Cal’s absence the past three years had only heightened his mythology in the minds of those he’d left behind. Now the prodigal son had returned, with a new wife in tow. (Claire kept that fact to herself. If Jonathan feared Cal was planning to whisk Claire away now that he’d returned to Los Angeles, so much the better. He deserved to worry.)
Claire shifted on the bed so her back was toward Becca. “Unzip me.”
“What the hell?” Becca muttered. “I thought you said you weren’t a lesbian.” Nevertheless, she complied, determining it was easier not to argue.
Claire tossed her dress to floor, where it pooled into a misshapen black hole, sucking in all remaining light from the rest of the room. In nothing but a slip, she got under the covers, trapping Becca in the middle of the bed between her and Jonathan.
“What are you doing, my dear?” asked Jonathan sleepily.
“I’m not sleeping in Eden’s room and I’ll be damned if I take the guest room in my own house.”
“Okay, I’m outie,” declared Becca, jerking free from the sheets in a burst of panic and leaping out of the bed. She made a mad dash for the bathroom, naked ass wiggling.
“There are fresh towels in the left-hand drawer,” Claire called after her.
Jonathan barked out a drunken laugh and flopped onto his stomach, apparently down for the count. He’d wake up tomorrow as he always did with a pillow crease on his face, looking like a moron.
Claire moved him onto his back, then followed suit and stared up at the ceiling.
Her husband was objectively good-looking, she knew; or at least, he’d looked good to her once. But twenty years of watching him piss on their marriage vows had altered his face in her mind to Dorian Gray levels of grotesquery.
Jonathan was erudite, charming, passionate, and smart.
Claire was smarter.
Jonathan was a very good magician.
Claire was better.
If not for one twist of fate, her incapacitating stage fright, the countless trophies Jonathan had accumulated in their time together might have been engraved with her name, not his.
He was her proxy onstage; she needed him to give life to her routines, or they would wither and die, never to find an audience. It was her ideas that catapulted him to board president and two-time runner-up for Stage Magician of the Year; her patter he memorized; her stage direction he followed, however grudgingly.
If he finally succeeded in grabbing the brass ring next month, it would be as though Claire had finally won. Before she divorced the son of a bitch, she needed to prove it, to herself if to no one else. She needed to know she was the best.
Jessica
When Jessica was six, growing up in Waukesha, Wisconsin, her mother told her that her dad, a mysterious figure whom Jessica had never met, was a magician who traveled the world with exotic animals, a team of beautiful assistants, and a water tank, from which he had to escape every night or die trying.
Her mother spoke in a loud, animated voice, and to Jessica’s young ears, her intoxicated enthusiasm was indistinguishable from passion and therefore rang with truth.
Likewise, it never occurred to her to ask why, if he was the star of his own show, he never sent them any money. Or why risking death by drowning every night was preferable to being part of a family, or even sitting down with them for dinner once a month. His name was William Deverell (the Great) and he’d proved strangely ungoogleable.
In elementary school, to her mother’s irritation, Jessica recorded every magic TV special she could find. She also borrowed DVDs from the library in nearby Cutler Park, scouring them for mentions or glimpses, anything that could be connected to a Deverell. While Mom slept off a bender or worked long hours at the Kroger (then the Cracker Barrel, then Sam’s Club, then Sunset Laundry, and ultimately as a late-night cleaning lady at an insurance agency, where she could be alone and sip from a flask while she vacuumed and dusted), Jessica researched her dad and, in the process of pursuing him, learned the skills she needed to become entirely self-sufficient.
He must not have been famous enough to make it on TV, she concluded at age thirteen. Which means he has to be tracked down in person. But globe-trotting magicians and their entourages didn’t perform in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on the regular. So she took the train to Chicago and walked right into Magic, Inc., one of the oldest magic stores in North America. The older woman behind the register was sympathetic to Jessica’s plight but unable to recall meeting any magicians of that name.
To soften the blow, she gave Jessica a free ticket to a stage show at the Arie Crown Theater. The headliner was known as the Monarch of Magic. His tricks may not necessarily have been new, but they gave Jessica an extraordinary rush. Seeing magic live was to question the solidness of the world around you. (TV didn’t compare because a part of you always suspected trick camera angles or false editing at play.) The shared experience with an enraptured audience, surrounded by pulsing music, lights, and smoke and mirrors, was addictive!
By fifteen, armed with only a learner’s permit, Jessica risked juvie each weekend by dragging her friends on road trips to Milwaukee, Chicago, and Indianapolis, to carnivals where magicians performed alongside jugglers, sword swallowers, clowns, and burlesque dancers. She and her friends wasted none of their time or money on the Tilt-A-Whirl, Thunder Bolt, or potato sack slides. They were on a mission. And then one night, after a year of searching the Midwest on increasingly distant road trips, she realized she wasn’t doing it to find her dad, not anymore.
She loved magicians. They made people happy, wanted nothing more than to bring joy and astonishment to others. They lived for her delight; gave her a feeling she never got at home, of being wanted.
