by Joel Arnold
Again, there is that miracle captured as her life vanishes, her breath making a final, hasty exit through the heavily lipsticked moat of her lips.
Stop. Rewind.
Play.
“Where’ve you been?” Angie asks, the moment Carter walks in the door.
His briefcase is tight under his arm. “What do you mean?”
“I called work. They said you called in sick.”
“No.” Carter shakes his head. “No, that’s not right. Who told you that?”
“The receptionist.”
“No. I was there. She must not have seen me come in.”
“I left five messages in your voice mail.”
“I didn’t get them. I had meetings all day.”
Angie’s eyes burrow into his skull.
“Who took your call? Was it Denise? If it was Denise, she doesn’t know her head from her a-hole.”
He watches her as she mulls this over.
She exhales, her entire body deflating in front of him. “Okay,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you of—”
“Of what?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Can I put my briefcase away?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Of course.”
He guards his checking account like a rabid wolf, keeping two sets of check registers. There is the real one with the monthly fifteen hundred dollars deducted kept at work. Then there is the doctored one he keeps on his desk at home meant for Angie’s eyes. The videotape — he only keeps one at a time — is kept deep in the locked desk drawer.
Brittany has started playing soccer. She comes home after practice with grass stains on her clothes, her knees and elbows rubbed raw from her rough style of play. Angie spends more time with her, helping with homework, watching rented movies on the VCR in the living room. Carter knows it’s nearly impossible, but can’t help imagining Brittany accidentally finding one of his tapes and sliding it innocently into the VCR out of curiosity. The thought makes him nauseous.
But the time spent locked in the den only increases.
Another month goes by. The tape of the barn has become overcome by a fuzzy snow, the prostitute’s screams garbled as if the television speakers have been immersed in sewage.
When he leaves his fifteen hundred in the empty video box, he finds it still there when he returns to collect the tape. Only now there is a note attached to it.
PLEASE DEPOSIT $500 MORE.
He freezes with anger. He’s been ready to see something new, has been anticipating this for the last three days. But he lets the anger melt off him and goes to the bank, withdraws five hundred dollars in cash, and places it along with the previous fifteen hundred in the box. When he reaches in the hollow of the tree two days later, there is a new cassette. No labels. Only a shiny black plastic shell, the miracle it surely contains palpable in Carter’s sweaty hands.
INT. AN EMPTY HOUSE — DAY
She’s a real estate agent — maroon blazer, black pants, a name-tag that says BARBARA WHITEHALL in crisp black letters. She leads the camera through the rooms smiling, pointing out the features of the house.
“You’d be surprised at how many people bring a video camera to these showings,” Barbara says. “I thing it’s a great idea.”
She climbs a set of stairs covered with beige carpet. The camera follows her up. She turns at the top.
“Right this way.”
She leads us to an empty bedroom, turns a circle, then slides open the closet.
“Decent closet space. Southern exposure.”
Indeed, the sun spills in through the blinds, it’s light spliced with lines of shadow as it splays over her body. The cameraman likes this and zooms in on the interplay of light and dark on her neck. He only backs off at the moment the scalpel appears and makes a quick, precise cut across her jugular. The blood appears only slightly before her eyes register confusion, then terror. She reaches up to her neck as the color of her blazer becomes saturated. The scalpel enters the picture once again and makes short work of her hand. It cuts through her fingers as the sound of the cameraman’s breath, so close to the microphone, cuts through the woman’s piercing screams. He cuts deeper, and the screams abruptly stop as the lens follows her to the floor. The fountain of pumping blood diminishes to a slow seep, and again, the exact moment of her death appears on-screen in glorious color, captured like a butterfly in an empty peanut butter jar.
He is greeted that evening with Angie’s harsh stare.
“What?” he says.
She waves a bank statement in front of his face. “What the hell is this?”
His stomach turns inside out. Where did she get that? It was supposed to be mailed to his work address. Not here. How the hell—
He tries to bide for more time.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about.” She reads off two large withdrawals that total thirty-five hundred dollars.
“Investments,” he blurts. “I’m investing in the stock market. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Bullshit.”
“Honey, I—”
As she crumples the statement in her hand and throws it at him, hitting him squarely on the jaw, she says, “Pack your crap and get the hell out of here. You’re through.”
“But I—”
His words are lost in the room’s chilled air as she slams the door shut behind her, locking herself in their bedroom.
A month later, Carter’s tape is almost fully depreciated, the face of the victim lost in a blizzard of static. He rents an apartment now, and has no spare cash with which to feed his habit. He writes this on a white half-sheet of college-ruled paper, adding that he can have the money in one short month if he can please just have a new tape. He folds the paper and places it in the empty tape box, mentally keeping his fingers crossed.
When he goes to retrieve the box, it is empty save for another piece of paper. He unfolds it and reads.
We are not in the business of loans, but there is always the option of trade.
The option of trade. What exactly does that mean? He says the words over and over in his mind.
