The Masquerading Magician

by Gigi Pandian

  Max stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I’m here about what you told me the other day.”

  Panic seized me. He couldn’t be here to have me committed, could he? Had my own past deeds come back to haunt me, because I’d once helped institutionalize the man I loved?

  “I wasn’t myself that day,” I said. “I mean, I don’t mean I have psychotic breaks and become another person.” I was making this worse. “Let me start over—”

  “We all get tired sometimes, Zoe. It’s okay. I know you’re into this New Age stuff.”

  I swallowed a nervous laugh threatening to surface. The term “New Age” was entirely backward. Being in touch with nature and our own bodies was as old as the world. It was only in recent times that we’d forgotten about it. But Max’s words knocked me back to my senses. “I get carried away sometimes.”

  “I know you’re attached to that statue. That’s what I meant about why I’m here. It was stolen, Zoe. The statue was taken from evidence. That’s what I wanted to tell you. You must’ve been right that it’s more valuable than we thought.”

  I kept my mouth shut, the easiest way to avoid lying about what I already knew. I should have known it wouldn’t take long for the police to realize their evidence was missing.

  “You’re in shock,” Max said, his voice full of concern. “Can I make you some tea? Or should I get your friend? I’d understand if you wanted me to leave. I told you that you could trust me with your valuable possession, but I was wrong. I hope you can forgive me. But really, I’d understand if you simply want me to go.”

  When I heard the tenderness in his voice, I knew what I wanted. And it wasn’t for him to leave. “Please stay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Very. But you don’t look so sure yourself. What is it, Max?”

  “I can’t let it go. I just—I don’t understand what happened.”

  My heart beat in my throat. “You didn’t see the thief, did you?”

  Max rubbed his brow. “No. We didn’t see them. It was a professional operation.”

  My body was now completely tense. “Why do you say that?”

  “Someone hacked into the security system.”

  That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. “Really? How do you know?”

  “The video only shows a figure removing the statue from the evidence locker. They had a blanket draped over themselves so as not to be seen by the cameras. At the door, they picked the lock, again under the blanket. But none of the cameras caught him entering.”

  People only see what they want to see. It never occurred to the police that a piece of evidence could have walked out on his own, so they assumed it was a much more complicated operation than it was.

  “Am I under suspicion?” I asked.

  “No. I showed the detective your website. He knows you couldn’t have pulled this off.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “I can’t figure out why it was taken.” Max paced the length of the small kitchen, from the window box herb garden to the off-kilter back door. “There were no fingerprints or trace evidence on the statue.”

  “I could have told you that. I keep him—it—well cleaned.”

  Max stopped pacing and took my hands in his. They were warm and comforting. “I don’t like this, Zoe. I don’t like it at all. We don’t know what we’re up against.”

  “I’ll be careful, Max. I promise.”

  The sound of Tobias’s sonorous voice and Brixton’s guitar sounded through the door.

  “Brixton has gotten really good at the guitar,” Max said with a smile that reminded me why I loved having him in my life. “Your friend has a great voice too. He a musician?”

  “Not professionally. He’s singing to cheer me up. That’s why he came to visit. It’s been a rough couple of days. I feel like I’ve aged two years in the last two days.”

  “I know you’ve been through a lot, Zoe. Losing your little brother when you were young, and now encountering two violent deaths this year.”

  I felt my locket against my skin, keeping my brother close to me. “This might sound silly,” I began hesitantly, “but one of the things that helps me deal with death is to embrace it. The Victorians, and other cultures, had a custom of having picnics in cemeteries. Would you like to join me for a picnic at River View Cemetery? It helps me clear my head—”

  “Have you been going back there again, Zoe?” Max snapped, anger flashing in his eyes.

  His outburst was so unexpected that I jerked backward and bumped into the swinging kitchen door. “What’s the matter with you, Max? Ever since you got back from China—”

  “I’m sorry, Zoe. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things differently since that trip to my grandfather’s 100th birthday party. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Why would you lose me? We’re just getting to know each other. Why are you being so cryptic?”

  Max gave a long sigh. “You know I lost my wife, Chadna, not long after we were married. You asked me before what happened to her, but I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  I thought back to the times I’d been to Max’s sparse house. There were only two photographs. A black-and-white one of his grandmother, and one of his wife in vibrant color. His grandmother was photographed inside her apothecary shop in China, her lips unsmiling but her eyes alive. The photograph of Chadna was taken in a field of tulips. Her long black hair flowed almost to her waist, and the loving smile on her face told me Max had taken the photo.

  “You weren’t ready to tell me,” I said. “That’s okay, Max.”

  “That wasn’t it. It’s not about you. It’s that I’ve always wanted to think about the future, not the past.”

  That was one of the great things about Max. He didn’t press me to tell him about my own past.

  I waited for him to go on, but instead he said, “I should go. I’m interrupting your party.”

  “They seem perfectly happy without me. Is that the Spinners they’re singing now? I’d say you’ve got quite a while before they even realize I’m not in the room. You were talking about not living in the past.”

