Circus of the Grand Design

by Robert Freeman Wexler

  He closed his eyes, trying to visualize trees, a stream, and himself sitting on a rock eating bread and cheese, but the images were forced out by a shriek and a slap from the other side of the room. He threw his eyes open.

  Desmonica stomped past him, toward the table of acrobats.

  "Lumpy track!" Gold yelled after her.

  The acrobat next to Miss Linda hopped up and bowed to Desmonica. With Miss Linda's path now clear, she bolted. Her red shoes, like oversized ballet slippers, slapped against the floor as she hurried from the car. Desmonica threw her arms around the acrobat.

  "Hot and tasty, ready or not," Dawn sang. She deposited a plate and a glass of beer on the table, covering his diagram with the plate.

  Lewis jerked the diagram out and folded it. He slipped it into the sanctity of his shirt pocket.

  "I brought your food for you because you look like splat." She sat down opposite him. Her hair, which had been falling into her face earlier, was now pulled back by a leather hair band, and she had wiped off the eye shadow.

  Lewis started eating without looking at his food. A few bites later his mouth was on fire. The sauce was the spiciest thing he had ever eaten. He gulped down some beer. The way he was feeling, alcohol was the last thing he wanted, but he was too tired to get water. What a mess—he finally got some food, but it was inedible. No choice though, have to eat this stuff. Dawn was eating the same thing. The spice didn't seem to bother her.

  Leonora came in from the direction of the residential cars. Her hair was wet. "All clean," she said.

  Lewis wished the same was true of Dawn. Leonora moved past them, toward the counter. Lewis heard Gold's voice, asking Leonora about her back.

  Dawn leaned closer to Lewis and whispered. "Garson is rubbing her back."

  So what? Lewis looked down at his plate and breathed in the aromas. He scraped the sauce off the meat (locobird breast?) and cut off another piece.

  "He's been after her for the longest time."

  The beer was already making Lewis dizzy and his eyes watered from the pepper. He wanted Dawn to leave, but she kept talking. At least his runny nose kept him from smelling her.

  "It took me a while to get used to her, but now she's like a sister. I've never been able to get to know the acrobats though. They're so scary. All their wives or whatever just left them. I can't believe Dez went off with one of them."

  "Are you sure all the wives are gone?" He had a sudden thought that the citrus woman could be one of the acrobats' missing wives. No...she would never have been with anyone like them.

  "Remember the hamstring I pulled in rehearsal?" Gold's voice was the loudest in the room. "Didn't bother me a bit today." He slapped his leg for emphasis.

  Numbness spread throughout Lewis's mouth. He finished the beer and looked around. The man he had assumed was the jockey sat at the farthest booth with his hands propping his chin. Floyd Perry, according to the roster. Across from him sat Jenkins, enveloped in a gray herringbone jacket large enough for both men. They had set up a chessboard. How could they concentrate on a game like that? Everyone else in the room seemed to be yelling at once.

  He started to get up for water, but two acrobats ran by him on their hands. He sat back down. Gold and Leonora came over. Leonora sat beside Dawn; Lewis slid over to make room for Gold, but he remained standing at the end of the table, juggling three meatballs.

  "Did you see all the food Bodyssia's putting away?" Gold asked.

  "She's a big woman," Dawn said.

  Bodyssia sat at a table with one of the acrobats. It looked like they were about to arm wrestle. Two other acrobats stood nearby, yelling what sounded like "oboe bew, oboe bew."

  "How tall is she anyway?" Lewis asked.

  "Six-eight," Leonora said.

  "Well I'm six-five," Gold said. He tossed one of the meatballs high and caught it in his mouth.

  Dawn asked Lewis something, but he couldn't hear her over the surrounding rumble of noise; she leaned over the table and repeated: "You didn't tell us what you thought of the show."

  "I was great!" Gold yelled. "I juggled five torches at once." He tossed and caught another meatball.

  "This was the absolute most magnificent three-day stand we've had since I've been with the circus," Leonora said.

