The Last Illusion (8 page)

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 showing 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—”