Magic Mansion

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “All right, Gold Team,” Monty said. “Who is the first player to represent you in the Metamorphosis challenge?”

  Sue squared her shoulders, though it probably pained her to do so, and said, “Monty, the first team member who will represent Gold Team is…Amazing Faye.”

  Monty said, “Faye, can you tell us a bit about your strategy?”

  “Well, Monty, it may not look like it’s possible, but I’ve been performing Metamorphosis for over fifteen years. I can get in and out of that box in no time flat. It’s like this challenge was tailor-made for me.”

  “Very good, Gold Team. Now, we’ll check in with your competition. Red Team, who is the first team member you have selected?”

  Kevin Kazan puffed himself up, crossed his obnoxiously-muscled arms, and said, “Our first pick is Ken Barron. The man’s an expert at escape, and if anyone can change costumes in a bag, it’s him. Plus, it’ll give him a chance to prove himself after the major fail of his first challenge.”

  Ricardo wondered if anyone on the Red Team wanted to slap Kevin Kazan as badly as he did. But then he realized he should probably formulate what he wanted to say for himself when Sue announced him as their second competitor. That he was eager to perform such a classic? That he was game to try to see what kind of score he could make? He didn’t want to sound like a braggart, so—

  “And now,” Monty said, “here’s the twist.”

  Oh God.

  “You’ve each picked someone to be the second performer in your act…but your competitors might have someone else in mind. Teams, you will decide who the second person to perform for the opposing team will be, and you will have sixty seconds to do so. Your time starts…now.”

  Gold Team re-formed their huddle, though Ricardo was so numb with panic he was practically on auto-pilot. With Sue injured, he was the only member of the team other than Faye who was capable of doing the stunt in a reasonable amount of time. The only one.

  “That’s it,” Bev said. “We’re done.”

  “Forget about that,” Muriel said. “We can’t worry about which one of us they pick. We can only try to pick someone worse from their team.”

  “Not Kevin,” Sue said. “I get the feeling he was about to nominate himself as the second performer anyway.”

  “Not Jia,” Faye said. “She can change in two seconds flat, and she’s the smallest one on the team.”

  “Professor Topaz is really tall,” Sue said. “Would he have trouble changing in there?”

  Muriel glanced up from their huddle, looked over at the Red Team and said, “I doubt it. Sure, he’s got a little snow on the roof, but have you noticed how limber he is?” Limber? “I’m sure he knows all those classic cabinet tricks like the back of his hand.”

  “Then we pick Fabian,” Sue said. “He’s old, he’s not in great shape…and he had the same awful massage I did.” Her voice petered out toward the end, and Ricardo wondered if she was going to start crying. Again.

  “It’s a competition, kiddo,” Muriel said. “Don’t think for a second they’ll take any pity on you.”

  They finished their decision with five seconds to spare, then looked over at the Red Team. Jia and Kevin were fighting in heated whispers, while John, Fabian and Ken watched in resignation.

  Sue leaned in to Ricardo and said, “What if they pick me? My muscles are all seizing up. What if I lose the challenge for the whole team?”

  Ricardo knew a thing or two about working through pain…though with his True magic, he possessed an unfair advantage over most figure skaters in terms of recovery time. “If you do get picked,” he whispered, “do a gentle stretch before you get in the cabinet. Not now—just watch me.” He folded down into a hamstring stretch. “Imagine your muscle fibers relaxing. Imagine the toxins flowing out. Do both legs. And remember to breathe.”

  _____

  John had always considered himself a patient man. Fabian, probably not. Lately, every time Kevin spoke, Fabian’s eye twitched.

  “Ain’t no way that Math Wizard gonna get in and out of that box faster than any one of us,” Kevin said. “And you can tell by the look in her eye. She’s scared.”

  Jia said, “But the deep-tissue massage—”

  “Miz Blondie over there can ignore her pain. Don’t let her fool you. I seen it in the challenge. That girl held her breath almost as long as I did. And that ol’ gray-haired bag nearly did, too.”

  “Muriel,” John said. He almost didn’t—they only had a minute, after all, and it would be counterproductive to spend it arguing—but he couldn’t let it pass.

