Read The Magician’s Assistant Page 9


  “It’s only been two weeks,” she says.

  “Still,” Phan says. He looks at the bandage on her hand, touches the white tape around the stitches. “I was sorry about this. I saw that knife go straight into your hand. Did it hurt much?”

  Sabine thinks about it, but it all seems so far away. “I can’t remember,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

  “Good,” Phan says, and he kisses the bandage over her hand. “That’s what we like to hear.”

  Sabine slept late. Despite the sun in the room and the rabbit nudging at her, wanting food, she did not wake up until after nine. When she did wake up, she felt better about everything. What else was she going to do today, anyway? Work on a shopping mall? Go through the dresser drawers again? Sleep? Why not call Dot and Bertie? All she knew for sure was that the story was complicated, it happened a long time ago, and she was only getting part of it. Parsifal had taken care of them in the will, he had been helping them for years. Wasn’t that a sign, a kind of forgiveness? Besides, whatever it was, it was one day. Tomorrow they would be going back to Nebraska.

  The phone hadn’t made it through one whole ring when Bertie answered. “Hello,” she whispered, her voice low and suspicious.

  Sabine had almost forgotten about Bertie, who had slept peacefully through all the revelations of the night. “Bertie, it’s Sabine.”

  “Sabine?” she said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Your mother and I talked last night about going out today. I could drive you around, show you some places that Parsifal liked.”

  “Mom’s not up yet,” she whispered. “It isn’t like her, but the room is so dark, and the time change and all. Maybe it just threw her off.”

  It was an hour later in Nebraska. “We were up pretty late,” Sabine said. She found that she was whispering back and stopped it. “After you went to bed, we got together and talked. Have you been out yet? You’re not just sitting there in the dark, are you?”

  “I don’t want to wake her,” Bertie said.

  Sabine thought about how often she had sat in a dark hotel room, waiting for Parsifal to wake up. All the endless places she had sat, waiting. It must be a family trait. Half of them sleep, half of them wait. “Put your mother on the phone.”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “Well, she told me to call her in the morning and wake her up so we could go. I’m just doing what I said I’d do.” Enough of waiting for Fetters to wake up.

  “Um,” said Bertie. The line was quiet for a minute, as if she were really thinking it through. “Okay,” she said finally, “hold on.” She put the phone down softly. Sabine could hear her cross the short distance between the two hotel beds. “Mom?” she said, her voice still a whisper. “Mama, wake up. It’s Sabine. She says we’re going out today.” There was a pause, most likely for a touch to the shoulder and then a gentle shake.

  Sabine wondered how much longer Mrs. Fetters had stayed on in the bar. Last call had only been minutes away, but clearly that bartender liked her. Maybe she should have let her sleep.

  “Mama?”

  “Hum?”

  “Sabine’s on the phone.”

  “Sabine?”

  “She’s taking us someplace, she says. She wants to talk to you.”

  There was rustling, the click of the light switch. Sabine could almost feel Dot’s bones shift as she stretched. “Hello,” Mrs. Fetters said. It was the voice of a late sleeper, someone who would not be awake for at least an hour after they were up and dressed.

  “It’s Sabine. I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “You didn’t wake me,” Mrs. Fetters said.

  Just like Parsifal, who slept more than anyone in the world and always lied about being asleep. “I just wanted to tell you, yes, I’d be happy to take you and Bertie around today if you’re still interested.” It was easier now. They had found something out about each other. They knew, to some small extent, what they were dealing with.

  “How’s your hand feel?”

  Sabine looked down at her hand and was half surprised to see it taped up. She had forgotten about it until the question was asked. “It’s fine,” she said. She lifted it, turned it side to side. “It feels much better.”

