Jack

Seattle, WA—Beacon Theatre

Monday, June 7, 1909

I STOOD OFFSTAGE while Evangeline basked in the enthusiastic applause of the audience. She wore a gown the color of sunrise and a slender tiara that she’d worked into her hair. She looked like a queen soaking up the adoration of her subjects. And there was no doubt that they loved her. We’d been performing at the Beacon for a week, and we’d never played to anything less than a full house. In fact, we’d already been warned that we’d packed too many people in and had become a fire hazard.

When the curtain finally closed, I met Evangeline at her dressing room door with a glass of her favorite champagne and three sealed envelopes. She took the glass but wrinkled her nose at the letters.

“More invitations, I suppose.” Evangeline glided past me into her dressing room and sat on the chaise longue. She wasn’t the only performer who used the theatre, but she’d still demanded, and had received, her own dressing room.

“Mr. Harper,” I said. “Again. But these new ones are from Mr. Rockport—”

“That man is old enough to be my father.”

“And Miss Chevalier.”

Evangeline snatched that letter from me. “Eustace Chevalier is someone I wouldn’t mind becoming acquainted with.”

The letters began after the first performance. Poetry, invitations, missives promising enduring love and devotion. Evangeline ignored them all, and I only brought to her attention the ones I thought might interest her. There were a dozen more each night that I disposed of. Evangeline only cared about the attention.

The entire city of Seattle, the state of Washington, and much of the country were talking about the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, and they rarely spoke of it without mentioning the Enchantress. No one who was anyone came to the fair without buying a ticket to see her perform.

“Did you hear the applause, Jack? It was louder than last night’s.”

“They love you,” I said. “There was another article about you in today’s Star.”

Evangeline waved it off as if it were meaningless. “Didn’t I promise you this would be better than Paris?”

“You did.”

“When was the last time you even thought about your fragrant cheese boy?” she asked. “What was his name? Timothée?”

“Thierry.” And she was right. I hadn’t thought about Thierry since arriving in Seattle. And even as she brought him up, the trivial discomfort I’d felt at leaving him had all but vanished. “I never doubted you.”

Evangeline sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “I wish your sister felt the same.”

While Evangeline and I had rehearsed and performed, Lucia had hardly left the workshop. I’d even tried to cajole her into spending time at the fair with me and Ruth, but Lucia was stubborn.

“She does,” I said.

“Then she might try to show a little more appreciation for all that I’ve done.” Evangeline set her champagne flute down and turned her attention to me. It was like having the sun decide you were the only person on the planet deserving of its warmth. “Promise me you won’t ever leave me, Jack.”

“Leave you?” I asked. “Why would I leave you?”

Evangeline waved her hand noncommittally in the air but watched me pointedly, still waiting for my answer.

“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

Evangeline relaxed. “You’re a good boy, Jack. Run along now. I know you must have better things to do this evening. I certainly do.”

I backed out of the room as Evangeline dismissed me, and ran into George McElroy.

“Watch out,” I said.

“Where you off to in a hurry?” he asked. “Going to see Ruth?”

I tugged on my coat to straighten it and scowled at George. “That’s none of your business. And what, exactly, are you doing skulking around Evangeline’s dressing room?”

“I wasn’t skulking.”

“You don’t belong back here and you know it.”

George clenched his fists, but a smile quickly replaced his frown. “See you around, Jack.”

Ruth and I walked arm in arm along the Pay Streak as the sun began to set. All around us, crowds of people drunk on excitement ran and chattered. They were life, and I drew energy from them. Their exhilaration was my own.

Ruth and I watched folks board the Scenic Railway, stopped by the baby incubators to peek in on the little squallers, avoided Dixieland, and waved at Princess Lala and her asp. Seattle wasn’t my home any more than London or Paris or Rome had been, but Seattle was the first place that felt like it could be home. There was a charm here, a sense of adventure. It was infectious in its way. I felt like I could see my future spread out before me, boundless and free.

I didn’t understand how Lucia and I could be in the same city, and yet I was happy while she greeted each new day with profanity and a frown. Evangeline’s comment about Lucia was still on my mind, and I brought it up with Ruth. “Evangeline’s always been harder on Lucia,” I said, after telling her about our conversation at the Beacon.

“Why?” Ruth asked.

“Don’t know. Never thought about it.”

Ruth rolled her eyes at me. “Didn’t you say Lucia wants to perform? Maybe Evangeline could let her.”

I shook my head. “Evangeline hardly lets Lucia help with anything but designing and building the equipment we use in the show.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

“But it’s what Lucia’s good at.” Honestly, I thought Lucia could probably be good at whatever she set her mind to, but when it came to the apparatuses she built, I’d never met anyone more brilliant.

“Could be she’s tired of being told what to do,” Ruth said. “Could be that she’s ready to be out on her own.”

“She’s sixteen.”

“I was sixteen when I left home.”

I glanced at Ruth. “And you really don’t regret it, do you?”

Ruth shook her head. “Not one bit.”

“You weren’t scared?”

“Of course I was scared.” Ruth smacked my arm like I was a fool for suggesting otherwise. “But if I let that stop me from taking chances, I’d never get to do anything fun.”

I admired Ruth. She was as fearless as Lucia was brilliant. And she was determined too. I didn’t think there was anything that could stand in her way once she’d set her mind to doing something. She’d said she was going to college and then to medical school, and I believed she would get there no matter what obstacles folks tried to throw up in her way.

“Maybe you and Lucia could start your own magic show,” Ruth said.

“Me and Lucia?”

“Sure. You don’t really plan on staying with Evangeline forever, do you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked. “I’ve got everything I need.”

