Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

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.

Huge then! Silber had exclaimed.

Almost nothing.

He had long explained to his wife, who was bedazzled by Silber and his tan and those “gold lion eyes,” as press folk always described them, that illusionists were basically like TV weathermen. They were pure show . A few chosen fucking mimbos, he broke it down, with some big ideas and cash to back it up. Not a thing else going on.

If Manning had had it his way, it would have been something else altogether: Chrysler or the Empire State, even, but Silber didn’t think those had the same appeal. Plus seating in cramped Midtown would have been beyond an ordeal, and the city would have a heart attack even considering negotiations. Downtown they had the twenty-five acres of Battery Park, more or less, with little disturbance. The worst was going to be battling business — the work ethics alone — and vacating the building even at the dark hour. (Manning recalled wanting to punch Silber when he and the assistants had to explain to the illusionist, over and over, that, hell yes, some people did work past 9 p.m., some people did work before 9 a.m. Silber had shaken his head and cried, Fuck America! while Manning flooded his brain with his most potent Zen koans in order not to raise his fist to Silber’s face.)

They went over the sketches while Indigo, heavy as she was, floated into a headstand in the corner for the sake of Manning’s boys, no doubt, who never ever raised an eye from their drills, wrenches, nails, screws.

Then suddenly from the staircase: “The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson’s yacht Half Moon. Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there on September eleventh, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River!” It was Raj, assistant number 2, reading off piles of printouts, the fruits of his busywork of the past few weeks. “Awesome, right, Bran? I mean, it’s an honest-to-God anniversary—1609, baby!”

“What is that? Sixteen-oh-nine is how many years ago?” Silber — numbers! — called without looking up, suddenly beet in his bronzed cheeks. He had not seen Raj since the party last weekend, where he had not only made out with Raj but, if drunken memory served him right, also balanced a dirty martini on his own possibly rock-solid crotch. Silber, contrary to what many speculated, he knew, always maintained his heterosexuality, and he had an army of lingerie models to prove it anyway— am I right, ladies ? They’d smile, purr, coo — pros.

“Three-hundred- so -not-a-round-number years ago. Yeah, sorry!” And Raj disappeared into the staircase again, suddenly also with memory.