The Magician's Lie

by Greer Macallister

  “Where will you go?” I asked.

  “I’m moving out to a farm on Long Island,” she said. “No more road. No more travel. None of this.”

  I began to cry.

  “Stop that,” she said. “If you let this be the end for you, you’re not the girl I think you are.”

  “I just want one night to be sad.”

  “A night’s too much,” she replied. “You have three minutes.”

  For three minutes, we sat in silence, sipping our brandy. The artwork on the wall was familiar enough now that I felt the painted ladies and gentlemen were my good friends. It seemed I would never see their faces again.

  She flipped open her pocket watch, which had been Alexander’s, and said, “Time’s up. How do you feel?”

  “Not sad anymore,” I lied.

  “Good.”

  I sipped my brandy again.

  “Because I have something I want to tell you,” said Adelaide.

  “Yes?”

  “Vivi, I’m proud of you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, trying hard not to cry again and failing.

  “Oh, toughen up. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “It’s the end of my world,” I said.

  “And you don’t think it’s the end of mine? I’ve been at this a lot longer than you. I’ve lost a lot more than you’ve lost.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I understand, chérie,” she said gently. “You’re young. When you’re older, you’ll understand. Life is long. If you’re lucky. You never know what it will bring.”

  I replied, “So you think there could be other things as wonderful as working in your show?”

  “For you? Absolutely.”

  “Such as?”

  Raising her glass, she said, “Working in your own show.”

  “I don’t think I’m ready,” I said.

  “You’re ready.”

  “But I’m not like you,” I said. “I’m not strong enough. I can’t fake it. I can’t build a world out of nothing.”

  “You don’t have to. You’ve already got it.”

  “I’ve got a fat goose egg,” I said, frustrated.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Listen to what I’m saying. I’m giving it to you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not proposing you make something out of nothing. I’m proposing you take over what’s already here. I’m handing the company over to you.”

  It was starting to sink in. I was overwhelmed. “Truly?”

  “Close your mouth. You’ll catch flies,” she said. “Honestly. You’re smart enough, Vivi. I assumed you’d thought of this.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, but I realized I should have. I’d been too busy mourning our demise without stopping to check first if we were dead. Adelaide leaving the business didn’t mean the show couldn’t go on. Not if someone else was willing to step up and be Adelaide.

  And she wanted that person to be me.

  “No guarantees,” she said. “If things fall apart, things fall apart. I won’t come to rescue you. If your employees desert and your animals escape and the audiences throw horse apples on the stage, that’s your own problem, not mine.”

  “I understand.”

  She said, “I’m doing the best I can for you. You can have the sets, the illusions, the whole noodle. In return, I want a cut. Twenty percent.”

  “I’ll give you ten,” I answered quickly.

  She roared with laughter, wiped her mouth, and said, “That’s adorable. I’ll take twenty.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. Just make good at the box office and keep me happily retired.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Oh,” she said. “One other condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I hired you a manager,” said Adelaide. “A sharp young man. You’re great onstage, but you’re ignorant of the business.”

  I couldn’t disagree.

  “He’ll protect my investment, keep an eye on you, book your circuits. Cut the checks and all that.”

  “Experienced?”

  “Not as much as some. But he knows what he’s doing.”

  And just like that, there was a knock on the door.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “Magic.” She smiled, going to open it.

  I heard a low voice, a man’s voice, in the darkness. His tone was light and teasing. Adelaide laughed and said, “Yes, perfect, right on time.”

  The low voice rumbled again, but I was seated too far from the door and couldn’t hear his words. I sipped at the last of my brandy.

  “Well, come on in then,” she said. “Come and meet my protégée. Or should I say, meet her again.”

  He stepped up into the railcar, and my world tilted on its axis.

  The first thing I noticed was his dark hair. It looked like it was wet. And though I would never have been able to describe him to a stranger, once I saw him again, I recognized everything. The familiar slant of his shoulders. Thick fingers and forearms that showed his ability to dig. The way he leaned forward a little, even at rest, as if something interesting were always right in front of him. The intensity.

  And that smile. I knew that smile.

  “It’s good to see you, Ada.”

  “It is not good to see you, Clyde.”

  “You jackass,” Madame said to him. “You said she liked you.”

  “She did,” he said, a familiar softness in his voice. “Very much.”

  “Once upon a time,” I said frostily. “Madame, this man doesn’t keep his word. He can’t be trusted.”

  “Addie,” he said, “have I ever steered you wrong?”

  She looked back and forth between our faces, reading us both. “You haven’t,” she told him.

  “But he was—he once—” I searched for the right words. “He broke my heart.”

  “Did I?”

  I said, “He told me he would be honest, and then he deceived me. On an important matter. How could I trust him to have my best interests in mind?”

  Adelaide replied, “Well, that’s very odd to hear, considering…”

  “Considering what?”

