Magic Mansion (12 page)

Ricardo’s technician had already covered his back in gel. The man guided Ricardo into a supine position—and John quickly found a picture on the far wall to stare at. It was something innocuous, something banal. A watercolor. Gestural, green. Perhaps a tea leaf. He focused on it, and saw it wasn’t really a watercolor, just a mass-produced print. Not from the image itself, which was blandly pleasant enough, but from the vibration of the cellulose and the thin varnish coat of the printing process.

As hard as he stared at that damn leaf print, all he could think of was the sight of Ricardo’s perfect abs bunching as he eased back onto the table. And imagining how they would feel sliding against his palms as the two of them rolled together. Skin on skin.

And then the seaweed touched him. Warm. Wet. Not unpleasant. It smelled herbal, like lavender, mostly. The technician applied it with a brush like he was painting the side of a house, with long, sure strokes. Then he asked John to lie down on the trough-like table, upon which was a layer of thick towels, and over that, a sheet of crinkly silver mylar.
 

The technician began painting John’s front. Marlene said quietly, “Chat.”

John turned his head. Ricardo was watching him. Smiling. Not the showman’s smile, but a private one. His front was now being painted, too. The gleam of the seaweed gel only enhanced his sleek muscles. “They say the seaweed draws out impurities,” John said…and then he wondered if that included impure thoughts.

“I hear your skin feels amazing afterward,” Ricardo added.

No doubt.

Ricardo’s technician finished coating him and began wrapping him in the mylar. “How long is it supposed to stay on?” Marlene asked him.

“Twenty minutes, half an hour. Enough time to work up a good sweat.”

Honestly,
John thought.
Must everything be a euphemism?

“I suppose we have time to go all the way,” Marlene said.
 

Yes. Apparently, everything must.

“Once they’re wrapped up,” she told the cameramen, “head over to the reflexology and get some close-ups of those feet. We’ll make sure to come back before they unwrap and get a few shots of these two looking sweaty.”

John’s technician spread the last of the gel over his stomach, then folded the silver sheet over him and tucked it in snugly. He brought up the other side and tucked that in too, then wrapped the sides of the thick towel around him as well. The cameramen trooped out, the technicians, and finally, Marlene.

John and Ricardo were alone. Swaddled in a pair of lavender-scented mylar cocoons, but alone.

John turned his head to face Ricardo. “How are you?” he whispered. He didn’t think there was a secret camera left behind, but according to the sheafs of documents he’d signed, there could be.

“Good. Really good. You?”

“Good.”

They stared awkwardly for a long pause, and then Ricardo said, “I really wish I could move.”

“It does seem to be your forte.”

Ricardo smiled. “What does?”

“Moving.” John wondered why he was admitting the thing that was keen on spilling out of his mouth. “I saw the videos on your website.”

“You did?” Ricardo’s cheeks flushed.

“They were…very good.”

Ricardo launched into a story about the venue where the videos had been taped, how he’d had a great audience there, a steady gig. How it had closed its doors during the latest recession and left him performing at parties. And John traded a story or two about some of the more unusual venues he’d headlined. A dot-com launch. A funeral, once. Twenty uninterrupted minutes felt like a decadent amount of time in which to talk—and perhaps it was fortunate that neither of them could move, because there could very well have been a hidden camera trained on them. And even so, if John had been capable of putting his arms around Ricardo, of drawing him into a kiss…he wouldn’t have been able to resist.

Chapter 13

TWO MAGICIANS LEAVE

U
NEDITED
V
IDEO
J
OURNAL
- K
EN
B
ARRON

“So I survived the first punishment, cleaning the bathrooms, making the beds. I don’t think the housework was the actual punishment. We’ve only been here one night, so it wasn’t particularly hard. It wasn’t as if anything was dirty. I think not being allowed to go to the spa, not getting to bond with our teammates…that was the real punishment.

“As much as it would kill me to do it because I’m so damn ashamed, I’m itching to call my sponsor. But I can’t. No phone calls, that’s part of the deal here.
 

