He was studying her. She felt very looked at. “I said, ‘I’ll bet you raised doves.’”
“Is, is this a magician thing you’re doing?”
“A magician thing?”
She pulled out her apple and cheese slices and didn’t take her eyes off them. “You know, uh, mentalism? Reading my mind? You’re really good. You’ve got me shaking.” She took a big bite. It was easier than talking.
It was time to back off. “Oh, oh, no, no. It’s just luck, just probability. You grew up on a ranch, I just started guessing the animals on it. And the doves”—she never really answered that one, did she?—“well, doves are a staple for most magicians, you were a magician in your youth, on a ranch, so I thought you may have had some doves. I think we’ll be working with doves at some point, so I asked.”
She looked relieved but kept on chewing.
“So … you had doves?”
She looked as if she hated to admit it, but finally she nodded, one cheek still full.
Well, that was enough load for either of them to bear for now and still maintain the agenda that brought them together—oh, yes, there wasthat, wasn’t there? He took a bite from his sandwich and gave them both a break to depressurize. She took several more bites; apparently she was going to extend the silence as long as she could.
Now he cleared his throat. “Anyway, getting around to my little opening sermon …” She was chewing and receptive. The pressure was off for now—soon to return, he feared. “I’ve seen you perform at McCaffee’s twice, and there was that time on the street …”
She winced a little and said, “Right.”
“So I’ve seen you as a Gypsy, I’ve seen you as a Hobett, I’ve seen you as … well, let’s call her the Enigmatic Damsel in Distress … and I’ve seen you as a Secretive Attorney’s Client hiding behind, oh, let’s call it the Downey Doctrine: ‘Teach me and coach me and help me to be somebody but don’t ask me who I am.’ But that issue right there is the one I keep coming back to. Through all of this, I find myself constantly having to face the same fundamental question: who are you?”
She’d run out of apple slices so she had no excuse for her silence. Even so, not a speakableword came to her. She thought, I’d love to know, but dared not tell him. She could only stare at him, tilt her head, and stare some more. One of her minds, one of her brains, one of her selves might know, but by now they were all so mixed up, like scrambled eggs.
And maybe that was his point.
Oh, thank the Lord, he’s going to keep talking.“You have to be sure about that for two big reasons. Number one: because knowing who you are, and liking who you are, are going to read right through to your audience. If you’re hiding from them, they may not be able to pin down what it is they feel about you, but they won’t be able to connect, and if that’s the case, you’ll never rise above that sea of magicians out there who all bought the same trunkful of tricks from the same catalog. Maybe you’ve noticed how a great trick in a bad magician’s hands can be a same old thing, klutzy and boring, while a mundane trick in a great magician’s hands can be a thoroughly entertaining experience. That should tell you something: the magic is in the magician.”
He stopped and looked away, and the silence was awkward. He looked to her again, tried to speak but had to look down, stroking his face. “Anyway …” She got teary-eyed watching him. He drew a deep breath and tried again. “Anyway … getting to my point … you’re a natural. You can connect and charm and enchant better than some of the best performers out there. But I still get the sense you’re working a little too hard to get through and it’s because you’re hiding. All the characters you’ve tried—the Gypsy, the Hobett, the Client—they’re not you. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but any performer who knows herself and isn’t afraid to show it can wear any outfit and be any character and still come through. I’m sensing that you’re afraid to do that, that these other faces are there so you don’t have to be. If we can, I’d like to see if you can drop that barrier and touch your audience directly. You have the nature within you, the wonder, the joy of the experience. We need to turn those things loose so they flow right through without a bulletproof shield in the way. Am I making sense here?”
Now, shewas trying not to cry. He’d not only described her work; he’d also described her life. Her fingers went over her mouth, an unconscious gesture, as if she could bar her real self from bursting out and saying … well, such things simply could not be said.
Dane had been piecing together this little speech for quite some time, gathering it like fallen apples from every moment he’d spent with her up until now. He knew it was right for her as a performer, which justified delivering it. That it was right for her as a person he hadn’t wanted to address, but now her silent gaze, her glistening eyes told him he’d addressed it anyway. His own emotional investment aside, maybe it was still for the best.
He pushed ahead. “The second reason you need to know who you are is the nature of this business. Mark my words: if you ever achieve the level of success I think you’re capable of, you’re going to find yourself in a world that wants to repackage you and make you something you aren’t; they have to sell you, so they’ll put a face and a name on you that will be bigger and more glamorous than you really are. They’ll dress you up, stand you up, light you up, and print you up with the specific aim of squeezing every last possible dime out of you, and if you do not know who you are, you’ll make the same fatal mistake so many others have made: you’ll believe them.You’ll buy what they’re selling, thinking it’s you, and oh, the euphoria, the cloud-nine high you feel!
“But it’s all a lie, and lies don’t last. When the commodity they have made you has outlasted its marketability—when the stores start returning all the T-shirts and school folders and posters and lunch boxes and coloring books that have your face on them—when nobody wants to buy ‘Eloise Kramer’ anymore, they’ll pitch her into the nearest Dumpster, they’ll recycle all the paper and cardboard, and they’ll make room for the next big star, and then who will yoube?
“Ask those who have gone before you, the ones who thought the business, the crowds, the applause defined them. It’s no picnic betting your soul on a personality, an image that is other than you, because when you lose the bet, you end up sitting alone in your room and there’s nobody there.”
She was wiping her eyes with her napkin. He could plainly see he’d stirred up all kinds of little ghosts inside her. Once again, it was time to back off.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Now, I do remember what you said about thinking you’re somebody else, and I wonder if, at least as long as you’re around here, you might not trouble yourself about that? You are somebody. Just be that. That’s how I’m going to play it. During all your training, I’m going to assume that you are not the Gypsy or the Hobett or the Attorney’s Client, or any other face that comes along, but yourself, however you may emerge over the days and weeks. And if you need permission, if you need someone to tell you it’s okay to be who you are, I’ll do that for you. Can you look at me, please?”
Her blue eyes returned from a moment of reflection and he saw in them a longing she’d never shared before, a hunger so deep it seemed a life’s store of wisdom and answers might never satisfy it. “When you are here on this ranch, when you are working, when you are learning from me, you may be yourself. It’s all right. It’s perfectly safe. Do you understand?”
She broke into sobs, her voice quaking. “I don’t know who she is.”
Pay dirt. He got a little excited and pointed. “That. That right there, whoever’s crying right now, whoever’s feeling, whoever just said that, that’s you. Let’s work with her.”