Magic Mansion (3 page)

Ricardo glanced down. Damn it, not here. Not now.

His body seemed bent on reacting to the sight of his hero like that of a boy at the height of puberty—exactly like he had that first time. He blinked, once, long and deliberate, and willed himself to pull it together. Strutting through his paces onstage in clingy slacks that showcased a big package was one thing. Flouncing around in front of the producers with a raging hard-on was another.

Ricardo dropped back and tried to force his body to calm down. He drifted so far upstage, he actually heard the murmur of voices behind the curtain. One voice, he even recognized—the production assistant with the headset mike. “…get through the rest of these idiots. Maybe the cheesy one here’s got something good up his sleeve. If that fucking dinosaur would ever stop pulling scarves out of his ass…”

Cheesy? Yes, fine, Ricardo had been called worse. But to refer to the great Professor Topaz as a dinosaur?

How dare he?

Ricardo spun around and took in the scene around him as if the world had stopped, and only he was still capable of movement. A couple of interns at the edge of the stage flipped through their lists, oblivious to the performers. In the front row, the producers sat with two or three seats between them so as not to inadvertently contaminate one another. One was texting on her cell. The other was occupied with picking a bump on his jaw.

All this, Ricardo saw as he whirled. He kept on turning, finally coming to a halt when Professor Topaz filled his field of vision. Topaz had exhausted his supply of silks and had moved on to folding mylar birds, pulling them out with flourishes that made them seem as if they would take flight themselves at any moment.

The Professor’s eyes met Ricardo’s.

With that single look, the whole day coalesced: the anticipation, the nerves, the humiliation, the sheer effort of holding back…and Ricardo felt himself slip.

His showman’s smile flickered. He tightened his cheek muscles in an effort to keep it in place. Letting the smile slip wasn’t the worst of it, though.

In that fraction of a second when things started tanking, Ricardo had allowed his gaze to fall on one of the sparkly pink doves. If anything, a magician should know how to control his face, his body, the attention of his audience, and most of all, his ability. Ricardo had lost control.

It was beautiful, in its way.

The pink mylar dove spread its wings wide, and the metallic folds of its body plumped as if something other than just air and clever origami were filling it out. While the other glittery doves had fluttered, this dove, for a brief, shining moment…soared.

Professor Topaz’s eyes went wide, and he spread his hands to allow the almost-living bird to hover there before his astonished face. But only for a moment. He focused, then, and the bird dropped from the air into his outstretched hands. His eyes met Ricardo’s…and then he went on with the act as if everything was humming along exactly as planned.

He took a bow, then Ricardo glided to center stage and began juggling two single rings with the linked pair. The inopportune stiffie? No longer an issue.

_____

The parking lot outside the audition smelled like the grudging start of autumn and the end of a frat party. Dumpsters lining a nearby alley overflowed with beer bottles and splitting sacks of garbage. The smoggy sky turned darker yet, and a steamy drizzle began to fall.

“You’ll get a callback by Friday if you make it to the next round.” That was it. That was all the guy’d had to say—with no inflection whatsoever. And Ricardo knew that jerk was capable of speaking with inflection. He’d overheard it loud and clear through the stage curtain.

Strangely enough, he didn’t even care whether he got into Magic Mansion or not. Offstage, in the commotion of both Mordo the Great and Fabian Swan trying to hustle past with their prop-laden acts, Professor Topaz had managed to simply disappear.

Ricardo’s stupefied glee over sharing the stage with a living legend warred with his dismay at letting the Professor slip away without even swapping a few stories. Or phone numbers.

The bus shelter, though it smelled like day-old takeout, at least shielded him from the murky sun. Ricardo checked the schedule. He’d just missed the bus. Magnificent.

Though the walls were plexi, Ricardo couldn’t quite see through them. They were covered with a dozen generations of brightly colored flyers advertising work-from-home opportunities, some pyramid schemes, and a lost dog. He peeled back a flyer from a band he’d never even heard of, but even when he dug deep, he couldn’t find a single magician among all the ads. Not one.

