When the woman replied, the spell broke.
Klara felt as though she’d been smacked. She can’t remember whether she thanked the woman or how she made her way into the alley. She was simply there, her face streaked and her palms caked brown by the dirt on the railing of the fire escape.
Thirteen years later, the woman was right about Simon, just as Klara had feared. But this is the problem: was the woman as powerful as she seemed, or did Klara take steps that made the prophecy come true? Which would be worse? If Simon’s death was preventable, a fraud, then Klara is at fault – and perhaps she’s a fraud, too. After all, if magic exists alongside reality – two faces gazing in different directions, like the head of Janus – then Klara can’t be the only one able to access it. If she doubts the woman, then she has to doubt herself. And if she doubts herself, she must doubt everything she believes, including Simon’s knocks.
What she needs is proof. In May 1990, on a warm night when Raj and Ruby are asleep, Klara sits up in bed.
She should time them, like she does in Second Sight. One minute per letter.
She stands and walks to the kitchen booth on which she’s left Simon’s watch – a gift from Saul, leather banded with a small gold face. She sits in the cab, where there’s enough moonlight to see the ticking of its slender second hand.
‘Come on, Sy,’ she whispers.
When the first knock comes, she starts timing. Seven minutes pass, then eight – twelve when a knock sounds again.
M.
She stares at the watch like it’s a key, like it’s Simon’s grinning face. The next knock comes five minutes later: E.
Ruby whimpers.
Not now, Klara thinks. Please, not now. But the whimper becomes a warble and then Ruby’s cry breaks through like dawn. Klara hears Raj climb out of bed, hears him murmur until the baby’s only sniffling, and then they appear in the cab.
‘What are you doing?’
He holds Ruby high on his chest, so that her head is aligned with his. Their eyes loom in the dark.
‘Nothing. I couldn’t sleep.’
Raj bounces Ruby. ‘Why not?’
‘How should I know?’
He lifts his free hand – just asking – and recedes into the darkness. She hears him set Ruby down in her crib.
‘Raj.’ She faces forward to stare at the nailed-over door of the Burger King. ‘I’m not happy.’
‘I know.’ He comes to sit in the passenger seat and scoots the chair back until his legs can stretch forward. He wears his hair in a ponytail – it’s been days since he washed it – and his eyes are watery with exhaustion.
‘I never wanted this for us. I wanted something better. I still do. For her.’ Raj jerks his chin at Ruby’s crib. ‘I want her to have a house. I want her to have neighbors. I want her to have a fucking puppy, if that’s what she wants. But puppies aren’t cheap. Neither are neighbors. I’m trying to save, Klara, but what we’re making? It’s better than it was, but it’s not nearly enough.’
‘Maybe this is as far as we go.’ Klara’s voice is uneven. ‘I’m tired. I know you are, too. Maybe it’s time we both got real jobs.’
Raj snorts. ‘I dropped out of high school. You never did college. You think Microsoft’ll want us?’
‘Not Microsoft. Someplace else. Or we could go back to school. I’ve always been good at math; I could do an accounting course. And you – as a mechanic, you were talented. You were brilliant.’
‘So were you!’ bursts Raj. ‘You were talented. You were brilliant. First time I saw you, Klara, that little show in North Beach, I looked at you onstage and I thought: That woman. She’s different. Your dreams were too big and your hair was too long, it kept getting tangled in the ropes, but you spun at the ceiling like nothing I’d seen and I thought you might never come down. I’m not ready to give up. And I don’t think you are, either. You really want to settle down? Get a job shuffling papers or working with other people’s money?’
His speech moves her in deep, buried ways. Klara has always known she’s meant to be a bridge: between reality and illusion, the present and the past, this world and the next. She just has to figure out how.
‘Okay,’ she says, slowly. ‘But we can’t keep going on like this.’
‘No. We can’t.’ Raj’s eyes bore straight ahead. ‘We need to think bigger.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like Vegas.’
‘Raj.’ Klara presses her palms into her eye sockets. ‘I told you.’
‘I know you did.’ Raj shifts in his seat and leans toward her over the armrest. ‘But you want an audience, you want impact – you want to be known, Klara, and you can’t be known here. But people come from all over to visit Vegas, looking for something they can’t get at home.’
‘Money.’
‘No – entertainment. They want to break the rules, turn the world on its head. And isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you do?’ He grabs her hand. ‘Look. I never wanted to be the star. You never wanted to be the assistant. You’ve always felt you were meant to do something great, something better than this, right? And I’ve always believed in you.’
‘I’m not like that anymore. Something’s gone. I’m weaker.’
‘You’ve been doing better since you stopped drinking. You’re only weak when you get into your head, when you get stuck down there and can’t climb out. You have to stay up here,’ he says, holding his hand flat under his chin. ‘Above water. Focus on what’s real, like Ruby. And your career.’
When Klara thinks of Ruby, it’s like trying to hold on to a rock in the middle of a river, like trying to cling to something small and hard while everything is pulling her away.
‘If we go to Vegas,’ she says, ‘and I can’t do it. If we don’t get hired. Or if I . . . if I just can’t. What then?’
‘I don’t think that way,’ Raj says. ‘And neither should you.’
Vegas,’ says Gertie. ‘You’re going to Vegas.’
Klara hears her mother’s hand muffling the receiver. Then she hears her shouting.
‘Varya, did you hear me? Vegas. She’s going to Vegas is what she said.’
‘Ma,’ says Klara. ‘I can hear you.’
‘What?’
‘It’s my choice.’
‘No one said it isn’t. It certainly wouldn’t be mine.’
There is the click of another receiver being picked up.
‘You’re going to Vegas?’ Varya asks. ‘For what? A vacation? Are you bringing Ruby?’
‘Of course we’re bringing Ruby. What else would we do with her? And not for a vacation – for good.’
Klara looks out the window of the RV. Raj is pacing while he smokes. Every few seconds, he glances at Klara to see if she’s still on the phone.
‘Why?’ asks Varya, aghast.
‘Because I want to be a magician. And that’s where you have to be if you want to be a magician – if you want to make money doing it. And besides, V, I have a kid; you don’t know how expensive that is. Ruby’s food, her diapers, her clothes –’
‘I raised four children,’ says Gertie. ‘And I never once went to Vegas.’
‘We know,’ says Klara. ‘I’m different.’
‘We know.’ Varya sighs. ‘If you’re happy.’