The Girl in the Glass Read Free

Antony," I said.
    "Sleep tight, babe," he called back and then slipped out of the room as quickly as he could to keep the butterflies in.
    I sat quietly, surveying the veritable jungle of plants and potted trees surrounding the table and chairs. The blossoms were as varied in color and shape as the insects. Up above, I could see the stars through the glass skylight. In his room, Schell had exchanged the platter on his Victrola for some equally melancholic piece, and the serenity of the scene made me ponder this turning point in my life. I'm sure the moment comes to most earlier, but few have had a "father" as extraordinary as mine. In my conversation with Antony, it had struck me for the first time that Schell was merely mortal. The thought of him troubled, confused, made the world seem instantly more sinister.
    THE EXTENT OF SUSCEPTIBILITY
    T he next day, Schell and I took off in the Cord to stake out a new mark. There was a very wealthy gentleman over in Oyster Bay whose bank account required lightening. It was our practice to meet with perspective patrons first before performing a séance in order to case the room where the event would take place and judge what effects would be possible. It was also an opportunity to pick up clues that we could spin into prescient revelations. The boss focused on artwork, the type of furniture, jewelry, repetitions of words and phrases the mark might use, hand gestures, pets. Not an errant nose hair escaped his attention, and he'd extract from these crumbs of information secrets of the bereaved as if he were Conan Doyle's detective.
    The thing he most concentrated on, though, was the apparent degree of the mark's grief, for as he always reminded me, "The depth of loss is directly equivalent to the extent of susceptibility." In other words, the more one longed for contact from the other side, the more readily one would embrace the illusion. Occasionally, we would run into a snake, some self-professed debunker, whose intent was merely to out us as frauds, but Schell could spot this within the first five minutes of an interview.
    "Watch the nose, Diego," he would say. "The nostrils flare slightly when one is lying. The pupils dilate an iota. In a thinner person, you can detect treachery by the pulse in the neck." For a man who trafficked in the spiritual, he was ever focused on the physical.
    "And how are your studies going?" Schell asked me as we sped along.
    "I'm reading Darwin, The Origin of Species ," I said.
    "My hero," he said, laughing. "What do you make of it?"
    "We're apes," I said, adjusting my turban.
    "Too true," he said.
    "God's a fart in a windstorm. It's only Nature that rigs the deck."
    "It isn't a perfect being that's brought all of this about," he said, lifting his right hand off the wheel and gracefully describing a circle in the air. "It's all chance and tiny mistakes that give an advantage, which are compounded over time. Think of the intricate, checkered patterning of the spanish festoon [a butterfly we'd had a specimen of some time back]; all a result of some infinitesimal, advantageous mistake in the makeup of a single caterpillar."
    "Mistakes are at the heart of everything," I said.
    He nodded. "That's the beauty."
    "But you never make mistakes," I said.
    "When it comes to work, I try not to. But, believe me, I've made mistakes—great yawning gaffes."
    "Such as?"
    He was silent for a time. "I let my past dictate my future," he said.
    "I can't think of you employed in any other career," I said.
    "Perhaps," he said, "but I can certainly conceive of you doing something else. You don't want to remain Ondoo for the rest of your days now do you? This repatriation business will blow over eventually. The economy will rebound. By the time you're nineteen, I'd like to see you in college."
    "As far as my records are concerned, I don't exist. I have no past. I'm illegal." My education, although superior to any that could be obtained at a public school, was all garnered through a