Club Deception

by Sarah Skilton

  He folded the card into a tent and set it on the table. Using an even fancier maneuver than last time, he retrieved two cards from opposite ends of the deck: the Three of Spades and the Three of Clubs. These were also folded and placed either side of the Queen. Then he tossed all three back and forth in rapid succession, over and under one another.

  “Three Card Monte,” he said to the camera. “Li’l bar trick to pay my tab. No one can resist.”

  It worked well as a segue; the next sequence took place in the outdoor eating area of a pub. Cal wore a formfitting suit with a classic-looking checked tie and hat from Burberry. He also had two black eyes.

  “Look at him, he looks like a chav,” Brandy cackled beside him. They sat at a wooden table, sipping from large glasses of lager. The sun hovered in the distance, going down. It was unclear at first who filmed them.

  “We’re hoping to induce heart attacks by the time we’re twenty-five,” Cal said cheerfully, tucking in to a platter of fish-and-chips.

  “How’d you get the shiners?” asked a flat female voice. A familiar, flat female voice. Jessica sat up straighter, and her breath caught in her throat.

  On-screen, Cal cocked his thumb at Brandy. “This one volunteered me for a fight.”

  “You gotta fight, for your right, to paaaaarty,” Brandy sang.

  “I leave you alone for two days and you wind up in the hospital?” the unseen female said.

  “Who said anything about the hospital? I’ll be your Nurse Nightingale, baby,” Brandy cooed. She opened a bottle of prescription pills and shook them out onto the table.

  “Where’d you get those?” the female voice asked.

  “This chick I know reads to blind people at a nursing home. I tagged along and I was right: They have the best shit lying around.”

  “You stole from a nursing home?”

  Brandy was giddy. “They don’t even try to hide them.”

  “They don’t deserve them,” the female voice added sarcastically.

  “They won’t miss them. They won’t even know they’re gone.”

  “The strangest part of this story is that you know someone who reads to the blind,” said the female voice.

  “I know lots of good people,” Brandy said.

  “And they know one very bad one,” Cal said. He picked up the bottle, marveled at it. “Can’t believe you pilfered these from someone’s dear sweet granny.”

  “You want some, or not?” Brandy retorted.

  “’Course I do.”

  Brandy looked directly at the camera and rattled the bottle. “Clairey?”

  Her suspicion confirmed—it was Claire—Jessica leaned in toward the TV.

  “None for me,” said Claire.

  Brandy rolled her eyes. “Are you at least going to have a drink? Now that exaaahhhms are over?”

  “No, not tonight.”

  Brandy was obviously annoyed by her friend’s lack of intoxication. “But we’re at a pub.” She tossed some pills down the hatch and swallowed them with a gulp of Black & Tan. “At least have one of your weak-shit shandies.”

  A nervous laugh from behind the camera. “God, how much have you had?”

  “Not nearly enough to make you two interesting.”

  “I’m so sorry we bore you. Maybe you should get a hobby,” Claire said.

  “I’m taking over the show,” Brandy announced. The camera turned sideways as it transferred hands.

  Claire of 1995 entered the frame.

  Jessica hit PAUSE. Watching Claire felt wrong. Forbidden. But there was no way she could stop now, and she was kidding herself if she thought otherwise. She felt a guilty thrill at the prospect of seeing Claire in her early twenties. Almost my age. Would we have been friends? Real friends, not forced acquaintances?

  Claire of 1995 was bookish and awkward, a little tall for the room. She wore glasses that made her eyes look small, a SMITHS T-shirt, and cuffed, faded jeans over black ankle boots.

  Her blond hair was long, thin, and straight, pulled back in a tight ponytail that trailed limply down her back, unlike the present day, where the thick tousle barely hit her shoulders. She’d learned to play to her strengths since her college days.

  A rush of power flowed through Jessica and she laughed aloud. A little harmless revenge for the way Claire had treated her. She wasn’t always so put together, was she?