  Three days? Before Lewis could respond, wild drum music blasted out from speakers over his head. Gold jumped up onto the empty seat beside Lewis and clapped.

  "Hey let's dance, Leonora. You love the National 12."

  Leonora got up, and moved with Gold to the middle of the car, where they windmilled their arms to the beat. Desmonica and one of the acrobats were already dancing, bobbing their heads and clapping.

  "How could it have been three days?" His head was filling with fog of some sort.

  "That's a great idea, want to?" She pulled Lewis out of his seat.

  "No! Can't now."

  "Okay," she said. She pulled him closer and stood on her toes. She kissed him on the lips, pushing her tongue into his mouth. Though he felt nauseous from the alcohol and her smell, her kiss aroused him. Then she stopped. "Bye now."

  She went to one of the acrobats and tapped him on the shoulder. They moved into the group and started swinging their arms up and down.

  Back in his quiet room, alone, away from the crush of noise and bodies, relief flooded over him. The circus life was exhausting him, and he had barely started his job. He hoped it wouldn't stay that way. He didn't like always being too tired to think. He threw himself onto his bed and slept.

  Part Three

  Chapter 11: An Interview

  Lewis felt as though he had been dreaming since he boarded the train, or perhaps even before that, watching the fire flare in Are No's house. Had he died then, caught in the fire? He might have dreamed his escape as he passed out from the smoke. But his nocturnal visitor, the citrus woman, she had to be real, even if all else was dream. Sitting at his desk with the fogged windows facing him and Are No's fishing lure dangling over his head, he tried to conjure her. He replayed her visit, noting every detail of her appearance, the way she moved, her scent. She would say something like: "I travel the north wind to a place inside you. I am the heart and the flame."

  That was preposterous. Of course he had dreamed her. A real woman wouldn't show up in his room, induce orgasm, and vanish. Fucking dreaming or hallucinating. Crazy fucking place, all those acrobats and elephants. He should have stayed at the party and danced with Dawn. She was real. She had kissed him like it meant something. But these performer-types probably always acted that way. She danced with the acrobat after telling Lewis she didn't like them. None of it meant anything.

  He got up from the desk and knelt on the floor. Might as well try to get in shape. Everyone else was so fit. They had to be. He was the sedentary one. He didn't know many exercises. At least his cut hand didn't hurt anymore. He would try some push-ups, right now...

  Someone knocked on his door, and he jumped up to open it. Dawn, looking scrubbed in white shorts and loose navy tank top. She carried a matching navy gym bag.

  "Hi there," she said in her little-girl voice. She had such a silly voice compared to the citrus woman's.

  "Hi to you too." He hugged her and lowered his head to kiss her, but she pushed past him into the room.

  "I'm ready to be interviewed for the program." She dropped her gym bag on his bed and stretched out beside it. "And hurry it up—I have a lot to do today."

  She unzipped her bag and began to remove its contents, black leotard, tights, shirts, flipping them out and up as though trying to cover Lewis's room with a gauzy layer of her own. The tights floated to the floor near him and he caught a trace, more than a trace actually, of foot, of sweat, and overlaying all of that: elephant.

  He retrieved the legal pad from his satchel and moved his chair closer to the bed.

  "I've been interviewed before, you know," she said. "You're not my first." She touched his hand with her rough fingers and laughed, a throaty laugh that wasn't what h
e had expected from her chirpy voice. He looked at her bare arms. Funny how soft she looked but how firm everything felt. "After I won a titanium rhomboid in the Festival of Order."

  She reached into her gym bag again, and he thought she was going to show him the medal. Instead, she pulled out a nearly-empty bottle of wine and two dented paper cups. She filled them with the remaining wine and dropped the empty bottle on his mattress.

  "May the spotlight always grant us happiness," she said. She tapped her cup against his and drank, then sat, silent, perhaps waiting for him to ask the first question.

  Before he could compose a question, she began, jutting her chin and speaking forcefully, as if not expecting him to believe her: "Nobody could touch me on the opti-vault."

