Magic Mansion

by Jordan Castillo Price

  And ultimately, John wasn’t willing to bet that Jia was too stubborn to put aside her differences with Faye to risk being trussed up so tightly she’d never get out again.

  If John chose Faye, Jia would choose Chip, and Ricardo would be stuck with Ken. If John chose Chip, he had no idea what Jia would do…but the chance of Ricardo ending up with Ken was a risk John just wasn’t willing to take.

  “Well, Professor,” Monty said, “what’s it going to be?”

  “Since I enjoy a challenge,” John said, lying through his teeth, “I’d like to go with Ken Barron.”

  Ricardo made a scoffy sound of disbelief. Ken gave the camera a grim smile. Jia looked around Ricardo at John and mouthed the word what? Kevin murmured, “Ooh, now you just showin’ off.” Monty looked baffled, but he recovered quickly. “Interesting choice—and given the competitive level at which you’ve been playing, I have no doubt you’re up to the challenge. And how about you, Jia? As the third place winner, will you go with Chip Challenge or Amazing Faye?”

  Jia said, now a bit uncertainly, “I’m picking Chip Challenge.”

  “And last, but most certainly not least, that leaves Ricardo the Magnificent being set up for his final competition by his old teammate, Amazing Faye.” Ricardo did a little “yay” clap and Amazing Faye gave him a sultry flutter of her false eyelashes in return.

  “Aaand, we’re done,” Iain called out. “Bev, Chip, Ken, Faye and Sue, no chatting with your buddies—you’ll have time to catch up after we wrap. All of you step outside and join Marlene in the yard. Final Four, head out by the fountain, I want to grab a quick video journal from each of you while second unit gets some establishing shots of the last stunt. Kevin, let’s start with you.”

  John, Jia and Ricardo left Kevin and Iain in the dining room and headed for the fountain. Out in the hall, once they could no longer hear Kevin spouting off about how great he was, Ricardo grabbed John by the sleeve and said, “What the hell did you just do?”

  “He took the words right out of my mouth,” Jia said.

  John turned to Ricardo and looked into his eyes—the same storm-blue eyes he’d been gazing into every night, and every morning, and every moment he could steal from the show in between. “It will all work out. Trust me.”

  “You just fell on a land mine for me. Didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Jia said, “that’s about the size of it.”

  “We can’t say that for sure,” John insisted. “If there’s anything we can count on, it’s a twist. For all we know, the straitjacket will be irrelevant.”

  “Oh, come on.” Ricardo took John’s vest by the lapels and tugged them in annoyance. “When straitjackets are involved, it’s a pretty good bet that the objective will be to get out of them. Did you assume I can’t handle Ken? Is that it?”

  Handhelds might have been hovering around somewhere, but John was past the point of caring. He took Ricardo’s face between his hands, tilted it up toward his, and kissed him. Ricardo’s lips were pressed together at first, but after a moment of resistance they parted gently, with a sigh. He let go of John’s lapels and pressed his palms against John’s chest instead. John managed a bit of restraint and kept his tongue to himself, but even so, as he lingered over Ricardo’s sweet mouth, the kiss felt anything but chaste. It might have been a cowardly move to avoid an argument by plying Ricardo with attentions he couldn’t resist—and, yes, John had grown quite aware of the inexplicable effect he had on his new man. But it wasn’t just distraction he was trying to achieve. It was connection.

  Because it wasn’t so much that John thought Ricardo couldn’t handle being bound by Ken Barron, while he himself could. Undoubtedly, neither of them would come through it well. And it was easier to face his own imminent failure than to watch Ricardo, with his whole career ahead of him, lose Magic Mansion’s most important challenge.

  Jia cleared her throat and whispered, “Douchebag at ten o’clock,” and John stepped away from Ricardo just before Iain bore down upon them.

  “C’mon, Professor, you and your boy toy can compare tonsils later,” he said, “and believe me, we’ll all be eager to watch the confetti fly and call it a night.” He steered John over to the grand staircase with a handheld trailing behind them, and positioned him in front of a drab landscape in an overwrought gold frame. “Can you make it look like you just happen to be leaning on that banister?”

