The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  "What?"

  "Parsifal," Phan says from the door.

  Parsifal looks up at him. "Oh, come on. She knows. I know, you know, she knows. There isn't a whole lot of time."

  "Why isn't there a lot of time?" Sabine says, feeling slightly nervous. "What about Kitty?"

  Phan shakes his head as Parsifal hugs her again. "Kitty is fabulous. Don't worry about Kitty. Besides, this isn't even the reason that you're here."

  They never had flowers like this before a show. It's like being in some strange sort of garden where things grow out of tables rather than the ground. "So why am I here?" Sabine says. She doesn't think there needs to be a reason. They haven't seen each other in so long. That they are together now is reason enough to be anywhere.

  Now it's Parsifal who looks nervous. He glances at Phan, who looks at his wristwatch.

  "It is late," Phan says. "We have to get things going." Phan opens the door a crack and looks out down the hall. "It's a madhouse," he says, still watching the crowd. "They'll tear this place down if you don't go on soon." He lifts up on his toes, leans his head out into the crowd, and then spins around. "Oh, my God. Parsifal, Johnny Carson is here."

  "No," Parsifal says, and rushes to the door.

  "You can't go out there now," Phan says, blocking his way out. "They'll eat you up. You can see him after the show."

  Parsifal puts his hands on Phan's shoulders. For a second Sabine isn't sure if he's going to embrace him or push him aside. Parsifal leans forward, kisses him. "I'm scared," he whispers.

  "You've done it a hundred times in practice. It's brilliant. You'll be brilliant." Phan buttons the top button of Parsifal's shirt and begins to tie his tie.

  "You're going to have to tell me what's going on here," Sabine says. "You're making me crazy."

  Parsifal turns to her, Phan's hands still at his neck. "It's a new act, I guess you'd say. I'm going to show it here tonight. It's amazing, Sabine. It's beautiful. I want you to be the assistant."

  "But I don't know it," Sabine says.

  Phan looks at his watch.

  "There's nothing to know," Parsifal says. "You look stunning. We're a team. You'll be absolutely fine. Just follow my lead." He hands her a black-and-gold lipstick case from the dressing table.

  "I have to know what the act is," Sabine says, drawing on her mouth in red.

  A young man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a headset comes in the back door without knocking. His eyes are frantic. "Now," he says, pointing to the door. "I'm sorry, but right now."

  "Go, go," Phan says, giving them both a quick kiss. "I need to get to my seat." He is out the door.

  Parsifal puts on his jacket and takes a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. "We have to go." He does not say this to Sabine. He mouths the words. He takes her hand and pulls her down the back hall to the edge of the stage. They are standing there together in the dark, side by side, as they have been on any one of a thousand nights before. Sabine doesn't ask him anything now. It's too late. You can never talk this close to the stage, but Parsifal turns and takes her face in his hands. He kisses her and says, "Remember this, okay? You'll love this."

  Sabine has never been onstage before without knowing the drill, without having practiced the trick backwards and forwards for months on end. Then she remembers that first night at the Magic Hat, when he called her up from the back of the room, the waitress holding the Manhattan. She went with him then. She followed his lead like they were dancing. Now, at the Magic Castle in the pitch-black dark, Parsifal takes her hand. Their arms are twisted together and they lean into one another hard, the way they always did before a show, their mutual wish for good luck. He leads her onto the stage.

  The second their feet touch the polished wood, the light floods down on them. They can see only each other. Sabine can tell the size of a crowd by its roar, and the roar tonight is huge, bigger than Vegas, though that's impossible since none of the theaters at the Castle is anywhere near as large as the Sands. They are screaming his name. They are stamping their feet against the floor. They are applauding and the noise it makes is like an airplane splitting apart in midair.

  Parsifal raises his hands to soothe them. The light reflects from his palms. "Thank you," he says. His voice is humble, genuinely overwhelmed. "My name is Parsifal." And they begin to scream again. He waits, he shakes his head. "And this is my beautiful assistant, my wife, Sabine."

