Magic Mansion (17 page)

Gold Team had debated whether or not to buy their competitors anything on the shopping spree that followed the salon visit—but Faye had insisted that when the chefs on Out of the Frying Pan brought home token gifts for their opponents, it had been viewed not as gesture of inclusion, but one of condescension.
 

Ricardo was glad enough to not feel pressured to buy anything for that jerk, Kevin. And no one needed to know he hadn’t picked out the pearlescent gray bow tie for himself. Having something to give John once their part of the shooting had wrapped would be the perfect ice-breaker, and so really, the afternoon had been as full of “win” as Ricardo could possibly have hoped.
 

“Take a look at you,” Monty exclaimed in his cute Aussie accent as he strode by the Gold Team on his way to his mark. “Very spunky.” He gestured to include the whole team, though Ricardo noticed it was actually Sue who’d caught his eye. Eliza Watt, stylist to the stars, had managed her crew with an iron fist. She was apparently a big fan of “lowlights,” which made Sue’s dark blonde hair glow like warm honey. Even Bev had been convinced to try some…once she was informed she had all the fashion sense of an ex-nun.

Faye had refused everything but a facial and a deep condition, and her red dye-job now looked a bit tacky compared to everyone else’s fancy refinements. Everyone but Muriel, actually, who’d been game to go along with a rather bizarre addition of glittery blue filaments in her long gray hair and an extreme eyebrow wax that left her looking somewhat surprised.

It had been a relief when Ms. Watt pronounced Ricardo’s hundred-and-fifty-dollar haircut, “Not bad,” though she did tweak it (herself, no less) with some micro-adjustments she claimed would accentuate his eyes. Maybe she knew what she was talking about. John sure seemed to like what he saw.

Luckily, the rest of the Gold Team was smiling just as wide as Ricardo, so he didn’t need to tone it down. It felt good to be happy. In fact, it felt awesome.
 

Especially when John’s eyes met his across the room, and John’s gaze softened. He didn’t quite smile, but Professor Topaz had never been an ebullient kind of guy. No, the Professor was
intense
. And that was even hotter.

“Greetings, magicians,” Monty read from his teleprompter. “Some of you spent the afternoon being pampered, while the rest of you endured a day of grueling labor. Hopefully the lesson you’ll take away from today’s events is how critical it is to win these challenges.

“Keep that in mind tonight, when you’ll be able to strategize for the next challenge, which I’ll announce in just a few moments. First, though, I have some sad news for you. The Red Team’s punishment is not quite finished.”

Ricardo felt their anger surging through the room like a pressure change in an airplane cabin, though not one member of the Red Team had so much as moved. In fact, they were preternaturally still. Except for Kevin Kazan, who’d narrowed his eyes.

“Will the two members of the Red Team who lost the Metamorphosis Challenge please step forward?”

Fabian stepped forward stiffly—though it was difficult to tell if that stiffness represented anger, or the residual effects of the deep-tissue massage, or the day he’d spent wrangling weeds. Ken was stricken.

“I’m sorry to say that the audience has voted one of you out of Magic Mansion.”

As much as Ricardo reminded himself that the whole point of a competition was to eliminate players, it still managed to surprise him. Each and every time.

“The magician who will be leaving tonight is…Ken Barron.”

Ken closed his eyes, and he swallowed so hard that his Adam’s apple rose and fell, casting a distinct shadow on his sinewy throat. Even from across the room, Ricardo swore he could feel the man’s heart breaking.

“Thank you, Ken,” Monty said—compassionately, though of course he’d probably been told to say it that way. “It’s time to say goodbye.”

For a moment it seemed as if Ken had frozen to the spot, and despite his dismissal, would continue to stand there, throat working, until the same burly security guard who’d escorted Charity and Oscar up for their luggage and out to the parking lot might come in and flank the escape artist now, too. But then one of the stolid Red Team magicians broke rank.

John stepped forward and placed a hand on Ken’s shoulder, with his stern expression shifting to one of regret. Although John was tall and slim and austere, it looked easy enough for him put his arms around Ken and offer comfort. It seemed as though he might speak, but then Ken’s shoulders shifted, and he hugged John back, tightly, and words were no longer necessary. They clasped one another fiercely, but only for a moment.

