by Steph Post
“A what?”
“It didn’t make sense at the time, though I knew what the words meant. A Toenga Lespri is a kind of spirit balance. In the stories that Madame Celeste would tell me while she was tattooing me, men and women were always going up against the gods, trying to create a Toenga Lespri. Trying to humble the powers and spirits on the other side, so as to create balance in the world.”
“Between humans and gods?”
Ruby nodded.
“Yes. I thought they were just stories. I heard them like dreams. But I’ve been sitting in this room thinking for days and the pieces have been slowly falling into place. And now this, with discovering what Daniel really is. Don’t you see? This isn’t about me. It isn’t about you. Or January or the Star Light. It’s bigger than all that. It’s bigger than any of us. I’m not doing this because I want to, Hayden. I’m doing it because I have to. Do you understand?”
Hayden did. He didn’t want to, he still wanted to take Ruby far away from Daniel and forget that any of it had ever happened, but he understood. He slowly nodded his head.
“Yes. All right. So what is it that we have to do?”
No matter what she said, he would be a part of it. He would follow her. He would. Ruby put her hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eyes.
“All we have to do is trick the trickster.”
It was obvious to Ruby that none of the occupants of the Hotel Mensonges liked Hayden. They didn’t trust him. Even though he’d spent half a dozen summers on the midway and was keeping company with a tattooed Snake Charmer, he wasn’t of their kind. He wasn’t a freak. He was on the other side.
Many of those sitting around the long breakfast table that morning, passing down bowls of grits and platters of biscuits and bacon, had been at May-May’s for years. The Hotel Mensonges was their home, a sort of communal house that sheltered them and which occasional sideshow refugees, such as Ruby, passed through. They were a family, and though they lived in the midst of one of the largest cities in the South, they were still closed off from the outside world. They no longer interacted with rousties, marks or, even worse, handlers.
As soon as Ruby and Hayden sat down in the dining room, the heckling began. The hulking woman carrying out plates of food from the kitchen had two bony, claw-like hands protruding from the back of her collar. She smacked a dish of butter down between Ruby and Hayden and turned to him sharply.
“What? You’ve never seen a woman with a parasitic twin?”
Ruby rolled her eyes and reached for a biscuit. The woman’s ugly mouth twisted before she moved on down the table. Hayden called after her.
“Of course I have.”
Ruby knew this was a lie. Even she had never seen a woman with a twin still embedded inside her body. She glanced over at Hayden, who was crunching on a piece of bacon. He winked at her, but she could tell he was uncomfortable. The man sitting across from her, his face hidden behind a downy coat of auburn hair and his watery blue eyes magnified by thick spectacles, pointed his butter knife at Hayden and sniffed.
“And what is your moniker?”
Hayden swallowed the bacon and reached for his coffee.
“My moniker?”
It was hard to tell if the man was smirking or not behind the fall of hair hanging down over his lips, but his voice suggested it. He had a thick German accent compounded by a lisp and he gestured with the knife again.
“Your performance title. Your stage name. What are you proclaimed to be on your pitch card?”
Hayden leaned back in his chair and blew on his steaming cup of coffee.
“Don’t have one.”
A dwarf sitting on a stack of Montgomery Ward catalogues at the end of the table snickered. Ruby saw what was happening and wanted to intervene, but she figured Hayden could handle himself. The hairy man leaned forward, peering intently at Hayden.
“For example, I was with Phineas Barnum for seventeen years. I was known as Lionar, the Magnificent Lion Man. I was very popular. I made a fortune and traveled the country in my own private railway carriage. This is true.”
Lionar pointed with the knife to the dwarf and then began going around the table, identifying the guests.
“This here is Major Mite from New York. He also worked for Mr. Barnum in the American Museum on Broadway. Billed as a Human Miracle. And this is the Monkey Girl. I don’t know her so well and she doesn’t like me, but, eh, what are you going to do?”
The Monkey Girl scowled at Lionar, but Lionar merely shrugged and kept going.
“Then we have Jolly Jack and Amora the Armless Wonder. Kreno the Missing Link, the Skeleton Man and the Human Torso. And you have probably already met Victor, the Three-Legged Marvel, as he tends to hang around the foyer, guarding the door. Miss May-May doesn’t come down for breakfast and we’re missing a handful more, maybe. Oh, and the Witch Woman. With the hands.”
