The Magician's Lie (22 page)

1904

The Halved Man

Clyde and I were reunited in New York upon his return, and once I was in his strong, sheltering arms, I never wanted to leave them.

“But are you all right?”

I nodded fiercely, yes.

“You'll be ready for your show in two days, won't you?” he asked, and if I was a little disappointed that talk had turned so quickly to business, it helped me calm my own heart.

I drew back and collected myself. “Yes, I'll be ready,” I said.

He pulled me toward him again and said, “I missed you. I can't even tell you how much I missed you,” and I tried to let myself relax against him. He pulled at my skirt playfully, but mindful of the wound on my thigh, I murmured something about waiting a little longer, and he didn't insist. I hadn't tried to heal it yet. I was afraid somehow I wouldn't be able to, that whatever magic had once been in me was gone. Seeing Adelaide had bolstered my spirits and reminded me I was capable of soldiering on, but it hadn't made everything fine and safe and right. Neither of us had the right kind of magic to pull off that trick. No one did.

I couldn't rest, not really, but travel and emotion and fatigue meant that at least I slept.

The next day, I woke up curled against the warmth of Clyde's body, which had always been wonderful to me. So long known, so long familiar. But in the first breath when I woke up, I inhaled his masculine, musky smell, and for a moment, I didn't recognize him, and I sat bolt upright, heart pounding.

As soon as I recognized my surroundings, the bedroom of the Jane Street apartment, my world settled into place again. I lowered myself back down, and Clyde shifted in his sleep to put his arm back over me. I lay still, but my mind was still spinning. That fear was far too fresh in me, too close to the surface. I needed to find some way to drive it down again.

I had been afraid of Ray more than half my life, but the fear had gone dormant with distance. Now it was fully awakened again. Terrified and threatened, my head spinning, I had lashed out with all my strength and loosed a waterfall of blood from a fellow human being's body. He was the only thing in the breathing world I feared, and he had turned me into a killer. I could feel those surging moments of desperation again, wishing over and over to heal the gaping wound and stop the coursing blood, going mad at my failure. Even the thought of him dead at last, a cold body among all the other cold bodies, didn't kill the fear.

Was it him I was afraid of, or myself?

The fear was up against me, inside me, under my skin. Adelaide had said to use it. How could I do that? How could I push it away, or transform it into something else?

I lay on my back, staring up at the blank white ceiling, thinking of that awful day. How entirely helpless I'd felt, right up until I lashed out, and how regret had washed over me afterward. How the terror was like a djinni escaped from his lamp, never to be crammed back in. How everything had spiraled out of control, and how fervently I wished that everything could come out differently.

And that was the seed of the illusion. How I didn't need to fear either Ray or myself if I could take back that day. If I could end the confrontation my own way, on my own terms. How I could bring death, yes, but afterward, if I chose to, bring life.

By the time Clyde woke up and turned his sleepy gaze on me, I had the idea fully formed. The illusion. Powerful and magical and unique.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning.”

“I have an idea.”

“So do I,” he said, nearly purring, and ran his finger up my arm in that tickling way he knew I loved.

“Not now.”

“When?”

I couldn't hold back a smile. “Soon.”

He rolled over, stretched, kissed me gently on the lips, and settled himself back against the pillows. “So what's your idea?”

“A new illusion. One of the boys. Who's the best?”

“At what is the question.” He eyed me, half suspicious.

“Not anything in particular. He doesn't need to be a dancer or an acrobat. Well, an acrobat might be good. But not necessary. It's a passive role, really.”

“Go on.” Idly, he rubbed my shoulder.

“He just needs to have presence, mainly. Oh. And act scared.”

“Scared about what?”

“About what I'm going to do to him.”

“And what are you going to do to him, love?”

“Cut him in half,” I said.

“What?” Clyde's hand dropped from my shoulder.

“Well, someone cuts a girl in half, doesn't he?”

“A lot of someones do. Kellar, certainly. Atwood. Burlingame.”

“And a dozen more. So I'll cut someone in half. Why shouldn't I?”

He looked at me blankly. He didn't have an answer.

I kept going. “But not a girl. The girls can't defend themselves. Cut a man in half, and see how he likes it.”

“Arden, are you all right?”

I bristled at the question. I'd expected him to embrace the idea, but he was clearly made uncomfortable by it, and I wasn't sure why. He was usually head over heels for sensation. I said, “Of course I am.”

“You almost died.”

“Yes, I remember that,” I said with a touch of frost. “But I'm fine now.”

“I don't like this,” said Clyde. “It's not you.”

“It's me. Truly.”

“No. I know you.”

He sounded more than confident. He sounded territorial. It rubbed me wrong. Accusingly, I said, “Do you?”

“Arden, please, don't be like this. I love you, and everything I want is your happiness.”

“That's not even my name,” I said.

“Arden. Ada. Miss Bates. Whatever you'd like. It's you and you're mine.”

“Yours? I can't talk to you about this anymore. I need to go.”

“No, no, don't run, not from me, please,” he said and grabbed my arms, the worst thing he could do, and I ripped my body out of his grasp and stood.

He started to rise from the bed, and I held my hand up, blocking him.

“Don't. Don't.” I stepped into the dress I'd worn the night before, a forest green gown too fancy for the circumstance but the closest thing to hand.

“Don't go,” said Clyde. “You can't very well wander the streets alone.”

“Oh, can't I?”

“I mean—Ada, please—at least let me go.”

“No, I'm leaving. I don't care what you do. Please yourself,” I muttered, closing the top button of my dress on the way to the door, which I left hanging open behind me.

