by Jeff Garvin
We turned the corner and came into a deserted smokers’ grotto. I turned and looked at Ripley.
“How did you get here?”
“Carjacked a soccer mom,” he said. “I’m an interstate fugitive.”
I laughed, but the laugh broke in the middle and I had to choke back tears. God, I was a mess. I needed to get control of myself or I was going to scare him away, too.
But instead of withdrawing, Ripley stepped forward and put his arms around me. They were stronger than I had imagined. He smelled like new-car-scent air freshener and spearmint gum—not bad smells, but again, not what I expected.
I broke off the hug. “I can’t believe you came.”
“I needed to get away.” He looked down at his feet, traced a line in the small pile of cigarette ashes on the concrete. “After we got off the phone last night, I went back for Jude, and we walked to Heather’s.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s a tough little fucker; he’ll be fine. Heather’s going to watch him till I get back. Anyway, she let me borrow her car, and I got on the road.”
“You drove straight here?”
“I mean, I stopped at the DQ in Blythe for a pee and a Blizzard.”
I laughed, and it felt like a hot water balloon had burst in my chest. “It’s really great to see you, Ripley. I mean, I guess, it’s really great to meet you.”
“The pleasure is all mine, milady.” He did a sort of awkward Elizabethan bow, and I laughed. It was 100 percent Ripley, and I was relieved that some part of him matched my expectations.
There was an awkward pause. Ripley stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You don’t look like your avatar,” he said.
Neither of us used our real photos online. Ripley’s avi was a pixelated emoji with Xed-out eyes, and mine was Death from the Sandman comics.
I flipped my hair. “Cuter than you thought, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said, clearly uncomfortable. “I mean, no, but . . .”
A laugh escaped me. Of course he didn’t find me cute. I was a red-eyed, insomniac mess.
He cocked his head. “Are you fucking laughing at me right now, Elias?”
“Absolutely. You should have seen your face!”
“Okay,” he said. “It’s fine, go ahead. Make fun of the skinny ace Jew.”
I suppressed a manic giggle. “You’re Jewish?”
“Well, my dad’s about as Jewish as a ham-and-cheese sandwich.” He smirked. “But it comes down on your mom’s side, and her maiden name was Adelstein.”
“And she named you Ripley?”
“Believe it or not.” His smiled faded, and an instant later he wasn’t the best friend I’d known for years; he was the alien who had loped down the walkway next to me. He fidgeted with a small black ring he was wearing on the middle finger of his right hand. I needed to say something to puncture the uncomfortable silence.
“Joking aside, what did you expect?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Someone more gothy, I guess? Pixie cut, winged eyeliner. Maybe those vampire contacts.”
I crossed my arms. “So basically, you saw me as a character on a CW show about high school Wiccans.”
“I would totally watch that show!”
“I would, too.”
He smiled. “How about me? Am I what you expected?”
The truth was I had expected someone geekier, less put together. But I was ashamed to admit it, so I said, “Almost exactly.”
“Suuure,” Ripley said, rolling his eyes. “Well, anyway, my look has its perks. I’m going as Mark Zuckerberg for Halloween.”
We both smiled.
“Epic hair,” he said. “You could play guitar for Seven Seize.”
“At public school they used to call me Homeless Hermione.”
He grimaced. “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
My gut felt full of hot rocks; we weren’t supposed to meet like this. We weren’t supposed to meet at all. And now Ripley had showed up at my lowest point ever. I didn’t want him to see me like this, when I couldn’t hide what a mess I was.
He must have noticed a change in my expression, because he asked, “What’s wrong?”
When I answered, it was almost a whisper. “I thought we promised we’d never meet in person.”
He looked suddenly miserable. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “It was a stupid promise.”
Ripley smiled and let out a relieved laugh. “Yeah, it was.”
My phone buzzed. I assumed it was Dad wanting to know why I was taking so long—but the name on the screen was Liam Miller.
