08 Illusion (35 page)

“Something that follows her and accentuates her moves.”

“Several changes if we can swing it.”

“But with class.”

“Like Mandy made famous.” Arnie’s eyes asked if the reference was okay.

“Well … exactly,” said Dane. “Is Keisha Ellerman still designing?”

“And how.”

Dane sighed through pursed lips. “Budget, budget. We’d better talk venues first.”

“Let me take you to lunch.”

“Great!”

“I guess I should change,” said Eloise.

“Just Dane,” said Arnie.

There was a short, awkward beat, and then she recovered. “Oh. All right.”

Arnie smiled and explained, “We’ve come to that point, kid: Dane and I need to talk about you behind your back.”

Dane patted her shoulder. “That means things are getting serious.”

Arnie didn’t build on that comment. He just let the sideways stretch of his mouth and the arch of his eyebrows concede.

She smiled, adjusting. “I’ve got some housecleaning to do.”

Dane took Arnie to Rustler’s Roost, a log-structured, ranch-style barbecue place with log furniture, red checkered tablecloths, and waitresses in cowboy hats. It wasn’t Vegas, was definitely Idaho, and had plenty of room so they could find an isolated table and talk privately.

“They have great food,” Dane assured Arnie.

“Bring it on.”

They ordered, then Arnie gave Dane a look he’d seen before, a look that meant this lunch could go kind of long, Arnie had a difficult topic on his mind.

Dane thought he might be able to steer around it. “You know, I was thinking it would be a great idea to get her booked on Preston’s show. Maybe she could even take up a challenge. That would get her in the public eye and give her something unique to say for herself.”

“He’d take her apart,” said Arnie.

“Well, not if we set it up right. Maybe we should leave out the challenge part and she can just be a guest magician.”

Arnie repositioned himself on the log bench as if his rear end were getting sore already. “First let’s talk about Eloise.”

“I thought that’s why we were here.”

“I don’t mean the business part. I mean the other part.”

Oh, brother. We’re going to go there.
“You mean, umm …”

“I mean, I want to know if I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

Cornered.
Arnie wasn’t blind and he wasn’t stupid. “She … she tends to be affectionate. She has no parents. I guess I’m like a father to her.”

“Dane …” Arnie put up his hands. “Listen, if that’s the case, or even if you have something more going with this girl, I’m not your parents or your pastor, I’m okay with it. I work in Vegas, I see everything.”

“It’s not like that.”

“But do you know what it
is
like? As your friend, that’s what I want to be sure about, that whatever it is, you know, you really know.”

“What it’s … what are you talking about?”

“All right.” Arnie leaned toward him and made an effort to keep his voice down. “I’m thinking about you and me on the street outside that coffee shop, and you going on and on about that girl looking and sounding just like Mandy. You do remember that?”

Dane couldn’t hide the fact that he did.

“And now I see this same girl”—Arnie balked, waiting for words—“the blond hair. I just—”

“It’s her natural color.”

Arnie waved his hands as if erasing everything and starting over. “Okay. Umm, let me just spell it out for you and then you tell me if I’m wrong, okay? Friends?”

“You’re wrong.”

“Hear me anyway.”

He would have to. There was never any turning Arnie around. “Go ahead.”

Arnie tiptoed, one word at a time. “You’re a widower, you’re lonely, you miss your wife, you have money and connections … and then, somehow, this young, good-looking, ambitious girl catches on that she resembles your wife.”

Dane shook his head in dismay. “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You have no idea.”

“That performance I saw today. That was Mandy. Move for move, the gags, the expressions, the hair, everything! She’s done some homework, she is into the role.”

“Arnie—”

“Dane. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, and so have you, come on.”

“I coached her, remember.”

Arnie rolled his eyes heavenward, seeking wisdom with a frustrated pat on the table. “All right. Let’s start here—and then you can talk me out of it. I’ll let you try, okay?” He took a breath and tried again. “Nobody can look and act that much like Mandy without
really
trying, and it’s easy to see that she has an emotional effect on you and knows it. She’s an incredible performer, but given what I’m seeing, I don’t trust her, and because I don’t trust her, I don’t like her, and because I don’t like her, I can’t be her agent. All right. Let’s start there. Go ahead.”

