The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

I struggled to control my breath. Surely, Eva would return. If she didn’t, would Toby come? Would he think to look for me in the desert?

Eva had asked me a question about loneliness. It prompted another. What is the darkest place I’d ever been? Until then I’d thought it was the river that had taken my brother during a storm. I’d been wrong. Now I knew: the top of that mesa.

Oddly, I was relieved that Eva had gone. The Toby she knew and the one I married were different men, different magicians. I felt the night draw closer, enveloping me in Toby’s lonely magic. But unlike Eva, I wasn’t its captive. I stood up and started to walk. I felt my way down the mesa. My shoes filled with pebbles and dust as I walked along the dirt road back toward the small highway to hitch a ride back to Vegas. I could not tell Toby where I’d been.

Seven

Sandra was getting under my skin during the days leading up to the Winter Palace’s grand opening. I had agreed to help her find the right dress for the VIP party. She dragged me through the malls at Caesars Palace, the Venetian, and the Aladdin until we found something suitably unsuitable. When she was not pinching me and pulling me from one boutique to another, she was back at the Winter Palace, hovering around my magician as he paced the main floor of the casino. She and her coworkers tittered, whispered in Toby’s ear, and bought him drinks, but Toby said nothing about his plans.

I knew that Toby’s silence concealed excitement. We sat up late, working on his show. While I sewed his costume—an elegant black suit lined with silk that captured the colors of the setting sun, he dreamed up illusions, made lists of materials, and considered how much of his remarkable skill he could display to the patrons of the Winter Palace and how he would trick them into believing that what they were seeing was not real.

Three hours before show time, the Winter Palace was crowded with middle-aged women who twirled their VIP passes, snatched blintzes and caviar canapés from passing trays, and flirted with the bartenders. Their heels were already doing a number on the red carpet. The explosion of fireworks from the Winter Palace’s minarets echoed through the building. A traveling branch of the St. Petersburg Orchestra was tuning up in the theater while the Flying Karamazov Brothers tested their juggling equipment in the wings. Cocktail waitresses in skimpy peasant outfits circulated with trays of champagne and White Russians. Sandra was tipsy. She was wearing heels that she described as “absolutely Ivana Trump,” and she looked, as she had wished, like something out of the pages of Russian Vogue circa 1985.

“Fantastic!” she trilled, popping a hand-cut potato chip loaded with caviar into her mouth. “Mel!” she yelled in my direction. “Mel! The curtains, fantastic. Everyone, just look at those curtains. Look how rich. You just want to roll around naked in all those folds. It’s too bad we can’t keep Mel around forever. Genius. She’s a genius.”

We were standing near an ice sculpture that Sandra had commissioned. It showed a family of caribou frolicking alongside an ornate sled filled with Russian royalty. The attention to detail was impressive, from the animals’ chin hairs to the patterns on the rugs warming the passengers. “You like?” Sandra said, accidentally showering one of the caribou with champagne. “I knew you’d like it. All that snow and ice.”

I thought how nice it would be to cool my cheek against the flank of a caribou. “It’s fantastic,” I replied.

“We’re keeping the sculptor on the premises for the first month, in case we have a meltdown. After that, we’ll call him in every other month or so for a touch-up.” Sandra paused and adjusted the neckline of her dress. “You know, I must have taken twenty calls in the last two days about this show. All of my girlfriends were dying to be in it.”

“I can imagine.”

“But I made the best choice.” Sandra swilled her champagne.

“Choice?”

“I wanted only the finest showgirl.”

“For what?”

“For Toby’s assistant.” Sandra gave me one of her condescending looks.

“Assistant?” I asked.

“Your husband is sex on legs, but you’ve got to appeal to the men, honey. They’re the big spenders.”

“What assistant?” My mind was racing back to Eva and the mesa—to the warning I thought Toby didn’t need to hear.

“Every good show needs a showgirl. And I got him the best. She’s the lead dancer at the Rio. Guys come, literally, from everywhere to watch her shake it.”

“But Toby doesn’t use an assistant.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Sandra said, polishing off her drink. “But we told him—no assistant, no show. And he’s pretty excited, let me tell you. She’s a real showstopper.”

I grabbed a drink from a passing tray and took a generous sip. “Sandra, this is a bad idea.”

“It’s not like he’s going to cut her in half or anything.”

I clutched her wrist. “He’s not supposed to use an assistant.”

“Is this jealously talking?” She tried to pull out of my grasp.

“You don’t understand—he can’t.”

“Honey,” Sandra began in her mock whisper, “there is no can’t. It’s already done.” She stepped away from me. “You’re never going to make it in this town if you’re afraid of a showgirl.”

“Sandra—”

“Done,” she called over her shoulder.

My heart pounded as I watched Sandra slip into her crowd of girlfriends and vanish in a swarm of high hair and sequins. I edged over to the gambling pits and set my drink on one of the craps tables, wishing I could find the magician and ask him why he hadn’t told me about the new addition to his show. I scanned the crowd for his familiar crown of shaggy black hair, but I knew that Toby was hiding. I exhaled, trying to expel the panic and numb my ears to Eva’s warning.

“Not on the felt, please,” a voice barked, making me