Magic Mansion (9 page)

Muriel’s reply had been, “What do I look like, a Cup o’ Noodles?”

And so John wasn’t surprised that when he felt the vacuum draw the air from the sealed box that enclosed his head, felt his eardrums flex, and heard the announcement, “Timer starts…now,” it was followed by a great whoosh as the Math Wizard immediately filled her tank with water. John craned his neck to glance to the other side. Muriel had closed her eyes. Her long, wavy, once-brown hair filled the box, giving her head a sort of disconnected appearance from the rest of her body. Either she was deep in meditation, or she was simply biding her time until this initial humiliation was over.

John looked to Bev again. Her short gray hair floated, and small bubbles rose all around her. Her score on the scoreboard surpassed everyone else’s, gaining ground half a second at a time. Then, once she’d gotten her bearings, she jabbed the green button. Her tank lit up, and the animal wrangler approached with a cupful of fish and dumped them in. Her numbers on the scoreboard, which were already ticking by more quickly than her competitors’, began scrolling up even more rapidly.

John stopped deliberating and hit the green button straight away; his few seconds of initial pause may have already cost him dearly.

The sound of water rushing into a vacuum was peculiar, a deadening muffle so intense it seemed like it should have been labeled “loud.” Monty had been doing some kind of play-by-play banter, but as soon as the water filled John’s ears, the sound of his own steady pulse overtook everything else, and his world turned inward.

The water, on some level, resonated with his Truth. That Truth, and not the Islander heritage, was probably the real reason the ocean had been kind to him in his youth. Not only would his score rise faster from choosing to be underwater—he’d be able to hold his breath longer there, too. Because the water seemed to understand. It calmed him. And he felt his pulse ease back, and his heart slow—and though he’d only seen a frozen body of water on celluloid, in films where some unfortunate would plunge through a hole once the foreboding music had peaked, it occurred to him that hypothermia must work that way.

But then the fish plunked into the water all around his face, and his heart rate sped to normal, and beyond. Though water’s Truth should have felt alien compared to that of a human being, it was pure enough to understand at a glance. The fish were another matter: want, want, want, want.

Want
.

He felt them exploring his hair, wriggling, touching, testing. His earlobe. His eyebrow. So close they were nothing but small, gray, nipping shadows. Reflexively, he tried to bat them away, but only succeeded in bashing his hand against the outside of the tank. Large bubbles rose as he released a gulp of precious air in his startlement. He looked to one side. Muriel—calm, dry. The other—Bev, gray hair spread in an underwater halo as she turned to see how Fabian, in the tank on the other side of her, was doing. Outside the tank, a loud and percussive sound, mostly muted by the water. And then Fabian’s timer stopped rising. His final score: one minute, twelve seconds.

John felt people rushing past him, but with his head locked in a tank, couldn’t see. With his ears muffled by water, couldn’t hear. Fabian was fine, wasn’t he? He had to be fine. The worst he would have was a snootful of water.

Unless he’d suffered a heart attack.

But, no. That wouldn’t have happened in just a minute.

Right?

John had no idea. He’d never had so much as a cavity or a sniffle, so he never actually read any of the articles Dick sent him about stress tests and HDL levels and colonoscopies.

He stared at the side of Bev’s head until she turned and locked eyes with him. John tried to gesture toward Fabian’s tank with his eyes, to see if she might be able to hint at what had just happened. But her face was distorted from the effort of holding her breath while the doctor fish picked at the corners of her mouth. Seeing those fish swarming her face made John’s own predicament feel even worse, so he fixed his eyes on the scoreboard instead—his and Bev’s seconds ticking by at double-speed, Muriel’s slower climb now surpassing Fabian’s final score—and he blinked away a greedy fish while he did his best to ignore the impending burn in his lungs.

A fish plucked at his eyelash, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He was unsure if it was better or worse with his whole world narrowed down to the sound of his own pulse in his ears. It seemed much faster than he cared for it to be, and he did his best to calm it, and to think about Rose. For years, she’d suffered being tied and trussed and locked inside painted boxes, all the while wearing four-inch heels and a bright, red-lipsticked smile. Surely her son could tolerate being nipped at by fish for a few more seconds. Even in front of the cameras.