“Last night…was out of control. Completely out of control. Totally…unbelievable. The way it feels, having cameras following you around, the idea that every move you make, every look that crosses your face, could possibly show up on someone’s high-def TV set, bigger than life—you can’t imagine the pressure. And maybe they’ll decide this ‘look’ of yours is raw enough to show over and over, every time they go into a commercial break. And then a DVD set will come out, and whatever look you had on your face will be there for people to laugh about, to mock…forever.

“And if it’s really humiliating, it’ll probably show up on YouTube, too. ’Cos the DVDs aren’t bad enough. People love that. Watching you die inside.

“Chip Challenge has been awesome through this whole thing. He’s like the kid brother I never had. He’s a good guy, you know? A sincerely good guy, deep down inside. You’d think this business would eat someone like him for breakfast. But there’s something resilient about him. And I hang out with him, the cameras don’t seem so bad, and I kind of feel like…well, I dunno. Maybe things can work out for me after all.”

____

As Ricardo finished changing into one of his “Magician Semi-Casual” outfits: tight black stretch jeans, a purple silk shirt (untucked), and a sixties-inspired pair of pointy suede wingtips, there was a tap on his bedroom door. He found Sue there in the hallway, just as moderately-dolled-up as he was in a glitzy clubwear blouse, crushed velvet slacks, and kitten heels. She slipped into his room and checked for cameras, and when she reassured herself of their relative privacy, said, “I still look like I’ve been crying, don’t I?”

She did. A bit. “Can’t say I noticed. I was wondering if I needed to get myself a pair of velvet pants. They’re hot on you, girl.”

She perched gingerly on one of the room’s two unused beds. “It was so embarrassing.”

“You don’t even know for sure the editors are going to show it.”

“Oh, they’ll show it all right.” She sniffled as if she might start crying again. “The minute the waterworks started, the cameras swarmed me. It was like a scene from a Hitchcock movie. But instead of birds pecking at me from all angles, I had cameramen.”

Who knew a deep-tissue massage would be so painful? Ricardo felt profoundly guilty, because he should have been the one to bear the brunt of it. His pain threshold had always been high. And he felt even more guilty that the worst thing he’d needed to contend with at the spa was the fact that he was swaddled so tightly he couldn’t reach out and run his fingers over John’s bare shoulder.
 

That was likely a blessing, given that a secret camera might have been hidden in a heating vent or a stack of towels.
 

When they’d picked their tasks, everyone had been so distracted by the aspect of who was willing to grin and bare it—and who was concerned with sparing their older teammates the discomfort of disrobing—that none of them had considered the specifics of the treatments themselves.

“They’ll probably show Fabian too,” Ricardo said. “He must have been wincing, at least.”

“Probably. He was making this weird groany sound. But he wasn’t crying—not like me. And the crying seemed to be what drew them. Like flies to…crap.”

Ricardo sat beside Sue and gave her a pat on the knee. She winced. He supposed it wasn’t the best time to mention that he smelled really good, and that his skin felt amazing, even his elbows. Or that John looked just as fine with his clothes off as he did in his tailored black suit.

And that John’s skin probably felt amazing now, too. And if they rubbed their amazing skin together, it would be so hot Ricardo might just burst into flames.

A double-knock sounded on the door, and an assistant called in, “Taping in the ballroom in ten.”

Ricardo gave Sue what he hoped was an uplifting smile, and said, “It’s showtime!”

Sue stood, unfolding painfully from the edge of the bed. “I want to die.”

“Come on.” Ricardo offered his arm. “We’ll walk nice and slow.”

They did walk slowly, and consequently, were the last two to enter the ballroom. With the Gold Team standing there framed by the gilt fireplace, Ricardo experienced a moment of disorientation at seeing Amazing Faye and Charity there with Muriel and Bev—because during his morning at the spa, he’d forgotten them. Intellectually, he knew they were part of his team. But in his heart, his teammates were the women he’d met while he was taping the Magic Mansion intro.
 

Faye’s semi-causal outfit consisted of a halter top and clingy tuxedo-inspired pants with sequins running up the sides. Charity had on a bubblegum pink tracksuit—and her puppet was now wearing a bow tie. Ricardo looked more closely. No, Oscar had on a whole new outfit. Right down to the shoes. His fuzz-like hair was even styled a bit differently, parted to the side.