Arnie took a bite from his barbecue beef sandwich and waited.

Dane tried to think of a gradual way to ease into it, but finally resigned himself to the one overarching question in his mind. “What if she
is
Mandy?”

She trailed the long central vacuum hose behind her as she moved up the stairs one riser at a time, running the brush head back and forth.

Once upstairs, she ran the hose down the hall to the upstairs vacuum outlet, just past Dane’s bedroom door.

The bedroom door was open.

She looked in from the hall.
Wow.
It had its own fireplace—propane, neat and clean, with a carved mantel. Classy-looking dresser and a full-length mirror. The bed was made. Beautiful bedspread with big, fluffy shams against the headboard.

Would there be—was it snooping?—a picture of his wife anywhere? She leaned in.

Off-limits, Shirley’d told her.

The closet door was open …

She gasped, fingers over her mouth.
Oh, no, you’re killing me.

The gown—the blue gown from her vision on Christmas night—was hanging right there and looked exactly as she’d seen it: floor-length, a skirt that would float and billow when she spun, full, sheer sleeves, sequins that could throw diamonds of light upon the walls and ceiling, metallic embroidery about the waist and bodice. She knew that gown, every detail. She’d worn it in another world, another time. Hadn’t she?

And she was dancing, wasn’t she?

Ten steps in and ten steps back out again, that was all it would take. She wouldn’t touch anything. She darted to the south windows and looked toward the long driveway. Shirley’d gone home to take her son Noah to the dentist. Dane and Arnie wouldn’t be back for at least an hour.

I’m not being sneaky. I just … it isn’t everybody who has visions like I do and then sees something … just a few seconds and I won’t touch anything.

The step through the bedroom door brought a pang of conscience; the step through the closet door brought the fear of divine judgment.

But her fingers took hold of the sleeve—just to lift it outward and have a look at it—then the shoulder—yes, same material—and then the skirt of the dress, feeling, remembering, and it was all so real, more than déjà vu. She held the sleeve beneath her nose and inhaled a scent she vividly remembered. Taking the gown on its hanger, she held it against her body—just her size.

She put it back.
No, better not.

“She grew up on a ranch, she raised llamas, horses, and doves, her father’s name was Arthur, her mother’s name was Eloise. She knows how to do carpentry and how to fix a leaky faucet, her favorite coffee is a nonfat mocha—”

Arnie held up his hand. “Dane, stop. Hold it a second.”

“She dances like Mandy, she laughs like Mandy, she gets the same look in her eyes—”

“Dane?”

Dane stopped. He was running off at the mouth and knew it.

“Dane, Mandy is dead. Pardon me for asking, but are you aware of that?”

The answer stuck in his brain and wouldn’t go through.

Arnie pressed in. “I was there with you at the hospital the day she died. When she died she was fifty-nine. This girl is nineteen.”

“She’ll be twenty on the fifteenth.”

Arnie’s voice rose despite his effort to keep it down. “What the—what difference does it make? She’s still a different girl, Dane, a different girl who is”—he lowered his voice but he was shaking— “who is forty years younger. Forty years!”

Her jeans, shirt, and shoes lay in a neat pile on a chair next to the fireplace.

The black formal slid over her shoulders and hips and conformed to her body like it was made to be there. She turned in front of the full-length mirror, holding a diamond necklace against her skin to see how it looked with the dress. She’d never worn anything so lovely.

She found a pair of shoes that matched. They slid onto her feet like the glass slipper in
Cinderella.

The feeling!

A white, sparkling gown and matching slippers fit just as well, draping from her body in such graceful lines that she had to dance like a princess, circling the room in front of the mirror as the skirt swished through the air and the jewels and sequins sparkled.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Dane admitted.

