Zigzag Effect

by Lili Wilkinson

‘It wasn’t like I was starving him,’ said Bianca, a touch defensively. ‘There’s a mattress in there, and I brought him food every day.’ She nodded towards the shopping bag on the floor. ‘There’s even a toilet, so it wasn’t like he had to pee in a bucket or anything.’

  Armand’s mouth narrowed into a thin sliver.

  ‘We were there, weren’t we?’ asked Sage. ‘We came back to the theatre when you were trying to move Armand from his dressing-room to down here. That was why you locked us in the storeroom.’

  ‘I told you it was sabotage!’ said Herb.

  ‘So the next day you tell us that Armand has gone away on some urgent personal business,’ said Sage. ‘And suddenly you remember about the theatre curse, which you figure will be a nice distraction. But whenever I suggested that the two things might be linked, you changed the subject. That was when I first started to wonder. And I think it’s where you lost control of the whole situation. You love the idea of the supernatural so much, you got carried away with fabricating this ghost story.’

  Bianca’s expression turned icy.

  ‘Then you let your anger get away with you,’ Sage said. ‘What was supposed to be a simple piece of blackmail exploded into something much more complicated. First Herb decided to take over from Armand, which made you decide to take him down too. So you stole the secret of Houdini’s Return and sold it to Jason Jones. Then you realised that I was getting suspicious, so you amped up the whole Renaldo the Remarkable thing, and directed the curse on yourself – writing that message on your mirror, and faking the accident with your ankle and the stage light.’

  Herb shook his head. ‘That was a beautiful piece of misdirection,’ he said admiringly.

  ‘You decided I was getting to be too much trouble, so you tried to make me leave. You drove a wedge between me and Herb, and when that didn’t work, you pulled off your most remarkable piece of magic – my dream with the ghost.’

  She pulled the ghost photo out of her bag.

  ‘I thought that this photo of Warren was a photo of Jasmine,’ she said. ‘But what I didn’t notice was that the real ghost was there all along.’ She pointed to the figure behind the curtain. ‘This photo was taken at around midnight – after I’d fallen asleep. It’s the ghost I saw in my dream. The ghost of Jasmine, Renaldo’s wife.’

  ‘Also known as Bianca in a wig,’ said Herb. ‘It’s totally obvious.’

  ‘This photo didn’t prove that there was a ghost,’ said Sage to Bianca. ‘It proved that my dream hadn’t been a dream at all. It had been real. You drugged me.’

  Bianca shrugged miserably. ‘I’ve never been a great sleeper,’ she said. ‘I have this nightmare where I’m trapped inside a wooden box and I can’t get out. My doctor gave me sleeping pills. Strong ones. I used them on Armand, too.’

  ‘So you set up this room to make it look dreamlike. The things from Herb’s desk. The backwards letters. I assume the wig and the white dress came from your costume box.’

  Herb frowned. ‘Does that mean you faked all the letters?’

  Bianca seemed to shrink a little. ‘Only the backwards ones,’ she said softly. ‘All the other letters are real. I’ve been getting them for years. The one that I left on your desk? I got that after my very first performance, the first time I performed the Zigzag Effect. I was sixteen years old. I hoped it would make you leave.’

  Sage felt a surge of sympathy. Bianca’s life had been awful. She had always been treated like an object, just a pretty thing that could be cut up and rearranged as needed to distract the audience. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still very, very dangerous.

  ‘So what happened next?’ asked Armand, who almost looked like he was enjoying himself.

  ‘Bianca made up a bunch of stuff about Herb, to throw the suspicion onto him,’ said Sage. ‘Then she sabotaged Houdini’s Return.’ She glanced at Bianca, who shrugged.

  ‘I fiddled with the mechanism on the water barrel,’ she said. ‘So you couldn’t get out.’

  Herb’s face twisted. ‘You could have killed me.’

  ‘I saved you!’ she replied savagely. ‘Remember I was the one who pushed the barrel over and let you out.’

  ‘And you want me to be grateful for that?’

  Bianca’s face returned to its former state of icy blankness.

  ‘So then Jason Jones made the copyright infringement claim against Herb.’

  ‘He did what?’ Armand’s usually expressionless exterior suddenly turned purple with rage.

