The Last Illusion (5 page)

IV) Benefits for the Self (Nutritional Facts):

• Grasshoppers have six times the protein of cod or lean ground beef.

• One cup of crickets contains 250 calories and only six grams of fat.

• 100 grams of silkworm larvae provide 100 percent of the daily requirements for copper, zinc, iron, thiamin, and riboflavin.

• A single honeybee larva may contain 15 times the recommended daily allowance of vitamins A and D.

• Etc., apparently. The health benefits had the potential to hold the key for acceptance—this and the next—but the minute he imagined himself arguing his case before father and therapist and whoever else would listen, the curtain would fall on the act. No applause.

V) Benefits for the World:

Some humans did
eat insects, and in fact did it for good reason: eating insects was good for the environment, efficient, ethical. Most insects’ energy-input-to-protein-output ratio = 4:1, while raised livestock = 54:1. Insects don’t need to use much energy to stay warm, and they reproduce at a faster rate than beef animals (a female cricket can lay from 1,200 to 1,500 eggs in three to four weeks).
They also require very little food or water to raise,
he saw himself pleading in the spotlight, the final words before the lights went out.

VI) One God’s Thoughts:

In the Bible’s Book of Leviticus, it outlines acceptable food for the Israelites: “These you may eat; the arbeh after his kind, the sal’am after his kind, the chargol after his kind, and the chagav after his kind .
.
.” which apparently all refer to the locust. In the Book of Matthew, John the Baptist survived on locusts and wild honey—
and when did you start thinking about God?
he imagined Rhodes interjecting.

VII) Bonus: A Recipe!

Chocolate-Covered Crickets

Ingredients: 25 adult crickets; 3.5 oz (100 g) semisweet chocolate

Place crickets in a colander and cover quickly with a piece of wire screening or cheesecloth. Rinse them, then dry them by shaking the colander until all the water drains. Then put the crickets in a plastic bag and put them in the freezer for about 15 minutes (until they are dead but not frozen). Then take them out and rinse them again. Remove crickets’ heads, hind legs, and wings according to personal preference.

Bake at 250 degrees until crunchy (the time needed varies from oven to oven). Heat the chocolate in a double boiler until melted. Dip the dry-roasted crickets in the melted chocolate one by one, and then set the chocolate-covered crickets out to dry on a piece of wax paper.
Enjoy!
it said, the word and its punctuation and that curly font possessing some intensely moving power for Zal, who would never allow himself to make his own.

VIII) Eating Out:

He couldn’t find any restaurants in New York at the moment that specialized in entomophagic cuisine, but he did notice that some restaurants had insect dishes here and there. Several Japanese restaurants, for instance, featured boiled wasp larvae appetizers. One place had Stir-Fried Manchurian Ant Tostada. Another: White Sea Worm Lettuce Wraps. Another: Burmese Chile Water Bugs with Rice. Termite Egg Soup. Wax Worm California Rolls with Tamari Dipping Sauce. Mexican Fried Butterfly Larvae Tacos. Cricket Flour Naan. And many types of Mealworm Cookies and Chocolate-Covered Anything, it seemed. He made a list.

IX) The Best of Online Snacks:

Ant Candy, Preserved Weaver Ant Eggs, Canned Curry-Flavored Mole Crickets, Bacon & Cheddar Cheese–Flavored Crickets, Canned Soy Sauce–Flavored Pregnant Crickets, BBQ-Flavored Bamboo Worms, Roasted Silkworms, Preserved Black Scorpions in Salt Water Brine, Scorpion Amber Candy, Spicy Giant Bug Paste. He bookmarked and bookmarked.

It was all there, and probably much, much more.

So what did he do, but with Hendricks’s allowance, start to covertly spend and spend. First came the online snacks. Then the lone lunches out, which proved so divine, so downright sensual, that he turned them into lone elaborate dinners that he’d even dress up for. He began going to the pet and bait stores and cooking his own. He thought about raising them, but worried about Hendricks or, say, a landlord dropping by and noticing somehow. He thought about joining the Entomophagical Society, the premier national club for insect cuisine fetishists, but then worried about having to explain his story to the other members.

What he did do he did on the low, of course, with considerable shame and angst, horrified when Hendricks asked,
So where is all the money going? Computer games? More clothes, though I haven’t seen you in a new thing in ages? Food? What is it, Zal?

He could not say a word. He shrugged. And it was yet another thing Hendricks dismissed out of consideration, because that was just Zal, and
considering
, considering it all, anything could make sense.

Zal, out of respect for Hendricks and the allowance, and the fact that his little obsession could turn into one of those addictions he was warned about, did not go too far. He kept it for special occasions. For times when he needed a boost. For times when he felt alone and wanted to give in to that loneliness completely. For times when he couldn’t stand it anymore. For days when he woke up from one of those nest dreams, those beautiful warm nest dreams, and wanted nothing more than to be fed.

Otherwise he ate normal foods, too. He liked grilled cheese and certain salads with creamy dressing and all pies and mac ’n’ cheese and rice pilafs and lentil soups and all sorts of things normal people liked. And of course, birds didn’t eat just insects. Zal always felt very enamored of dried berries, nuts, and sunflower seeds. That stuff especially was an ingenious indulgence, where the two worlds overlapped—he could consume as much as he wanted, without raising any suspicion or evoking any taboo. He could be himself with trail mix in a way that was so profound, he once thought to himself, a thought he was sure had never been thought in the history of man or bird.

If there was any chance of smiling or laughing and beating those odds as well, he wished he could say to Hendricks, it would be through all this, through the complete succumbing to this most protected passion of his, who and
what
he really was and continued to be on some level, deep down inside.