Did Oscar wear pajamas, too? Ricardo had been a bit lonely in his own room, but the thought of Oscar watching him sleep made him experience a surge of gratitude for his solitary accommodations.
 

The Red Team stood beneath a massive Impressionist depiction of swans and water lilies, a towering canvas at least ten feet high. It seemed a bit festive behind them, the men all in black—even Chip Challenge, though his rhinestones, cuffs and fringe were colorful. Their sole female contestant, Jia Lee, was once again fabulous in red: a short, tight red sheath dress with a mandarin collar.
 

Around the perimeter of the room, camera operators got themselves settled in, while assistants took readings with light meters and fussed with the curtains. A makeup artist touched up Sue’s lipstick, but must not have seen anything to correct on Ricardo. And then Monty Shaw walked past with a quick, “G’day,” and took up his station on a piece of tape beneath an ornate arch that led to a smaller parlor, or something—Ricardo couldn’t quite say what it had once been, only that there was a tapestry screen blocking the view of its interior now, and the set assistants went in there every time they needed a power strip or a roll of gaffing tape.

Iain came in last, murmuring to each of the cameramen. He conferred briefly with Monty, then seated himself behind the boom operator, where he crossed his legs and began chewing on his thumbnail. He did not, Ricardo noticed, say hello. He only said, “Action.”

“Hello, magicians!” Monty said brightly.
 

Both groups cautiously said hello. Ricardo felt the camera sweeping him, and he hoped he’d hit the right note with his greeting. Too subdued, and he might come off as bored. Even arrogant. Too enthusiastic and he’d seem like a loser.

Maybe he shouldn’t have gone for the exfoliant after all. He’d need his thick skin if he hoped to stand up to the continual scrutiny of the camera.

“I trust you’re all rested and rejuvenated?”

Sue managed to smile and act like she was. Even if she was grinding her teeth to keep the ache in her thighs at bay.

Once the magicians all made their sounds of affirmation, Monty said, “Then you’ll be eager to hear about your next challenge.”

Not really. What Ricardo was eager to do was ditch the show and go back to the spa with John. Or go anywhere with John, for that matter. But he supposed every challenge he endured put him one step closer to an off-camera meeting with the Professor.

“In this challenge, you’ll be working as a team. But…” he looked from one group to the other, and the cameras panned over everyone’s fretful expressions, “you’ll be doing it one teammate short. Because
two
of you…have been eliminated.”

Eliminated?

Two
?

Ricardo felt physically ill. No one said anything about one elimination, let alone two. And Monty hadn’t said they
were going to
be eliminated, either. He said they
had been
.

What if the spa were some kind of test?

What if Ricardo was supposed to do the deep tissue massage and leave the seaweed wrap for one of his teammates? Just a second ago he’d been fantasizing about leaving Magic Mansion behind and cruising off into the sunset with John. But now that his possible cut from the team was imminent, he realized he didn’t want to leave at all. Not really.

Because Ricardo was a competitor. And, damn it, he wanted to play.

He swallowed hard.

Maybe (he hadn’t allowed himself to even think it) what he really wanted was…to win.

Across the room, Kevin Kazan planted his feet wide and crossed his arms in a thuggish stance. His stiff black baseball cap sat high on his head at an angle that made Ricardo itch to straighten it out, and his neck was so thick with oversized necklaces that the Red Team medal just looked like part of his jewelry collection. When he saw Ricardo sizing him up, his eyes narrowed, and he tipped his chin up as if to say,
You want a piece of me?

Ricardo swallowed again, and considered the revelation he’d just had.

He wanted to win.

Yes, he did.

He looked Kevin Kazan right in the eye, and he smiled.

“Last night,” Monty said, “in the fishtanks, your physical limits were tested. Some of you competed successfully. And some of you…did not.”

He paused while the cameras roved past the magicians, attempting to capture whatever dismay was lurking behind their polished smiles or sneers.

“Would the magicians who stayed behind at the mansion today please step forward?”

Iain said, “Stand on the tape mark,” which would be edited out.