Magic Mansion by Jordan Price (best fiction books to read .txt) 📕

than hundreds of smaller snips. Ken took a pair of shears. The magicians handed over their red-ribboned medals for safe keeping, then pulled on their gloves and approached their punishment.

John had never been one for gardening—not that he didn’t think he would have a talent for it if he ever applied himself, just that he’d always been too much of a nomad to develop the requisite skills. Casey was the one who’d grown up in a sprawling ranch house in the suburbs with a garden in which every bud, leaf and stem had its place. Not John.

Casey’s childhood home in Whittier was still there—though whether the gardens were still as immaculate as they had been while Casey was alive, John couldn’t say. Maybe so, if Casey’s mother (Mrs. Cornish, to John) had opted to hire a gardener to help with the more arduous spring cleanup. If she even still owned the home at all. John hadn’t seen her since the funeral. Since he’d never been acknowledged as anything more than Casey’s “friend,” whether because it seemed useless to press the more intimate details of their eighteen-year relationship on her, or because her well-timed avoidances discouraged them from trying, John really had no reason to visit. Staring up into the browned fronds of a palm that was surely rotten inside, John wondered if it might have been better to lay all the cards on the table—even the doctored aces. Especially those.

And then if Mrs. Cornish still needed to use the word “friend” for John, so be it. At least everyone would have known where they stood.

Besides, it was likely that Mrs. Cornish had been well aware of the nature of their relationship all along…how could she not be? John knelt beside a gnarled weedy bush with a stem almost as thick around as his wrist, and began sawing while he mulled over the probability. Two men in their forties (and fifties, and sixties) didn’t share a townhouse merely because they were bachelors who could agree on the thermostat setting and the best wine to accompany that night’s entree.

Wood cracked, and the weedy shrub sagged, its branches still tangled in its neighbor’s. Amazing, really, how much of John’s life had been spanned by his time with Casey. And how little he had to show for it.

A few yards away, commotion flared up and cameras converged. Kevin was swinging his machete wildly as if he was doing some sort of exotic sword dance. A few small brown bats fluttered out of the tree above him, moving deeper into the brush. Marlene and a phalanx of staff determined that Kevin hadn’t been bitten, and that all the bats had fled to the neighboring property. But the magicians ended up spending an hour in shade while they waited for the crewmen to determine another patch of overgrown grounds was bat-free, and then cordon off a big enough swath to constitute their “punishment.”

While they waited, Fabian sat himself down beside John on the edge of a retaining wall, fanning himself with a creased takeout menu he’d found in the litter that ringed the edges of the property that the cameras didn’t film. He was still moving stiffly, though not as badly as the day before. “I did a show,” he said, “guess it’d be fifteen years ago now, for cable. You probably didn’t see it.”

“I don’t watch much TV.” Fifteen years ago, Casey had surprised John with a two-month European adventure for his forty-eighth birthday—and with both of them between gigs, it seemed as if providence had arranged everything so they could enjoy it to the hilt. While Fabian had been appearing on cable—local cable, most likely—John had been relaxing in a gondola, or strolling through Madame Tussauds, or sampling the wares in an Amsterdam coffeeshop.

“We didn’t keep stopping the camera,” Fabian said. “A couple of takes, then get to the next scene.”

Jia boosted herself up to sit beside Fabian, feet dangling a few inches off the ground. “How come Kevin was the one to find the bats? Now they’ll show him before every damn commercial swinging that stupid machete around.”

Fabian grunted an assent.

A handheld wandered past. Jia and Fabian let their expressions go grim—though it wasn’t much of a stretch, since both of them looked that way naturally—and John felt his own face follow suit. It occurred to him that if the editors needed to make one of the teams look like villains in post-production, with ominous music, uncomfortable pauses and dramatically manufactured shifty-eyed glances, the Red Team would definitely be the one.

Especially since the Gold Team was continually hugging each other. And smiling.

John sighed.

Jia pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to Fabian and John who both shook their heads, then tapped one out, lit it, and took a deep, thoughtful drag. “So you’re married,” she said to Fabian, “right?”

“Thirty-seven years,” he said.

She looked for John’s left hand, but he hadn’t bothered to remove his gardening gloves. “What about you?”

“No.”

The terseness of his reply didn’t seem to discourage her. She didn’t strike John as someone who lacked for audacity. “Because someone on the crew may have let it slip that I’d be way less likely to be voted off the show if I could get a little on-camera romance going.”

John wondered what she wanted from him. His blessing? Doubtful. Maybe some advice. “I suppose it might make interesting drama.”

Fabian made a scoffing sound that sounded like, “Psheh.”

“I know, lame, right?” Jia bent forward to peer around Fabian at John. “But give it some thought, Professor. ’Cos I’m betting the Red Team gets pared down for losing last night’s challenge—no offense, Fabian—and I’m not ready to go home just yet.”

“Give what…?” Oh, hell. She’d been looking for a lot more than John’s advice. Casey would have found his shock over the thought of romancing her, even faux-romancing her, laughable. Then again, Casey let everything roll off his back. Maybe even things he should have taken a bit more seriously.

“All right, everyone,” Marlene called out.