We began gathering our things. Nat would be apoplectic if she’d heard some of these rules. What’s next? she would lecture. No deodorant? No laughing? No individual thought? What the fuck is this place?
I snapped the elastic band again—harder this time.
15
A SINGLE BLACK stool, illuminated by a spotlight, stood in the middle of the stage. The audience was quiet, holding their breath and squinting at the shadows. Pink sparks burst from stage right. The crowd gasped. Another burst on the left. They gasped again. The spotlight cut out for a second.
When it brightened again, I was standing center stage, stock-still with outstretched arms.
The audience cheered, unable to believe their eyes. I hadn’t walked onstage, had not been lowered or lifted to it. I had simply materialized.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I purred, “thank you for being here tonight. I’m Madame Fearless. Before we begin, let me remind you I do not use actors or plants in my audience. Everything you will see in this theater is one hundred percent real.” Affixed to my black floor-length dress was a cape bejeweled with a giant phoenix, wings spread. I swept it aside. “Let me also remind you I do not perform magic. Rather, I am a mentalist. Before you dismiss the difference as some snobbish technicality, I will explain. Tonight I won’t saw a person in half, though there are a few men on which I would like to attempt such a feat.” I arched an eyebrow and let the audience laugh. “I can’t guarantee I’d put them back together.”
The crowd continued to chuckle. I took a few steps to my right, the spotlight following me. “Nor will I endeavor any card tricks, sleight-of-hand maneuvers, or pull a never-ending knot of scarves from my mouth.” I touched my throat, as if imagining the attempt, then took several steps to the left. The audience had quieted again.
“If you insist on calling what I do magic, then it must be considered mental magic.” I returned to the middle of the stage and steepled my fingers, contemplating the sea of faces. “Let us begin. Is anyone willing to join me onstage?”
Hundreds of hands rocketed into the air.
In the two and a half years I had been performing this show, I’d discovered there was an art to selecting assistants. In my early days I called upon only the most appetent participants, the ones who wagged their arms and lifted their backsides off the seats, dying to be chosen. I learned the hard way that many of those people had an agenda. They wanted a chance to ham it up, pilfer my spotlight. As I worked night after night, tweaking aspects of the performance, I realized the key to selection was in the eyes. Sometimes I came down from the stage and walked the aisles in search of the widest, shiniest eyes I could find. I knew them the instant I saw them: the ones who were desperate to believe. Those were the aides I wanted.
While I patrolled the edge of the stage, searching the crowd, two theater employees set up a long table behind me. A third staff member wheeled a cart with an assortment of items next to the table. They had all exited stage left by the time I’d made my first selection. I welcomed a young woman with curly red hair and a shoulder-padded jacket, asked her to tell everyone her name and where she was from. Since all my shows to date had been on the East Coast, most of my participants hailed from New England, sometimes the Midwest. That was about to change. Last week my agent had secured a national tour of my show.
I handed Red a glass vase with a single white rose but no water. “Would you mind holding on to this for me?” She nodded, clutching the vase.
I shielded my eyes from the spotlight, scanning the crowd as if deep in thought, when in fact I’d already spotted my other targets. I called an older man with a big mole on his cheek to my stage and gave him a toolbox.
Last but certainly not least, because the third pick was the most critical, I chose a middle-aged man with bifocals. After Bifocals introduced himself, I offered him a small package wrapped in robin’s egg blue paper. The scene was set, the players in place. My spine tingled with anticipation. The three spectators stood side by side, jittery.
I turned to the crowd. “Since I’m the ambitious type, when I began putting my show together, I thought, ‘How wonderful would it be if I could not only entertain people but also improve their lives?’ I started thinking about how I could help, about what it means to be human. I thought of love and joy and compassion.” I paused, let the smile slide off my face millimeter by millimeter. “But some of us are not lucky enough to experience one of those things, let alone all of them. What’s something we can all relate to?