  She looks at him as the crowd calls her name. He has never introduced her as his wife before. Until that moment she has completely forgotten she is his wife. Parsifal lifts her delicate hand high in the air and she bows to the audience, to him. The sea-foam green of the satin combines with the pink lights to make her skin luminous.

  "Tonight—," he says, but they are still roaring. "Please," he says, "please." He waits until they are quiet, but even the quiet is volatile, living. There is a charge in the air, as if anything might set them going again. "Tonight I will attempt to perform a feat of magic that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been attempted on any stage, at any point in time, anyplace in the world." This notion, that they are about to be placed in history, makes them cheer again. The audience loves them so desperately that Sabine feels frightened of their love.

  Parsifal raises his hands. "This is, in all ways, an extremely difficult performance, and if it is to be accomplished, I will have to request absolute silence." They are off like a light switch. There is barely the sound of their massive, collective breathing. He motions for Sabine to walk in front of him. "Sabine," he says.

  Sabine doesn't know where she's supposed to go or what is supposed to happen. She wonders if this trick will involve her body, if she is in some way supposed to pass through him or be cut into pieces or float in the air, and while she is apprehensive, she is not afraid. She knows her work. She knows work in the deepest part of herself, and she knows Parsifal. She walks ahead of him. She has not noticed the table before, but there it is, center stage. It is a regular table, not a trick prop. It is waist high, with slender legs and a thin, solid top the size of a record album. With its slight proportions the table reassures the audience that it is not designed to hide anything. All it has to do is hold one deck of cards, which it does.

  A card trick?

  "Please pick up the deck," he tells her.

  Sabine picks up the pack. It is absolutely good in its shrink-wrapped cellophane and its glued-down seal.

  "Is the deck unopened and unmarked?"

  "Yes," Sabine says, and holds it out to the audience. Parsifal never used marked cards in his life.

  "Please open the deck and remove the jokers."

  Sabine finds the tab on the wrapper and pulls it open. She breaks the seal with her thumbnail and pulls the deck out of the box, dropping the cellophane and the two jokers onto the floor.

  "Please shuffle the deck."

  Parsifal steps aside and Sabine begins to shuffle. She's glad she's had some practice lately. She waits for his signs, his hand in his pocket, his right foot turning in, but none comes. There are no instructions on how to stack the deck and so she doesn't. She shuffles for the art of it, for the form. She makes the cards move only in ways that are beautiful. When she is finished, there is a small swell of applause, but Parsifal silences it with a look. Sabine places the deck neatly in the middle of the table.

  There must be a joke in here somewhere. It all seems a little portentous for a card trick, but when she turns to smile at Parsifal he is once again the man going into the MRI machine. He is Parsifal on the night of Phan's death. He is pale and his face is shining with sweat. Sabine can see the veins rising in his temples, and she raises her hand to touch him but he shakes her off. "Silence," he says, although this time he can barely manage the word.

  He raises his right hand, as if he is lifting up the light scaffolding. The hand trembles beneath some terrible unseen weight. Then he lowers it slowly to the deck and taps the top card, one time, two, three. He stops to take a brea
th and Sabine wants to say to him, Forget this, whatever it is, forget it, but she is the assistant and she has to wait for his sign. He taps the deck for the fourth and final time. He sighs and smiles, a small, tired smile. He takes out his handkerchief and wipes his face again, making a slight nod of acknowledgment to the black hole that is the audience, because somewhere out there are Phan and Johnny Carson. "Turn over the top card and show it to the audience, please," he tells Sabine.

  Sabine does not know this trick, but she knows a show. She lets her hand hover in the air above the deck for just a moment as if she is afraid of what she might find. She is not afraid. She picks up the card and holds it in front of her, making a sweep from left to right, as if such a massive, faraway crowd can actually see this little piece of cardboard in the dark. "Ace of hearts," she says, and puts the card face-up on the table.

  "Second card, please."

  The deck is not stacked. She is the only one who could have stacked it and she didn't. She holds up the second card. "Ace of clubs."

