Vanishing and Other Stories (9 page)

 

THIS BECOMES THEIR ROUTINE
: for fifteen minutes each night they take shelter from the rain and wind, and she performs. She changes aces into kings. She makes a ten-dollar bill disappear, then reappear sticking out of the collar of his shirt. She asks him to kiss a card, and when she shuffles, the card his lips have touched is at the top of the deck. He's seen most of these tricks before, but that doesn't matter. When she performs them, there is nothing of the usual weariness around her eyes. None of the boredom that slackens her features while she works. And nothing of the poker face she wears
when they speak. She is full of cunning and joyful underhandedness. She is alive.

“How did you do that?” He asks this each night, and each night the answer is the same.

“A magician never reveals her secrets, Tom.”

On his part, there is an easy pleasure in being had. And there's something else too. He can recognize bereavement in others now. Miranda was once a performer and he imagines that a life dedicated to this kind of artistry is not always kind. It results in a jackpot or in great loss—nothing in between. Whether a person is rewarded or punished is a matter of luck. He can tell by looking at Miranda's hardened, tired face that her luck has been bad.

So he allows himself to be seduced by her grace, her hands, and what she calls magic. This is his kindness to her. He allows her to be onstage again, to wear a glittering suit and white gloves. He allows her to pull doves from her hat.

 

 

THERE IS ANOTHER ROUTINE
, and she is ignorant of it. Each night, he waits for her. Sometimes she has to work an hour or two of overtime, and while she does, he sleeps in his car. This is the kind of man he is becoming, the kind who gambles away his earnings and who sleeps in his car. But it doesn't matter, because he likes the sound of her shoes on the pavement, stepping around the puddles. It invariably wakes him up.

He follows her home, squinting through the rain. He stays far behind her, and keeps his lights off. He doesn't mean any harm. He only wants to watch her step out of her car, shut her door, toss the
car keys into her purse. He wants to watch her unlock the door to her building and disappear inside. Then he likes to imagine her in the elevator, and inside her apartment. Washing the makeup off her face, climbing into a dark bed, sleeping well.

He has trouble sleeping. When he arrives home, he is often up for an hour, sometimes two. He sits in the dark and watches the aquarium. The convict tang, with its silver body and black bars, skims the rock for food. And the nocturnal flamefish is always up. Its red body is easy to see even in the dark. It is a slow, methodical swimmer. Following its cautious movement is the only thing that eases Tom into sleep. He wakes most mornings on the couch, in front of the aquarium. His body jerks as though he's emerging from a dream, the kind where he is continuously, endlessly sinking.

 

 

THEY SIT OUTSIDE
and listen to rain hit the Dumpster.

“What do you do in your other life?” he asks. “When you're not at work?”

“I try to get some sleep. I clean when I have to. I cook.”

He imagines she eats her meals the way he takes his: alone, in front of a flickering television. “I'm not much of a cook. It's depressing to eat alone.”

“My father used to run a restaurant in Grande Prairie, so I'm happy in the kitchen.”

“Grande Prairie? I imagined somewhere more exotic.”

“Trust me, Grande Prairie is exotic.” She laughs. “My parents wanted me to take over the restaurant and I wanted to be a famous
magician. You can imagine how that went over.” She rolls him a cigarette of loose tobacco that gets stuck in his teeth—“How's that for exotic?” she asks—and shuffles her cards.

“Let's start over,” he says. “Let's get married.”

“You're just like my ex-husband. Out of nowhere, Paul would say something hilarious.”

“What happened to this husband? Did he die?”

“If only.”

“At least tell me your name.”

“I've never liked it. My parents heard it on TV and it sounded perfectly North American to them.”

“It's Lucy, isn't it? They named you after Lucille Ball?”

“There are ways you could find out.” She drops the end of her cigarette to the cement. “Ask any of my co-workers, for example.”

“Let's get out of here. I mean it. We could take your show on the road. I'd make a good assistant.”

“No, you wouldn't. You're too morose.”