He was not, in spite of their wishful thinking, what they considered
well.
Not yet.

PART II

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

—Douglas Adams,

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Summer 2001.
Hello, New York City, USA,
went the voice-over in the illusionist’s head—sealed with the biggest smile he could muster straight into the relentless reflections of the Mirror Room—
and goodbye!

It was still early—Bran Silber was not married to his words. There were months still left, but the illusion, the illusion was doing itself, whether he liked it or
liked it
. From the moment he chose it, he knew there were no outs.

He preferred that word:
illusion
. In the warehouse bathroom, there was a torn magazine photo of Heidi Fleiss’s mug shot with a Post-it placard that read
tricks apply here only.

They didn’t use words like [trick] here, Oliver Manning had been huffily reminding himself for years. Today Manning—fifty-nine, industrial engineer, known for creating the greatest large-scale illusions in history, known for creating them mostly in severely reluctant partnership with Bran Silber—was on-site. He was chain-smoking pensively and occasionally whispering orders to a group of bespectacled yet steroidal young guys, interns who were already ahead of deadline on Silber’s latest stunt.

They were going as close to real as illusion could afford. Not a single stooge would be planted, Silber’s first time stoogeless since Manning had years ago tipped him off to the talk.
They think you’re stooge-y,
he had said, straight, Manning-style.
And you are. But stooges are out. You don’t have to keep it real, but at least keep them real. Leave the fucking plants to the dirt.

And that was that. Silber called Manning “boss,” not the other way around, even though Silber Inc. supplied the engineer’s paycheck. Silber was always a bit terrified of losing Manning, especially now that he had a new burst of midlife ambition. He had just turned fifty-two. This was a big year for an illusionist: Houdini had died at fifty-two, after all. Silber was not afraid to say he loved Houdini.

He was nothing like Houdini. Hands too soft, chemically peeled face mostly unlined, eyes always Visine clear. Love of spectacle, hatred of sweat. Color: rose or maybe bronze. Women: models, preferably super, and young leggy actresses, and an occasional burlesque dancer of the more petite variety. He did not shoot blanks; he had many children he did not know but paid for. Vegetarian, except for lobster and prosciutto and sea urchin and oysters—he had taught himself to love oysters, somehow necessary for a man like him. He’d adopted eight silken windhounds whose names he could never get straight—they did not live with him—a beloved Asian leopard cat named Philomene who slept with him once a week, and a boa constrictor he had personally never handled named “X.O.” City: New York, New York, but he also owned homes in five different countries and a small island in the Caribbean that he had been to only twice. He hated numbers; he had a staff of people who could tell him how much money he had in the bank.

Manning, on the other hand: all nuts and bolts, piston and steel. He worked, breathed, even
appeared
metallic, with his silver hair, platinum skin, and wolf eyes. He was a hard man; you had to be a rock to weather Silber, that was for sure.

Silber’s first assistant, Indigo—her real name, although people usually thought it was a Silberism—who was always lethargically perched on his BlackBerry, was suddenly animated out of her underpaid still life with some news. “Yo, Bird Boy is back, Bran!” she called. He would want to know about Bird Boy.

Silber was serene in his favorite workday metallic overalls, smoking a red Fantasia Light—which Manning ridiculed every time, refusing anything but his Marlboro Reds—while he admired Manning’s shrewd inspection of things Silber could not see. Suddenly, serene he was not. He looked up, squinted his eyes, and sucked hard, as if in deep concentration.

“And he says
what
? The
gist
? C’mon, Indy!”

Indigo waved a frustrated hand in the air as if to say
Tough to paraphrase, dude
. “You know how he writes. Um, checking in, heard about new, um,
illusion
”—Silber was sure it said
trick,
and Indigo caught it,
good girl
—“wanted to visit set, wanted to see if okay, in love, some corny shit about that and wants your help—”

“
Gist
, please!”

“—and he wants to come by. Yea or nay, hombre?”

Silber smiled wearily and shrugged at Manning, who was tapping his cowboy boots all along the platform’s platform. “Uh, yeah, tell him he can have tickets to the show, but absolutely no BTS”—Silberish for
behind the scenes
—“for this one. If he comes by, tell him he has to stand outside, and that can involve waiting, but it has to be next week or the week after or something. Indigo, just make it, like,
tricky
.”

“Gotcha, chief!”

She sent just a few lines: “Monday morning or Tuesday midafternoon or Thursday dusk, 9 or 3 or 7, 45-minute slots not impossible, might involve some waits, which would be taken out of the 45-minute slot. Need some paperwork beforehand—very private here at moment. Thanks. Dream, B.X.S.”

“These kids,” Silber sighed. Manning, a combination bored and irked, as was often the case, finally met his eye. Silber, overeager to let his partner know they were on the same page, whipped out the mantra often: “Okay, boss, so let’s M+B! Emmmm and beeeeee time!”

Manning nodded.
Move + Blind
was his phrase, without the metaphorics, and the basic function of the construction behind Silber’s vision. Manning was in the business of reality, not metaphor. The audience would be moved, literally, and blinded, literally, and thus: illusion. With all the variables that could go wrong with this one—Manning made it known that while it was likely Silber’s, it was not
his
favorite.

“Pillar in the pool’s gonna be a bitch, naturally,” Manning grunted. “The pool” was not a real pool, but what they called the two hundred or so feet between the two towers. To Manning’s annoyance, Silber had struggled to wrap his head around “two hundred feet,” especially in the absence of the recently often absent Floyd, assistant number 3, who worked calculations on the side. Manning, frustrated, had reduced it to something Silber could understand
: You got an Olympic pool?

In three countries at least,
he had said, flashing that fluorescent white smile of his.

Almost that,
Manning had shot back, unamused.