  “Do you realize what an asshole you’re going to look like if you pick Bev?” Jia said. “Use your head. It’s not only about winning the challenge. It’s about making sure you don’t get voted off fast ’cos everyone hates you.”

  “Does it look like I care?” Kevin said. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to win.”

  Ken cracked his knuckles.

  Jia said, “You will make us all look bad.”

  “Don’t worry, pretty lady. Lots of people root for the bad guys. ’Sides, alls I gotta do is keep coming in first. You wanna make sure you stay in the game, then you got to bring it.”

  Fabian made the grumble deep in his throat he’d been making ever since his spa treatment. It sounded vaguely like some unseen part of the mansion, off in the distance, had finally decayed to the point of collapse.

  John looked at Fabian to see if he was okay, then noticed the Gold Team, beyond him, in their huddle—more specifically, he noticed Ricardo bending over and stretching in a gorgeously form-fitting pair of jeans…and it put him in a happy enough place that he could forget about Kevin, if only for a moment.

  Until Kevin spoke directly to him, at least. “That seaweed-shit you did at the spa. Did it hurt?”

  What? John turned and looked down his nose at Kevin, wavering between giving him a straight answer and asking him what business it was of his, when Monty called out, “Time’s up! Team leaders, step away from your groups.”

  Once Kevin swaggered out of earshot, Fabian said, “So help me, I wanna wring that thick, white neck of his.”

  Jia said, “Make sure I get a front row seat.”

  “He’s a jerk,” Ken said, “but maybe he has a point. If Red Team wins the early challenges, chances are, more of us will make it through to the later rounds.”

  John, who had been told flat out by Marlene that he was not expected to win Magic Mansion, found it difficult to muster up any concern over which team won the Metamorphosis challenge. Not only that, but he envied the camaraderie on the Gold Team…and not just because Ricardo was on it.

  Once Sue and Kevin were standing on their marks, Iain gave the go-ahead, and Monty said, “Gold Team, who did you select to perform Metamorphosis for the Red Team?”

  “Monty, we chose…Fabian Swan.”

  “I knew it,” he muttered. “I just knew—”

  “Fabian Swan,” Monty said, “you will join Ken Barron in representing the Red Team.”

  Cameras swung toward the cluster of magicians in which John stood. Fabian stopped muttering and nodded grimly.

  “Red Team, who did you pick from the Gold Team to compete in the Metamorphosis Challenge?”

  John wanted to turn away when Kevin announced Bev. Although the Gold Team had chosen the weakest member of the Red Team (in John’s opinion, at least taking into consideration the deep tissue massage) at least they looked a bit chagrined about it. He yearned to find something else to focus on, but he forced himself to watch. He felt he owed it to his fellow magicians—Gold or Red.

  Kevin somehow managed to swagger in place by shifting his stance. He smiled, and he said, “Red Team picks…Ricardo.”

  What?

  What about Bev?

  The baffled expressions on the Red Team’s faces were not lost on the cameras, who panned frantically between them. The Gold Team, too, looked surprised. And relieved.

  “Interesting choice, Red Team,” Monty sa
id. “We’ll see how it plays out. It’s Ricardo the Magnificent representing the Gold Team with Amazing Faye. Now it’s off to wardrobe with the four performers, while the rest of you settle in and prepare to enjoy the show!”

  When Kevin swaggered back to his team, three cameras trailed him. “What the hell was that?” Jia said.

  “Whoa, girl. Chill.”

  “Ricardo? Of everyone you could have picked…Ricardo? That guy can bend like a pretzel.”

  “Y’all might not have noticed, but Ricardo’s the one to beat.” Kevin gave the group a smug look as if to say he just might be crazy…like a fox. “But right now? He’s hurt. And he’ll probably hurt hisself worse doing the stunt. Might even get hisself eliminated.”

  “What makes you think he’s hurt?” Jia demanded.

  Kevin made a V with his fingers and pointed dramatically to his own eyes. Jia whirled around and strode over to Iain, who looked startled to be confronted directly by one of the players, and said, “Can we drink during this challenge?”

  “Well I, uh…I’ll need to check.”

  “Because I want a drink. With plenty of tequila.”

  “Checking.”

  “Or a gun. If you can arrange that.”

