Magic Hour, page 1
Magic Hour
by
Brian Rowe
Copyright © 2021 by Brian Rowe
Cover © 2021 by Katie Bode
http://brianrowebooks.com
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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PART ONE
BEFORE THE INCIDENT
CHAPTER 1
“Who’s ready for a magic trick?” I asked.
“We are, we are!” they all shouted—all but one.
As the bridesmaids cheered for my goofy little tricks, Maberly Walker tapped her fingers against her hips and displayed only half-smiles, the kind that guaranteed she wanted to be anywhere but here. To the young ladies I showed off the Spoon Bend—a trick that impressed audiences even though a four-year-old could learn it well—but the whole time I only paid attention to Maberly. She had always been pretty in the six years I'd known her, but today she looked like a Grecian goddess wearing a tight yellow dress, her long black hair pulled up into a bun, the skin on her face a mixture of crimson and cream. Of all the lovely girls at Juniper High, she would’ve been the one I wanted most.
If I weren't gay, of course.
I set the spoon down and bowed when more applause ensued. “Thank you, I’ll be here all night.”
“The way this is going, we will be here all night,” Maberly said. She readjusted her dress, smacked loudly on bubble gum, and glanced at her cell phone for the hundredth time. When a loud scream bellowed from the bride’s dressing room, she rolled her eyes.
“Maberly, what the hell are you doing out there!” shrieked a high-pitched voice that didn't sound human. “This isn’t play-time!”
“Coming, Evie,” Maberly said. She took out her gum and flicked it to the grass, then sauntered toward the dressing room, leaving me a magic show for five instead of six.
“Do another trick!” a short blonde girl shouted beside me. “Can you do that thing when I pick a card and you know what it is?”
I averted my eyes from Maberly and turned back to the group. “Sorry, no. I don't have a deck of cards with me.”
“What?” The girl stared at me, puzzled. “How is that possible, you’re a magician.”
“I wouldn't really call myself that. My dad's a magician. I can do a few simple tricks, but that’s all.”
“Well, do you have anything else you can show us?” another bridesmaid asked.
I tapped my pinky against my chin for a moment, then I pulled my camera bag up to my feet. I scoured underneath the camcorder past the manual and battery charger. I pulled up two pencils, one a touch smaller than the other, and kicked the bag aside.
“Any of you heard of the magnetic pencil trick?” I asked.
The bridesmaids shook their heads and stayed transfixed on my every move.
“Check this out.” I brought my hand to my chest; I stuffed the smaller, orange pencil into the back of my wristwatch; I twirled the yellow pencil in the air and pushed it against the back of my hand.
“Oh, whoa!” a bridesmaid said.
“That’s so cool!” another one shouted.
I gazed at my hand. The yellow pencil appeared to be floating in mid-air.
“It’s impossible is what it is!” the blonde girl blurted out. “How the hell are you doing that?”
She rushed behind me, but I shot my hands into the air before she could see the watch. “Don't you dare look!” I said. “You wouldn't want to spoil the magic—”
“Hey! You over there!” The voice came from the bride’s dressing room again, but this time it was someone older. The perfect glimpse of what Maberly would look like in the year 2050 descended the cement steps and snapped her fingers at me. “You’re the wedding videographer, right? What’s your name?”
The bridesmaids quickly dispersed like they wanted to avoid gunfire. “Uhh, Henry, Henry Crest,” I said, knowing it was too late to hide. “Are you Maberly’s mom?”
“Henry, that’s right,” the slender brunette said, not answering my question. “The bride would like a word with you. Could you step inside real quick?”
She walked past me, not giving me a chance to respond, and with that, my little magic show had limped to a bitter end. I sighed and sped across the grass.
Maberly was in the dressing room, but she didn’t acknowledge me, and instead stayed focused on her cell phone. She had the capacity to be friendly, like when she spent late hours with me finishing our Edvard Munch portfolio for art class; or when she came over to my house to practice our lines for Macbeth for AP English; or when she suggested that I, over every other videographer in Reno, film her sister’s wedding. I wanted to believe that the incomparable It girl of our senior class was a decent person under that occasionally cold exterior.
But as she departed into a side hallway and left me stranded with the bride, I remembered that compared to her sister, Maberly wasn't cold at all; she was as warm as an August afternoon in Death Valley.
“You don’t have your camera,” Maberly’s older sister Evelyn said. She stood in the corner of the room, studying her regal wedding dress in a full body mirror. She was like the evil Queen from Snow White, except younger, and with less purple eye shadow. She turned to me, an over-the-top scowl on her face. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Oh, it’s just outside.” I loudly gulped like I was seconds away from a whipping. “Did you want me to get it?”
“What do you think?” she asked, crossing her bony arms. “I am not paying you to prance around outside doing goddamned magic tricks like some clown.” She took a step toward me like she wanted to scream some more, or spit, I wasn't sure. “I am only getting married once, and you are failing to capture my special day, understand? You have a job to do. I suggest you do it!”
