Magic Mansion

by Jordan Castillo Price

  As distinctly as if the set had been playing in his own living room, John heard the words, “Lights…camera…magic.” He lowered the handset from his ear, with Dick still going on about how he should cash in on his homosexuality while gays were “hot,” and focused instead on the commercial downstairs. The voicework was hastily produced, a local spot with too much audio high-end and no background music, which made the words carry right through the floor. “Do you live in the L.A. area? Are you a professional magician? If so, Magic Mansion is looking for you. Call 888—”

  The channel changed. An inane laugh track swelled, then fizzled. Theme music piped in. John could hardly pound on the floor and tell the neighbors to change the channel back. Not only would they misinterpret the knocking as a complaint about the noise level—the number would be long gone. John raised the phone to his ear again, and found Dick saying, “…you never know. If you start getting out more, maybe you’ll meet someone.”

  “Dick,” John cut in. His agent fell silent. “What do you know about Magic Mansion?”

  Chapter 2

  THE AUDITION

  It had been years—hell, maybe more than a decade—since Ricardo Hart actually felt nervous before a show. Nervous enough to make his hands sweat. And while perspiration-slicked palms were the bane of any performer, for a stage magician, sweaty hands were the absolute kiss of death.

  He placed his palms flat against his thighs and tried his best to look objectively at his situation. True, a quarter of a million dollars was at stake, and the young lady currently onstage was cute…but she was clumsy. Though she might have the advantage of being able to work the judges in high heels and fishnet stockings, Ricardo could score better on posture alone, as well as stage presence, audience banter, and overall execution.

  He shifted in his seat and touched his props for comfort. When he hefted one of his silver linking rings, however, the smooth metal slid in his sweaty grasp, which did nothing to alleviate his nerves. All week long he’d been picturing himself acing the audition, confidence being ninety percent of the game. But now? Now he was so terrified he could only hope to get through his act without embarrassing himself.

  “And that, my good judges, is the Bottomless Gibeciere.” She pronounced gibeciere strangely, as if she’d never heard it spoken—and maybe she hadn’t. Nowadays, magic could be learned online. There was no such thing as the Internet when magic first called to Ricardo. He’d picked up the craft from magazines like Genii Magazine, honed it in a magic and circus skills course at summer camp in Minnesota, and finally perfected it by apprenticing several working magicians in L.A. From the tender age of ten to his most recent thirty-fifth birthday, a quarter century, Ricardo had trained as a performer. The e-gician on stage shouldn’t pose any threat to someone like him.

  Although she did look really, really good in fishnet.

  A production assistant with a clipboard and a headset microphone approached the back of the theater where the remaining magicians waited their turns. He flashed a penlight on his clipboard, and Ricardo tensed, wiped his palms on his slacks, and waited to hear his name called. “Okay…so we’re running overtime, and this place is booked to shoot an infomercial in just a couple of hours….”

  Ricardo felt his heart stutter. Running overtime? How could that possibly be? He pleaded with his eyes, well aware that the very worst thing he could do would be to act desperate, but he was unable to stop himself.

  Turning away from the row of hopeful magician faces, the producer murmured into his headset, then turned back and said, “So here’s what we’re gonna do. You guys’ll be performing two at a time.”

  Not only did Ricardo’s heart stop again…it felt as if it dropped within his chest cavity to lie there like a taxidermy prop dove. He was a one-man act. There was no way he’d share the stage with one of those amateurs.

  “Next up, Ricardo the Magnificent…”

  No. He wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it. His act depended on focus from the audience. No way could it happen with someone else performing on the same stage, at the same time.

  “…and Professor Topaz.”

  In the next row, a figure rose. Even from behind, Ricardo knew him by the regal set of his broad shoulders and the silhouette of his impeccably-styled hair. Ricardo had never seen him from anywhere but the audience. He was even taller in person than he looked onstage.

  The Professor Topaz had been a few yards away from him this entire time? Ricardo’s heart imploded like a star gone supernova.

  “You don’t need a table,” the producer asked Ricardo, “right? It says here you don’t need a table.”