Option of trade.
His hands shake. His unshaven chin works back and forth as if his jaw is trying to free itself from his skull. He pulls a pen from his pocket and scrawls on the paper one word.
Trade.
Brittany’s soccer team has made it into the playoffs. Carter watches them win from the shadows of a giant silver maple tree. He cries uncontrollably when she scores a goal. He wants so badly to run to her, pick her up and carry her away.
Instead, he wipes at his eyes with the back of his shirtsleeve and leaves. He drives to a nearby pawnshop. Uses his wedding ring and a wrinkled hundred-dollar bill as payment for a used video camera.
That night he rents a motel room and sets the camera up on the dresser, aiming it at the motel room bed. He places a shirt over it so that only the lens pokes through. When the call girl knocks, he presses the record button and answers the door.
“Come in,” he says.
“I’m Cherry.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
INT. MOTEL ROOM — DAY
A call girl named CHERRY comes into view, placing her purse on the bed. She wears too much rouge and eye shadow, and speaks to someone who is off-camera.
“Mind if I use the bathroom?”
She disappears from view, and the camera is lifted from its place on the dresser. It focuses on the bathroom door. The glint of a freshly sharpened hatchet is reflected in the brass doorknob. Cherry opens the door. She is naked and screams as the hatchet hacks its way easily through her make-up.
As she falls to the ground, the camera zooms in on her face, the camera momentarily losing focus, but sharpens on her tongue as it stops in mid-swipe across her bloodied lips. The voice of the cameraman is heard in a distorted, breathless growl as his own lips press into the microphone.
“Cut.”
Fade out.
Wicked Wire
Whenever William Farini became aware of himself, when he took note of his existence, it was always here. High above the strewn sawdust, the canvas of the ceiling close enough to smell, the silhouettes of crows perched outside, as if waiting for his cries of pain. How often had he found himself here, staring at the tightrope, the razor wire gleaming, waiting for him to step across, waiting to slice into his tender feet?
He grabbed the wooden pole off its perch, sweat-stained indentations from countless performances where his hands clutched it, the pole’s ends splintered and cracked, red paint flaking off in spots.
He looked out across the tightrope, at the hungry razor blades, the thin, taut wire. The other side may as well have been on a different planet. How many times had he performed this? Each time, the other side — a mere fifty feet — looked miles away. Whoever said the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?
The Ringmaster’s voice echoed off the bleachers in a strong practiced cadence.
“Ladies and gents, raise your eyes to the skies above the center ring where a feast of fantastic feats of funambulism awaits! Please join me in bearing witness to William Farini, Walker of the Wicked Wire!”
The crowd roared.
The crowd. Every performance brought new faces, yet the crowd as a whole remained the same beast.
William took a deep breath, tightened his grip around the balance pole and stepped onto the wire. He winced as his weight pressed his flesh onto steel. He’d stopped wondering why he never developed calluses long ago. Each time he began his performance, the soles of his bare feet were fresh and tender as baby skin.
A razor blade sliced into his middle toe. He kept his mouth shut, sucking the pain in, and took another step. His blood dripped through the air, becoming tiny round globes as it fell, splashing onto a webbing of net before continuing its journey to the floor. The pain remained as sharp as the razor blades he stepped on.
A new weight on each end of the balance pole pushed him further into the wire. Painful, yes, but a weight he’d been expecting. A weight he welcomed.
“John! Frank!” he called.
His sons clutched desperately to their respective sides of the pole. Although their weight pressed him forcefully onto the sharp, hungry wire, it also lowered his center of gravity and made balancing easier.
“It’s good to see you, boys.”
He took a second step. Felt his foot press hotly onto a razor blade, his weight pressing until the razor sliced through to the bone. He held in a scream, beads of sweat popping on his forehead. He forced himself to smile. His sons didn’t need to know the pain he was in. They had their own problems.
Johnny looked so frightened straddling the end of the pole, so shaky and unsure.
“It’s alright, John.” William nodded. “Don’t look down. Look at me, John. Look at me and take your time. Pretend you’re in the barn playing on the rafters.”
And Frank, the fearless one, who’d leap from the barn loft down onto the back of the hay wagon like a young Tarzan. Yet here, he was frightened, too, although he put on a brave face. There was a tremor in his voice as he inched his way toward his father. “When can we see Mom?”
“She’s here,” William said. Can’t they see her? “On the platform.” Waiting just as he remembered her.
But Frank squinted toward the platform and said, “It’s so dark over there. Are you sure it’s her?”
“Yes, Frank. She’s waiting for us.”
Drops of blood fell through the net to the sawdust below. He would’ve preferred that there was no net. Not like the one beneath him.
Concentrate. Look straight ahead. You’ve done it before. So many times before.
He smelled the farm, their farm, the freshly thrashed hay, the sweet aroma of manure (and yes, it was a sweet smell, especially in memory, especially now) and the smell of the barn and the corn bin and the hen house and the fields — the whisper of corn stocks on a breezy summer day. The memories were strong. Painful. Sometimes he wished he could forget.
