Circus in a Shot Glass

by Beth Overmyer

  This made Danny laugh. “No, nothing like that.” He took me by the elbow and tried to steer me toward the corner, before I shook him off.

  “There’s no show, is there?”

  Danny grimaced. He ran his hand through his hair, taking a clump of it off as he did.

  My nose wrinkled up by itself and I took an automatic step back as his hands began to shake. “What’s happened to you?”

  He looked around, started to talk business, but broke into small talk when a custodian rounded the corner with his cleaning cart. When the blue-clad man had disappeared into the gents’, Danny said, “Just some experimental stuff. But that’s a side business.”

  “Danny, you’re an idiot.”

  “Yes, but a rich idiot.”

  I had to give him that.

  “So the question is: Are you still in?”

  “In?”

  “Don’t play dumb; you know what I’m talking about.” He shot a paranoid glance around the room, even taking a moment to lean over the check-in desk for eavesdroppers. When he caught me shaking my head he said, “Can’t be too careful.”

  I dug my shoe toe into the thick carpet, which squished under my weight. I wasn’t raking in much money, and my savings account was a joke with no punchline. Plus I was tired of mooching off my mom. But stealing? Drug-dealing? I was no goodie-two-shoes, but those activities were both ambitiously bad, even for me. “Can I have more time to think about it?”

  Danny rubbed a trickle of sweat off his forehead. Normally, this guy was laid back and too stupid to be menacing. But these past few months had changed my high school friend into someone I could believe worked with the underbelly of society. As we stood there his posture grew rigid, his gaunt face tightening. He leaned down to me, prodding me in the chest with a thick finger. “Hey, I pulled a lot of strings for you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “If I’d known you were just going to turn chicken the second we got here, I would’ve never recommended you for the special job.”

  Trying not to shake, I pushed his finger away from my chest. “What special job?”

  He grinned and leaned back, but there was still danger in his dark eyes. “A desk job. Nothing you’d get your hands too dirty doing.”

  “I’ll—”

  Danny shook his head. “Thinking about it isn’t going to fly this time.” He pulled a worn business card from the depths of his pocket, and as he handed it to me, his voice went cold. “Are you in, or are you out?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Scotch

  2014

  There is a long silence on the other end of the line after the initial “Hello?” It’s Ringmaster. He sounds . . . upset. “What’s up?” I ask, considering the clock on the wall. Midnight. He must’ve woken me up for something important.

  Ringmaster clears his throat and says, “You need to move out.”

  It’s my turn to take a long pause. Maybe I heard him wrong. “What?”

  “But only for a week.”

  Okay, I didn’t mishear him. “Move out.” My tongue trips over the words. “As in leave?”

  “For a week, yes.”

  “But . . .” My mind races through the town of Scenarios, picks up speed around Oh No Boulevard and hangs a right at Frozen Terror Lane. This has something to do with the shop closing. I can feel it. This isn’t good. What am I going to do?

  “Calm down, carrots.”

  “I’m not panicking,” I say, fighting hard to keep my breathing even.

  “Yeah, sure. I can hear you breathing like a chain smoker with asthma.” He coughs, and I can’t tell if he’s emphasizing his point or if his own smoking habit is to blame. “And before you ask, no one’s going to touch your stuff. We just need to have the place properly cleaned.”

  “Cleaned.”

  “You know, the thing normal humans do. You take a broom, some mops and you—”

  “Yes, yes, I get it. But I clean.”

  He huffs into my ear. “Sure you do. But the Boutique needs a good, thorough cleaning.”

  “But for a whole week?”

  Ringmaster mumbles something I can’t make out and coughs again. “Look, if it helps, you can stay in my garage until this is over.”

  “Stay in your garage?”

  “What is this, an interrogation session? Yes, in my garage. Turn up your hearing aid, for Pete’s sake.”

  My teeth skim my lower lip and I hesitate. “For a week? Does it take that long to clean?”

  There’s a pause. “Clean what?”

  “The shop . . .”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course it does.” This from the man who couldn’t operate a vacuum. What did he know about cleaning anything? I say as much:

  “How would you know?”

