“They’re both right,” Claire chirped, high as a kite.
“I’m a proud member of both,” Cal added with a grin.
Claire clapped her hands together and everyone looked over. “Kaimi, tell Nigel that Cal is making his copy of the Erdnase papers available to every member of our club for a fee. His own members will be furious when they find out he had the chance to buy them as well but opted not to. Tell him to charge a thousand dollars each and he’ll make back his investment in a month.”
Kaimi beamed at Claire. “Perfect.” She tapped away at her phone and grinned at the response she got. “We’re in business.”
After their excitement died down, Landon turned to Felix. “So, you ever go to the brunches?”
Felix felt on guard. “What brunches?”
“For the wives and girlfriends? ’Cause you’re sort of like Claire’s wife, right?”
Felix set his fork down. “The hell?”
“I’m just joshing you, man. Congratulations on Magician of the Year.”
The way Landon said it told Felix he suspected the truth. He wasn’t alone. After the original avalanche of online worship had subsided, critics began to chime in.
“Where did Felix come from?” they demanded. “How come no one’s heard of him before this?”
“You know what, no,” Landon said a moment later. “I can’t keep pretending I don’t know. This came in an hour ago.”
He tapped his phone on and pulled up a website.
“Is it the Hipster Magician again?” Claire asked between bites. In thrall to the munchies, she’d gobbled up two helpings of chicken and half the table salad. “He, or they, swore they were taking a break.”
“They didn’t post a video, but they linked to something about Felix,” Landon said.
Felix shot up from his chair and everyone gathered around Jessica’s desktop computer, since Landon’s phone was too small to view.
The link sent them to Tragic Magic. Spencer and Roy at Merlin’s Wonderporium had apparently digitized the security cam footage of Felix stumbling around with the Foiled mask on.
The title of the post read: “Club Deception thinks THIS GUY is the best the magic world has to offer.”
The video was grainy, but that just added to its authenticity.
There was Felix, silently flirting with the coed, then attempting to impress her by demonstrating Foiled. There was Felix, lurching forward, accidentally groping the girl’s dad, spinning, falling, destroying the Hyuks display, and knocking himself out cold on the floor.
For three long seconds, the Clarkes’ loft contained nothing but stunned, mortified silence, until, “Ha-haaaaa!” Claire’s uncontrollable laughter burst forth like a geyser. Fat tears of mirth rolled down her cheeks. She couldn’t breathe, and then when she could gulp in air again, it was to double over in a fresh keening sound that swirled around the room.
Twenty separate GIFs had already been generated in the comments section. They ran on repeat, inescapable.
“I gotta ask…” said Cal, running a stiff hand through his hair, and trying not to smile. “How exactly did you become Magician of the Year, and does it by any chance have anything to do with Claire?”
To his own frustration, Felix looked to Claire for assistance, which didn’t do much to support his cause.
“We may as well tell them.” She wiped her eyes. “It’s going to come out now anyway.”
* * *
“What you need to do,” Jessica said, “is use this to your advantage.”
“What do you mean?” said Felix. “How?”
Having heard the story of Felix’s transformation, everyone gathered in the living room to discuss damage control. Kaimi and Landon perched on extra folding chairs from the kitchen, while Cal, Jessica, and Claire sat together on the couch. Felix stood, alone in the middle of the carpet, feeling acutely out of place.
“First, you have to own it. It’s like a sex tape,” Jessica explained. “Sure, it’s embarrassing, but there’s no better way to get clicks.” She pointed to Claire. “And here’s your angle…”
“What? No. I don’t have an angle,” Claire said firmly.
Jessica barreled ahead. “Co-opt the image of Felix crashing into something, that’s your intro, and then, ‘If I could turn him into Magician of the Year, imagine what I could do for you.’ Right? And then you upload weekly tutorials behind a pay wall.”
“Tutorial…? Like instructional videos?”