  Clyde said to me, “I told her who you were and where to find you. Back when you were in the chorus. It’s why she hired you, and why you’re here.”

  I turned to Madame for confirmation, and she nodded. “He did. He suggested you, insisted I go to watch you dance, said you were perfect for the company. When your predecessor had to leave the business.”

  “The pregnant girl?” I asked, suspicious, eyeing Clyde.

  “Yes.”

  He caught my look. “Good God, Ada, it wasn’t me.”

  I shrugged.

  Adelaide said, “Here’s the trick to it, Vivi. The deal’s already done. You take the company, I take my cut, he’s your manager. It’s a solid deal. If the two of you can’t work together, fine. It would be a tragedy, of course.”

  “Because?”

  She said, “I would be very sad that you’d decided to leave a business that suits you so very well.”

  I knew what she meant. I was still reeling from all this—Clyde Garber not only in my present, but also more involved than I’d known in my past and with a proposed role in my future—but I wasn’t slow, despite the brandy. If the deal was done, it was done. And just because it wasn’t what I expected didn’t mean it wasn’t good for me. Rushing to say yes and rushing to say no were mistakes in equal measure. I needed to think it through.

  At length, I said, “All right.”

  “You two will have a lot to talk about.” She stood. “I’m going to go for a walk.”

  “A walk? Are you sure? In the
dark?” I asked.

  “Aren’t you sweet,” said Adelaide. “I am walking as far as the next tavern, because I am going to get good and drunk just once more in New York City before I leave it forever.”

  “Thank you,” I told her as she left, and she did the most typical thing she possibly could have done: she pretended not to hear me at all.

  Then Clyde and I were alone again, together, for the first time in years. He smiled at me the same, the shape of his body under his clothes was the same, the warm look in his eyes was the same. It was so familiar that it hurt.

  “So,” I said. “You again.”

  “You again,” he echoed, grinning.

  “I don’t see why you think I should be happy about this.”

  “Because your life is coming up roses?”

  “An interesting way to put it. So you’re not a gardener anymore, I see.”

  “A lot has happened to both of us,” he said. “Look. I understand why you were angry, why you ran away. It took me a while to figure out. I hurt you. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I’m sorry.”

  He sounded sincere. Of course, he’d sounded just as sincere, years before.

  “But we were kids then,” he said. “Weren’t we? Just stupid kids.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Okay. Two of us were kids and one of us was stupid. Me. You can let it go now. Water under the bridge. You have to find a way to trust me.”

  His insistence made me push back. It was a reflex. “No, I don’t.”

  “Ada,” he said. “Please. For once. Don’t resist.”

  “The hell I won’t. What’s to stop me from firing you?”

  “Addie says you have to work with me.”

  “Addie knows how good I am at what I do.” My confidence was bolstered by the brandy, and I let myself be bold. “I’m not replaceable. But I bet you are. And I bet I can convince her of that.”

  He extended his hands, palms up. “Maybe you could. Or maybe not. Why take the risk? Wouldn’t it be easier just to work with me? And let the past be past?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is a good opportunity, Ada. No, an amazing one. Addie thinks you’re incredible, and I’m inclined to agree with her. If you don’t do it this way, you’ll have to build your own company from the ground up. Are you prepared for that?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “But this would be better. So much better. And you’d be willing to let that go because of a teenage grudge?”

  “You make it sound like it was nothing,” I said hotly. “It was not nothing.” His argument was solid and logical, but the history between us was beyond logic, and I wanted to be sure he wasn’t taking me lightly.

  “I know,” he said, “I know. But think about what good sense it makes to do it this way. Forget our history. Pretend we’re meeting new, and we’re just colleagues. Professionals. Can we do that?”

  Finally I had to admit it was the right choice, at least for the present. I lifted my chin. “I can, anyway. I don’t know about you.”

  “That’ll do for now, I suppose. Would you like to have some supper?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

  “All right. You want to be businesslike?” he said, sounding resigned. “Then let’s do some business. Come on.”

  We walked out into the night, and as we walked, he told me his story in an unending stream of patter. Mr. Olmsted, who had once promised him a job, wasn’t in the city when we arrived, but he had provided an introduction to a Mr. Hastings, who was key in the design for a new library building, replacing the Croton Reservoir. Clyde worked for Hastings & Cutter as a general errand boy, delivering plans and managing supplies in support of every kind of construction from churches to theaters. He met the managers of the best theaters in New York, charming a few of them, and saw an opportunity. He announced his availability as a talent scout to agents who managed acts in the city, charging each one well under market rate but making ends meet by attaching himself to half a dozen. When the time was right, he chose one agent to assist full-time, who happened to be Adelaide’s agent, for whom he scouted talent all up and down Broadway. That was when he’d spotted me in the chorus of The Belle of New York, and when Adelaide needed a new Odalisque, he suggested my name. In the years since, he’d become a full-time talent manager himself, booking acts onto vaudeville circuits all throughout the East, having some solid success. And although Adelaide was too loyal to abandon the agent who’d been with her and Alexander since the beginning, her retirement opened up this new possibility, and for me, she wanted a younger and savvier man.

