The Spirit Cabinet (17 page)

It was unusual, this rehearsal, but Miranda didn’t mind. Anything to break up the day, that was her thinking. It was almost her motto. From the time she awoke—sometime around nine a.m., absurdly early by Las Vegas standards, shamefully late by her parents’—until the Show at ten p.m., the day stretched out, empty as the Saskatchewan prairie she’d grown up on.

Lately she’d been going to churches, churches of all sizes and denominations, but there were few services held in the late mornings and early afternoons of weekdays. And those that she had found were decidedly weird. They featured either gamblers inveighing against their ill fortune, demanding angrily that God get with the program, or else gaunt men and women who spoke of the meads of asphodel and held their brass crucifixes upside down.

The traditional time-waster of her ilk—her ilk being known in the trade as a box-jumper, although she wrote thaumaturgical assistant on credit card applications and such—was, of course, keeping in shape. But such was the nature of Miranda’s body that flabbiness could be erased with just a couple of snappy
stretches. She still belonged to Shecky’s Olympus—the shadowy Hades where she’d first encountered Rudolfo—but only needed to go a couple of times a week. Actually, she didn’t really
need
to go at all, but she sometimes craved the human company, even if it was silent and surly. (The bodybuilders worked with grim industry, exhaling heavily with exertion so Miranda was buffeted by many small winds. She’d first noticed Rudolfo, Miranda remembered, because he alone acted otherwise, driving upwards from his squat with a long howl of ecstatic pain, ending with a rapid series of grunted
ja
s.)

Miranda also never seemed to gain weight and sometimes resented the fact, because that would at least give her a foe and a fight. She did sometimes go for runs in the desert, but the Bod usually located whatever little pockets of fat existed, tossing them out in desperate appeasement.

Miranda was perforce a hobbyist, one with an artistic bent. Watercolours, wood carving, photography. Her hotel room—she couldn’t bring herself to consider it an apartment, what with the furniture being bolted to the floor and all—was crowded with an easel and drawing table, the walls adorned with prints and parchment. None of it, Miranda knew, was much good. Some of the photographs were all right, the bloodless landscapes of the desert, and she’d once done a fine painting in the Chinese style, sitting cross-legged for thirteen hours and then lowering the brush to the rice paper, scraping it across and leaving behind a line that came from deep inside. Basically, though, she was a hacker. Her work was all just one step removed from jigsaw puzzles and paint-by-numbers.

All of which left her in a vast desolation of neon-lit timelessness, which is why she welcomed this rehearsal.

The two men were standing together on the stage, but each was so thoroughly up to his own business that they looked,
even from four hundred feet away, to be in totally different worlds. Rudolfo was directing the lighting guy, gesticulating at the ceiling as though he were God creating the universe. “Okay, blue,” he commanded, and the air became suffused with azure. Rudolfo stared through the shafts of illumination.
“Nein, nein, nein!”

Jurgen’s business was much harder to define. He seemed to be investigating the air itself, wiping a hand through the emptiness and then examining his fingertips as though there might be residue. Miranda was not so quick to notice his white hairs, nor the fact that his once-orderly locks were rebelling atop the blocky head, or that his tan, so deep a few days before, had faded away. But she did notice the odd expression he’d adopted, at once both somber and addled, as though Jurgen were at the same time pondering the universe and having his belly tickled.

Miranda leapt up on the stage. “Hey,” she said. “What’s up, guys? You got something new for me?”

“I don’t know,” said Rudolfo churlishly. “Is Jurgen’s idea for rehearsal.”

Jurgen nodded. “
Ja
, I got something new.” He turned, placed thick fingers in his mouth and whistled like the beer-swilling football fan he had been all those years ago.

“More, what the fuck is it called,
lavender!
” sang out Rudolfo, and he trusted that his disdain was manifest. He became aware of some disgruntled trudging across the stage, a few workmanlike grunts, a creak and some clumps. Rudolfo turned to see six unionized stagehands unloading what looked to be a huge old steamer trunk.

Jurgen rushed over, locking his fingers together, twisting his arms like a small girl who has just received a puppy. “Beautiful!” he enthused.

