The Magician's Lie (19 page)

1901–1903

The Iroquois Fire

In the days and weeks following, Clyde and I fell quickly into a pattern, as if we'd always been together. It was difficult at first to focus on anything but each other. I did learn to take precautions, because the two of us was enough and neither of us wanted to make it three. I wasn't about to risk my career. I still remembered the example of the nameless girl who had preceded me as the Dancing Odalisque. In a way, I had her to thank for all of this, for her foolishness had made my entire career, and now my love, possible. If she'd had a Mr. Vanderbilt to counsel her, to encourage self-control, who knows where that would have left me?

When I was in New York, Clyde and I spent all day each day in the office on Broadway and returned at night to his rented rooms on Jane Street. Even then, even as we were rushing to discard our clothes, we would still talk business, reminding each other of appointments or obligations in between each kiss. Figures and illusions and ticket prices and billing were all the food for love. One night when Clyde knelt at my feet, introducing me to a new form of pleasure, I had a new understanding of Woman on Fire. Instead of a woman destroyed by fire, I would create an illusion of a woman bursting into flame but withstanding it, letting the flames caress and surround her. It was a delicious inspiration. We were each the person the other needed, at the right time, in the right place, at last.

“I wish you could come on the road with me,” I said to him afterward as we lay in bed together, an idle wish in a quiet moment.

“You know I can't. It's a cutthroat business, Arden. We can't just do it halfway.”

“I know.” Of course my career was the important thing, and if the choice was between staying in New York and being no one, or traveling alone as Arden to perform in front of crowds night after night, my choice was never in doubt.

“Not that I wouldn't love that. To be with you. It's all I've wanted since the moment I saw you again.”

He trailed his fingertips over my body, knees to shoulders, and cupped my face in his palm. I savored the lovely feeling that there was nothing more important in the world than how his fingers felt against my skin. Our world could be just the two of us, small and wonderful.

“I've been so in love with you,” he murmured. “I couldn't believe you couldn't tell. I counted the days until you'd be back, and every time you were, I sat there every moment fighting the need to touch you. Like this.”

He let his hand roam, and I gasped.

“But you said you'd kill me if I touched you. And so I didn't.”

“You didn't,” I said. “You kept your word.”

“This is better,” he said, lowering his face to mine for another kiss and stroking me until I could barely breathe.

When my mouth was free to speak again, some time later, I said, “I don't want to leave you.”

“You're not leaving me,” he said. “I'm yours, wherever I am. We'll keep you in a tighter orbit as soon as you're established. Medium time, the next step up. There's no reason to go west—the Orpheum circuit is already lousy with illusionists, and that does us no good. We need to build your profile in the East.”

He went on, “I've got a real talent for this.”

“If you do say so yourself.”

He grinned, never one for false modesty. “It's a stepping stone for me to meet the people I need to help me build my theater in New York. Once you're known and your act commands the highest prices, we'll install you as the main attraction at the Carolina Rose. I'll be a real impresario, and you'll be a flat-out star. And we'll be together, here. We just need to be patient and smart about it. I believe we'll get what we want.”

I looked at him. He was right. It was what we both wanted. That didn't make it easier, being apart.

“You're so beautiful when you're sad, with those eyes of yours. They break my heart,” he said.

“Mine too,” I said and curled my body into the curve of his, until I could feel his breath as if it were my own.

***

I was riding high, thrilled and amazed at my own luck, feeling more powerful than Houdini himself. I wasn't just a female illusionist; I was a woman in full, a woman with a man who couldn't get enough of her. It made me even more confident and seductive onstage.

We debuted the new version of the Woman on Fire, which I reveled in. My costume was crafted of white layers of chiffon with red, orange, and yellow ones underneath, and as I spun, the brighter colors looked like flame. With carefully placed lamps and wisps of smoke, the illusion that I was on fire was complete. I loved it because I could be my true self onstage for once. For the purposes of the Woman on Fire, I didn't need to pretend myself fearful or foreign or shrouded in mystery. I only needed to be happy. And I was.

