Circus of the Grand Design

by Robert Freeman Wexler

  She placed a hand on top of his head and he turned his face toward hers. "Good morning," he said, trying to act casual. "I'm starved—how about we go see what Cinteotl's got for breakfast."

  With a look suggesting deep, unspoken significance, she handed him a stone figurine, an abstract, female form about the size of his thumb. The stone was black with gold veins; it warmed his palm, and he stared at it, wondering if the warmth came from her having held it, or if it radiated its own heat.

  "Thank you. It's my treasure." He kissed her; she sank back into the mattress, bringing him with her.

  Chapter 22: Rehearsal

  A banging on the door woke Lewis from a dream of flying horses. He sat up, confused. What would happen if Bodyssia broke in and found Cybele in his bed? But Cybele wasn't in his bed. Her disappearance was unsettling. He had thought: this time she'll stay. The figurine lay on the desk. Not wanting whoever was out there to see it, he put it in a drawer. The knocking started again. "I'm coming," he said, and pulled on underwear and shorts.

  Perry, not Bodyssia. "Come on, we've got to rehearse."

  What was Perry talking about? He stood in the doorway, staring at the jockey. Perry reached up and shook his shoulder. "Get it together, man, there's work to do."

  "I'm ready. Meet you in the dining car? Need coffee."

  Lewis sat on the edge of his bed. Horse, something about the horse...socks, those blue ones would do...whose eyes were blue? Perry wanted to rehearse with the horse...their act...that would be it, their act...hadn't prepared an act, he would put on the blue socks though, that would make a good start, and pants, boots even, if he was going to be getting on that horse, the real one, not the flying horse. No, the flying horse had been the dream. Cybele's horse didn't fly.

  For luck, he took Cybele's figurine from the drawer and slipped it into a pocket.

  Perry waited while Lewis drank a cup of coffee and ate a banana. When they reached the elephant car, Dawn and Leonora had finished their own rehearsal, and Barca was moving the elephants into the meadow pen. Dawn waved to Lewis. He wondered how she would act around him. Would she acknowledge their liaison publicly? And if she did, what about Bodyssia?

  He sat on a stool while Perry tethered Gautier in the practice area and removed a saddle from a storage bin. Leonora and Barca left, but Dawn stayed. As she walked toward him, Lewis thought about what his sex with her had been like. He remembered few specifics past his excitation on seeing her underarms. The memory embarrassed him. Wouldn't she find such an attraction odd? He had never thought of himself as someone with sexual fetishes. And Cybele had known, had raised her arms to snare him. Despite the constant arousal Cybele brought him, he appreciated Dawn's humanity. At least he could, after a fashion, understand her. She stood close to him now, brushing her thigh against his and touching his arm while she spoke about how much she had enjoyed their time together.

  Perry called to him. Dawn left. Until now, the significance of what was about to occur hadn't reached him. In the elephant pen the distant trees shook in an unnatural breeze. Prisms of neon emblems rattled through the mists outside the windows. How would he be able to perform in public? His life up to this point meant nothing. His future held Cybele, the horse, the circus. He found himself on the horse, Perry's horse, with Perry leading. Perry was saying something about their script being almost ready. Lewis hadn't been on a horse since summer camp, twelve, fifteen years ago. The gray walls held a texture previously hidden. They reminded him of trees. The train lived. It breathed, it changed, it comforted.

  ~

  "Hard work has its rewards, both concrete and existential," Perry said. He closed the gate of Gautier's stall and followed Lewis. "It opens the possibility of perceiving a wider variety of situations, experiencing more flavors, sights, sounds." When they reached the dining car he told Lewis to wait there for him to get the script.

  Lewis sat at a booth, staring at the clouded windows. Along paths obscure they moved to faraway places. He had lost the desire to leave. The circus had taken him. He reached into his pocket to touch Cybele's warm figurine.

