Born of Deception

by Teri Brown

  “What happened in there?” Cole asks, concern written across his handsome face. He looks like a professor with his forehead furrowed and a frown creasing his lips, and my own mouth curls in spite of my unease. I slip my hand into his and he smiles back, though the worry lingers in his eyes.

  “I’m not sure. I was nervous. I couldn’t think.” That isn’t exactly how it felt, but as I can’t really describe the odd sensations I was having, I leave it at that.

  “Do you feel better now?” he asks anxiously. “Let’s get you back to the hotel.” He hails a taxicab and climbs in next to me.

  He’s so attentive; the odd confused feeling I had fades as we get farther and farther from the restaurant. “Are any of those men Sensitives?” I ask. That’s the only explanation that makes sense considering how quickly I’m recovering. Of course, the only person who has ever altered my abilities is Cole, but then, I’ve never really been around other Sensitives. I don’t know how my abilities would react.

  Cole shakes his head. “No. I knew them all before I went to the States. I would have been able to tell. What did you think of them? Did you sense anything?”

  I shrug. “I was too busy being a nervous wreck to get a clear read on anyone.”

  He nods. “That’s what I thought might happen.” He’s silent for a moment. “Do you have rehearsal now?”

  “Not until this evening.”

  The taxi stops in front of my hotel and Cole leaps out to open my door. I exit and shiver as a gust of cold wind hits me. He reaches down and pecks my cheek. Returning to his country seems to have increased his shyness. I wish he would just take me in his arms to reassure me, but he only pats my arm distractedly.

  “I’ll call the hotel tomorrow and leave a message once they get back to me. You get some rest before your rehearsal, all right?”

  I nod and watch as his motorcar chugs off. My nerves are as unsettled as the weather, and for the very first time I almost wish my mother were here. Then I shiver, knowing how uneasy I must be feeling to wish such a thing. Superstitiously, I take it back, knocking quickly on the wooden doorjamb of the hotel door before entering.

  Mother is the last thing I need right now.

  Three

  I try resting as Cole suggested, but I’m as jumpy and out of sorts as if ants are running up and down my spine. From Leandra’s strange undercurrent of rage to my condition at tea, I’m feeling harassed and exposed. Not that my abilities don’t usually leave me feeling uncomfortable. The capacity to see catastrophic events before they happen and to talk to the dead aren’t exactly conducive to a serene existence. But things just feel different now that people know about me. I feel . . . unsafe. As someone who grew up craving safety above all else, the sensation is disturbing.

  Impatiently, I scoot off my narrow bed and run a comb through my hair. The old mirror over the bureau is pitted and makes my face look wavy. Only the blue-green eyes staring back at me seem familiar.

  The hotel is more of a boardinghouse than a hotel, minus the bad boardinghouse food, which is fine with me. But it’s still small and dilapidated and the walls are probably more paint than wood.

  I riffle through the chipped wardrobe for something to wear to rehearsal. Because I do so many sleight-of-hand tricks, I usually wear some kind of oriental-inspired dress with loose sleeves. I change into a China blue silk and settle a black gigolo hat with a blue feather on my head. My call isn’t until tonight, but I might as well go to rehearsal early. I’m not accomplishing anything and I’m too twitchy to stay here alone.

  Snatching up my wool coat from the back of the faded print chair where I’d tossed it earlier, I head out the door and down the stairs. I generally avoid the elevator, which creaks alarmingly as it makes its slow, torturous way up and down the building. At least the hotel is clean, I think, crossing through the run-down lobby. During our traveling years, my mother and I stayed in hotels and boardinghouses so bad that even the rats had left in a mass exodus.

  The best thing about the hotel is that it’s a half block from our theater, so it takes me no time at all to get there. Tiptoeing out to the front, I slip into a seat to watch the other acts. The Little Sisters are performing and I watch their rapid interplay. I have to hand it to Martin Beck, the famous manager who put together the troupe—he certainly knows talent. Sally and Sandy soon have me laughing with their physical pratfalls and quick exchange of jokes. The act is even more hilarious once you realize that Sally is actually Sal, a brother dressed as a sister. So convincing is his costume and mincing voice that only those in the front row would wonder if he were male or female.