  “No table.” Ricardo’s voice came out husky.

  “Okay, let’s get that table moved stage left.” Stagehands swarmed out from behind the curtains and began re-positioning the set. The production assistant turned back toward Ricardo and Professor Topaz. “Remember, guys, Magic Mansion isn’t only about your parlor tricks.” He seemed bored, like he’d given those instructions one time too many. “That’s the premise of the show, but the real reason people watch reality TV is to see how the contestants interact with each other.”

  Professor Topaz turned. The motion made his velvet cape flare gently, and the stage lights framed him with backlighting. All Ricardo could see of his features was the glint of the ambient light off his eyeballs as he donned his top hat. “Break a leg,” he said solemnly.

  Then again, he said everything solemnly. That was part of his act.

  The thought of sharing the stage with Professor Topaz transported Ricardo from the state of simple nervousness to that of all-out, mind-numbing panic. Did he even remember how to breathe? It seemed as if he might not. In. Out. There was the trick of it. Now, hopefully, he could keep going with it while he forced himself through his act.

  “You may begin,” Topaz said quietly. He’d opened a case and needed just a moment to set up his props. Ricardo recognized the cage-like box immediately. Square circle, a classic. Ricardo had seen him do the trick at the Humboldt county fair. He’d been very solemn about it.

  Ricardo’s silver linking rings didn’t need any prep. He glided to the front of the stage and launched into his act without hesitation. Prepare to be amazed, et cetera, et cetera. His act wasn’t about the metal rings, though, and it wasn’t about his banter. It was about poise and grace. He rolled one of the rings along the top of his arm, then allowed it to teeter on his fingertip for a moment before he flicked it onto his wrist. He’d done the move so many times before—thousands of times—that it went off like clockwork. His palms had even dried. Ricardo hadn’t realized sheer terror would do that for a guy.

  He shifted his weight and rolled out the second ring. If he’d been working a bachelorette party, he would have brought his hips into the act. Here, though…he had no idea what the producers were looking for to populate Magic Mansion. Did they want a player? Or did they want a serious magician? Not that one couldn’t be both. And besides, the whole hip-grinding thing was just part of the act. Like fishnets.

  The third ring, some light juggling, just a bit of hip action, and finally, Ricardo struck the rings together. Once, twice, metal chimed against metal, and then he allowed the upper ring to slip through the hidden gap. Presto—the rings were linked.

  With a flourish, he ceded the stage to Professor Topaz. His pulse was pounding so hard he wondered if the judges could see veins throbbing in his forehead, and he glided back from the spotlight to deflect the attention from his own nervousness.

  Professor Topaz turned his riveting gaze toward the producers and put himself through the paces of his illusion, timeless steps, like a waltz. He didn’t move around the stage as Ricardo had; he was thirty years older, and no longer needed to grind his hips to hold an audience’s attention.

  Not that Ricardo could have pictured Topaz prancing around like a gigolo. Even thirty years ago.

  No, Professor Topaz could bring a hush to a room with a flick of his cape, a glance of his flashing, dark eyes. When hi
s voice swelled and he intoned, “Behold, the canister is no longer empty,” Ricardo couldn’t tear his gaze away from those graceful hands. Silk scarves fluttered from the loaded chamber, floated on the air, buoyant and ephemeral, framing the commanding form of Professor Topaz, who stood among them like a figure from a dream.

  He’d looked exactly the same, back when Ricardo was a teenager, the first time he saw Professor Topaz perform. Only now he had a shock of silver at his temple. A stunning shock of silver that Ricardo ached to run his fingers through.

  Ricardo glanced down. Damn it, not here. Not now.

  His body seemed bent on reacting to the sight of his hero like that of a boy at the height of puberty—exactly like he had that first time. He blinked, once, long and deliberate, and willed himself to pull it together. Strutting through his paces onstage in clingy slacks that showcased a big package was one thing. Flouncing around in front of the producers with a raging hard-on was another.