  There is a murmuring in the audience that even Parsifal's looks can't quell. His voice is weak. "Third card, please."

  They are waiting and Sabine makes them wait. She has never turned a card so slowly before in her life. "Ace of diamonds." There is a gasp now, and Sabine makes part of it herself. The audience is on their feet. She can feel them trembling, straining towards the stage. Her own hand is shaking. She knows all the tricks and this is not one of them. It was not possible to stack the deck.

  "Fourth card, please, Sabine."

  And when she lifts it up she cannot believe it herself. The audience comes on them like a wave, leaping onto the stage and sweeping Parsifal high into the air. They already know the answer. They do not need to hear her say it but she does, over and over again. "Ace of spades, ace of spades." Someone tears the card from her hand. Parsifal is gone, riding out on the shoulders of the people. He turns, he tries to wave to her, and she waves to him, good-bye. The table has overturned. The cards are everywhere.

  "Sabine," the voice said. There was a hand shaking her shoulder. "Sabine, wake up!"

  "Kitty?"

  "Dad's here." How reached over and switched on the light next to her bed. Sabine raised up on one elbow. He was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt with Mr. Bubble on it. His hair was rumpled with sleep.

  "Your dad is here?" She had been dreaming about Parsifal. Parsifal and she were in a magic show.

  "In the kitchen with Mom. You have to go talk to them. You have to get up."

  Sabine pushed herself up from her bed and opened the closet to find her bathrobe, but How took her hand and pulled her forward. Parsifal was with Phan and they were happy. There were flowers everywhere. "Come on," How said.

  Sabine stumbled down the dark hallway in her pajamas. The house was cold without her robe. Dot turned the thermostat down at night to save money.

  "I won't put up with this." Howard's voice, too loud for being so late at night. Sabine didn't know how she hadn't heard it before or how Dot was sleeping through it now. The people who listened for Howard's voice had been awakened by it. The ones who weren't used to it slept through.

  "Go home," Kitty said, her voice tired.

  Guy was standing just outside the kitchen door, wearing only a pair of white jockey shorts. The light from the kitchen fell over the front of him like the light from a movie screen. He was watching, shivering, all of his skin impossibly pale.

  "Go in there," Guy said when he saw Sabine. She put a hand on his bare shoulder and he leaned against her. He still had the warm smell of sleep on his skin. "He'll kill her," he whispered in her ear like a secret.

  They were watching Kitty and Howard, who seemed to think that they were the only two people in the house who were awake. "Nobody's going to kill anybody," Sabine said, feeling clearheaded and brave. Parsifal had told her, Kitty is fabulous. He said it with such assurance that there was no way to believe it wasn't true. Howard was easy, a middle-aged punk. If she had to go up against him, there was no way he could match her. She left the two brothers behind her, huddled together at the door frame.

  Kitty was sitting in a chair at the table, her hands covering her face. Howard was standing beside her, rapping the blade of a ten-inch knife against the table. In her life, Sabine had seen as many trick knives as real ones. Blades that were rubber and bent away. Blades that slid up into the handle and gave the illusion of stabbing. That's how they did it in the movies, in magic shows.

  "Hey, Howard," Sabine said, rubbing her eyes. "You're waking everyone up."

  He turned to her, his face full of the rage she had seen only on the faces of the teenaged boys who roamed Los Angeles. He pointed the knife towards her. "Go back to bed."

  Kitty raised her face. She was crying or she had been crying. There was the smallest cut along the top of her cheek that was bleeding. She was bleeding. A delicate cut with blood so impossibly red that for a moment Sabine thought that, like the knife, it might not be real. She would take Kitty and the boys back to Los Angeles with her. That was the answer. Looking at the cut on Kitty's face, Howard, this same kitchen, it became clear. All of this was over.

  "Go back to bed," Kitty said. "Take the boys with you."

  Sabine shook her head. "I'm not going anywhere." She came over and took the chair next to Kitty. "Let me see your face." She put a hand under Kitty's chin.

  "I'm fine," Kitty said. "Really."

  "Goddamn it, don't you hear?" Howard Plate said.