  Louie claps his hands and the “sisters” come down the stairs. After a brief conference, he slaps Sally on the back and yells for the next act to come out.

  I watch until it’s my turn to go on. I’m nervous the way I always am before a performance. Even though this is just a rehearsal, a lot is riding on it. I know that Louie is watching from somewhere in the back of the auditorium, judging whether or not he made the right decision to move me up on the bill.

  Once backstage, I check my props. The hinge on the dove’s cage stuck last time I used it and I want to make sure the stagehand lubricated it correctly. Everything I use has to be in perfect working order. I’d hate for the hoop trick to fail because one of the hoops is bent and they won’t link together properly. Or for an escape trick to flop because the door squeaked.

  Once my props are checked, I run through my act. I’ve mixed older tried-and-true tricks, like my disappearing doves and connecting rings, with new ones such as the dollar-in-a-lemon trick, where I borrow a bill from an audience member and make it appear in a lemon. The tricks increase in both difficulty and pizazz until my grand finale—the levitating table. The assistant, a woman Louie hired before I arrived, wheels my iron maiden out onto the stage.

  “Stop!”

  Louie’s voice reaches me from the back of the auditorium, and I pause, swallowing hard. What did I do wrong?

  He walks up to the edge of the stage. “Beautiful, doll, but let’s switch the iron maiden escape with the levitation trick. The effect is more stunning.” His cigar wags up and down as he speaks, but his eyes are narrowed, considering. His comical looks hide a shrewd mind.

  But still . . . the levitation trick is my closing illusion as it’s so visually stunning. “Why would you want the escape trick to be last? I think the levitation trick leaves a better impression.”

  “I’m looking to try something different, sweetheart. Let’s turn the iron maiden bit into an escape-gone-wrong trick to make it look as if you’ve failed.”

  I raise my eyebrows. For this trick, my hands are cuffed and I’m placed in a modified iron maiden—a box shaped like an upright human body with a hinged section that swings outward. The front of the box was supposedly painted to look like me, but the face is so ugly, I prefer not to think about it. The interior of the box is lined with wicked metal spikes. Once inside, my ankles are cuffed, then my assistant closes the box and secures it with metal bands placed through the hinges. She encircles the box with a red curtain that only parts at the front. To escape, I have to remove the cuffs from my hands (easy), grip one of the spikes at the hinge side of the cover, and lift upward a fraction of an inch. Slowly, the ratchet pin on the hinge comes loose, and it’s just a matter of opening the box at the side using the padlocks as hinges. After getting the box open, I remove the cuffs from my ankles and replace the pins by pushing them through the hinges from the bottom. Then voilà! The box is secure and ready for an audience member to inspect.

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean you want it to look as if I’ve failed?”

  A slow smile plays about his lips. “Blood.”

  I swallow. “Blood?” My stomach churns as I recall the last time I saw blood. It had been pooling around a dead man at the going-away party Cynthia had thrown me. The time before that, it had been from a bullet wound in my own shoulder. I don’t have the best memories of blood.

 
“Yeah. Fake blood. Once you’re in the box, you can squeeze some blood on the floor and let it ooze out. Then you come out with bloody hands, looking as if you barely made it. It would be a sensation!”

  I tilt my head, thinking. It’s very good, my aversion to blood notwithstanding. And he’s right, I couldn’t do the levitation illusion afterward if I’m supposed to be hurt. So I give him a nod. “I’ll do the escape trick last.”

  He beams. “Perfect. We’ll practice it that way tomorrow. You can take off. Go have fun. It’s London, you’re young!”

  He turns away, already engrossed in another of the myriad production problems that always plague a show. As both director and producer, Louie’s hands are full.