  He growls. “Don’t question me, you twit. That’s what the cleaning company told me.”

  Ringmaster sounds edgier than usual. I’d better not push him much more, or I might lose my position all together. “So next week? You’ll pick me up?”

  “Next week? Try tomorrow.”

  My mouth opens and closes a few times before I settle on saying, “Oh.”

  “Have your stuff packed and ready by ten.”

  The phone drops before I can hang up on him. I can still hear him shouting at me from the floor, and I’m oddly detached. “This was going to happen sooner or later,” I tell myself. But it doesn’t stick and it doesn’t slide. Choking on the acrid taste in my mouth, I press the phone’s “talk” button with my bare toe, tickling its sisters two, three, and voice mail.

  With what strength of body and presence of mind I can throw together, I rip my bag from the closet and began tossing random clothes into its shallow depths. Living with Ringmaster for a week. “I can do this.”

  Lies.

  I imagine the laundry, the dishes, the endless complaining about what I’ve done and what I am doing. And I cannot, do not voice the thought to myself of what will happen to my—what will happen to the circus. Guilty, I leer at the door. So tempted.

  In goes some underthings, two pairs of jeans, a skirt, some socks, and three t-shirts that are dirty and smell of me—no one else. I haven’t done my own laundry in ages, but I think I can figure it out. But my case is too small, so out goes the skirt and in goes a shower kit. In goes a few more toiletries, and out goes Fantome de l'Opera, which I at once do and don’t want to read again.

  Again the bell tolls, and it tolls for me. Ring. Once. Ring. Twice. It is the third ring, and I am scuttling and skittering across the floor to answer it. “Hello?” I say, all hope and dread. Could Ardal know? Could he be calling and offering a solution to my problem?

  “Why’d you hang up on me?”

  Of course he couldn’t have known. “He’s not psychic,” I tell myself. To my boss I say, “It took you this long to figure out I hung up on you?”

  “Hey, smart ace. Why did I get the busy tone again?”

  I am all shoulders, shrugging and shaking. “I don’t know.”

  There is a pregnant pause and then, “Oh. Good night, Scotch.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  The phone rings five minutes after I hang up. But I don’t want to be disappointed. Not again. So it screams me to sleep.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  A faceless man shakes his head. “Aren’t gifts supposed to be surprises?”

  “Pfft. I want to know!” the faceless woman says, reaching for the unopened parcel. Before I can stop her, she peeks inside.

  “What is it?” I ask, pouncing at what she holds to her chest. But there are tears in her eyes. There are tears in my eyes. I can see them . . . I can almost see faces now . . .

  There was lots of crying, I think, waking with a start.

  Someone is pounding on my door to the unsteady tempo matching the beat of my heart. I throw on some clothes, grab my suitcase and laptop, and skip to a stop outside my apartment door. I’ve been expecting Ringmaster. It is not Ringmaster.

  It is
a tall man. The wrong tall man. The one who keeps peering into my store. Besides being tall, he is lean. Too lean. His clothes hang loosely on his gangly frame. Although they are nice, expensive clothes, they are not tailored. Or, if they were, the wearer has since lost a lot of weight. And the closer I look the more my suspicions are confirmed: He is wearing a wig. A nice wig, but a wig at that.

  He smiles what he must think is a warm smile but frowns when he meets my eyes. “James said I should pick you up.” We just stand there, the both of us, staring at each other, one with boredom the other with suspicion. Finally he grunts, rolls his eyes, and asks, “Well, are you coming or what?”

  I shake my head, trying to piece together what’s going on. “I’m sorry, but who are you? You didn’t say your name.”

  This isn’t right. Ringmaster said he would be here at ten. It’s nine thirty. I tell him as much.

  The man laughs and introduces himself. “I’m Danny. Remember me?” I don’t. He continues. “James—borrowed some money from me, and I’m doing him a favor.” Borrowed is said through a scowl.

