Club Deception

by Sarah Skilton

  The superfluous lingerie slipped teasingly against her skin and she had to admit it felt nice; she hadn’t worn anything like it in ages.

  They kissed slowly, experimentally, getting reacquainted with each other. In some ways he was already familiar, though. Not because they’d kissed before, but because he was a magician. It was all so shamefully predictable of her. Of course he’d be a magician. For some women there was no escape. Some women were sawed into thirds, divided, and given away, never to be reunited with their former selves. Claire was no different.

  The top of her body, which housed her brain, her logic, her reason, her pragmatism, and her survival instinct, had gone to Jonathan. Her midsection, where her heart lived, along with all her passionate, emotional, foolish impulses, had gone to Cal (and Brandy). At this moment, everything below the waist belonged to Felix and though he was making it worth her while, it preoccupied her that he was another magician.

  But he wasn’t really a magician. He was a baseball player.

  Yes. That worked…

  The fantasy created itself. She wore a thin sundress that clung to her skin and he wore his dirt-flecked uniform and he took her right there on the baseball field, which smelled of grass and sweat and testosterone. No, he took her from behind, standing up, slamming her against the chain-link fence. It shook and rattled from his thrusts, and she had to turn her face to the side and grip the unforgiving metal wires tight with her fingers so she wouldn’t fall.

  “What are you thinking about?” Felix asked. “Where’d you go?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You told me you always think about other people when you…you know…screw Jonathan…?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m thinking about you—just…as a baseball player.” She smiled sheepishly.

  He frowned. “Why not think about me like I was onstage? The crowd? The rush? Isn’t that a good fantasy, too?”

  She tapped his lip with her fingertip. “No, that’d be like making love to myself.”

  “Cute,” he said, in a moderately successful imitation of Claire. (Okay, an entirely successful imitation.)

  She chuckled. “Brat.”

  “That’s the worst you can come up with?” he chided her. “‘Brat’?”

  She grabbed two fistfuls of his T-shirt, helped him pull it off, and coasted her hands across his chiseled abs and chest. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. Just tight skin stretched over muscles.

  “Oh,” she breathed appreciatively.

  At his insistence, she lay back on the bed and held her arms above her head, gripping a pillow, while he paid particular attention to parts of her body she’d forgotten could be erogenous: the backs of her knees, her belly, the smattering of freckles on her shoulders, which he made a point of kissing individually. He peppered the inner part of her elbow with love bites, nibbled her earlobes, and touched every centimeter of her face—her lips, her eyelashes, chin, jaw, neckline, temple—with reverence and awe.

  It didn’t occur to her until then that she’d been resigned to never being touched that way again. Brandy was dead; Cal had remarried. She figured there were parts of her, figuratively and literally, that would never be revived. What a blessing to be wrong.

  They made love in earnest and she felt light-headed and pleasantly dream-like. He built up his pace, clutching the sheets on either side of her, his muscles rippling, his hips and back rising and falling.

  She entered a state of delirium as they surged against each other.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “Look at me.”

  She kept her eyes closed. “I can’t…”

  If she looked at him, she’d have to acknowledge everything that had led to this point. The dissolution of her marriage, winning the award that proved she was the best, and then having to watch while Jonathan tried to take it from her.

  “Please. Open your eyes,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “We’re in this together,” he said. “Look at me. We’re in this together.”

  Slowly her dark lashes lifted and they locked eyes, green to brown.

  She climaxed in a wave that flooded down her legs and straight to her toes, numbing them in ecstasy.

  Despite the sweat coating both their bodies, she felt cleaner now than she had in years. Cleansed—of the past, of settling for anything less than what she’d just received.

  Reborn.

  Jessica

  Tuesday night at T minus five minutes to showtime, Jessica made microwave popcorn and opened a bottle of sparkling grape juice. She hadn’t watched live TV since junior high, but this was a special occasion. Cal had a bag of frozen peas pressed against the hand he’d used to punch Jonathan Fredericksson the night before, but his free hand gripped Jessica’s as they sat on the couch together, waiting for their lives to change in real time.

  Her phone lit up twelve times during the show with what she assumed were texts from well-wishers and friends back in Chicago, so she ignored them. During the last ad break, she sneaked a peek, and her heart leapt into her throat. They weren’t texts after all; they were push alerts from the Hipster Magician’s YouTube channel, linking her to his latest videos. Twelve new videos in the last forty-five minutes? What the—?

  The time stamps varied. Each one had been released to correspond with the West Coast feed of the show. The instant one of Cal’s tricks aired on TV, the Hipster Magician had responded with a ready-to-go explanation.

  “Oh, shit.” Jessica scrolled frantically through the videos.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Cal leaned over to look.

  Hands trembling, in a state of slow-motion futility, she showed Cal her phone.

  On TV, Cal finished up his signature illusion.

  Ding, went her phone, and a new message overtook the screen. Alert! A new video is available from the Hipster Magician! The link led straight back to YouTube, where the Hipster Magician had uploaded the secrets behind the Bottle Cap trick.