  Bodyssia walked into the dining car. A pink sweatsuit wasn't something he had expected her to wear. It softened her, brought her closer to his size. Funny how color affected perception; he would have to experiment...

  "Prince Lamb!" Her bellow shook him out of his contentment. She picked him up and hugged him.

  "You can't do this," he said, trying to be forceful, but with his face mashed into her neck the words came out muffled.

  "What's that, dear?" She held him out from her so he could speak. He had a sudden vision of her pulling Dawn's arms off. He would have to take care not to anger her. At least she was no longer speaking poetic nonsense. Dangling in her grasp gave everything a new perspective and not one he enjoyed.

  Bodyssia suggested meeting after her workout. When Perry returned, carrying a blue notebook, she lowered him. His feet touched down on the yellow floor. He had rarely seen Perry and Bodyssia standing together. She must have been a foot and a half taller. Perry and Dawn were about the same height; Bodyssia could break either of them apart.

  She reached down to put a hand on Perry's shoulder. "Hey, I was thinking about what you were saying about the difference between chronological and spatial dimensions. It only makes sense if the medium is elastic enough to allow movement in all directions."

  "Exactly, and in most instances it isn't. It needs a catalyst."

  She turned toward the gymnasium car. "See you, Prince."

  "What was that about chronological...?"

  "Something we discussed after a recent show. I ramble on about odd theories, and our companions like to humor me." Perry set his notebook on the table. "Come on now, we have a script to work through."

  He opened the notebook and motioned Lewis to come closer. "I've adapted a section of a play. See here, at the beginning? I go first, then when you approach I challenge you, 'I am Thaliard of Antioch, Me pompae provexit apex. And who art thou, mean knight?' Then you say an aside, then speak to me, then we fight."

  Dawn entered. She had changed into a black leather miniskirt and sleeveless black tee shirt. Had they arranged a meeting?

  "I'm not smelly now." she said, and kissed him. What would Perry be thinking, first Bodyssia, now Dawn?

  Perry handed Lewis the script. "Take this back to your room and copy it over. And learn it." He left.

  "You know, I just never know what to make of Floyd," Dawn said. "I hate to talk badly about someone, but he scares me sometimes, like once he showed me a book on witchcraft."

  "He likes books. So it could have just been a book that had a particular significance in its bindery, or it might have been a rare..." She pushed her tongue into his mouth and he forgot what he had been saying. She kept pushing, with her tongue and with her body until he found himself flat on the table with her on top. Someone would come in...clatter had to be Cinteotl...Bodyssia...

  Dawn pulled away. "I'll save the rest for later," she said.

  He had better leave now, before anyone else appeared. But as he got up Bodyssia emerged from the door Dawn had just passed through.

  "Hey Prince, you're not leaving."

  Could he get out the door before she reached him? "I have to go work on my act. You know how it is." He spoke with as much strength as he could with her rumbling toward him.

  "Well I gotta eat something, so you just go do your thing."

  Her dismissal relieved him. What if she had seen Dawn on top of him? He hadn't asked for attention from either of them and couldn't be responsible for anything...

  "Cute guy." she said, surrounding him with a bear-hug and lifting him. "Now don't forget about later." She put him down.

  Chapter 23: A Promising Place

  The emptiness of his room relieved him. He wasn't ready for another encounter with Cybele. What would his cohorts think if they found out about her? Gold would be jealous at his having such a secretive and mysterious lover. The thought of Gold walking in while
Cybele sat naked on his desk made him smile.

  He spread Perry's script and his legal pad on the desk and started copying.

  ~

  Mean knight you say, and so it seems

  Opinion's but a fool, that makes us scan

  The outward habit for the inward man.

  And who I am, as my actions shall show

  A gentleman of Tyre; my name, Pericles;

  ~

  He couldn't learn this. Sure, in his acting class he had memorized a few short sections of things, but nothing so involved. Ride the mechanical horse, remember his lines...impossible. Pillows of cream...clouds on the ground...aspic. Taking Cybele's figurine from his pocket, he set it on the desk and stared at it, then sketched it on the page beside his script, letting its curves soothe him.