I stared at her, speechless. I had filmed six weddings during the last year and never before had I been met with such venom, especially from the bride herself. “With all due respect, ma’am, I’m doing this as a favor to Maberly.”
“A favor? What are you talking about? We’re paying you, aren’t we?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You're paying me 100 dollars.”
“You see!” She put her hands in the air like I was supposed to be grateful for such a generous fee. “This isn’t a favor. This is a business transaction. I don’t care who you are, or how old you are, or how little experience you may have. I’m not going to allow for any more of these hour-long magic shows while the camera just sits idle on a bench. I want you filming!”
“But…” I should’ve stopped. There was no rationalizing with this pale witch. “If I filmed the whole time I was here, that would be eight hours of footage, or more. You want your wedding video to be eight hours long?”
She crossed her arms delicately. “Look, Benny. I know you’re just doing this because you have the hots for my sister.”
I shook my head, trying to decipher her crazy talk. “It’s Henry, actually, and—”
“I’m sure she’s been friendly enough to you over the years that you thought maybe, just maybe, you have a chance.”
“Ma’am, please. I have exactly zero interest in your sister—”
“And if that’s the case,” she interrupted, “don’t do this for me. Get to work, do your job, for Maberly. Whether she ends up marrying that pathetic Donavin or flees to Europe for some Parisian boy-toy, she’s still technically available. So you never know.” She ran her hands together like she had just cleansed herself of a dirty mess. “It’s up to you, Benny. What do you want to do?”
What I wanted to do was shove my camera so far up her ass she’d have the rest of her life on film forever. But I politely smiled and headed out the sliding door.
I stopped next to my camera bag. The upcoming ceremony, the most important element of any wedding video, was still another hour away, and I’d already shot thirty minutes of footage of everything remotely interesting—the sprawling estate, the gloomy gray skies, the already inebriated guests. I had plenty of shots of the bride getting ready, as well as the groom kicking back with a beer. There was nothing left to shoot, and I tried to stress this to her, but it was no use—I pulled out my camera, aimed it in a random direction, and started filming.
I headed up to the balcony and got a few more shots of the surroundings. The venue was an isolated Italian restaurant called Cleo’s that looked out over Reno’s valley floor. It would’ve been a gorgeous spot for a summer wedding, but in mid-February, it was too chilly, too brown, to be considered anything pleasant. Evelyn had apparently insisted on a Valentine's Day wedding, no matter the drab surroundings.
So there I was on the big V-day, forever single, in the fierce cold, in the middle of nowhere, filming shots of dead trees for five bucks an hour while the bride spread vicious lies about my work ethic to anyone who cared to listen. I didn’t like to call myself a wedding videographer, since I wasn’t a professional and had no intention of continuing with such trivial work once I left Reno, but still—even though filming weddings was nothing more than a way to make a few extra bucks during my senior year of high school, I took pride in my work.
I made my way inside the restaurant, which at the moment housed all the wedding attendees. I traipsed aroun
I just hated that it always had to be me.
I walked down the winding staircase, back toward the two rooms where the bride and groom were currently stationed. One thing I did enjoy about filming weddings was the invisibility factor. It was like being a fly on the wall, except without all the annoying buzzing. Strangers walked past you all day, not paying attention to you, not caring who you were, or what the hell you were doing there. It wasn’t like being a wedding photographer, a person forced to engage with the bride and groom every step of the way; a videographer merely stands back and watches, like a cold, detached voyeur.
I put out my fist to knock on the groom's dressing room door, but someone pulled it open before my knuckles made contact. “Speak of the devil,” I whispered.
The elderly wedding photographer glared at me with eyes of venom black. Her skin looked cracked, almost bruised with all its imperfections, and her face was so weathered she could have been sixty or ninety, I couldn't really tell. She bit down on her tongue and tilted her head to the left. Her Nikon D800 camera dangled in between her saggy breasts. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
At weddings, the photographer and videographer are mortal enemies, always getting in each other’s way, always wanting the other to drop dead of a fluke aneurism so the job could be completed without further distractions.
Still, though, every time I bumped into my contemptible fiend, I mustered a smile, stuck my hand out, and tried to fake a short-lived friendship. “Hello. I’m Henry.”
She glanced down at my hand with an ugly smirk, then turned around and shouted, “Sheryl! Let’s get some more shots of the bride!” Her young assistant blew past us, and the old woman followed, shoving me out of the way with her right shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said.
I was at a loss for all the hatred aimed at me. It seemed to be more than usual at this particular wedding. “Look, I’m sorry if I—”
“Just stay out of my way, kid!” the woman shouted, keeping a tight grip on her camera like she thought I would steal it. She looked me over from head to toe. “What are you? Fifteen?”
“I’m seventeen, actually—”
“And let me guess, this is your second wedding? Your third? I’ve been a photographer for twenty years. You get in my way, and I swear, I’ll take that camera of yours and smash it to pieces. Do I make myself clear?”