  I set down my suitcase, which weighs more than it should all of a sudden. “Why are you doing him a favor if he’s the one borrowing your money?” For some reason my heart has taken off at a gallop, and I am perspiring.

  “Man, don’t be so suspicious of kindness.” The ensuing laugh rips at my ears; I want it to stop, for him to go away. He’s not familiar; this is a different sort of pain in my head. “James said you’d turned into a shrew. No, see, we take care of each other, people in James’s and my business.”

  “Oh, you deal in antiques too?” I reach for my luggage again, but my hand is frozen, and my legs have sprouted roots.

  Danny is all impatience and huffed breaths that make me think he’s a smoker. “Antiques? He hasn’t told you?” Another laugh, and I lean against the taupe wall, my jean pockets flush against the chair rail. Why do we have a chair rail? What is the point? What is the point of any of this if what “Danny” says is true? He says, “What makes you think James sells antiques, apart from the front? Some people, man, I tell you. So naïve.”

  I bump my head back against the wall but hardly feel a thing. “He’s been lying to me?”

  Tap, tap, tap. An expensive shoe slapping the floor with its toes. This stranger, this man who I know is about to shatter my delusions, says, “You don’t know what your brother does for a living?”

  I think my brain must have gone off for a moment. “Wait, who does what for a living?”

  The man’s nicotine-stained fingers twitch and reach inside his suitcoat pocket. He produces a silver lighter. I catch the initials D.A.R. engraved on the side. He fishes out a cigarette and lights up. “He said you were one messed up chick.” Greenish gray smoke leaks out of his nose with a snort, and it is all I can do not to throw up. He must know this as he leans forward, leering. “Care for one, Jewels?”

  Jewels, James’s sister. This sounds familiar somehow. But it can’t be. I would’ve known, right? And yet . . . I have known all along, haven’t I? Deep down in the place I like to bury with a drop or seven of my namesake, information has been swimming around, waiting to float to the surface. But I don’t want it to be true; I need for it to be another big, fat lie. I clear my throat. “He told you we’re related?”

  Danny takes a rather long drag and chuckles like he’s enjoying destroying me. “Dude, we’ve met before . . . and there are pictures of you two and—well, you’re all over his house.” Puff, puff. “You should see a neurosurgeon or something ‘cause you are twelve short of a dozen, if you catch my drift. Must run in your family.”

  Down, down, down I slip. The floor is cold and unforgiving against my body, which wants to curl into the fetal position. But I remain ramrod straight-backed against the wall and say through my teeth, “You should get out.”

  He takes another drag, and I hate the smoke seeping out of his nostrils. I want to twist that liar’s nose and see if it’s made of wood.

  Wood can break. I can’t break . . . not yet. I will save that grand finale for later. There is too much at stake. So I knit myself back together with the thought of a long, hard drink. “Scotch,” I say aloud, causing the man’s lip to pucker around the cig with amusement. “My name is Scotch, and I have a brother. A liar.”

  “Heh. Seems to me he’s not the only good liar around here, Scotch.”

  “Why did he—Why did my brother borrow money from you?” Scotch, rich amber liquid on my tongue. Bitter forgetfulness, I am coming for you.

  “Do you want to know what he’s into, kid?”

  I nod.

  He breathes smoke, as a demon from the pits of hell sent to torment me. “I knew coming early would be worth it. Nothin’ like putting the jerk in his rightful place. Saves some people from cherishing delusions, you know?”

  I glare at him, knowing this isn’t the first time he’s dealt bad news. “Just tell me.”

  “Easy, princess, easy.” Huff, puff, puff. A dead part of me wonders if he’ll set off the smoke detector. He doesn’t.

  It occurs to me: “You’re a loan shark, aren’t you?”

  He shrugs. “Nah.” He’s enjoying stringing me along, this much is obvious.

  When he doesn’t explain himself, I try again: “He borrowed money from you and can’t pay you back, but why?”

  “You see,” Danny says, “James didn’t technically ask to borrow money, so much as took it.”

  I cover my face with my hands and bite my lower lip. “Why?”

