Magic Mansion

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Francis seemed unaware of how bad his retort was, at least as unaware as he was of the likelihood of anyone actually calling him “Foxy.” Through the blinds, they could see the producers heading up the hall toward the conference room—and one of them was carrying a plate. Francis leaned forward eagerly. Kevin scowled intently. And Ricardo allowed a faint smile of interest to touch his face, then deepened it just a bit while he held himself uncannily still.

  Marlene Perez was first through the door—her, and her plate. A stack of plates, actually. Empty plates. Which she set on the table. The second producer, Iain Kelliher, hustled in behind her, dropped a large Home Depot bag onto one of the empty chairs, and pushed his oversized tortoise-shell frames up his nose. Ricardo hadn’t yet decided whether he needed a trip to the optician to have their fit adjusted, or he was just calling attention to them because he thought they were so profoundly nerdy they were hip.

  Francis stared at the stack of empty plates in utter dismay. Kevin watched the producers with a cool and calculated self-possession. Ricardo groped for something genuine to smile about. They couldn’t possibly want to keep them there much longer. That was somewhat encouraging.

  Marlene nodded at the Home Depot bag. “Time for a little challenge. Each of you, take a dowel.”

  Dowels. Plates. It seemed too obvious. Plate spinning? It was one of the first circus tricks Ricardo had ever learned. There had to be another angle.

  “Once you’ve got your dowel,” Marlene said in a bored voice, “grab a plate and spin it.”

  Or maybe Ricardo was overthinking things.

  Francis tore open the Home Depot bag as if he was hoping to find a few cheeseburgers on the bottom. “But these aren’t the right weight. They’re too thick.” He pulled the four-foot dowels out and let the bag fall back to the seat. “Well, this one’s too thick, anyway. They’re all different diameters.”

  Iain shrugged and said, “They were in the same slot at the hardware store.”

  Maybe, Ricardo supposed, he hadn’t been overthinking things at all. Maybe it was a test. But what test? A test to see if they would notice that one of the dowels was too thick?

  Or a test to see if it even mattered?

  Kevin’s gaze went to the three dowels in Francis’ hands, then flicked up to meet Ricardo’s eyes. He grabbed one of the two slender dowels, then took a plate off the top of the stack and threw it into the air with a flourish. He caught it, and centered it with a flick of his wrist. It spun without so much as a wobble.

  Which left Ricardo to either wrest the other slender dowel from Francis, or to take the clumsier piece of makeshift equipment himself. It was a gamble—but he decided to chance it. When Francis held out the thicker dowel, Ricardo accepted it with a gracious smile that conveyed it was the stick he’d been hoping for all along.

  Francis looked relieved. Marlene noticed. Kevin did, too—and Ricardo suspected he was kicking himself for taking the easy way out. That made it effortless enough to maintain the showman’s smile—though he did need to work to keep the smugness out of it. No one likes a smug winner.

  “These aren’t even the right type of plates,” Francis said with growing alarm. “You don’t just spin any old plates. You spin steel plates. With a dimple in the middle.”

  Ricardo took the top plate and wondered if it would be too flashy for him to toss it up behind his back. Possibly. Besides, the producers were mostly watching Francis begin to teeter toward a hypoglycemic meltdown—and it might come off as needy if Ricardo did an overly-showy move while no one was paying attention to him. He flicked the plate into the air plainly and caught it on the clumsy, thick dowel. Marlene glanced at him. He smiled.

  “There’s no dimple,” Francis said, though there wasn’t much steam behind the words, since both Ricardo and Kevin were currently standing around with their plates whirling in the air over their heads, each of them looking as matter-of-fact as possible, as if the stunt was so simple it was hardly worth noticing. With a heavy sigh, he picked up a plate, hooked the rim on the tip of his dowel, and gave it a spin. It wobbled at first since it was much heavier than a plate that had been designed for the task (and, indeed, there was no dimple), but centrifugal force saved the day, and soon even Francis’ plate was aloft.