He opened his eyes and saw his score was over three minutes now—which probably meant he’d been holding his breath somewhere around two, multiplied by the delayed addition of the water and the fish—and he didn’t see how he could last much longer. Between the excitement of the competition and the freakishness of the fish exploring his face, he simply couldn’t force himself to stay calm, and his diaphragm was screaming out with the need to draw breath. It hurt—but no doubt cramming oneself into a box in four-inch heels was no treat, either. Stage magic was all about self-control. So John acknowledged the hurt. But he held firm.

A muffled whoosh broke his concentration. The Math Wizard had punched the red button. Her tank drained immediately into the pedestal below, and the top popped open. Bev’s final adjusted score: four minutes, eighteen seconds. John felt people rushing behind him again—and finally his aching lungs would take no more. He pushed his red button. The water (and the fish) drained, the top opened, and sweet, sweet air rushed in. Four minutes, two seconds. He might have beaten Bev’s score, if only he’d been quicker to fill his tank with water.

Beside him, calm and dry, Muriel stood with her head inside a sealed plexiglass tank while her unadjusted timer ticked past three minutes.

Crew came and blotted down John’s hair, then gave him a hand to a dozen chairs arranged in three rows of four where, in the back row, Bev and Fabian were waiting. Fabian, John was pleased to see, looked damp, but very much alive. John sat beside his new friend while a stylist gave his hair a comb, a quick tousle, and a spritz of hairspray. “Damn fish went up my nose,” Fabian muttered. “I can hold my breath three minutes, easy. If I could do it again, I’d do it without the fish.”

_____

If there was one thing Marlene would never have anticipated, it was the oldest female contestant coming out of the first round in the lead without even touching a drop of water. Before the challenge, Muriel Broom would have been her pick for one of the first magicians to pack up and leave the mansion. But she didn’t mind being proven wrong. The executive producers had presumed a man would win the competition, for instance. Thanks to talent, and stubbornness, and plain dumb luck, Magic Mansion really could be anyone’s game.

Muriel Broom trouncing Fabian Swan proved as much.

The second tier of magicians lined up: Chip Challenge on the end in his Elvis sunglasses, Jia Lee beside him, then Ricardo the Magnificent and his ever-present cheesy smile, and next to him, the ventriloquist, Charity Young…and her creepy puppet. Or dummy. Or figure. Or whatever the hell she was supposed to call it—Marlene could never remember.

Through Marlene’s headset, Iain asked, “Do you want us to have Chip take off his sunglasses?”

“That’s okay, leave ’em on. It’s his trademark. Besides, it might be kind of funny.”

Iain allowed Chip’s glasses to stay. They did look pretty funny, on Marlene’s monitor. A camera swept by as the magicians put their heads in position. Chip with his sunglasses. Next, Jia, serious and calm. Next, Ricardo, no longer smiling. And next, Oscar.

That
was the ridiculous puppet’s name.

Marlene tapped her headset. “Iain? What the hell does Charity think she’s doing?”

“I’ll talk to her.” Some static, and then Iain said, “She’s claustrophobic. Says we can do it as a gag—have the dummy in the box instead, and she’ll pull him out early and play it up, gasping for air, whatever.”

“That’s just weird.”

On the monitor, Iain turned so he was facing away from the contestants, cupped a hand over his mouth, and whispered to Marlene, “If we do it that way, it’ll give everyone else someone to hate. Think how cheated they’ll feel if she gets away without doing the stunt.”

It
would
make for some interesting footage. But Charity Young wouldn’t be the only one the contestants would hate if Marlene allowed it happen. “And where does the puppet doing her challenges end? No, we’ve got to keep up the pretense of fairness here. Put that damn thing in her chair and start the timers.”

Charity Young was not a particularly attractive woman. She was pushing thirty, and carried an extra dozen pounds that she camouflaged, not particularly well, behind a glitzy silver track suit. Her makeup was heavy, but the features behind it were ungainly, with long, horsey teeth and eyes that always looked nervous.

There was something “off” about her voice as she argued with Iain in the monitor, informing him that under no circumstances would she put her head in that box. It took Marlene a moment to realize what it was: she’d never heard Charity’s actual voice before. Because whenever they spoke, Charity would hold up Oscar and move his stiff little mouth, and deliver whatever it was she wanted to say in a silly falsetto.

