"Okay," Bertie said. "It's all cued up. Hit the lights."
Dot was in her chair. Bertie rushed back to take her place at the end of the couch-Bertie, Kitty, and then Sabine. Guy was in the other chair and How stretched out on the floor in front of their feet like a giant dog. Kitty leaned over to Sabine, whispered, "I'm glad you decided not to go. I've felt terrible all day."
"Sh," Dot said. "It's coming."
Kitty, shushed, slipped her hand over Sabine's and squeezed. Sabine was surprised to find she felt the touch travel all the way up her arm.
Parsifal had put down the phone and thrown his arms around Sabine's back, pulling her in to him so quickly her feet left the floor. "We're in," he said. "We're in, we're in."
"Play!" Guy said, and hit the button.
There was applause for someone. Carson was at his desk, smiling his closed-mouth smile that was slightly embarrassed and completely knowing. His pencil balanced delicately between his fingers. Sabine remembered suddenly his handsome face, how he had that particular glow of celebrity that everyone recognized but no one could quite identify. He was wearing a tan suit. His gray hair was cut close.
Of course Parsifal was in love with him.
"When we come back, we have a big treat. For the first time on the show, Parsifal the Magician." Carson flipped over his pencil and deftly hit the eraser two times on the desk as if to drive the point home. "So don't go away." Doc Severinsen's band struck up some music that Sabine remembered as completely deafening when she was in the room with it, but on television it seemed quite reasonable. Then the screen was covered by a drawing of a television being chased by a floor lamp. Both of their plugs were undone and whipped up in the air behind them, small, two-pronged tails. The television screen said, THE TONIGHT SHOW, STARRING JOHNNY CARSON. As if they didn't know.
For an instant there was a color field with a bull's-eye on it. Three, two, one. "That's where they put the commercial," Guy told Sabine. "We didn't get the commercial."
Behind a multicolored curtain, a man with a headset and a clipboard had stood beside them. They had been prepped, drilled, rehearsed, but still he went over it all one more time. When the curtain opened they were to go, no questions asked. When the curtain opened again they would come back. Joan Rivers and Olivia Newton-John were sitting on the sofa next to Johnny Carson. They were lucky that Carson was hosting the show himself that night. It could well have been Joan Rivers, host, instead of Joan Rivers, guest. When there was a substitute host the numbers went down precipitously.
Parsifal and Sabine held hands tightly and leaned into each other. "Three, two…," the man with the headset told them, but instead of saying one he pointed viciously at the opening of the curtain. Get out, was the general gist of it. Get out there.
"There you are," Kitty said.
Dot's eyes spilled over the second she saw them. She pressed her fingers to her mouth.
"She always cries," Kitty whispered, her breath a layer of wintergreen mint over a layer of tobacco. "Even if she watches it ten times a day, and some days she does."
Young. That was the only word. They were young. Slim and tall, handsome and beautiful. Young. Parsifal shone with health. It came like light from his skin. He was an advertisement for milk. For fresh air and sunshine. For life in beautiful Southern California. Sabine had forgotten that such health had ever existed, in him or in the world. It hurt her. She had lost everything without understanding. The life she wanted was on television now. His youth, his life. This was the way she had felt when she was a teenager and saw a man walk on the moon. It was so spectacular that you knew it had to be faked. She could not look away from the perfect structure of Parsifal's bones to see the girl beside him. She saw only her outline, a shadow in red.
"Man," Bertie said, "are you good-looking or what? Not a lot of women who could pull that outfit off."
"I wouldn't have looked good in that when I was fifteen years old," Kitty said.
"Hush," Dot said. "This is the part."
"Good evening," Parsifal said, his voice spilling over the room. "Thank you."
As they walked forward a black velvet curtain crept down unnoticed over the bright silk stripes. The audience had been applauding thunderously, screeching their appreciation for two unknown performers who had done nothing to earn it. Sabine hadn't understood at the time. She was afraid they were mocking. But now she could see it was their youth that was being cheered, their beauty. That was why they got the job. It was her legs, the sweep of his hair off his high forehead. It was something they projected together but not apart. They were in love, or at least that was how it looked on television.
"My name is Parsifal, and this is my assistant, Sabine." The camera panned to her face and then stayed there for an impossibly long time. Her mouth was wide and painted the red of her costume. Her eyes were as dark as her hair.