  The clunky lunchroom plates slowed quickly. Ricardo sped his with a wrist flick. Kevin did the same. Francis made an attempt, but his dowel slipped off-center, and the plate began to wobble wildly. Ricardo felt the balance shift as clearly as he saw the sweat beading Francis’ brow. Balance was everything, and its presence or absence had always been a palpable thing for him. With a flick of his clumsy dowel he sent his own plate whirling high, and caught it on his fingertip, still spinning. At the same time he stretched out the now-empty dowel to snag the lip of Francis’ wobbling plate before it fell on his head. “Pass it here, Foxy.”

  It should have worked.

  But Ricardo tripped on something, and ended up knocking Francis’ plate onto the middle of the conference room table, where it circled loudly for a full five seconds before it clattered to rest.

  Ricardo looked at the floor. There was nothing there. He’d tripped on nothing? Not very likely. Ricardo Hart simply did not trip. Especially on nothing. He glanced back at Kevin. For the first time that afternoon, Kevin was smiling.

  Apparently he wasn’t worried about looking like a smug winner.

  Chapter 5

  CASTING

  Marlene tossed a takeout carton into the trash, then tilted her head to one side, then the other, until her neck let out a disturbingly loud, yet satisfying, crack. Iain eyed her blearily. His glasses rested on the top of her desk beside his crossed feet. He knew it drove her crazy when he put his feet on her desk—so she was taking extra care to look as if she hadn’t even noticed.

  It had been a long day, phenomenally long. Not for the magicians; they’d been allowed to leave by two-thirty. In the afternoon. It was past that now in the wee hours of the morning, and they’d finally watched and scored all the footage they’d shot.

  She consulted her notes and pulled up one of the digital tapings for the fourth or fifth time—she’d lost count—and Iain sighed. “That guy? Again?”

  He’d always been a lightweight when it came to pulling all-nighters.

  Iain’s recorded voice came through the speaker, although the camera was trained on Ricardo Hart, whose glib smile was firmly in place. “I’ll read off a list of names,” interview-Iain said, “and you tell me the first thing that pops into your head. Don’t think about it. Just blurt it out. Like a word-association game.”

  Ricardo Hart’s slick smile deepened. “Sure.”

  “My ass,” exhausted-Iain muttered. “That guy’s as spontaneous as an arranged marriage.”

  Interview-Iain read, “Jia Lee.”

  “Exotic.”

  “Chip Challenge.”

  “Funny.”

  “Fabian Swan.”

  “Imposing.”

  “Professor Topaz.”

  Marlene stopped the footage, then clicked back two frames. “There,” she said.

  Iain squinted at her monitor. “What?”

  “Don’t you see it? Right there.” She backed up a few more frames, then played the footage back at quarter speed. “Watch his eyes, you say Professor Topaz, and he freaks out.”

  “So? Maybe he’s just surprised.”

  “Come on, you think anything surprises him? Besides, it’s not like he didn’t know Topaz was trying out for the show. They shared the first audition.” She cut her eyes to him to determine if he even remembered. Knowing him, he’d dozed off by that point. Such a baby. Keep him awake for two, three days and he was useless.

  “Play it regular speed,” exhausted-Iain said. On the playback, interview-Iain said, “Professor Topaz,” again.

  Something flickered over Ricardo’s expression, and he said, “Professor Topaz is my hero.”

  Marlene paused the recording. “Maybe he means it.”

  “I don�
�t know.” Iain yawned. “Maybe. If he’s covering up for something else, we can see what it is when it surfaces. It’s always good for some drama when you make people compete against their family and friends.”

  Marlene backed up a few frames. The video hadn’t managed to capture the nuance of the Ricardo’s expression, even in slow-mo. If she’d been interviewing him, she would have asked him to expound on the whole “hero” thing. But she’d been busy listening to that ass Kevin brag about how long he could hold his breath, and hoping to God it really was a magician’s badge of honor, and not some kind of slimy come-on.

  “Just eliminate someone,” Iain said, as she played though Ricardo Hart’s shift in expression again. “It doesn’t matter who.”

  “No. I think we should each pick one of them to stay.”

  “That’s the same as eliminating one!”

  “Not really.”

  “Kevin’s a cutthroat asshole and Francis is a big dork who’ll play on the viewers’ sympathy as long as he doesn’t get too whiny. We’d get great footage out of either of them.”

  “Agreed,” Marlene said. “That’s why I’m going with Ricardo.”

  Iain shifted sullenly. “Over some ‘look’ he gave for a quarter of a second? It could’ve been gas.”

