The Lightness of Hands

by Jeff Garvin

  Craig Rogan standing before the red curtain on his talk-show soundstage.

  The massive tank. The creak of steel cables.

  Then my breath rushed out of me as I watched my mother enter the frame. She was beautiful—dark hair hanging down her back as she crossed the stage with a grace I didn’t inherit. She smiled, and there was no sign of turmoil in her deep brown eyes. No hint of the darkness to come. For the first time, I wondered whether she was manic when it happened, or whether she was in the gray.

  The click as she pulled the lever.

  The splash as the truck hit the water.

  Dad, thrashing beneath the surface, wrestling with the ropes that held him. The thump as he kicked desperately against the door of the truck.

  A gasp from the audience—both on-screen and in the theater—as he ceased struggling and floated, suspended, like a dead goldfish.

  Stagehands rushing the tank. Throwing the emergency release. Water gushing from the dump hatches, flowing over the apron and into the audience.

  Screams as the crowd rushed for the exits.

  Men rolling my father onto his side as he coughed and sputtered. His suit soaked and dripping.

  The stage going black.

  The projected image faded, and for a moment I was in total darkness. Overhead, I heard the hum of the motor drawing the screen up into the rafters.

  Then—sudden as a flash of lightning—a spotlight struck out from the back of the auditorium, bathing my body in hot white light.

  I closed my eyes and pictured the stage as if I were watching from the back of the house. In the bright oval cast by the spotlight, my shadow stretched out behind me, long and crisp and dark.

  It was showtime.

  Tepid applause rises from the orchestra section, swelling into an ovation as it rolls toward the balcony. The girl bows.

  Lights come on upstage, revealing a massive Plexiglas tank. Stagehands approach and lean a shining aluminum ladder against the wall of the tank. The girl climbs to the top, reaches in, and flings a handful of water over the side. Droplets sparkle in the spotlight, then hit the stage like rain.

  The house lights go up. The girl selects a volunteer from the fifth row, a middle-aged woman who will look suitably reliable to the skeptical crowd. The woman mounts the steps and circles the tank, inspecting it. When she seems satisfied that no trickery is in play, she returns to her seat.

  The girl selects a second volunteer, a firefighter type with bulging arms and a movie-star smile. She offers him not the traditional hank of cotton rope, but two zip ties, the kind used by law enforcement. The man fastens one tie around her wrists, pulling it tight with a decisive zip. When he binds her ankles, she flinches. The man returns to his seat.

  Now the music starts; not the dramatic swell of Richard Strauss, but a subharmonic boom like a distant explosion. The slow tick of a heavy hi-hat. A hypnotic bass-guitar riff, a tinkling of piano keys, and an urgent, smoky voice, singing about falling.

  This is not her father’s score. This is not her father’s trick.

  The girl turns her back to the audience, raising her bound hands high into the air. The spotlight drifts upward toward the proscenium—and slowly, the truck descends from the rafters. First to appear are the whitewall tires, then the running board, then the shining chrome grille. Bright white lights illuminate the gleaming maroon body of the 1947 Chevrolet pickup as it finally touches down on the stage.

  The girl—the magician—senses the people in the front row leaning forward in their seats.

  It happens fast now: a stagehand helps her into the driver’s seat, closes the door, retreats toward the prop lever. A backbeat kicks in under the bass riff, and the truck jerks into the air, rising slowly on its steel cable. When it reaches the top, the truck swings upstage and settles, rocking gently, suspended over the tank.

  The music dropped out, and the sudden silence drew me back into awareness. I’d been distracted, out of my body, elsewhere. But now I was no longer watching the show like the audience, I was performing it.

  I sat high above the stage, hands bound tight and gripping the steering wheel of the old truck. All I could hear was the creaking of the cable and the faint hum of the stage monitors. The hum was in my head, too, numb and electric on my scalp. Beneath, my neurons fired off in a spastic frenzy. I felt raw. My eyes stung. My breath was shallow.

