Circus of the Grand Design

by Robert Freeman Wexler

A man and woman holding hands passed from the opposite direction. Both wore the yellow smocks. They smiled and nodded to him. A chipmunk darted across a fallen tree.

  The path split, marked by another inscription, "Here, where the hand of violence shed the blood of the innocent..." He chose the left and soon came to a grassy area at least a hundred yards wide. Several dozen people moved through the meadow, walking dogs, throwing balls. Others lay on blankets beside picnic baskets.

  He wanted to ask someone why this domed park existed, why life here appeared to be centered indoors, but as Perry said, they had to follow the dictates of the locale. Questions would draw unwanted attention. Passing a trio of jugglers, two women and a man, he wondered what Gold would say about this group's skill level. Probably sneer. He climbed onto a rocky outcropping for a better view of the park, and there was Gold, approaching the other jugglers. Gold pulled out three balls, yellow, green, and blue, and began to juggle.

  Two people stopped to watch, then a few more. Some wore the smocks, others didn't. The people scattered around the meadow were grouped by smocked and smockless. He wished he knew more about the social structure here. The smocks gave everyone an appearance of same-ness, making it hard to distinguish individual features. He saw one smocked man talking to a couple of non-smockers. One of the non-smocked was small, about Perry's size, and wore a dark-colored round hat with a narrow brim; the other man was about the same height as the smocked man, but heavier, with dark hair and a full beard.

  The two non-smocked watched the jugglers, nodding at something the smocked man said. They appeared to be paying closest attention to Gold. Lewis looked away from the men, and spotted Dawn and Leonora walking toward the jugglers from the far side of the meadow. He didn't feel like talking to any circus people, so he slid down the backside of the rock and returned to the hotel.

  ~

  Later, Lewis woke from a nap and took the elevator down to the second floor, where the hotel guidebook showed a cafe. He ordered a cup of coffee and sat in a plush armchair. The performance would be happening soon, but he still had no desire to see his companions. He put his coffee cup down next to a fashion magazine—the cover showed a dark-haired woman with a midriff-length smock laced together over her otherwise bare breasts. He hadn't seen anything like that in his walk around the mall and park. In his sphere, fashion magazines didn't match the way real people looked either. The dim light made reading the magazine difficult, but he flipped through the pages, looking at pictures. All the models wore the smocks, though, like the cover photo, the cuts varied. Apparently they were adaptable to the dictates of fashion.

  Spheres. Had he accepted that explanation? Martha was here, but not his Martha. That much was obvious. Bubbles and spheres—this city, mall-town, wherever it was, existed under a bubble. Artificial like the train, no breezes, no rain, no sun. But the train at least was his. This place and its ways, alien and unfriendly. After their performance, he would return to his room on the train to spend the night with Cybele. Though her pull was less insistent here, he felt incomplete without her.

  A man entered the café. Lewis recognized him, one of the unsmocked who had been watching the jugglers, the small one with the hat. Odd coincidence that he would show up at the hotel. The man moved to the counter to order. He must be staying at the hotel too. It wasn't that large a town.

  The smockless waitress approached to refill Lewis's cup, but he shook his head. Time to prepare for the show.

  Chapter 28: Further Adventures under the Mall Town

  Aside from the late arrival of the acrobats, the performance flowed smoothly, and when the crew gathered afterwards, Dillon announced that he was taking them to dinner. Everyone removed their costumes backstage like the previous night, then returned to their rooms to clean up. Showered and changed, Lewis sat on a lobby couch near the elevators. Abigail walked by; she waved but didn't stop. He still needed to see what else she knew, but perhaps there would be a chance later, before he returned to the train, to Cybele.

  The elevator doors opened and Miss Linda emerged. She glanced around the lobby, spotting Lewis. "I've made a pledge to be sociable," she said.

  A smudge of whiteface makeup showed on one cheek and on the front of her maroon sweatshirt. He had become so accustomed to her clown face it was odd to see her without it. Her cheekbones were sharper than he remembered. She remained near him but looked away, toward the hotel's reception area. The elevator doors opened again, discharging more of their group, and she moved behind the couch.

  Desmonica flopped down beside Lewis. "I'm a tired momma," she said. "It's got to be a boy in there. János Junior—how does that sound?"

  When everyone had arrived, Dillon led them across the vast lobby to the "Colonial Steakhouse."

  The interior was similar to the breakfast restaurant, same type of tables, same George Washington reproduction on the wall. The hostess, a cheerful, red-haired woman in a frilly skirt, who talked to their group as if they were school children, seated them in the center of the restaurant, where several tables had been pushed together to accommodate their party. A balcony with smaller tables overlooked the room. Everyone was there but Barca, apparently not allowed to join them even for a private function.

  Lewis sat beside Perry, and Miss Linda beside him. Cinteotl sat across the table, between Bodyssia and Brisbane. Lewis had never seen Cinteotl outside his kitchen.

  Dillon cleared his throat and stood. "My friends. Now, I know toasts are usually proclaimed after the meal, but I felt we should conduct them first tonight, rather than subjoin." He raised his glass. "I want to say that I have never had with me a more dynamic group than the one present at this table. To us."

