiques.
Carter shuffled the deck, looking lost in thought. “Perhaps they suspect you’re a confederate. Magicians, or so I’m told, use confederates. Have we ever met?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you on my payroll?”
“No, sir.”
“Walking down the street, have you ever seen me? I look something like this.” Carter turned in profile, as if that might help.
“I have not.”
“I’m not sure I believe you. I might be paying you to say that.”
“I’m perfectly trustworthy.”
“Which is the problem. If I had a confederate, he’d be perfectly trustworthy. How do I know then that you are
not
my confederate? I can’t possibly amaze a sophisticated San Francisco audience until they know who my confederates might be.” Carter put his hand to his chin. “We must do something to flush all possible confederates out of the audience.” He snapped his fingers. “Mr. Smyth, you may return to your seat. A round of applause for the man who claims not to be on my payroll.”
Mr. Smyth looked like he had a great deal more to discuss, even as he reluctantly took his seat back.
“Will everyone in the audience—and this goes for everyone—please look under their seats? One of you has five thousand dollars in gold bullion hidden there.” This last statement was an ad-lib. He imagined, somewhere backstage, James flipping through his showbook frantically. In the audience, Carter heard murmurs, and several isolated cries of astonishment as fingertips all over the theatre found that there was indeed something secreted under their seats. Carter continued, “I’m sorry, did I say five thousand dollars in gold bullion? I meant everyone has decks of playing cards.” He heard groans and laughter, and returned to the regular script. “Please unwrap your souvenir decks of cards. You’ll notice they’re rather thin. Hold them up. Thank you.”
It made a lovely sight, almost two thousand hands waving decks in the air. He directed everyone to open the boxes up and remove the twenty-one cards inside. “They’re normal playing cards except there’s a rather plain-looking charlatan on the back. He’s wearing a turban. He’s drawn by Monsieur Leonetto Cappiello of Paris, France,” he added, another ad-lib he hoped James heard.
When everyone had removed their cards, he told the audience to pick a card from their decks. “Now, please don’t show it to me. You, sir, in Row S, five seats in, you’re showing me your card! All right, I’m closing my eyes.” Carter put on a blindfold and continued. “Now, I want you all to put your card back, right in the center of your decks. Exactly ten cards from the top, please. I’m going to make you do some math this evening, but it shouldn’t be too frightening. I want you to cut your decks into piles.” He held up two fingers. “Two piles. That’s the math.”
All around the audience, men and women looked into their hands, following Carter’s instructions, and making piles on their palms or on their knees. “Actually,” Carter said, “there is more math. Take the first three cards off the bottom . . . now take five from the top . . .” He continued in this vein. The audience shuffled and discarded pips as directed. The house was alive with the sounds of people counting as instructed. But far in the back of the theatre, in a seat in the third gallery, a man performed the maneuvers as if following the orders of a jail guard. And with each new instruction (“Cast aside the bottom card . . . now shuffle again . . .”), the man was heard to hiss, “Oh,
please
,” until his neighbors told him to hush.
“Now, square your decks. This is the moment of truth. Take the top card off your decks, and look at it. Is that your card?”
The theatre sounded like the woodlands, as little trills and cries came
through the air. For Carter had indeed led every person in the audience—save one, who had deliberately disobeyed—right to the card they’d chosen. He took off his blindfold. Almost two thousand cards were swinging in the air, a deep lawn of white and red and black flowers, people turning to each other to ask, “How did that happen?”
“Have I chosen everyone’s card then?” Carter smiled. “Then it is as I’d hoped. You are
all
my confederates.” He bowed.
In the gallery, the bald man elbowed the woman to his right. “What a blowhard,” he whispered.
“Shhh!”
“Don’t you think the man’s a blowhard?”
“Excuse me, sir.” It was an usher. He had a flashlight, and he pointed it directly in the man’s face. “Can you come with me, please?”
“I paid for this seat. Fifty cents.”
“Sir, please come with me.” The usher pulled his jacket back, showing off a blackjack. The bald man’s eyes went from it to the usher’s face.
“My, my. Two saps,” he said, and before inviting more dialogue, he stood. The usher was exactly his size, well over six feet. “All right. I’m coming with you.”
He walked to the aisle, and as he passed, audience members grabbed at their ankles where he’d stepped on them. The usher pulled at his bicep.
The man regarded the usher’s fingers. “You should remove your hand.”
The usher said nothing more as he guided the man out of the gallery.
They made it like that as far as the staircase, which was dark, soundproofed, and curtained off. It was a staircase that led not only to the lobby, but to the roof.
. . .
“Would anyone here like to learn how to do magic tricks?” Carter asked brightly. As he spoke, his eyes were on the crippled children. Before the show, the nurses had informed him which children were sturdy and mobile enough for what he had in mind. Many of their hands went up, and they cried out in excitement. He listened carefully for those voices that would carry deep into the theatre.
To his delight, he heard one of them had deep gravel in his voice—he sounded like a gangster. He gestured that the boy should come join him onstage.
“What’s your name?”
“Jake,” the boy growled. He was indeed a little gangster, perhaps seven years old, hands jammed down into trouser pockets undoubtedly
stuffed with frogs and string and a pocket knife, eyeing Carter like he was figuring the odds on a dog fight.