  Iain mumbled into his phone, then said, “No drinking until after Metamorphosis.”

  She huffed at him in disgust, then came back to the group, standing as far away from Kevin as possible with her arms crossed.

  Her loathing only seemed to spur him on.

  Indeed, he seemed to revel in it.

  Chapter 15

  INTO THE BOX

  The teams themselves were able to choose who would be first in the box and who would be second, probably since both roles involved the same skills—namely, slipping into (or out of) a big wooden box with a trick closure, getting into (or out of) a bag with a trick bottom, and losing a tearaway costume at some point in between.

  Only a rack of costumes divided Ricardo from Fabian and Ken—and their strategizing was making him antsy. “We got this,” Ken was telling Fabian. “I’ll be in and out in no time flat, then you can bring home the win.”

  Ricardo cut his eyes to Faye, and whispered, “You want first or second?”

  She considered the question, held up her arms for the costumer to slip a sparkly black spandex sheath—stretchy enough to slide right out of—over the top of a punchy gold mini dress. “Let me ask you something.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re gay, right?”

  What did that have to do with anything? “Well…yeah.”

  “Then let’s go traditional, me first. Normally I’d say we should change things up and have you play the role of the assistant. But I don’t want the act to devolve into something campy—that just cheapens everything, makes a big joke out of it. That’s not going to help either of us once this gig is through.”

  “Oh.” She seemed so matter-of-fact that Ricardo wasn’t sure exactly how he should feel. And he wasn’t sure he’d even thought that far ahead. “Okay.”

  “Like that first challenge.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Head in a fish tank,” she said, “what was that all about? That stunt’s something I’d expect from The Big Gross-Out, not this show. This is about talent. Not playing a kazoo with my nose, or piling raw meat on my head, or getting dunked in tanks of slime and making myself look like a huge idiot.”

  Ricardo slid a black shirt with gold vest combo, held together by velcro, over a reverse gold shirt with black vest. His gold tuxedo-styled pants hid a black pair underneath. “Is it really? About talent, I mean.”

  “What else could it be?”

  Iain appeared in the doorway. “Are we ready, kids? Let’s go.”

  Ricardo motioned for Faye to precede him, then murmured, “It’s spectacle,” and watched her shoulders rise and fall as she sighed, possibly in agreement.

  While Ricardo and Faye were in wardrobe, the ballroom had been rearranged. The cabinets were now in the center of the room, about ten feet apart, with the scoreboard looming behind them. The remaining three members of each team sat on a long sofa off to the side of their respective cabinet. Except for Kevin Kazan, who was too cool to sit, and instead perched on the red sofa’s arm.

  The Red Team watched stonily as the challenge players entered. Sue, Bev and Muriel gave their teammates a coordinated thumbs-up.

  Iain went over the rules with the four players—they were allowed to communicate as they did the stunt, with no part of the illusion hidden from the cameras, since the mechanics of the trick had already been exposed on national TV some years before. The timer would stop once the bag was untied, revealing the second magician in his costume change—and that timer was the only thing that mattered. Not style. Not showmanship. Only speed.

  Although, as Ricardo took his place beside the cabinet and waited, heart pounding, for the timer to begin, the conversation he’d had with Faye did cause him to consider: in the big picture, form always mattered. He was a performer. And appearance, charisma, style…those things mattered. And so he took a deep, calming breath. And he smiled for the camera.

  Monty did his spiel, explaining a simplified version of the rules to the audience, but Ricardo was so focused on mentally rehearsing his moves that he could hardly hear them. One word permeated his concentration—“Go!” And then they were off.

  He dashed up to the cabinet, shoved open the top and hoisted Faye into it, careful to set her precisely in the bag without her heels catching. “You come down on this side,” she said, pointing stage right.

  “Got it.” Ricardo yanked the bag up over her head and looped the top shut with a slipknot. Traditional? No. Usually the bag was knotted well, to give the assistant plenty of time to undress. But they were racing against the clock. “Slipknot,” he said, as Faye crouched down in the cabinet, bag wriggling. She’d be out of the stretch dress by the time he closed the cabinet’s top, and out of the trick bag-bottom before he tied the cabinet’s lid shut—which he considered doing with another slipknot, then decided against it. The trick lid slid forward, thanks to rope slack inside the bottom of the cabinet. If it pulled too hard against a slipknot, the rope could come undone and disqualify them. Better to play it safe.

