Houdini's Last Trick (The Burdens Trilogy) by Khalaf David

Author:Khalaf, David [Khalaf, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: David Khalaf
Published: 2015-12-06T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TWO SIPS INTO his brandy, Houdini could feel the alcohol traveling in his bloodstream, through his heart, into his brain. If he concentrated hard enough, he’d be able to feel the ethanol connecting to nerve receptors and releasing dopamine.

But alcohol dulled his introspection. The more he drank, the less he’d be able to sense how the brandy was affecting his body. Every sip made things worse. Every sip made things better.

“You act as if you’ve never had a drink,” Pickford said.

“Not one like this,” Houdini said.

Not one with you.

“What are you drinking?” Houdini asked, nodding to her bright pink cocktail.

“The Mary Pickford, of course,” she said, taking an undignified swig that left a dribble on the side of her cheek. “White rum, pineapple juice, grenadine, and maraschino.”

“You have your own cocktail?” Houdini asked.

“Don’t you?”

Houdini shook his head.

“My drink of choice already has a name. Water.”

The bar was dark but Houdini thought Pickford smiled. It was just as well that he could barely make out her face in the candlelight; he couldn’t be mesmerized by her if he couldn’t see her.

Houdini ran his fingers along the vertical metal bars that made a cage around their table.

“This is an odd place. The Jail Cafe. Who wants to pay to be imprisoned?”

“Does it make you nervous?” Pickford asked.

Houdini shook his head.

“If anything, I feel at home. I’m an escape artist, remember.”

Pickford wrinkled her nose as the waiter walked by in a prison uniform.

“I think it’s tacky,” she said. “But this is Hollywood, and everything has to be an attraction, I suppose.”

For all of Pickford’s grumblings, it was she who brought them there. Their taxi driver had driven aimlessly for three or four miles until Pickford finally directed him to the hilly Ivanhoe neighborhood between Hollywood and Downtown. The entrance to the Jail Cafe was at street level on Sunset Boulevard, but to get to the restaurant, patrons had to walk down two flights of steep concrete stairs embedded into the hillside. At the bottom was a legitimate restaurant by day, and a speakeasy by night. The irony of them breaking the law in a prison-themed restaurant did not escape the magician.

“I know why you like this place,” Houdini said. “Because it’s dark.”

Pickford grabbed the stem of her cherry and swirled it in her drink.

“Do you ever miss your privacy?”

“At times,” Houdini said.

Pickford let out a sigh so long and sad it was as if she were exhaling her very soul.

“I grieve my privacy as if it were a child who died from a slow illness. It’s a terrible loss that no one warns you about when you go into entertainment. When I wake up each morning, there’s the briefest of moments when I forget that it’s gone. I feel normal; I feel free. Then I roll over and see Douglas snoring, and I remember who we are. What we are. And I remember that my privacy is dead, and no amount of longing shall ever bring it back.”

Houdini didn’t relish his fame, nor did he resent it.

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