This is part 4 of the story-in-progress "The End Of Light." Look off to the right to find the table of contents for this story, and for the two already completed stories.
Joe held his arms up.
One hour into the show, and it had gone perfectly.
Perfectly – everything. Conan O’Brien’s crew had come up, they had filmed little skits and jokes and included him in it ,and they had wandered around backstage, and they had assured him that not only would it be featured on The Tonight Show when the show came on that night (“Right after the monologue, before the first guest, usually,” that woman, Jackie, had said, when he’d asked when the piece would play) but they’d also noted that Conan would be in the front row for opening night.
And he was.
Joe could see him there, had seen him there throughout the show, had noticed him the moment he’d walked onstage, in his black tuxedo - -a black tuxedo with a black shirt and black vest, marked here and there by a fiery reddish gold threads strung through it, designed in part because Joe felt that it made him look mysterious – not quite all dark but shot through with hints of light and flame – and in part because that was what the instructions he’d read had said the costume should look like.
It had taken three months, and a lot of money, to make the costume. Maybe, he reflected as he stood onstage now, arms up, not a “lot of money” by Conan O’Brien’s standards, or by many people’s standards, but a lot of money by his standards. He’d not paid his rent for two months to help pay for the outfit that the website described, the outfit that Joe had realized, early on, he would need to pull off the end-of-show-tricks for each night.
He wondered if the guy, or girl, or people, who had set up that website would ever see the show, the costume, or hear about it, and if they would realize where he’d gotten some of his information.
He wondered if they’d realize that their information, some of it, anyway, was correct.
The audience had finally grown quiet, which was good because Joe had grown tired of holding his arms up, could feel the muscles straining. He was sweating, sweating profusely under the outfit, the tuxedo-like outfit that he’d paid for, and his mind rambled as he waited and waited for silence, waited and waited for the silence to grow thicker and heavier and more questioning.
There it was.
The moment had arrived when the audience was entirely his. He’d rarely achieved this level of showmanship, rarely had climbed to the heights where an audience’s entire attention was focused on him, where each mind in the audience was no longer wondering how he’d done that last trick, was no longer trying to see down his date’s shirt, was no longer wondering whether he would try to kiss her at the end of the night, was no longer thinking about having to get up for work tomorrow. As a magician, he’d played corporate retreats and birthday parties and small stages and retirements and anniversaries, he’d played hundreds and hundreds of shows and had only on a few times before had an audience this ready for a trick.
He’d never before, though, had a show as good as this one. These were still tricks he’d performed tonight, he knew – but they were tricks on a different scale, tricks from a different perspective. They were ancient tricks coupled with modern minds, and they worked on so many levels.
He was sweating, still.
He’d thrown fireballs, he’d melted ice, he’d levitated objects and audience members and himself, he’d gusted wind and pulled things out of other things, had lifted his hat at one point and caused a phenomenal gush of water, a waterfall, to pour out of it onto him, running down over him in a torrent of icy cold liquid that felt incredible to him, as hot as he’d been at that point, and running onto the stage and forward in a small breaker of water right towards Conan O’Brien, had seen the audience pull back as the water poured off the stage… and vanished, disappeared in a slight mist and he was completely dry, he leaned down and had a woman (a not-unattractive older woman) feel his coat and ruffle his hair, he was bone dry.
He was sweating and breathing heavy.
After all that, the audience was his and he needed them. He held his arms up, still, trembling now a little in the heat and effort, and he opened his eyes. He met the gaze of various audience members, looked them in the eye as the silence fell thicker and thicker around them, one two threefourfivesixseveneightnineten he’d met eyes with ten of them
(that was what was required)
And he said, now, to the whole audience: “One final feat.”
He paused and let those words carry out over the audience. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“It is dark in here.” He said.
He breathed in through his mouth and out through his nose. He concentrated and felt as though a flame were lit inside his chest.
For some reason, he pictured the sun in his mind, the sun looming red and fiery and large.
“It is dark outside,” he said, more quietly still, letting the silence fall back down like a curtain over the audience.
He breathed in through his nose, and out through his nose.
“But I can light your way home,” Joe said.
He held his arms up, willing them to stay straight a moment longer.
He breathed in through his mouth and held his breath, then said in a gasp:
“Using you!”
He flung his hands towards the audience and let his breath out.
Nothing happened.
The audience, totally his, waited.
Then, there was a gasp.
The first woman whose eyes he’d met a moment before had begun to glow, a bright cheery yellow glow like the kind of light a window throws out on the snow at Christmas time. Her friends around her began to clap.
Then they, too, began to glow, shades of yellow and orange, as they clapped. From across the auditorium, another yell and more clapping and the second man Joe had locked eyes with glowed, too, a deep-sea green like light filtering through the water and touching the sand on the bottom, making yellow sand green. As his companions cheered the glow spread to them, too.
Around the auditorium, each person Joe had met eyes with began to glow: here purple, there red, one in the back of the auditorium a brilliant white and the colors and glowing light spread around until everyone, in the audience around the entire theater, was glowing with every color of the spectrum.
Joe stood on the stage, sweat running down him in rivers, and watched as the glowing audience stood and applauded, crescendoing waves of applause and cheers and whistles washing over him in sound waves that did nothing to cool him down but did everything to lift him up.
