Bev, Sue and Muriel were right behind Ricardo. Sue looked like Miss Nebraska in her new low-lighted hairdo, spike heels and gold lamé one-piece with high cut legs. Muriel wore a suit with a plainer cut and a gold snakeskin pattern that left the eye wondering where to look. Bev seemed awkward in glasses, earrings, and geriatric-looking gold paisley swim dress that managed to highlight every unflattering bulge.
Faye brought up the rear in gold kitten heels and a thigh-length gold sparkle wrap cinched tight over her swimsuit. She strode to a piece of gaffing tape on the floor Ricardo hadn’t even noticed, and gazed at the wall on the far side of the basement. No doubt steeling herself for whatever new challenge was in store. And hoping there’d be no pudding involved.
Across the pool, the Red Team gathered…what was left of it. Kevin Kazan wore huge red swim trunks with elaborate black criss-crossed lacing at the fly and the side seams. They hung low on his hips, boxy and stiff, and above the waistband, his tattooed abs were so cut they didn’t even look real. Jia wore a low-cut red one piece with a glittery black dragon emblazoned down the side. And John towered over them, smooth and tan, lean and natural, in a pair of simple red racing shorts. From across the basement, he looked statuesque, and timeless.
While Ricardo didn’t quite need to give himself a mental cold shower by imagining income taxes or prickly spray-painted lawns…he couldn’t resist admiring. Kevin looked back at him, arms crossed and chin tipped up, as if he read Ricardo’s attention in the Red Team’s direction as a challenge.
Whatever. Professor Topaz rocked a swimsuit like nobody’s business.
“My, my, my,” Monty purred with mock lasciviousness as he was ushered in past the Gold Team. “I’m stoked for tonight’s challenge.”
Sue tittered. Faye was so focused she didn’t even notice. Muriel looked down at her snakeskin bathing suit, then told Ricardo, “You think that was directed at me? Hot damn. Maybe I should’ve gone for the bikini.”
While Ricardo wouldn’t have dreamed of telling Muriel not to get her hopes up, he highly doubted she’d been the object of the announcer’s playful leering. Then again, considering the age difference between himself and John (and the unabashed enjoyment he was getting from those red shorts) he supposed he could be wrong.
Crew shuffled, cameras swept, and finally when everyone was in place, Iain gave his signal.
“Good evening, Magicians,” Monty read from the teleprompter. “Water and stage magic have long gone hand in hand. Back at the turn of the Twentieth Century when it was considered scandalous for a woman to show so much as a bare ankle, Harry Houdini was being chained up in a water tank wearing nothing but a pair of woolen shorts.”
A camera hovered to the side of Ricardo. He put his weight on one foot and made sure his body was at a pleasing angle. But subtly. He didn’t want to look like he was posing, after all.
“Another magical prop that’s withstood the test of time—a prop that is now synonymous with stage magic—is the magic wand.
“Wands are one of the many props typically employed for close-up magic: drawing the viewers’ eyes to the very spot the performer wishes his or her audience to look, to distract from their sleight of hand. They’re not typically used in underwater cabinet tricks.
“So tonight in Magic Mansion, we thought we’d try a little twist…and combine water with wands…in the Wand Pond.”
Grips whisked the cover off the pool while cameras circled. The pool was full of water. Muriel sighed. There’d be no pudding tonight.
“Inside this pool, you’ll find a thousand wands.” A spotlight blinked on, shining on a board with four black-painted sticks pinned to it like specimens. “Nine hundred of them are the same size, ten inches long.” Ricardo noted the demo-wands were, indeed, different sizes…but only marginally different. Which would be basically impossible to tell, underwater. “Ninety wands are ten and a half inches long. Only nine wands are eleven inches long. And a single wand is a full twelve inches.
“You’ll be searching for the longest wand. You have fifteen minutes to complete this task. You may only hold one wand in each hand at any given time, and anyone who picks up more than two at a time will be disqualified. In the event that the longest wand found by each team matches, the team who found that wand first and exited the Wand Pond will win the competition. So when you’re satisfied with your wand, hop out of the pool.