  “What’s the real reason you don’t want me to pick him? Is he too swishy for you?”

  “Half the magicians we met looked totally gay—and from what I gather, they’re all nailing their female assistants.”

  Marlene opened a file and read. “Ricardo Hart. When he was a teenager in Minnesota he was a competitive figure skater. Never married. No female assistant. And according to the credit check, he used to live with a personal trainer named Marcus.”

  “Right. You had me at figure skater. Look, I could give a rat’s ass where he gets his jollies—if you like him, he’s in. But I’m not taking responsibility for picking between the other two. Either one of them could turn out to be a gem or a dud.”

  “But you’re with me on Ricardo?”

  “He’s older than the other two—what is he, thirty-five?”

  “But he looks as young as either of them.”

  Iain stifled a yawn. “Whatever. You want this Ricardo guy so much? Fine.”

  “Fine. Email that plate-spinning clip to the focus group and we’ll call it a night.”

  Chapter 6

  SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT

  “We’re here in front of Jia Lee’s home in Oakland.”

  “Cut.” Marlene Perez glanced down at the script, and re-read it to herself in Monty Shaw’s Australian accent. There were an awful lot of ‘E’ sounds in that line—we’re, here, Jia, Lee—and if it were delivered in the middle of a segment, she’d let it slide. But you couldn’t open with something like that. Not in that accent, you couldn’t.

  Sometimes it seemed like Monty was hamming up his pronunciation for the camera—not that she blamed him. Anything to differentiate him from the sea of other handsome blond, bronzed him-bos on the audition tapes. She tapped on her earpiece and said, “Can we get a writer over here?”

  It would have made more sense to have Topaz host the damn thing, since he had a kind of magician-y Tim Gunn vibe—but that was one of the many suggestions over which she’d been steamrolled. The executive producers insisted he wasn’t a big enough name. Penn & Teller, who’d almost signed on, ended up taping a special in Japan that conflicted with the first four episodes. David Copperfield’s rates would have blown the budget for the entire show. And The Amazing Jonathan hadn’t even read the pitch. So they’d picked Monty—although he was even less of a household name than Topaz, in the States, at least. Apparently he’d played an illusionist in some artsy fartsy film down under. Though the film had won the AFI award for Best Costume Design and Best Sound, she’d be shocked if more than a handful of viewers in Magic Mansion’s key demographics had ever heard of it, let alone seen it.

  Even so, the execs had dug in their heels, and she was stuck with Monty Shaw and his piercingly nasal vowel sounds.

  Good thing he was so easy on the eyes.

  A writer scurried out from the trailer and Marlene explained the problem. Since they could hardly have Jia Lee change her well-established stage name this late in the game, the writers were instructed to henceforth read Monty’s first line aloud for excessively obnoxious vowels in all other non-name words. They tweaked the script, fed Monty his new line… “And…action.”

  “This modest Oakland duplex is the home of Jia Lee, the Far East darling of L.A.’s magic circuit. Miss Lee’s exotic good looks and flawless presentation have made her the first female guest of honor at the Portland Magic Jam, and her Asian-inspired show, Apple Blossom Vanish, ran at the Parks Theatre for a stunning sixteen-week engagement.”

  Monty approached Jia’s front door, walking just a bit gingerly. He had a good flare for narrative. Marlene would give him that. He lowered his voice and said, “Jia’s been told we’re taping the reactions of magicians who’ve been chosen for a third round of auditions, so let’s see how she responds to the news that she’s actually won a spot in the Mansion.” He rapped on the door and sang out, “Magic Mansion!” in an accent toned-down enough to come across as charmingly Aussie rather than strange and foreign—Marlene hoped so, anyway. You never could tell what was going to rub a WalMart clerk in Nowhere, Indiana wrong.

  Jia’s door snapped open, chain on. Half a face appeared in the gap. “You weren’t supposed to be here ’til two.”

  “Magic Mansion,” Monty repeated chipperly.

  Camera one zoomed close. On the mobile monitor, Marlene saw the wreck of the magician’s duplex. Plastic drop cloths covered the furniture, and masking tape hung in curls from the window frames. The ceiling was half-purple with color-change ceiling paint that went on dark and dried light to keep painters from leaving any gaps in the paint, and a wide rust stain spread across the center, marking the spot where something unfortunate had overflowed in the bathroom above.

