Magic Mansion (41 page)

Ricardo hopped onto the rails, breathing hard, while the belt sped by between his (and John’s) feet. “You’re always telling me to be careful,” he chided.

“This is nothing.” John pressed into his back, buried his nose in Ricardo’s hair, and
breathed
him. The belt whirred past, motor working. “You’re totally engaged in what’s going on around you right now. Every bit of your attention is focused. You’re living your Truth. Now is the time…you’re safe.”

Ricardo let his head drop back and press into John’s shoulder. John grabbed his damp hair, pulled his head more sharply to the side, and swiped a long, wet lick down the tendons on his neck—tasting his salt, his sweat. Ricardo stifled a moan. It wasn’t so much that he’d expected John to be timid in bed…just that the full force of his attention would be enough to sweep anybody away. And every time they came together, John managed to take things to yet another level, as if there was no end to the depths in him waiting to be explored. “My attention’s focused, all right,” Ricardo said. “On that bulge you’re pressing into my butt.”

John clenched Ricardo’s hair harder, and allowed his breath to play along the side of Ricardo’s throat. A moan did escape Ricardo, then. And he wondered if John would actually try to go through with it, and
do
him right there on that big, vibrating machine, where anyone might walk in on them. But no. Not only was John sensual, he was patient, too. He placed a single kiss in the curve where Ricardo’s neck met his shoulder, and then raised his head and spoke against Ricardo’s ear. “This morning, when I opened my eyes and you weren’t there, I realized something.”

“What’s that?”

“When we’re done here…when it’s time to go…I can’t see myself waking up without you by my side.”

Ricardo’s heart rate, which had been cooling down to baseline, picked up again. “What do you…?”

“I want you to move in with me.”

“Oh my God.”

“We’d need a bigger place than my—”

Ricardo spun on the rails with the belt whizzing down the center, flung an arm around John and kissed him, landing his mouth somewhere in John’s beard in all his eagerness. “I can’t believe—I mean—yes, of course yes.” He took John’s face in his hands, tenderly now, and kissed him more deliberately, enjoying the tickle of his mustache, savoring his lips. “This is amazing. I can’t wait. I just can’t wait.”

John turned his head and pressed his cheek to Ricardo’s. “Then we have something to look forward to—both of us.”

The thwap of fabric hitting pleather startled Ricardo out of the followup kiss he’d been planning, and he turned to see Kevin Kazan standing by the chest press, where he’d just flung down his towel. “Y’all can do that shit anywhere,” he said. “Why you gotta go at it here? Some of us got work to do.”

Ricardo was so flush with the giddiness of what John had just suggested, he couldn’t dredge up a single retort. He simply stared back at Kevin, wondering which parts of his recent experience were his real life, and which were just strange snatches of performance art.

When neither Ricardo nor John took up the gauntlet and snarked back at him, Kevin puffed himself up bigger, gave them his nastiest glare, and said, “Y’all don’t intimidate me.”

And with that, he turned away, thrust the pin into the heaviest setting of the chest press, sat himself down, pushed…and grunted.

Ricardo twisted around and pressed the treadmill’s power-button as John climbed off. Today’s workout was officially over.

Even so, Ricardo found he couldn’t quite wipe the smile off his face.

“Why don’t we go back to
my
room this time,” Ricardo suggested, once there was enough distance between them and Kevin that the workout grunts faded into the Mansion’s background noise. “There’s a private shower.”

“I like the way you think.” John trailed his fingertips over the back of Ricardo’s hand as he veered off toward the kitchen. “I’ll get my things and meet you there.”

The handhelds weren’t paying Ricardo any particular attention as he skipped up the stairs two at a time. Too bad. If anyone deserved to have happy-music playing in the background as they trooped back to the dorms, it was him. He flung open the door to his old room with his mind on what he’d wear tonight, and whether they’d hear how they did in the latest challenge anytime soon. He was so absorbed, he didn’t hear the rustle of paper until it dragged in an arc.

A single sheet had been slid under his door. It was your typical plain white printer-paper. Wrinkly, like someone had crunched it into a ball and then flattened it out again. Ricardo picked it up and turned it over, and found a snapshot of him and John.