For her eighteenth birthday, her friends took her to a two-hour magic show in Madison, with warm-up acts, an MC, and a headliner, and arranged for her to assist during the first card trick. Afterward, Jessica got a larger-than-life-size image of a Queen of Hearts playing card tattooed on her back. She wanted the memory of that night—her friends’ love and support, her own light-headed joy—engraved on her skin.
Home at three a.m., Jessica was startled to discover her mother waiting up for her.
To the consternation of the backyard chickens, which she’d enclosed with her inside the mosquito-screened front porch, Jessica’s mother paced angrily from side to side. Clutching a bottle of Green Mark vodka, she hurled her questions:
“You’re looking for him, aren’t you? Do you think I don’t know what you’ve been doing all these years? Do you think I’m stupid?”
The chickens squawked and fluttered.
“Of course not,” Jessica replied carefully. Her fresh tattoo leaked beneath its bandage. She was desperate to put a cold compress and some Aquaphor on it as the tattoo artist instructed, but if her mother sensed her distraction, things would get ugly, fast.
“You haven’t been spending your weekends at Priya’s,” her mother hissed, her finger stabbing the air.
“If you knew, why didn’t you stop me? Why did you let me go?”
“One less thing on my plate. But you’re wasting your time, looking for him.”
It turned out Jessica’s father wasn’t a magician.
If William Deverell the Great knew any magic tricks, Jessica’s mother assured Jessica, he’d twisted them for his own gain.
He was a con man. A thief.
She didn’t even know his real name.
When she’d met him in San Francisco, he’d gone by the name William Deverell. However, he used different names for different “careers,” among them a limousine driver, a bouncer, a purveyor of antiquities, and a document forger. The name Deverell was fake, which meant Jessica’s name was fake, too. She was the only branch in the Deverell family tree.
She was eighteen now so maybe it was time, so her mother said, that Jessica stopped being a goddamn idiot expecting him to show up with a goddamn top hat, goddamn cane, and goddamn bunny rabbit.
Despite the shock of it all and the c
rude way it was delivered, Jessica wouldn’t have traded her years of searching for this cold truth, because the story of a magician father had sustained her for most of her life, kept her dreaming and hoping and burning for something better when she’d most needed to.
Ultimately, it would lead her to California.
* * *
After one semester at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she dropped out, armed herself with a fake ID (like father, like daughter), and made a life for herself in Chicago, bartending at the stylish Gold Coast Hotel overlooking Lake Michigan.
For five years she took online courses. She dated bland, square-jawed fraternity brothers from Northwestern and Concordia who seemed to think drinks at The Ogden to watch a Blackhawks game was a good date night. They were future bankers, future stockbrokers, and future venture capitalists, and she couldn’t imagine herself staying with any of them once they truly became those things. The Art Institute boys weren’t much better. Their fragile adoration made her feel trapped, and she kept their conversations to surface-level banalities. If they knew her family history, they’d only end up putting her on a tragedy-pedestal. One of them referred to her as his muse, so she gently broke things off. Let him feast on that for a year.
So when Calum Clarke arrived at the hotel, it was as though she’d conjured him out of her collective disappointment in men; men who thought her Queen of Hearts tattoo was kind of trashy; men who grabbed her ass in front of their buddies; men who had no clue about what she wanted or needed, only what they could extract from her.
Not only was Calum the best-looking man she’d ever seen—dark-haired and dashing—but he was a magician, and he was British. Just like The Prestige. He was pure fantasy, this lanky yet masculine illusionist with the James Bond accent—but she wasn’t allowed to go near him! Her manager made it clear the first night of Calum’s weeklong engagement that servers and bartenders were not to bother him. The magician had been hired and flown in at great expense by the hotel, for VIP guests only.
All Jessica could do was stand behind the bar, night after night, in dizzying envy while the rich crowd lined up outside (cocktails in hand, excitement swirling), entered the theater, and emerged forty-five minutes later, invigorated, glowing, forever changed.
Every show, every night, was torture.
* * *
Somehow she made it to Friday evening.
After clocking in, reapplying her lipstick, adjusting her skirt, and memorizing the night’s drink specials, she scanned the dining area and felt a familiar, painful knot of lust tightening in her stomach. There he was, devastatingly gorgeous in his tuxedo, his soft-looking, wavy dark hair aching to be touched; his perfectly smooth face, sculpted cheekbones, and cleft chin begging to be kissed and caressed. He may have been too skinny for some girls’ taste, but he pushed all her buttons.
As usual, he ate dinner by himself, at a table by the window. He rolled a poker chip smoothly along his knuckles, then swept it back up and around his hand to start over again. His movements were effortless and sensual, in a smooth rhythm. She unconsciously swayed on her feet to match the tempo. Over and around. Over and around.
And Jessica’s manager was nowhere in sight.
He’d be gone after tomorrow night, so what did she have to lose?
She waited until the server dropped off his check, and then she strode over, bare legs shivering in the air-conditioned room, trying the fake-it-till-you-make-it mode of confidence.
“Hi! Sorry to bother you, but do you have a few minutes for a drink? On the house.”
Cal sprang to his feet and pulled out a chair for her like a butler in an old film. “I don’t drink, but I’d fancy some company.”
