The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (top non fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

bit closer this time.” I rubbed a petal between my fingers. “You certainly come prepared. What else have you got up your sleeve?”

Toby laughed.

He ordered a whiskey for himself and another wine for me. The sweetness of the wine and the bitter aftertaste of its synthetic container made the flashing slot machines swirl in and out of focus.

In the beginning, Toby’s arrhythmic speech caught me off guard. His pauses sneaked up unexpectedly, and he swerved from subject to subject like a racecar driver. With no indication to mark the end of our talk, he announced, “I’m off. It’s not that I’m not enjoying myself. It’s just that I’m getting a little tired.” He cleared his throat. “Tired mind. Thoughtless hands. I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong impression.”

“It’s been an interesting impression.” I smiled, trying to draw him back but willing to let him go. “Maybe I’ll get to see your show sometime,” I added, even though I was planning to leave Nevada the next day.

“That might be sooner than you think,” Toby said. “Circe held Odysseus for a whole year just with magic and wine.”

By the time I’d thought up a response, Toby had vanished into the tangle of slot machines.

People always say how minutely they remember the details of the moment that changed their lives—let’s say the waltz of light and shadow, the Greek key design on their coffee cup, the bitterness or sweetness of food, the dryness of skin, the specific pathway forged by adrenaline, the black and ocher hexagons on the carpet. What I remember most about that night, besides the stop-action motion of the Old Stand Saloon as Toby crossed the room to join me, is the restaurant’s synthetic gingham napkins.

When I reached my room, I withdrew the napkin filled with quarters from my bag. I tucked the quarters away in a small pouch, then spread the napkin on the floor. From my sewing bag, I pulled out a needle and thread and a patchwork quilt—my traveling companion. When you move around as much as I do, you need your own map or trail—a time line to remind you of where you’ve been, how you got there, and if necessary, how to find your way back. Working quickly, I sewed some of the napkin into my quilt, hoping it would lead me back to the magician.

As I’ve said, my name is Mel Snow. I was born in the lull between a blizzard and a flood. My parents told me that it was the falling temperature that forced me into the world. I’m not sure I believe this. I do think the blizzard—its rampant disruption of our suburb—has contributed to the way I design my textiles. I love the patterns, the seamless repetitions, which are both effortless and expected, as clear and orderly as a marching band. But as much as I desire an unbroken chain of diamonds, leaves, or snowflakes, I cannot let them sit perfected and undisturbed. I want to turn up the volume, introduce a synthesizer or a zither, something out of place in the arrangement of the orderly orchestra. So I shorten a trapezoid into a rhombus, skip a diamond in a string of fifty, darken a white snowflake to an ashy gray. And in my designs, with their minute corruptions, I try to create a pattern of patternlessness.

When not disrupting my own textiles, I made a living comforting and reassuring the cheapskate owners of small hotel-casinos in forgotten Wild West towns. I had recently been working for Sew Low Fabrics, and I was struggling to get a handle on their clients who wanted to evoke a bogus respect for Native Americans. “How about something a little more Indian? One of those geometric prints in too many colors. The tourists love that stuff,” they’d say. “No one wants to forget how the West was won,” they’d add with a chuckle. The manager of the Old Stand Saloon was no exception.

I had hoped to catch a glimpse of the magician before taking the bus out of Tonopah that afternoon. But the manager had kept me overtime with a string of gripes about his order for curtains, bedspreads, and napkins, all patterned with an interlocking horseshoe motif—a bit of which I had sewn into my quilt. He had spent so much time telling me about how proud he was to “buy American,” even though I’d noticed that he’d ordered his plates and flatware from Mexico, that I had only a few minutes to catch the bus. I dashed to the lobby, the clatter of the synthetic stain-resistant horseshoes drumming in my ears like a high-speed forge, and took a harried look around for Toby.

The waiter with the jagged teeth peeked around the door of the restaurant, where he was arranging cutlery on the buffet. “He’s gone,” he said. I grabbed my bag and went to wait for the bus. The magician didn’t appear.

Eighty miles outside of Tonopah, in a small town called Beatty, I had to transfer to another bus that would take me to Las Vegas in time for my midnight flight. As I got off, I asked the driver, “Am I going to make this connection?”

“If he comes, he comes,” he replied, not looking my way. He closed the door, and with a hydraulic hitch, the bus was off.

I waited. The yellow sun began to melt and spread, dyeing the sky rust, then crimson, and finally cornflower blue. I dragged my foot through the loose stones and watched as the traffic began to pick up—the late-night convertibles and caravans heading for a night out in Vegas.

After two hours, I stood up, shouldering my bag, and prepared to walk to the gas station in the distance. I had gone only a few steps when a brown minivan came to a halt next to me. I picked up my pace, but my bag was heavy. I didn’t turn around until someone lifted it from my shoulder.

“The desert is no place for someone named