08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  “Give those silver dollars names, at least in your mind. That’s what makes Burt so effective—he’s a living thing, like a pet, like a goofy sidekick. When he has a name and a mind, people feel for him so they love to see him win—which is a mark of your genius, by the way. So complete the story: the dollars are mischievous so they get lost, but then they still love you so they come back. Keep it subtle, but humanize them; give them feelings.”

  They worked so carefully and talked about so many things it took them close to three hours to work through the first ten minutes of her act.

  But what a finish! “Eloise, you can do this. You have the instinct for it, the magic inside you. You’ve made me real proud.”

  You’ve made me real proud. Words from Daddy, Mandy’s fondest memory, and hers today. She finished the last stall on that side of the barn, then skipped and pranced to the other side, throwing in a stag leap that wasn’t very good but was okay, she was wearing work clothes and dancing on straw. She sang music for the move “Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head …” But not so much that her eyes would get red because crying wasn’t for her today, and she had no complaints. She had belief in herself and memories she didn’t have to worry about.

  She started the first stall, raking and pitching, raking and pitching, and it must have been her mood, because songs kept coming to her. “Do, do, do, lookin’ out my back door!”

  Nearly finished with stall one. “She’s just a hawwwwwng keetonk woman!” Daddy would have frowned on that one, so she found another, “I’ll Be There,” by the Jackson 5—come to think of it, little Michael may have become a solo act; she’d heard his name mentioned here and there.

  And whatever happened to Elvis? Boy, he’d be really old by now. “Well, since ma babay lef’ me! I foun’ a noo plaze to dwell …” The pitchfork made a great mike stand and she still knew the moves.

  Oops. She wasn’t getting work done. Back to it.

  Ed Sullivan. She could do a great impression of him—she didn’t bother moving like him because he hardly moved at all and she’d get no work done. “Right heeyer, on our really big shoo! The Bee-uls! Less hear it, less hear it!”

  Flip Wilson. “The devil made me buy this dress! I said, ‘Devil, cut it owwwt!’”

  Dean Martin. “Everybody … loves somebody … sometime… .”

  Laugh-In. “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me!”

  Scrape. Swish. Clunk.

  Right when she was having fun. She stopped to listen, stifling her breath. Somebody was in the next stall, raking and pitching straw, same as yesterday.

  Come on, now, I didn’t ask for this. I was having a good time here.

  But now the sound stopped.

  Her heart was racing. She didn’t want to know, but then again she did. She went to the stall door and peered out into the barn.

  There was a pile of straw outside the next stall that hadn’t been there before, and now she heard a quiet, almost sneaky kind of padding in the straw next door.

  “Hello?”

  Just like yesterday, no one answered.

  “Is anybody there? Please?”

  No answer.

  “Pretty please, with peanut butter on top?”

  Okay. Time to look.

  She held her pitchfork in front of her, tines raised as if she’d ever impale anybody, hands clasping the handle tightly but trembling anyway. The fact that she was scared made her angry, which gave her the gumption to step out of her own stall and look in the other. “Just talk to me.” Her voice was high and quivery. “I won’t hurt you. And if you’re not there, then you don’t have to say anything because you’re not there and it’s all my problem, okay?”

  Somebody’d been working in the stall. Half of it was cleaned out, the straw and debris in a heap just outside the stall door. She stopped short of going in. Somebody could be waiting just around the corner of the doorway and jump her if she stuck a toe in there. Better to stay outside and listen, just listen and see if anything moved. She kept the pitchfork straight out in front of her, standing motionless until she felt silly. At last she decided, Well, okay, I looked. If I stop here I won’t hurt anybody, including me, and that’s the big deal in all this, not to hurt myself or anybody else. After that, I just need to not act weird.

  And standing out here pointing a pitchfork at an empty stall was weird. What if Shirley came in?

  She calmed herself, put on Normal, and went back to her own stall to finish it up. “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how, come on a safari with meeee!” The songs didn’t come quite as easily this time, but they came.

