He said, “It makes a difference to me. It’s what I want, Arden. Please.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” There was hope in his voice.
I said, “I mean, okay, I’ll think about it.”
He was silent for a minute. The next question he asked seemed unrelated. “Are you going to do that trick?”
I didn’t tell him it was an illusion, not a trick, and I didn’t ask which one he meant. I told him bluntly, “Yes.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“My mind is made up.”
“And marriage? Is your mind made up on that too?”
I tried to be gentle. “No, darling. Please. That I need to think about.”
“Of course you do,” he said, his voice rough. “You never do anything the way a normal girl would do it. Of course you have to do this your own way too. You’ll probably want to buy your own ring.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I don’t even know if I want a ring.”
“You know. You just won’t tell me.”
“That’s not true. Please. I truly need time to think. You took me by surprise.”
He still looked suspicious, but in the end, he said, “All right, then. A few days enough?”
“Yes,” I answered and hoped it would be.
***
We tried it first in Baltimore. It was somewhere we could put up posters, create mystery, pay people to whisper. We spread a rumor someone had been killed in a rehearsal. We spread a rumor it was as dangerous as the Bullet Catch, as fatal as Parisi’s Chainsaw Folly. We spread every rumor we could to guarantee a packed house for opening night, and we got exactly what we wished for.
I’d never felt more powerful. I’d designed and performed dozens of illusions, but they were all some form of pageantry, turning the most prosaic items into flowers and ribbons and flames, embracing the lush impossible. I was the undisputed queen of creating opulence from nothingness. Nothing like this: savage and beautiful, with all the artifice of stagecraft stripped away. Nothing else had put me alone on a stage with the object of my actions, just the two of us, in which I could have complete victory. In a way, it was like Adelaide’s performance of Lady to Tiger, but instead of the physical form of a tiger, I took on the spirit of one. Instead of a delicate grace, I had a strong grace, a grace to be feared.
Frankly, I liked being feared for a change.
I had begun as a dancer, and a dancer’s allure was as a creature too light for the earth. My new allure was as a creature too dangerous for it. Jeannie outdid herself with a striking black gown, beaded and spangled all over, to suit me up like a modern witch, both graceful and grim. Unfortunately the gown turned out to be her swan song as my wardrobe mistress, as she was called home to Abilene to care for her mother, who’d taken ill. An unwelcome surprise, but I couldn’t begrudge her. I would miss her terribly, but the excitement of the Halved Man swept me along, carried me forward.
The old act had incorporated many things—fire and beauty and mystery and magic—but this was the first time we reached out into the seats to take our audience by the throats. This was the first time we made them afraid. And as strange as that was, as unexpected as it was, they found that they liked the feeling.
I raised up the long bright knife and plunged it into the center of the coffin. The man cried out. Then I laid down the knife and picked up the saw, which I heaved back and forth with obvious effort, leaning my whole body into it to emphasize how heavy it was, how hard to move. The man howled as I sawed.
The audience howled along with him.
With a flourish, I spun half the man away, leaving the other half in place. Some nights, I left the head and shoulders behind, some nights, the legs and feet. The audience seemed to embrace both possibilities. No matter which half went where, they cried out in unison, disbelieving. They sucked in all their breath and let it all out like a single breathing person all together. The shock and the terror and the shared impossibility made a single fantastical creature of them. I made a creature of them.
I spun the second half of the man off the stage after the first, clouds of smoke filled the stage, and I pointed with a terrible, straight finger toward the center of the front row. There a young man with a head of bright blond curls stood and opened his white shirtfront to expose a line of fresh red blood across the center of his waist. I clapped twice, hard, two sharp noises like gunshots. He wiped away the blood from his skin with the palm of his hand. He wiped again with his other hand until the blood on his stomach was gone, the flesh clean and unbroken underneath, turning so all could see. He was identical in every way to the man I’d cut in half, but whole again.
Of course, earlier in the act, they’d already seen that the twins were part of the company. They knew there were two of them, identical blond things with cherubic faces and teenagers’ lanky frames. They saw one and started looking for the other. They felt smart, thinking they were too smart to be fooled.
When the twin sprang up, as an unexpectedly whole person, the audience was suspicious. “Impostor!” they called. “It’s the other one!”
And in the next moment, his brother sprang up at the back of the theater. Everyone looked back and forth between the two twins. The second one pulled aside his shirt to show a waist as unmarred as his brother’s. They both turned to one side and then the other, giving the audience a good look, from the cheap seats on down. Someone had been torn apart and made whole again, but it was impossible to tell who. They were both flawless.
Then the audience shouted “Brava!” and “Amazing!”
The twins took their perfectly synchronized bows, moving as one. Then I took mine.
And the theater erupted in applause, long rippling waves of it, until the echoes threatened to deafen us all.
The headline in the Sun read “Woman Magician’s Spectacle Divides Man, Dumbfounds Audience. Who Is This Amazing Arden?” There were other headlines, less flattering ones, but the Sun’s I clipped from its page and tucked away for safekeeping. I wasn’t given to keeping mementos, but this felt like a worthy occasion.
It was an immense success, the Halved Man. It was like and yet unlike what everyone else was doing. It created a stir. There had already been press about my unfeminine business, but it multiplied a hundredfold. Some said I was possessed by the devil. Some said I should be stopped before I hurt someone. A preacher in Conestoga gave a sermon about the killing of a man by a woman being the sign that Armageddon was upon us, and he called for my destruction, so we had to have a police guard for a couple of weeks, but all that meant was more attention.
The twins were ecstatic. Not content to simply take turns, they drew straws every evening to determine which of them would be the one in the box, and the excitement of this ritual brought the whole company together to lay bets and play favorites every night. They were all involved. Contessa, née Doreen, snuck down into the audience and watched, even though she had to be onstage for the next illusion. She couldn’t help herself. When the knife took its first plunge into the coffin, there was always a bloodcurdling cheer of joy, and I knew it was hers, because it happened in every town.
The audience cheered and booed and whooped and cried, and when it was all over, they threw more flowers than they’d ever thrown before. It was amazing how their enthusiasm changed everything. The show seemed brighter, smarter, faster. All of us in it seemed more beautiful, more clever, more alive. The new energy affected every member of the company. I could see the difference clearly.
In short, everyone was happy but Clyde.