“There’s a guy in there, too,” Gus said. “We should help him.”
“And mess up the trick?” Shawn said. “I’m shocked.”
“This isn’t part of the trick.”
“Isn’t it?” Shawn said.
Shawn pointed to the stage where the green man was reaching his hand up behind the proscenium arch and pulling down a sturdy cable with a noose at the end. He dropped the noose into the water and looped it around Balustrade’s ankle. Then he gave the cable a sharp tug and it retracted quickly, like a cheap roll-up window blind, pulling Balustrade straight out of the tank.
Gasping and coughing, the magician hung by his ankle, high above the stage. The green man closed the tank lid, then took the magician gently by the hand and pulled him along as he went back down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he settled Balustrade on the stage, then unhooked the cable from around his ankle. The magician flopped on the floor, gasping like an angelfish scooped from its tank by a curious kitten.
Benny Fleck emerged from the wings. “Let’s have a round of applause for our gracious volunteer,” the small man said as he helped the still-coughing Balustrade to his feet. A small spate of confused clapping came from various corners of the room as Fleck led the magician off stage.
“Volunteer?” Gus asked Shawn. “Is that a regular part of the act?”
“I don’t know, but I bet the green guy never gets a second heckler,” Shawn said. “Besides, it accomplished its purpose.”
“To humiliate Balustrade?”
“That was a bonus,” Shawn said. “It was to keep you watching Balustrade so you wouldn’t pay attention to whatever the green giant was doing.”
“What was he doing?”
“Something he didn’t want you to notice.”
Gus waited for more details, but Shawn didn’t have any to offer. He turned his attention back to the stage, where the green man had climbed back up the stairs and reclosed the hatch, bolting it shut. He faced the audience, hands on his hips.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the moment where we must take our leave from each other,” he said. “If all goes according to plan, I will see you shortly. In fact, I will be right there.”
He pointed to a spot exactly in the center of the showroom. Unconsciously, the crowd edged away from his destination, in case he was planning to materialize inside of them. The three nondampened magicians who had challenged the green man in the lobby all moved a little closer.
“But it is possible that I will not return at all,” the green man continued. “To dissolve one’s molecules is difficult, but to reintegrate them is much harder. If I fail, then I will forever remain a cloud of dust suspended in a tank of water. And if that is to be my fate, then so be it!”
The green man took a deep bow, then unlatched the lid and threw it open. He stretched to his full height and stepped off the platform. Weighted down by the heavy boots, the Martian Magician sunk to the bottom of the tank. For one long moment, he stood absolutely still, staring out through the glass at the audience.
Gus knew this was a trick. He understood that everything Shawn had said was right. But as he watched the green man standing patiently at the bottom of a tank of water, he could feel the pounding of his heart, the thin trickle of sweat on his palms. His lungs began to ache for air, and he realized he’d been holding his breath since P’tol P’kah slipped under the water.
“This can’t be part of the trick,” Gus whispered to Shawn. “There’s got to be something wrong.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to think,” Shawn said.
“Well, I’m not the only one here who’s good at taking instruction.” Gus gestured at the crowd of bachelor partyers. They were staring, transfixed, worry on their faces. Even some of the magicians in the room were beginning to look concerned.
“We should do something,” Gus said.
“You’re right,” Shawn said. “If we left now, we could beat the rush to the parking lot.”
Before Gus could respond, there was a gasp from the audience. He turned back to the stage to see that the water in the tank had changed. Before it had been perfectly still. Now it bubbled and frothed like a glass of cheap champagne. As Gus stared, he realized that the bubbles were coming from the green man’s body.
P’tol P’kah raised his hands over his head, sending a storm of froth rising to the surface. As the bubbles flew from the green fingertips, Gus saw with a shock that the fingers were shrinking. No, dissolving. Within seconds, they were gone down to the first two knuckles, and quickly the hands were reduced to clublike stumps.
The green man lowered one deformed hand to touch his stomach, and immediately the bubbles began fizzing out of his abdomen. But they didn’t rise to the top of the tank. They spun around, as if caught in a whirlpool. And when they cleared, Gus could see they had eaten a hole clear through P’tol P’kah’s midsection.
This has to be a trick, Gus told himself. Shawn must be right. But he didn’t see a trick. What he saw was a giant man dissolving like an Alka-Seltzer tablet. Where moments before there had been rock-hard green abs, now there was a void. And it was growing in all directions, devouring his chest, his hips, his shoulders. His arms, eaten from both sides, fell off his body and dissolved into bubbles before they hit the tank floor. All that was left was the grinning green head floating seven feet over the enormous black boots.
The bubbles were working on P’tol P’kah’s chin now. Before they could reach any higher, the green man opened his mouth as if to speak-or to scream. But what came out wasn’t just a blisteringly loud roaring sound. It was light, a blast of pure white light that lit up every corner of the showroom, blinding Gus temporarily-but not before he could see the stunned faces of everyone in the audience.
Then the light went out, and the room was plunged into darkness.
For a moment the room was so silent, Gus thought he might have been struck deaf as well as blind. And then he heard a sound from across the room. He was so stunned by what he had just seen, it took his brain a few seconds to understand that what he was hearing was the clapping of hands. At first, it was just one person, but soon the entire auditorium had erupted into wild applause and cheers.
Gus knew exactly what he should be doing at this very moment. He should be constructing the perfect pithy phrase to shoot at Shawn, something that would take all his friend’s premiracle jibes and throw them back in his face
But Gus didn’t feel like lording it over Shawn. He didn’t want to win an argument or grab a few well-deserved points. All he wanted was to luxuriate in the moment. Before he even started the inevitable-and inevitably futile-process of trying to figure out how P’tol P’kah had achieved this impossibility, Gus wanted to replay the moments in his mind and marvel over the vision.
As the cheering started to subside, the houselights flickered on. Gus turned instinctively to the spot in the crowd where P’tol P’kah had promised to materialize. He wanted to see the giant take his much-deserved bows.
But P’tol P’kah wasn’t where he said he would be. No one was. The magicians surrounding the spot had kept it clear, just in case, and the entire audience was staring at the empty hole in the crowd, but the giant hadn’t materialized. The applause faded away to a confused muttering.
Gus tried to ignore the minor disappointment. After all, the Martian Magician had dissolved in a tank of water. If he didn’t stick the landing, that didn’t take anything much away from the rest of the performance. But he knew that Shawn was going to start mocking the show any minute now.
“If you’ve figured it out, you can say anything you want,” Gus said, not even casting a glance at Shawn. “Until then, I don’t want to hear that it was cheap or cheesy or fake. Because I’ll know you’re not telling the truth.”
Shawn didn’t answer. Which was odd, because in all the years they’d been best friends, Gus couldn’t remember a single time when Shawn didn’t answer a taunt. Even when he’d had strep throat and couldn’t talk for days, he’d scrawl a response on a piece of paper, or at least hit Gus with a rolled-up magazine.