It was an awesome picture, even printed on plain paper with an inkjet printer. It had been taken outdoors in diffuse sunlight, and for a quickie shot, it had great color and contrast. Seeing the moment when John had told Ricardo how good he looked, but viewing it from outside himself, felt surreal. Ricardo had never given much thought to how the two of them looked together. John was deliciously tall next to him—and that Edwardian tux was enough to make Ricardo lightheaded.

Too bad the photo’s headline was
Ricardo the Fag-ificent.

Ricardo read the online message thread with dull interest, then had another look at the photo—
my God, John is so handsome
—then read the comments again. And when he heard John’s footfalls heading down the hall toward his room, he fought the impulse to jam the printout in the back of a drawer, to spare John from seeing what the public thought of them together.

But he didn’t. He decided he’d rather embark on their new life together with disapproval rather than lies. Ricardo had learned to give what other people thought only the smallest amount of credence—so, what other people thought about him and John? That was their business. What John thought of him was the thing that mattered.

“What’s that?” John asked in a soft voice.

Ricardo handed it over, then turned to get ready. He didn’t want to watch John read it, and yet he held on to it for so long, Ricardo eventually stopped going through his shower caddy and looked up to see what was going on.

John’s eyes were closed. He held the printout in one hand, parallel to the ground. The fingers of his other hand stroked the surface of the paper, their motion hypnotic, as if he was demonstrating some new sleight of hand that would end with him pulling out a mylar flower, or maybe making the whole thing disappear in a pop of flash paper. When he opened his eyes, finally, he said, “Quite a few people have handled this. But we don’t really know them.”

“Not Kevin?”

“I don’t think so.”

Ricardo took the paper from John and looked at the photo again, squinting so the phrase “I hope they give each other AIDS and die” was a bit less distinct. “No…” Ricardo mused. “Kevin’s more direct. And he doesn’t have access to the Internet any more than we do. Plus that thing he said about not being intimidated by us?”

John stroked his beard. “It must mean that he is.”

“Exactly.”
 

Ricardo dug a pair of manicure scissors out of his caddy, and set to snipping the photograph away from the hateful words. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find that photo again online,” John said, smiling his sad smile.

“I’m not going to give some asshole the satisfaction of ruining my day. As far as I’m concerned, all they’ve accomplished was treating me to a picture of you and me—you in that crazy-hot tux—and as the first shot of the two of us together I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, it’s currently my favorite photo in the world.”

John took the wrinkled snapshot from Ricardo and slipped an edge of it behind the frame of the dresser mirror to display it, and said in his grave and sonorous tones, “The first…of many.”

Chapter 37

SCORING THE PERFORMANCE

They were lying in Ricardo’s large bed, still damp from the shower, when a PA knocked and told them taping would begin after lunch, and fancy activewear would be required for the challenge. John kissed Ricardo goodbye deliberately, though they’d spent the morning lost in kisses. He didn’t know what they were heading into—and he felt it would be wise to ensure he was fortified against anything.

John’s activewear was nowhere near as clingy and revealing as Ricardo’s glittery gymnastic outfits. The slacks were fine dining waiters’ tuxedo pants with hidden elastic, the white shirt was a lycra blend made for dancers, and the vest had stretchy panels along the seams. Even his shoes were utilitarian. They looked like dress shoes from afar, but the soles were made to stand up to oily floors and broken glass. Once his secretly-flexible wardrobe was in place, John headed for makeup. Every crew member he passed—and there were many—caused him to wonder.
Were you the one who slid that picture under Ricardo’s door? Or you? Or you?

And, more importantly, why?

He didn’t probe each of them with the Truth. There wasn’t time. Besides, John had been doling out his use of True magic sparingly, and it didn’t seem prudent to blaze a trail of it through the Mansion so close to taping. Now was not the time for Ricardo or him to draw any more envy than they already were by the simple fact of their happiness.

When he settled himself in his stylist’s chair, though, he couldn’t restrain himself from saying, “So…it’s on the Internet.”

She combed through his hair, dipped into some product, and worked it between her palms. “What is?”

“Photos. From the last challenge.”

“Really? How’d you look?”