"Look at you," Kitty said. As she said it the face on the television broke into a blinding smile, riches of perfect white teeth.
Sabine looked hard at the face. She could identify it as beautiful because it knew nothing. That face believed the man beside her on the stage would always be beside her, believed she would always be that young. No one had explained anything at that point.
The camera pulled away abruptly, a man caught staring.
Parsifal put a board between two chairs, a blanket over the board. He took Sabine's hand and helped her lie down. She followed obediently, did everything he wanted. There was something about the sight of her body stretched out, so relaxed, eyes closed, that embarrassed her. So much leg. Parsifal crossed her arms over her chest. She did not help him, so limp and doll-like she didn't know enough to fold her own arms. He bent over to kiss her forehead, at which point her heavy eyelids dropped closed and she was assumed to be in a trance; and maybe for a moment she was, because she could not remember the feel of that kiss.
Levitation was invented by John Nevil Maskelyne in 1867. He manually placed his wife in the air. The trick then went to Harry Kellar, who sold it, along with the rest of his act, to Howard Thurston upon retirement. After Thurston, it went to Harry Blackstone. Sabine soothed herself with facts, gave her mind over to trivia. Too many people had the trick now. It wasn't enough to just do it straight anymore. They had all seen a girl in the air.
Parsifal wrapped her in a blanket and tied it down. He ran a hand through the air across the top of her and beneath her, and then he took the board away so that her head stayed on one chair and her feet on the other and her poker-straight body rested in between. It was a good effect, but the audience hardly found it miraculous. In fact, this was the hardest part of the trick, because Sabine was rigid; she was balanced between two chairs weighted down to hold her steady. Parsifal and Sabine looked careless, but every inch was plotted, retraced, mastered. On the television in Nebraska, Sabine watched the way her feet slipped into the blanket. There would have been no way to catch them. No way to tell the truth of their movement. The black velvet curtain made everything a mystery. Parsifal's hands swept over her, beneath her. Then he pulled away the bottom chair and held her feet in his hands. Look at the tenderness on his face, the tenderness for her! He lifted her feet to his chest, testing her at first, and then trusting, going higher and higher. He lifted her feet over his head, walked his hands down the backs of her legs and slowly to her back. His hands moved down and her feet lifted higher, and then impossibly high, until Sabine was balanced, tightly wrapped like a papoose, on the very crown of her head on the back of one chair. Oh, the audience loved this. On her head, Sabine heard the applause. The crowd in the living room loved it, too; the women clapped politely, both of the boys made appreciative sounds. Parsifal, silent, kept just the tips of his fingers on her back to give the appearance of steadying her, when in truth Sabine steadied herself. His face was the very picture of caution. So tentatively, so delicately, he pulled his hand away and then put it quickly back; then, with more confidence, took it away again and again, and then altogether. Sabine, eyes closed, hair fanning over the top of the chair, was Venus inverted. All the work of this trick was hers, staying perfectly still, asleep. Her face was easy, peaceful. She kept herself from swaying, took shallow breaths through her nose while every muscle ripped apart from its neighbor. From the studio audience in Burbank, more hearty applause. Parsifal stepped away from her. For a minute she was forgotten while he bowed. Sabine remembered feeling like the top of her head was going to crack open. Then he saw her again. He studied her, studied the chair. He bent from the waist and, with great effort, lifted the chair with the balanced Sabine up into the air with both hands; but the higher up she went, the lighter she became. Only the chair was heavy. Parsifal the actor. Sabine the gymnast. At waist level Parsifal took a hand away, and then he lifted the chair above his head. The camera pulled back and back. He was tall, and then there was the chair, and then tall Sabine, her toes pointing into the hot stage lights. The audience was not used to looking so far up, and it thrilled them. They were applauding wildly now. Parsifal bowed again, still balancing. Then he ran the entire trick in reverse. The chair grew heavier as it came down. He brought back the second chair and the board. He tipped her down, suddenly careful with this woman he had been waving like a flag. Flat on her back, all her weight returned, he unwrapped her, flicking off the blanket, uncrossing her arms. Gently, sweetly, he kissed her forehead again, at which point the magnificent eyes fluttered and opened. The generous smile spread across her face. With his help, she sat up and stood, waved and bowed. It was a beautiful trick, but it took the whole five minutes they were allotted. They were good, Parsifal and Sabine, their abilities to amaze were limitless. There were hundreds more tricks they weren't given time for.