The Spirit Cabinet (37 page)

“One time,” said Jurgen, “Harry Houdini—”

“Why you talk about Harry Houdini? He’s dead.”

“Oh, certainly, he’s dead,” admitted Jurgen. “But that’s no reason not to talk about him.”

From the dressing room next door came low howls and moans, halting but adamant. These sorts of sounds came often from the little cubicle given over to Rhonda Byng, who hadn’t been fired because Rudolfo was too enervated to do even that. He imagined that she had some greasy boyfriend who came to service her crudely before the Show, to bend her over the makeup table and stab at her dispassionately. This is what Rudolfo imagined, but it is not what he knew to be true. Because Rhonda arrived each night alone, solitary and pining for Jurgen. She made shy smiles and ducked into her little room long before she was due to appear on stage.

“One day Harry was riding in an automobile. Of course, this was in the early twenties, when automobiles were something of a novelty. At any rate—”

“Hold still …”
Rudolfo’s words sounded clunky and awkward in the dressing room. He realized he’d spoken in German; part of his mind had decided that, what with Jurgen speaking so eloquently, they must be conversing in their mother tongue. But the German sounded foreign and furtive, as suspect as a spy. Jurgen was speaking in English.

“He was being driven by a friend,” continued Jurgen, “not that he had that many, you know, he was a private and humourless man …”

“Shut up,” muttered Rudolfo. “Just fuck the shut up.” He
shattered the china jar across the floor. From next door came orgiastic bombinations.

“It’s simply a little anecdote I’m relating,” Jurgen protested.

Rudolfo placed a thumb in his mouth to bring about a pause in which he could think. But he’d long ago ingested most of the pale cartilage on his fingers, reduced his nails to jagged ridges so low they bisected the fingertips—there was no more nail to chew, “Okay,” he whispered. “Tell me the story.”

“Well …” Jurgen rose slowly. He picked up a long soiled piece of muslin and began to swaddle his netherparts. His penis was erect and twitched at the end, but Rudolfo had given up noticing. (Rhonda’s throaty belling continued to leak through the walls.) “The anecdote is simply this. It has, you’ll agree, a certain whimsical irony.”

“Just tell me the antidote!”

“Well, Harry was being driven by his friend to his apartment, and when the man pulled up beside the curb, Houdini turned and looked at the passenger door for a long moment …” Jurgen giggled. “And then he said,
Hey, how do you get out of this thing?
”

He drifted over to the corner to where his filthy robe hung beside his old lamé garb, his sequined vestments, the flaming elastic bodysuits that he no longer wore. He shrugged himself into the robe—Rudolfo ignored the feeling that it was helping with the process—and when the garment had settled upon him, Jurgen clapped his hands together, producing an unearthly hollow sound that bounced off the walls of their tiny dressing room. (Rhonda cried out sharply, once, and then there came nothing but soft whimpers.)

“Okey-dokey,” said Jurgen. “It’s showtime.”

Preston ducked out of the George Theater. The collar of his jacket was turned up and his neck was withdrawn, turtle-like. He
wore a rumpled fedora that he tugged as far down as possible over his forehead, although that was not very far. He suspected that the hat had belonged to his father. Preston had not been able to separate himself from his father, despite all his best intentions. The Magnificent’s belongings were always turning up in his closets, a kind of eerie bequest. His father’s money had gone to Syndi, the last of his little pixilated girlfriends, but his old clothes were always turning up, or monogrammed cigarette cases, tarnished seltzer bottles, silk scarves, sheepskin condoms, all the leavings of the Magnificent’s strange life.

Still, the hat, although a little small, hid his telltale greasy ringlets, and Preston was therefore a little less recognizable as he hurried along the street.

He was not sure who, exactly, he was hiding from. Miranda was lying atop the bed in the George, her flawless nose stuck inside a thick novel. She was going nowhere. Miranda tended to stick to any task with mulish perseverance, especially the reading of a book. Preston couldn’t think of anyone else who would care what he was doing.

