Mrs. Houdini

by Victoria Kelly

  “Well, that was good fun,” he said, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Now who are these lovely women here?” He spoke with a slight European accent, enunciating each word carefully, as if he were being especially cautious not to give himself away. Bess wondered what he’d make of learning that her real name was heavily German.

  She introduced herself as Bess. When she held out her hand, he turned it over and, boldly, kissed the middle of her palm. She snatched it away, surprised and a little scandalized.

  “My mother always told me never to shake a woman’s hand,” he said. “It’s disrespectful.”

  Doll laughed and reached for Dash’s arm. “You magicians are quite cheeky, aren’t you?”

  Bess considered Harry’s bold gesture. She wasn’t sure what to make of him. He was taller than she was, which was easy considering she was still the height of a child, but he had an arrogance about him that unnerved her.

  “Are we going to the beach?” Doll asked. “Let’s, please. It’s sweltering out here.”

  The sun was going down behind them, but guests were still pouring onto the grounds, and the streetlamps blazed like the white eyes of ghosts. Bess recalled her mother’s shame when she’d left home, but it was worth it, wasn’t it, to be here in the summer lights in this jewel-encrusted palace, a place with more color and life than she’d ever known.

  None of the performers spent much of their free time in the fairground, though. The Bowery was always crowded, the food was expensive, and they didn’t get any of it for free. But mostly, there was always the possibility that theatergoers might recognize or accost them. Even worse than that, although no one said it out loud, was the possibility that they would actually be mistaken for the theatergoers themselves, ordinary men and women who ate hot dogs or waited in line for a goat-cart ride or the Switchback dime railroad. And the idea of it—such tedious, immaculate ordinariness—was abhorrent. They had all come to Coney Island to forge extraordinary, resplendent lives under the lights. Perhaps her sister would be content to wait in line, but Bess would not be one of the onlookers anymore.

  “To the beach,” Dash agreed and took Doll’s hand, and Harry fell in step behind them. Bess walked beside him, as she had nowhere else to go, but he didn’t speak to her again. She was unsettled by his silence, and slightly insulted. It seemed outside the bounds of common decency. He was young—almost as young as she—and she wondered if he had ever even been with a woman before. Doll—who was an expert in such matters—had explained to her that when men made a show of their confidence it was often to disguise some sexual insecurity.

  Finally she gave in and spoke first. “Tell me something.” She lowered her voice so Dash and Doll wouldn’t hear. “You knew that man in the audience was going to challenge you tonight, didn’t you? You knew he’d never be able to get out of that trunk.”

  Harry smiled. “Why would you think that?”

  “Or maybe it was all made up, and you paid him to get stuck in there so you could look like a hero.” She surprised herself with this. She hadn’t meant to be so brash. But she was stewing in the insult of his silence, and it had brought out another, harsher side to her.

  His smile faded. “I’ll tell you one thing—not a soul in the whole state of New York can get out of that trunk except Dash and me. And I certainly don’t need to pay anyone to try.”

  “You don’t have to snap at me.” She paused. “I could get out of that trunk.”

  He looked at her, amused. “Could you?”

  Bess nodded. “You’re clearly very skilled with ropes—that’s the most difficult part. You had your hands untied behind your back before Dash even pulled the sack up over your head. But the rope tying the sack was tricked—I suspect you just had to pull on it from the inside for it to open the bag. Then there’s the trick panel on the rear of the trunk.”

  Harry’s smirk vanished. “You’re wrong.”

  “I’m not saying it doesn’t take a great deal of skill and practice to do it so quickly. I do think you should bind your ankles as well though. It would make the escape seem even more miraculous.” She saw Harry’s face darken and realized she had gone too far.

  “I’ll tell you my own secret,” she said, more kindly. “My real name’s much worse than Floral. It’s Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner. The Bess comes from Beatrice.”

  Harry’s anger seemed to soften. “That’s your secret? It’s not that bad.”

  “Of course it is. It sounds like the name of some fat headmistress.”

  “Beatrice was the name of Dante’s muse,” he argued. “He wrote her into Paradise.”

  Bess glanced up at the dim figures of Dash and Doll, ahead of them, growing farther and farther away. “You’ve read Dante?”

  “I’ve read everything there is to do with magic. Or at least I intend to, anyway.”

  “But Dante’s books are about religion.” She recalled her teacher’s lecture on the Inferno in high school. She wouldn’t classify it as a study in magic—fantasy, maybe, if you took it lightly. But to Bess, the nine circles of hell were a Catholic warning against sin, about how carefully everyone treaded in this world, and how quickly fortune could be taken away. The Italian girls flaunted their untranslated copies of the book to show up the German girls, whom they considered bland and unsophisticated. Of course, on Sundays they all went to the same church, and outside their neighborhood, in the wealthier parts of the city, all of them tried equally hard not to give away any trace of their heritages, using American nicknames to disguise Old World names and American makeup to hide ethnic imperfections.

  Harry snorted. “Magic and religion are the same thing.”