The crowds grew larger, my billing more pronounced. I found myself in a familiar cycle. In the earlier days with the Great Madame Herrmann's company, we'd played smaller theaters, and as she built her fame over the years, we'd visit larger venues in the same cities. And so it was with the Amazing Arden's company. We went from the Howard Athenaeum to the Hollis Street Theatre in Boston, no small leap, and from the Locust Point Theater to the Ford's Grand Opera House in Baltimore. As he had many times before, Clyde displayed his worth as my business manager and suggested it was time I begin to play on a percentage basis at certain theaters. My upfront salary would be smaller, but every ticket sold would yield a bit more silver for our coffers. Enjoying the gamble, I agreed. At three out of every four shows, it paid off, and it would be hard to say which of us was more pleased.

Clyde was both my inspiration and my reward. I delighted in the stage and the road, collecting anecdotes and tales to tell him, and when we were together in New York, I disappeared into bed with him for hours and then days, and when he insisted we go and eat something, I mumbled and dragged my feet until he swept me up in his arms to carry me out, blinking, into the light. We could have griddle cakes at a lunch counter or shrimp bisque and spring lamb at Delmonico's, and I'd hardly notice, so thrilled to be sitting across from him, looking at him, knowing he was close enough to touch.

And when I was with him, I learned the compromises of intimacy, the way the pillow you fall asleep on disappears in the night sometimes, the way the other person's smell becomes more familiar to you than your own, the way you learn the phrases they repeat and the foods they avoid and in which direction their hair grows. In the years before we found each other again, I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be loved and needed; now it had become such a part of my life I couldn't imagine what it would be like not to.

And so things continued in the same way, for a full year and then some, until Christmastime of 1903.

***

My little family of performers had grown together, and not a single one I'd hired had left the company. They also began to come to me for counsel and reassurance, which was something Adelaide's employees had never done, forbidding as she was. Sometimes they only wanted my advice. Sometimes they wanted to ask to be included in or excused from a particular illusion or to be granted a particular day off here or there. On occasion, they asked for more meaningful favors. The long-fingered former bodyguard, whose name was Hugo, asked for a loan to get his sister out of a bad situation, and I was happy to advance him the money, though it was a substantial sum. He paid it back promptly, reaffirming my trust.

We still had our curfews and our mandatory dinners. During these mealtime conversations, we were fond of going over and over our memories of every venue we knew, talking about which were the best theaters and which the worst, debating the pitfalls and benefits of each one. Late in 1903, Hugo told us of an ornate new theater built in Chicago, a beautiful, soaring place. Not only was there room for nearly two thousand audience members in the high, vaulted auditorium, but great thought had been given to the comfort of the acts as well. We'd never heard of a backstage area so luxurious. Five levels of dressing rooms had been built—surely, we exclaimed, that could only be a rumor—and an elevator constructed to shuttle performers from there to the stage level. Its opening had been much delayed, but all was now well at last. It was called the Iroquois Theater, and none of us could wait to play it.

Clyde booked a show for me there in early January, but I decided to go a few days in advance, at the end of December. Holidays were a quiet time for us. What audiences there were tended to congregate for family entertainments, especially the seasonal ones, Yule-themed ballets and musicals and the like. So we made a plan: I would go on ahead while Clyde settled the year's business. After this single show, I'd join a small circuit called the Castle for a month of shows in Missouri, and after that, we were very close to a deal with a northeastern circuit, the Monrovian. Once that paperwork was signed, Clyde could afford to spend a week without hustling for the next bit of business. When the deal was done, he'd follow me out to Chicago, stopping over for one night before turning north and heading into Canada, where he wanted to look at a plot of timber he might buy as an investment. He'd been eager to put some of his money into land, and as a man who knew growing things, he thought he might be able to turn a profit in lumber. When he described the virgin stand of pine to me, “trees so close together they rub shoulders,” he sounded giddy as a schoolgirl. I teased him for it, but to be honest, I only wanted him happy. Sinking money into the Canadian forest would delay his plan to build the Carolina Rose in New York, but we were in no rush, and the longer I spent on the road building my name, the better off we'd be when he did.