“The winning team will spend tomorrow wining and dining with a special V.I.P., but more importantly than that, they’ll go into the next challenge with a big advantage. You’ll have three minutes to confer with your teammates on your strategy, and then it’s time for a dip.
“And if anyone should happen to find the single longest wand, not only will their team win the current challenge…but that magician will be immune in the next elimination round.”
Two handhelds edged into the Gold Team’s huddle. Ricardo saw that, across the pool, they were doing the same for the Red Team…which only had three members.
That wasn’t very fair. Gold Team had five chances in a thousand to find the longest wand. Red Team had only three.
“It’s statistically improbable anyone will find that twelve-inch wand,” Bev said. “And since it’s entirely possible that everyone comes up with a short wand, one of us needs to grab the first wand she sees and hop right back out. That way, we’ll win the time-score. Who wants to do that? Faye? You’re quick.”
“No…not me,” Faye said. “Someone else.”
“Not Ricardo,” Bev said, “Assuming he doesn’t have a problem with water. You don’t, do you?” Ricardo shook his head no. “He’s got the longest reach. He should stay ’til the very end and keep comparing every wand he grabs to the one already in his hand. Chances are, he’ll end up with one of the ninety 10-1/2 inchers.”
“Not you,” Muriel said to Bev. “I got a feeling you’ll be able to spot a long one. Heh.”
“Accounting for the motion and the refraction of the water…well, it’s hard to say what I’ll be able to see until I get in there. But maybe.”
“I’m quick,” Sue said. “I’ll make a grab and jump right out.” Either Sue was a phenomenally generous team player, or she didn’t seem to think she needed immunity, not at this stage of the game. And Ricardo suspected she didn’t.
“Okay,” Bev said. “Good. And since we’ve got a huge advantage in having five players, we should have someone else jump out with their best wand at the five- and ten-minute marks.”
“Instead of grabbing for wands yourself,” Sue suggested to Bev, “what if you worked with the other players and point out which wand we should take?”
“Good,” Bev said. “I like it.”
“Except me,” Sue said. “I’ll just grab and go as fast as I can. Okay, so who wants to go in what order? Me first, Ricardo last, Bev second-last….”
“I’ll come out after five,” Muriel said. Which would make it unlikely she’d gain the immunity…though, Ricardo reminded himself, Bev said it was improbable anyone would find the twelve-inch wand. While she hadn’t said “impossible,” chances were she reserved that word for literal impossibilities, like Kevin Kazan one day waking up as a tolerable human being.
“Okay,” Sue said, “that leaves Faye at the ten-minute mark. Is everyone on board? High five!”
As Sue high-fived Ricardo, Iain called out, “Okay, enough talking. Everyone face the cameras. Monty, you read that next part.”
While facing the cameras didn’t put Monty in his direct line of sight, something compelled Ricardo to sneak a quick look at him. As the announcer read through whatever was on his teleprompter, his eyes widened. Only briefly, but Ricardo saw what he saw. A cold knot of dread formed in his stomach.
On Iain’s signal, Monty smiled broadly at the contestants and said, “Before you dive in, Magicians, there’s just one more thing. Playing with only three team members would put the Red Team at a serious disadvantage.”
Oh, great, Ricardo thought. Just when we get our plan all ha
shed out, they’re gonna tell us to have two people sit out. Maybe Muriel would volunteer. And who else? Maybe Faye…she hadn’t seemed too keen on the challenge during the whole planning process, anyway.
Monty took a deep breath, and went on. “And so, to even the odds, we turned this decision over to our home viewers—and they have spoken. Red Team, say hello to your new member…Amazing Faye!”
Ricardo had been so sure he was about to hear a directive to sit someone out, Monty’s words didn’t even make sense to him. Not until Faye whispered, “I’m sorry, guys…nothing personal,” and gave the belt of her gold sparkle wrap a tug. It slid to the floor, pooling around her kitten heels…and there she stood in a shimmering scarlet bikini. The gold wrap lay on the floor like a shed skin as she strode away to join the other team—who looked just as shocked as Ricardo felt.
“How long did she know?” Sue whispered, bewildered.
“Wardrobe,” Ricardo decided, because to think she’d been in on the switch any sooner was just plain creepy. “They must have told her then, when they gave her a red bathing suit. Unless she’s colorblind.”