  My assistant, Mollie, and I put away my things. I’m half tempted to ask if she wants to have supper with me, but I know she has a little girl she needs to get home to, so I say good-bye and head back to my hotel. I figure I’ll just grab something to eat at the café next door and call it an early night. I don’t like eating by myself, but Cole had said he would see me in the morning. He’s probably eating with his mother, and I can’t begrudge him time with his family. But still, after a day like today, I’d rather not be alone. Plus, I’d forgotten to tell him my good news about moving up on the bill. Of course, not being in show business, he probably wouldn’t understand, and I would have to explain it to him, which would take most of the fun out of it. Maybe it’s better that he can’t have dinner tonight.

  I pick up a newspaper and read reviews of various shows while I dine on a simple meal of shepherd’s pie and tea. I spot Sal and Bronco Billy pass by the window in their street clothes and wonder what they’re doing. Probably going out to have fun.

  Feeling sorry for myself, I pay my bill with unfamiliar notes, hoping I’ve tipped the waitress enough. The weather has turned, and a steady rain wets my face along with a few tears as I make my lonely way back to the hotel. I almost wish my mother was here. No. Scratch that. I wish Cynthia were here. Cynthia Gaylord came to one of my mother’s séances and we ended up best friends, even though she’s married and a few years older than I am. As a famous gangster’s niece, she carries a loaded gun on her at all times and I carry a balisong knife in my handbag. We united over our weaponry and have been best friends ever since.

  She promised to come and see me as soon as the show runs in London, but we have about a week of rehearsals and then we leave to perform in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Though London is our home base, we won’t be formally playing here until March.

  The cold, drizzly weather does little to lift my spirits and I pick up my pace, wanting to get back to the relative warmth of my room, even if all I’ll be doing is reading a book and heading to bed. Once there, I listen to the rain beating on my window and wonder why I feel so sorry for myself. All in all, it wasn’t a bad day. I’m just tired. Things will look better in the morning.

  My night is restless and it seems only moments before I’m awakened by a knock on the door. “You have messages,” a sunny voice calls.

  Disoriented, I sit up in bed and scrub my hand over my face. I must have lain awake for hours before sleep finally found me. I gather the envelopes the messenger left on the doorstep and go through them. One is from Louie with my call time today and another is from Cole.

  Anna,

  Something came up and I won’t be able to make it until this evening. If you aren’t at the hotel, I’ll come to the theater. Would you like to go to dinner at Frascati’s?

  Cole

  My shoulders slump. I notice that he didn’t tell me exactly what had come up and I could be his sister for all the affection the note contains.

  After spending last evening alone, I definitely don’t feel like being by myself again. Frustrated, I open the third message and stare at the letterhead. Society for Psychical Research. Under the letterhead is the address and Mr. Gamel’s title in formal script.

  Dear Miss Van Housen,

  It was a pleasure meeting you yesterday. If you are interested in touring our facility and learning more about us, I will be in the office from two to five this afternoon. I hope to see you then. I think you would make a valuable contribution to our research and our knowledge of psychical phenomena.

  Sincerely,

  Darius Gamel

  My pulse speeds up. He’s officially going to invite me to join the Society. Do I want to join? After a lifetime of feeling alone with my strangeness, the thought of a community of others like myself is both appealing and terrifying.

  I snatch a deck of cards off the bedside table and shuffle them, a nervous habit I’ve had for years. On one hand, I’m skeptical of sharing my abilities with people who see me as a lab rat. On the other hand, I long to meet others like myself who have struggled with the same fears and doubts.

  I set down the cards and plop down on the bed. What a time for Cole to be preoccupied. All my instincts tell me to politely reschedule the meeting for a time when Cole can join me, but perversely part of me wants to go anyway. He has his own life. Why should I have to wait for him to make time for me?

  Undecided, I wash and dress and run to a little café down the street for breakfast. My call is at eleven today, so I don’t linger.

  Bronco Billy is just leaving as I get to the theater. He gives me his slow, easy smile. My mouth goes dry and I blink.

  “Be careful—Louie is in a foul mood today,” he says in passing.

  I want to ask him what happened but instead just stare like an idiot.

  Men shouldn’t be allowed to be that beautiful.

