Fool’s Gold

* BONUS NOVELLA *

This Jaya Jones and Sanjay Rai novella originally appeared in Other People’s Baggage: Three Interconnected Novellas, along with novellas by Diane Vallere and Kendel Lynn, published by Henery Press in 2012. Each of the novellas stands alone, but if you’d like to learn more about the lost luggage in the story below, and where Jaya’s lost luggage ended up, you can seek out “Midnight Ice” by Diane Vallere and “Switch Back” by Kendel Lynn.

  

ONE

  

I stepped onto the stage of the theater. The spotlight blinded me, but after a few seconds my eyes began to adjust. The stage was nearly empty. To my left, a wooden wardrobe cabinet. To my right, a weathered whisky barrel that had seen better days. Rows of plush red seats stretched out in the dark theater, all of them vacant.

“You look awful, Jaya.” The voice filled the air, but I remained alone.

I whipped around, looking from the seats to the rafters to the wings, only to be confronted with emptiness. The backstage area had been empty as well, which is why I was now standing here in search of Sanjay.

A moment later, he appeared on the stage a few feet away from me. From where, exactly, I couldn’t be sure. Sanjay was a magician. The Hindi Houdini. A bowler hat sat on his head as usual, but today his outfit was a black t-shirt and jeans instead of the tuxedo he usually wore when performing.

“Nice to see you, too,” I said.

“I thought you were a good traveler.”

“You try being delayed at the Dallas airport for eight hours, then arriving in Edinburgh to find you ended up with someone else’s suitcase.”

“That explains your ridiculous clothing,” Sanjay said. “I thought this magic cabinet had transported me back to 1980.”

“Very funny.” I smoothed out the florescent pink Edinburgh Fringe Festival t-shirt I was wearing, wondering whether I should have borrowed some of the vintage 1960s clothing I’d found in the suitcase that wasn’t mine. It was definitely much more stylish. “At least the night clerk at the hotel was nice enough to open the hotel gift shop at three a.m. so I could grab a t-shirt and leggings. This t-shirt was the only thing that came remotely close to fitting. I left my clothes from the flight with the hotel’s laundry service.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t go shopping this morning.”

“I chose sleep.” I yawned.

“Now that I’m getting used to it,” Sanjay said, looking me up and down, “it’s not so bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in pink before. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen you in anything besides black or gray.”

“What about you? No tuxedo? I thought you liked to practice your show in full attire.”

“It’s not even noon.”

“I know,” I said. “I should still be sleeping.”

Sanjay grinned. “Thanks for coming.”

“Sanjay!” A voice with a thick Scottish accent called out from under the stage. “What’s the hold up?”

“My friend Jaya’s here,” Sanjay called back.

A stagehand materialized on the stage next to Sanjay. As had been the case with Sanjay, I wasn’t sure exactly how he’d gotten there.

Auburn curls stuck out around the edges of an orange ski cap. “So you’re Jaya Jones,” the stagehand said. “Sanjay was all broken up that your flight didn’t make it in time for you to have dinner with him last night. Can’t say I blame him. I’m Ewan.”

Sanjay’s face flushed as I shook Ewan’s hand. I don’t know why. Of course it was too bad I couldn’t make it on time as planned and was instead relegated to a twenty-four-hour journey from San Francisco to Edinburgh.

I’d only met Sanjay two months before, but he was one of those people who immediately felt like family. He was the best friend I’d made in San Francisco since moving there for my first university teaching job. I finished my PhD in history earlier in the year, after completing the research for my dissertation at the British Library in London.

When Sanjay told me he was performing a magic show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest performing arts festival in the world that takes place each August, I knew it was fate—or at least an excellent opportunity. A friend from when I lived in London was also going to be at the festival.

This was going to be a perfect vacation. Flight delays and switched luggage aside, I was ready to enjoy my first real vacation in ages. I’d spent the summer preparing for the four undergraduate history courses I’d be teaching that fall, and I desperately needed a break. I had two weeks before the semester started. I was going to spend this week in Edinburgh relaxing, doing a little sightseeing, and enjoying the festival.