  "Perfectly," Sabine said, not taking her eyes off Kitty for a minute. She pressed a paper napkin left from dinner against the cut.

  Howard took hold of Sabine's shoulders, the shoulders of Phan's white cotton pajamas, and pulled her to her feet. The neck of the pajamas caught her neck and made her head snap back and then up straight. The knife, which he held at a careless angle so that it could as easily go through her skin as not, cut her sleeve. In the hallway she heard a sound from the boys, a deep inhale. There were as many trick knives as real ones. Knives so useless you couldn't use them to open an envelope. For all she knew she was still asleep, or she had been awake before and this was now the dream. Howard's knuckles pushed against her collarbone and the soft skin of her throat.

  "Howard," Kitty said, standing up herself.

  "Listen to me!" he screamed at Sabine. He flung her back against the refrigerator and then shook out his hand as if he regretted having touched her. Four refrigerator magnets shaped like fruit fell to the floor.

  Sabine pulled down her pajama top to set it right again, trying to catch her breath. No one had ever pushed her, had ever pulled her anywhere. "You need to go home," she said, coughing.

  "I'm going home," Howard said. "I'm taking my family home." He was like the audience, just barely contained. He shook slightly, as if he were making an enormous physical effort to keep himself from killing her in his fury.

  "They won't go with you," Sabine said.

  "They'll do what I tell them to do." Howard Plate looked at Sabine as if he were only just now able to see her. He was trying to catch his breath. "Why are you here? Didn't I tell you to stay away from us?"

  Maybe he could kill them. Maybe Kitty's leaving had made him mad enough and the dream she remembered really was a dream rather than a promise. Kitty is fabulous. Sabine had thought she could bluff her way through this, but when she opened her mouth there was nothing she could think of to say. She was afraid of him. It had never occurred to her that this might be the outcome. She was in Nebraska in a kitchen where one man had already died. What did she know?

  "They want to come home tonight. My boys want to come home. Jesus. I don't have to explain this to you." Perhaps he meant to pound his fist against the table and forgot the knife was still in his hand, or maybe he meant to drive the knife into the wood, which he did. It went in with a deep thud and stood up straight, a gesture from an old western—cowboys, Indians. Kitty flinched against the sound and then, for a while, they were all quiet.

  While each wai
ted to see what the other would do next, Guy stepped forward into the light, all of his skin showing, his arms wrapped around his narrow chest. The elastic on his underwear had seen a hundred washings and sat down loosely on his slim hips. The white was not a pure white anymore, but a very, very pale gray. He had none of his standard bravado, no sway; but with all of his body showing, his youth and beauty were startling and they all turned to watch him. Almost naked, he glowed with celebrity the way his uncle Parsifal had that night on the Johnny Carson show. He came into the kitchen so quietly, with such timidity, that he appeared to be coming in not to stop the fight, but to offer himself up to it. How followed his younger brother, stepped just inside the door, onto the linoleum, and stopped. Guy moved ahead silently, as if clothing were responsible for all sound. They couldn't even hear his feet against the floor.

  "You boys go back to your room," Kitty said. "This is all going to be fine."

  Guy looked at the knife. He reached out two fingers and lightly touched the handle to test how securely it was anchored in the wood.

  "Go on," Sabine said. She did not like to see him so close to the knife.

  "Dad, it's late," Guy said, as if this whole story were about sleep and how they were being kept from it.

  "Then get your naked self to bed," Howard said.

  Kitty walked towards Guy and put her arm around her son, ran her hand across the beautiful skin of his back. "I'll take the boys to bed." She held out an arm for How, who came to her. They were children, sleepy and undressed.

  "They're big enough to get themselves to bed." Howard's tone was halfhearted, his anger failing him. He looked at his wife, who was walking away. "You come back here when you've got them settled," he said.

  Kitty stopped, her beautiful face suddenly rested and self-assured. Whatever it was was over. Guy had defused it somehow, had made it all different. "I'm going to sleep," she told her husband. "We'll talk later." And then she walked her boys down the hall.