  When she’d finished the first stall, she took a peek toward the second.

  The heap of straw that used to be in front of the stall’s door wasn’t there anymore. The stall wasn’t cleaned out either, not half of it, not any of it.

  Hoo, boy. Second verse, same as the first.

  Live with it. Roll with it. Get to work. If this was as bad as it got …

  But she’d seen it worse than this, and that was what scared her. That whole levitation thing the other night she probably brought on herself, but some of the other stuff, including this, she never asked for, it just came along and happened to her, and what was she supposed to do, act like it didn’t?

  Just don’t hurt anybody. Don’t hurt anybody and they won’t lock you up.

  She got to work, unable, unwilling to sing anymore. She just pitched the hay out the door …

  “The devil made me buy this dress! I said, ‘Devil, cut it owwwt!’” It was a voice that sounded just like her trying to sound like Flip Wilson.

  “Everybody … loves somebody … sometime… .” It was coming from the first stall, her voice being silly and singing like Dean Martin.

  “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me!” She’d heard recordings of her voice, but this was downright, flat-out real. Or wasn’t it? Was it live, or was it Memorex?

  Eloise yanked in her pitchfork and it scraped on the ground. The hay swished aside. She flipped the tines upward and the other end hit the ground with a clunk.

  The girl in the last stall went silent and still. She was listening, Eloise could just feel it. The straw crunched and squeaked ever so quietly under the girl’s feet as she went to her stall door.

  What in the heck am I gonna do? Who is that over there really?

  “Hello?” came the voice. It was her. She. Herself.

  Get out of sight, that’s what you do, because if you see yourself standing in this stall you’re gonna freak out and you might get stabbed by yourself with a pitchfork and that would be way too freaky, that would be the ultimate implosion of your brain into itself and what are you going to tell Shirley when you’ve stabbed yourself with your own pitchfork, I did it but it wasn’t me? Eloise padded carefully, as silently as she could, to the corner of the stall adjacent to the door, the only place she could hide from anyone looking in. “Hello?”

  Oh, God help me, she’s going to come over here, isn’t she?

  “Is anybody there? Please?”

  What if I did answer?

  “Pretty please, with peanut butter on top?”

  Here she came. Eloise could hear her stepping through the straw. “Just talk to me.” Her voice was high and quivery. “I won’t hurt you. And if you’re not there, then you don’t have to say anything because you’re not there and it’s all my problem, okay?”

  She stopped outside the stall, and Eloise remembered—how totally nuts was this?—that when she was the girl out there she was too afraid to come in and look. Okay, so don’t look. I don’t want to see you either.

  She didn’t come in, but she stood there and stood there forever. Get back to work, uh, me.

  Finally! The girl who sounded just like her gave it up and headed back to her own stall.

  Eloise had to look. She didn’t want to, but she had to. She tiptoed to the stall door, leaned, and stuck one eye and her nose outside.

  It was her. She. Herself, in th
e same clothes with the same pitchfork just slipping out of sight into the other stall. Vivid. Real. Eloise could have touched her.

  Would her other self have felt it?

  Her other self started singing again, her voice weak and looking for a key, “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how, come on a safari with meeee!”

  And then the singing stopped and there was a heap of straw and manure outside that stall and no movement inside. Eloise stepped over and looked, finding what she expected: the stall cleaned out, just the way she left it, and no one there.

  Her encounter with herself made it all the more awkward—close to miserable, actually—when Mr. Collins suggested doing the card box routine with Shirley as the volunteer. “You need a live, self-aware, emotional person to work with on this one.”

  But Shirley? Her supervisor? Maybe Mr. Collins wanted Eloise to work under stress by working with a fussy volunteer. Wonderful. All Eloise had to do was keep her brain in this universe while poking around in another to do the trick—without having another Eloise show up—and put on a great performance with both Shirley and Mr. Collins watching her every move.

