Continued from Parts 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, and 8...
My opportunity to slyly rescue the iPhone or any of the other items from the box prior to the performance never came. Zarelda and Kumar kept at their station near it until the last possible moment, and then there was hurried instruction to prepare to go onstage.
The show went smoothly, and I think I
executed my part well. There were a few surprise elements. Zarelda
made several costume changes. They were so quick that I wondered if
she had a costumer's equivalent of a race car pit crew backstage.
One of these costumes, had she worn it on the plane in place of the
red dress, I would have been adequately satisfied that there was
nothing amiss with her legs. It was cut high on both sides with
plenty of leg exposed. Instead of looking like a suspiciously
potential smuggler of parrots, she looked like an exotic bird of
paradise herself. Iridescent crystals hung in tassels down her front
and, while the white gown was cut high on the sides, long
feathery extensions, like exotic plumage, dangled down the center of
her gown as a skirt in both the front and rear.
Midway through the show, she performed
a trick I had never seen in rehearsal. I knew about this only in
part, that at this point in the program, she would do a trick that
didn't require my involvement. She emerged in a flamenco dress like the one
in which I had first seen her, only this one was in cobalt blue. Her
near-hypnotic power I had felt on first seeing her now seemed to take
hold of the entire audience. She took graceful flamenco steps as she
twirled and stomped down center stage, her arms arcing and twisting
above her head. “You must help me with this one,” she told the
audience. “Dream of Brazil. Dream of the Amazon. Dream of Brazil.
Say it with me.”
It was a chant as she twirled and
stomped, and the audience joined in. It took on an almost creepy
tone, like a cult leader directing her flock. As she twirled, and the
audience chanted, she transmogrified. I saw, perhaps, some of the
special lighting effects that required Kumar's help. The cobalt skirt
rippled with her movement, and as she moved, a projection of a tall
waterfall was made onto her skirt, and it seemed to take on life. I
was mesmerized by her. She flicked her wrist in a dainty dance-like
movement, and a macaw, the very variety Jack had displayed on his
cell phone so many days ago, manifested itself suddenly, resting on
her hand. I noticed no secret pockets, no hidden compartments. It
happened in an instant. It was magic.
From my half-hidden position at the
side of the stage, I looked out to the audience. Somewhere in the
midst of that crowd was Jack. What was he thinking now, a great big
“I told you so?” Zarelda flicked her opposite wrist, and a second
macaw roosted on her hand, and then, just as quickly again, they
vanished, but where? Her voluminous skirt? It was hard to tell. It
was magic, and, at that moment, I was a believer in magic like any
child.
There was nothing particularly menacing
about Zarelda that night. She seemed charming, delightful, a flirt
with the audience, and yet I couldn't push away a certain foreboding
sense of premonition as the evening wore on. I looked out sometimes
at the audience and wished I could discreetly signal Jack about my
sense of unease. I could pull on my ear lobe like Carol Burnett, but
what would that possibly accomplish? I could signal like baseball
players, only we hadn't established any such system of communication,
and my sense of self-dignity was too great to make myself quite that
foolish looking, tapping and pulling at random parts of myself. I had
read once about a hostage blinking SOS in Morse code on TV. Would
Jack pick up that signal or would it simply look like I was having an
episode of petit mal epilepsy? Really, the performance and my role in
it took up so much of my concentration that I was unable to
sufficiently come up with a plan that actually made sense, and I
really had no idea what I was expecting anyway.
I successfully maneuvered my way out
the escape hatch of the vanishing box for our final act. Zarelda
joined me in this private space behind the contraption briefly before
she would appear in my place. It wasn't until she reached her hand up
to my shoulder and then my face almost tenderly that I caught a whiff
of a chemical smell, and everything went black.
To be continued ...
&© 2016 Susan Joy Clark