Lionar stretched his neck trying to look down to the end of the table. The Witch Woman had just brought out the last platter and was sitting down now, shoveling grits into her mouth. The clawed hands twitched as she ate. Lionar pointed at himself with the knife.
“And then, as I said, there’s me. The Lion Man. Now your turn.”
Lionar set the butter knife down and folded his hands in his lap. Hayden sipped his coffee and spoke over the steam.
“Hayden. Just Hayden.”
Major Mite snickered again and Lionar pretended to be stunned.
“Why, that’s all? So, then, Just Hayden, what is your gift? What were you known for? What wonder did the playbills announce?”
Ruby glared across the table at Lionar, but he ignored her. Hayden took another sip of coffee.
“If you’re asking what I did on the midway, I drew portraits.”
Lionar clapped his hands together.
“An artist! And did you, I suppose, hold the pencil with your toes? Or maybe your teeth?”
Hayden shook his head.
“Nope. Just the regular old way. With my hands.”
“Oh. How dull.”
Lionar began cutting up a link of sausage with his fork and knife. Ruby was tired of it. She wiped her hand on her trousers and then extended it across the table.
“My name is Ruby, by the way. And what’s yours?”
Lionar looked at her hand for a moment and then set down his utensils. He cautiously extended his own and shook her hand.
“I told you.”
Ruby didn’t let go.
“No, I mean your name.”
Ruby glanced sideways at Hayden.
“For example, this is Hayden. I’m Ruby. And you are?”
The side conversations that had been going on at either end of the table suddenly came to a halt, as everyone had their eyes on the middle. Lionar tilted his head and looked over his spectacles at Ruby, but finally conceded.
“My name is Hans. Hans Vogel.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Hans.”
Ruby released his hand and then deliberately turned away from him. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the Monkey Girl grinning at her. She heard Hans loudly asking Major Mite about a book he had loaned him and the conversations around the table picked back up again. Ruby pushed her plate away and turned to Hayden, being careful to keep her voice down.
“Atlanta.”
Hayden spoke through a mouthful of biscuit.
“Atlanta? Why?”
Ruby leaned in closer to him.
“I just know. Bright lights. Big city. I remembered something last night that January had said to Daniel. It makes the most sense to me.”
Hayden swallowed and then pushed his plate away as well. He turned in his chair.
“It makes the least sense to me. If he’s a…”
Hayden glanced around the table to make sure no one was paying attention to them. Luckily, the novelty of Hayden had quickly worn off and everyone was busy with their newspaper or their gossip or their breakfast.
“…if he’s, well, whatever he is, wo
uldn’t he be in, like, a forest or something? Hiding in the woods? Like a, I don’t know, a fairy? Or an elf?”
“I’d say he’s pretty far from helping people make shoes.”
“You know what I mean.”
Ruby smiled.
“I know. But I think he went to Atlanta.”
Hayden raised his eyebrow. Ruby hadn’t told him about any of her dealings with Daniel. Not about what had happened at the theater or in the geek tent. And she didn’t intend to. Hayden gave her a half-smile.
“Are you trying to think like him now or something?”
Ruby gave him a disgusted look. Hayden sighed and touched her arm.
“Hey, that’s not what I meant. I was just kidding.”
Ruby looked away from him. She didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say, how to express everything that was roiling around inside of her. She’d been trying to just focus on the plan, the next step. She hadn’t had time yet to process what was actually happening.
“I know. I just, I’m not like you, Hayden.”
She cut her eyes at the freaks around her.
“And I’m not even like them. I’m something else entirely.”
She held out her hands, turning them over.
“These tattoos. They make me different from everyone. Absolutely everyone.”
Hayden snatched one of her hands and gripped it tightly, almost crushing her fingers.
“You’re not like him, though. Don’t start to get that in your head. You’re nothing like him. Understand?”
He gripped her tighter.
“We don’t have time for that kind of thinking. We’ve got something to take care of. A job to do. We need to get to Atlanta. If we leave now, we can make it by late tonight. All right?”