“Yeah, why not. Start with a low price point, or give the first one free, or whatever, get people hooked—”
“People could subscribe to your channel,” Kaimi chimed in. “And eventually order compilation DVDs, bonus material, products…”
“And I’ll advertise it on my newsletter,” said Landon. “I think it’s a great idea.”
Jessica beamed at him.
“No—no, I don’t…I don’t perform,” Claire said faintly. “I mean, thank you, but…”
“You won’t be performing, you’ll be teaching, and you’re a freaking rock star at that,” Felix told her, getting into it. It wasn’t the way he’d envisioned the next step of his magic career, but it was better than nothing. Own it. Co-opt it. Use it. He walked over to the couch and squatted in front of Claire as though he were proposing. In a way, he was. Let’s keep the partnership going. “It would just be you and me on video, no audience or anything, just us and a camera.” He looked at Jessica for confirmation. “Right?”
She nodded eagerly.
“And then one thousand nasty user comments about vagicians, or how I sound, or how I look, or how my hands can’t palm things the way men’s do…” Claire said.
“We’ll disable comments,” said Jessica. “Or no, we’ll vet them first. And fuck that other noise.”
“We’d need a studio—good lighting, good sound, it can’t look cheap,” Claire said.
“There’s a nice spot on Pico that rents by the hour,” Cal said. “You should really think about it, Claire.”
She gave him a cautious glance. “You think so?”
“Yes, I do.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You’d be brilliant.”
She seemed to consider the possibility but then shook her head. “I don’t know how I would fund it.”
“I’ll invest,” Jessica said. “I want to invest.”
Claire’s expression changed from hesitant to excited. Felix could practically see a lightbulb go off above her head. “It should be you,” she said.
“What do you mean?” asked Jessica.
“It should be you in the videos with me. I can teach you. We need more women in magic.”
“Men might not pay for it if it’s a woman teaching a woman,” Landon remarked. “It’s lame, I know, but…just being devil’s advocate.”
“They will if the woman looks like Jessica,” Claire retorted. “And if the instructions are clear and useful, which they will be.”
Jessica ducked her head and blushed. “Okay. Okay! I’m in!”
Cal looked alarmed. “Don’t underestimate your own appeal, Claire, you don’t need Jessica to…”
“I’m so in,” Jessica repeated.
“And who cares if some men are put off by it?” said Kaimi. “They’re not the only audience. Go after female viewers. Maybe if women see other women doing magic, in a way that’s accessible, it won’t seem so foreign. There might even be a big market for it, Landon.”
Landon laughed good-naturedly. “There might! I’m on your side. You need a catchy name, though.”
And just like that, everyone started talking at once, coming up with concepts, titles, lesson plans, graphics…
Felix felt ill.
He grabbed his car keys and walked out the door.
Claire didn’t need him. She never had. She needed a project, and now she had a new one.
Claire
On a cloudy, late-October day, Claire pulled into Jonathan’s reserved parking spot at Club Deception.
She remembered the
day they’d first become members, how excited they were. He’d passed the skills test handily, and in typical Jonathan fashion decided to run for a board position right away. It never occurred to him to wait. He’d always been so self-assured, so confident. Always walked the line between confidence and arrogance.
Blind, willful arrogance.
How could you not recognize her, Jonny? How could you sleep with both of them and not realize it?
At Lieutenant Douglas’s request, Claire had gone back to the station to corroborate Leon Krause’s claims during his confession. What she learned was upsetting but not exactly shocking; hadn’t she been waiting for years, in some hidden corner of her mind, for the other shoe to drop?
Becca’s mother was the woman whom Jonathan had had an affair with thirteen years earlier. Jonathan hadn’t made the connection, as he tended to view his assistants as interchangeable amalgams of dark hair and petite frames, opposites of Claire.