  How natural. John placed a hand on the woodwork and did his best not to look stilted.

  “How’s the light?” Iain said, and the cameraman told him it was fine. “Okay. Let’s get this over with. How do you feel going into this challenge?”

  “I’ve been a magician for over fifty years—that’s longer than any of the remaining contestants have been alive. I’m well-versed in all the traditional magic skills, and that includes escapology.”

  “Is that a real word?”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Kevin Kazan’s persona is popular with a young crowd, but I plan to show there’s more involved to magic than being flashy and glib. And I will do it by pitting myself not only against the challenge, but against the most experienced escapologist in the Mansion.”

  “But how do you feel?”

  “I’m eager to prove myself.”

  There was a pause while Iain waited for something more, but when he saw there was nothing else John had to say, he checked his watch and told the cameraman, “Let’s get Ricardo over by that window…backlit? Okay, how about by the tacky couch…?”

  ___

  -DRAMATIC MUSIC-

  “We’re now down to the Final Four,”

  (Jia) I’m the last woman standing in this game. The boys had better watch out.

  “and competition is fierce.”

  (Kevin) I say bring it, yo. Bring it.

  “Soon the magicians will be pushed to their limits in a challenge that will test them both physically and mentally.”

  (Ricardo) Whatever this game throws at me, I’m one hundred percent capable of handling it.

  “Our contestants are about to face off in the biggest, most intense competition yet…”

  (Professor Topaz) I’m eager to prove myself.

  “…for a chance at being named the Magic Mansion’s grand prize winner. Who will it be? The magician who’s put a dramatic spin on the traditional ‘Chinese conjurer’ act, Jia Lee? The streetwise street magician who could sell a wallet to a pickpocket, Kevin Kazan? The ex-skater who traded his silver blades for silver rings, Ricardo the Magnificent? Or the imposing illusionist who’s proven that great magicians don’t just get older, they get better—Professor Topaz?

  “I’m your host, Monty Shaw. Stay tuned to see who will be crowned the Grandmaster Magician…in the Sands of Time challenge, on Magic Mansion.”

  ___

  John wasn’t sure exactly what the final challenge of Magic Mansion had in store for him, but he was fairly certain it would be big. He stood, sequestered in a curtained-off stall, nodding as the stunt coordinator made him practice a special head-nod that meant, “I give up,” from within the confines of a straitjacket. And then he was made to reassure everyone that he was perfectly capable of performing this move while hanging upside-down.

  Given the amount of construction noise that had been leaking through the basement window all week, the scale of the final challenge shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to John. And yet, somehow, now the sounds coming from beyond the curtain—machines and crew—were daunting. He was tempted to reach out with True magic and try to get a sense of what lay ahead, but it was too risky to put his feelers out. And he supposed he would find out soon enough. He couldn’t resist peeking, though. Not to get a look at the game, but to try to see one of his fellow players.

  John found a seam in the curtain. In the cloth cubicle to one side of him, Ricardo chatted with a sound tech as he was being miked. John tried to catch his eye, but Ricardo was occupied. He had his eyes on the prize.

 
Or maybe he was still angry over the way John had handled things.

  Now that John thought about it, he realized that depriving Ricardo of the opportunity of being restrained by Ken Barron could easily turn out to be a mistake. In the short term, it might actually help Ricardo win the competition. But in the long term, what if Ricardo did indeed win—and he attributed that win not to the fact that John wished him to have every possible advantage, but the notion that John thought he wouldn’t be able to handle Ken Barron. And yet, what kind of jerk would John have felt like if he’d just allowed the chips to fall where they may?

  Maybe there hadn’t been any right way to handle it.

  Somewhere in the yard, a diesel engine revved. Marlene’s voice rose above the hubbub, snapping at the tech to tape down a cable. Wind played through the tops of the dry palms.

  The best course of action in the dining hall, John decided, would have been to think long-term and simply play to win, as he and Ricardo had promised each other early on. It was obvious now. But the whole reality show experience was so unlike anything he’d ever encountered, his decision-making skills were not exactly stellar at the moment.