  The truck gave a sudden lurch, and the audience gasped, but this was part of the show, a device to ratchet up the tension. I put my bound hands out the window to show that I was okay. The spotlight was hot as the August sun on my face. There was a low creak of stressed metal as the truck swayed slightly on its tether. For a moment, there was only quiet and light, and then—

  My body jolted upward as if yanked by an invisible hand. The top of my head struck the ceiling of the old Chevy, stars popped in my vision, and then I was driven down into the seat as the chassis struck the surface.

  Immediately, water began to gush through the open windows of the truck. It was shockingly cold on my ankles, and for a moment, I was completely entranced by the sensation—icy, slippery, hypnotic. Then, through the Plexiglas, I saw stagehands approaching, padlocks in hand. I watched the massive lid descend from the rafters and settle into place. Click, click, click, click. I was locked in.

  The water rose to my knees, and my pulse spiked. I needed to move fast. I turned my wrists inward and began to work my hands out of the zip ties.

  Thousands in the auditorium and millions at home watch as the old Chevrolet truck sinks below the surface—with the girl inside it. As she struggles to free herself from her bonds, the water level rises to her chest, then to her shoulders.

  I finally slipped my hands free of the zip ties—but it had taken too long, and the water was already up to my chin. I was going to have to hold my breath longer than planned. Fighting off panic, I huffed in half a dozen short gasps of air, saturating my lungs with oxygen. Then, more frightened than I’d ever been in my life, I plunged beneath the surface.

  Now the magician is completely submerged. As the seconds pass, her struggle becomes more frantic. She’s thrashing now, desperate. In the front row, a woman screams; this is the same scenario she witnessed on the video only moments ago. But this time, it’s the girl who is drowning.

  I twisted and pivoted, but the zip tie around my ankles was cinched too tightly. Fear took hold. I began to thrash and kick, but I couldn’t get free.

  That’s when I sensed more than saw the stagehands approaching, waiting for me to signal the abort. Their presence seemed to exorcise my panic. I shook my head vehemently at them—no, don’t pull the levers. Let me finish this.

  My chest was growing tight, my head thick. I needed air now. I would have to escape with my feet still bound.

  I began to work my way out through the truck’s open window. As I wriggled my torso free of the truck, I kicked out with my legs—but something yanked me back.

  I gasped in surprise, sucking in a lungful of water. A cough shook me, and my abdominal muscles convulsed. I pulled again with my caught leg, but it held fast.

  The magician has been underwater for a full minute now; she can’t seem to escape the submerged truck. In the auditorium, the audience is visibly uncomfortable. A man on the aisle gets up and leaves the theater. Another follows.

  A dark oval swelled in the center of my vision. Muted music thumped outside the tank; underwater, it sounded like distant bombs. My skin went icy hot—

  And I was back in the hotel bathtub. The water was scalding. The water was freezing. My lungs burned, my head throbbed, my muscles ached. I was tired. So tired. I wanted to be still, to rest.

  I blinked, and through the water, I saw a blurry black form approaching, his image refracted and disfigured by the tanks and the water. He was coming to pull the plug, to drain the tanks, to stop the show.

  I had failed. I had gone under. It was over.

  Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh . . .

  The song erupted in my mind, jarrin
g me back to awareness. I shook my head, waving my arms at the approaching stagehand—Give me ten more seconds.

  I bent in half, moving my head back in through the window, and immediately saw the problem: the zip tie around my ankles had caught on the Chevy’s window crank. As quickly as I could, I pushed my feet back into the cab, dislodged the tie, and bolted out the window.

  Just as the girl finally escapes the truck, a white Kabuki cloth descends, obscuring tank, girl, and truck from the audience’s view. The stage lights flicker. The music cuts out. Three thousand people hold their breath.

  Then blinding white light floods the stage, the Kabuki cloth drops—

  And the truck is gone.

  The audience erupts into applause—but then the applause falters, devolving into gasps as the crowd realizes:

  The girl is still in the tank.

  She’s free of her bonds but trapped by the padlocked lid. The girl turns toward the audience, waving her hands, her wide, bulging eyes magnified by the water.