I might have had an ulterior motive as well. I was getting over a breakup. I deserved this treat before diving into real life.

Sanjay narrowed his eyes at the stagehand and cleared his throat. “The show opens tonight,” he said, his face slowly returning to normal color. “I’m still working out the kinks of my biggest illusion, so I don’t have time to take a break right now. We need to do a full run-through with light and sound as soon as the other member of the crew arrives.”

“Do you need any help?” I asked.

“You’d be up for helping?”

“Why not? I’ve got a little time.”

“There’s one thing,” Sanjay said hesitantly. He pointed to a section of seats close to the stage. “Take a seat in the front on the left, and watch the stage carefully. That’s my weak spot. I think I’ve got it fixed, but I haven’t done an audience test yet. Ewan is helping from backstage—”

“Below-stage,” Ewan said, “if you want to be accurate.” He winked at me.

“The point being that you can’t see the illusion from the proper vantage point,” Sanjay said.

“Fair enough,” Ewan said. “You sure you want her to help?”

“Why wouldn’t I help?” I asked.

Ewan shrugged before walking off stage.

“What did he mean by that?” I asked Sanjay.

He gave a non-committal shrug suspiciously similar to Ewan’s, and didn’t meet my gaze when he spoke. “Who knows?”

“I’m ready whenever you are,” Ewan called out, his voice below us.

I jumped down from the stage and sat in the first row.

“Who among our revered audience members,” Sanjay began in a booming theatrical voice, “would like to help me ensure the integrity of this illusion? If the lovely lady in the first row with shoulder-length black hair and dangerous heels would assist me?”

I rolled my eyes and hopped back on stage.

“Have we ever met before?” Sanjay asked.

“You can skip the banter,” I said. “There’s nobody in the audience.”

Sanjay sighed. Even the sigh was an overdone theatrical sigh. “Don’t you know anything about rehearsing?” he asked.

“Fine.” I said. “I don’t know you, and am not your confederate.”

“Thank you. Now, please select one of the following implements to tie my wrists behind my back.”

He lifted a black cloth from the top of the whisky barrel, revealing two types of handcuffs and three kinds of rope. He moved the objects of restraint from the lid, handed them to me, and placed the lid of the barrel on the stage floor. While I inspected the rope and handcuffs, Sanjay took his bowler hat in his hands and rolled his neck back and forth before returning the hat to his head.

“I’ll take these two,” I said, holding up the more menacing-looking pair of handcuffs and a piece of thick rope.

“Two,” Sanjay murmured. “Very nice.”

He turned away from me and placed his wrists together behind his back.

“Make them as tight as you’d like,” he said.

So I did.

I wouldn’t have thought a person could fit into the barrel, especially a man who was five foot ten with his hands tied behind his back, but Sanjay eased inside with little effort.

“If you’ll place the lid securely on the barrel before returning to your seat,” he said from within his confines.

As I secured the lid, I noticed the barrel rested on a stand that raised it several inches off the floor, so Sanjay wouldn’t be able to go through a trap door in the stage.

For a few moments after I returned to my seat, nothing happened. Then the barrel began to rattle. Slowly, at first, for over a minute. As I began to wonder what on earth Sanjay was doing in there, the rattling grew more violent. Just as it was shaking so hard I was sure the lid would burst open, the movement ceased.

The stage was dead silent.

In the silence, a wisp of smoke escaped from the lid of the barrel, followed by a burst of yellow flames through a single hole cut out of the barrel. That couldn’t be right.

“Sanjay?”

Silence.

“Sanjay, are you all right?”

More silence.

The flames grew brighter.

“Ewan!” I yelled. “Is this supposed to happen?”

“He’s an expert,” he called back from below the stage. “I’m sure he’ll escape in time.” He paused. “Uh…pretty sure.”

“You mean he’s still in there?”

With my heart thudding in my chest, I jumped onto the stage and ran toward the flaming whisky barrel.