by David Khalaf
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TWO SIPS INTO his brandy, Houdini could feel the alcohol traveling in his bloodstream, through his heart, into his brain. If he concentrated hard enough, he’d be able to feel the ethanol connecting to nerve receptors and releasing dopamine.
But alcohol dulled his introspection. The more he drank, the less he’d be able to sense how the brandy was affecting his body. Every sip made things worse. Every sip made things better.
“You act as if you’ve never had a drink,” Pickford said.
“Not one like this,” Houdini said.
Not one with you.
“What are you drinking?” Houdini asked, nodding to her bright pink cocktail.
“The Mary Pickford, of course,” she said, taking an undignified swig that left a dribble on the side of her cheek. “White rum, pineapple juice, grenadine, and maraschino.”
“You have your own cocktail?” Houdini asked.
“Don’t you?”
Houdini shook his head.
“My drink of choice already has a name. Water.”
The bar was dark but Houdini thought Pickford smiled. It was just as well that he could barely make out her face in the candlelight; he couldn’t be mesmerized by her if he couldn’t see her.
Houdini ran his fingers along the vertical metal bars that made a cage around their table.
“This is an odd place. The Jail Cafe. Who wants to pay to be imprisoned?”
“Does it make you nervous?” Pickford asked.
Houdini shook his head.
“If anything, I feel at home. I’m an escape artist, remember.”
Pickford wrinkled her nose as the waiter walked by in a prison uniform.
“I think it’s tacky,” she said. “But this is Hollywood, and everything has to be an attraction, I suppose.”
For all of Pickford’s grumblings, it was she who brought them there. Their taxi driver had driven aimlessly for three or four miles until Pickford finally directed him to the hilly Ivanhoe neighborhood between Hollywood and Downtown. The entrance to the Jail Cafe was at street level on Sunset Boulevard, but to get to the restaurant, patrons had to walk down two flights of steep concrete stairs embedded into the hillside. At the bottom was a legitimate restaurant by day, and a speakeasy by night. The irony of them breaking the law in a prison-themed restaurant did not escape the magician.
“I know why you like this place,” Houdini said. “Because it’s dark.”
Pickford grabbed the stem of her cherry and swirled it in her drink.
“Do you ever miss your privacy?”
“At times,” Houdini said.
Pickford let out a sigh so long and sad it was as if she were exhaling her very soul.
“I grieve my privacy as if it were a child who died from a slow illness. It’s a terrible loss that no one warns you about when you go into entertainment. When I wake up each morning, there’s the briefest of moments when I forget that it’s gone. I feel normal; I feel free. Then I roll over and see Douglas snoring, and I remember who we are. What we are. And I remember that my privacy is dead, and no amount of longing shall ever bring it back.”
Houdini didn’t relish his fame, nor did he resent it. It was a necessary part of being a magician, just as danger was.
“You didn’t have to go into acting,” he said.
“That’s true, but also untrue,” Pickford said, finishing her drink and beckoning to the waiter for another. “With a face like mine I was put on the entertainment track as a child. And once that train picks up speed, it’s difficult to jump off.”
Pickford’s next drink came quickly. She snatched it from the waiter before he could set it down.
“And Fairbanks, how does he fare with the attention?” Houdini asked.
Pickford barked a laugh.
“Douglas eats it up. He was made to be famous; it’s part of his very being. After all, how can someone with charisma express his force of presence if no one is there to appreciate it?”
Houdini hadn’t considered the truth of that insight. If Fairbanks’s charisma were as much a part of him as introspection was to Houdini, the actor couldn’t help but be the center of attention. The notion gave him second thoughts about stealing the spotlight from Fairbanks on one of the most important nights in his career.
“I’m sorry for my stunt,” Houdini said. “There were opportunities to call it off, but I became prideful. And I wanted to punish your husband after what he did to me. Pride and vengefulness, these are ugly qualities I’m ashamed to own.”
Houdini sipped his brandy again even as his body told him not to. His head was becoming fuzzy.
“Douglas never apologizes,” Pickford said. “You and he, you’re polar opposites. Everything about him is external. All of his energy flows outward. It’s part of what I love about him, and part of what drives me crazy.”
Another gulp of her drink.
Is that her second, or her third?
“You, all of your energy turns back in on yourself,” she said. “Every action is questioned, reasoned, analyzed. Everything about you is internal. Douglas lives in the world. You live in yourself. It’s quite refreshing.”
“How so?” Houdini asked.
“You don’t need any attention from me,” Pickford said. “You’re perfectly self-sustaining. I don’t have to be Mary Pickford around you. I don’t have to be your audience. I can be nobody. I can simply be…nothing.”
An alarm began to sound in Houdini’s head, but it was distant and muffled, and with so much brandy he couldn’t understand what it was warning him about.
“We should get you home,” Houdini said.
He paid the tab and had the bartender call two cabs. He then walked Pickford back up to Sunset Boulevard, holding her arm as she stumbled up the steep staircase. The street was empty, both directions wandering off into blackness broken only by a string of street lamps.
It was so quiet Houdini couldn’t believe they were in the middle of a city. The air was mild and pleasant, and it carried the faint smell of sage and other native plants that were foreign to him. Cloaked in darkness, Pickford’s face and body were reduced to intertwining curves of purple, blue and black.
“You can take the first cab,” Houdini said. “Your husband will be worried.”
“I can’t go home,” Pickford said. “Not until Douglas sleeps it off. He’ll be all apologies tomorrow.”
“A hotel then,” Houdini said.
Pickford shook her head.
“They’d recognize me. It would be the gossip of the town for weeks. We can’t afford that publicity, not America’s perfect couple.”
“Where, then?” Houdini asked.
“Wherever you are staying.”
“No,” Houdini said. “It isn’t smart.”
“Douglas says I lack smarts altogether,” Pickford said. “Please, I can’t be alone.”
“No.”
Houdini knew right then and there he should turn and retreat down the street, without waiting a second more for his cab to arrive. He should turn away and never lay eyes upon Mary Pickford again. But he chose not to.
Pickford pulled them under the closest street lamp and removed her hat. Her golden locks flowed about her. In his mind, Houdini scrambled for all of the tools meant to defend against a situation like this: steadfastness, forbearance, faithfulness. But they felt awkward and slippery in his head, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quite grasp them.
“Please,” she said. “I want to be nothing. I want to be no one. Just for a night.”
All he could do was stare.
I can’t. I won’t. I want to.
He felt every cell of his being turn toward her, offering his full attention. His full submission. This was the inescapable brunt of her beauty. Hers was a trap from which there was no escape.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He did.