(Although, in a limo parked down the road, he was being pointed out to two very large and brainless men. “There he is now,” crackled the voice, and the large men wrinkled their noses at the foul air that came wafting from the back seat.)

Preston, perhaps the finest stage magician that ever lived, was off to attempt his most awesome miracle, the improvement of his appearance. He was going to climb aboard an exercise bicycle and try to pedal away puckered fatty deposits. He was going to sit in a steam room until his pores popped out their blockages. He was going to stand at the shaving bar and work with great care on his beard and his hair. Preston knew he was behaving in many ways like a teenaged boy, and his only excuse was that he had never before behaved like a teenaged boy, certainly not when he was one. As a teenager he had done little but
practise sleights and subterfuges. Seven hours a day, seven days a week, Presto would send coins flying invisibly from one hand to another, he would pluck cards from the air and then fire them back into nothingness. So now, all these years later, he was acting ungrown and enchanted. He was doing odd things, like ponying up a thousand bucks to join a health club. He shrugged and spoke aloud. “Fuck it,” he said, in peevish self-defence. “I’m in l—”

Before the word was spoken, the two large and brainless men knocked Preston over like he was a bowling pin, then loaded him into the back of the sleek black limousine. Preston scrambled across the leather, and when he finally managed to right himself, he was staring into the pinched, pale face of the world-famous Kaz.

“No more Mister Nice Guy,” said Kaz quietly.

“Hey, Kaz,” said Preston, “there never was any Mister Nice Guy.”

“Are you really fucking Miranda?” demanded Kaz. He looked terrible, far worse than he ordinarily did. He had a queer, mottled appearance, the paleness blotched by patches of flaky, irritated skin. What little muscle tone Kaz had acquired was gone. And his breath had worsened, although Preston would have thought there was little room for deterioration. Each of Kaz’s words came accompanied by wild, roaring gusts of putrescence. “Are you?” Kaz repeated. “Are you really fucking Miranda?”

Preston considered various answers, some of which would respond to Kaz’s acrid immaturity, some of which would defend the vague but vicious attack upon Miranda. What he finally said was, “Yes.”

Kaz drew a deep breath. Sucking back his own air seemed to make him feel queachy and a pained look swept across his face. “That’s okay. I fuck plenty of showgirls. Plenty.”

The windows were tinted; even so, the streets of Las Vegas gleamed and glowed, lit by the afternoon sun. The limo was travelling down Paradise Road, bunched in with a lot of other limousines, a wild pack of luxury automobiles.

“You fucked me over at the auction,” said Kaz. “And don’t think I don’t know why. Anti-Semitism.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re an anti-Semite. It’s obvious. That’s why you made sure the Collection went to those two fascist faggots. By the way, I’ve got a private detective working on this thing. He’s working on a few leads concerning Jurgen Schubert’s conduct during the War.”

“I’m sure it was atrocious. After all, he would have only been about three years old.”

“They are Nazis and you are an anti-Semite.”

“I am not an anti-Semite, Kaz, and even if I was, I didn’t know you were Jewish.”

Kaz looked momentarily crestfallen. “You didn’t know I was Jewish? What did you think I was?”

“I had no goddamn idea, Kaz.”

Kaz bounced his hands off his knees a few times—not in anger so much as a boyish inability to contain energy. He turned to stare out the window and spoke as though Preston the Adequate was a great distance away. “Just tell me. Tell me what’s in the books.”

“There’s nothing in the books.”

“Look, Preston, I don’t mean you any harm. I am not a violent man. But I swear to god I will shoot you through the heart if you don’t come clean. Because I
know
.”

Preston the Adequate reached up and took his face into his huge, clammy palm. He rubbed his eyes, pushing his thumb and fingers into the sockets and pressing hard. “What is this you know, Kaz?”