  A quick granny-knot, and Ricardo leapt up on top of the cabinet, feet planted wide on a narrow ledge on each side of the lid. Immediately the lid slid forward, and Faye squirmed out in her gold mini dress.

  Ricardo dropped into the cabinet stage right, shedding his gold tuxedo pants, and ripping off his outer shirt and vest. He wadded the costume into the corner of the cabinet, and then snatched up the bag. The bag was tricky. It felt like he was turning it around and around endlessly in his cramped semi-fetal position, searching for an open bottom that had somehow ceased to exist, as the seconds on the scoreboard ticked relentlessly away. And he wondered, while he did it, if Kevin had somehow known it would happen. If he had some way of predicting that for all his training and all his experience, Ricardo would be bested by something as stupid as a trick bag. Monty’s voice filtered through the sides of the box, punctuated by the sound of rope rasping on wood as Faye worked the granny knot open. Of course Kevin couldn’t have known. Even if he was a True magician, he couldn’t see the future…could he? Finally, Ricardo forced out all thoughts of Kevin Kazan, took a calming breath, focused, and felt his fingers slip into the bag’s bottom. He pulled the bag over his head and called, “Ready!”

  It was less than a second between his signal and the moment that Faye slid open the lid—couldn’t possibly have been more than that. But in that brief pause, Ricardo felt a sense of déjà vu rush over him—and it was as if he was back on the screened-in porch in St. Paul…thirteen years old? No, younger than that. Twelve. And Krista Franke, his very first assistant, had just duct-taped him into a refrigerator box.

  Krista hadn’t stood on top of that corrugated cardboard cabinet while Ricardo freed himself from a laundry bag, though it probably would have borne her weight.
She’d never exceeded a hundred pounds, even when the two of them were carb-loading as competitive skaters. She had a figure like Faye. Tiny, but strong.

  Strong enough—years later—to leave a hand-print on his cheek when she discovered the Tom of Finland chapbook in his skating bag (pages full of swarthy men with lusciously rounded asses, and dark nipples gleaming as if they’d been oiled) and she realized the reason he’d become so unaffectionate, so distant, had nothing at all to do with her being the one to nab the McLoraine Figure Skating Scholarship.

  She’d been looking for his ever-present pack of Trident. Ever since then, the taste of chewing gum turned Ricardo’s stomach—even now. Half a lifetime away.

  A tug—it was Faye hauling on the slipknot now, not Krista. Heck, back then, Ricardo hadn’t even known how to tie one. A quick smooth of his hair, and Ricardo held his head high as the bag fell away, and he turned toward the cameras—surely he was allowed to look in their direction during a challenge—and smiled.

  “That’s one minute, fourteen seconds for the Gold Team,” Monty said happily, but his tone was nothing to judge by. He always sounded perky.

  Ricardo bent toward Faye and said in her ear, “What about Red Team?”

  Faye nuzzled Ricardo’s cheek with her head and said, “They never stood a chance.”

  Red Team’s cabinet lid hit the floor with a clatter, and Fabian, covered by the bag, stood. Ken untied the bag and revealed a rumpled-looking Fabian a full twelve seconds after Ricardo had emerged, smiling, from his own bag. Though they hadn’t won, the Red Team members faced the cameras with dignity and good sportsmanship, and gave a bow. Then they turned toward the Gold Team to give them a congratulatory salute.

  As Ricardo waved back, he saw Ken’s fly was open.

  On television.

  He was so mortified for Ken, so completely flabbergasted, he actually froze for a moment with his hand mid-wave, and it took all his effort to keep his smile from slipping.

  “So close,” Monty said to the Red Team. Hard to tell if he could even see the open fly from where he stood. “You were fast, but unfortunately, not fast enough to beat the Gold Team.” He turned to face Ricardo and Faye. “That means, Gold Team, that you win the Metamorphosis Challenge. And as your prize, you’ll spend tomorrow getting your own personal metamorphoses—that is, makeovers—from stylist to the stars, Eliza Watt!”