He looked out at the upturned faces of the audience, like baby birds waiting in their nest to feed. The tin echo of calliope music mingled with their communal hum. Sunlight radiated through the tent canvas making their skin glow orange. The light and heat made William dizzy. Nauseous. The taste of a dry cigar had grown stale and bitter on his tongue.
He remembered when he’d been part of the audience. Connie was the one who got so excited about the circus coming.
“Oh, let’s go. Please Bill. The boys will love it. We’ll all love it so much.”
It was the first time in his thirty-six years that a circus had traveled to their small town. Maybe the spectacle would lighten their hearts. Let them forget the hard times, if only for a few hours. They could barely afford milk and bread, but how long had it been since Connie smiled?
He saved pennies and nickels in a Prince Albert tobacco tin hidden behind a wooden crate meagerly weighted with rations of sugar and flour and coffee. On the day the circus rolled into the barren fields on the other side of town, he had barely saved enough, and counted it twice to make sure he wouldn’t be embarrassed by coming up short at the Big Top’s ticket booth.
They traveled on foot for five miles over a dusty road, through the failing heart of Riverbend. The winding river that gave the town its name had dried up only two years earlier, leaving behind a bed of coarse gravel and widening fissures.
Dirt stung their eyes. Small funnel clouds of topsoil danced in the outlying fields. They wore handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses to keep from breathing in the dust, yet they still tasted it, a thin glue on their tongues. As William and his family neared the huge red and orange tent, the large entrance flaps snapping and whipping in the wind, they saw other families fighting their way through the blowing dirt.
They stepped inside. The wind stopped. William looked up slowly, carefully, pulling the handkerchief down as if he didn’t trust his senses. The smell of popcorn made his mouth water. A woman in a blue leotard and pink boa walked by carrying a tray full of beer. She stopped and turned to William.
“You look parched, mister. Have a beer on the house.”
“I can’t—”
“Oh, c’mon now.” Her smile was big. Wet. “Course you can.”
“Thank you.” He took the bottle of beer and sipped, closing his eyes. Nothing had ever tasted so good. He handed the bottle to Connie, then let each son take a sip.
He counted out his change at the ticket booth. The ticket teller slid back a nickel and winked. “The missus gets in free.”
William eyed the rows of available seating. Plenty of open space on the tiered metal benches. They ascended the rickety steps to a spot just left of center, and when they sat, only a moment passed before trumpets blared and the Ringmaster stepped into the center ring. His uniform was bright crimson in the hot spotlight.
William looked at his sons, their mouths agape, hands gripping the edges of the bench. He looked at Connie. Excitement and anticipation filled every pore on her face. For a moment, it was impossible to take his eyes off her. He soaked in her happiness as best he could, because he knew that when he told her the bank was foreclosing on their farm in the morning, it would be a long, long time before her face shone this brightly.
He blinked away tears, rubbed his eye, pretending a bit of dust had lodged there. He turned away. When his vision cleared, he saw a figure cloaked in shadows staring at him from the other side of the center ring.
A dagger of harsh sunlight pierced a hole in the big top’s canvas and caused William to blink and tilt his head. He struggled to keep his balance as his sons inched closer. He felt their fear tremble through the wood of the balance pole. He stopped. Closed his eyes. Regained his balance and sucked in the pain.
From the other side, Connie whispered, “William.”
He gritted his teeth. Took another step. “Look at me, boys.
Slow and steady. Slow and steady.”
His right foot pressed deeply onto a razor blade. The razor sliced into his heel, not stopping until it hit bone. He held in a scream. Blood dripped through the net to the sawdust below.
The circus clowns gathered. They looked up at him. Pointed. Sneered.
He’d never seen them without their makeup on. He never wanted to. They were short, brutish things. Coarse black hair sprouted from the thin line of exposed skin between their white gloves and tattered coat sleeves. They were kept away from the other performers in claustrophobic, thickly barred cages, and only let out at show time.
Five of them stomped below him now, jumping up and down, snarling, laughing.Did the audience see them lapping at his blood as it dripped into their mouths?
What had he seen when he’d been part of the crowd?
The figure clothed in shadow.
What had propelled him to her?
“How about a soda?” William asked his sons as they sat transfixed in their seats.
“But William — “ Connie placed her hand on his knee. Her eyes were large, moist moons, and she didn’t have to say another word to convey her worry over money. How could they afford anything else on this day? This month? This year?
“Don’t worry, Connie. I’ve got enough to cover it.” Just enough. He patted her hand. Winked. Ran his fingers over the back of her wrist. How could he have known it would be the last time he’d see her?
Really see her — as someone whole. Solid. Not merely the mist waiting on a platform high in the air whispering his name.
“William. William.”
Halfway across, his sons heavy on the balance pole, his blood dripping; the clowns below catching it within the darkness of their painted-on smiles.