  Claire sat beside Cal, who wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, pulling her closer to him on the bench. She almost squirmed with delight but edged away once it was over.

  “Give him a kiss,” said Brandy.

  Claire laughed nervously again. “What? No.”

  “Why not? You’ve always wanted to. And he’s so debonair with those black eyes.”

  “I am pretty adorable.” Cal puckered his lips and made a smooching sound.

  Claire leaned over to peck Cal on the cheek.

  “No, no, no, a real kiss,” said Brandy.

  Claire blushed and looked at Cal. He smiled reassuringly.

  She brought her face closer to his until their lips touched. He tangled a hand in her hair, removing the hair tie she’d used for the ponytail, and deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue inside her mouth.

  Jessica goggled at the screen.

  “Are you getting hard, Callie?” asked Brandy, zooming in. “I’m getting hard.”

  Claire wrenched her mouth free, breathing hard. She stroked her lips with her fingers, looking dazed.

  Cal removed Claire’s glasses and placed them on the table.

  She looked painfully exposed without them, a snail without its shell. Her hair fell across her face and she tucked it reflexively behind her ears.

  “Can you turn off the camera?” Claire asked.

  The image cut out.

  Jessica’s stomach twisted in knots.

  On-screen, some time had passed—a week? Cal’s black eyes were mostly healed. He and Brandy, drunk and plotting something diabolical, sat together on the couch at their flat. The camerawork was finally smooth and stationary; they must’ve been using a tripod.

  “We’ve decided that our dear friend Claire is too tense.”

  “Much too tense.”

  “We think Claire needs to get laid.”

  “Only problem is…” Brandy whispered, “she’s a virgin.”

  “Virgin. Virgin. Virgin,” said Cal behind cupped hands, creating an echo.

  “She’s, how you say, skittish.”

  “But deep down she’s gagging for it.” Cal snickered.

  “It’s our duty, as her best friends, to make sure she doesn’t stay that way.”

  “We’d never forgive ourselves.”

  “What’s better than having sex with someone who loves you?” Brandy asked.

  “Having sex with two people who love you,” Cal shouted happily.

  “We’re going to teach her everything she needs to know about the big, bad world.” Brandy swung both her arms in a wide arc, landing in a pointing position toward Cal’s crotch, like a game-show hostess showing off the merchandise. “Wait’ll she sees his uncut monster.”

  Cal grabbed at his junk. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that skinny blokes have the biggest cocks.”

  “Only because they look big in comparison to the rest of their bodies,” Brandy said.

  “We’ll film it, naturally,” Cal continued.

  “It’ll be a snuff film for her cherry,” Brandy agreed.

  “Rest in peace.” Cal grinned and raised a glass.

  Jessica cringed and hit PAUSE on the remote again.

  She’d seen more than enough of her husband and his former wife to get a sense of their relationship. There was no reason to go looking for trouble by watching more.

  But a sick, tenacious part of her needed to know whether they had succeeded in their plan.

  She pressed PLAY.

  Made a hundred vows to stop watching, and broke every single one.

  Felix

  Another week went by at the House
of Fredericksson. Felix was pleased with his progress. Not only had he nailed three new sleights under Claire’s tutelage, but he’d memorized the patter for the entire act; no small feat considering it was filled with jargon about quantum physics. Unfortunately, his pain was worsening; the tingling sensation had traveled up his fingers and hands to his wrists and inner elbow. On her advice he held his hands and wrists under hot water in the bath to soothe them, using the jets as a massage, but by morning they ached more than before.

  Thursday night, he sneaked out of his room and stole a couple of swigs from Jonathan’s stash of whiskey. Enjoy the backwash, pendejo. He’d hoped it would knock him out, but instead he lay in bed tossing and turning until he fell into an anxious dream. He was back on the baseball field during a play-off game, and he couldn’t do one g-d thing right. He balked. He fumbled. He juggled. He couldn’t keep a single ball in his mitt.

