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Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

At the Intersection of George Burns and Gracie Allen

Nebraska

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright © 1997 by Ann Patchett

 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

 

For information about permission to reproduce selections of this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

 

 

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print version as follows: Patchett, Ann. The magician’s assistant/Ann Patchett. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-15-100263-4 ISBN 978-0-15-600621-7 (pbk. ) I. Title. PS3566. A7756M34 1997 813'. 54—dc21 97-2139

 

eISBN 978-0-547-54879-1 v4. 0313

 

 

 

 

 

to Lucy Grealy and Elizabeth McCracken

At the Intersection of George Burns and Gracie Allen

 

 

 

 

 

PARSIFAL IS DEAD. That is the end of the story.

 

The technician and the nurse rushed in from their glass booth. Where there had been a perfect silence a minute before there was now tremendous activity, the straining sounds of two men unexpectedly thrown into hard work. The technician stepped between Parsifal and Sabine, and she had no choice but to let go of Parsifal’s hand. When they counted to three and then lifted Parsifal’s body from the metal tongue of the MRI machine and onto the gurney, his head fell back, his mouth snapping open with no reflexes to protect it.

Sabine saw all of his beautiful teeth, the two gold crowns on the back molars shining brightly in the overhead fluorescent light. The heavy green sheet that they had given him for warmth got stuck in the guardrail lock. The nurse struggled with it for a second and then threw up his hands, as if to say they didn’t have time for this, when in fact they had all the time in the world. Parsifal was dead and would be dead whether help was found in half a minute or in an hour or a day. They rushed him around the corner and down the hall without a word to Sabine. The only sound was the quick squeak of rubber wheels and rubber soles against the linoleum.

Sabine stood there, her back against the massive MRI machine, her arms wrapped around her chest, waiting. It was, in a way, the end of Sabine.

After a while the neuroradiologist came into the room and told her, in a manner that was respectful and direct, the one thing she already knew: Her husband was dead. He did not pluck at his lab coat or stare at the floor the way so many doctors had done when they had spoken to Parsifal and Sabine about Phan. He told her it had been an aneurism, a thinning in a blood vessel of his brain. He told her it had probably been there Parsifal’s whole life and was not in any way related to his AIDS. Like a patient with advanced lymphoma who is driven off the freeway by a careless teenager changing lanes, the thing that had been scheduled to kill Parsifal had been denied, and Sabine lost the years she was promised he still had. The doctor did not say it was a blessing, but Sabine could almost see the word on his lips. Compared to the illness Parsifal had, this death had been so quick it was nearly kind. “Your husband,” the doctor explained, “never suffered. ”