  Even under these difficult circumstances, Sabine was glad to show off her city. Los Angeles, she felt, was maligned because it was misunderstood. It was the beautiful girl you resented, the one who was born with straight teeth and good skin. The one with the natural social graces and family money who surprised you by dancing the Argentine tango at a wedding. While Iowa struggled through the bitter knife of winter and New York folded in crime and the South remained backwards and divided, Los Angeles pushed her slender feet into the sand along the Pacific and took in the sun. The rest of the country put out the trash on Wednesday nights and made small, regular payments against a washing machine and waited through the long night for the Land of Milk and Honey to get hers. And, oh, how America loved it when it happened. They called in sick to work and kept their children home from school so they could watch it together on television as a family, the fate of a city too blessed. The fires shot through the canyons, the floods washed the supports out from beneath the houses that lined the hills over the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. There were earthquakes. There were riots. America leaned over: “Dangerous,” they whispered to their children. “I always told you that.” It was true, in the orderly city the boys packed together and murdered one another and then themselves in brutal festivals. There were places you could no longer go at night and then places you could not go during the day. The city kept its head down. Everyone would say, It is not the same.

  But Sabine never thought in terms of having allegiance to her country. She loved Los Angeles. Sabine would always choose to stay. She had lived through every tragedy and shame and they only served to draw her and her city closer together. What would she be without the palm trees, without the Hollywood Hills? She had been born in Israel, but she was shaped by tight squares of regularly watered lawns, by layers of deep purple bougainvillea blooming on top of garages. She heard languages she could not identify and they were music. She smelled the ocean. She loved to drive. After she and Parsifal finished a show, they would almost always drive the long way home, up and over Mulholland, to watch the lights in the canyon. “Try getting that in North Dakota,” he would say to her. They lived in the magnificence of a well-watered desert where things that could not possibly exist, thrived. They lived on the edge of a country that would not have cared for them anyway, and they were loved. They were home. Do not speak badly of Los Angeles to Parsifal and Sabine.

  Dot and Bertie Fetters, rested, washed, fed, and dressed, were back in Phan’s car. They were ready. They gave no hint that they had thought all along that Sabine would come through. They never said she owed them a ride in Los Angeles. On the contrary, they were overwhelmed. They trembled with gratitude that she should give them such a gift.

  “Really,” Bertie said from the backseat. “This is so nice of you.” The top section of her hair, whose curls today appeared more gold than brown, was pulled away from her face in a mock-tortoise barrette. It was a pretty face, though it took some getting used to. The spikes of her eyelashes had left tiny black dots of mascara beneath her eyebrows. Of all the different styles represented in Los Angeles, the Midwestern look was rarely seen.

  Mrs. Fetters, either not fully awake or just slightly hung-over, kept touching Sabine’s arm as a way of expressing her thanks.

  Sabine had not forgotten what had been said the night before. She kept the Nebraska Boys Reformatory Facility close to her heart. But this morning she felt unable to pin it on the small woman who sat beside her in the car. All that had stayed with her from the conversation was the sadness. The blame, somehow, had gone. “So is there anything in particular you want to see? Any place we should go first? We can go to the studios, the tar pits, the ocean.”

  “Where did Guy work?” Bertie asked, leaning over the seat. “Is there one main
place magicians work or do they go from place to place all the time?”

  “He was only a part-time magician,” Sabine said. “We never made our living at it.” She thought she saw a look of disappointment cross Dot Fetters’ face, as if her son were a failed magician. “Nobody makes a living at it, maybe a few dozen people in the country. It’s a terrible life, really, you have to travel all the time. Parsifal had two rug stores. That was his job.”

  “A rug salesman?” Dot Fetters asked.

  “He worked in an antique store when I first met him, then he got into fine rugs. The stores are very successful. He had a wonderful eye.”

  “I thought you had awfully nice rugs in your house,” Bertie said, happy to have put something together.

  “Then we’ll go to the rug store first,” Mrs. Fetters said. “And if there’s someplace he did magic, then we’d like to go there, too. And back to the cemetery. But we don’t have to go every place. I don’t want to be taking advantage of you here.”

  Sabine told them no one was taking advantage.

  Sabine hadn’t been to the stores in a long time. When Phan was sick and after he died, she went often, ferrying papers that needed signatures and couldn’t be faxed. Parsifal would ask her to go and look, at the color and the weave on something that had just come in. Again and again she said she knew nothing about rugs. “You have eyes,” he would say. “You have good taste. I want you to tell me if you like them. I want to know if they’re pretty.”

