08 Illusion (45 page)

Her heart sank. No surprise there either.

chapter

38

W
ell, she hadn’t had any visitors yet.

Mandy sat in her dressing room trying not to botch her mascara again, hoping she would never hear an authoritative knock at the door. There was a cop right there to handcuff her for that afternoon’s Dumpster escape, but he didn’t say or do anything that wasn’t part of the act.

Her hand still shook a little.

Girl, you have
got
to remember the rules: don’t be a danger to yourself or others
. If Kessler hadn’t stepped in and stopped those guys …

She whooshed a sigh. Oh, the things she was about to do to Bill and Tyler and that lobby. It was God’s grace that she didn’t.

But she really could have, and that was why she was shaking. Call it an answer to prayer—
hoo boy, what an answer!
—but ever since that visit to Clark County Medical Center, a realization had come together piece by piece, growing from a
hmmm?
to an
aha!
to a big-time life changer over the course of the afternoon: all the weird “delusions” she’d been having weren’t delusions. They were weird and otherworldly, scary at times, mysterious, and hard to control, but one thing they were not and delusions were, was false. The Clark County Medical Center wasn’t a bunch of nightmarish flashbacks but a real place she had visited, if not in body, in
fact
, countless times. She’d seen real things, been real places, met real people, learned real names. She’d talked to Ernie Myers from a supposed delusion and she’d talked to him in the real world, and in the real world he was mad at her for doing something to him from her delusion, which told her the delusion was as real as the real. She was never making any of this stuff up, she was really going there and seeing it.

Just like her visions of the ranch, the white paddock fence, the driveway, the three aspens, the house, the barn, all of it. She’d seen those things because they were really there and somehow, some way, she’d been there to see them before really being there. The Mandy she saw coming out of the hospital was the same Mandy she saw coming in—now, how that worked she hadn’t a clue, but both Mandys were she, and both were real.

She beckoned to Maybelle, who sat with her friends on their perch in the corner. Maybelle fluttered, alighted on a lipstick, and brought it to her. The dove got a treat and returned to the perch.

Anyway, this changed everything. Seeing things that weren’t real was crazy. Seeing things that turned out to be real wasn’t. Thinking she could move things from somewhere else was crazy, but really moving them from somewhere else wasn’t. Just ask Clarence, Lemuel, Preston Gabriel, Bill, and Tyler, and most every audience she’d ever had—to name a few. Until today she’d gone with it and figured it was just part of her crazy world, something she would never understand, much less discuss. Now she still didn’t know what it was—a gift, maybe?—but she knew it wasn’t crazy.

As for thinking—knowing—she was Mandy Whitacre, if all the other stuff was real, then maybe her being twenty years old in 2010 when she was born in 1951 was real, too. Sure it was. She just hadn’t figured that part out yet.

Anyway, all the trouble aside, today’s Dumpster escape went off without a hitch because slipping between dimensions, “interdimming,” to pull off a vanish, escape, levitation, whatever she needed, wasn’t so scary or difficult anymore. She was getting a handle on it—pretty much. Now, if the trouble would just stay away …

Well
—she touched up her rouge—
maybe you’re not crazy, so try not being dangerous. Behave yourself and be glad you aren’t in jail!

The nine-o’clock show had a great crowd, a nearly full house.

Les and Eileen, along with their friend Clive, all from Westport, Connecticut, were as entertaining as Sarah, Clive’s wife, the one Mandy levitated. Mandy allowed them to walk all around and under Sarah and even wave their hands over the top of her to feel for wires, and they were having such an amazed, flabbergasted, and hilarious time of it the routine was scoring big points and gold stars with the audience. What made the illusion even more fun was the fact that Sarah, unlike most pretty girls who get levitated, was not in a hypnotic trance but fully awake and as giddily mystified as her husband and friends were.