“Listen. I travel around the world, going to these fairs and conventions. Sleeping with women that are
twice
as good-looking as Miranda. Anyway, at these conventions, at these fairs and conventions, you hear about these rooms. Not at first. I mean, for a long time, even when I was National Champion, I wouldn’t hear about these rooms; I’d just go and maybe I’d get invited to dinner at the mayor’s house or something, but it was a long time before I started hearing that there was a
room
, there was a special fucking room and a few guys were going there. Fucking
invitation
only. But finally,
finally
, I started hearing about these rooms. And a couple of times, I got invited into them.”

“Well, then. Happy ending. I’ll just get out at the next corner.”

“In these rooms … these hotel rooms … there’s usually only three or four guys sitting around. Magicians. Names we all know. I saw your old man in these rooms a couple of times.”

“You never did.”

“He was there. And there was always this weird little guy, dressed in robes, with a tuft of hair sticking up in the centre of his head. This weird little guy talked about the books.”

“The books.”

“I know that there is information, concrete information. About magic. Not about illusion, about the real deal. That is what I want. And that is what I will do anything to get.”

“I don’t know what’s in the books. I never read the books.”

“Liar.”

“I never cracked one open,” said Preston. “Don’t think I didn’t want to. Don’t think I didn’t sit there all night sometimes with one of those big honking books on my lap and my fingers trembling. But I’m a magician, Kaz. I’m not a wizard.”

“You’re afraid.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m not. Okay? I am not afraid. I have taken this as far as I
can—as far as any human being can—and I am ready to take the next step. I am ready to become a wizard.”

“Kaz, you got to figure that if there is information, it’s about a few little, I don’t know, cracks in the wall. It’s about a few places in the universe where the corners don’t come together. It’s not about unlimited power.”

“Okay, then please explain to me why Jurgen Schubert is all of a sudden doing this stuff, he’s doing fucking legendary stuff, the Hindu Rope Trick, for fuck’s sake, and guys have seen it and said they can’t see any rigging or anything. So explain that to me.”

“The Hindu Rope Trick is a venerable illusion. Lots of people know it. My old man used to do it.”

“Yeah. Well, like I say, your old man was in those rooms.”

“He never was.”

“What is it with you and your father?” demanded Kaz.

“My old man was
never
in those rooms. Because my father was no fucking good! Why do you think I hate him so much?

“I thought it was because he turned your mother into a fat, drooling drunk.”

Preston took a deep breath and calmed himself, but not before smacking Kaz in the face, cracking his nose and snapping the oversized spectacles in half. Kaz bent over with his face between his hands, but he couldn’t stop the blood from spurting all over the leather seats.

“I’ll just get out at Hacienda.” Preston pointed helpfully through the tinted windows. “I’ve got to go to my health club.”

Kaz nodded through his bloodied hands.

Rudolfo pulled open the front door and allowed Dr. Merdam entry.

Dr. Merdam seemed to have gained a few pounds in the weeks since he’d last paid a
Haus
call. It was as though he’d finally crossed some critical line, tipped the scales so that gravity might become his complete and utter master. The extra fat on his cheeks, for example, tugged down over his starched white collar, dragging much of his face with it. The weight of his cheeks pulled at the skin under Merdam’s beautiful almond eyes so they appeared sad, even forlorn. His eyebrows were yanked at the outer corners and cocked upwards interrogatively. His belly, a bulge of prodigious proportion, now plummeted toward the earth as though leaden, contained desperately by the buttons of his finely tailored vestments. Still, picturing himself an elfin man, Dr. Merdam danced into the hallway daintily and shook hands with Rudolfo.

“How is he?” he asked, removing a handkerchief and lightly dabbing at his lips.

“Not good.”

“How so?”

“His skin …” Rudolfo reached forward and raked his fingers through the air, searching for words.

“Is he pale?”

Rudolfo found himself laughing and unable to contain it. He laughed until tears welled up in his eyes. Then he blinked as furiously as he could, but his eyes, lacking lashes, couldn’t do much to staunch the flow. The tears spilled over.