Her eyes nearly rolled back in a haze of pleasure. His accent was delicious.
She saw now that what she’d thought was a poker chip was a sobriety chip. She could’ve kicked herself, but his smile looked genuine, and his cautious brown eyes revealed a hint of humility that put her at ease.
There’s no way you could’ve known about the sobriety thing. Forget about it and just be yourself.
Up close he seemed closer to late thirties than early but she didn’t give a damn. Chivalry was chivalry, and he had it for days. There were a few wrinkles around his eyes, but that made him seem illustrious instead of insipid like her college-aged boyfriends. He smelled faintly of fresh cedar, which reminded her, pleasantly, of Cook County Forest Preserve after a rainstorm. She’d have given up a week’s pay to see him in a tight T-shirt and jeans, drenched.
His lips were a dream, full and soft looking.
Trying to keep her breathing steady, she sat and clasped her hands under her chin. “I’m Jessica, by the way.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Jessica. I’m Calum.”
“I know.”
(He was sitting under a poster advertising his performance.)
He glanced at the poster and shook his head with embarrassment. “Right.”
“So, I came over here because I wanted to apologize.”
“Whatever for?”
“I’ve been dying to see your show, but…” She lowered her voice, glanced around for eavesdroppers. “My manager said it wouldn’t look right to the guests.”
“I see.”
“I’ve been catching bits and pieces all week, though, and after each show I jotted down some of the things people have been saying as they left.” She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a fistful of napkins. “I thought maybe you’d like to read them? Everyone especially seemed to love the Bottle Cap trick.”
His bottom lip dropped in surprise.
She stared at his mouth, picturing his lips gliding up and down her neck. When she handed over the napkins, he reached toward her at the same time, and their fingers grazed, sending a jolt of longing through her.
“Aren’t you a doll,” Cal said in a quiet, sincere voice. “I’m going to hold on to these so next time I botch a show I can re-read them.”
She was positive he had never botched a show.
“I’m sorry you missed it, too,” he continued. “But I’m, frankly, a tad relieved.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t see how it could possibly live up to expectations.”
Gorgeous and modest. Her desire for his hands on her was so pure and unflinching she could almost, almost feel it happening.
“I’m willing to take that risk,” she said. Her smile faded. “Maybe next time, huh?”
“Tell you what. If you’re willing to take that risk, I’m willing to as well. What about a staff-only show at the end of the night? Invite anyone you like. If you’re free, that is.”
She had never been more available.
* * *
True to his word, Calum stayed put onstage following the final curtain that Friday night. He didn’t return his velvet close-up pad, his Linking Rings routine, or any other prop to his steel-framed briefcase.
The bar manager protested, of course—“We have a band on the weekends, they need to set up”—but Cal convinced him to allow a fifteen-minute version of his show for the hotel staff. The cameraman who’d been shooting footage all week (rumor had it Cal was putting together a TV show to air in the fall) continued filming, albeit with a cocktail in his hand. He was officially off the clock, but a few more spontaneous reaction shots from “regular people” would be valuable as cutaways.
“Would you mind terribly helping me?” Cal asked Jessica, who sat in the front row with another bartender and two waiters.
She had a half-empty beer in hand and he told her to bring it up with her. She knew what that meant: the famous Bottle Cap trick, at last.
“The cap, too, if you please.”
To her co-workers’ enjoyment, Jessica threw her head back and swigged the last drops. Cal took the glass bottle and bottle cap from her and showed them to the audience, then asked Jessica to confirm their ordinariness. They’d come from her own hands, from her own bar. They couldn’t have been more normal.
On the third tap, silence.
He held the bottle up: the cap was inside.
And it was never coming out.
Jessica shrieked, her eyes shiny with delight. He handed her the bottle so she could study it.
She shook it up and down—rattle, rattle, rattle, went the cap—and passed it around to her pals.
Contrary to his professed fear, the trick didn’t disappoint. Not even close.
For his next illusion, he asked Jessica to pick a card and sign her name on it with his Sharpie. She selected the Two of Hearts. Calum placed the card in the middle of the deck, snapped his fingers, and asked Jessica to turn over the top card. There it was, having risen through the ranks: the Two of Hearts.
He lost the card six more times; in the front, the back, and the middle of the deck, only for it to rise to the top over and over.
During a moment of heart-stopping tension, Jessica turned the top card over a seventh time and discovered that the front of the card was blank. The staff collectively leaned forward in their seats. The next card was blank, too. And the next. Cal spread the deck out on his close-up pad for all to see: a full set of red backs and white fronts, all blank. The signed card and its original siblings were gone.
He waited a beat, then pointed to the ceiling.
Everyone looked up.
“No. Motherfucking. Way,” Jessica squealed.
“Yes. Bloody. Way,” he said back.
Her signed card was stuck to the side of a tall pillar above them.
The audience responded with cheers and yells.
Jessica glanced down and saw that the original deck was now spread out where the blank one used to be.
“This, too,” she called out, motioning to her friends. “Look back here again.”
A fresh wave of applause broke and washed over them as everyone realized Cal had set them up for a second surprise.
Club Deception Page 4