  Listening to his familiar voice and walking next to him made me feel fifteen years old again, young and foolish. By many standards, I was still young, but I hadn’t felt that way since the day the train took me away from New York the very first time and Adelaide told me to write down my address for the boy. I’d felt like a grown-up then, like someone with the world waiting on her. I’d felt old when I was young. Now it was all reversed. I was only angry because he’d fooled me, once upon a time. He was right that it would be easier to work with him than to force him out. In this case, perhaps the devil I knew was better than a devil I didn’t. Now all I had to figure out was whether my professionalism was stronger than my pride.

  Fifth Avenue was broad and long, and at this time of night, empty. It was cold enough that I could see not only my own breath in the night air but also his, and there was something intimate in that sight. I snuck a peek at him. The arched eyebrows and the high cheekbones, they hadn’t changed. He looked a little wider in the shoulders, and he wore thin-rimmed eyeglasses over those piercing blue eyes, but otherwise, he was the same. I knew he was examining me just as closely, though I pretended not to see. I turned my gaze back to Fifth Avenue.

  The mansions were stunning. Broad-shouldered and pale and grand, each and every one. They loomed out of the darkness like sleeping giants, noble and silent. Most had the faint glow of lights deep within, veiled behind lace curtains and velvet drapes. Despite how large the windows were, you couldn’t make out even the faintest shape of what was inside. You had to imagine. Their faces were blank and forbidding. I’d heard about them, of course, but I’d never walked into this part of the city.

  As if he could hear my thoughts, he said, “You’ve never been here before?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Never had a reason,” I said.

  “I love New York,” he said. “No matter how long you’re here, there’s always something else to see.”

  “But there’s a whole country to be seen too. Not just this one city.”

  “Then I suppose we’re both best off doing what we do. I’ll hold down the fort here, operating out of the Broadway office, and you’ll take to the tracks.”

  That heartened me some. Adelaide insisted we work together, but we wouldn’t really be together at all. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Casually, I responded, “Oh yes. I’d almost forgotten why you’re here.”

  “Never forget the bigger picture, Ada.”

  “Don’t lecture me,” I snapped back. “I don’t see any gray hairs on your head.”

  “Sorry. Sorry. Anyway, here we are.”

  He gestured up at an imposing marble building, one that looked just as much like a mansion as the rest, but with no signs of life inside.

  “The Lenox Library,” he said.

  The building was enormous and white, and I could feel the cold radiating off its surface. Two imposing wings jutted out toward the street while the central entrance sat demurely within a large courtyard, recessed and regal. Huge arched windows were arrayed on the first and second floors. On the first floor, each arch was large enough to drive a carriage through, but only the top half of each window was glassed, to keep out prying eyes. On the second floor, the windows were even grander
, furnished with six separate panes of glass, curved gracefully on the top but solid and rectangular at the middle and on the bottom. The center of the building had a third floor, with smaller windows, paired and rectangular. From here, they resembled French doors, but at such a distance, it was impossible to know their true size. Both wings of the building were crowned with Greek-looking pediments, intricately carved, but with what I couldn’t say, as they were so far overhead, nearly disappearing into the darkened sky.

  I had to admit the entire effect was breathtaking. “It’s beautiful.”

  He led me away from the street, around the side of the building—no small distance—toward a series of low windows. He counted under his breath, one two three four from the left, and crouched in front of a window that looked identical to the others.

  “In case you ever need to know this,” he said, “the best way to get through a lock isn’t to pick it. It’s to slip something in between the bolt and the frame so it never locks in the first place.”

  He reached down and swung the glass of the window open, as silky silent as you please, and gestured for me to proceed through the open window, which I did gladly and landed softly on a floor not too far down. He followed.

  Once we were inside, he turned back to me from the dark and said, “Welcome to the whole world.” I looked around, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light from the high windows.

  Books.

  Shelves of them, walls of them. Down to our feet and high above our heads. Books everywhere. The last time I’d seen shelves of books was back at the Biltmore, in the library where we first began our affair, but these shelves held twenty, thirty, fifty times more. It was stunning. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed them. I wanted to run my fingers along the endless series of spines, rub my cheek against the cloth and leather covers, press my nose into the pages and inhale until I was drunk on the smell of old paper.

  “All the books anyone could ever want,” he said. “And this is only half of what’s going to be in the public library. All these, and all the books from the Astor Library, that’ll be the start of the collection. For anyone to read.”

  “It’s amazing.” I couldn’t help whispering, staring up at the rows on rows of spines stretching out into the distance. I knew it wouldn’t last—we weren’t supposed to be here, and I doubted we’d stay long—but it still felt like a sort of homecoming.