  ‘Bianca stole my new effect,’ said Herb with a scowl. ‘She sold it to Jason, who claimed it as his own. He’s trying to get me thrown out of the Magician’s League.’

  ‘Like hell he is,’ fumed Armand. ‘I will not let that slimy weasel get away with that again.’

  ‘Again?’ Herb frowned. ‘Jason stole from you?’

  ‘How do you think he got his first big break?’ Armand’s hands moved instinctively, as if to wring an invisible neck.

  Sage nodded. ‘He practically bragged about it to me.’

  Armand rounded on Bianca. ‘How could you?’ he said. ‘Locking me away is one thing, but this? A magician’s ideas are his most prized possessions. To steal them is … monstrous.’

  Bianca winced. ‘I thought he just wanted to know about the mechanism on the barrel, so he could use it for one of his own tricks. I–I didn’t know he’d steal the whole thing and try to destroy Herb.’

  Armand’s lips drew together in a tight, angry line. ‘He’s done it before,’ he said. ‘And he will never do it again. I’ll make sure of it.’

  Bianca seemed to shrink away from him. She looked truly miserable. Sage felt a surge of pity. She was sure Bianca was telling the truth this time. She hadn’t meant for Herb to get so hurt.

  Armand took a breath and closed his eyes, visibly calming himself. ‘So what next?’ he said to Sage.

  ‘Well, I had two plausible suspects: Jason, who wanted to get rid of Armand in order to steal Herb’s effects and poach Bianca; or Herb, who had got rid of Armand to further his own career. I was ready to throw in the towel – Bianca’s campaign to get me to leave nearly worked. But as I was leaving I stopped to take one last look at the theatre.’ She nodded to Herb. ‘You told me that to really appreciate Melbourne, you have to look up.’

  ‘So?’ said Armand.

  ‘So Bianca told me that Renaldo the Remarkable was a magician who performed in this theatre in the 1920s,’ said Sage. ‘Except he didn’t. The Lyric Theatre wasn’t built until 1932, and it was originally the Lyric Cinema, not a theatre at all. It was quite a landmark at the time, totally state-of-the-art, with a fancy projection room as well as an underground cellar to safely store the film.’

  ‘So she made up Ron the Raconteur?’ Herb snorted. ‘Figures.’

  ‘Actually, there was a Renaldo the Remarkable,’ said Sage. ‘I googled him too. He was a real magician, and he did die onstage. In Aberdeen, Scotland. And there was no wife called Jasmine. His wife was called Laura, and she remarried after he died and had five children.’

  ‘I have an active imagination,’ said Bianca. ‘Nothing wrong with embellishing a story a little.’

  ‘After that I found Armand’s phone in your dressing-table drawer,’ Sage said to Bianca. ‘I realised that you’d lied to me about Herb. And I found the empty bottle of jasmine perfume. So I called Herb, who came back to the theatre after you left last night and released Armand.’

  ‘And here we all are,’ said Armand.

  ‘You can’t prove any of this,’ said Bianca, her eyes flashing. ‘I was careful.’

  ‘Not nearly careful enough.’ Sage drew her phone from her pocket. ‘I’ve recorded this whole conversation.’

  Bianca stared at the phone as if it was an impossible piece of technology. Her eyes closed, and Sage saw a flash of what looked like relief pass over her face. ‘So what happens now?’ she asked.

  Armand shrugged. ‘I call the police and you go to jail.’

  ‘No,’ said Sage.
Armand turned to her in surprise, as did Herb.

  Sage bit her lip. ‘The thing is, Bianca’s right to be angry. Armand, you’ve treated her like crap. The life of a magician’s assistant is a pretty rubbish one. Bianca’s made a lot of mistakes, but I can see why it happened.’

  Bianca’s bottom lip began to tremble, and she looked up at the bare lightbulb, as if to stop herself from crying.

  ‘You were my friend,’ said Sage, softly. ‘I saw how sad and lonely you were. What you did was wrong, but I don’t think you deserve to go to prison.’

  Herb nodded slowly. ‘Sage is right,’ he said. ‘The victimisation of female assistants is totally creepy. It’s pretty much the one industry in this world that hasn’t moved in any way since the beginning of last century. I think I’d go nuts if my whole life was being ritually tied up and dismembered, and my only thanks was a paltry salary and some stalkery fan mail.’