Exhaustion settled in his bones, and a deep, cold sadness…not over the way the casting call had turned out—because, to be honest, he suspected the primary motivation to put twelve magicians in a Hollywood mansion was not actually to award one of them a quarter-million dollars, but rather to mock the other eleven. And to encourage the rest of the world to do the same. No, Ricardo’s sadness was for the slow and inevitable death of magic itself.

Just as he was feeling maudlin enough to relax his perfect posture and allow his shoulders to slump, a looming shadow dwarfed his own silhouette on the riotous colors of the layers and layers of flyers that papered the bus shelter wall. Before Ricardo could weigh giving his assailant the five bucks in his wallet against flattening the guy with a kick to the side of his knee, a velvety, low voice said in his ear, “Are you always so obvious?”

Ricardo scrabbled at the flyers, tearing them, but no matter how many fell, there were more beneath to shield him from the prying eyes of anyone who might pass by. “What’re you talking about?”

Fingers sank into his shoulders and spun him around, and there, blocking him from the street, was none other than Professor Topaz. “You know exactly what I mean.”

Ricardo squinched his eyes mostly shut, but even so, Professor Topaz remained backlit, all but the glint of light playing over the whites of his eyes. And it seemed to Ricardo that he should probably answer, but all he could think was,
So much hotter up close than I’d ever dreamed
.

The Professor relaxed his grip on Ricardo’s shoulder. Slightly. “You do realize what you did…don’t you?”

Ricardo nodded, dazed.

Topaz rallied his anger, though it was dissipating fast against Ricardo’s unwillingness to fight back. “Then what were you thinking? Never perform True magic when the audience is close enough to see it’s no trick. Never.”

Ricardo grasped Topaz’s hand where it bit into his shoulder. Such big hands. Such strong fingers. Topaz shifted and brushed against a telltale bulge—the same bulge that had seemed to disappear during the audition, but evidently had only been hiding, like an assistant in a secret compartment, to emerge proudly at the climax of the act. And he didn’t react to its presence like a straight man would have. Of course, in Ricardo’s fantasies, Topaz was gay, and willing, and eager. He’d never dreamed it might be the reality. “I’m sorry.” Ricardo’s voice, again, had grown husky. He dry-swallowed. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“You’re still young, but believe me. It
will
catch up to you someday. The malice. The spite.” Professor Topaz, confronted by the unmistakable evidence of Ricardo’s devotion pressing against his thigh, held very still. “You need to be caref—”

Ricardo flung himself against Topaz. Lips, teeth, tongue, everything clashed, prodded, and finally found a place where it fit together perfectly. Everything about Topaz felt big, and firm, and powerful—and the air around him fairly crackled with magical energy.

They kissed hard and deep, until finally it seemed as if there was no breath left between them. When Topaz reluctantly came up for air, he touched Ricardo’s cheek as lightly as a floating silk. “You move…beautifully.”

The idea that Professor Topaz had even noticed his act made it difficult for Ricardo to catch his breath.

Topaz leaned in to murmur in Ricardo’s ear. “You keep your shoulders high without holding them stiffly. Your spine is straight, but flexible. And your hips…the way you only hinted at what your hips might do…” he slid his long, strong fingers underneath the waistband of Ricardo’s clingy slacks, “that was so much more provocative than all the ridiculous thrusting the other contestants were doing.”

Ricardo let out a shaky breath as Topaz delved deeper down his pants—and could barely restrain himself from demonstrating how naturally that “ridiculous thrusting” came to him. When Topaz finally touched him, there, skin to skin, Ricardo let out a small gasp, part submission, part sheer joy.

“Never show them your power,” Topaz breathed in Ricardo’s ear, while his fingers wrapped around the hard-on that seemed as if it had been waiting for him all day. Or maybe Ricardo’s entire life. “Power makes men jealous, and jealousy makes them dangerous. True magic is a subtle thing. Use it when you must, but never take it for granted—and stop tempting fate.”

Ricardo draped his forearms over Topaz’s broad shoulders and pressed his cheek against the velvety black cape. Up close, it smelled like the inside of a consignment store—rosin and candle wax and antique maple. Topaz handled Ricardo’s cock with the same authority with which he seemed to handle everything. Unhurried, utterly sure, and, of course, solemn. No time for tempting and teasing—but who needed seduction, when every moment, from the first time Ricardo had seen him brandish his cape, had led up to this encounter?