“Do you now?” Ruth raised an eyebrow at me.

I wasn’t sure what Ruth meant, and I was going to ask her to explain, but I noticed a crowd gathered in front of the Formosa Tea House, and it pulled me toward it like iron filings to a magnet.

Ruth and I managed to make our way to the front, where a man wearing a fine black evening suit stood surrounded on all sides by an audience. It only took me a moment to recognize a fellow magician. The man had a well-groomed mustache, a narrow patrician nose, and a weak chin. His costume would have looked at home on the stage of the Beacon, but it looked out of place amongst the crowds of the Pay Streak.

“Who is he?” Ruth asked. I was going to tell her I didn’t know, but a woman beside Ruth said, “He said his name is Laszlo. Isn’t he wonderful?”

I didn’t see anything terribly wonderful about him, but he’d attracted quite an audience, and I figured I might as well stay.

The golden light from the setting sun cast its glow on the magician, giving him an otherworldly radiance. “Is this your card, young woman?” Laszlo held the queen of spades out and up high for everyone to see. He spoke with a gentle accent that I couldn’t place.

The young woman standing in front of him giggled and said, “No, sir.”

Laszlo frowned. Deep creases lined his brow. “Are you quite certain?”

The young woman nodded, unsure whether she should be embarrassed by or for the magician. Others were beginning to laugh at seeing Laszlo outwitted by a child, though I suspected their reaction was premature.

Laszlo pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Then I don’t know—” He paused; his eyes lit up. Laszlo had a deep, smooth speaking voice, and he performed with a practiced ease that I couldn’t help but admire. He snapped his fingers. “May I assume this is your father?”

The girl nodded as the man standing next to her said, “I am.”

“Your hat, sir,” Laszlo said. “If you don’t mind.”

The man removed his well-worn cap, looking a bit bewildered, and handed it to the magician.

“The card must have leaped from your daughter’s mind to yours.” Laszlo reached into the hat and removed a card. This time the ace of clubs. “Now, young woman, is this your card?”

The girl beamed and clapped. “It is!”

But before her applause could spread, Laszlo tilted the cap upside down, and more cards began to spill from within. Each one an ace of clubs. When the flow finally stopped, Laszlo tapped the cap, freeing the last of the cards, and then returned it to the girl’s father with a cheeky bow.

The illusion was an easy one, though I couldn’t deny that Laszlo carried it off with a pleasingly breezy panache. Where the Enchantress performed for the audience, this Laszlo seemed to perform with them.

“And now,” Laszlo said. “If you wouldn’t mind providing me with a bit more room.” The crowd backed up, forming a circle around the magician. Allowing himself to be surrounded was a challenging way to perform. It increased the danger that someone might spy the secret of a trick. He was either supremely confident or a fool.

While Laszlo spoke, elaborating on the difficulty of an illusion such as the one he was about to perform, a young man entered the circle. He was tall, with thick brown hair, and sky-blue eyes framed by heavy brows. He was dressed in a suit that was so deeply scarlet that it was nearly black, and he moved delicately, as if fearful of making a sound. There was something familiar about him. I’d seen him before, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t remember where. I was so captivated by the young man that I nearly missed when Laszlo began.

“I call this illusion The Butterfly.”

From within his coat, Laszlo produced a silk square of many colors that was the size of a handkerchief. Laszlo unfolded it, and each time he did, the square grew implausibly larger. The fabric itself seemed to catch the dying light like the skin of a bubble. Laszlo continued unfolding the fabric until it was as large as a bedsheet.

“What stands before you is a caterpillar.” Laszlo motioned to the young man, his assistant. “A poor, unfortunate, ugly thing.”

I didn’t know if the young man was poor or unfortunate, but he was most certainly not ugly. He might not have been the most conventionally attractive boy I had ever seen, but like Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, he was intriguing, each new angle with a story to tell.

“Luckily for us, every caterpillar is destined to become something else through the magnificent power of metamorphosis.” As Laszlo continued speaking, he began to wrap the young man tightly in the silk sheet. “When nature demands, the lowly caterpillar will form a chrysalis.”

I could no longer see the young man, wrapped entirely as he was in the colorful cocoon, but he was clearly still inside.

“During this time of transformation, the caterpillar will shed its homely design and later eclose as a creature far more beautiful. Far more graceful. The caterpillar will emerge as—”

Laszlo dropped the silk cloth to reveal, not the boy he had wrapped up, but a stunning young woman in a magnificent sparkling gown. She stepped over the cloth and raised her arms, revealing intricately beaded wings designed to catch the light.

“A butterfly!”

I blinked. The audience gasped.

Where had the boy gone? He had been wrapped up too tightly to have changed inside the cocoon, and there was no trapdoor for him to have traded places with the woman who’d emerged. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I had no idea how an illusion had been accomplished. I was as baffled and ignorant as the people around me. It was the greatest trick I had ever seen.

The stunned silence lasted until Laszlo and the young woman joined hands and bowed. The applause that erupted lasted for a full minute. The crowd began to close in around them. People clamored to know how he had accomplished the feat.

Laszlo and his butterfly made their escape, leaving the audience with nothing but amazement and awe and leaving me with not a single clue how the illusion had been performed. I had missed something, clearly, but I didn’t know what.

“Now that was a magic trick,” Ruth said.

“But where did the boy go?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “There was nowhere for him to go. It was like he just disappeared.”

“Got me, but forget studying medicine,” Ruth said. “I’m thinking I need to become a lepidopterist.”

“I have to see the illusion again.”

“Count me in,” Ruth said.

And while I suspected that Ruth, like most people who’d seen the trick, was eager for another peek at the butterfly, I was desperate to know how the caterpillar had disappeared.