Nearly excellent
, thought Dane, sitting near the back. Incredible timing, inventive effects and gags, great pacing, perfect misdirection and hand placement, lots of Vegas-style pizzazz, but where was the wonder? He couldn’t see it in her eyes or hear it in her voice, not like before. Maybe the town was getting to her. Or …

He could see Seamus Downey standing in the back, watching—or patrolling. Downey seemed pleased enough, but with a strange lord-of-all look in his eyes that Dane had seen before and never liked. So this was the man in her life now? That could explain a lot.

What a feeling—or feelings: pride in the great progress she’d made, gladness at her success mixed with regret at the loss of her unique sparkle, sorrow at the chasm now between them, and a longing to be with her, at least to be friends again, to steer her a bit, maybe bring back what she’d lost since … The memory of that day would forever haunt him.

He’d come in the hope of speaking with her, but now that was looking like no small task, especially with Mr. Downey the Great and Powerful lurking about. He’d thought of finding someone in management and using his name to get through to her, but seeing her on that stage made her seem so unreachable and him so much a stranger, what could he say?

He could try congratulations, kudos, small talk, and then—
oh, this should be easy
—the question of who she really was, and how would he segue into that? He might comment on the stage name she’d chosen and how she’d come by that name, and whether that tied in with all the other facts about her that lined up perfectly with the girl he met some forty years ago.

And where from there? Oh, this should be a cakewalk.

The show went great considering what a day she’d had, but as soon as she closed the dressing room door, uncapped a bottle of water, and dabbed the sweat from her face, the highs of the performance ebbed away and the trouble loomed in her mind. Maybe,
maybe
, Ernie Myers would forget about her, maybe he wouldn’t see her picture in the paper even though she told him she was looking for the Orpheus Hotel; maybe the hospital wouldn’t be that interested in her even though she decked two of its employees.

There was a knock on the door. It didn’t sound like a police bust. The voice was quiet and courteous. “Miss Whitacre?”

“Julio?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She opened the door to Julio the bellman, all by himself. He’d brought a small envelope. “Thanks, Julio.” She offered him a treat-size Hershey’s bar from a dish on her vanity. He snatched it up, gave her a wink, and let her be.

The envelope contained a note. She unfolded it and read, “
Saw you near the elevators the day of my accident, would like to speak to you regarding what you saw.”
It was signed by Doris Branson, the hotel manager. Branson included her phone number.

Mandy rested against the wall and let her lungs empty. Accident? What a day. First Ernie, and now her.

The good news could be, if Doris Branson saw her near the elevators while she was interdimming there, that was one more confirmation that something real was going on, a second witness. The bad news could be, if Doris Branson had an accident right after she saw Mandy, the same as happened to Ernie, that could mean that Mandy and all her interdimming had something to do with it, and what if it did? Double trouble.

Well …

She’d just have to call Doris and face the music, whatever it was. It probably would be painful, but what else was new? She might learn something more about her very strange world, so the pain might be worth it. To put a smile on it, maybe Doris would end up on her side and talk to Ernie, then maybe they’d all talk, then maybe … she didn’t know.

Dane waited through the show, suffering and enjoying, and stood to applaud when Mandy struck her final pose. When the curtain came down and the lights came up, he searched through the heads and shoulders to find an usher, anyone—other than Downey—he might ask about having an audience with—

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. An unintended brush, of course; the place was swarming. There was an usher at the main door. He could ask him—

The tap came again. Probably Downey. Dane steeled himself and turned.

“Pardon me,” said a middle-aged man in wire-rimmed glasses. “Am I addressing Dane Collins?”

Dane was looking at a miracle and made no effort to hide his awe. “You most certainly are.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, sir, and glad I caught you.” The man extended his hand. “I would use an alias, but you already have my name: Jerome Parmenter. Before you have your talk with Miss Whitacre, may we have a word?”

chapter

39

P
armenter couldn’t talk with Dane anywhere at the Orpheus, not in a hotel room, not in the casino, not in the lounge or in the restaurant. They had to find someplace safe, neutral, secure. Dane suggested the house where he was staying.