  Look at me. John strained to catch Ricardo’s eye. But Ricardo had a medic talking in his ear, fitting him with a blood pressure cuff. He didn’t have time to reassure John. Nor should he need to.

  But while John had been looking at Ricardo, the contestant on his other side was scoping him out: Kevin Kazan. A chill raced down John’s spine when he turned away from Ricardo and saw a gap in the opposite curtains, and Kevin’s steely eyes fixed firmly on him. “Pro-fess-or Topaz,” he said. “Wanna go out wit’ a splash.”

  “We’re magicians. What other way is there?”

  “Gotta give you props for playin’ smart. Yes I do.”

  John had no desire to engage in the conversation. He stared at the curtain straight ahead.

  Kevin went on despite the fact that John wasn’t looking at him. “This way, when you crash and burn, it won’t be ’cuz you were too weak to outdo the younger, stronger players. It’ll be ’cuz you picked the biggest challenge. So you come out looking pretty good anyway. For a loser.”

  The audio assistant approached with his tape and wires, and John lifted his vest to allow the equipment to be attached to the back of his shirt.

  “I had an older brother who bought it over in Iraq a couple-a years ago,” Kevin said through the gap in the curtain. “When we was kids, I worshipped the ground he walked on. And you know what his nickname for me was? ‘Little Fag.’ I ain’t, y’know. But ’cuz of him, I never held it against no one, neither. I wonder what he woulda made of you. And Ricardo over there. Not that I’m worried you two got a chance of taking the prize. But I’ll say this much, you did put up a hell of a fight.”

  “You’re miked,” the assistant told John—which excused him from replying. What a relief. Because he had no idea how to respond to Kevin’s little story. If it was meant to be confusing, it was certainly fulfilling its purpose.

  Once the audio assistant was done, the medic slipped a cuff over John’s arm to check his blood pressure, which would be normal, despite the anxiety and the stress. Because it had never been either high or low. “So,” the medic said. “Is it true?”

  John sighed, but only to himself. “Is what true?”

  “That Ricardo’s off the market?”

  John took a better look at the medic—young, attractive, and oh yes, clearly gay. “That depends how angry he is over my gameplay strategy.”

  The medic released the cuff’s pressure. Air hissed out. “I think he’ll get over it. He just turned down the coffee we were supposed to have.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What can I say?” The cute medic winked. “You got a lot more face-time with him.”

  Before the medic could semi-flirt with John any more, yet another person crowded into the cloth enclosure with them.

  Marlene.

  “Ken Barron?” she demanded. “Honestly, Professor. What were you thinking?”

  “Why does everyone assume that being tied up by Ken Barron amounts to professional suicide? Did it never occur to you that I might have some experience?” Not as part of his own act, of course. Too rough. Too undignified. Though there was a point at which Casey had considered adding restraints to the Gentleman Magician’s routine, a sort of lighthearted nod to escapology that wouldn’t muss his hair too badly. He and John had practiced with the straitjacket until their shoulders were sore. (Many other parts of their anatomy, too, though that was after the escapology experiments had grown tedious and they’d finished a bottle of chablis, and started putting the gear to more creative uses.)

  In any case, John did indeed know how to slip a straitjacket, and his long limbs were a distinct advantage.

  Marlene didn’t look particularly reassured. “How’s his blood pressure?”

  “Ideal,” the medic said.

  “Do we have a heart monitor?” she said. “Because whether this was optimism or hubris or I-don’t-know-what, I’m not letting anything fatal happen to you on my watch.”

  “Marlene,” John said gravely, “it’s fine. I know the secret head-signal. And having a mass of wires taped to my chest would only put me off my game.”

  She squinted at him as if she was about to force him to wear a heart monitor anyway. The line between her eyebrows looked like it had been pressed in with a chisel.

  “If you’re not making anyone else wear one,” John said, “it would hardly be fair to require it of me.”

