“Can I come in, Ma?”
Both girls turned, and Ellen dropped a small metal box. with a clang.
“Oh, Ellie, you’ve spilled the glitter. Here, let me scoop it up.” Tommy got down on his knees beside her. “Hand me a sheet of paper. Just so you don’t get any that’s been stuck to the floor, it’s okay.” Carefully he brushed the red shiny stuff onto the paper, then funneled it back into the box.
Ellen was prettier than Little Ann, a quiet brown-eyed girl with dark braids lying forward on her shoulders. “I thought you’d forgotten all these little details.”
“In one winter? What kind of dumb bunny you think I am?”
“Where you been keeping yourself?” Ellen asked.
“Right out in plain sight, top of the flying rig,” Tommy retorted. “And if you don’t see me, just turn your ear that way and listen for Papa Tony yelling!”
“How come you’re not working here this year?” Ma Leighty asked. “I just got you trained to where you know where I keep everything, and this year you’re in the show and you’re too grown-up to work wardrobe anymore?”
“Heck, no, it’s not that, Ma,” Tommy said uncomfortably. “I just got too much to do, that’s all. I take care of all the flying costumes, and like that.”
Little Ann giggled. “You get it coming and going, don’t you, Tommy? Oldest kid in spec always does all the costume checking in and out, and now you get in the flying act, and they make the youngest handle all the chores!”
Ma Leighty chuckled. “That way when he gets old and fat, he’ll still be some good to the show.”
“Flyers never get fat,” Little Ann said. “Old, maybe, but not fat. Look at Papa Tony. He must be seventy.” She laid her typed list on the table. “I’m finished here, Ma. That last muddy spell made a mess of everything, but I guess that’s it.” She jumped down from the trailer, Tommy just behind her.
He asked, “Did you get the keys in your shoes fixed?” This year Little Ann was performing on a “golden whirl,” a rotating trapeze where she swung around and around by the feet. It was a simple trick, and not at all dangerous, because the performer’s shoes were locked into the bar of the trapeze. But at the last performance Ann’s shoes had become so locked that she’d had to struggle embarrassingly to free herself at the close of the act, and finally one of the rigging men had had to climb up and unlock the shoes and take her down.
“Yes, Mother got Angelo to look at them. They’re okay now; I tried them out this morning.” They went along the alley gradually taking shape in the empty cornfield, where the roustabouts were setting up concession stands. Little Ann took out a pair of dark glasses and put them on.
“Tommy, is Papa Tony so hard to get along with as they say?”
“Oh, no. He’s strict, and makes you watch yourself all the time, but his bark’s a lot worse than his bite. Anyhow, he never bit me, not yet.”
Little Ann giggled, then turned grave. “Listen, did you hear from your dad? Is he going to be okay?”
“I guess so,” Tommy said. “Only his eye got infected, and they were afraid for a while he was going to lose it. They’re trying something new on it—some kind of wonder drug.”
“If I was your father I’d never go near a cage again.”
“Me, neither, but I guess Dad doesn’t feel that way. He got his arm half bit off when I was four years old, but he never worries about it. And remember the time you broke your arm, the year you were in the web act? You were back on the web three days after they took off the cast. Ann, I have to take some stuff in to the laundry—you want to ride in and keep me company?”
“Let me go tell Mother.”
She ran off. When she came back she had quickly combed out the pin curls and slipped into a full-skirted blue pinafore dress. “Mother says okay if you drive carefully.”
They walked along the line of trailers to the Santelli one. Each trailer had its allotted position so that wherever they played, whatever the shape of the lot, they were always six “doors” apart and everyone had the same neighbors every night. He knocked on the trailer door.
“Anybody here?”
“Come in,” said Mario irritably from inside. “What’s the matter with you, Tom?”
“You decent? I got somebody with me.”
“Just a minute—” Then, muffled through a closed door, “Okay, come in.”
The cramped central room was empty. Tommy called, “I came to get the laundry.”
“Want me to go along? I can take time, I guess.”
“No, I asked Little Ann to ride in with me.”