I felt suddenly dizzy. Too many emotions were rushing through me at once, and I couldn’t track them all. I couldn’t take the call, not with Ripley standing right here. What would I say? In a slight panic, I sent it to voice mail.
“Who was that?” Ripley asked as I stuffed the phone into my pocket.
“One of those stupid robocalls.”
Ripley seemed skeptical but didn’t press it. “Now that I’m here, how can I help?”
“We have to get to Las Vegas.” I tugged on my hair. “There’s a bus every eight hours. We should have enough to get there.”
Ripley shook his head. “I have a better idea.”
He grinned and held up a set of car keys.
Once I explained that we were due in LA for a tech rehearsal in three days, Dad reluctantly accepted Ripley’s offer of a ride—though he insisted on driving, since Ripley had been awake for twenty-four hours and I was still shaken from the accident. We bought road food and filled up Heather’s Hyundai, and it was a little after five p.m. when Ripley curled up in the back seat, Dad took the wheel, and we set out northwest on US 60.
While Dad drove, I paged through his journal, reading every entry, examining every diagram, absorbing every detail of the theory and technique behind the Truck Drop. I went through the execution step-by-step, looking for ways to expand it, to make it more surprising. After three hours, I was carsick, my eyes stung, and I had zero ideas.
I closed the journal and looked up. We were crawling along the highway, pursuing an endless snake of red lights.
“Where are we?” I asked Dad.
“About two miles south of Kingman. There’s some kind of pileup ahead.”
I glanced into the back seat and saw that Ripley was still asleep.
“Pull over,” I said. “I’m going to drive for a while.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I might be coming out of it.”
And despite the carsickness and my burning eyes, I thought I was coming out of it. A lightness had stolen over me during the ride, and I felt my mind clearing, shifting into a higher gear.
Dad glanced in the rearview mirror, possibly to check that Ripley wasn’t eavesdropping.
“It’s okay, Dad. He knows.”
Dad nodded. “You know, Ellie, it’ll be a few days before the pills take effect.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why, yes, Father, I’m quite familiar with the chemistry.”
He gave me an exasperated look.
I expected Ripley to stir when Dad pulled over to swap seats, but he was out cold. His family drama and the overnight drive must have drained his tank to E.
As I pulled back onto the highway, Dad reclined his seat, put an arm over his eyes, and fell asleep.
But I wasn’t tired at all. Traffic had evened out, and it was only a few more hours to Vegas, so I gripped the wheel at ten and two, activated cruise control, and let my mind go to work, visualizing the Truck Drop over and over on a loop.
A little before midnight, we came around a low hill and the darkness seemed to peel away, revealing the full nocturnal radiance of the Strip. Casino lights blazed like tiny suns, their colors too sharp, too vibrant. I felt a swell of heat behind my eyes: This was home, and I wanted to take in everything about this moment. The thrum of the motor. The hiss of tires on ol
d blacktop. The perfume of desert flowers and gasoline. It was an orchestra of sensations all vibrating at my frequency. It seemed impossible that twenty-four hours ago I’d been ready to give up. We needed to raise five grand, acquire the props, and get to LA—and suddenly I was certain we could pull it off.
I exited I-15 at Sunset Road so I could drive up the Strip. I needed a little dose of home. Since it was so late, I was surprised to see a cluster of tourists standing under the WELCOME TO FABULOUS LAS VEGAS NEVADA sign, but it didn’t dampen the rush of nostalgia. The last time I’d seen this particular landmark, we’d been on our way to visit Mariano and Rico Vega and see Flynn & Kellar. I’d been ten years old.
Things looked mostly the same as I drove north on Las Vegas Boulevard. The Luxor’s bright white beam still shot up from the top of its black pyramid to light the bottom of the clouds. The campy facade of the Excalibur castle looked just as faded and peeling as ever. And, in the distance, Trump Tower jutted up into the sky like a gaudy golden dildo.