Leon Krause was Becca’s maternal uncle. He hated Jonathan for sleeping with his married sister, couldn’t forgive the way it ended. Their breakup—the one Jonathan had forced Claire to instigate over the phone—had resulted in that fatal car crash. Though Becca’s mother survived, she suffered partial paralysis and jail time for vehicular manslaughter, not to mention the lifelong pain of causing the death of a child. Ichabod watched her transform from a vibrant wife and mother to a disabled, divorced single mother in one fell swoop. After helping to raise Becca, he followed his niece to Los Angeles to manage her show-business aspirations. In his free time he studied magic and joined Club Deception so he could track down the man responsible for ruining his sister’s life. Against Leon’s wishes, Becca had accompanied him to a party where Jonathan was performing, and fell under his spell just as her mother had. (Yes, Claire told Lieutenant Douglas, that was true; she’d witnessed the aftermath firsthand.) When Leon discovered the bastard repeating his predatory ways with Becca, he stepped up his plans for revenge.
Once he told Becca the truth about her new boyfriend, the girl was horrified and enraged. The original plan was for Becca to poison Jonathan herself. She’d wait to strike until after the contest, in the hope of receiving a portion of the prize money if he came in first. But when he lost, he angrily fired her, and she no longer had the necessary access to commit the crime.
Becca and Leon’s lawyer claimed that Becca had a change of heart after the contest and “withdrew from the conspiracy.” Acting alone, Leon showed up at the Chateau Marmont after approaching Jonathan at the club in the guise of becoming his new manager and helping him launch a TV career.
Having secured a bottle with Cal’s fingerprints at a show six months before, and knowing (as most local magicians did) of Cal’s and Jonathan’s hatred for each other, Leon had planned all along to frame Cal. After his TV special was ruined by the Hipster Magician, Leon used that to his advantage, particularly since a crowd of people had witnessed Cal and Jonathan fighting the night before.
Leon and Jonathan chatted cards and had a drink together in Jonathan’s room. When the poison took hold, Leon dressed him in the easily purchased Hipster Magician costume to complete the frame job.
Claire had asked Lieutenant Douglas about Kaimi and Landon’s connection to the crime. Apparently they’d been questioned for sending Jonathan threatening texts the day of the murder, regarding a payment they felt was their due. Kaimi had told the police about Becca’s relationship with Jonathan around the same time Jessica had called in the information about Leon. Douglas’s team was able to establish their connection shortly after.
At this point, Leon’s only priority was protecting Becca. He provided a full confession in exchange for the conspiracy charges against his niece being dropped.
Claire didn’t blame him. She would have done the same for her daughter. Her daughter, who still wasn’t returning her calls but who’d sent a terse text last night: I love you, Mom. I just need time to process things on my own.
She’d read the text every hour since it arrived.
Sitting in the Club Deception parking lot and remembering those early, happy years, she mourned the version of Jonathan she’d first married. The man who worked himself to the bone, seven days a week, fourteen hours a day to support his pregnant wife. The man who, when he planned his first tour, wanted his family with him so badly that he wrote them into the act. She mourned the life they were supposed to have lived.
Now she braced herself for a tongue lashing of extraordinary degradation. Everyone, it seemed, knew about her troubled marriage and the part Felix had played in ending it. The all-male board of directors would no doubt side with Jonathan when it came to Schrödinger’s Cat.
In her more frustrated moments over the past few years, she’d referred to the board members as “misapplied phlebotinum” because they used their limitless powers for the most mundane and trivial of tasks. (“Should the club logo be two millimeters taller on the letterhead?” “Is it time to retire Eskargot font?” “Do we want to be known as a place that serves Absolut vodka, or Grey Goose?”)
But today she would learn the old goats were shrewder than she’d ever given them credit for.
For one thing, the three men who’d shown up in the Silver Room—Secretary Williams, Treasurer Pelletier, and Trustee Grossman—stood when she entered the room, and offered her a bottled water and a fruit plate. They’d also covered the sculpture of the naked woman’s torso with a black silk. Perhaps it had finally occurred to them Claire might not enjoy having to look at it for hours on end during meetings. Whenever she’d sat in for Jonathan and taken notes on his behalf, she’d been all but ignored. The Invisible Woman.