The pain in her hand made her focus. Ruby nodded at him and he loosened his grip. She took a deep breath and tried to smile. She was looking right at Hayden, but all she could see was Daniel.
The man with an expressionless face and crisp white jacket placed a glass of iced tea in the center of the table and gave a short bow.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?”
Daniel glanced at the tea. A white orchid trailed over the lip of the glass, pinned down by an ornately cut lemon. The ice cubes were perfectly square. Daniel sighed and crossed one leg over the other.
“No.”
He waved the man away.
“Very good, sir.”
The waiter disappeared into the cloud of small tables on the promenade, all filled with couples perched across from one another on high-backed bistro chairs, sipping teas and iced lemonades and spooning sherbet into their mouths. Mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, illicit lovers. All gossiping or arguing under their breaths or staring vacantly at one another with a precisely studied disinterest. Daniel turned away from them and looked over the balcony railing, down into the lobby of the hotel. He sipped the tea. It tasted the way it cost and Daniel smiled. Finally, he was back in his element.
He had never stayed at the Grand Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, but he liked it already. When he had first come over to America, he had hovered between New York and Chicago, marveling at the skyscrapers popping up around him at every turn and causing havoc with the gin runners and the strikebreakers. Nothing extraordinary or noticeable, just a fix of chaos every now and then. Mostly he had immersed himself in the new world that had risen out of the ashes of Europe’s hubris. France had been a wasteland, but New York was a heartbeat on cocaine. The lights, the sounds, cars, trains, the windows the size of whole walls, women with cropped hair and crimson lips, men spilling drinks and cash all over the tables, music roaring in the hotels and in clubs and on the street, no one caring, everyone living only for the next lark, the next cigarette. For the first time in decades, Daniel had entire nights go by where he never felt bored once.
Chicago was fun, too, but darker. The women were harder, the men more serious. Energy pumped through the city’s heart and veins as well, but there was less laughing and more brooding. If New York was the glittering butterfly, flitting in all directions without a care, Chicago was the frantic moth, bashing itself against the window, trying to get in to the light. He had enjoyed them both, and St. Paul, too, though he had detested Boston and found Washington to be little more than a festering swamp. Atlanta didn’t have quite the pulse of his beloved cities in the North, but it was fresh and clean, opening in new buds all around him. And the Plaza was its jewel.
The ground floor was a froth of women in pale silk dresses, men in pastel linen jackets and bellhops in starched uniforms, all dashing about, meeting one another, posing and posturing, moving luggage and palming tips and showing off to the world. Everything in the lobby was bathed in sunlight, streaming down through the tremendous domed skylight high above, and everything was white. The flowers, the sculptures, the leather sofas and armchairs, the fluted columns, the carved wood paneling, the gleaming marble floor echoing upwards with every click and clack of heel steps and cart wheels and even little puffy dogs’ nails. In the afternoon glaze of this high society, only Daniel stood out in contrast with his striking black suit that seemed to sparkle in the wash of sunlight.
Daniel turned back to the table and picked up the heavy paper menu that had been placed before him. The gold letters spelled out an array of finger sandwiches and cucumber salads, sorbets and ices and delicate trays of cut meat, all described in some bastardized form of French. Daniel didn’t need to eat, of course, but sometimes he ordered dishes just to look at them. He was sure anything he ordered would come served on crystal and be garnished with edible flowers. He flippantly tossed the menu back on the starched white tablecloth and out of the corner of his eye he could see a waiter drifting toward him. Daniel held up his hand before the man could get to him.
“No.”
Daniel sighed and slipped a cigarette out of his case. Again the waiter started to come forth with a light, but Daniel turned to him and glared, baring his teeth around the cigarette. He lit it himself and turned his back to the bustling promenade. Daniel looked up toward the glass ceiling and smoked. All these people. All the same. Mothers trying to marry off their daughters, daughters rebelling against their fathers, fathers trying to intimidate their sons, lovers fighting, strangers flirting, people moving forwards and backwards, consumed only by their small, narrow needs. So dull. So mundane. So utterly, irrefutably insipid. It pained him to think about it.
