After Orkarche was Texarkana, Giddings, Abilene and Caddo. We performed the show, packed up and drove that night across the flat Texas plain fouled by the scent of cow manure.

In Cisco we checked into a roadside motel with thinning carpets and smudged white walls next to a field of oil wells. In the morning we set up the show at the Longhorn Theater on the edge of town. Before the show I saw Erza slowly walk around the Woman by Chemistry , as if measuring-up an enemy. Cautiously, she touched the rim of the cylinder and ran her finger along its edge and leaned over to peer inside, hesitantly, as if expecting something to pop out.

Erza's legs had become bruised from climbing in and out of the illusion. The schedule of one-nighters was tiring her. She no longer wrote letters home or read about movie stars.

"Erza, why don't you lie down," I suggested. I spread out blankets used for case padding and stacked up my old folded shirts for a pillow. On a long table I made a small bed for her. Soon I began to hear her talk in her sleep. Just a few words, "rabbit," "silk," "rope" and then she murmured, "Cut the pack at the long card." I walked toward her. Did I hear that right?

More phrases followed: "Be judicious with the use of the riffle," and, "May I borrow a gentlemen's watch?" and later, "Catch a peek at the bottom card." Magician chatter, for sure. Sitting down on my stool behind my trunk, I stroked by stubbled chin. How could a farm girl know that?

After the show that night in a dingy roadside cafe with ten-gallon cowboy hats hanging near the door, Erza poked at her plate of scrambled eggs and asked, "Is there real magic, Mr. Malcomb?"

Spiritualists, shamans and swami men acted as if they were gifted, but we all went to the same school. "I've never seen magic that did not involve a sleight or a gimmick of some kind," I told her. I showed her the calluses on my hand. "From working the cards—it doesn't just happen."

She tilted her head, her face unchanged. Two strands of brown hair were pinned in tight little balls on her head as if budding horns.

"Lookie," I said. "Some folks say magic is the power of belief. If you look at things a certain way, they become it."

"What do you think?" she asked.

Many years had passed since my days with Cardini. All my wishes never changed anything. "No magic in my book," I told her.

"What about the Woman by Chemistry ?" She leaned forward, looking at me straight, as if my answer could be other than the obvious.

"Nothing more than a double cylinder, a secret compartment and a bucket of dry ice," I told her. She looked out the window at my three-wheeler trailer and frowned.

I flapped the table napkin up and down in front of her and stuffed it in my closed hand. When I opened it it was gone. She leaned forward and touched my open palm on the table top.

I grabbed one finger and squeezed it once before letting it go.

"From now on call me Malcomb."

*

Several nights later in an old adobe school house in a bleak patch of desert just outside Las Cruces, Erza rose through the billows of smoke, her mouth curved in a sly smile. She leapt out the box herself, swinging her body over and landing firmly on her heels. Two bright balls of light shone in each of her eyes, and as I looked into them, I felt the headlights of a train hurtling toward me.

That night in the car with the yuccas casting spiky shadows in the moonlight, Erza said, "Malcomb, the name Erza, doesn't really have that touch of glamor." She lifted her chin and said, "From now on I want to be called Lila Love."

I shuddered. A name like Lila Love demanded attitude. A gal had to carry herself with a certain strut to have that name. Not Erza, not my Erza.

"Choosing the right name in show business is very important," I said. "It must be catchy and simple so audiences and agents will remember you, but at the same time it must suit you. Lila Love doesn't suit you, dear."

The moon fell through the window on half her face as she slowly crossed her arms and tilted her head down like a bull going for the red and said: "It. Suits. Me. Fine." Her bottom teeth punctured her lip with the last word. She twisted the rear view mirror toward her and turned a cheek at her moon-lit reflection before snapping it back in place.

On the side of the road, in the murky border between the headlights and night, I saw road kill; dead coyote eyes backing away into the night, and behind it a flare of white teeth and frantic motion from the animals dragging it away. A sense of uneasiness burned my gut like a shot of rye. A few nights later when Erza paid for her room at the Sleepy Meow Motel in Bisbee I saw in her open purse a red Bee deck—card man's deck. Also a roll of smooth-faced coins, not real money, but the conjuring kind carried by every magician from New York to Frisco. No, this couldn't be so. ...

*

The next night, our day off, I knocked on her motel door to ask Erza to dinner. She appeared in her bathrobe, hair messy, eyes glassy, the room hazy with smoke.

I smiled broadly, wishing I'd checked for food in my teeth. "Erz— Lila , it would be my pleasure if you would accompany me to the Gorge and Go Grill tonight."

Strewn across her bed I saw cards, coins, thimbles and cups and balls; a bottle of opened whisky on her window sill.

"I'm busy," she huffed and slammed the door.

*

After that I inspected her fingers for the telltale signs of a sleight man: calluses on the inside index finger, a certain firmness of wrist muscle and added dexterity with a knife and fork.

Erza had a certain presence now. I felt her nearness even when I didn't see her, by a tingle buzzing through me, as if a lightning bolt just snapped over my head. She attracted attention, even from the audience. I saw their eyes turn to her as she walked on stage, and then I'd glance at her, standing there holding a tray with a big frosty smile, staring straight into the footlights, never blinking.

She read Mighty Magic magazine while puffing on Havana cigars backstage. Now and then she'd purse her lips and shoot-off perfect round smoke rings which sailed in the air like moving bull's-eyes. The doves squawked and flapped their wings each time she neared their cage.

In the Woman by Chemistry , she now rose through the white smoke in splendor.

Her pale saber-like arms lifted high, followed by all of her, raw and fine.

Her dark hair as sinuous as underwater pond grass, eyebrows arched in haughty glory and oxblood lips set in a crisp line. She leapt out of the box with gymnastic skill and lowered herself in a seductive courtly bow. She was indeed a kind of Lila Love—the flesh incarnate of strength, mystery and danger. A woman who drank as much as the boys, who baited them with her hip-swivel gait.

In Lila Love's embrace a man might fumble across her pearl-handled pistol.

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