  His forehead rested on the legal pad. Nothing down there that a little hard work can't...what did Betty Jo always say? Bodyssia and Dawn, neither of them helped him once they found out about...Who the fuck was Betty Jo? God, he must have fallen asleep. He would shower, that would wake him, then he could finish copying. In the shower he felt a sudden queasiness, and on leaving the bathroom, a cloudless blue sky hovered outside his windows. Far away, dark shapes moved through acres of grass.

  ~

  Outside, standing on the caboose landing, Lewis inhaled scents of grass and earth. Warm air caressed him, whispered through the tall grasses. Parallel rails stretched from the train to the edge of the world. On one side of the tracks, buildings, and beyond them, a river; on the other side, nothing but the grass. Dillon stood near the rails, hand shielding his eyes from the sun, gazing out at the grassy ocean.

  Lewis walked toward him, passing a sign that said, in large green letters: prairie reconstruction project. Distant bison roamed the high grass. The sun, the bright sun, warmed his cheeks after so long in the train without. Pale blue, the mood lingered. The grass was the sea, and the bison whales surfacing for air. Each time he saw them he imagined a geyser erupting from their blowholes. Their cries, like humpbacks, filled his ears.

  "A promising place, this, do you not agree?" asked Dillon.

  A crow landed on the railing of the caboose. Its appearance startled Lewis, the sleek, blue-black body. And its eyes—what did it know? The single crow always portends tragedy.

  "I have tried many times to direct our path here, but this is my first success; the intangibles have coalesced, fueled by new energies perhaps. We should consider it a sign that you are ready to begin this new chapter of your career."

  It took a moment for Lewis to realize that Dillon referred to a performance. "I can't." He stared at the crow, acid bird of hopelessness, expecting it to utter a gloating laugh. "Script's not ready...trying to polish on paper." His breath dissipated, pulled from him by disdainful magnets orbiting the plain of bison.

  "You are publicist no longer. The circus does not perform on paper. We take our acts before the people. Where we fail, we study and change, where we succeed, we toil further."

  The crow squawked twice and flew off, low over the tall grass, and Lewis's speech returned. "But I have lines to learn. Haven't even practiced on the horse."

  "Follow me then, and find your confidence within."

  Lewis walked behind Dillon through the silent train. They stopped at the door to the empty storage car. "Wait outside," Dillon said; he shut the door behind him.

  Cybele had to be in there, helping Dillon prepare the mechanical horse, but he heard only a faint shuffling noise, then a scraping followed by a low whir. Dillon opened the door. The mechanical horse stood in the middle of the room.

  "Incredible," Lewis said, awed by the brass and enamel, the smooth sides. This wasn't the first time he had been close to it, he had even mounted, but here, with no one else around, its appearance overwhelmed him. "I can get on?"

  Dillon nodded.

  Lewis grasped the pommel and pulled himself up. The horse's sides chilled his bare legs, but the smooth leather saddle comforted. "How do you make it go?"

  "Easily," Dillon said.

  Lewis lifted the reins and nudged the horse's sides with his heels. It walked forward. "I can't believe this," he said. He felt a silly grin taking over his face, and he let it, allowing the realm of excitement to take him. He walked the horse around the car. "I wish there was room to make it go faster," he said. He pulled the reins back to stop. "It moves so easily. I thought it would have to be programmed, like a clockwork toy, or worked by a second party with radio control or something. It's so life-like."

  Dillon motioned toward the door. "I must return the treasure to its vault. I will bring it to the theater as usual, and from there it is up to you."

  Lewis didn't want to dismount, but he knew better than to argue with Dillon. He would ride again soon.