But there were differences, too. The Tropicana had been totally revamped, the Statue of Liberty at New York New York was wearing a Golden Knights jersey, and the windows of the Tangiers Hotel & Casino were plastered over with a huge vinyl decal reading:
DANIEL DEVEREAUX: SKY’S THE LIMIT
COMING THIS CHRISTMAS
Devereaux had been performing on the Strip for over a decade—how long had it been since he’d taken time off to revamp his show? Casinos paid their marquee performers tens of millions of dollars and depended on them to draw big crowds; going dark for a month was an expensive proposition. I wondered what he was going to do next.
The dash clock read 12:22 a.m. when I passed Gold & Silver Pawn Shop and entered the Downtown district. Ripley sat up and looked around.
“Morning, sunshine,” I said.
“Where are we?”
“Viva . . . viva . . . Las Vegas!” I snorted at my own terrible Elvis Presley impression, but Ripley seemed unamused.
He ran a hand through his tangle of red hair and gaped out the window. “Holy shit.”
“This is where I grew up. Home sweet home. Sin City.” I rolled down the windows and savored the dry breeze as we turned right and approached the blinding canopy over Fremont Street. This was old Vegas, and I could feel the legacy of a thousand magicians tickling like champagne in my veins. We passed the Tack & Saddle, the site of our fictional two-night engagement. We passed the Golden Nugget. The Four Jacks. The El Cortez. I drove farther east, away from the lights and toward crumbling concrete and graffiti in search of our motel.
Dad sat up, checked the clock, rubbed his eyes. “Goodness. Traffic must have been bad.”
“It was hideous,” I said, laughing. “We were gridlocked for two hours after we drove through Kingman. Didn’t break up till Boulder City. Jackknifed big rig. Huge pileup.” I realized I was babbling but couldn’t stop myself.
Finally, we pulled into the motel that would be our home base for the next day or two. Despite its charming art deco facade, the ironically named Uptowner looked like the kind of place you’d score an eight-ball—so it was perfect for our budget. Ripley said he’d pay for his own, separate room, and Dad was about to let him, but I shut that down. He’d driven all this way to rescue us; paying for his bedbug bites was the least we could do.
Finally, we pulled into the motel that would be our home base for the next day or two. Despite its charming art deco facade, the ironically named Uptowner looked like the kind of place you’d score an eight ball—so it was perfect for our budget. Ripley said he’d pay for his own separate room, and Dad was about to let him, but I shut that down. He’d driven all this way to rescue us; paying for his bedbug bites was the least we could do.
We got a room on the second floor facing a concrete outdoor walkway. The view wasn’t bad; I could see part of the Las Vegas skyline. But when I stood at the railing and looked down, I saw only an underfilled swimming pool and the cracked parking lot beyond.
In comparison to the motel’s rundown exterior, the room itself wasn’t as gross as I had feared; the carpet was stained, but the sheets were fresh. Dad immediately crashed on one of the two beds while Ripley collapsed into a sketchy-looking armchair. I took a long, tepid shower with my flip-flops on, just in case. Then I changed into jeans and a T-shirt, grabbed Dad’s journal, and sat down at the scratched-up motel desk to work.
“What’s up?” Ripley asked, moving to sit on the edge of the desk.
I replied in a whisper so as not to disturb my dad. “We’re retooling the Truck Drop.”
Ripley raised his eyebrows. “Do you really have time for that?”
“We can’t just do what we did before,” I said, flipping to a fresh page. “We need to top it.”
For the next hour, Ripley and I spitballed new ideas. We got more comfortable with each other, and eventually we were talking in person just like we had on the phone. Bouncing ideas off each other just like we had online—only now were sitting two feet apart.
Ripley suggested adding pyro to the act, setting the truck on fire with Dad inside it. It was a flashy concept, but we didn’t have the time or the money to pull it off. I came up with a Sub Trunk variation in which Dad would put me in the truck, and we’d suddenly switch places before the drop—but it didn’t feel big enough, and I rejected the idea myself before Ripley could comment. We went round and round like that, and even though our ideas only got more grandiose and impractical, I was having a blast. This was the part of grand illusion that I loved: The design. The creativity. Weaving a story, then constructing a frame of deception to support it. After an hour or so, Ripley yawned, apologized, and passed out on the second bed.