He had journeyed south from Chicago to find something different, something new. An experience that was raw yet beautiful. Something that was gritty like the War, but bright and scandalous, too. He had thought he might find it in the oil boomtowns of Texas, but those had been nothing but a bore. When he stumbled upon a playbill for the Star Light, he thought it might be just the diversion he was looking for. Daniel had spent several years during the middle of the eighteenth century attending the Carnevale festivities in Venice, before the Austrians brought it all down. He had thought joining up with a traveling carnival would be akin to those times: seductive, enchanting, a place to prey on people’s most instinctual passions. Daniel started the whole experience off with a bang, getting rid of the geek so he could take his place. Yet, it had been such a disappointment. He’d found only dirt and disillusionment, everything cheap, painted up for show. The people were tired, the mood of revelry lasted only a few hours and the performers were the worst. What should have been ecstasy, what should have been glamor, was nothing more than complaining about sore feet and scrabbling over pennies. They weren’t even depraved. Just downtrodden. His little experiment with the Star Light Miraculum had been a waste.
Daniel quickly stubbed his cigarette out in irritation, smearing the gilt tray with ash. There had also been the matter with the woman. The one with the tattoos. Ruby. She was like a mosquito, buzzing around his ear, her memory refusing to leave him in peace. It wasn’t so much that had he allowed himself to lose his temper over her, he most likely would have burned the wretched little place to the ground
anyway, just on principle. And it wasn’t that he feared her. In fact, he smiled to himself when he thought of Madame Celeste and her pathetic little attempt to challenge him. Where did she even get the idea from? If he ever ran into Legba again, he would ask. It would be just like his fellow trickster to send him a parting gift as he scurried back to the jungle.
No, he wasn’t afraid of Ruby. If she had survived the fire, and he wasn’t exactly sure if she had, time would take care of her eventually. Or maybe she would turn all melodramatic and throw herself into a river, though she didn’t seem quite the type for that. And there was that buzz in his ear again, when he thought about her in that way. Her type. Her thoughts. Her, of all ridiculous things, her feelings. Her mind and heart that were the blank spaces on a map for him. Terra Incognita. An unending void.
Daniel twisted his cufflinks in irritation. And yet. When he had touched her, when he had put his hands on her and pressed into her, falling only into a lacuna he could not bridge, it was as though the sky had split open for a moment and he had felt something he had never, never felt. Not once in all of his thousands of years roaming the earth. Something he had shamefully and secretly thirsted for, knowing full well it could never be attained. Perhaps coveting it only for that reason. Daniel had felt mortal.
He banged his fist down on the table, clattering the silverware. A few women gasped and then there was the hush of whispers and side glances in his direction. Daniel stood up and calmly slipped his cigarette case into his pocket. He straightened his cuffs and smoothed back his hair. Then he picked up the glass of iced tea and hurled it across the tables at the curved, mirrored wall.
“Oh, piss off!”
Daniel stalked away, leaving a gaping silence in his wake. When he got to the staircase he turned, resting one hand on the scrolled brass railing, and concentrated for a second. No one would remember having seen him at that table. No one would remember him at all. He grinned to himself and sauntered down the stairs.
Ruby drew her knees up to her chest and leaned her head against the dusty windowpane. She was grateful to May-May for taking her in, but the two days and nights she’d spent suffocating in the tiny, windowless hotel room, pouring over The Book of Others had been a nightmare. All she had done was alternately try to find clues about Daniel in the book and relive the fire over and over in her head. She’d berated herself for not comprehending what had happened to her in the geek tent, even though she still wasn’t exactly sure what had taken place between Daniel and herself. But Ruby was sure she could have seen the fire coming if she had tried. If she hadn’t been taken in by Daniel in the first place. And she was positive that the destruction of the Star Light was her fault. Ruby had meant what she’d said about the Toenga Lespri, but she also knew that she was going after Daniel out of guilt. It wasn’t revenge; it was penance. Yet she understood, too, what Hayden had said about her selfishness and about putting even more people in danger. There were so many thoughts, so many sides to consider, but the only path Ruby could believe in was the one that led her face-to-face with Daniel. Coming to terms with that had been overwhelming, but she felt that, in some regard, leaving The Hotel Mensonges meant leaving all that doubt behind. She had made her decision. She had a purpose now, and a plan.