“Jurgen,” said Rudolfo patiently—he was determined to maintain his calm here— “what the fuck-shit is that?”

Rudolfo knew what it was, more or less—it was part of the Collection, a piece of junk that his partner had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for, but he didn’t know what it was doing on the bright shining stage at the Abraxas Hotel.

“Is new Substitution Box!”

“It’s not new,” noted Rudolfo. The wood was pale and green with age. The leather straps had been fed through the buckles so many times that the edges had been tanned to near-suede.

“
This
Substitution Box,” explained Jurgen, pointing helpfully, as if the stage were littered with Substitution Boxes, “is same one Houdini used.” Jurgen turned and gazed at Miranda. “You know routine?”

Miranda nodded. “Sure thing, boss. I used to do this chestnut with the Amazing Leonidas.” Miranda threw open the trunk and pulled out a huge canvas sack. (Rudolfo reeled, because the sack smelled as if it had been kept in Hell’s musty rec room.) “I cuff you. You get into the sack, I tie it, I close you and the sack inside the box and do up the padlock. I climb up on top, pull up a curtain. Meanwhile, you lose the cuffs. You cut through the bag at the bottom.” Miranda walked behind the trunk, reached out with her left big toe and pulled the lower part of the back wall away. “You roll out here, reach out and take the screen, I drop and crawl into the box. You drop the curtain,
bang
. Inside the box, I climb into the sack, I hold the bottom of the bag closed with my toes. You unlock the padlock, open up the box, untie the bag and
pow
, there I am. Metamorphosis.”

“Okey-dokey,” said Jurgen. “That sounds easy enough.”

“It’s kind of,” said Miranda hesitantly, “a corny bit.”

“Ja!”
said Rudolfo, even though he was trying not to pay attention. “Is corny like piss.” Rudolfo turned away and continued screaming at the lighting guy. “Put another gel on the spotlight right away now!”

“There’s a lot of acts with a sub box in it,” Miranda went on. “The Pendragons are the best. They do the switch so fast, it’s amazing. Our routine won’t be anything special.”

“Miranda,” said Jurgen seriously, “it gonna be special; you better believe it.”

“Well, okay, sure, let’s try.” Miranda bent down and dug through the stuff in the trunk, finally coming up with a pair of old handcuffs and snapping them around Jurgen’s thick wrists. The handcuffs were gaffed; all Jurgen had to do was knock the sides together and they would open and fall away. Jurgen stepped inside the canvas sack; Miranda raised the material over Jurgen’s head, pulled it tight and cinched the ropes. Jurgen folded himself into the Substitution Box and Miranda closed the lid, snapping the oversized padlock that fastened the latch.

Then she pulled off her sweater, socks and sweatpants, stripping down to a white leotard, because the main reason thaumaturgical assistants are usually almost naked is that clothes interfere with what they must do: crawl through tiny holes, make themselves as small as possible, etc., etc. Miranda picked up a large square of velvet and stepped up onto the Substitution Box. She planted her feet firmly and raised the curtain until both she and the trunk were hidden from view.

The moment just hung there, like washing on a line. It lingered for so long that Rudolfo turned away and placed his hand above his eyes, peering through the light into the darkness. “Okay, chief,” he said to the lighting guy. All of a sudden there came the strangest sound, a pop like a fat boy makes with finger and cheek. And there stood Jurgen atop the Substitution Box, grinning like the idiot he seemed intent on becoming. He jumped to the ground, produced a huge key, worked the padlock and pulled open the lid. The canvas sack rose up from inside the Box, its contents visibly shaking. Jurgen pulled at the ropes and the sack fell away from Miranda.

“Wow!” Her cheeks were flushed; indeed, her whole body was flushed, great circles of red bleeding through the whiteness of the leotard. Her hair was messy and her eyes were bleared with tears. “Holy fucking cow!” Miranda virtually leapt out of the Substitution Box; she sprang up and landed some feet away in a defensive crouch, as though terrified beyond reason. She wiped at her nose and eyes as though she were crying, but when she fell over backwards clutching her stomach, her long legs raised heavenward, it became more than clear that she was laughing.