  They were pretty, always pretty, because Parsifal knew his business even when he couldn’t go to the store. And in truth, over time, Sabine had picked up some things through constant exposure. She never had Parsifal’s talent, but she had been with him on how many buying trips? She had been to Turkey. She had sifted through piles of prayer rugs in Ghiordes and Kula, stood in the sun until her sweat had made mud out of the dust on her legs. Maybe she had missed some subtle values, some rugs that were fine although possibly drab, but the great rugs she could always spot. She could read the patterns, knew at a glance a Melas from a Konya, a Ladik from a Sivas. She loved the Ladik. Parsifal said Sabine was invaluable because she had classic American tastes. Whatever she loved would be the first rug to sell when they got home.

  It wasn’t just her taste that was helpful. She was strong, though you might not know it to look at her. Sabine could hold up in the heat longer than Parsifal (“Yours are a desert people,” he would tell her as he went to sit in the shade) and she could lift the rugs, peel them back, separate the piles. Back in the old days, when there was only one store and the host of healthy young men Parsifal was given to hire had not yet been found, Sabine would climb the ladder and attach the rugs to overhead displays.

  Sabine had no plans to keep the stores and run them herself, but she hadn’t yet thought of letting them go, either. She drove the way Parsifal liked to go, down Santa Monica Boulevard, past Doheny, and through the abundance of boys. They roamed the street like beautiful moths in tight black jeans and draping trousers, their white T-shirts absorbing light. Blond curls dipped naturally; straight black hair, recently trimmed, swept into eyes. So many white teeth, so many square jaws. Black-brown skin pulled taut over biceps, heavy lashes fell softly on pink cheeks. They walked arm around thin waist, chin nuzzling neck. Bertie put both hands on the windowsill of the car. She started to say something, but then didn’t.

  “‘Parsifal’s on Melrose. Fine Rugs,’” Mrs. Fetters said, reading the neat gold letters of his name on the front window. How happy he had been the day the painters came. Sabine had taken his picture that day, standing next to his name. Where was that picture? “Will you look at that.”

  The fan of bells that Parsifal bought in China bumped against the glass and sang out when they opened the door. Salvio nearly cried when he saw Sabine. He put down his coffee and walked all the way across the store with his arms stretched out towards her, and she stepped into those arms like a woman stepping into a coat held out to her by a man.

  “My angel,” Salvio said. He kissed her neck beneath the straight line of her hair. “We’ve all been hoping you would come down when you were ready. We miss you, everybody misses you so much.”

  Sabine nodded and touched his head. She knew who he was missing. Siddhi and Bhimsen, the two men from Nepal whose job it was to unfold the rugs for customers, came and shook her hand warmly, offering sympathy in sketchy English. Mrs. Fetters and Bertie stayed by the door beneath a towering arrangement of tightly wrapped calla lilies, watching.

  Sabine squeezed her eyes shut for a second and then pulled back. “You’re never going to guess who I’ve got with me,” she said. She held out her hand and they came to her in shy obedience. “Salvio Madrigal, this is Dot and Bertie Fetters. Parsifal’s mother and Parsifal’s sister.”

  Salvio was a champion. He would not engage in price haggling but always let the rugs go out on trial. He was helpful but never made anyone feel crowded. Whatever was said, Salvio took it as something expected, something completely natural, so he did what any person would do when meeting family, even though he knew Parsifal’s family was dead. He held out his hand. “Mrs. Fetters, it is such an honor to meet you. Your son was a dear friend of mine, one of the best men I ever knew. I am very sorry for your loss.”

  Mrs. Fetters held his hands and looked at him with such tenderness a passerby would have thought this woman had finally found her son.

  “Salvio runs the store,” Sabine said. “He does everything.”

  “Did Guy ever run the store?” Mrs. Fetters asked Salvio. “Did he work in here?”