  All he could do was sit there in chair position throwing dummy signals to Gutierrez, the pitcher. Only, they weren’t supposed to be dummy signals. To Felix, they meant very specific things, things they’d practiced for weeks—cutters, splitters, four-seams, changeups—but to Gutierrez and everyone else they were meaningless. They lost run after run and hit after hit.

  The smell of roasted sunflower seeds, freshly cut grass, dirt, chewing gum, and Jonathan’s whiskey sank into his throat and nostrils, making him feel sick.

  He woke up drenched in sweat, his fists clenched and throbbing.

  Even his knees ached.

  * * *

  Friday morning, a different smell woke him up: sugar and bacon and buttery pancakes. Oddly, Claire wore a black pencil skirt and a sheer, see-through white blouse that showcased a black bra underneath, instead of her usual jeans and T-shirt. He mentally unbuttoned her blouse as she led him to the table and sat next to him. She’d already fixed him a plate and when he reached for his fork to dig in, she stopped him.

  “Rest your hands.”

  He hadn’t felt this demeaned since she’d made him fold her laundry. And yet he hadn’t the strength to argue. Like a baby bird, he opened his mouth and she placed a forkful of food on his tongue.

  How did this become my life?

  He felt wrecked. He’d been battling a killer headache all night, he was scared what he now thought was tendinitis in his hands was permanent, he felt morally conflicted about the contest, he had no job, no income, no contact with the outside world, and no say in how he spent his time. Jesus—I joined a one-woman cult. And now she’s cutting up my pancakes and feeding me.

  When he polished off the plate, she brought him a thick packet of papers and a fancy pen with the Club Deception logo on it.

  “Here’s your application to sign.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It’s boilerplate. Each act must be between six and ten minutes in length, blah blah. If you go over or under they can disqualify you, blah blah. A contestant’s performance may be videotaped or recorded, blah blah.”

  He could feel impatience radiate off her; it gave her a sharp, fierce glow. He didn’t want to invoke her anger, but he’d be pretty stupid not to read the contract before signing. When he got to the originality clause, he stopped. The contestant asserts that he has the right to perform the act in question, and that it does not infringe on the rights of any third party.

  “But it’s not my routine.”

  “Just a technicality,” she said.

  “It keeps saying here it has to be my own creation to be eligible.”

  “It is. You’re the one who gives it life,” she said. She placed a reassuring hand on his cheek. Looked him straight in the eyes.

  Her palm was the softest thing he’d felt in weeks. Possibly ever. He almost wanted to cry with relief. To be touched again, when he couldn’t touch himself anymore. To be touched again by the woman who’d been teasing and denying him all these days and nights—it was almost spiritual. He’d been fasting and now he could eat. He’d been dying of thirst and now he could drink. She’d taken all his senses away, and now she was giving them back to him, and he was so grateful he would’ve signed anything she asked him to. He would’ve signed his soul away to the devil. (Maybe he had. Maybe the devil looked like an angel.)

  “You don’t want these last few weeks to be for nothing, do you?” she asked. She smelled like raspberries and syrup.

  He wrote his name on the line.

  He didn’t recognize his own signature.

  She kissed him on the cheek. “Why don’t you go back to bed?”

  He nodded and stood on shaky legs to return to his quarters.

  When he woke up, she was sitting on the chaise lounge in his room, reading a book. She set it aside and asked how his hands were faring.

  “Honestly, they’ve never felt worse.” He hated the sound of his voice, which was on the verge of cracking. But the emotional roller coaster of the past twelve hours, not to mention the physical pain, had made him sound like a teenager and turned his brain to mush.

  Adding to his confusion was the fact that his bedroom was dark, the shades drawn, the sheets cool, and he had no idea if it was day or night.

  “How long was I out?” he asked.

  “Most of the day. It’s okay, you needed the rest.”

  At least when his knees suffered in baseball he could wear a patellofemoral brace. That wasn’t an option for his hands and arms. Neither were cortisone shots, which had ultimately cost him his career, anyway.