Mario came out, buttoning his shirt. He was barefoot, his hair wet and tangled. He said “Hi” to Little Ann, and Tommy, watching her face change, thought, I bet half the girls in the show are nuts about Mario—that never occurred to me.
“Mario, you got any change for the laundry? If they have machines I’ll need some dimes.”
Mario fished in his pocket and pulled out a handful of change, which he dumped, uncounted, into Tommy’s cupped hands.
“Stop somewhere on the way back and get me some black shoelaces, okay?”
“Sure, anything else?”
“I guess not. Keep the change—buy yourselves a soda or something.”
Tommy was tying the laundry into a shirt. Little Ann wrinkled her nose, sniffing. “What’s that nice smell? Like cloves?”
“Hair set. Glycerine.” Mario held up the squat jar. “My mother makes it for us; the stuff you can buy is all so greasy.” He set it down. “Ann, who’s the new girl in the web act? The one on the end web, the one with long hair?”
“Her name’s Sue-Lynn. She’s from back East somewhere. I forget her last name—Farris or Farley or something. Why?”
“She reminds me of somebody I used to know, that’s all,” Mario said.
Tommy knew what he meant; the day he had seen the slender, dark-haired girl for the first time, he had thought, incredulous, Liss? Then she had come down from the web, and he had seen her, close at hand. It was not Liss; the eyes were not blue but dark brown, her mouth was wider and more sensuous, with somewhat crooked teeth. But she was like Liss, and something in the motion of the slender, almost breastless body reminded him indefinably of the way Liss Santelli moved. Even Angelo had mentioned it: “Matt, did you see the girl in the web act looks like Liss?”
“Maybe she is someone you used to know,” Little Ann said almost flirtatiously. “She asked who was the good-looking dark man in the flying act, and she asked if you had a girl.”
Mario was exasperated, but he was polite. “Matchmaking, at your age, Ann?”
“No. She said she worked a couple years in a flying act, and she saw there was no girl in your act and wondered if you wanted one, that was all. If you were interested.”
Mario said, “I thought she looked kind of professional for a web act.”
“Oh, so you are interested?” Little Ann teased.
“No. Not really.”
“You’re mean, Mario,” Little Ann said, giggling. “The best-looking man with the show, and you don’t have a steady girl, or anything.”
Twisting his face into a purposely droll grimace, Mario teased, “Don’t you know I’m waiting for you to grow up, sweetheart?”
“Oh, you!” Little Ann giggled, turning poppy-red.
Tommy hoisted the tied-up laundry and said brusquely, “We going to take this to town, or you want to stay here talking it up with Mario?”
“I want to stay here talking it up—” Abruptly Little Ann realized Tommy was not teasing. “Sure, I’m ready. Let’s go.” She opened the door for Tommy to maneuver the bundle of laundry out. As they put it into the back seat of the Santelli car, she said, “Are you jealous, or something? Can’t I kid around with Mario if I want to? He’s old enough to be my father, almost!”
“Oh, nuts! I don’t care who you kid around with. And he isn’t either; he’s only about twenty-three, that’s all.” He got into the car, rolling down the window against the steamy h
eat, and backed the car around. He felt grumpy, and didn’t know why. Watching Mario flirting with Little Ann—for that was what they had been doing, and he knew it—had somehow made him deeply uncomfortable.
“Oh, good,” said Little Ann as they turned into the gravel lot outside the sign WASHATERIA, “it’s one of those new kind with automatic machines and dryers. They’re kind of fun.”
Two hefty women in housedresses stared as the two youngsters came in. Tommy paid no attention; he was used to being stared at.
“Let me help, Tommy.”
“Okay, if you want to. The towels go in one machine and the practice tights and stuff in the other one. And the robes have to be done in another machine all by themselves because the color will run—and set the water for cold, not hot.”
Little Ann giggled again. “Hey, I ought to be telling you all that—I’m the girl!”
They worked in silence, loading the machines. One of the women, staring at them curiously, asked, “You young people are new in town, aren’t you? Are you with the oil-field people out at the edge of town?”