  Where did he stand? Which chair did he sit in? May I hold the phone that he held? Show me the way he held it. Did he stand here and look out this window? Was there something in particular he watched for? Tell me, and I’ll look for it, too.

  “Guy was Parsifal,” Sabine told Salvio.

  “Parsifal,” Mrs. Fetters said, repeating a difficult word she was trying to memorize. “It’s right there on the window.”

  Salvio didn’t throw one questioning look to Sabine. He picked up the dance step, followed the lead. “He used to be here all the time, seven days a week. But then there was another store, other things going on. It was good for him to take some time away. Everybody knew he worked too hard.”

  “Once Phan got sick,” Sabine said, because Salvio couldn’t, wasn’t sure, “Parsifal turned it all over to Salvio.”

  “Did you know Phan?” Bertie asked. Mrs. Fetters had clearly brought her daughter up to speed this morning: The History of Your Brother as I Know It, over breakfast. And Bertie, in all her sweet Midwestern dullness, had taken it in, made the information part of her so that now, a few hours later, she was asking about the dead lover of the dead brother she did not know.

  Salvio dressed like an aging tough boy—black jeans, black T-shirt, his black hair, just now gray at the edges, slicked back. “I knew Phan well. I was here in the store on the day that they met. He was a very sweet man, thoughtful, generous. Very quiet.”

  “They met here?” Mrs. Fetters said.

  “Phan came in to buy a rug. I think it was”—he looked at Sabine—“was it a Vietnamese rug?”

  Sabine nodded.

  “They never did find that rug,” Salvio said.

  Los Angeles gleamed. January and sixty-eight degrees. A light breeze hustled the smog out towards the valley and left the air over Melrose as fresh as a trade wind in Hawaii. The streets were so wide it felt like luxury. It was not Manhattan, nothing pressed close together, nothing strained. Instead it stretched, relaxed, moved slowly. It was not Alliance, Nebraska. Everything beckoned. Every store was a store you wanted to step inside of. Every girl was a girl you wanted to kiss.

  “I thought we’d go to the Magic Castle for lunch,” Sabine said.

  “Castle?” Bertie said. She was looking over her shoulder, watching the rug store recede behind them. She had been happy there. She had wanted to stay.

  “It’s a club where Parsifal and I used to perform, a
magicians’ club.” Sabine was glad it was Friday and they could go to lunch and not dinner. There would be fewer people she knew there for lunch, but there would still be too many people she knew no matter when they went. Magicians were notorious for hanging out. Each one had his own very specific seat at the bar, a drink that everyone was supposed to remember. They wanted to perform, they wanted people to see them, they wanted to steal each other’s tricks. The thought of the Castle depressed her.

  But people loved it, the massive old house on the top of the hill, all the cupolas and leaded windows, the secret rooms and sliding walls. They made the place feel haunted by leaving it dusty and dim. Even at a quarter to twelve on a bright afternoon it felt like the middle of the night in there, dark wood and heavy blood-colored carpets, chandeliers turned low.

  They squinted as they stepped inside. The woman at the desk was on her feet and coming at them before their eyes had fully adjusted to the dark. “Sabine!” She hugged Sabine hard around the neck. “Monty!” she called over her shoulder. “Sabine’s here.” She touched Sabine’s face, touched her arm. “Look at you. Look how skinny you are. We’ve all been wondering when you were going to come down.”

  “I haven’t been getting out much,” Sabine said.

  “Well, it’s early yet. It hasn’t been any time at all.”

  Sabine introduced the Fetters to the woman, whose name was Sally. Sally had worked the door at the Castle for the twenty years Sabine had been coming, and in that time her hair had become blonder and her eyeliner darker, but the woman was still essentially the same. She didn’t know that Parsifal didn’t have a family, so meeting them was no surprise. Monty came down from the office, kissed Sabine, shook everyone’s hands.

  “People ask about the act all the time,” Monty said. “Everybody wants to know when Parsifal and Sabine are coming back.”

  “We won’t be coming back,” Sabine said. Wouldn’t that be a trick.