  I can hear Louie yelling at Jeanne all the way to the side door. I tiptoe down the hallway, ignoring the stomach-turning stench of sweat, mildew, and greasepaint. The backstage of almost every theater I’ve ever been in smells the same way, though in the West, you can swap out the mildew for cow manure.

  Poking my head around the frayed velvet curtain I see our lovely songbird, the soprano Jeanne Hart, calmly watching Louie work himself up into a swivet. His anger pulses out from him in waves and his mouth is practically foaming around his cigar.

  “You can’t just do that, Jeanne! You can’t pick and choose what shows you will and won’t do!”

  I can’t see Jeanne’s face from where I’m standing, but there’s no mistaking the amusement in her voice. “I can do whatever I like, darling. Check my contract. The one you signed. What do you think ‘theater approval’ means?”

  Jeanne Hart is beautiful in a sultry, sensuous way. Her hair is a burnished red, her mouth is too wide, and her heavy-lidded green eyes are slightly tilted at the corners. No matter the weather, she dresses in a way that shows off her lovely polished arms and makes the most of her ample breasts. But you forget her seductive looks the moment she sings—the purity of her voice is heartbreaking.

  “It doesn’t bloody well mean you get to pick and choose where you’ll sing and where you won’t,” Louie blusters.

  “But it does. Check with your lawyer and next time be more careful what you sign. Now, do you want me to start from the top?”

  “No, I don’t want you to start at the top!” he screams. “I want you to get your sneaking upper-class behind off the stage! You’re fired!”

  Jeanne turns and saunters off the stage, her lovely well-shaped head held high. When she reaches me, she gives my arm a reassuring pat. “Don’t look so stricken. He can’t fire me, I’m his wife.”

  My mouth falls open. The stunning Jeanne Hart is married to Louie the penguin? The clicking of her heels grows fainter as she walks down the hall to her dressing room. Pressing my lips together, I walk downstage. Louie had taken a seat in the front and is mopping his forehead with a red handkerchief.

  “Do the escape-gone-wrong routine,” he snaps when he spots me. I nod at my assistant, who has just appeared upstage. We run through it several times and each time it’s easier. I want to ask Louie where the fake blood is going to be hidden, but don’t want to irritate him further. I’m not sure his heart can take any more vexatio
n.

  “Do you want me to practice the whole routine?” I ask after I’m done.

  He shakes his head, looking calmer. At least his face isn’t as red. “No, you can take a break until dress rehearsal on Thursday. You’re happy with third billing, aren’t you?” he asks before I exit the stage.

  I nod. Second billing is a throwaway spot. Usually, the audience is restless by then and just wants to see the main attraction. Third spot from the end and top billing are the best spots in the lineup. I’ve been at the top of the bill before, but that was when I was with my mother, not just Anna the Magician.

  “Good.” He waves a hand, his quick mind already leaping to the next problem at hand.

  I give my assistant a thumbs-up, and she waves and disappears through the door. The stagehand is taking away the iron maiden as I leave. “Thanks!” I mouth as the comedian, Bruce Horner, starts his routine.

  I hurry to my hotel room to get ready for my appointment. Doubt niggles in my stomach as I change into a plain skirt and blouse and run a brush through my hair. I know I should wait for Cole, but curiosity and my determination to be independent win out.

  Before heading to my appointment at the Society, I order fish and chips from a stall. The man behind the counter fries them in a vat of bubbling oil and shakes salt over the whole thing before serving them to me in a cone of newspaper. Like a Londoner, I eat them right in the street under a store awning, giggling as vinegar and oil run out down my hands. The man kindly gives me a damp towel to clean myself up with and after doing so, I hail a cab.

  I stare out the window, watching drizzle saturate the city. London feels different from New York. It’s not really less busy and the clothing is similar, though you’re much more likely to run into a woman still clinging to the longer skirts of another era here. But the city is older than anything we have in America, and it’s not unusual to find entire blocks filled with buildings constructed during the medieval era. In New York, most Gothic architecture is simply a clever reproduction. Another difference is in the inhabitants. People on the streets of London tend to be far more polite than in New York, but much less friendly, if that makes any sense.