  Suddenly, lights flash onstage, blinding and bright as a bolt of lightning.

  And then they fade—

  And the girl is suddenly outside the tank, kneeling, coughing, soaking wet. Slowly, she stands and raises her arms in a triumphant V.

  The applause is deafening as a waterfall.

  CHAPTER 34

  AS SOON AS THE CURTAIN hit the stage, I staggered backward on my bound legs and landed flat on my ass. Two medics appeared and muscled me into the wings. I couldn’t stop coughing—and smiling—as they shone a light into my eyes, listened to my lungs, took my vitals.

  I had done it.

  “She’s all right,” said one of the medics, draping his stethoscope over his neck. Then, to me, “You got lucky, miss.”

  From the other side of the curtain, I could still hear the applause. Holy shit, I had done it.

  “That was incredibly reckless,” said a familiar baritone.

  As a stagehand clipped the zip tie off my ankles, I looked up to see Flynn Bissette’s six-foot-six frame looming over me.

  “I know,” I said, trying hard to wipe the smile off my face. “I picked the wrong guy to tie me up. And I lost control in the tank.”

  Flynn raised his eyebrows. “That’s incredibly self-aware,” he said. “Doesn’t make it any less stupid.”

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing.

  “I almost pulled the plug on you. But apparently, I’m just as reckless.” He looked at me for a long moment. “Nice job, Ms. Dante.”

  Clemente motioned to Flynn, and he turned and strode onto the stage.

  As soon as I opened the dressing-room door, I heard an earsplitting shriek.

  “YOU WERE FUCKING AMAZING!!!”

  There stood Ripley, his red hair swept back neatly from his forehead. He was wearing what I could only describe as a leisure tuxedo: the lapels were wide black satin, and the coat had tails down to the backs of his knees. He was a John Hughes character. He was an original.

  He was my best friend.

  I pulled him into a tight hug, and he clamped his arms around me.

  “Holy. Crap. Ellie,” he said, pushing away to look me in the eye. “That was incredible!”

  “I can’t even right now. Tell me in three days, when I need it.”

  “Noted,” he said, and mimed locking his lips and dropping the key into his shiny breast pocket. I loved that about Ripley; even when he didn’t understand my boundaries, he respected them.

  “You look handsome as fuck,” I said.

  “All I did was put on a suit. You, on the other hand, look like the survivor of a horror movie.”

  I laughed. I’m pretty sure there was snot involved.

  Ripley grabbed a handful of Kleenex from the counter and thrust them at me. “There’s somebody I want you to meet,” he said, looking suddenly sheepish.

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah, right now.” He opened the dressing-room door and motioned to somebody outside.

  A scrawny teenager entered, almost as tall as Ripley but skinny as a rail. He wore black jeans and a button-up still creased from the store, and his dark brown bangs hung over acne-riddled skin. He shot me a wary glance.

  Ripley said, “Ellie, Jude. Jude, Ellie.”

  Jude gave me a cool nod, but I stepped forward and hugged him. “I’ve heard so much about you,” I said.

  He stiffened in my embrace, so I stepped back.

  “Your show was sick,” he said, brushing aside his bangs. “But you should’ve had fire.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “Maybe next time.”

  The three of us stood there for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then Ripley said, “You should call your dad.”

  I made my way to the loading dock. My hair was still wet, and it was chilly out here, but I didn’t care. I pulled my hood over my head and took out my phone.

  Dad answered on the first ring. “You did it! You did it!”

  I heard cheering and applause in the background; it sounded like at least a dozen people.

  “Who’s with you?” I asked.

  “The whole damn cardiac unit!” he said, and there was more cheering on his end. “Nurses, specialists . . . You should have seen Dr. Saroyan. He actually chest-bumped one of the surgeons.”

  “No way,” I said, laughing.

  “Oh, Ellie,” Dad said. “You were marvelous. Just marvelous.”

  “I almost drowned myself.” I sat down on the concrete dock, letting my feet dangle over the edge.