  “There’s an overinflated expectation of fairness if I ever heard one. Or else….” She cocked her head and considered him. “You wouldn’t happen to have any aversion to the grand prize, would you?”

  “Money?” John laughed bitterly, and the cute medic ducked out to resume his rounds. “Hardly. Casey Cornish was notorious for his indulgent spending…and when he died, he didn’t take his debts with him. Neither of us had any use for marriage, too anti-establishment, and that stubbornness would have let me off the hook…if the credit cards hadn’t been in both our names.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Is it even possible for me to win? I thought I was your token over-sixty gay minority.”

  “That was then and this is now. Now that you’re in the Final Four, the executive producers can’t just knock you out like they did with Fabian. Whoever wins, wins.” Marlene patted John on the sleeve. “Just don’t be a hero—use the emergency signal if you need to. You and Ricardo won some pretty good swag by making it to this round, and the two of you have plenty to celebrate tonight. No matter who wins the final challenge.”

  Once Marlene left John alone with his thoughts, he decided she really was right. Both Ricardo and John could revamp their wardrobes, and they each had a television special to look forward to—and John had his Vegas appearance as well. No matter what happened, everything would be fine. John’s fingers found the split in the curtains on Ricardo’s side again, and when he parted them to say good luck, there he was, as if he’d had the very same idea.

  John leaned through the opening, and Ricardo did too. Their lips met. The fleeting kiss felt like adrenaline. “Is that true, what you told Marlene?” Ricardo asked. “You know what you’re doing?”

  John allowed a nearly imperceptible smile to show. “Only in terms of the straight jacket.”

  Ricardo leaned forward and kissed him once more, and whispered, “I love you, John,” and then an airhorn sounded. He treated John to a parting saucy smirk, and ducked back into his own stall.

  John felt briefly thankful he wasn’t hooked up to a heart monitor as the curtains fell, and four monstrous hourglass shapes filled his field of vision. No doubt his pulse would have set the alarm bells ringing.

  Jibs zoomed and handhelds swarmed, gathering the reactions of the contestants as eagerly as children claw candy from one another beneath a broken piñata. John struggled to make sense of what he was seeing—hourglasses, large enough to hold a magician in the
empty upper compartment. In the second compartment, sand. And beyond them, huge machines, diesel engines rumbling low.

  They meant to enclose the magicians in the hourglasses—and flip them over. With sand pouring down?

  In straitjackets.

  Maybe Marlene’s concern was, for once, justified.

  “Greetings, Final Four,” Monty said from a decked-out platform across the yard. John only heard him through a speaker mounted in his stall. “Each of you have spent the week traveling back in time, working on your fantastic new routines. But as you all know, time only runs one way…and that’s forward. As you also know, time has a tendency…to run out when it’s least convenient.

  “Harry Houdini’s time ran out on Halloween morning, 1926, from a ruptured appendix he sustained following a blow to the stomach. But we trust none of you have taken a punch to the gut recently?”

  John shook his head. Who wrote the patter for this show, anyway? He was certainly glad he didn’t need to deliver it.

  “We’ll have medics standing by anyway, just in case. Because you’re going to duplicate Houdini’s infamous stunt, the Suspended Straitjacket Escape. Only you won’t be hanging from a crane, like the great Houdini. Instead, you’ll be dangling inside these hourglasses, facing off against not only each other, but…the Sands of Time.”

  John was familiar enough with sand. Usually it was wet, saline sand, riddled with mud and bottle caps and weeds and jetsam. But one thing he knew for sure: sand was heavy.

  “Escaping the hourglass will take skill, determination…and luck. Once your competitors strap you into your straitjackets and lock you inside the glass chamber, the countdown begins. You’ll be turned upside down, and the sand will flow. Your first task will be to free yourself from the straitjacket and get upright, since you’ll be needing your hands…to unlock the exit in the hourglass wall. The key? There are several of them…distributed throughout the sand. The first magician to open that glass door and step out on the platform will win…not only a quarter million dollars, but a fabulous four-month world tour, complete with shows in all the great cities Houdini played, including London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Moscow.”