John’s decision to embrace his eliminated teammate caused a ripple of compassion to spread through the Red Team. Fabian turned to Ken and hugged him too, though it was more of a manly clap-on-the-back type of gesture. Jia stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, and finally Kevin, possibly the least inspiring team leader that ever existed, gave Ken a hearty handshake, followed up with a salute.

“Spare me,” Sue muttered. “Kazan can’t even say goodbye without looking like a douchebag.”

As one, the Gold Team waved at Ken while he walked past them on his way across the ballroom, and Ricardo did his best to not allow his expression to convey his relief that, in this round anyway, it wasn’t a member of his own team heading out that door. And that
farewell
wasn’t something he’d had to say himself.

“Okay, kids,” Iain barked, jolting Ricardo out of his sobering turn of mood. “Form a group in front of the fireplace so you can all hear the next thing Monty tells you loud and clear.”

The taller magicians fell toward the back, Ricardo and the Professor drawing together like magnets in the center. At least it hadn’t been John to leave—as hard as it was to say goodbye to Ken, who’d wanted to win so badly it was palpable, Ricardo consoled himself with the fact that John was still there.

Though he wanted to slip his hand into John’s so badly it physically ached to keep himself from doing it.

Once a stylist smoothed out a wayward tuft of Monty’s hair and then got herself out of the range of the cameras, Iain gave the go-ahead, and Monty turned his dazzling smile toward the magicians, and began.

“Your next challenge involves another traditional cabinet trick: the Zig-Zag Lady. Though since we’re more of an equal opportunity type of show, for your stunt, it’ll be known as the Zig-Zag Cabinet. The way this trick is traditionally performed, the magician places his assistant inside a three-sectioned box. Cutouts in the front of the cabinet reveal the assistant’s face, fingers and toes. After a wide blade is slipped horizontally between each of the segments, the center section is slid to the side, creating the illusion that the assistant has just been sliced in three.”

Faye, who was standing directly in front of Ricardo, said, “Yes,” under her breath. No doubt, given the number of years she’d put in as an assistant, she’d done the Zig-Zag Lady countless times. And no doubt she was good at it. The crux of the trick involved the assistant turning only her body sideways and sucking in her middle, and then some clever painting and foreshortening to make the blades look as if they sank into the box much farther than they actually did, and the cabinet segments to look more drastically misaligned than they actually were.

But Kevin Kazan answered her with a leery, “Huh,” as if he didn’t think it was going to be that simple. And though it galled him to admit it to himself, Ricardo suspected Kazan was right. There would be a twist. There always was.

“But here’s the twist,” Monty said brightly, as Ricardo steeled himself against sighing, groaning, or rolling his eyes. “Not only will you be responsible for
performing
the illusion….”

“Hold the pause,” Iain said, as the cameras circled the magicians intently to capture their budding unease. Ricardo held his breath and steeled his expression into one of polite interest, though he noticed that Muriel and her surprised eyebrows were drawing more than their fair share of attention from the handhelds. Once all the contestants could be represented as sufficiently awed by the “cleverness” of the program, Iain said, “Okay, lights.”

He signaled to the gaffer, who fired up a bank of lighting, and suddenly a tarp-covered bulge was the central focus of the set. Ricardo hadn’t even noticed it until the lights hit the canvas. Had he made the mistake of assuming it was just leftover cleanup from the ceiling incident—or had he been too busy ogling John to care about it one way or the other until it was pointed out to him?

Either way, it was sloppy. And Ricardo, who’d spent most of his life in a state of keenly focused awareness, was disturbed he’d failed to notice a detail that prominent—too prominent to technically be called a “detail.”

Iain called out, “Do the reveal.”

A couple of grips picked up the edge of the canvas. One camera was trained on the pile. The others continued swarming the magicians. The grips heaved off the canvas, revealing a stack of plywood and lumber.

Maybe it really was something to do with the ceiling repair, and Iain had just gotten his tarp-covered piles mixed up. But then Fabian made a low chuckle in his throat, and Ricardo decided that although he didn’t know what it was supposed to mean, it wasn’t all just some sort of crazy mistake.

Iain said, “Take it from the last line,” and Monty repeated, “Not only will you be responsible for
performing
the illusion….”

Muriel let out an involuntary snort. Ricardo glanced at her to see what she’d just kenned to that he hadn’t quite figured out, and found her new eyebrows had quirked up impossibly high. “Oh,” she said, “that’s rich.”