  “We had contingencies in place. You were never going to drown.”

  The background noise faded; I imagined nurses and doctors filtering out of the room, going back to work.

  “You know,” he said, “your mother would be very proud of you.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but the words got lodged in my already swollen throat. I felt my tear ducts start to dilate. I bit my lip, tilted my head back, and blinked rapidly. My makeup was already wrecked from the whole nearly drowning thing, but old habits died hard.

  “Ellie?”

  “I’m here.” The words sounded choked, but I was back in control.

  “I want to thank you.”

  “Dad, please don’t.”

  “You hush and let your father speak.”

  I did.

  “I want to thank you for taking care of me. For fighting for me.” He paused. “You are better than the best daughter I could have imagined. You are magic.”

  I covered my face with my hand. My shoulders shook. I felt as if, after years of climbing, I had finally reached the summit, only to realize that from here all roads led down. That in order to arrive at the next peak I would have to descend again into the shadow of the valley. The thought of going back down left me exhausted. My brain crackled. The power lines weren’t down yet, but it would only take one storm.

  But I was on that summit now. And maybe I could stay here for a little while longer. Rest. Soak up the sun. Recharge my batteries before I headed back down the mountain.

  “Dad?” I said.

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “I want to do it again.”

  I could almost hear him smile. “There she is.”

  After cleaning up my face and changing into a fresh black dress I’d borrowed from Grace, I dragged Ripley and Jude into a limo, and we rode to the Magic Castle with Dane Madigan and Chris Gongora. While Jude and Ripley obsessed over the curved TV and the built-in bar, I talked shop with Dane and Chris. Both of them offered generous compliments about my performance; I nodded and smiled and tried to be gracious, but my brain and stomach were both doing cartwheels. I wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.

  Maybe not the next night, either.

  My phone buzzed.

  Liam: Wow. Just Wow.

  Me: You watched?!

  Liam: No, there was a Notre Dame game on. I’ll catch it on YouTube later.

  Me: You are the actual worst ever!!

  Liam: Seriously though. I had no idea
you could do that.

  Me: There are a lot of things you have no idea I can do.

  Liam: . . . Are you flirting with me right now?

  I let him enjoy the bouncing dots for a long time before I sent my reply.

  The limo pulled into the driveway in front of the Castle, and a valet opened the door. Chris got out first and offered me his hand. I took it and we emerged into a blinding fusillade of camera flashes. I posed and smiled and tried to surrender to the surreal.

  Chris leaned toward me and said, “You’ll be trending before you make it to the bar.”

  I laughed. And then, through the dozen floating green rectangles popping across my vision, I spotted a familiar silhouette. He was tall, broad shouldered, and uncommonly handsome in a black suit and tie—Liam. I lost whatever cool I had and ran toward him.

  “I thought you were at school! What are you doing here?”

  He leaned in and kissed my cheek, setting my whole face on fire.

  “You look incredible,” he said, holding both my hands in his. I could barely breathe—but this time, I found the sensation rather pleasant. My eyes were locked on his blue ones, but I could sense Ripley and Jude hovering behind me.

  Liam released me. “You’re Ripley, right?” he said. “Ellie won’t shut up about you.”

  “I know the feeling,” Ripley said.

  The two of them stared at each other for a moment, and I wondered if their silence was part of some primordial masculine bonding ritual.

  They were interrupted by Jude, who pulled out an earbud and asked, “Do you think they’re going to check my ID?”

  I smiled at him. “Not tonight.”

  Liam took my arm, and Ripley and Jude flanked us as we walked through the front doors.

  Nostalgia hit me like a cold Pacific wave. The musty smell, the dim lighting—it was like a scene from my childhood projected in Technicolor on all five of my senses. The foyer of the Magic Castle was precisely as I remembered it from a decade before: red velvet wallpaper embossed with a damask pattern; oversized fireplace complete with carved-wood mantel and golden peacock screen; and, finally, wall-to-wall shelves of dusty books with improbable titles.