Jurgen was laughing too, a chuckle that might be employed in a church should the pastor attempt a witticism.

Rudolfo stopped short. On talk shows Jurgen could be counted on to heave out a couple of overburdened breaths should the host say something meant to be funny, but beyond that Rudolfo had always believed that Jurgen had no laugh.

Only then did it hit him, the realization that should have come many hours earlier. He had never told the strange dope-sucking cabbie where to take him. He had not said where he lived. He didn’t know why this was connected to Houdini’s ugly old Substitution Box, but it was, the first idea stopping short and the next bumping into it like a hackneyed vaudevillian act.

He looked at his partner and he was afraid.

The only time Rudolfo had been more afraid was when he thought he would be arrested for General Bosco’s murder.

He and Samson had fled into the night.

The one thing Rudolfo had learned in the grim
Berufsschule
was how to function even when scared senseless. He thought through his predicament logically. How much did
die Bullen
know about him; how much would they have been told? His fellow circus performers thought his name was Rudy, because that’s what General Bosco had called him and General Bosco was the only one who ever talked to him. No one knew Thielmann and,
anyway, Thielmann was not a name entered in any birth certificates or records. So at best the police would be looking for a youth with platinum-blond hair (he quickly stuffed his wig into a trash container) known only as Rudy. He would simply cease to be that person.

Samson remained a larger problem. A fugitive does not benefit from the companionship of an albino leopard. Rudolfo headed for a department store to remedy the situation.

Curiously enough, Jurgen was in that same department store, although this was not the occasion of their first meeting. This was a near-miss, if you will. You could, conceivably, even perceive it as a miscalculation on Someone’s part. You could dismiss it as coincidence. But the fact remains that Jurgen Schubert was standing before a set of mirrors in the men’s department, trying on a suit of improbable colour. Preston the Magnificent, Sr., had been very clear in his instructions that the performer dress “not as a member of the drab and drear citizenry—for from these pedestrian ranks his Art has elevated him—rather as a latter-day Priest of the Sun, a Flamen of Fire, a wondrous robed Magi.” For some reason Jurgen seemed to think that magi had very bad taste, that they favoured the vomity tones of the spectrum. He had located a suit of such a profoundly ill hue, a bile green with little flecks of rust, that its manufacturer likely went out of business immediately following its creation. Jurgen stood before the mirrors and appraised himself, noting that the colour suited his deep plum eyelids. He struck a pose, placing a hand in front of his chest and twisting the fingers upwards. If he’d had a deck of cards, he would have produced a perfect fan; as it was, it merely looked like his hand was suddenly twisted by infirmity, retribution for even trying on the suit.

At that moment Rudolfo was skulking behind the racks of jackets and trousers, sneaking toward the hosiery. He glanced over, saw Jurgen and laughed. Jurgen spun around with darkened eyes.
He saw a strange white hairless creature looking at him from behind some clothes. This monster shook its head and then disappeared from sight.

Jurgen turned around and inspected himself once more. He decided not to buy that particular suit.

Meanwhile, Rudolfo had picked up and paid for a pair of black socks, shoe polish, a dark blue watch cap, three belts and a pair of sunglasses. He and Samson then took to an alley and awaited nightfall.

Some hours later they emerged, the watch cap covering the greater part of Rudolfo’s baldness, the sunglasses balanced on his nose. He walked in a stiff, awkward manner, his shoulders pulled back and his chin tucked into his neck. In his right hand he clutched the loop of a buckled belt; this belt was attached to and through the others, so as to form an odd kind of harness; this jerry-rigging girded young Samson’s chest and belly. It was Rudolfo’s inspiration that he should disguise himself as a blind man, and Samson as his Seeing Eye dog. Toward that end, he had blackened the albino leopard’s body with the shoe polish. It was impossible to do more than impart a kind of sootiness to Samson, but it was enough to cut the glare. The other problem, the animal’s pointed ears, Rudolfo solved in a clever manner, pulling the black socks over them to dangle with canine goofiness.

They hadn’t gone more than fifty feet before a passerby pressed a banknote into Rudolfo’s palm. He had found a new career.