  Armand’s face clouded over. ‘You think I should just let her go?’ he said, his voice rising in disbelief.

  Herb tilted his head to one side. ‘She’s just done such a beautiful job of all this,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s a bit too elaborate, messy in parts. But the execution has been utterly brilliant. I’d hate to see that skill waste away in some kind of low-security correctional facility.’ He glanced at Armand. ‘There must be a better way to do this.’

  ‘I don’t see that there is,’ said Armand. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Bianca’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I understand,’ she said softly.

  ‘No,’ said Sage. ‘It isn’t fair. She has a ticket to London. You’d never see her again.’

  Armand’s face was stony cold.

  ‘Please,’ said Sage. ‘You owe it to her.’

  Armand sighed. ‘Fine,’ he said to Bianca at last. ‘Use your ticket. Start your own show in London. Become someone else’s assistant. Move to the country and take up chicken farming. I don’t care. Just don’t ever come back here.’

  Bianca’s brows lifted in sudden, wild hope. ‘What about Jason? What about Houdini’s Return?’

  Armand scowled. ‘I’ll take care of Jason,’ he said shortly. ‘I told you, I’m not letting him get away with this again.’

  Bianca drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘You’d just let me go? No trick?’

  ‘You seem to be the expert here,’ said Armand. ‘It makes sense that you should perform one final trick yourself.’

  Bianca swallowed.

  ‘Disappear,’ said Armand.

  17. Restoration: an item is destroyed, then restored to its original state.

  Sage walked slowly around Yoshi Lear’s classroom, looking at all the photos pinned to the walls.

  A newly married couple holding a chalkboard sign that read forever.

  Santa Claus standing in a living room, looking dubiously at a fireplace.

  A posed diorama of the moon landing.

  Sage paused before her own photo. It was a double exposure she’d taken of Warren, superimposed over a photo of Herb posing onstage, brandishing a magic wand. She’d photographed Warren up close, and the double exposure made it look as if he were twice the size of Herb. Herb had an arm stretched out in a ta-dah pose, as if he had transformed something into a giant bunny, or produced him from thin air. It had taken her ages to get the exposure settings right on her new camera, scribbling out sums on the back of an envelope to make sure that the image wouldn’t end up too bright.

  She hoped Yoshi would count a double exposure as an undoctored photograph. She had taken what was in front of the camera – there had been no digital wizardry, nor any manipulation of the negative beyond exposing it twice, superimposing one image over the other. It was, after all, how the girls had accidentally created the final Cottingley Fairies photo.

  Yoshi called them all back to their seats, dimmed the lights and clicked the projector on. A black-and-white photo of a woman holding a toddler appeared on the screen. They were both filthy, with sad, exhausted faces. The woman was looking at something behind the cameraman, her mouth slightly open as if she was begging for someone to help her and her child.

  ‘So you have taken a photo that is a lie,’ he said. ‘But is there any such thing as a photo that doesn’t lie? Every decision you make as a photographer – the exposure, your choice of colour, the focal point, even the time of day – each of these decisions affects the final photo. Each decision is like a little white lie that alters reality. This photo was taken by Dorothea Lange in 1939, and it perfectly captures how we think of the US Great Depression. The despair. The hunger. But it wasn’t the only photo Ms Lange took that day.’

  He clicked his remote again, and another photo appeared. It was the same woman and toddler, but this time the woman was laughing, and the toddler’s head was tilted back, exposing a wide, cheeky grin on a clean face.

  ‘The first photo is a famous one,’ said Yoshi. ‘It’s been used in many books about the Great Depression. But the second one doesn’t quite fit. If things were so bad, then why are they laughing? What could they possibly have to laugh about? Ms Lange wrote in her notes that the baby’s face was washed for the second photo. Does that make it less truthful?’

  Sage opened her folio and pulled out two photos as she listened to Yoshi talk. Both photos were of Bianca. One was Bianca onstage, the stage lights sparkling on her sequins. She was dazzlingly beautiful, her eyes bright and her smile wide. The second photo was Bianca in her dressing-room, the night that she and Sage had slept at the theatre. Her mouth was open in mid sentence, her hands up and active, like she was explaining something. She wore no makeup, and she looked … real. She remembered what Herb had said when they were locked in the storeroom.