  Ricardo dropped back and tried to force his body to calm down. He drifted so far upstage, he actually heard the murmur of voices behind the curtain. One voice, he even recognized—the production assistant with the headset mike. “…get through the rest of these idiots. Maybe the cheesy one here’s got something good up his sleeve. If that fucking dinosaur would ever stop pulling scarves out of his ass…”

  Cheesy? Yes, fine, Ricardo had been called worse. But to refer to the great Professor Topaz as a dinosaur?

  How dare he?

  Ricardo spun around and took in the scene around him as if the world had stopped, and only he was still capable of movement. A couple of interns at the edge of the stage flipped through their lists, oblivious to the performers. In the front row, the producers sat with two or three seats between them so as not to inadvertently contaminate one another. One was texting on her cell. The other was occupied with picking a bump on his jaw.

  All this, Ricardo saw as he whirled. He kept on turning, finally coming to a halt when Professor Topaz filled his field of vision. Topaz had exhausted his supply of silks and had moved on to folding mylar birds, pulling them out with flourishes that made them seem as if they would take flight themselves at any moment.

  The Professor’s eyes met Ricardo’s.

  With that single look, the whole day coalesced: the anticipation, the nerves, the humiliation, the sheer effort of holding back…and Ricardo felt himself slip.

  His showman’s smile flickered. He tightened his cheek muscles in an effort to keep it in place. Letting the smile slip wasn’t the worst of it, though.

  In that fraction of a second when things started tanking, Ricardo had allowed his gaze to fall on one of the sparkly pink doves. If anything, a magician should know how to control his face, his body, the attention of his audience, and most of all, his ability. Ricardo had lost control.

  It was beautiful, in its way.

  The pink mylar dove spread its wings wide, and the metallic folds of its body plumped as if something other than just air and clever origami were filling it out. While the other glittery doves had fluttered, this dove, for a brief, shining moment…soared.

  Professor Topaz’s eyes went wide, and he spread his hands to allow the almost-living bird to hover there before his astonished face. But only for a moment. He focused, then, and the bird dropped from the air into his outstretched hands. His eyes met Ricardo’s…and then he went on with the act as if everything was humming along exactly as planned.

  He took a bow, then Ricardo glided to center stage and began juggling two single rings with the linked pair. The inopportune stiffie? No longer an issue.

  _____

  The parking lot outside the audition smelled like the grudging start of autumn and the end of a frat party. Dumpsters lining a nearby alley overflowed with beer bottles and splitting sacks of garbage. The smoggy sky turned darker yet, and a steamy drizzle began to fall.

  “You’ll get a callback by Friday if you make it to the next round.” That was it. That was all the guy’d had to say—with no inflection whatsoever. And Ricardo knew that jerk was capable of speaking with inflection. He’d overheard it loud and clear through the stage curtain.

  Strangely enough, he didn’t even care whether he got into Magic Mansion or not. Offstage, in the commotion of both Mordo the Great and Fabian Swan trying to hustle past with their prop-laden acts, Professor Topaz had managed to simply disappear.

  Ricardo’s stupefied glee over sharing the stage with a living legend warred with his dismay at letting the Professor slip away without even swapping a few stories. Or phone numbers.

  The bus shelter, though it smelled like day-old takeout, at least shielded him from the murky sun. Ricardo checked the schedule. He’d just missed the bus. Magnificent.

  Though the walls were plexi, Ricardo couldn’t quite see through them. They were covered with a dozen generations of brightly colored flyers advertising work-from-home opportunities, some pyramid schemes, and a lost dog. He peeled back a flyer from a band he’d never even heard of, but even when he dug deep, he couldn’t find a single magician among all the ads. Not one.

  Exhaustion settled in his bones, and a deep, cold sadness…not over the way the casting call had turned out—because, to be honest, he suspected the primary motivation to put twelve magicians in a Hollywood mansion was not actually to award one of them a quarter-million dollars, but rather to mock the other eleven. And to encourage the rest of the world to do the same. No, Ricardo’s sadness was for the slow and inevitable death of magic itself.