  Attentive to his duty, Lewis wrote opti-vault in his legal pad. He had never heard of it.

  "One commentator said I was 'gracefully captivating.' But the titanium was a disappointment. I had worked all my life for the laurel wreath."

  Her voice reminded him of small birds. Finches maybe. Brown finches. He had known people who kept finches in a cage in their living room. He used to watch their cat watch the birds. It would squat under the cage for hours as the birds hopped from their perches to the food bins and back. He had wanted to open the cage and let the cat have a chance.

  Dawn swept her clothes back into her bag, leaving the empty wine bottle. She laughed again. He couldn't help comparing her to the citrus woman—her laugh would be much more alluring. "So I smiled and I said, 'Steve, you just relax, because this is going to be the easiest thing you've ever done.'"

  Who's Steve? Her coach?

  "Then I kissed him, right on the lips." She leaned toward Lewis, cupped his face in both her rough hands, and brought her lips, moist, with a taste of wine, against his.

  He raised his hands to her shoulders, felt the soft skin over hard muscle, stroking the base of her downy neck. With a quick tug, she pulled him from the chair and onto the bed beside her. Her tank top had gotten twisted; one of her small breasts lay bare. He reached for it, rubbed the nipple with a fingertip, but she pushed him back onto the chair. He sat stunned for a moment—why? Still smiling, she seemed in no hurry. She straightened her top and stood. He remained in the chair with his hands in his lap, watching her. She leaned over, kissed him once more, and turned away.

  "Thanks Lewis, I love to be interviewed."

  ~

  A teacher once told Lewis that a person is born with whatever talent will one day become the focus of their life. The trick, she said, was uncovering it. For talent and career often become entangled, so that a person's choice of a career, though they might have an aptitude that carries them through it, is not necessarily their true talent. His problem was, despite college and the years following, he had yet to uncover this mythical talent. He had wanted it to be music; for years he practiced guitar without improvement. Something held him back, a blockage he could never identify. As a youth, he read books constantly (part of the dreamy boy thing that his parents didn't approve of), but at some point during high school he lost that, so when college approached, he had no interest in pursuing literature. He had gone to a moderate-sized state university with a variety of academic options. But none had drawn him. Though he had ended up with a degree in public relations, he couldn't remember the steps leading to it, and he thought it unlikely that public relations was his talent.

  Why couldn't he have been like Gold, knowing from birth that his destiny lay in juggling? Not that Lewis needed to be a performer—a mathematician, that would suit, or biologist, historian, electronic appliance repair—whatever lay inside him, waiting to be discovered, he would embrace it.

  ~

  New faces, new lives...so much newness—the train and its residents. Lewis wasn't accustomed to confronting new mystery with each person he met. And this room, this cabin with its narrow bed and fogged windows. He should leave. Wherever the train next stopped, small town or big city. Joining the circus, however necessary it seemed at the time, had been a mistake.

  He had enough cash to get by for two months, maybe more. Long enough for this overwhelmed feeling to recede.

  Maybe he would visit his family. He hadn't seen his parents since leaving for college. They hadn't gone to his graduation, but then, he hadn't either. Back at Are No's he had started a letter to his sisters. It was still in his journal notebook, unfinished.

  Their parents were military, military doctors. He hadn't turned out the way they wanted. It had always been assumed that he would go to a military academy or, at the least, a school with an officer-training program. As a child, when he built his model airplanes, he always pictured himself in a cadet's uniform. One Saturday morning he took a model of a fighter plane out to the back yard. "I want to burn this," he told his mother.

  "You can't burn a perfectly good airplane."

  He looked at the plane, then dropped it on the driveway. "But the wings broke off."

  His mother locked him in his room.

  "He can't go around destroying representations of government property," he heard her telling his father over the phone.