  The painting is still beautiful – very beautiful. But it’s more of an organic beauty. Like something grew wild and natural, and that’s why it’s beautiful. It’s not like the first painting – that painting took years to prepare. Every brushstroke is perfect. But my painting isn’t perfect. It’s real, and real is infinitely more beautiful.’

  Except Bianca hadn’t been relaxed and comfortable when Sage had taken that photo. The second photo, the one that was beautiful because it felt real, was the one that was a lie.

  Yoshi came over to Sage as she was packing up her notes. ‘How did you go with your ghost photo?’ he asked with a smile.

  ‘It wasn’t a ghost,’ said Sage. ‘Just someone standing in the wings.’

  ‘Are you disappointed?’

  Sage remembered being snuggled under a blanket in Bianca’s dressing-room, sharing secrets and eating Vietnamese takeaway. Bianca had been her first Melbourne friend.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Sage strode along the wet streets, filling her lungs with great breaths of cold air. She didn’t mind it so much, now she was used to it. And it helped that Mum had taken her shopping and bought her new cashmere gloves, a chevron-patterned scarf, a cute knitted beret and a stylish wool felt coat. Cold weather definitely had fashion-related silver linings.

  It was to be her last visit to the theatre for a while – school was starting on Monday and she didn’t want to have to juggle homework, new friends, new boyfriend, Yoshi Lear’s classes and her theatre job. Herb had texted her to say that Armand had found a new assistant – an ex-circus performer called Georgia, as well as a part-time usher to replace Sage. Herb had also said that Armand was being much more open and talkative, and had suggested they overhaul the show, getting rid of all the creepy cutting-up-the-assistant tricks and replacing them with brand-new effects.

  Sage smelled the steamy hot ginger and garlic even before she turned the corner to Mr Pham’s. Her stomach rumbled. She spotted Herb immediately, sitting inside at their usual table. His face split into his usual wide, ridiculous grin when he saw her approaching, and he put his hand up to the window. Sage paused, touching her own hand to the glass and grinning back at him. Then she pushed open the door and went inside.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Herb, standing up.
r />   ‘Only five minutes,’ said Sage.

  He wrapped his arms around her, and she slid into his embrace, feeling extra bulky because of her coat. She rested her head on his chest, and heard his heart beating. Herb stroked her hair, and then dropped a kiss on her head. Sage looked up at him.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Hi yourself.’

  She reached up on tiptoes, and he bent his head down to kiss her. His mouth was hot and tasted like green tea. Sage sighed happily.

  ‘Get a room!’ called Mr Pham from the kitchen. Sage giggled and pulled away.

  ‘How are the photos looking?’ asked Herb as Sage sat down.

  ‘Good,’ said Sage. ‘I’m working on a new assignment.’

  Mr Pham came over with a plate of spring rolls. ‘Hello, Miss Sage,’ he said with a smile. ‘Herb tells me you won’t work with him anymore. I can’t blame you, really.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Herb.

  ‘I have to focus on my education,’ said Sage with a grin. ‘Herb can be pretty distracting.’

  Mr Pham raised his eyebrows. ‘So I see,’ he said, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  ‘Looking forward to the show tonight?’ asked Herb. ‘Being an audience member for once, instead of having to do all the work?’

  ‘How’s it looking?’ asked Sage. ‘How is the new assistant?’

  Herb tilted his head from side to side. ‘Not bad,’ he said, grudgingly. ‘She can’t quite get the timing right on Assistant’s Revenge.’

  ‘It’s a tricky one,’ said Sage. ‘Have you made any big changes yet?’

  ‘A few. You’ll see tonight.’ Herb’s smile was mysterious.

  It was the first show post-Bianca. Herb had promised that there would be a special surprise.

  ‘I saw in the paper that Jason Jones has cancelled his Arts Centre show,’ said Sage, dipping her spring roll in sweet chilli sauce.

  Herb smirked. ‘He’s been kicked out of the Magician’s League.’

  ‘How did Armand do it?’

  ‘Apparently he had proof that Jason stole from him, back when he was Armand’s assistant.’