Professor Topaz’s hand stilled, just once, to let Ricardo hover there for one final beat on the brink of his release. Their lips met, deceptively gentle, and then another sure stroke sent Ricardo’s spirit aloft. He hovered there, weightless and sparkling, for a glorious moment before he floated back to earth.

Pearly semen webbed Topaz’s fingers when he pulled his hand from Ricardo’s slacks. He snapped his fingers, which would have ended with ejaculate spattered on his cape, for most people. Professor Topaz, however, wasn’t most people. Instead, a translucent white butterfly launched from his fingertips. Ricardo watched it dip and flutter, find an air current, climb higher, then make its way around the side of the bus shelter and out of sight.
 

“The secret of making something fly convincingly,” Topaz said solemnly, “is to allow it to sink a bit, first.”

“Thanks.” It seemed inadequate, but hell, language itself seemed inadequate at that very moment. “I mean, you’re the master. I mean, not in a weird way. Just that—”

Voices intruded in the extended moment they’d been sharing: chattering, laughter. Topaz took a step back, and Ricardo’s hand slipped from his shoulder. Ricardo hadn’t realized he’d still been clinging to his idol. A pair of teenaged girls talking on cell phones stepped into the shelter, and then belatedly realized they’d done so with two older men, one of whom was wearing a velvet cape and the other with rhinestones on his collar. They looked the men up and down with open, slightly disdainful curiosity, then exited the shelter to lean against the outer wall, instead.

“Forgive me.” Topaz took another step back. “This was not the time, nor the place. Thank you…for humoring me.”

Ricardo scrambled to find something to say, but he suspected “But you’re everything I ever wanted!” would only leave him sounding like a psycho. “Wait,” he said—and would it be weird to ask
the
Professor Topaz out for coffee? Or that phone number? Topaz was such a living legend, it hardly seemed possible to imagine him doing something as mundane as lifting a coffee cup or sending a text. In any event, Topaz did not wait. He turned and strode across the street, quickly but calmly, in traffic gaps that appeared, and then closed behind him as if they’d been choreographed to obliterate his passing.
 

Once Ricardo made it across the street himself, Professor Topaz had vanished.

Chapter 3

THE CONTRACT

“You’re not nervous,” Dick asked John. “Are you?”

John glanced up at the studio gates. Nervous? He hadn’t even realized they’d arrived. They’d been winding through overgrown residential Los Feliz side-streets with blue recycling bins out in front of the tile-roofed cottages, and older cars parked in their cracked driveways. Hardly the neighborhood where one would expect soap operas and game shows to be produced. But the residential street took a sharp turn where the terrain grew steeply hilly, and there, before them, the studio’s gates loomed—and beyond a line of screen trees, a parking lot glittered with Mercedes and BMWs, and of course a good number of hybrids, now that conspicuous non-consumption was slightly more in vogue. Slightly.

“I haven’t been nervous in ages,” John said. Which would have been true, if he’d been referring solely to being onstage.

“That’s the attitude. You’re the old pro—they need you. They need a good variety of actors for these gigs—speaking of which, you ever watch Weighty Matters?”

“No.”

“A competitive weight loss show with a bunch of tubbies exercising in front of the camera and crying about how food is their only friend, and they never got enough love when they were kids. A lot of times the oldest contestant is the one who really steals the audience’s heart. No one ever thinks the old fart’s actually gonna win…but they test real high with focus groups.”

John only half listened. He’d been up past midnight guiltily exploring www.ricardothemagnificent.com. Poring over the publicity shots—that mouth. Those lips. The lips he’d kissed. Reading the bio. John had pegged him for thirty, but he was older than that. Watching the clip where Ricardo glided across the stage, head held high, almost cocky, but not quite. Watching the clip, pausing, resuming, lingering over the swell of his chest and the bulge in his trousers…then staring at the “contact Ricardo” button. And realizing he hadn’t the faintest idea what he might type that wouldn’t make himself sound utterly ridiculous.

“Earth to John.”

“Hm?”

“I said, what’s your threshold? We’re probably looking at six weeks of work, if they make you an offer. So how low can I go? Eighteen K?”

“I hadn’t been aware it would be a paying job. I thought it was a competition.”