  “First off,” he intoned in his nasal twang, “the cap is never not in the bottle. Which should tell you all you need to know.” Of course, he then proceeded to explain the illusion in detail.

  “Jesus fuck,” roared Cal, eyes wild. “How many people have seen this?”

  “It’s okay, it’ll be okay—” Jessica stammered.

  “How many people?

  “I—I don’t know yet.”

  He snatched the phone out of her hand. “It says three hundred and one plus. That’s not too bad.”

  “Uh…well…that means they’ve frozen the count to check for bots.”

  “Why would they need to check for bots?” he demanded.

  “Because it’s…a lot of activity.”

  “It’s getting so many hits so inhumanly fast they think it’s robots, is what you’re telling me.”

  “Couple hundred thousand, maybe? It’s okay—”

  “How is it okay? How is it bloody okay, Jessica? It’s the worst possible thing that could’ve happened. Do you understand that?” His accent was growing more pronounced the angrier he became.

  In his haste to move away from the couch, he dropped the bag of peas and spilled the sparkling grape juice bottle onto the area rug. “Oh, that’s just great.”

  “I’ll clean it up.”

  He shook his hands out, flinging more sticky droplets everywhere. “You know, I’m not a child, I don’t need to drink grape juice and pretend it’s champagne.”

  Her eyes welled up. “I’m sorry.”

  He headed for the door.

  She followed him. “Where are you going?”

  “Out. I don’t know.”

  She grabbed the car keys. “I want to come with you.”

  “Well, I want to be alone,” he snapped.

  “When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know, Jessica,” he said with exasperation. “I have to get out of here.”

  “You’re scaring me,” she said quietly.

  He stood still. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to tak
e it out on you. I just need to be alone for a while, someplace where I don’t have to keep saying I’m sorry. I’m rotten company right now and it’s nothing to do with you.” He grasped her face with both hands, gave her a swift kiss, and headed out into the night.

  Her mind raced.

  She didn’t know the city well enough—she didn’t know him well enough—to hazard a guess as to where he’d go.

  She had an overwhelming urge to call Claire and ask for advice, where she thought Cal might be headed. But before she finished dialing, a second thought hit her like a slap to the face.

  The only way the Hipster Magician could have uploaded his pre-recorded rebuttals so perfectly in time with the live airing of Cal’s show was if he’d known beforehand which tricks Cal would be doing. He hadn’t revealed every single one—only the ones from the teaser montage they’d shown the night before at the club. Which meant the Hipster Magician had been a guest at the party.

  He was someone they knew. Someone they trusted.

  Her eyes filled with tears and she sank to the floor.

  Claire

  Less than an hour post-lovemaking, the past came knocking at Claire’s door.

  Banging, really.

  Pounding.

  “Are you kidding me?” she muttered.

  “Want me to see who it is?” Felix asked.

  “No, I’ll be right back.”

  Slick and raw from their coupling, she stood on wobbly legs and pulled on a bra, her Liz Phair EXILE IN GUYVILLE shirt, and her frayed jean shorts from the closet, the ones with the British flag on the back pockets.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Felix pluck the gold nightie off the floor and place it over his face like a washcloth.

  “No having fun with that until I get back,” she said.

  He gave her a thumbs-up from under the silky tent, and she walked down the hall to the foyer.

  She turned on the porch lights, but that hardly helped; one of them was broken. Maybe Felix could fix it for her tomorrow.

  She opened the door. In the dim light, Cal was disoriented and disheveled. It was a sight she knew well, and it filled her with a combination of dread, excitement, and anger. (Of course, unlike in the old days, he didn’t wear track pants and a ratty T-shirt when he fell off the wagon. Present-day Cal wore a tailored button-down and Helmut Lang trousers to do it in.)

  “Do you know how late it is? Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I did something terrible.” He reeked of gin. “You have to help me.”

  “Get in here.” She looked behind him into the darkness and opened the door wider.

  He plunged inside the house, arms flailing. “I’m going to lose her. I’m going to lose everything. Please, Claire, you have to help me.”

  She regarded him calmly. “Why should I?”

  He seemed gobsmacked by her denial of him. Of course he did; it was a first. He grabbed her wrist. “Are you still mad about the video? That wasn’t my fault.”

  She yanked her wrist free and he stumbled backward from the unexpected force of her action.

  “No, you prick, it’s not about the video.” It was the first time they’d been alone together in three years. She followed him to the kitchen, backed him up against the island, shoving him, pushing him, unleashing the tumult of emotions she hadn’t realized she’d been suppressing. “You were supposed to come back for me. Three years ago you left me. You left me. When she died, I was alone. And I’m still alone. You prick.”

  He stood there, arms limp at his sides, and took it. He was contrite, baleful, wet-nosed. He knew he’d been bad. He was a puppy returning to its master. Only Claire had never been his master. Their master was gone. Maybe that’s why it had taken him so long to come home to LA, come home to her, and why he’d needed a new wife to do it. They didn’t know who they were to each other without Brandy. They were scared to find out.

  When she’d exhausted herself berating him, he clasped his hands together prayerfully. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please, Claire, I’ll do anything. But you have to help me. I can’t go home like this. I can’t let her see me this way.”