“No,” said Parmenter, “everyone knows you’re living there.”

“What do you mean, ‘everyone’? Who’s ‘everyone’?”

“We’ll talk about that.”

“So how much do you know about me?”

“Not here.”

Dane thought of going to Christian Faith Center. By now it was after ten, but the church might still be open. Parmenter thought that would work. Dane called Pastor Chuck, who met him at the front door and gave him a key to lock up. Parmenter remained in the car until Dane could make sure no one would see him, and then went inside.

They settled for the Preschool Department, a large room painted in bright, primary colors with biblical murals on the walls, Scripture posters, pictures of Jesus, Moses, the disciples, the lost sheep, the boatful of fish, and finger paints of Jesus, sheep, fishing boats, and an empty tomb. They sat down on child-size chairs at a child-height table in a corner filled with plastic toys. It looked awkward, even a little silly, but Parmenter felt safe here. He visibly relaxed.

“Good. Good enough.” He faced Dane, hands on his knees, his knees elevated because of the tiny chair he sat on. “Thank you for giving me this time, and most of all, thank you for choosing to talk with me before talking to Miss Whitacre. I’m sure you’ll see it was the right choice.”

Parmenter produced a laptop computer from his briefcase, set it on the table, and flipped it open. He reached for a child’s wooden block and set it on the table as well.

Dane recognized the computer. “You were there at McCaffee’s.”

“Oh, you bet I was.” He pulled a small device that resembled a GPS from the briefcase and set it atop the toy block. He switched the device on, then tapped at the computer keys, apparently responding to whatever information the device was sending. “And I’m going to answer all your questions if I can, but I suggest we cover things in order, and in small doses. You’ll understand once we get into it.”

A few more taps on the computer, and then he took the block and held it out. “Here. Hold this in your hand.” Dane extended his palm, and Parmenter set the block on it. “To get through the introductions, I know who you are and where you live and what you do for a living, so there’s no need for you to tell me. As for who I am, you obviously know or you wouldn’t have made such a lasting impression on Dr. Kessler. I can tell you my age—I’m fifty-seven—and I could list my credentials and diplomas and bore you to death or I could get right to the important stuff. So hold the block up so you see where it is and also”—he indicated the block’s former location on the table—“where it came from.”

Dane felt like a volunteer in one of his stage routines, but he was not expecting a magic trick.

“Lucky for us,” said Parmenter, eyeing the computer screen, “Mandy Whitacre is inactive at the moment, probably asleep in bed, so we’ll be able to squeeze in and do this. Don’t blink. You ready?”

Dane’s eyes were open.

Parmenter tapped the enter key on the computer.

The block vanished from Dane’s hand and instantly reappeared in its former location on the table.

Dane was impressed but not surprised. He’d already seen this phenomenon several times.

Parmenter looked at the block on the table, then at Dane. “Okay, you saw what happened?”

Dane nodded. “Interdimensional displacement?”

The scientist lit up. “You’ve been reading about me!”

“And this is how she does it.”

“Fundamentally, yes. To qualify myself in your eyes, I have just shown you the core explanation for Mandy Whitacre’s magic, and I’m not betraying a confidence. I invented it. Shall I break it down for you?”

“You have my undivided attention.”

“To put it simply, I set the block on the table, then determined the exact spatial coordinates, exactly where it was, at”—he consulted his computer—“eleven thirty-eight
P.M.
, January thirtieth, 2011. I then moved it to another location, your hand, at approximately eleven thirty-nine. Then the fun part: I sent it back to where it was and how it was at eleven thirty-eight. Where it was and how it was, the exact state it was in a minute earlier. It’s crucial to understand that.”

“And how did you do it?”

Parmenter sucked in a whistle, then sighed it out, trying to come up with an answer, Dane figured. “It’s a combination of time and space travel, although the crucial difference is, the block didn’t travel through time, time traveled through the block.”