“No, ma’am,” said Little Ann politely, “we’re with the circus.”
“Are you—do you take part in the performance?”
“Yes, we’re both in different acts.”
“My, how interesting!” The woman withdrew, reluctantly, to tend her own machines, assuring them she would watch for them during the performance.
Tommy whispered, “These doggone hick towns. Look, she’s still staring.”
“It’s my darn hair,” said Little Ann, pouting. Her hair was, Tommy remembered from a couple of years ago, normally a rather mousy brown, but when she went into the act Margot had, as a matter of course, begun bleaching it until it was platinum blonde. “When I was in high school last year, you should’ve heard them. Nice girls don’t bleach their hair, and all that; just the same, a lot of them started doing it, too. Mother says it makes people look at me. It sure does.”
“Let ’em look. I think it’s pretty.” Tommy suddenly thought of Stella and wondered if her hair had been naturally blonde or if she bleached it, too. “There’s a soda machine over there. Want a bottle?”
They drank from the bottles, listening to the clothes sloshing in the machines. Tommy wondered what he had been worrying about. This seemed perfectly natural, like the old days.
“Did you like California, Tommy?”
“Yeah, it was nice. Only it seemed funny to have palm trees around, and no snow even at Christmas.”
“Mother said, once, that Lucia Santelli was probably the finest woman flyer in the world. Is she one of the same family? Did you meet her?”
“Sure, she’s Mario’s mother,” Tommy said.
“I heard she broke her back. Is she awfully crippled?”
“No, you can hardly tell. Just sometimes she moves kind of slow, that’s all. She helped Mario’s brother Johnny with his act.” They started talking about the Santellis while they loaded the clothes into the dryers.
“Watch it and don’t put the tights in,” Tommy warned. “They’re wool, so they’ll shrink.”
“There’s a girl in the web act wears silk tights, like a ballet dancer. She says wool makes her break out in a rash. I think she just wants to show off her legs,” Little Ann said.
“I guess wool makes a lot of people break out in a rash,” Tommy said. “Mario’s sister—Liss—wears silk tights, but she was a ballet dancer for a while.”
“She isn’t in the act now?”
“No, she got married and had a baby,” Tommy said.
“Well, so did my mother. And yours,” Little Ann argued.
“But her husband isn’t with the show,” Tommy said.
“I think circus people should only marry circus people.”
“Well, I guess they mostly do.” Tommy did not want to discuss it. “Listen, Angelo said I could take the car Sunday. If there’s a good movie, want to go see it?”
“Love it,” Little Ann said. Then, suspiciously, “Did my mother ask you to ask me?”
“Heck, no! Why’d she do a thing like that?”
“Because I was saying just the other day how I never saw you anymore, and right away you ask me, and I don’t need to have my mother fix up dates for me!”
“Nobody fixed it up. Angelo was bawling me out because he said the other kids in the show would be thinking I was stuck up, and then he said I could take the car if I wanted to take somebody out.”
“Okay, then, I’d love to go. Unless it’s a Western—I don’t like Westerns. Look, that dryer’s stopped. Want me to help you fold the clothes?”
Sunday evening, just as it was beginning to get dark, Tommy called for Little Ann at the trailer. The faint quiet light around the lot. closed down for Sunday, made him uneasy; he was used to the brilliant lights of performances, and to the end of his life, dimness troubled and frightened him in a way he could never put into words.
Little Ann was wearing a pink dress with shiny white scrolls at the neck, and white wedge-heeled sandals. He held the car door open for her for the first time.
“You look cute, Little Ann. Watch your fingers,” he added automatically before slamming the door.
She still had babyish dimples when she smiled. “I wish people would just call me Ann. There isn’t any Big Ann with the show anymore, and it sounds goofy.”
“I’ll try to remember. But I been calling you that since we were about six. Listen, the movie in town is a Western, but five, six miles out the highway there’s one of those new drive-in places—where you sit in your car and watch the show on a big screen up front, and you get a speaker for your car.”