  “You mean miracles?”

  “Miracles don’t exist. I mean real magic.” He frowned. “Growing up, I watched my father pace uselessly around the room when the rent came due, saying, ‘The Lord will provide, the Lord will provide.’ But it wasn’t the Lord who found ways to pay our rent. It was me.”

  Bess was taken aback. “I have to say I disagree with you. Miracles do exist.”

  “Have you ever seen one?”

  “No, but—”

  “So how would you know?”

  “It depends on how you look at it. A baby being born—that’s a miracle, don’t you think?” She felt her cheeks flush. It was becoming clear how young she was, how little experience she had outside the few blocks she grew up on. She knew the priests did not have all the answers; in fact, one of the ones she’d encountered in a church near the Gut had tried to run his hand along her leg. But it was difficult to admit that, to some extent, life was one great pool of floundering souls, everyone clutching for something to believe in. Church had always set her at ease—when her father died, when her mother remarried, and the house was full of screaming children—she could sit for an hour among the trembling brightness of the candles, the windows the colors of jewels, and all that breathless beauty, and be still.

  “Listen,” Harry said. “The only miracle I’ve seen yet is the one that led me to meeting you tonight.”

  Bess blinked at him. She wondered if he was making fun of her. She had insulted him, perhaps even humiliated him, and now he was proclaiming some kind of tenderness toward her? He hadn’t even touched her hand, but she felt as if he’d run his fingers down her back. She wrapped her arms instinctively around her waist. “You’re—you’re quite straightforward.”

  Harry reached toward her. “Are you cold?”

  She shook her head and changed the subject. “Are you saying you don’t believe in religion then?”

  “Of course I do. My father was a Jewish scholar.”

  “Oh,” she stammered, confused. “You’re . . . Jewish then?” She wasn’t quite sure which was worse—that he was Jewish, or that he seemed to have mocked her own beliefs. Or that neither of these changed the fact that she couldn’t quite bring herself to step away from him.

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you still practice it?”

  “No.” He looke
d her up and down. “And you’re Catholic, then?”

  “Why would you suppose that?”

  He smiled. “You said Jewish with such forced politeness.”

  She blushed. “I did not. And it’s not that. My mother’s very strict about her faith.”

  “So you became a dancer. How very Catholic of you.” He frowned. “You seem to put a lot of stock in what you’ve learned from other people—teachers, parents, priests. But what about what you’ve learned for yourself?”

  She felt, in a way, that, by standing here alone with Harry, she had made a decision without intending to. His breath was so warm she felt as if it might scald her. She realized now that she wouldn’t—couldn’t—go back. What she had once considered sinful did not seem wrong anymore. The routines of her new life—the wide-eyed stares of the men in the audience; the giggling late-night confessions of Anna and Doll in the bunk across from her—seemed not only harmless but honest and real. She had been looking for something during those hours she spent in the solitude of a church pew, but she had found it here instead, in Harry’s smooth, unblemished face, and in the way he seemed to want her not for being smooth or unblemished but for being wonderfully complicated, emerging from the banality of her past life to something enthralling.

  They had reached the beach now, and the ocean, black as cloth in the distance, the froth of the waves cascading like plumage, was less than a hundred feet away. There was something spectacular about the sea at night—it was dangerous, unexplored; and if there was such a thing as magic, then it was certainly somewhere out there, in all that humid darkness.

  They stood with their feet buried in the sand, looking out at the water. Dash and Doll were nowhere to be seen, but she could hear the unmistakable chirp of Doll’s laughter, somewhere down the beach. “You believe in miracles. But don’t you believe in magic?” Harry asked her, his dark eyes suddenly serious.

  Bess blinked. “I—I don’t think so. You mean like flying carpets? No.”

  “I’m going to tell you a secret, then. And it is essential that you know this.” He took both her hands and looked at her. A current of electricity shot through her. “There is no such thing as magic.”

  Bess felt herself shiver, but she didn’t pull away. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if it was real, I’d know it.”

  “That’s a ridiculous answer.”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  She was suddenly nervous to be alone with him. She didn’t care much for propriety, but it was odd that the beach was empty, even at this hour. A few hundred feet away was a thick, salty marshland, and swarming the air by their faces, clouds of tiny black bugs found their way into Bess’s hair and mouth. She was becoming more and more uncomfortable next to Harry. There was something animal-like about his movements, the strength with which he’d grabbed her. He had seemed to joke with her before, but there was not a trace of play in his black eyes now. He was watching her with intent.

  “I wrote you off, back when I watched you perform,” he said. “I thought you were just another flirt singing silly songs.”

  “Oh,” she said, alarmed. “Well, I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “But you knew about tonight. You were right that we were onto that lackey who tried to discredit us. And the trunk trick . . . I’m not saying you were right about that. I’m just saying no one’s ever come so close to seeing through one of my tricks. You’re smarter than I expected. And bolder, too, I guess.”

  She could feel herself growing dizzy in the heat. The waves seemed to be pressing in on them both.