  "Do you know what a burn victim looks like?" his father said when he got home. Lewis was sitting on the floor playing with toy cars and didn't look up at him. His father shook him, pulled the car out of his hand. "Of course you don't." His father never waited for answers to his questions. "I treat burn victims every week. People who received their burns defending their country. Flying the same planes you took upon yourself to destroy."

  Lewis didn't answer; his father shook him again, picked him up and pushed him down, against the bed, then left the room. After that, Lewis never played with military toys. When he refused to go to the college his parents chose for him, they told him they wouldn't pay for his education.

  He was always surprised, on meeting the parents of friends and girlfriends, that other families weren't like his. During college, he spent several holiday breaks with George Yeow and his family. George had been his roommate for two years in the dorms, and another two sharing a decaying house with several other students. Holidays with George's family were always a warm-hearted whirlwind of conversation and eating. Maybe they were warmer because they were immigrants, because they understood the precariousness of life. Lewis's family had been in the U.S. since the 1840s. His parents exhibited a blind patriotism that didn't allow for any uncertainty.

  One of the reasons he had not wanted to remain with Martha after they finished college was her parents. They had never liked him. She was from one of those declaration of independence families that never married anyone out of their class. They tolerated him, knowing it unlikely that he and Martha would ever marry. He always pictured her mother with her perfect coiffure, sitting back in a plush armchair after a day's arduous socializing, listening to Muzak. Her parents were probably happy now that he had left their daughter, though they wouldn't be pleased with the scandal, the shame of his arson and flight.

  And Martha, she would now have to admit to her parents that their view of Lewis had been vindicated. Poor dear, so wrong about the bad rubbish boy. Her rigidity and anger came from her parents. Maybe if she had broken with them, like Lewis had with his...

  The people of the circus probably thought of each other as family. He didn't think he would ever be able to share in that.

  Chapter 12: A Map

  Dillon sat at his desk with his face bent over a foot-thick, hardbound book. He thumped it shut and looked up at Lewis. "There you are. Weaving yourself into the fabric, I trust?"

  "Sure. I just wanted to ask you about some things." Lewis turned his head to see the title of the book, but Dillon's hand blocked most of it. All he could make out was Monoli...and...scape. Dillon opened a drawer, and with some effort lowered the immense book into it.

  Lewis took the seat opposite him. "I've been exploring the train." He watched Dillon for a reaction. None came. "I found a storage room, and a lounge, and the animals, but then things get a little hazy."


  Dillon's eyes glowed their familiar blue. They made Lewis edgy; he looked down as he spoke. "I found this empty passenger car and walked through it; eventually it seemed to get smaller and smaller until I was on hands and knees."

  "Vehicles perform better if they are designed aerodynamically. A pointed object moves more smoothly than a blunt object. Inherent in structure, but resonating—"

  Impatient, Lewis interrupted. "I understand aerodynamics, I just didn't realize I was walking through a nose cone."

  Dillon opened another drawer and pulled out a pad of paper. He began writing on it. Taking notes on the conversation?

  "So where does the driver sit?" Lewis was again having trouble saying everything he had planned. "I also wanted to make sure you got the press release. And...I somehow missed a performance. I was wondering if—"

  "Splendid. Progress keeps an organization like ours moving swiftly forward, in arcs of ever-increasing complexity." Dillon spread his hands, palms up, and smiled. "We draw near a cycle of heavy involvement. The sun will rise soon on the false and the fair."

  ~

  Lewis wanted isolation. The acrobats were in the dining car, but they would likely pay no attention to him.

  "A plate of your best," he said, before Cinteotl could begin his culinary description. He sat and looked at his food, a bowl of gray mush with bits of meat. Yes, he should leave, flee this train of strange food and stranger people. He ate a spoonful of the mush, which had a strong, fermented taste.

  Two of the acrobats began shouting. One stood and slapped the other. They flung themselves out of the booth and rolled on the floor, fighting, savagely gouging and pummeling as if they were the bitterest of foes. The nose of the acrobat with the long scar across his forehead began spurting an amazing amount of blood, and the two noncombatants separated them, shouting "no recrudescence."