“I’ve seen them on the road, but I’ve never been to one,” Ann said. “What’s the movie?”
“Some kind of musical, I guess. Anyhow, it isn’t a Western; I asked. Want to go there?”
“I guess that would be fun,” she said demurely, “but you’re driving—it’s up to you.”
The drive-in was dimly lighted. After a while, as they waited for the picture to start, Tommy put his arm around Ann’s shoulders. She moved a little closer but still sat straight.
“Want some popcorn?” he asked.
“Love it.” She sounded relieved.
He came back from the concession stand juggling a paper tray with two sacks of popcorn and two tall paper cups filled mostly with ice. “Here,” he said, “I remembered you didn’t like Coca-Cola, so I got you Seven-Up.”
They drank the soda and ate the popcorn, watching the lights of the incoming cars as the darkness closed down.
“Seems funny to be in the audience,” Ann said.
“It would be funny to live in the same town all the time and go to the same movie. Look, the screen’s starting to light up; I guess the show’s going to start.”
In a burst of noise from the loudspeaker, Bugs Bunny came on the screen. Tommy finished his popcorn and crumpled up the bag, He settled down to watch the movie. After a while he laid a tentative hand on Ann’s knee. She let it rest there for a minute without moving, then gave him her hand to hold. After a few minutes more he put his arm around her and she settled down comfortably against him. She smelled very clean, like soap and talcum powder and some light, fruity scent.
“You smell like strawberries,” he said.
“I guess it’s my lipstick. It has kind of a cherry taste.”
After a minute more he kissed her cheek, tentatively, and she squeezed his hand in the darkness, but said gently, “Let’s watch the movie, okay?”
“Okay. But it isn’t that good a movie, is it?”
“I guess not,” she murmured, and in the dim light he saw her dimples again. After a minute he turned her face around to him and kissed her, this time on the mouth. She twisted quite soon, and said, a little breathlessly, “Hey, let’s not get quite so passionate, huh?”
But she made no effort to move away to her own side of the seat, and he was confused. He had lost track of the movie, although the feature film had s
tarted and the screen was full of girls in ruffled Mexican skirts, swirling in some kind of Spanish dance. He was much too conscious of Little Ann’s firm sun-tanned shoulders against his arm. Cautiously he put his free hand on her breast. He was still trying to keep part of his attention on the movie, but when Ann sighed and put up her face to be kissed, he forgot the screen. After several minutes he said huskily, “Your lipstick does taste like cherries.”
“Mmm-hm.”
Tommy felt a sudden, uncomfortable awareness; the diffuse, friendly pleasure of fondling and cuddling had, abruptly and distressingly, become sexual arousal. It dismayed him. Somehow it had just never occurred to him, even as a remote possibility, that he would be aroused by a girl. Any girl. Little Ann of all girls! At some deep level he was curiously pleased with himself, but mostly he was worried, not wanting her to find it out. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself from pulling her against his body in such a way that she could not fail to be aware of it.
In an interlude between kisses she murmured, “I never knew anybody who kissed quite that way.”
Was there something different, revealing—queer?—about the way he kissed her? He raised his head and she said, “I didn’t say I didn’t like it, you dope,” and kissed him again of her own accord. She did not protest his hands on her breasts, though she did firmly push his fingers away from the button at the neck of her dress. “That’s far enough,” she said gently. He didn’t insist. It was exciting enough to feel their small tips hardening through the layers of dress and petticoat. It was almost a struggle, though she was not really struggling; it was not resistance but excitement squirming her slight body into his arms, close against his own. His hand slipped up her thin bare leg, under the fluff of petticoat. She was wearing silk panties with elastic at the edges; to his momentary surprise, the softness there was faintly damp. He hadn’t really known that about girls. She had put her hands on him, shyly, a little unwillingly, touching him through his clothes. The ache of that was almost unendurable. He had grown used to release of this kind of tension (and as quickly and directly as possible), not to prolonging it or controlling it or passively enduring it.
The Catch Trap Page 30