I kept working until, sometime later, my phone buzzed. I had come to dread the sound; it only seemed to bring bad news. This buzz was a text from Liam.
I’m sorry. I can explain. Please call me back.
My heart seemed to contract. What was he sorry for, exactly? Lying? Cheating? With great effort, I pushed the anger and the sadness away. I didn’t have time to cry; I had work to do. The Truck Drop already had a great narrative: the impossible escape. What we needed was a new effect, something that would blow everyone’s expectations out of the water. I flipped to a later page in Dad’s journal and found a diagram of the Truck Drop as imagined from upstage looking out at the audience. Until now I had been picturing the illusion as the audience would see it. Maybe I needed to work on it from behind the curtain—from the magician’s point of view—until I could see something new.
From the perspective of Dad’s drawing, the trick’s infrastructure was apparent: the truss above from which the truck would be suspended, the dump hatches on the back of the tank—all the bits and pieces that would be hidden by the curtain. I focused on one element at a time, imagining how we might exploit each one to greater effect. When my eyes came to rest on the motorized winch mounted in the rafters, I paused—and something clicked.
I sketched and made notes for I don’t know how long, my mind whirring, my fingers cramping around the cheap motel ballpoint. At some point I looked up and realized the room had grown brighter. I glanced at the clock. It was 6:38 a.m.; I’d been working for almost five hours straight.
I stood, stretched my cramped muscles, and started up the in-room coffee maker. After brushing my teeth, I wandered out to the walkway to raid the vending machines for breakfast. There was a decent view from the second story, and dawn was breaking over the Strip. To the south, the sun reflected off the windows of the Del Oro hotel in a cascade of molten gold. The air smelled like dust and cigarettes. It felt incredible to be here, to be home.
When I returned to the room bearing three individually wrapped strawberry Pop-Tarts, Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking exhausted.
“Morning,” I said, tossing his breakfast onto the comforter.
He glanced at it, then at Ripley, still passed out on top of the undisturbed bedspread.
“You didn’t sleep?”
&n
bsp; “Just woke up early,” I lied, biting into my first Pop-Tart and savoring the sweet rush of high-fructose corn syrup. “I want to show you something.”
I poured us each a paper cup of hot brown water and sat down on the desk chair facing him. I flipped a few pages in his journal and handed it over. He frowned, took a sip of coffee, turned the page. After a minute, he looked up at me, blinking.
“This is . . . How . . . ?” He flipped back a page, reread what I had written, then stood up and began to pace. “Vanish the truck,” he said, and stopped in his tracks.
“There you are, struggling to free yourself from the ropes.” I stood and gestured for effect. “The curtain drops. When it comes back up, you’re still in the tank—but the truck is gone.”
“It could work,” he said.
“I know. All we need is a fast winch, and the Dolby Theatre has one.”
“This could really work.”
“I know.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “You did all this last night?”
I nodded.
Dad looked at my sketches again, shook his head, and laughed. “Ellie, this is brilliant.”
I smiled. Then he frowned slightly and closed the journal.
“What?” I said.
“It’s an ingenious design,” he said. “But without the props . . .”
“We’ll get them.”
“How?” he asked, raising his voice. Ripley stirred on his bed, and Dad continued more softly. “We don’t have anything to offer Higgins that he can’t already buy.”
I shrugged. “‘An opportunity will present itself.’ Isn’t that what you always say?”
CHAPTER 18
JIF HIGGINS LIVED WAY THE hell out west on Lake Mead Boulevard in an affluent suburb of Las Vegas called Summerlin. It was basically a giant golf course dotted with Costcos and McMansions—but Higgins’s house looked more like a cult compound. Slump-stone walls obscured most of the property, and the barrier on the street-facing side was an elaborate wrought-iron fence with a topiary that must have cost the GDP of a small nation to irrigate.