  “And I was completely wrong. Grandfather had the traditional big sixtieth birthday party when I was a toddler, here in Portland, but this one was different. He’s going to die soon, but he was the happiest I’ve ever seen him. Family and friends from across the world and from every stage of his life visited over the course of a week. They spoke of being helped by him and my grandmother in ways that couldn’t possibly be true. The transformations Grandmother made out of herbs weren’t magic. She was an apothecary—just a precursor to a pharmacist. But two of Grandfather’s guests in particular made it sound as if my grandparents had transformed their lives with magic. And people Grandfather hadn’t seen in seventy years made the trip, so he’d truly touched their lives.” He paused. “Looking back was looking forward.”

  “That sounds beautiful.”

  “It also sounds crazy. What’s crazier is that I was starting to believe it.”

  I squeezed his hand, feeling hope rise within me. Was he closer to understanding than I thought? “It doesn’t sound crazy, Max.”

  “If you really mean that, then I know you’re ready to hear the reason why I became so overprotective when you’ve mentioned going up to the mudslide area. It’s about Chadna.” A sad smile consumed his face. “I should start at the beginning. Her older sister died of cancer when she was young. It’s why she wanted to become a doctor in the first place. She thought she could channel her grief into something concrete. She was so driven. I met her during her fourth year of med school. In the ER.”

  “She was your doctor?”

  “That would have made a nice story, right? But that’s not what happened. A friend of mine called me in the middle of the night, needing to go to the emergency room. I drove him,
but I’m no good in the middle of the night, and you know I hate coffee, so I promptly fell asleep. She woke me up.” He cringed.

  “What’s so bad about that?”

  “She woke me up with smelling salts. She thought I must have come into the ER for myself and been in such bad shape that I’d passed out. She was brand-new to the ER so she didn’t know about proper procedures or anything. She broke the smelling salts right under my nose, and I head-butted her nose. There was blood everywhere.”

  My hand flew to my mouth and I tried to stop laughing, but my efforts were in vain.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s impossible not to laugh at that story.”

  “It’s a wonderful story, Max. That’s the kind of thing that keeps a memory alive.”

  “It’s definitely unforgettable.”

  “Was your friend you took to the ER injured on the job?”

  “No, he wasn’t a cop. I hadn’t yet joined the police force. I was aimless until I met Chadna. She was the exact opposite of my woo-woo family.” He laughed sadly. “I told you my grandmother taught me a lot about herbs when I was kid. She and my grandfather lived here with my family until she died, and then my grandfather returned to China. It was my grandmother who was passionate about herbal medicines, talking about the energy of plants and the intent that goes into creating herbal remedies. I always regretted that, shortly before she died, I told her how stupid it all was.” He ran a hand through his thick black hair. “Chadna was nearly finished with her residency when she received her own cancer diagnosis.”

  “How long did you have left with her?” I asked, wondering if he was acting so strangely because of how sick I looked. Did he think he’d lose me to cancer too?

  “She had a year of cancer treatments. She never lost her smile through the whole thing, but it was even brighter when she beat it.”

  “Wait, she was cured?”

  He nodded. Tears welled in his eyes. “Two weeks after she received the news that she was cancer-free, we were on a weekend getaway to celebrate. We were hiking. We came across a boulder that looked like it would give us a gorgeous view. We climbed up it, and the stone shifted.”

  My breath caught.

  “She fell,” Max said. “We were supposed to have our whole lives together, but in that moment, it was all taken away.”

  “I’m so sorry, Max. That’s why you don’t want me trekking around that unstable ground above the river.”

  “I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.” He stepped closer and ran his fingers through my white hair that he, like everyone else, thought was dyed. “There was nothing I could do, but I still blame myself, you know?”

  “I know. I—” I broke off. Should I try telling Max the truth again? What would he do if he saw Dorian?

  “I should go,” Max said. “You should get back to your friends.”

  “Don’t go.” I put my hand on his arm and took a deep breath.

  Thirty-Nine

  saint-gervais, france, 1871

  As the end of his life grew near, Jean Eugène Robert-­Houdin feared for what would become of his not-quite-human son. Inspiration struck one day, out of a tragedy.

  A famous personage in France, Robert-­Houdin knew others in high society as well as men at the tops of their professions. One such man was a well-regarded chef who cooked choucroute garnie with such exquisite results that people traveled for miles to partake of his delicacies. The chef developed an ego, as most men do when told repeatedly how great they are. One day, a grease fire began in the kitchen. It quickly engulfed his establishment. The chef made sure all of his workers made it to safety. He was the last one out. It never once occurred to him that the building would dare injure him. Yet a wooden beam struck him, trapping him inside the burning building. Before he was rescued, the fire scorched his head and hands. He escaped with his life, but without his sight and former dexterity.

  As he’d never married, the former chef sat alone in his large house. There was no life in the house, save for the domestic servant who came twice a day to clean the house and bring him barely tolerable food. The chef might have withered and died from desolation had it not been for the occasional interesting visitor, such as his old friend Jean Eugène Robert-­Houdin and an odd fellow Robert-­Houdin brought with him.

