But he wasn’t sure. How irritating.
The frogmen spun the cabinet… once, twice, three times.
Its side profile was always as black and narrow as a dagger’s and Majika made sure to stand behind it fully visible, as if it were really that thin an edge.
He rapidly calculated angles, checked the wings and floor for hidden mirrors.
The audience gasped…
… for out of the narrow edge of the dark mirror the woman in the gaudy sweat suit stepped, blinking as if emerging from the dark.
“My goodness,” she murmured like the tourist born she was.
What a stooge! So annoying as to appear absolutely natural. He wondered what casting director Majika used.
The lithe magician gestured the woman to stand at her right side, then nodded to the dark men to spin the mirror again.
And this time the very same image of the sweat-suited woman stepped out from the other edge of the mirror. Majika moved between them, her own figure reflected to infinity in the bland mirrored face of the cabinet front.
The split images of the woman from the audience eyed each other, and then began addressing each another.
“You can’t be me.”
“You must be me.”
Twins. Simplest trick in the book. One backstage waiting to go on, the other planted in the audience. What a sucker ploy!
“How’d she do that?” the reporter prodded, her pencil waving in his face.
Watch the fresh peel, baby!
He leaned away from the unwanted contact. Twins, he was about to say, when Majika waved the two women together and they slowly converged until they melted into each other and only one stood there, looking like she needed to be pinched to wake up.
“How’d she do that?” the reporter persisted, insisted, as that ilk will.
“Mirrors,” he said shortly, rising so he could beat the rest of the audience to the exit doors. It was hard work. They were all standing, blocking the rows and the aisles, giving Majika a standing ovation for the final illusion of her act. He didn’t even glance stageward to catch the vaunted final fillip of the show: a white rabbit pulled from a black top hat that moments before had been flatter than a Frisbee. Even flatter than the edge of a spinning mirror.
“Chardonnay,” he greeted Majika when she finally returned from the multiple bows to her dressing room, which he had managed to enter as if he had appeared there by design. It stunk of opening night floral arrangements, but the show had been running for eight months.
“Merlin,” she answered. ”I mean, Marlon. Dare I ask how you got in here?”
“Started early, honey. Shut the door. We have things to discuss.”
She obeyed, just as she had used to when she’d needed the paycheck.
His confidence perked up. He was the maestro, she the upstart. “That mirror thing is a fairly effective trick,” he said, smiling. God, it hurt.
“Works for me.” She sat at her dressing table to swipe the glitter highlights from her face.
He wished she would wipe off that new expression of elegant self-satisfaction. Or had she always looked that way?
“Seriously,” he added, “I think you might have something there.”
“Really?” She spun toward him, bare-faced, looking as taut as a teenager.
He blinked like a tourist in the limelight. Something was wrong here. Unfair. Why should she be slim and unwrinkled, when she’d passed off his Babe-scale years ago?
“So how’s your kid?” He had searched for the given name and given up.
“He died.”
Silence always made him uncomfortable. He supposed firing her in the middle of that medical melodrama could have made it hard on… someone. He didn’t like to hear about people dying. He never knew what to say, so he said nothing.
She seemed to expect no less from him. “So, did you like the show?” she asked.
“What’s not to like?” Everything. “Glad you made such a great… comeback. You look terrific.” Spoken softly, like an invitation.
“Thanks. It’s good to see you again too.” She seemed pleased that he was here.
Oddly, that cheered him. He hadn’t realized he’d needed cheer until now. “Really?”
“Well, you are the maestro. I’m flattered that you bothered to see my show.”
“It’s that Mirror Image trick that’s the draw.”
“Illusion,” she corrected as swiftly as he had corrected the reporter.
She leaned an elbow on the dressing table, then her chin on her fist. Her image reflected to infinity behind her, thanks to the room’s traditional parallel aisle of dressing table mirrors. It was all done with mirrors, and he was never done with mirrors, for he saw himself, small and wee, in a tiny corner of the reflected room behind her. His trademark mane of hair, now a dramatic white, was mostly extensions now. He was the sum of all the parts of his former illusions.
His heart fluttered. This moment was important. He knew it. For her, for him. He couldn’t tell for which one it was more vital, just as one couldn’t tell the twins from the Mirror Image illusion apart, even when they merged at the end.
“It’s twins, isn’t it?” He spoke without wanting to, hungry, urgent, worried.
“No, not twins.”
“Not twins?”
She smiled, gently, as at a slow-witted child. “This is something totally new, my illusion.”
“Nothing’s new in magic. Nothing! It’s the same dodge and burn the photographers used do to enhance photographs, only it’s performed on the audience’s eyes instead of a negative.”
“Dodge and burn,” she repeated. “I like the way you put that.”
“Listen. I’m curious as hell, and I admit you’ve got me wondering. I really want to know how you do that.”
She was silent. Signature illusions were a magician’s bread-and-butter, big-time.
“A million dollars,” he said, unable to stop himself. “I’ll give you a million dollars if you show me the secret of that trick.”
His words had surprised her as much as they had him.
“A million dollars.” She savored them like bittersweet chocolate. “A million dollars would have saved Cody’s life.”
“Cody?”
“My son.”
“Oh. Sure. Sorry. Sorry about that. So the disease, whatever, was terminal.”
“Then it was. Not now.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he left his offer hanging there.
Apparently she saw it still twisting in the wind. “You have to promise not to tell anybody.”
“Sure. I mean, no. Not ever.”
“And you can’t use it yourself without paying me a… royalty.”
“I wouldn’t want to use it. I mean, I’m not a copier. Haven’t ever been. I just want to know.” He realized this new, unexpected need was the deepest he’d felt in some time. “I don’t understand it. It’s not magic like I know it. I need to-”
“I understand need,” she said, cutting him off as if uninterested in the sudden flood of genuine feeling that engulfed him. “I’ll show you how the trick works.”
“A million dollars,” he repeated, awash in a foreign wave of gratitude.
He really had to know, more than anything in his life. What life? It was all magic show. She’d probably give the million to some foundation for the disease that had killed her son. So he’d have helped her after all. Life was strange, but magic was even stranger.
It would be quite an event. She would only reveal her illusion by using him in it. He was to be the prearranged stooge hauled from the front rows of the audience. His hotel and her hotel had agreed to co-promote the one-time union of two major Strip magicians as if they were world-class boxers having a ballyhooed rematch.
Maybe they were.
She also stipulated that he wear his stage costume: glittering black sequined vest and satin cummerbund, the vaguely frock-coat-style jacket with the capelet built into the back. Even his corset. He had felt like blushing when she mentioned it. How did she know?