  “Aren’t you a bit curious why he never has anyone come into this shop?” he says at me. “Why he never seems to sell a thing? Where does your food come from? Your clothes? This building, even? Why are you so well taken care of?”

  “He steals things,” I say through my teeth.

  This amuses the man. “That’s the side business. The real fun stuff is in the back.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  He puts out his cigarette on the wall, leaving a sooty gray stain, which looks like a bust of a strange, fat little man. “Just a . . . heads up. See, you can help James make more money. He owes me. He owes me big. And as for a payment, well, we won’t wait forever.”

  The man offers to carry my bag to the door, but I cling to it and refuse to be moved from where I’ve collapsed. This amuses Danny, who belts me with a laugh and nudges me with his expensive shoe. Finally, he gets bored with me and leaves, his odor still lingering in the air like a cloud.

  This is too much to process, but my brain, now-alcohol-free, latches onto the thought and won’t let go: “I have a brother, a brother who’s a thief.” Am I much better? To my horror, I realize where my meals come from, where my clothes and gift cards and toiletries and everything come from.

  In a way, in my ignorance, I have been an accomplice. If not an accomplice, then a beneficiary for sure. “I need out.” And the only thought in my mind is “I’ve got to run.” But where can I go? I have nothing and no one…not anymore.

  But my bags are packed. I am set to go somewhere, so I stumble to my feet. If ever I should remember…or could remember, I need to now. “My name is Scotch—or Jewels something-rather—I’m thirty years old. I have a brother who’s a thief and a liar—and I am a liar and his accomplice.” And I am out the door.

  Of course like all bad days, the sky is gray and dropping water bombs on me as I sit down on the cold, metal bench with what I can carry. Cabs go by, slowing when they see me, but I have less than ten dollars, and it is all stashed inside a tissue box back in my apartment, where I never plan to set foot again. Even if I had the money to hail a cab, where would I go?

  As the rain picks up, I set my meager bag of belongings on top of my laptop to keep it from ruination. But I think it’s too late. I am alone. I wish—I wish I were—

  “Hey!” someone says.

  A wave of water from the road makes it to where I sit, and I am good and soaked now. There is a hand on my shoulder, shaking me, but I am unresponsive
. I’ve given up.

  “Come on.” Someone grabs me under the arm and tries pulling me, but I must have been sitting here longer than I thought. My legs have fallen asleep, and I collapse back onto the bench. There is some cursing, and I cannot tell if it’s rain or tears in my eyes.

  He stands in front of me, scoops me up and leaves my belongings to their fate on that metal bench. I wonder what will happen to them, if some homeless woman will pawn my laptop and wear my clothes. I shiver and close my eyes, and I don’t have to open them to know who’s helping me into their car.

  “Hey, what gives?” Ringmaster asks, storming up to my side of the car. But Ardal is between us, and my brother, James—Skip—takes a step back. “What’s up with her? Did she pass out again?”

  Something is murmured softer than the rain, and the door shuts, cooping me in. Crazy Scotch. I’m crazy Scotch now, not drunk Scotch. There is no other explanation: I am mad, mad, mad. Shouldn’t it be of some relief, to be diagnosed at long last? Even self-diagnosed, it has to be a break-through…or a first.

  Because who else but a mad woman would put up with this bull-crap for so long, and why would she starve her brain into thinking her name is Scotch, that her brother is a ringmaster in a tiny antique shop? But there’s something else, something bigger. And I can’t—I can’t go inside. Not yet. My hand holds the key and I am at the door of this unknown. Do I want to know what’s inside?

  I drowse and watch, one-third fascinated and two-thirds frustrated as I observe the argument taking place in the rain. The car is running, and the A/C is blasting me with cool kisses that lull me to relax, and I don’t want to relax. My finger finds the window’s down button. I hit it and the glass slides enough to let in the words,

  “—Need her!” It’s my brother and apparently he needs me.

  Ardal says, “I don’t want to have this discussion again, James. We have a deal, remember?”

  My brother shifts his weight. “So you’ll get me out of this scrape?”

  “Yes, James, you will get your money once everything is settled.”