“Look,” Iain told her, “just put your head in the box—”

“I won’t—”

“—and the minute the timer starts—”

“I can’t—”

“—hit the red button, and you’re outta there.”

“B-but I can’t.” Charity’s chin trembled.

“Do it,” Iain said, “or you’re disqualified.”

Marlene smiled. It was the type of decision he would have normally saddled her with to make her look like a bitch, but he’d actually made it himself. She checked the time. Half past midnight. You could practically set your watch by Iain’s temper.

Charity glared at him mulishly, until Ricardo put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Think of how far you had to come just to get here. You can’t throw it all away now. It’ll be okay. Just do it for a second, and it’ll be over before you know it.”

Charity handed the puppet to an assistant as if she was giving up her firstborn child, then treated Iain to one more parting glare, and said, “Fine. I’m ready.”

It was more like five seconds before she hit the panic button, with cameras swarming all around her. No doubt in edits they’d draw out those five seconds, showing them in the intro, the outro, and before every commercial break, until the audience was seeing them in their sleep.

“Good job, Charity,” Marlene said, microphone off, to the empty production trailer.

Based on the experiences of the first group of magicians, fewer in the second wave opted to be nibbled on by fish. Only Chip Challenge hit the mega-charge fish button, but he was so out of shape that even with his timer running at double-time, his score was still one of the lowest: fifty-nine seconds.

Ricardo, who immediately pressed the water-only turbo-charge button, held his breath underwater for just over three minutes. It gave him an adjusted score of four minutes thirty seconds. And Jia Lee managed three minutes as well—though she’d done it dry, so her score stayed low.

Marlene took a few deep breaths as the contestants joined the others in the chairs. That two-minute statistic the writers had fed through Monty couldn’t possibly be right. She’d been holding her breath along with the magicians, and she couldn’t manage to go more than forty-five seconds, tops, without breathing. Though she supposed having a quarter mil at stake would make all the difference in the world.

Chapter 11

PICKING TEAMS

Ricardo was pleased with his performance in the first challenge. By the end of his round, he was in the lead—though he suspected that Ken Barron, a professional escape artist, would beat his score. But when he saw Kevin Kazan hyperventilating on his way to the plexiglass tanks, he wondered if the escape artist might have some stiff competition. Barron must have seen it, too, because he opted to go for the mega-charged green button. Maybe he thought he was nervier than the other magicians who’d cracked under the probing mouths of the fish. If that was the case, he’d been wrong.

He clocked in at 2:43. Even with the fish.

Amazing Faye was even less impressive. She didn’t want to get her hair wet, and she complained bitterly when she broke a nail pressing the red button to open the tank’s lid. She managed a disappointing forty-nine seconds.

That left super-oxygenated Kevin Kazan…and Sue.

Ricardo felt sorry for her already, and he hoped that if she did experience a wardrobe malfunction, it could somehow be used to her benefit. Then he saw her inhale, and then swallow a couple of times—lung packing—just before the air was sucked out of her box, and he wondered if she might have a fighting chance.

Both Kevin and Sue filled their boxes with water immediately. Amazing Faye dropped out, and then Ken Barron, but Kevin’s and Sue’s scores kept climbing. They hit three minutes, adjusted. And then they hit four. Their timers both passed Ricardo’s 4:30, and continued to climb.

While Ricardo’s score had been the highest, it was Muriel Broom who’d spent the most real time without air—more than four minutes. It might not sound impressive compared to the world’s record, but in real time, the span seemed so excruciatingly long, it had left Ricardo wondering if maybe she’d actually passed out, and only remained standing due to some fluke of the way she’d planted her feet.

Sue and Kevin both surpassed that real-time, too. Their adjusted scores now read 6:45.

Kevin was massaging his diaphragm. Sue was still, except for one hand, which clenched into a fist, then released, clenched and released, as if she’d convinced herself it was doing the breathing for her. A flush spread over her bare shoulders. She squeezed her fist hard. But finally, at a whopping 7:02, she pressed the red button, released the water from her tank, and took a massive gulp of air.