Our Christmas presents to each other were simple. I gave him an expensive pair of leather gloves to keep his treasured hands warm, and he gave me a copy of the book that gave me my name: a lovely pocket-sized edition of
As
You
Like
It
, which I looked forward to reading yet again. Life on the road had given me many things, but it had made it impractical to maintain a collection of books, a rare regret among so many joys.

The real present was time together, uninterrupted hours of pleasure, and we treated ourselves to the finest hotel we could find, heedless of the cost. I loved Clyde's Jane Street rooms for sentimental reasons, but for luxury and indulgence, two days at the Astoria were like living in another world. We tumbled between the soft, lovely sheets, and every minute was glorious. The bed was enormous, like a sailing ship in the middle of a carpeted ocean, white draperies billowing from the framework of the canopy like sails from a mast. Rich, savory food was brought to us, whenever we wanted it, under silver domes. The faucets yielded up water at every temperature from Arctic to scalding. We looked down from our high window at the soundless streetscape below, the dots of people scuttling about their everyday business, then let the curtains fall closed upon them again. We plopped our bodies into overstuffed chairs, extended them across cool velvet sofas, settled them into the steaming, lavender-scented embrace of the marble bathtub. What I loved most in these moments was that we were still ourselves. Even among abundant, outrageous luxuries, even isolated from the forces that had brought us together in the first place, we still reveled in each other. Clyde of the cramped, cold office and Clyde of a richly appointed suite at the Astoria were still the same man. The man I loved. The man who—I could never believe my luck in it—loved me.

After our Christmas together, I left for Chicago, arriving three days before year's end. The soft languor of my holiday was worn away by hours of train-borne rattling. Accustomed to my private railcar, I found even a good journey by public rail exhausting, and I could barely keep my eyes open until I finally arrived at the hotel Clyde had arranged for me. All I wanted to do was sleep, but there was an envelope on the bed with my name on it, so I had to read it before I collapsed. I was delighted at what I found inside—a ticket waiting there for the next day's show at the Iroquois, with a note reading “
Go
see
it
for
us. —C.
”

Walking into the theater was like walking into a dream. The Biltmore had been a palace, but the Iroquois was dazzling on a different scale. The entryway was larger than it seemed like any building could be, its ceiling impossibly far overhead. I had dressed in a plain brown shirtwaist and a low-brimmed hat, eager to avoid attention, but now I felt underdressed. A spectacle like this deserved better. All gold and ivory, it was like a song-and-dance man's version of heaven. I drank in the details, trying to capture as much as I could in my memory so I could share every bit of it with Clyde later.

Heading through a winding hallway lined with dark red carpet, I trailed my fingers along the brocade wallpaper, a heavy gold-and-red pattern almost too bold to be elegant. It felt like velvet.

My seat was in the very first row. I smiled, thinking of Clyde, and took my seat. I imagined myself concluding a performance on the immense stage, drinking in the applause of a stunned and grateful crowd, and felt my limbs grow warm with the thought of such a triumph. But before long, I twisted around and looked behind me, risking a crick in my neck to take in the sight of the gorgeous theater filling up. Even though it wasn't my own show, the excitement of an audience filing in still thrilled me.

From my vantage point at the foot of the stage, the size of the room was simply astounding. Hugo had told us the theater could hold nearly two thousand people, but hearing the number was nothing on seeing it. An enormous orchestra section stretched out on the ground floor, with a dress circle and balcony stacked above, and as I watched, all three filled up completely. Women and children lined the rows. Not just in the seats but between them, up and down the aisles. People packed themselves in, sitting or standing, wherever there was room. My audiences were large, but never like this, and my theaters were rarely as grand. It was more than twice the size of the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, far more opulent than Ford's Opera House in Baltimore. Gorgeous draperies of heavy scarlet damask lined the walls and boxes, and even the aisles were lined with deep carpet. Clearly, no expense had been spared.