Kevin Kazan welcomed Faye with a courtly kiss on the back of the hand, and she proceeded to whisper urgently to the Red Team while they listened, and nodded.
“Well, that’s just great,” Bev hissed, “she’s taking our whole strategy to our opponents.”
Ricardo had never seen Bev so angry. Cameras swarmed.
“Don’t worry,” Muriel said, “she can steal our strategy, but she can’t take away our talent. Gold Team will win it, because that’s how we roll. We’ll do everything as planned, and with Bev’s eagle eyes, Ricardo will be the one to find the big stick.”
Sue looked like she was about to burst into tears, but she nodded extra-hard in agreement and said, “That’s right, guys. We’ll show them. We are totally winning this challenge. Group hug.”
Ricardo put his arms around Sue and Muriel and bumped heads with Bev. There they were, just “the girls” who’d shared their reality TV initiation on day one with the obnoxious taping of the show’s opening credits. But instead of feeling solid and unshakeable, Ricardo felt suddenly vulnerable, and profoundly exposed.
Chapter 21
THE WAND POND
“…so I’ll hop out first,” Faye said. “I’m quicker than the rest of you, and I’m taller than Jia, so it’ll be easier for me to climb out.”
“A’ight,” Kevin said, “so to figure out who’s staying in the longest…who’s wearing contacts? ’Cos I can’t see shit once my contacts start sticking to my eyeballs.”
“I had LASIK when I was eighteen,” Jia said. “But I’m not a big swimmer.”
“I’ll do it,” John said. “I swim.” And while he’d never taken an eye test in his life, he had every reason to believe his vision had never been anything less than perfect. The acuity had become obvious in his early fifties, when he and Casey noticed a preponderance of reading glasses cropping up among all their non-magic friends. They’d even tried a few pairs on, for a lark. Casey had looked distinguished in his pair. John’s did nothing but make the room wobble.
Kevin was giving John a hard look—possibly trying to see if he was being overconfident, or maybe if he was wearing contact lenses too, but was willing to risk the discomfort of wet lenses for a chance at winning immunity.
Which, when John considered it against Red Team’s horrific losing streak, seemed like it might not be such a bad thing to have. According to Faye, the Math Wizard had said it was statistically improbable.
No doubt. But there were statistics, and then there was Truth.
“Magicians,” Monty said, “take your places.”
Tape marks ringed the broad, shallow pool, interspersed with a pair watertight camera rigs positioned underwater at opposite sides. John found a tape mark and stood on it. He felt a cameraman behind him as he calculated whether it would be foolhardy to take a shallow dive. Not dangerous, no, not if he did it with control. But why hurry? He’d have the entire fifteen minutes to find his wand.
Faye, however, would really benefit from a quick entry.
“On your marks…get set….”
John turned to Faye, whispered, “Leg up,” and cut his eyes to the pool.
Faye understood immediately. She gave a curt nod.
“Go!”
All around the pool, magicians in glittery red and gold swimsuits began boosting themselves over the pool’s sides. John, however, knelt beside Faye instead. He almost catapulted her right to the center—she weighed next to nothing, and her foot felt as small as a child’s against his palm—but at the last moment he reined in and aimed her closer to the pool’s side. She splashed down, went under, burst back up with a wand, then swung herself out over the edge. Sue followed close on her heels, but the seconds the jump-start had gained Faye proved to be crucial.
First wand to Red Team.
John swung his legs into the pool. Immediately, he was startled by the feel of the rods beneath his feet, uncomfortable to stand on, and strangely slippery, too. Wherever a number of them had fallen parallel, they functioned as a sort of conveyor belt, rolling the contestants out of their strides.
And if that wasn’t enough, there were cameras to avoid. And splashing.
And screaming.
He was unsure who’d started the screaming. Possibly Jia—the water was unexpectedly cold. But the manic energy spread fast, and pretty soon Muriel was whooping, Kevin was bellowing, and Bev was hollering over the top of it all, “Not that one! The other one next to it!”
