Page 47 of The Immortalists

She’s heard the same thing about stars: they appear to twinkle when light, viewed through earth’s atmosphere, becomes bent. The human eye processes the movement as absence. But the light is always there.

Klara breaks through the water. She gasps.

Perhaps the point is not to resist death. Perhaps the point is that there’s no such thing. If Simon and Saul are contacting Klara, then consciousness survives the death of the body. If consciousness survives the death of the body, then everything she’s been told about death isn’t true. And if everything she’s been told about death isn’t true, maybe death is not death at all.

She turns onto her back and floats. If the woman is right, if she could see Simon’s death in 1969, then there’s magic in the world: some strange, shimmering knowledge in the very heart of the unknowable. It doesn’t matter whether or when Klara dies; she can communicate with Ruby just as she does with Simon now. She can cross boundaries, like she always wanted to.

She can be the bridge.

19.

The billboard outside the hotel has changed. Tonight, it reads. The Immortalist, with Raj Chapal. The show won’t begin until eleven o’clock—a New Year’s Eve special—but the entrance is already overflowing with tourists. Raj parks the Sunbird in the employee lot. Usually, she carries their bags and he carries Ruby, but tonight Klara won’t let go of the baby. She’s put Ruby in a red party dress that Gertie sent for Ruby’s first birthday, with thick white tights and black patent leather shoes.

They walk through the lobby. Fish glow and scuttle in the fifty-foot aquarium. The tiger habitat is swarmed, though the animals are sleeping, their downy chins flat on the concrete. Raj and Klara turn toward the elevators. This is where they’ll part: Raj will bring their bags to the theater, and Klara will bring Ruby to day care.

Raj turns to her and puts his hand on her cheek. His palm is warm, calloused from work in the shop. “You ready?”

Klara’s heartbeat trips. She looks at his face. It’s beautiful: the swan’s neck of each cheekbone, the angular chin. His shoulder-length hair is in a ponytail, as usual; the makeup artist will blow it out and add silicone to make it shine.

“I want you to know that I’m proud of you,” he says.

His eyes are glossy. Klara inhales in surprise.

“I know I’ve been hard on you. I know things have been tense. But I love you; I love us. And I have faith in you.”

“But you don’t believe in my tricks. You don’t believe in the magic.”

She smiles. She feels sorry for him, for how much he doesn’t know.

“No,” he says, frustrated, like he’s talking to Ruby. “There’s no such thing.”

Families surge toward the elevators, moving around Klara and Raj, through them, and Raj drops his hand. When they’re alone again, Raj puts it back where it was, but it’s harder, now, his palm cupping her jaw.

“Listen. Just because I don’t believe in your tricks doesn’t mean I don’t believe in you. I think you’re great at what you do. I think you have the power to affect people. You’re an artist, Klara. An entertainer.”

“I’m not a show pony. I’m not a clown.”

“No,” says Raj. “You’re a star.”

He drops his bags and reaches for her. With his arms around her back, he pulls her close and squeezes. Pressed to Klara’s breast, Ruby squeaks. Their family of three. Already they feel like ghosts, like people she used to know. She thinks of the days—they feel so long ago—when she thought Raj could give her everything she wanted.

“I’m going upstairs,” she says.

“Okay.” Raj makes a fish face at Ruby, who giggles. “Wave goodbye, Ruby. Wave goodbye to your papa. Wish him good luck.”

• • •

The woman who runs the day care cracks the door when Klara knocks. The suite behind her is filled with the children of stagehands and performers, receptionists and line cooks, managers and maids.

“Nuts tonight.” She looks like a hostage, her face haggard behind the bolted chain. “Happy fucking New Year.”

Klara hears the crash of glass and a series of whooping noises.

“Good God,” shouts the woman, turning. Then she faces Klara again. “Mind if we make this quick? Hello, you.”

She unbolts the door and wiggles a finger at Ruby. Klara clutches the baby. Everything in her that is rational resists letting go.

“What, you’re not dropping her off tonight? Don’t you have a show?”