  Dorian was introduced as a distant relative of Robert-­Houdin’s who had been disfigured in an accident and was therefore wary of being seen by people, who could be cuttingly cruel. Oh, how the chef understood the cruelty of men! The people who once adored him would no longer look upon his burned face and hands. The saving grace of his blindness was that he himself did not have to see what his once-handsome face had become.

  The chef was the first person aside from Robert-­Houdin with whom Dorian had conversed. On one visit, the topic turned to food, as it often did. Robert-­Houdin went to the window to look upon the barren trees that swayed in the wind. Winter would be upon them soon. He sensed it would be his last winter in this world.

  Robert-­Houdin’s human son had recently died in the Franco-Prussian War, and the Hessians were threatening Paris. What more did an old man have to live for?

  When he pulled himself out of his own thoughts and returned to the sofa, he realized that he had not been missed. Looking between the two outcasts, a flash of inspiration overwhelmed him.

  “Martin,” Robert-­Houdin said. He rose out of habit, even though the chef could not see him. “I have had the most inspired idea. You and my relation Dorian are both men shunned by society through no fault of your own, and you both appreciate eating gourmet food.”

  “Why must you bring up my failings?” Martin asked, holding up his burned hands. “I can neither see nor hold a knife. I must rely on the vile porridge and stews that wretched woman brings me.”

  “Yet Dorian,” Robert-­Houdin said, “has the best eyesight of any man I have met, and is nearly as accomplished at sleight of hand as I. Would it not be possible for you to teach him to cook? He is looking for somewhere to live where he will not need to hide from people who look upon him unfavorably because of his disfigurement. In exchange for food and lodgings, he could cook and clean for you. I cannot imagine a more perfect plan.”

  And so it was that one of the greatest cooks in France would teach Dorian Robert-­Houdin the skills that enabled him to become a gourmet chef.

  The war brought challenges that year, but the Robert-­Houdin household survived by hiding from the Hessians in a cave. Having gotten his affairs in order, Robert-­Houdin passed away that summer, at peace.

  Upon the old magician’s death, the family unlocked his studio. Everyone was disappointed to find no great creation waiting for them. What had the man been working on all those years? His mind must have left him.

  The family was less surprised by a trifling fact of far greater significance. Upon Robert-­Houdin’s death, his friend Viollet-le-Duc came to pay his respects. He asked if he could see the magician’s stage props. Since the architect was not a magician competitor, Robert-­Houdin’s family saw no harm in allowing an old friend to visit his studio. They didn’t expect the elderly architect to erupt in a rage when he could not find the gift he’d given his friend years before. No matter, they thought to themselves. They were sorry for his grief, but could he really have expected that his friend would keep his atrocious gift? When the architect began raving and asking questions, claiming that Robert-­Houdin had been an alchemist, they set him straight and politely asked the man to leave.

  Forty

  “I want to tell you something, too,” I said. “So please, don’t go.”

  Max stepped back to give me space, but took my hand in his. I smelled jasmine as he ran his index finger along the life line of my palm, even though I knew his Poet’s Jasmine wouldn’t be blooming again until summer. “I’m glad you’re feeling better after your melt-down the last time I saw you.”

 
Meltdown? I steadied my breathing. As much as I wanted to tell Max the whole messy, unbelievable truth, I’d been overly optimistic that I could tell him everything. He wasn’t ready to believe me. Not yet. “Hey, meltdown is a bit harsh, don’t you think?” I forced a laugh. “There was a search warrant for my house, so I was entitled to a freak-out.”

  “Fair enough.” Max laughed along with me. “What were you going to tell me? After I told you that embarrassing story of how I met Chadna, you know you can tell me anything.”

  I couldn’t, though. If he thought my talking about a living gargoyle was a meltdown, he’d certainly have his own meltdown if I convinced him it was true. But he was still straddling that line of what he’d let himself believe. One day soon, I hoped he’d be ready. And in the present, it was still true that I didn’t want Max to leave. He understood what it was like to lose a loved one under tragic circumstances, and I needed to open up to someone about Ambrose. The memories that had bubbled to the surface were too distracting, and talking with Tobias was no longer an option, since Tobias mistakenly thought he knew Ambrose long after he’d died. Max was who I wanted to talk to, and there was a lot I could tell him that was true. All I had to do was leave out irrelevant details that wouldn’t have fit with his understanding of the world.

  The sound of melodious guitar chords and a booming baritone continued in the background, lulling me into a sense of safety I hadn’t felt in years. Even though the people around me didn’t understand all of me, I was surrounded by people who cared for me, and who I cared for.

  “It’s not only my brother I lost,” I said. “There was someone I once planned on spending my life with. I never talk about him either. Until this week, I kept his photograph hidden inside an old notebook. But you’re right. When we try to forget them, we’re not fully living in the present. I want to tell you about him.”

  I pulled free from Max’s hand. I didn’t want him to be able to sense the difference in my pulse when I changed irrelevant facts that would make him question my recollection. As an excuse, I opened a glass mason jar filled with chocolate ginger cookies. I offered one to Max, but he declined. I ate the chewy cookie quickly, barely tasting it. Dorian would have been appalled. He also would have been appalled that I detected a hint of bitterness in the cookie.