  “Okay,” she relented, mostly to keep him quiet. “You can stay in the guest room. I’ll call Jessica, make something up, tell her you’re tired and you’ll see her first thing in the morning. We’ll get everything sorted then.”

  This sent Cal into a fresh torrent of tears and hair rending. “She can’t know I’ve been drinking. Her mother is a drunk. And I love her. I want to be with her forever. I want to be like that skeleton couple they found who were holding hands for fifteen hundred years while they decayed. The Romanian couple.”

  “Where have I heard that before?” she muttered.

  “This time I mean it.”

  “You always do.”

  He looked desperate and sweaty. “Claire, I’m sorry. Forgive me? Forgive me.”

  “Stop, okay? Stop.”

  He was on his knees now, hugging her tightly around the waist, pressing his face into her groin, her hips. “Claire. Claire. My Claire.”

  It was at once nostalgic and infuriating, and sent her into a tailspin of sense memories and misplaced arousal—she could still feel Felix inside her, hard as an iron bar dipped in velvet. She shifted her legs and tugged at Cal’s hair, trying to extricate him. “Get ahold of yourself. I said I’ll help you. But I want you to know I’m doing this for Jessica, not you. I like her more than you right now. She deserves better than this.”

  “I know she does.”

  Of all people, it was Jonathan’s words that came to her then; how Jessica was barely older than Eden. She felt an overwhelming urge to protect Jessica, to cover up whatever might need covering up until Cal got his act together again. Everyone in AA backslid at some point; now it was Cal’s turn. She had no idea why he’d chosen tonight of all nights to go on a bender—shouldn’t he have been enjoying the show? Living it up in fame and glory? But she didn’t have the energy or inclination to get into it. He was incoherent now anyway.

  As if to emphasize her low opinion of him right then, he actually grabbed her leg and looked up at her, accusatory. “You have someone over. There’s a car outside. Who is he?”

  “None of your business,” she snapped.

  After she forced him to drink some water, ushered him to the guest room, and called Jessica, she returned to Felix in the master, who asked her the same thing.

  “Who were you talking to? Who’s out there?”

  “No one,” she said warily. “No one at all.”

  Felix

  The second time they had sex there was no gazing into each other’s eyes, no mutual effort to ride the crest together. Claire was aggressive, almost frustrated, as though she were trying to pull a response from him that he couldn’t give her, because he didn’t know what it was.

  Not that it stopped him from attempting a third round before breakfast, which he hoped would be the same pancakes she’d made him the morning he signed the application for Magician of the Year.

  Claire was cuddled up under his arm, half asleep. He pointed to the tented sheet over his junk and said, “Hey look, instant reset.” (An instant reset was any trick in magic that could be performed again right away. He thought it was pretty clever.)

  She had just enough time to indulge him with a smile when a distant voice sounded outside the front door, accompanied by a series of knocks.

  “Police. Answer the door, please.”

  They both jumped.

  “Claire, you might want to get out here,” urged a tense, British-accented voice.

  “Is that Cal?” Felix said. He was up off the bed in half a second, frantically searching for his clothes.

  Claire was slower to rise. “Yes, he crashed here last night. Let me see what’s going on. Stay here.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. He was already choosing which window would work best as an escape. She pulled on the same clothes she’d worn to answer the door a few hours prior. Felix swiftly stuffed
himself inside his boxers and jeans and stood on the other side of the door, hidden from view, as she opened it, stepped out, and closed it behind her.

  Low, muffled voices, both male, filled the air. The calm, regimented sounds were indecipherable for a long stretch, stacked on top of one another, and then wrenched apart by a high-pitched wail.

  “No, no, no, no…”

  It was Claire, stuck on a loop of repetition. Felix’s throat swelled and before he could think better of it, he opened the bedroom door, just a crack, using Claire’s hysteria as cover for the sound of the knob.

  She was on the ground, boneless.

  One of the police officers crouched beside her. “We’re going to need you to come down to the station to identify the body and answer a few questions. Do you have someone you want to call?”

  “No,” she said again, this time almost a whisper.

  Horrified, Felix backed away from the door and nearly stumbled over his shoes.

  While he laced them up, Calum Clarke was Mirandized and arrested for the murder of Jonathan Fredericksson.

  * * *

  As he ran along the reservoir, feet kicking up dirt from the pedestrian path, concealed by the other, normal, good people who were out for their morning jogs, Felix had one thought: They weren’t supposed to hurt him.

  Jessica

  The first phone call was bad enough.

  According to Claire, Cal was spending the night in her guest room. She was vague about the details, just said there was nothing to worry about, Cal was safe, he loved Jessica very much, and he would explain everything to her in the morning.

  Jessica felt like she’d been socked in the stomach. Either he’d gone to Claire’s straightaway, looking for solace after his show was exposed, or he’d ended up there after some kind of binge. Had he gotten drunk? Tried to buy drugs? Hooked up with someone?

  And why couldn’t he find solace in me?

  The second phone call, eight sleepless hours later, was worse.

  This time it was Cal, calling from the police station.