The line dancing ends. The siren calling someone to ride the mechanical bull wails. I am about to stand up, move on, get my bearings, and figure out what to do next. And then, the magician is standing in front of me. He’s still in his Western shirt. A few streaks of stage makeup are visible along his jawbone.
“Toby.” His name nearly gets caught in my throat.
He looks at my dress, then smiles. “Sandra’s friend. Mia?”
“Mel. Mel Snow.”
“Toby Warring.” He smiles as he takes my hand. It’s the smile he left behind in Nevada. “Mind if I sit?”
I shake my head and pat the barrel next to mine.
“The desert is no place for someone named Mel Snow.”
“I’ve heard.”
Suddenly two beers are in front of us. Toby catches my eye to see if I’ve noticed this trick. I pretend not to. I simply accept my drink as if the magician brought it with him from the bar.
“Is the desert a good place for magic?”
“That’s quite a question,” Toby says, swigging from his bottle. “Some places out here are, and some aren’t. In the desert, you have to pay attention. Things have a way of going wrong.”
“I know.” I look down my bottleneck. “You’re from back East,” I say. “Mid-coast Atlantic?”
“How’d you know?” Toby’s eyes sparkle. He moves his barrel a little closer to mine.
“Are you a magician?”
He nods.
“I bet you don’t reveal your secrets.”
“I don’t have any.” He replaces his bottle on the wagon wheel table. “Well, I have one. But I’m not telling. At least not yet.”
His one secret—a magician who can actually do magic. I’m wondering how long it will take this time before he tells me.
“You’re not from Vegas either,” the magician says with one of his trademark conversational swerves.
I shake my head as we once again discover that we grew up along the banks of the same river back East.
“So you came to Las Vegas to work for a casino?” Toby asks.
You brought me here, I want to say. But in this world, I have no idea how I came to the Winter Palace. “I’m a textile consultant.”
Now the magician stifles a laugh.
“You’re looking at my dress?”
“What color is that?” he asks.
“I think the official name is Key West Coral.”
“Some things should stay in Florida.”
I looked down at the dress—its color, an awful match for my complexion. “I’m not so fond of sateen or crystal beading either.”
“It kind of makes you look like a broken-hearted beauty queen,” the magician says.
“When in Vegas,” I say, quickly raising my bottle in front of my face.
Toby lifts his beer to meet mine. There is a clink of glass, and for a moment it seems as if time has stopped. The music is gone. The dancers frozen. And once again, everything telescopes to me and the magician. When I look up, the crystal beads on my dress have become irregular turquoise stones.
“I’m not going to ask.”
Toby smiles. “As long as it makes you smile.”
“So,” I say, rolling my beer bottle between my palms, “shouldn’t you be celebrating your Vegas debut back at the Winter Palace?” What fresh coincidence has caused us to collide this time in another improbable location? Did Toby once again conjure me to his side, or did I pull him to mine?
“The show is the satisfying part. The aftermath is a letdown.”
“It didn’t seem too disappointing,” I reply, thinking of the women encircling the magician.
“In the end, the audience wants something I can’t give them.”
“They all want to know how it’s done?”
Toby nods.
“But in your case, the explanation is impossible.”
I ignore his surprise. I just smile and pat his knee. “In another lifetime, I spent a lot of time around magicians.”
For a moment, Toby cannot speak. Instead he snaps his fingers, and two more beers appear. We raise them to each other. “To things better left unexplained,” the magician suggests. And then Toby tells me about his childhood blocks that taught him about magic.
It doesn’t bother me that I’ve heard this all before. Soon we are on our feet, dancing to revved-up hoedown music. Between songs, I ask, “Why did you come here tonight?”
Toby shrugs. “Why not?”
Next to us, a woman has climbed on top of a barrel. She’s looped her shirt into an impromptu bra-top and is bending her knees, grinding her way down to her feet.
“You don’t strike me as the cattle-call type.”
“I’m not.”
A new song starts. We’re shouting now. “I wanted a moment alone,” the magician says.
“This is a strange place to come to be alone.”
He nods in time to the music and turns to face me. He puts his hands on my hips and pulls me in close. “And why did you come?”
I laugh. “Same reason.” Falling in love with Toby is easy.
We dance, stomp, and tumble along with the music. The crowd throws our bodies together. It’s a comfortable collision. And then we are in front of the mechanical bull. Toby catches my eye. I shake my head. “No way.”
But he’s insisting, and in an instant, I’m lifted over the wooden railing and waiting to be helped onto the bull.
I get in the saddle, and my dress rips. I grab the pommel and wait for the ride to start. A crowd gathers, hooting as the machine underneath me comes to life. Toby and I lock eyes. The
