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

“Do they tell the same story?”

I leaned in close to the quilt. “I don’t know. The first part has never said a word.”

Olivia finished her sandwich. “Well, if you made it, I’m sure it has a lot to say.”

I laughed.

When I’d finished joining the two parts, I ran my fingers over the whole, wondering when Toby would appear. His actions, his desert magic, were visible, but Toby himself was absent.

Olivia finished her sandwich. “I think I’d better leave you alone.” She touched the quilt on her way out the door.

I continued to look for Toby. But instead of hearing the magician, a new voice piped up. It came from the first part of my quilt, the part I’d begun in my early days out West. I located the patch, a tangerine bouclé taken from a Southern California hotel.

“He said he loved me, but I never really believed it. We were young. He was a magician. I was an assistant. I’ve read all the books. The magician falls for someone else. Well, that’s not exactly how it went down.” Eva paused. “At first no one noticed, you know,” she scoffed. “Everyone was so distracted by how great his trick looked that no one in the audience imagined I was gone for real. You know the rest. And you could have stopped him from doing it again.”

Before I had time to reflect on what Eva had said, a familiar voice piped up. “It was cool for a little while, being dead. When they heard about it back at my high school, everyone was talking about me. One girl even said that she saw me in some parking lot. Like I’d be hanging out in a parking lot! But then—” She snapped her gum again. “—then people sorta started to forget. Something else happened. Some local girl made it into a movie or whatever, and no one thought about me anymore. It totally sucked!”

When these two fell silent, I folded my hands and waited for my magician to speak. Just as my hand grasped a package of needles, I thought I heard his voice. It seemed to be coming from the Navajo marriage blanket—the scratchy wool a perfect vehicle for Toby’s voice. I leaned in close, but the words were indistinct. I let the red-and-black wool rest between the scissors’ blades, wondering if the woman who sold us the blanket had been wrong and that the only way to save my marriage was to destroy the blanket. I look a deep breath before letting my scissors race through the blanket, disrupting the geometric patterns, severing the cloud colors from the desert colors. It didn’t take long to reduce the blanket to strips and squares. I wondered how these shapes would work their way into my patchwork. I kept cutting.

Finally, I reached for a needle and thread. I started sewing. The needle flew in and out of the fabric, creating a pathway of stitches that drew Toby and me together again in the dark desert. There he was, as he was meant to be, arriving at my table in the Old Stand Saloon. It was as if my patchwork had been waiting for his arrival. It seemed to shine and come to life. The glittery fabrics of Las Vegas sparkled, the desert reds hummed, even the oceans—Max’s domain—vibrated.

“I’d been waiting for the two of you to come along.” My needle trembled. My hand paused, allowing me to look at the patchwork maze. A black-and-white-checked fabric had appeared among the desert reds. It spoke with the voice of the waiter at the Old Stand Saloon. “I’d been waiting and I’d been hoping. Magic doesn’t come to town twice in one week.” When his voice faded, absorbed back into the fabric, my needle resumed its pace.

Soon the pieces of the marriage blanket were scattered among the desert squares. They stood astride the glittering, synthetic casinos and beneath the torpid swaths of sun. And from a square where the blanket intermingled with patches of white velour and red Vegas sateen, I heard a new voice. “They come and go, the couples. I don’t really take no notice anymore. Maybe they in love. Maybe they drunk. Maybe she pregnant. Joo know? But they pay, they marry.” The white velour from which the voice was coming gave a rattling cough. “But joos was different. Joos was meant to marry. Marry and then some. I say to myself, I’ve been waiting for a couple like this.” Then the priest fell silent.

My needle had come to a rest. The patchwork continued to vibrate. I shook off my thimble. “So,” I said to a scrap of the blanket, “I’m waiting” I tapped one of the Navajo scraps.

“I was waiting for you that day. And you made everything better.”

“Until I couldn’t.”

“It’s not important how we came together. We fell in love.”

If you can conjure me, you can send me away, I almost told the quilt. But these were words meant for Toby.

When Toby fell silent, I turned to the Max shapes, hoping to be comforted by my brother’s voice. I let my eyes run along the quilt, watching Max’s story unfold. I saw his escape into the river. I saw our swim with the whale. And then I came to the patch that told of my fall through the ice—a patch I’d sewn during my last stint in the studio, capturing the muddy brown of the hill and the cherry red of Max’s coat. This patch looked different now, fuzzy and unraveled. Unlike the Max patches that led up to this one, my sewing seemed careless here and imprecise. I closed my eyes, trying to remember both the patch and the day it recalled. My recollection was just out of reach. I folded the quilt away and ran toward the villa. On the pathway, I collided with Olivia. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement.

“The rabbits,” she said. “The ghost rabbits. They’re back.”

We arrived at