Arnie’s sandwich lay half eaten on the plate. A waitress had come by to check on them. Arnie quickly told her they were fine, thank you. “Crazy. That’s right.”

“But how else do you explain it?”

“That’s what I’m warning you about.”

“I got her four doves just to see what her reaction would be. She named them Lily, Maybelle, Bonkers, and Carson.”

“Research, Dane. She’s smarter than you think.”

“Those were the names of the doves Mandy had clear back at the Spokane fair. There’s no way she could have known that.”

“She’s a magician, Dane, a very good one. She found out. Listen, there are things she does that neither of us have been able to figure out, but that’s how magic works, that’s the whole point.”

“She has a way with doves. It’s how we met.”

Arnie touched Dane’s hand and looked into his eyes. “Dane. Explain it to me. And listen to yourself as you answer.”

“I can’t explain it. I’ve never been able to explain it.”

“
I’ve
explained it. Now, can you come up with something better?”

Dane’s mind had never been able to land on anything that made sense. “I only know what I know.” He was still amazed by the next fact even as he spoke it. “She has the same teeth, the same smile. She even smells like Mandy.”

Arnie’s eyes stayed on him for one more brief moment, but then a gradual change like the sun going down came over his face. He eased back on his bench at a loss, disbelief and despair clouding his face. “Dane. Have you really come to that point? Have you really gone crazy?”

A snappy pink dance outfit—his wife must have used it for the jazzier dance numbers and the contorted box illusions—slipped on as if made for her. The stagey shoes, the pants and cute waistcoat got her moving, finding a groove, and God help her, there was just something so
right
about it, as if in some way, in some nearby other world, the clothes were old friends, her music was their music, her moves their moves.

Arnie didn’t finish his sandwich. He didn’t finish the conversation either. “I’d better leave, right now!” he said, standing and stepping free of the bench.

Dane had never seen his friend this way before. “Arnie, it’s so hard to explain—”

“Stop. Don’t say another word. Don’t drive any more nails into this coffin.” Dane tried to say something but Arnie leaned down, finger in Dane’s face. “I’m saying this to your face, all right? Remember that I told you to your face: you have lost your mind and she is going to break your heart. She is going to use you, and then she is going to discard you.” He tossed some bills on the table. “And after she does, and you are the real Dane Collins again, a man with some sense and some kind of future, I’m not sure what, please give me a call. I’ll help you pick up the pieces.”

“Arnie!”

“Not another word!”

“Book her on Preston’s show. Just that much. I’d consider it a real favor.”

“And a monumental abuse of friendship!”

With that he hurried to the front of the restaurant and spoke with the hostess. Dane caught the words “cab” and “airport.” It occurred to him that Arnie had left his travel case back at the ranch in the guest room, but … oh, well. He was Arnie Harrington. He’d never go back for it now.

chapter

31

T
here was still the blue gown. She told herself she wouldn’t touch it, but then her hand just fell on all these other things and one thing led to another and …

The gown was in her vision, after all, and the embrace of love, the encounter with herself that came to her that night, were here now, in this room, in these clothes all hung according to color and occasion, in the jewels neatly arranged in little drawers, in the beautiful shoes in neat rows on two shelves.

She ached for that blue gown as she looked at the clock beside the bed. Could she try it on and put it away in five minutes, ten at the max?

Dane remembered seeing Arnie standing in the front window of Rustler’s Roost watching him go. He remembered giving Arnie a pitiful little wave as he opened the door of his car, and wondering how long it would take Arnie to get a cab of any kind in northern Idaho. From that moment to closing the door of his car in his own garage, the drive up Highway 95 and all the way back to Robin Hill Road was by rote. He didn’t remember it. His mind was elsewhere, everywhere.

He hadn’t lost a friend, he knew that. That was precisely why Arnie had cut their visit short, to save the friendship. They’d bailed on each other before to depressurize and were always able to put it back together. Still, that didn’t remove the fact that this was one bleeding, messy feeling he had, as weighty as lead, and it wasn’t likely to go away until …