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

Gary didn’t notice. He strode out onto the stage and presented Sue with the bouquet, and said, “Golden flowers, for the leader of the Gold Team.” When she accepted the roses, she looked every inch the starlet—how dare that balding douchebag say she needed work? She bent to accept a kiss on the cheek, taller than him in her heels. And she stood with her arm around him and proclaimed, when Monty inquired how she felt, that it was a good thing she’d made such great friends in the Mansion to keep her from getting homesick.

The “happy couple” exited stage right. An assistant told Ricardo to take his place, and Ricardo put on his broadest smile and walked out onto the stage. The audience erupted into applause—not just applause, but a standing ovation. His smile went wider still, genuine now as he sketched a magician’s bow for them, theatrical and good-humored, and the applause swelled even louder, sustained for a moment, and finally ebbed enough for Monty to begin speaking.

“Ricardo the Magnificent—better known then as Ricardo Hart—got his start in the frozen north, in St. Paul.” The stage lights dimmed, and a shot of kindergartener Ricardo, his cousin Joey from Minneapolis, and a skinny, grayish snowman with a decidedly weird look on its face appeared behind them, filling the far wall.

“Ricardo’s love of show business was apparent early on.” A third-grade Ricardo dressed as Dracula for Halloween replaced the snowman shot. Ricardo stared at the saucy tilt of his head, and deep in his gut, recalled the exhilaration of donning the cape and dabbing on his mother’s lipstick. Even then, clearly, he’d been gay. He never realized his infatuation with men in tuxedos had begun that early.

“But he didn’t always want to be a magician.”

“Yes, I did,” Ricardo said under his breath.

“Ricardo’s first love was sports. A powerful competitive skater, Ricardo placed in the Marshall’s World Cup, took second prize at Campbell's International Figure Skating Classic, and even trained for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer.”

A shot of Ricardo with a mullet and Krista with extreme mall hair in painfully nineties black-and-aqua costumes mugging triumphantly around their Campbell’s trophy filled the stage as the audience murmured. “Krista Franke, his skating partner and high school sweetheart, the recipient of the prestigious McLoraine Figure Skating Scholarship, was the perfect match for Ricardo’s athleticism and flair.”

Another shot of Ricardo and Krista, this time in a spiral sequence, Krista in a catch-foot position and Ricardo in an arabesque. Good form.

“Unfortunately, life had other plans for them. Accepted by different colleges, the pair found the distance between them prevented their Olympic dreams from becoming a reality.”

And the Tom of Finland comic book might’ve had a little something to do with it, too.

“But there was another arena in which Ricardo could put his athletic skills, and his discipline, to work.”

Ricardo smiled and nodded, baffled by the way Monty’s script kept emphasizing what a jock he was.

“Magic.”

A publicity shot of Ricardo juggling rings in his first and only headlining show appeared. Ricardo’s costume was so clingy you could bounce a quarter off his athletic ass. Someone in the audience wolf-whistled, and then a spate of laughter rippled through the crowd.

“And here he is today, at the height of his career.” A bachelorette party photo with a drunk bridesmaid on either arm appeared. Thank God he was wearing a tux, and not a g-string full of dollar bills. There were certainly enough of those pictures to go around.

“Ricardo, how would you rate your chances of taking Magic Mansion’s top prize?”

Better than he’d ever dared hope. Pretty damn good, in fact…but Ricardo knew better than to gloat. “Hard to say. There’s some tough competition here, but I’ll do my best, Monty.”

“That’s the spirit—the competitive spirit!”

Ricardo didn’t think he’d just said anything particularly competitive.

“And to celebrate, we’ve arranged for someone to be here who’s always fueled that competitive drive!”

The stage lights came up, and curtains parted stage right…framing a small dark-haired woman in an elegant black gown and a gold corsage. It wasn’t until she’d walked halfway across the stage that Ricardo realized it was Krista Franke.

Ricardo embraced her, flashing back to all the times he’d lifted her on the ice. It hardly felt real. Monty asked her what she’d been doing—coaching skating, and raising two beautiful girls—and Ricardo stammered out how great she looked, and after a few more lines about who might win the grand prize in Magic Mansion, Monty bid the audience goodbye, the house lights came up, and the cameras turned off.

Iain strode out with a wireless handheld microphone and said, “That’s it, folks, thanks for coming. You can pick up your posters in the lobby—and the magicians will meet you there for photos and autographs in ten.”

Krista Franke on one side of him and Iain on the other—it was like Ricardo was half in and half out of a dream. “You really do look great,” he told Krista. “All grown up.”

“And you look like you’ve aged about two years in the past twenty,” she said. An assistant directed them backstage, and they made their way toward the dressing room. “It’s kind of weird, actually, watching you on the show. It’s like the only thing that’s changed is your hair. I thought you might look different in person. More made-up. But you don’t.”

Ricardo blotted his forehead, which felt clammy now that the hot spotlight was no longer on him. “The years have been great to you, too. You’re in fabulous shape. Two daughters. Wow.”

“Our oldest, Michelle, is fourteen.”

“Wow.” It was the only response Ricardo could think of.

“When they flew me out here, she was dying to come. I had to tell her no, she needed to stay in school. She was so devastated she cried until she threw up.”

Ricardo turned to look at Krista to try to figure out what the sudden edge to her voice was all about. “Teenagers,” he said.

“You think I care if she misses a few days of school?”

“I