John went under and picked up two wands. Were they ten inches? Ten and a half? He emerged and compared them. They were the same size. Or were they? Maybe they weren’t. Maybe he was holding them wrong. And maybe, in his apprehension, he would throw away the longer wand if he wasn’t careful, thereby letting victory slip right through his fingers.
Honestly, don’t be such a drama queen. The words popped into John’s mind as if dear departed Casey had been commentating on the whole fiasco, lounging on the sidelines with a mai tai in his hand and a lazy smile on his face. If nothing else, you get to ogle the cute twink in the gold trunks. So live a little. Relax.
John took a steadying breath, then searched through the splashing, screaming, wand-waving melee. Sue and Faye stood outside the pool, dripping on the tile floor, adding to the chaos by shouting encouragement at their teams. Muriel slogged through the water with her hair a mass of heavy gray tangles that covered her face. She seemed to be laughing. Jia bobbed up holding her nose with a wand hooked awkwardly in the pinkie finger of that hand. She compared two lengths of wand, threw one back in, then held her nose and went under again. Ricardo broke the surface of the water with a wand in each hand, compared them, and tossed one away while Bev shouted, “Not that one!”
Kevin lurked behind them, eyes riveted to the spot Bev was pointing at.
And despite the fact that he was standing nearly chest-deep in water, John felt somewhat…soiled. Because while he did want to win—enough to launch his new teammate into the pool—it just didn’t seem right to prey on the Gold Team’s strategy.
You can’t control what other people do, Casey used to say. You can try, but the only thing you accomplish is driving yourself crazy.
Too true. John took a deep breath, bent his knees, and went under.
The pool consisted of inflatable blue vinyl sides with a rigid framework holding it up, a sort of semipermanent structure that could be disassembled and stored in the garage at the end of the season. With all the harsh studio lights shining on and through it, the water took on the gentle blue cast that it would in a much deeper pool. It was cold, as if it had recently come from the garden hose. And all the splashing was stirring up plenty of bubbles.
John turned his attention to the wands. They covered the pool’s bottom like a fantastic black coral reef. He saw them, beheld them…and then looked deeper. An image popped into his mind. Pine needles. Of course. What else would cheap lumber be made
from but fast-growing pine?
The lumber held a stronger sense of itself than a man-made object might, and so it was quite possible that the longer pieces might be located by something a bit more precise than simple trial and error. If only John could figure out, between the splashing and the timer and the cameras, how to communicate “length” to a thousand simple pieces of wood.
Normally, John would take a few breaths to center himself. Underwater, this was not very practical. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and willed himself to feel stillness. A pair of gold trunks flashed by, and…my, what an ass. Stillness. Not so easy. He stood, broke water, took a breath, and went under once more.
He focused on the wood again. It felt somehow…scattered. Baked dry, lathed into smooth regularity, chopped into bits, and painted black. Despite its confusion, it did, however, seem to be “listening.”
John sent the tendril of thought: long?
No, no, no. Not long. The image of the green-needled tip of a tree reaching toward the sky fleeted through his mind. Now that was long.
John broke the surface again. Three minutes had elapsed. He began to doubt he could convey the concept of “twelve inches” to a bunch of painted dowels in fifteen years, let alone fifteen minutes. He took another breath and went under once more.
He pictured a tall tree, and a small tree, and he conveyed that for as long as he could hold his breath. When his lungs began burning a few images drifted up from various wands…but it was more along the lines of, Yes, this is where I came from.
John surfaced again. Jia was swinging herself out of the pool at four and a half minutes to ensure they’d gain another time advantage over Gold Team’s five-minute member. This counter-strategy had stirred up more chaos than the wand-diving. Faye was hauling her out, shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” while Sue leaned into the edge of the pool, screaming, “Stay in, Muriel. You might as well just stay in now!” Muriel, blinded by her own hair, slid on a dowel and splashed under. Ricardo came up with a wand in each hand, and his shoulder connected with Kevin Kazan’s chest. He looked, for a moment, as if he would snap at Kevin to back the hell off—especially as Kevin puffed out his chest and began posturing for a fight. But instead, Ricardo responded with a cool “I know exactly what you’re playing at” look, turned his back to Kevin and went about trying to grab whichever wand Bev was pointing out before Kevin did.
Magic Mansion Page 17