“Thank you for coming in, Claire,” Treasurer Pelletier said once she was seated. A copy of Jonathan’s ridiculous patent sat on the table in front of him.
“Of course,” she said quietly, hands folded in her lap. “I think I know where this is going, but…”
“You seem to have a pathological aversion to taking credit for your work,” said Secretary Williams. He peered at her over his small spectacles.
She looked up, startled. “How do you mean?”
“It’s time we call a spade a spade, don’t you think? Jonathan’s always been quick to blame others, quick to hire lawyers. For that reason alone we were skeptical of his claim that his show was stolen. As you pointed out when he confronted you”—she cringed remembering the brawl at Cal’s premiere party—“if the show were his, he would have performed it. Also, his patent is half gibberish; he didn’t include some of the best portions of the trick, almost none of the patter, and…we believe it was your routine all along.”
She held her breath. “You do?”
“We do. Just like we know who’s kept this place running during Jonathan’s tenure as president. The newsletters, the password system, the swap meets, the trick of the week on the menu cards. We know it’s you. You’re the beating heart of Club Deception.”
They all nodded.
“Without you, it would fall apart in a week,” said Williams.
“A day,” corrected Trustee Grossman, and shot her a warm smile. “Less than a day. And since Jonathan is no longer with us…we want you to take his place. At least until the formal election in January, though longer, of course, if you like. Will you be our interim president? We value you. We need you.”
Stunned, she didn’t reply right away. They must have interpreted her silence as dissatisfaction, because Treasurer Pelletier hastily added, “We’re willing to give you a generous stipend, if that will help in any way.”
“Yes,” she said, standing, preparing to shake hands and leave as quickly as possible, before anything could alter the precious alchemy of the moment, before they could change their minds, shift the terms, take it all back.
“However…” Secretary Williams began.
Here it comes.
“In light of the video posted at Tragic Magic…I trust you’ve seen it?”
She nodded.
“We can’t allow
Felix Vicario to retain his prize, or his standing. We want this to go away. He’s no longer a lifetime member, or any other sort of member. He is no longer Magician of the Year. It’ll be a blank spot in the record books. The prize money will be funneled back into the club.”
She closed her eyes for a second. She didn’t like hanging Felix out to dry, but she didn’t want to push her luck or appear ungrateful, either.
“Could he…work his way back in?” she asked.
“How?” Trustee Grossman looked skeptical.
“Take the skills test, like anyone else? When he’s ready, I mean.” If he’s ever ready.
Felix had never been lazy—he’d been impatient. When she gave him specific tasks, he worked valiantly and diligently until he completed them. But he wasn’t good at managing his time; he wanted everything to happen quickly.
“I don’t know that we want someone like him to be a member. Someone willing to pass off another person’s”—he motioned to Claire—“routine as his own.”
“I pressured him, though. It’s not his fault. If I could’ve done it myself, I would have. And he really does love magic. I think, given a year or two, he could surprise you.”
“Well, we’ll think about it.”
It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than an outright ban. Still, breaking the news to him wouldn’t be easy.
* * *
She opened the heavy club doors and stepped out into the smoggy autumn air.
Cal stood outside, leaning against his BMW, which was parked beside hers. He wore sunglasses (despite the clouds), khakis, a white T-shirt, and a Harrington jacket. In short, he looked like a GQ pinup.
“Hello, Claire.”
“Where’s your peachier half?” she said.
“Where’s your nubile boyfriend?”
“Jealous?”
“Always have been, always will be.”
She stood next to him, against his car, and folded her arms. They silently regarded the brick wall of the club’s entrance.
He took off his sunglasses and cleaned them with the hem of his T-shirt.
Club Deception Page 30
