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

a success. It’s what I required to make sense of the craft.”

“And now?”

“Two disasters are enough.”

I examined the flat before me—a depiction of the courtyard of an Italianate villa with fountains and colonnades. One of the colonnades ended in a double door.

I heard Toby flex his fingers with a crack. “The only way I could ever perform again is if I were unable to undo what I did in Las Vegas. But I can’t. As you said, I have many skills at my command, but I cannot retrieve a life.” Toby paused, letting his words drift to the charred ceiling.

I reached out and touched the door at the end of the colonnade. I felt myself falling forward. I stumbled and was standing on the stage behind the magicians. Toby turned around.

“Sorry,” I said as I righted myself.

Theo smiled. “You are the victim of one of Piet’s trick doors. We built them to keep other magicians out. I’m surprised they still work.”

“It’s an astonishing theater,” I said.

“Your wife is right.” Theo gave me a conspiratorial smile. “I have to leave you for a moment and inspect a few details in the back of the building.”

When we heard the stage door shut, Toby looked at me. “Nice dress.”

I tied the robe properly. “It’s creepy here, but also kind of alluring. Like a ghost town.”

“It is creepy.”

I circled around him, letting the robe flutter behind me.

“Do you think Leo made that?” Toby asked.

“I have no idea. It’s so much nicer than anything they wear in Vegas shows.”

“I like Las Vegas. We understood each other. There was a kind of give and take between me, the city, and the audience. I didn’t criticize the people for their attitudes, and they didn’t look too closely at my art. We enjoyed each other despite our mutual shortcomings. Or maybe because of them. I came so close.”

Dust rose from my feet and swirled toward the lights. “But imagine if this was yours. It would be perfect for a close-up show like the one in the Castaway.”

“Do you really think this is something I should do?” Toby stared into the vacant stage lights.

“Magic is how you connect to the world. It seems a little silly to save all your tricks for me. Here is as good as anywhere as long as you make it your own.”

“And as long as I stick to the basics.”

I nodded.

Toby flattened his palms and held them out over the stage. “So that’s what it’s come to, a close-up show. I’m to be a card-and-coin man.”

“And the rest of it.” I jumped off the stage and sat in one of the banquettes.

“I suppose you are already redecorating.”

I pressed my hand into the stiff fabric, feeling the springs resist my touch. “Well, I hadn’t thought about it, but I could.” I lay my head against the top of my seat, listening for the fabric’s song or story. But all I sensed was silence. Then I reached out and ran a finger through the faded fringe on one of the small lamps.

It was silent. “Strange,” I said. “There’s no music. Not even a murmur.”

“Maybe they’re keeping their secrets,” Toby said. “This place was built by a magician.”

“Maybe.” But the fabrics in Piet’s house never hesitated to talk to me. “If you take Theo’s offer, we’ll have to do a serious exorcism on this place.”

“If.” Toby’s single word trailed into the wings.

“We could do it together,” I suggested.

“When I’m ready.”

“Of course.”

Toby sensed my disappointment. “So, tell me,” he said, joining me and putting an arm around my shoulder, “what fabrics would bring this place to life?”

“Why worry about that now?”

“I want to know. I want you to tell me.”

I hesitated.

“A saloon theme,” Toby said, prompting me.

“Not bad.”

“Ever since I arrived in Nevada, I’d always dreamed of a saloon-themed show.”

“Corny but clever.”

Toby nodded. “We’d have to make it a little classier than the Old Stand, of course.”

I laughed. “I’ve already done their fabrics.”

“And I already have the black Western shirt.”

Ten

In the days following the miraculous return of my amphibious brother, I became his watcher, his secret guardian, locked in a nightly vigil that I believed could hold him close. At least I thought that was my purpose.

Over the next few weeks of summer, I dreaded the start of school, when Max would be out of my sight. And I knew that before this separation, I had to memorize him. My study was careful and methodical. By fall, I could predict the clothes he was likely to wear the following day. I could tell whether he was about to hook his hands into the waistbands of his pants and if he would have trouble falling asleep at night. I knew the arch of his eyebrows when he encountered an unfamiliar word and the swift pucker of his lips when he was preparing to make a joke. I knew the number of wrinkles around his knuckles and the exact length of each of his toes. I knew that he preferred to cross his right leg over his left and that he held his breath when he climbed up the stairs. And I knew best of all the feeling of radiated calm that blanketed my body a split second before Max spoke to me.

Before I became a master of my art, I shadowed my brother from room to room, clinging to every word he said. But then I learned to dissemble—I figured out that I would learn more if he didn’t know that I was watching. I learned to peek around the corners of books and listen through walls.

I clung to every detail of my brother—the trefoil pattern of moles on his right forearm, the slight depression on his left earlobe, the way he ate cereal with water instead of milk, the number of minutes—eleven—that he spent in the shower. While I was oblivious of the latest developments in the coolest TV shows or what songs were on the charts, I was an