  Just as he was feeling maudlin enough to relax his perfect posture and allow his shoulders to slump, a looming shadow dwarfed his own silhouette on the riotous colors of the layers and layers of flyers that papered the bus shelter wall. Before Ricardo could weigh giving his assailant the five bucks in his wallet against flattening the guy with a kick to the side of his knee, a velvety, low voice said in his ear, “Are you always so obvious?”

  Ricardo scrabbled at the flyers, tearing them, but no matter how many fell, there were more beneath to shield him from the prying eyes of anyone who might pass by. “What’re you talking about?”

  Fingers sank into his shoulders and spun him around, and there, blocking him from the street, was none other than Professor Topaz. “You know exactly what I mean.”

  Ricardo squinched his eyes mostly shut, but even so, Professor Topaz remained backlit, all but the glint of light playing over the whites of his eyes. And it seemed to Ricardo that he should probably answer, but all he could think was, So much hotter up close than I’d ever dreamed.

  The Professor relaxed his grip on Ricardo’s shoulder. Slightly. “You do realize what you did…don’t you?”

  Ricardo nodded, dazed.

  Topaz rallied his anger, though it was dissipating fast against Ricardo’s unwillingness to fight back. “Then what were you thinking? Never perform True magic when the audience is close enough to see it’s no trick. Never.”

  Ricardo grasped Topaz’s hand where it bit into his shoulder. Such big hands. Such strong fingers. Topaz shifted and brushed against a telltale bulge—the same bulge that had seemed to disappear during the audition, but evidently had only been hiding, like an assistant in a secret compartment, to emerge proudly at the climax of the act. And he didn’t react to its presence like a straight man would have. Of course, in Ricardo’s fantasies, Topaz was gay, and willing, and eager. He’d never dreamed it might be the reality. “I’m sorry.” Ricardo’s voice, again, had grown husky. He dry-swallowed. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  “You’re still young, but believe me. It will catch up to you someday. The malice. The spite.” Professor Topaz, confronted by the unmistakable evidence of Ricardo’s devotion pressing against his thigh, held very still. “You need to be caref—”

  Ricardo flung himself against Topaz. Lips, teeth, tongue, everything clashed, prodded, and finally found a place where it fit together perfectly. Everything about Topaz felt big, and firm, and powerful—and the air around him fairly crackled with
magical energy.

  They kissed hard and deep, until finally it seemed as if there was no breath left between them. When Topaz reluctantly came up for air, he touched Ricardo’s cheek as lightly as a floating silk. “You move…beautifully.”

  The idea that Professor Topaz had even noticed his act made it difficult for Ricardo to catch his breath.

  Topaz leaned in to murmur in Ricardo’s ear. “You keep your shoulders high without holding them stiffly. Your spine is straight, but flexible. And your hips…the way you only hinted at what your hips might do…” he slid his long, strong fingers underneath the waistband of Ricardo’s clingy slacks, “that was so much more provocative than all the ridiculous thrusting the other contestants were doing.”

  Ricardo let out a shaky breath as Topaz delved deeper down his pants—and could barely restrain himself from demonstrating how naturally that “ridiculous thrusting” came to him. When Topaz finally touched him, there, skin to skin, Ricardo let out a small gasp, part submission, part sheer joy.

  “Never show them your power,” Topaz breathed in Ricardo’s ear, while his fingers wrapped around the hard-on that seemed as if it had been waiting for him all day. Or maybe Ricardo’s entire life. “Power makes men jealous, and jealousy makes them dangerous. True magic is a subtle thing. Use it when you must, but never take it for granted—and stop tempting fate.”

  Ricardo draped his forearms over Topaz’s broad shoulders and pressed his cheek against the velvety black cape. Up close, it smelled like the inside of a consignment store—rosin and candle wax and antique maple. Topaz handled Ricardo’s cock with the same authority with which he seemed to handle everything. Unhurried, utterly sure, and, of course, solemn. No time for tempting and teasing—but who needed seduction, when every moment, from the first time Ricardo had seen him brandish his cape, had led up to this encounter?