“You said it seems like we've known each other for decades. I just want you to tell me your real name.”

She smiles, closes her eyes, and massages her neck. Her body leans, slightly, in his direction. She is so close to him that he could reach out and touch her hair. She has forgotten herself for a second, forgotten her desire for distance and privacy. He could wait for this to pass—and it will, quickly. She'll look at her watch and walk away. He knows this because he too knows solitude. He knows its pleasure and its power. He knows it is a home you can occupy, a place where you can watch your pains shimmer around you like a school of fish. It's also a habit, and he knows how entrenched and addictive it becomes. She might hate him if he
pulls her out of its dark waters. It would hurt at first. And maybe always.

Still, he reaches out and takes her hand. She lets him hold it for a second, maybe two. Then she slips it from his and checks her watch. “Look at that.” She stands to leave. “Time's up.”

 

 

HE LEARNS TO RECOGNIZE
the ones who play for money and the ones who play to find God. The first play to win, and they stop once they do. They pick up their chips and they walk out. The other kind of gambler, the kind he is becoming, sinks into the game and disappears. This gambler plays because he loves the rhythm and routine. He loves the moment—a breath—between winning and losing. To be made or broken within seconds. To live or die—the choice made each minute, by luck or some other careless god. He loves the risk, and cares little for the reward. He plays to lose.

 

 

“
WHY DO PEOPLE SEE MAGIC SHOWS?
” He asks her this after she has torn a twenty-dollar bill in half and magically restored it. What he really wants to ask is this: Why do people touch each other? Why do they fall in love?

“That's easy,” says Miranda. “To escape.”

His friends and colleagues would pronounce that word differently, and it's not just the accent, so faint it must be left over from early childhood.
Escape
. Others would emphasize the word with a
tone she doesn't use. They would mean a certain kind of irresponsibility. His friends and colleagues would see his actions—gambling, associating with this woman—as irresponsible, dangerous. He's noticed the concerned looks they give him at work. He's noticed the way they avoid him, out of fear or sympathy.

But his time with Miranda is as generous, as religious, as he's ever felt. As she performs what he knows are false shuffles and crimped cards, he is himself, and he is not himself. He is her attentive audience, and he is Miranda the Conjuror. He is the pleasure she takes from her own competence and the joy she feels in revisiting her repertoire. He is the grace that lives in her hands. To let go, to disappear, to forget himself. To exist in another's skin, and then—on the long, dark drive home—to return to himself, with another's knowledge. To escape. It was the only way to live.

 

 

HER VOICE AS SHE COUNTS OUT
his chips. Her laugh, brittle from tobacco and the casino's air. The way she smashes his watch to pieces then restores it to him as good as new. Her hands as they hold the watch in front of his face, a hypnotist's hands. That's what haunts him.

He has heard of men who resign themselves to loneliness and begin to visit whores. He imagines that they often visit the same woman, perhaps every night. They grow fond of the routine. Then they grow fond of the woman.

Inside the casino, Miranda treats him like nothing more than a customer. When he sits at her table, she doesn't look him in the
eye or use his name. When she drops cards in front of him, he can almost believe they are strangers. It reminds him of Kelly's last weeks. He had to move her from her bed beside the window to the hospital. There, she was cordoned off from him by tubes and wires and painkillers that made her mind and speech fuzzy.

Only once in those last days did she really look at him. She woke up and he leaned forward and took her hand. She focused on him for one or two seconds and said, “I miss the fish.”

So even then, she could surprise him. She'd never liked the aquarium when she was healthy. She used to joke that she only liked the sea star because it matched the throw pillows. But she must have grown fond of it during her illness, when watching the fish was all she had the energy to do.

And now, Tom stares at Miranda as though she were a fish in a tank, beautiful and trapped and not meant to be touched. He tries to stop, for his own sake as well as for hers. He tries, at least, to keep a discreet distance. He often sits at one of the slot machines and watches her, pressing and repressing the button, losing ten cents at a time.