  ~

  The rousing aroma of baking transfixed him. Soft and warm, together with a longing he had thought lost since...no, before Martha. She had been an excuse, not the source. His lack of feeling began before that, when no one would stop his cousin from hitting, not his parents, not his uncle, as though they wanted to see him suffer. "When the going gets tough the tough get going, and the little weak-os give up," his uncle, Mr. Junior High School Football Coach, had often said to him. None of them would do a thing for him.

  Cinteotl had been talking. "Feat viewed rarely and never the same way twice." He pressed down on a ball of dough. "A transformation taught to me by my old friend Alessandro, in which fire, earth, air, and water take a form both nourishing and delectable. Something eaten by princes and peasants, emperors and plebes.

  "And what, you might ask, is this miracle of the kitchen? For of course it is the kitchen of which I speak. If you will put on this blindfold." He handed Lewis a dishtowel smelling of yeast. "While I perform the final, secret step."

  Lewis tied it around his eyes.

  "Now, essence of this, and parcel of that, and you may view the result."

  Lewis pulled off the towel and gazed at the flat loaf in front of Cinteotl.

  "Bravo, Cinteotl, but I don't know if I can stand waiting for it to bake," Lewis said.

  "And that, my friend, is the magic of it all. For I have, before your arrival, baked several lustrous loaves. You have but to request one, and it shall be yours." Without waiting for Lewis to speak, he pulled a loaf from a compartment beneath the counter and slipped it onto a plate.

  Lewis carried the loaf to a booth. Soon, he would be performing, riding Cybele's horse. Perry would have to help him, Perry and everyone else, all those manipulating, egotistical performers; and after, he would be a full member, fellow performer seeking dreams and magnificence. Was that what he sought? He jumped to his feet and ran back toward his room, but stopped. Not his room—Cybele would be there. He knew it and he couldn't face her now. He kept moving, thinking he would go out to the plains and watch the bison, but at the door to the white room he stopped, took hold of the clicking knob, and entered.

  ~

  The light held more substance than before, as though dense particles were attempting to transmute into solid. Shapes swirled around him like the inverse of shadows. As a child, he had seen shapes in the dark of his bedroom at night. He liked these better, these shapes of light. Their configurations changed with each step, strange geometries of multidimensional abstractions, biomorphic forms mixed with isosceles triangles. The light grew softer as he walked, with more yellow and a hint of blue. The shapes became more difficult to see. They blended with the light.

  He walked forward, into the white mist. Each step became a breath, in-step, out-step. He lengthened his breath, allowed it to ease out, counting to four, in-four, out-four, until he had the rhythm. Now he floated in white. The space defined him. The breath carried him. Breathe, let the whiteness calm him. Walk.

  ~

  The facts as he knew them:

  1. The train visited places he had never known to exist;

  a. when the train began transit, his stomach lurched;

  b. the windows clouded
;

  2. None of the other performers commented on any of this.

  ~

  If anyone, besides Dillon of course, had an awareness of their situation, it would be Perry. Now that he was performing with Perry, he could get closer to him, win his confidence, engender trust. He would have to take care not to appear too eager. Answers wouldn't come easily. He would be subtle but persistent. In the end, he would understand everything.

  Stillness enveloped him. Inhale-step, exhale-step. He walked no more, no less, than necessary. Each breath-step brought him closer, took him farther.

  Chapter 24: Scheduling Conflict

  Lewis's costume both soothed and excited him. Its weight, the way he looked in the mirror: mysterious, strong, bold. He had nothing to worry about—the costume would protect him as the white room protected him. As Cybele protected him. He had hoped to find her waiting for him when he returned to his room to change for his first time riding her horse. So that was how it would be. No help from her when he needed it most. On his own...as always.

  He went to see if Perry needed help with Gautier, but the stall was empty. He couldn't be late, not to his first performance. The door-ramp in the elephant car was open, and he hurried down. Nearby was a brick building with a doorway wide enough for the circus animals and equipment. Inside, Perry and Desmonica tied red and blue ribbons to Gautier's bridle.