Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

Before Manning left Silber and his boys that afternoon, Manning admitted, for the first time ever in a Silber stunt, he had qualms.

Silber: “We’re ahead of sched — how bad can it be? Tii-ii-ii-ime is on our side, daddy.”

“It’s a lot of bullshit to float this boat,” Manning said. “And I’m not even talking about your need for a theme, a meaning, all that anniversary crap — I’m just talking straight logistics. You need the public, the press, everyone co-piloting. Even the helicopters got to respect angles. Camera tricks and everything. People aren’t as dumb as they used to be, Sil. I’m just saying. The thing will be done, but this is even more eye trick than your eye tricks.”

He had purposely said trick.

Silber’s eyes closed in the face of tension, and possible disrespect. “Well, we’re ahead, so we can work it out. Make it better. Make it happen .” He opened his eyes to meet Manning’s, but the engineer’s were already rolled and to the ground again. “Look, pops, no losing faith. We got some millions on this one. Nobody’s letting nobody down, am I right?”

Manning nodded, reluctantly, imagining the zeroes on his paycheck.

“They are going to love it!” Silber cried. “Hello, NYC, USA. . and goodbye! Center of World Trade, USA, North America, Earth, Milky Way: bye, bye, Mister American pie!”

Last Days of 1999.

The first time Zal — Bird Boy, as the Silberites, but rarely Silber, called him — went to the Silbertorium, the illusionist’s grand warehouse in Brooklyn, where all the magic happens, baby (spray-painted in gold by an old assistant just outside the entrance), he had spent forty-five minutes in the Mirror Room, mostly alone. The assistants in the other room were chatting loudly about what was on everyone’s minds: Y2K. They popped in and out of the Mirror Room, one after another, and beheld the boy, offered him water — flat or sparkling, iced or room temp — wine, beer, tea, espresso, anything, and he had not said a word or even turned his head. They just saw a slight albino-pale blond boy in unfashionably short green slacks and an orange sweater staring at the mirror. It was as if he were in a trance. By then they knew the Bird Boy story but not all of its implications. Later it would make sense — like many of his kind, as studies had indicated, he had a thing for mirrors. A thing, but not a good thing, really. A day without seeing his reflection was a perfect day, or an uncomplicated day, rather, but put him in front of that everyday plane of molten aluminum under a thin layer of glass and the lost feelings surfaced. Dissociation, his doctor had called it, entirely normal . Normal considering , that is.

Silber had eventually broken Zal’s Mirror Room trance, but just for a second, and then he’d resigned himself to sitting back and sipping a flute of champagne with strawberries while watching Zal watch himself. The men had been silent for more than half an hour, Silber and Zal’s eyes both locked with Zal’s in the mirror. Finally, Silber had grown restless and interjected, “Well, you should see my other Mirror Room!” to which Zal had snapped back to life. Silber led him out into the main loft and gestured toward the large white couch by the windows. Zal had looked at him blankly. “No other Mirror Room, sorry,” Silber said slowly, assuming Zal was slow at the very least. “Change of setting, you know.”

Zal had confessed to Silber that he simply couldn’t, and Silber had not believed him. The illusionist had downed his champagne and dragged Zal back to the Mirror Room again in spite of Zal’s protests this time— It’s useless, and remember what a mess it is to get me out of there, Mr. Silber! — and demanded he try. Zal had cringed, Zal had grimaced, frowned, scowled, pouted, kissy-faced, even silent-scream-faced, but no smile. Silber had looked at his own reflection, tapped the mirror before him, and, like an exasperated old ballet teacher, shrieked, “Look like this — cheeeeese! Like this, see! Cheeeeeeeese!” Cheese . Zal had shook his head over and over, and here and there would try again, but it was useless. This went on for a while. Finally, Silber noticed Zal’s eyes were filled with tears. “May I?” he had asked finally. Zal, ever resigned to nothing-to-lose anti-logic, nodded, dumbly. He winced just a bit at first as Silber stepped behind him — disappearing except for his tufts of amply moussed hair, which created a wild halo above Zal — and took hold of his face. With the ease of a lover, Silber gently, ever gently, as if kneading a very delicate and expensive dough, peeled back the thin, scant flesh of Zal’s bony face. It was a strange sort of smile that in the real world would never pass for a smile; instead it was as an emblem of a very dark farce, an absurdist black comedy, mime eyes in a grotesquely stretched inhuman mask. What does it mean? Zal thought. Nothing. But Silber, in a grand-finale-like gesture, only crept closer and eventually took his index fingers and pulled up the corners of Zal’s exhausted mouth, as if once again performing a feat of illusion. He held it there and chanted, There, there, there! Magic, baby, magic!

He eased his fingers off, and Zal’s face fell. Back to reality. They tried and tried again. By the end of it Silber had teared up and quickly ordered a car home for Zal.

Zal hadn’t minded. He was relieved to be out of the Mirror Room. Against all odds, Zal thought, he and Silber became friends that evening. They had met before, but Zal’s visit to the Silbertorium was different. Maybe friends was too strong a word. But there was a bond, and, whether on Silber’s end it was rooted in pity or wonder and on Zal’s end in wonder or desperation, they had made some sort of a connection. When Silber e-mailed him a few days later, he signed off, “Remember, always, try: J Dream, B.X.S.”

Zal had then stumbled on his own signature sign-off: “J, Zal.” He would come to sign off all his e-mails to Silber and Silber only with a happy face — their inside joke.

Zal knew why he had connected with Silber, but he always wondered why Silber had to him. He had seemed less busy in those early days— between miracles, honey, he’d snap when people asked what he was up to. But before he knew it, he’d be invited to dinners, private ones where Silber, like a spider on a web, would ever so gingerly pry into the details of his life. Zal thought maybe this was yet another case of research. He had been used to it by then.

At their first dinner at Silber’s Manhattan townhouse, just days after the Mirror Room episode, Zal had simply asked him why — why him, why then, why ?

Silber, without meeting his eyes, said simply, quietly, Because you are muse-worthy.

Zal had misheard it as newsworthy, something he had been conditioned to hear his whole life, his ear tricking him by habit, and he had grown sullen. Until he saw it in an e-mail later that night from Silber: Forgive me for so many things tonight! And if muse-worthy was a bit much, Zal dear. I am legitimately intrigued by you and enriched by our interaction. Your experience is out of this world — how can an illusionist not be dazzled? I mean only well. Sorry sorry! Trust trust! Dream, B.X.S.

It had been a tough dinner to sit through. Roksana, Silber’s cook, had just cleared the appetizer — a most refreshing gazpacho — and had brought Silber his Spanish potato salad with a side of mixed greens — salads, the only thing he ate for dinner — and then brought a bigger dish for Zal and Zal alone. She had, with a flourish, lifted the silver display cover on the tray and unveiled, as she announced, “Andalusian chicken with tangerines, sir.”