“…but first, you’ll need to
build
your own apparatus.”

Build?

Ricardo swallowed. His magic construction skills went as far as large-appliance boxes and duct tape. And he was the only man on his team. He cut his eyes to the Red Team. Fabian was sizing up the pile like he had a tape measure in his head, and Kazan was literally rubbing his palms together in eager glee.

Someone did take Ricardo’s hand then, but it wasn’t Professor Topaz. It was Sue. She squeezed his fingertips and smiled up into his eyes, and said, “Don’t worry, it’ll be fun.”

Chapter 18

CONSTRUCTION PLANS

Dinner, served family-style that night at a long dining room table (rather than the catered buffet they shared with the crew the prior evenings) was a profoundly awkward affair. John felt so much tension emanating from Fabian, it was a wonder his tepid carrot soup didn’t burst into a rolling boil. Kevin Kazan chewed his steak so hard his jaw creaked. The two of them wanted to inhale their food and get down to planning the the Zig-Zag Cabinet…and so Iain had ensured the meal was sent out one lingering course at a time.

“It was sad to see Ken leave,” Sue offered up to the room’s silence, and immediately her teammates all murmured their assent.

“It will only get harder,” Bev said.

“True,” Muriel agreed. “The longer we stay here, and the closer we get, the worse it’s gonna feel as they boot us out of here one by one.”

The closer they got? John imagined that between the arguing about the Zig-Zag Cabinet that would shortly ensue,
close
would be an understatement. More like stifling.

And, of course the one player he did want to get close to seemed a million miles away—even as they stole glances across the table despite their best efforts to keep from being too obvious.
 

The dessert was served, finally, and as the strangely festive pink parfaits were placed in front of them, Muriel added, “Plus, Ken’s nose-whistle was a hoot. Sometimes I thought his left nostril was gonna break into Stairway to Heaven. Or maybe Freebird. I’ll miss that.”

Jia took two bites of her parfait, then stood up so quickly her chair teetered, and said, “Are we through? Can I go now?”

Iain tapped off his bluetooth headset and sighed. “Do you need me to get you a nicotine patch?”

“I’m wearing one.”

Iain looked at the remains of the dinner, then shrugged and said, “Fine. That’s a wrap. You’ll each have a cameraman in your room to grab more dynamic footage of your strategizing than the ceiling cams would pick up.”

Jia put her hand on the back of John’s chair. “Come have a smoke,” she said quietly.
 

John almost declined. But since she probably hadn’t presumed he’d picked up the habit over the course of the last few hours, there must have been something she wanted to tell him…alone. John stood. The subtle fidgeting of his other teammates—Kevin clenching and unclenching his shoulder muscles, Fabian realigning his salad fork every few moments—had caused him to be glad enough to stretch his legs. The only one who really took note of him leaving was Ricardo—and Ricardo simply gave him a small but encouraging smile, then went back to the “chitchat” he and his team managed so effortlessly.

They slipped past a pair of stylists who were comparing their latest iPhone apps and let themselves out into one of the less photogenic parts of the grounds, a corner where several ladders were stored on a cracked concrete pad. Jia didn’t bother offering John a cigarette. She lit one up and blew the smoke up toward her forehead, and her hair fluttered. “Slick move,” she said, “getting yourself hurt like that in the garden. I can guarantee they’ll show that blood at least two or three times. I hope you didn’t do it to get out of giving me your answer.”

John hadn’t realized she even thought he’d actually been considering an onscreen romance. “It was an accident,” he said. An accident…which was the very thing that had left John in a cardboard box of an apartment, alone, instead of an artsy townhouse with Casey. Maybe that was the deeper reason John didn’t feel particularly sorry for Ken getting voted off. Or perhaps it was relief over the fact that he now wouldn’t need to decide whether or not to say anything about the alcohol.

“I don’t believe in accidents any more than I believe in luck.” Jia clasped her free hand around her middle, and planted her other elbow against the forearm, cocking her cigarette just so beside her lips. “You designed yourself a solid persona that’ll get better and better as you age. You’re a man. And that’s what happens. With every year that passes, you grow more authoritative, more distinguished, more mature. Not women, though. In the eyes of the world, women just get old.”