  Something occurred to her. “How many times did you see me perform?”

  “Three or four.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “I was in the back. You wouldn’t have seen me. But we passed each other in the Bowery a few times.”

  Bess was startled. “Why didn’t you say anything to me? Did you know it was going to be me here with Doll tonight?”

  Harry slid his hands into his pockets. “I asked Dash to take Doll out, so you’d come.”

  “Oh, that’s mean. Now she thinks he likes her. You should have just asked me.”

  “Would you have said yes?”

  “Sure.”

  He smiled. “How much do you like me?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Enough to marry me?”

  Bess laughed. She couldn’t tell if he was serious now, or mocking her. “That’s a lark. And I don’t see how you’ll win me over by making fun of me.”

  “I’m not making fun. I’m serious. I’m twenty and you’re what—eighteen?”

  She nodded. “Yes, we’re still young. What’s the rush?” She was playing along now.

  “You’re not a child anymore, Bess. You’re a woman. Don’t you feel that’s what you are?” He put his hand on the back of her neck. She felt the churn in her stomach. “You’re old enough by now to know what it is you want.”

  “I suppose I am.” The words didn’t sound as playful as she intended. He was as confusing a man as she had ever met. No one had ever professed his love to her before. In fact, some of the men Doll had introduced her to had told her frankly that they couldn’t take her seriously; she looked too much like a child with her curly hair and small lips. Now this man she had just met—who was, perhaps, as much still a boy as she was a girl—was declaring himself to her, and she wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or suspicious.

  “Don’t you want me?” he asked, with utter seriousness.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean by that exactly. I’m not the kind of girl you might be thinking I am.”

  He removed his hand from her neck and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I mean, don’t you want to marry me?”

  Rationally, it didn’t make sense. Neither of them had any money. She had known him for a night. He could turn out to be the kind of man who drank, who hit her when he was angry. He could miscalculate one of his tricks and die young. And she’d been in Coney Island only three weeks. Three weeks earlier, she’d been a schoolgirl, working at a shop counter in the evenings. She hadn’t had enough time to become someone else. What would she do if she became a mother? People who got married had children. Did she even want a child?

  The sand hills loomed like mountains beside her, the scattered shells dimly white in the moonlight. She bent down and held one in her hand. The front was smooth, the inside rough with salt. She looked at Harry. He had his hands in his pockets and was staring at her expectantly. She laid her palm against her forehead. Harry knelt down beside her. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  She thought of what her mother would say if she brought home a Jew. “I can’t believe you’re actually serious right now. I can’t marry you, Harry. You don’t know a thing about me, nor I you.”

  He considered this. “Harry’s not my real name. My real name is Ehrich Weiss. And no one here knows that but Dash, and you, now.”

  “So you see then? I don’t even know what to call you.”

  “You can call me whatever you like.”

  “Harry—” she began.

  He pulled her to her feet. “Come with me.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “I’ll carry you then.” He picked her up like a trinket, laughing, then hooked his arms around her shoulders and knees, like a groom carrying a bride. “You’re very light.”

  “This is preposterous,” she cried, but he was already walking in long strides across the sand, toward the marsh. “Where are we going?”

  The marsh, they discovered, was really a quick rush of water the ocean had made into a river, through the sand. It had dug itself deep over time, and someone had built a small bridge across it. He put her down in the middle of the bridge. “Can you stand?” he asked.

  “I can, you brute. But you’re mad. What in the world makes you think we can get married when we’ve only just met?”

  “Damn it, Bess! How can you not see it?” His outburst start
led her, and she stepped back. “We’re the same, you and me.” He wrapped his hands around her waist and held her tightly. “We see things. Things other people don’t.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you didn’t see me. When you were onstage you were looking right at me, and yet you didn’t see me. Because you were seeing something else. Am I right?”

  Bess nodded. She’d learned that when she sang, the songs enveloped her. She saw sensations in front of her—colors, the heat of the afternoon like smoke rising, brightness like the sun on glass.

  He went on, breathlessly, as if the realization had consumed him. “There’s something else out there, beyond what the mind can perceive. Maybe it’s religion, maybe it’s not. It’s not magic the way we think of it—that kind of magic is a game. It’s something else, something truer than that. Some people believe in it. A few can sense it. But me—I can see it. And then I met you. And I think—I think you can actually reach it.”

  Bess was stricken. She could feel the pulse of his hands around her waist as if the blood was throbbing through his fingers. “Reach what, Harry?”

  “What is out there. The other place.”

  “Like heaven?”

  “White gates and all that? No, no. I think there’s another plane of living right here where we’re standing. People who have been, people who have yet to be, what if they are right here with us? And yet most of us aren’t even aware of them.” His eyes danced. There was a madness to his passion, but he was not insane. There was something real and familiar about him. She felt he was putting words to something she had always known. And what if he was right? What if she possessed something extraordinary? No one, before Doll and Anna approached her and asked her to sing, had ever believed she was extraordinary.