***

I threw myself into revising the act. The excitement of the Halved Man was bubbling inside me. I stayed after Clyde with all my might—wheedling and cajoling, then insisting and demanding—until he agreed to find someone to make the new trick for me. The mechanics of it were relatively simple. The construction itself didn't require a master, as an intricate cabinet illusion would. There were no hidden hooks or mounts. This only called for a competent carpenter with a bit of imagination, absolute discretion, and two weeks' time.

Hundreds of illusionists were cutting women in half, and despite the differences between men and women, they came apart just the same way under a blade. Or, rather, gave the impression of coming apart—of course no one was really getting severed. Men's bodies could be reflected by mirrors or hidden under the false bottom of a trunk, just like women's. There were as many different ways to stage the illusion as there were illusionists, but I chose one of the simplest, knowing the shock of seeing a man in a woman's place at the end of the blade would be shock enough.

The cabinet design I chose was a coffin-shaped box in which the body would appear parallel to the ground, on four narrow poles that raised the box to the level of my waist. The poles were wheeled so the cabinet could be freely moved about the stage. But the cabinet was actually two cabinets, the separation in the middle cleverly concealed with thin panels of veneer. The saw that seemed to sever the cabinet only slipped into the existing gap, cutting nothing at all. One of the twins would lie down in the top half of the cabinet, jackknifing his legs up and to the side, and Hugo would lie down in the bottom half, curled tightly and carefully so only his legs protruded through the cabinet's holes. When the cabinet halves were pressed together, it looked like one man's body, but it never was. Any viewer would assume Michael's or Gabriel's angelic curls connected to Hugo's polished black boots, but they were entirely separate. The audience was off the track from the beginning.

Even after I healed the cut Ray had made on my thigh, when Clyde and I made love, I always insisted on darkness. Whenever his hand roamed too close, I shifted and stirred to keep his fingers from touching me there. I knew my wish had worked and the cut had healed completely, leaving no sign, as my cuts always did. But I could still feel it there, burning against the tender skin, and I couldn't stand the thought of my love's fingers resting on that unholy spot.

I was so careful in this respect I became careless elsewhere, and Clyde found among my things Ray's straight razor, which he took for a gift I'd brought him. He loved the smooth unadorned bone of the handle and exclaimed over its perfection. He kept it on the sink and used it every single day he was with me. It made me sick to my stomach to see it in his hand, but there was no question of setting the record straight. I couldn't even begin to explain. So I let him think it was something lovely when in fact it was something awful. For his sake. And every time I saw it, I tried to force myself to forget what that blade meant, what its sharp edge had done, but I always remembered. Always.

***

The night before the new act was to debut, there was a long, heavy thunderstorm. Clyde was next to me, and I was idly stroking his hair while we lay on the floor of the railcar together. The bed was far more comfortable, but sometimes we were too eager for it, and this had been one of those times. We'd drawn the shades against the lightning. I could hear the steady patter of rain on the roof, and it made the world inside seem small and dark and private. I reveled in the feeling.

Clyde said, “I need to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

“Please. It's serious.”

I set my shoulders and turned toward him. I was ready for another fight. But he didn't look angry, not exactly, and I tried not to rush to judgment.

“I love you so much, you know that?”

Soberly, I nodded. “I know that.”

“And I think you love me.”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice cracked, because for a moment, I realized he was a little unsure. That maybe I would say I didn't love him. But I did love him, as much as I loved myself, probably more.

“I've been thinking,” he said. “If we love each other so much. Maybe we should do something about it.”

“What?”

“I want to be with you. I've been waiting for the perfect time, to have everything settled, and now I realize maybe that's no way to live. Maybe we should jump at the chances that we have. You're my Juliet, my Rosalind, my everything. My Arden. I want to be with you.”

“But you are with me.”

“Not in the way I want.”

I wasn't sure what he was getting at, so I asked. “Do you want me to come off the road?”

“Not yet, no.”

I was growing more confused, not less. “Then I don't understand. If you don't want anything to change, what do you want?”

“I want you to marry me.”

The minute felt like an hour as I searched his face. He looked sincere. There was no trace of guile, no angle. And yet. I couldn't help but think of the last time he'd proposed marriage to me, years and years ago, under circumstances that knocked me flat. He hadn't meant it then, and he hadn't looked any less sincere. He'd always been a good actor. The only difference was that now, unlike then, I knew it.

I had the same feeling I had the first time he'd proposed: an overwhelming instinct to say yes, throw myself into his arms, mold my body to his. But this time, I didn't give in.

As soon as I got my breath back, I asked, “I see. How would that change anything?”

He looked down. “It wouldn't, really, I guess.”

“Then why do you want to?”

“Arden,” he said, a pleading note in his voice that I'd rarely, if ever, heard. “This is absolutely not very romantic. I had pictured it very differently.”

I reached my hand out, cradling his beloved cheek in my palm. “You know I love you. Completely. And desperately.”

“And I love you.”

I said, “So you don't need some certificate to tell you that. It wouldn't make a bit of difference. We belong to each other already. Don't we?”

He said, “It makes a difference to me. It's what I want, Arden. Please.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” There was hope in his voice.

I said, “I mean, okay, I'll think about it.”

He was silent for a minute. The next question he asked seemed unrelated. “Are you going to do that trick?”

I didn't tell him it was an illusion, not a trick, and I didn't ask which one he meant. I told him bluntly, “Yes.”

“I wish you wouldn't.”

“My mind is made up.”

“And marriage? Is your mind made up on that too?”

I tried to be gentle. “No, darling. Please. That I need to think about.”

“Of course you do,” he said, his voice rough. “You never do anything the way a normal girl would do it. Of course you have to do this your own way too. You'll probably want to buy your own ring.”

“I don't,” I said. “I don't even know if I want a ring.”

“You know. You just won't tell me.”

“That's not true. Please. I truly need time to think. You took me by surprise.”

He still looked suspicious, but in the end, he said, “All right, then. A few days enough?”