  “I have something that will help,” she said.

  Dubious, he followed her out of his room and down the hall, to the master bedroom. To his disappointment they bypassed the bed and entered the bathroom. On the counter were all sorts of girlie products: tinted moisturizer, leave-in conditioner, sunscreen, lip gloss, perfume, a double-barreled curling iron. Now that Jonathan had moved out, she was taking advantage of the extra space.

  Determined to regain a sense of equilibrium between them, even if it was false, Felix made a point of standing very close and towering over her. “I know it was an insult,” he said. “When you called me ‘Flowers for Algernon.’” (He’d checked Wikipedia, which in turn prompted a vague memory of reading the book in high school.)

  “I was only teasing. What, I’m not allowed to tease you?”

  “You can be a straight-up perra sometimes.”

  She looked amused. “Sometimes? Am I being that way now?”

  “No,” he conceded.

  “Sit,” she said, pointing to the closed toilet.

  He did so without a second thought, and then berated himself. Good boy. Woof.

  “Paraffin wax,” she said, and lifted the lid off a small plastic tub that was plugged into the wall. Inside was clear, hot liquid. She took his right hand in hers and dipped it repeatedly into the tub until a white gel formed and solidified around his skin, like a warm, thick, tailor-made glove. Then she did the same for his left hand. Afterward, she wrapped both his hands in plastic bags, and covered them with what looked like oven mitts.

  Felix sighed in pleasure and felt his tendons relax, soaking in the heat.

  “This,” he said, gesturing to the wax with his elbow, “this is how your skin is so soft.”

  “That’s part of it,” she said. “I also bathe in the blood of virgins.”

  “You are so freakin’ awesome.”

  “Not bitchy, then.”

  “Not bitchy.”

  “Keep your hands still for the next twenty minutes,” she said. “You want to go sit down somewhere more comfortable?”

  “Okay.”

  Keeping his hands steady and level, careful not to whack them against the doorframe as he went past, he moved to the living room and sat on the couch. She propped two pillows on either side of his body so he had somewhere to rest his arms.

  Claire retrieved a bottle of Cabernet and popped in a Blu-ray called Galaxy Quest that he’d never seen before. It was hilarious. She watched him watching it, and seemed pleased by his reactions. He liked seeing how enti
rely not-bitchy she could be. They spent the evening lazy and comfortable with each other, no talk of magic or preparations for the contest.

  Halfway through the movie he peeled off the paraffin wax, and when the film ended, she told him about growing up in Modesto. It was neither Northern nor Southern California, just an endless urban sprawl in the Central Valley. According to Claire, only two kinds of things happened there: suburban horrors—satanic animal mutilation, underage prostitution, the Laci Peterson murder—or nothing at all. Their only good claim to fame was George Lucas. To escape, she moved to England after high school to study at Oxford. Her best friend, whose bank account was newly fattened by a deceased grandparent, came along for the adventure.

  “You know what a pain it is to tell people you’re from Modesto? I’d say California and they’d say, ‘Los Angeles? No? San Francisco? No? San Diego? No? Are you at least by the beach? No?’

  “It was incomprehensible to them. ‘Why would anyone live in California but not be close to the beach?’ And it’s not like I blamed them. I started saying I was from Seattle.”

  He laughed. Even Castaic was cooler than Modesto.

  He wondered if, once the competition was over, they might spend another evening that way. And another evening. And another.

  He had a feeling it all depended on whether or not he won.

  “When I came back to California,” Claire finished, “I moved to Venice, a block from the water.”

  “With Mr. F?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “I don’t know, can you?” She winked.

  “Dios mío,” he laughed. “You are drunk.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He mimicked her wink, doing an exaggeratedly slow version.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, a ghost of a smile playing at her lips.

  It was true, though. Her wine bottle was empty. She’d opened it before the movie started, and per her rule, he hadn’t touched it. Jesus, she really was the same as the guys at the club. She lived off cigarettes, alcohol, and cards.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Ask me anything you want.”