John closed his eyes and gave over to the feel of her skilled fingertips against his scalp. Maybe several crew members had passed around the malicious gossip—but not the crew John trusted. The ones he knew. He needed to believe that. “Perfect. Thanks to you, Wendy.”

“You’re so sweet. If you weren’t gay, I’d snap you right up.”

“I’m sure your husband would have something to say about that.”

“I suppose he might.” She fussed with the front of John’s hair so it lay just so. “Are you wearing a hat today?”

“No hat. I imagine they’ll have us running around.”

“Oh. You mean…the final challenge.” She turned and met his eyes in the mirror, and made an exaggerated pout. “That means this’ll be the last time I get to work with you.”

“Send me an email through my website.” She hadn’t been passing that transcript around. John was sure of it. “We’ll keep in touch.”

Unfortunately, chances were, some of the crew he would be dealing with that day must have been. Would it be someone who should have tightened a bolt, but hadn’t? Someone who should have grounded a wire, but failed to? Someone whose active hatred, or even their passive negligence, would focus the free-floating malice around John, or Ricardo, and bring it to a distinct and dangerous head?

John did his best to clear his mind, to push away the thought. Vigilance was certainly called for, but paranoia would only work against him.

The contestants gathered in the formal dining room, seated down one side of the long table. Jia, Ricardo, John, then Kevin. Ricardo was adorable in a body-hugging lycra costume, Kevin had on stiff jeans, a white sleeveless rib-knit tank and sideways cap, and Jia wore a glitzy red and black tunic and leggings, with her hair in a severe bun. The lights were hot and the room felt stuffy before long, and it was difficult to stop eyeing the floor-to-ceiling curtain that now covered the far end of the room. Ricardo’s hand found John’s beneath the table, and clasped it. John wondered if his face changed when Ricardo touched him. Given the relief that flooded him from that simple contact, he decided it must.

“The Final Four,” Monty said off-camera as he took his place at the head of the table, dapper in a pale gray suit. He shone his dazzling smile on each of them. “I guess we’re in for one hell of a day.”

Somewhere outside, a horn sounded, and Iain strode into the dining room with a phone in the crook of his neck. “Okay, they’re done making noise in the yard. Let’s get rolling.”

Monty cleared his throat, hummed, cleared it again, took a few breaths…then turned on a blindingly bright on-camera smile, and focused on a spot on the wall somewhere behind Ricardo’s head. “Greetings, Magicians. Your historical magic acts caused quite a splash on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. One hundred audience members rated each of your routines in three categories: magic skill, historical theme, and charisma. Are you ready to find out how you did?”

The four magicians all murmured their assent.

“The first rating had to do with your magicianship, the tricks you chose and the dexterity with which you performed them. Jia Lee.” The jib zoomed in on her. “You adapted part of your stage act, the Golden Fan, for use in close-up magic.”

“The Golden Fan is a trick I created myself, where I make coins and ropes appear even though my hands are occupied holding the fans. I thought it was a good choice to perform up-close, because there aren’t any other magicians out there doing it. Only me.”

“Ricardo, you went with a hula hoop routine. Tell us about that.”

“I wanted to interact with the audience, and the hula hoops allowed me to do that. They’re showy and a lot of fun…and I chose them along with my theme because I wanted to be sure my historical period stood out from everybody else’s.”

“Professor Topaz….” The jib swung its mechanical eye toward John. “You opted for a traditional illusion, the cut and restored rope.”

He had. And, at the moment, being faced with three young, vibrant magicians who’d worked their themes stunningly and even invented their own tricks, John wondered what he’d been thinking. Between the new wardrobe with its multiple fittings, and the drilling with the enthusiastic vocal coach, and the choreographer’s expert work on his posture and flourishes, John had opted to go with a routine he’d performed hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Now he wondered if he’d played it too safe. He probably had. But even though the deed was done and the votes had been cast, he still felt the need to paint his caution in the best possible light. “Magic,” he said somberly, “is steeped in tradition. I’ve been performing for over fifty years, and yet for me, many illusions never lose their luster. I chose to share that particular trick with the audience on the boardwalk because it was my favorite.”