  Well, as Daddy would have told her, she could either get back into her hospital scrubs or take this dadgum bull by the horns and wrestle it down.

  Shirley came in right after lunch, took off her winter coat, hat, boots, and gloves, and sat at the third table in Mr. Collins’s restaurant. Eloise launched into the routine, putting the deck of cards in Shirley’s hand while Shirley just sat there playing along because her boss asked her to.

  What was that Scripture about a prophet being without honor in his own country?

  Well, those winning moments do eventually come around. When the cards stood up one after the other and formed a box at Eloise’s finger-wiggling command, Shirley’s stoic face finally broke into a smile, as if she were holding a baby chick.

  When Eloise produced the key to the tractor from the box, she had Shirley right in the astonishment zone. “That was clever!”

  “Excellent,” said Mr. Collins. “I like you working from both sides, that breaks it up visually, but let’s motivate the moves a little more. Can you manipulate the cards with your other hand as well?”

  Eloise could, and did, and Shirley sat there just being the center of focus for Eloise to move around.

  “And let’s try a different gesture each time you make one stand up so you aren’t repeating yourself.”

  Oh, right. Eloise hadn’t thought of that—among many other things.

  “Okay, now, slow down. When each card stands up, give that moment your emotional attention, and your audience will follow you. They need to feel what you’re doing, not just see it.”

  Emotional attention? Well, she found it with God’s help and worked it in.

  When Shirley got back into her winter coat, hat, boots, and gloves, she cocked her eyebrows at Eloise, nodded to herself, and said, “Huh!”

  And then she left.

  “That should help,” Dane said.

  His student looked relieved. “I’m not sure she likes me.”

  “Shirley’s a good gal. I think she’s just looking out for me.”

  “Well, she likes how I clean up the stalls.”

  “She likes your magic, too, and so do I. Just give her time. So … oh, right! Before we wrap up I wanted to talk about your levitation.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that here.” Instant reaction, as if he’d proposed doing a root canal.

  “Oh, well, sure, I figured as much. That’s incredible rigging. It’s got me stumped, so give yourself a pat on the back for that.”

  “As a matter of fact … I don’t think I ever want to do it again.”

  She really was afraid, as if he’d cornered her. “Hey, it’s all right. It’s your illusion, your show. Did you need any kind of help with it?”

  She shook her head and he could see a barrier going up. “No.”

  “Okay. End of subject. No problem. You look tired.”

  It was nearly the same “tired” she displayed after she did the levitation the other night. “I am.”

  “And stressed.”

  She managed to laugh some of it away. “I am.”

  “Well, the stress was planned, as you may have gathered. But you did well, so let’s call it a day. Go home, flop on the couch, and be happy with yourself.”

  She managed a weak smile as she reached for her coat. “Thank you.”

  “Nice earrings, by the way.”

  That brought a better smile, close to her classic, as her hand went unconsciously to her ear. “Why, thank you!”

  Hmm. Had she ever worn those before? He couldn’t recall.

  chapter

  * * *

  26

  She bought another pair of earrings, real silver this time, dangling just below her haircut with tiny diamonds sparkling. They weren’t cheap but they weren’t beyond her budget either, they came with a matching necklace, and hey, they were only the second pair of earrings she’d owned since September 17. The reason she bought them was simple enough: she was being a girl because, after all, that’s what she was. She’d lost the thought somewhere along the way with her mind so full, but it was finding its way back to her—and making things a little scary.

  Being a girl wasn’t hard when she was with Seamus or Mr. Collins. They were friends. They knew her situation—well, parts of it. But driving to McCaffee’s on Friday night for her seven-o’clock show, walking by those posters announcing a whiskered, red-nosed Hobett, and coming through that door looking like a girl was the strangest feeling, like that dream about being naked in public, like every person in the place was staring at her. Mr. Collins was right. She didn’t know she was hiding until now, when she really felt like she wasn’t and wished she was.