  The door slammed shut.

  “Jia Lee,” Monty sang out, and maybe the crazy vowels weren’t too bad after all. He made her name sound fun, like some kind of drinking game. “We’ve got an envelope with your name on it.”

  “It’s one-thirty!” The door was thin. The boom was in place, and the words projected right through the plywood.

  Monty glanced back somewhere beyond the camera as if looking for direction and gave a charming shrug, then turned back to the door and called out, “C’mon out, Miss Lee—let’s not keep the cameras waiting!”

  Camera two zoomed in on the doorknob turning. The boom picked up a rattle of the chain, though foley could re-do it if it wasn’t clear enough. The door opened.

  Jia Lee stared at Monty Shaw, wide-eyed in abject mortification, then snatched the bandanna off her long black hair. A smear of purple paint, white around the edges, lay across her cheek like warpaint. She wore an old 7-Up T-shirt stretched taut across her chest, sleeves cut off and beige bra straps plainly visible, and a pair of heather gray yoga pants splattered with purple. Even in her state of disarray, she was gorgeous. Her eyelids had pronounced folds, and her nose was probably too flat for the taste of most American men—but there was something classically proportioned about her features that was set off beautifully by her state of dishevelment and surprise. She looked foreign enough to say “flied lice,” but her accent was as apple-pie American as you please (unlike Monty’s) when she repeated, “It’s one-thirty.”

  “C’mon out, Miss Lee, and let’s see what the producers wanted to tell you.”

  Camera one zoomed in on the cheap plastic dropcloth catching on her sandals as she struggled to get through her front door without showing them any more than she absolutely had to. She slipped out the door, then held her head high as she sized up Monty like an empress holding court. A five-foot-one empress in paint-splattered yoga pants. “Very well.”

  Marlene was unsure if she’d ever heard someone use the words “very well” in conversation—but if
anyone could get away with it, it was Jia.

  “You’ve got a letter from Magic Mansion,” Monty said with excruciating perkiness. “Let’s see what it says.”

  Cameras swarmed Jia as she took the letter, slipped her thumb underneath the seal, and opened the envelope. She scanned it once, and once again. Her expression shifted, something subtle. Joy, or panic? “I got in,” she whispered, then clasped the letter to her 7-Up T-shirt and repeated, “I got in.”

  Marlene could have called cut, but it was only video, not film, and the afternoon had been humming right along. She sized up Jia and told her, “Good reaction. Can you give me one that’s a tad more excited? And then, Monty, you congratulate her. Wendy, come over here, make her messy hair more of a sexy-messy for me, a couple of strands in front, there you go. Okay. Jia, take it from the spot where you open the door and say it’s one-thirty, and this time, smile when you get the news. But don’t overdo it—make sure you still seem standoffish.”

  Jia nodded and said, “No problem.”

  Chapter 7

  OPENING CREDITS

  Show business contained far more preparation (and waiting) than actual performance. It seemed that way to Ricardo, anyway. He’d been awake since 4 a.m. to arrive at the studio by seven and shoot Magic Mansion’s intro. Each contestant would have their half-second in the spotlight at the beginning of every episode. They were to turn toward the camera and perform some sort of magical flourish. They’d been asked, in one of the half-million questions they’d been subjected to in the application process, whether they had a signature move. Those moves had been storyboarded, and focus-grouped, and finally pencilled in to a production schedule.

  Ricardo was eager to show off his sliver rings. They lent themselves to all kinds of kick-ass poses.

  He wondered what Professor Topaz had pinpointed as his own signature move—although, technically, Topaz didn’t have one. With the Professor, it was more of a word. “Behold.” The way he said it, as if he was alerting you to the moment when your perceptions about the world would be turned upside down and inside out, sent chills down Ricardo’s spine. Hell, even the memory of him saying it left Ricardo light-headed. Unfortunately, the Professor wasn’t taping his intro that morning, so Ricardo hadn’t seen him since the fateful encounter after the audition. Or maybe it wasn’t so unfortunate after all. Ricardo knew he was one of the lower-ranking magicians in the pack; he didn’t think he could afford to be known as the guy in the intro with the boner.