It took everything in me not to take her fancy Nikon camera and smash it against her face. But I probably would’ve been sued and thrown in jail and sent an astronomical bill to cover her camera repair costs, not to mention her medical bills, so I stayed put. She entered the bride’s dressing room, and I happily headed the other way, toward the groom. If nothing else, I had some eye candy coming my way.
I walked through a long, darkly hit hallway, one that appeared to lead not toward a waiting room but a dank prison cell. I turned the corner and found the groom, Mark—a baby-faced man of twenty-eight—kicking back on a couch with his five groomsmen. They were downing Coronas and passing around a joint.
As soon as Mark saw my camera, he threw the joint to the guy next to him. “Hey! What do you think you're doing?” He waved me away as he coughed out some smoke.
“I’m sorry?” I pushed my camera against my chest and took a step back. “What did I—”
“Tell me you didn’t just film that,” he said, still coughing. “Goddammit, I told Evelyn not to get a video guy.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I didn't film anything, I promise.”
He grabbed his Corona and took a few gulps. “Yeah? Can I trust you?”
I looked around at all his groomsmen. They stared at me like I was trying to break into their exclusive club. “Yes, of course you can. I'm obviously not going to—”
“Anything shows up on the video with that joint, you’re a dead man, you hear me?” He lay back against the couch and set his feet on the nearest table. “What’s your name, anyway?”
I turned back toward the hallway. I'd endured enough wrath for one day. “Benny. For today, I’ll be Benny.”
I pulled open the dressing room door and seriously considered sprinting to my car for a quick crying fit when one of the bridesmaids, the cute blonde one who took to my levitating pencil trick, appeared before me. “Henry, there you are. Evelyn's so worried, it’s almost time. She said you should start getting set up outside!”
“Oh,” I said. All my instincts told me to leave, but those sweet hazel eyes reminded me I had a job to do. My whole life, had I ever been a quitter? “Okay, sure. I'll be right out.”
She tapped her fingernails against the doorway and grinned at me. “Can I see another magic trick after the ceremony? You know, if you're not too busy? I found a stack of cards upstairs.”
My head was pounding and my stomach was growling and I felt like a punching bag for every ego in the building. But I could never say no to magic. “Sure, I'd be happy to. If the bride lets me, that is.”
I hoped for the girl to say, “I’ll talk to that witch and make it happen, she can’t expect you to work the whole day!” but she simply nodded and headed upstairs. I almost followed her, but the sound of a cabinet opening brought my attention back inside the adjacent hallway. I peered around the corner and pushed open the nearest door.
The noise was coming from a small kitchen space, one lit with flicking fluorescents. Maberly stood in the center of the room, hunched over, her back to me. She pulled out a bottle from the bottom cabinet.
“Breaking out the champagne already?” I asked, bringing my camera down.
I waited for a cork to hit the ceiling; instead, she tossed a bottle cap into the sink and spun around. “Oh,” she said, her voice a touch deeper than usual. “Hi, Henry. How's the filming coming?”
It was the first time she’d acknowledged me with more than a quick glance since I arrived. I hoped she’d stop being such a diva and have a conversation with me.
But before I could answer her question, she lifted a massive Smirmoff vodka bottle into the air and started downing it like water right in front of me. She took three giant gulps, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set the bottle on the counter.
My jaw dropped. “Uhh, what... what are you…”
She stood up straight, or at least tried to, and released a deep breath. I stared at her, bewildered, even a little frightened. I didn’t know what to say.
“Maberly?” I finally asked. “Are you all right?”
She started clapping her hands together, and she didn’t even glance in my direction as she walked past me into the hallway. She collided against the groomsmen, who were all filing a line in the dark hallway. “Let’s go! It’s game-time!” she shouted louder than she needed to, then she headed toward the bride’s dressing room.
Part of me wanted to run after her, grab her, make her explain what she was so worked up about.
I paused and leaned against the wall. “Could it be?” I whispered. As much I hated seeing Maberly in pain, one exciting possibility came to mind.
“Hey! Benny!” a voice called from behind me. I turned and peered at the groom, who was standing at the front of the line. His arms were crossed, and I didn’t have to look hard to see the pulsating veins on his chiseled forehead. “Shouldn’t you be outside getting ready?”
If the groom hadn't been so dreamy, I would have jammed my camera straight into his jugular. Instead, I nodded, ran toward the stairs, and tried to let all thoughts of Maberly Walker slip from my mind.
CHAPTER 2
The rest of the day didn’t go any better. The ceremony for Evelyn Walker, now Evelyn O'Dell, was, as expected, long and rambling. The photographer barked at me to stay out of her way another two dozen times, and Evelyn continued to glare at me whenever I moved my tripod to a new spot. As her maid of honor, Maberly tried to put on a happy face, but she seemed deep in thought the entire time. Something was obviously bothering her. Why wouldn't she talk to me about it?