  Roger was busy behind the counter, but she held his attention the moment he saw her. “Oh, what’s this?”

  All she could say was, “I thought I’d try being myself tonight.”

  He looked her over and nodded agreeably, but then he scowled a little. “Are we gonna have to reprint the posters?”

  Abby just beamed. “I like it.”

  Megan looked at her and immediately looked at herself. Myron looked at her and whistled. Eloise turned red and Megan gave him a shoulder slap.

  It wasn’t that big a deal, just dress slacks and a white blouse, a lacy vest, good shoes she could still dance in, some accessories, a little more jewelry, girl makeup instead of hobo, and since she wouldn’t be wearing a goofy hat, she had Rhea give her hair a little wave, a little frosting.

  Maybe if the Hobett hadn’t looked so terrible … Guy, she felt stared at!

  Dane arrived at about six-forty and this time he got a chair at a table right in front—and right next to Seamus Downey.

  “It appears you’ve had quite an influence,” said Downey, but it didn’t sound like a compliment.

  Dane took it as a compliment anyway as he followed Downey’s gaze to a sight that surprised and then pleased him: Eloise Kramer mingling and chatting it up with the customers prior to her show—and looking as good as he’d ever seen her.

  She figured the only way to be among friends was to make a few before the show started. It turned out that Eloise was naturally chatty, much more than the Hobett or the Gypsy, another little thing she’d forgotten about herself. She got to know John and Kathy from Sandpoint, Marge and Winnie from the Gateway Senior Center, Jim and Cindy from Kellogg, and several others, and the only comment she got that could have been referring to the change from Hobett to Girl was from Sheri the mom, “Well, you’re very pretty!”

  Okay. Cool. But as seven o’clock approached and Eloise stole behind the curtain into the pantry she wondered, did “pretty” amount to “funny”? Without the Hobett’s bumbling ways this was going to be a whole new shtick and she hadn’t been there yet.

  Well, bring it on. It was better than going back.

  Dane noticed the house wasn’t as full tonight, probably due t
o the snow. Winter was going to slow things down, which meant a kind of catch-22 for his client: she’d have to find more gigs elsewhere, but there probably wouldn’t be as many available. They’d better line up some Christmas parties, maybe a New Year’s party at a safe venue, hopefully something for Valentine’s Day, any birthday parties she could fit in, and she’d better get a Web page started and know how to budget. They’d have much to talk about. Oh, and he’d definitely have to compliment her on her good looks tonight. That frosting in her hair fit so well. It was easier to imagine her as a blonde.

  So he’d had quite an influence. Nice feeling.

  Anyway, back to business. He watched the folks still coming in, hoping for a good crowd. One man had found a single chair in the corner by the window and sat there all by himself with a computer in his lap. Not odd for this place, but odd for this hour. It would be interesting to see if Eloise could draw his attention away from whatever he was working on.

  Eloise tucked Burt into the pocket of her vest. He made a pretty obvious bulge, but wouldn’t be there long. She stretched a little. She’d reworked a few of her dance steps to accommodate her new outfit.

  She could hear all the voices, the clinking of spoons, the hissing of the steamer, the cacophony of her audience waiting, twenty-plus different conversations going at the same time and none of them understandable, like a henhouse at slow speed. She loved that sound. She stopped every other thing just to listen.

  It’s all about them, Mandy. Those are …

  She broke inside. She wasn’t expecting it.

  Those are your friends… .

  Tears came to her eyes. Mandy? And thinking the name again brought a fresh wave of tears, a trembling lip, a quake in her diaphragm. She broke down, right there, without choice or warning and only minutes before she had to go on.

  Desperate, she pulled the emotion in, breathed deep, tried to settle, wiped her eyes. She had a mirror hanging from a nail and her makeup bag resting next to the Kenyan coffee beans. She checked herself, tissued off the smears, touched everything up.