  "To us," everyone said, and they drank.

  Next, Dillon toasted the mothers-to-be, then Brisbane: "Garson says he is coming along nicely."

  Everyone yelled: "Brisbane!" Bodyssia got up and lifted him into the air. He grasped his hands over his head and gave a whooping cheer.

  "And so, to dinner," Dillon said. He sat down, and one of the acrobats began a song in his language; the other three joined. Though Lewis couldn't understand the words, the melody and sound of their voices thrilled him. Someone tapped a rhythm on the table, another hummed along, and soon all were humming and tapping with foot or hand.

  When the song ended, a movement in the balcony caught Lewis's attention. The red-haired hostess unhooked a swing that had been clipped to the railing. She maneuvered herself onto the flat seat and began to sway back and forth above them. The waiters delivered the first course, a crunchy seaweed salad. A few people, including Dillon, looked up occasionally from their food to watch the swinging woman.

  Lewis whispered to Perry: "I didn't see any Oblong Henry in the bookstore here."

  "Didn't expect to," Perry said. "Things here—"

  "Why do we stay? It's not fair to Barca—he can't even be with us at the banquet." The red-haired woman returned to the swing carrying an acoustic guitar.

  "We can't leave until the show has run it course. That's our way, and Barca understands."

  "Did you ever hear about Granite and Butterfly?" Bodyssia asked Lewis. "Butterfly would stand on the bottom end of a teeterboard. Then Granite would jump down on the high end to pop her into the air. Wings would sprout from her backpack, and she would glide around singing."

  Jenkins handed Perry a bottle of wine and asked him something. Perry turned away from Lewis and tilted his mouth close to Jenkins's ear.

  The woman strummed her guitar and sang. Her voice rose and fell with her swinging, making it difficult to hear. Lewis caught occasional lyrics, something about Butch, a playground bully, and in another, a cowboy named Ramsey. The songs mixed with the surrounding conversations—Gold and Desmonica offering baby names, two acrobats arguing about netball scoring, Bodyssia describing the hotel's exercise equipment to anyone listening. The courses kept coming, a purple flower with wide, thick petals sautéed in butter, steamed greens with long, hollow stalks, breaded and fried things tha
t resembled soft-shelled crab but appeared to be made from vegetable protein.

  Was he thinking Cybele's name or did someone just say it aloud? A waiter refilled his wine glass; Lewis looked at it suspiciously. How many glasses had he drunk?

  "You of course know the basic mythological background," Jenkins said.

  "Of course," Perry said.

  "There are conflicts over which is the older of the two versions. I opt for the Tale of Renewal, though I suppose I made the choice more from its artistic merits than logic. And because our own horse reminds me of it."

  "Yes, it does. And sometimes I wonder—"

  Two of the acrobats shouted across the table at each other, making Lewis miss the rest of Perry's statement.

  "The act of valor, and the passage across the parched landscape," Jenkins said. "I've always had a penchant for acts of valor. Though of course their historical origins are always less grandiose than the myth. But the idea of one chosen man on the magical horse braving harsh elements to bring the land back to fruitfulness has a romantic appeal."

  "Except his reward is castration and abandonment."

  Jenkins laughed, slapping the table. That was the most animated Lewis had ever seen him.

  "No meaningful story has a happy ending," Jenkins said.

  Their conversation turned to the subject of horses, the flesh-and-blood variety. Lewis wished he could have heard their whole exchange. He felt someone rubbing his shoulders and looked up.

  "Clowns relieve tension, it's my job," Miss Linda said.

  Had he looked tense? "Feels great," he said and closed his eyes, wondering whose job was to relieve the clown's tension.

  Desert finally came, with coffee and after-dinner drinks. Dillon stood and raised his glass. "And now, we bid farewell to this meal. Matinee tomorrow—please attempt to acquire sufficient sleep." He drained his glass and turned to go.

  Miss Linda whispered in Lewis's ear: "I've got to go too," and fled the room.

  "Wow, I've never seen her move so fast," Gold said.

  Jenkins and Perry left; the rest stayed to finish the remaining wine. The woman on the swing still played her guitar, now fingerpicking a sad-sounding instrumental, but the crowd in the restaurant had thinned; Lewis planned to do the same.

  "We're going back to my room to play some Whassis," Dawn said. "You want to join us?"

  "No thanks. I think I'll go to bed. I'm pretty done in."

  She smiled and blew him a kiss. These circus people with their false dramatic flair—at one time a kiss from Dawn would have thrilled him. Now, nothing. He walked out with them, said goodnight when the elevator reached his floor.

  He stuffed his clothes into his bag and went back to the lobby, where he asked the smockless woman at the check-in for Abigail, then sat on the couch, nervously rehearsing what he would say. When she arrived, he found himself speaking with confidence, telling her that he needed to return to the train, requesting that she arrange access. Though why would he question his abilities? Of course she would help him. He rode the horse. And she, whatever hierarchy the smocks signified, merely worked in a hotel.

  She told him to go back to where the crew had met before the performance, describing a nearby door that opened to the loading dock. She would call to have the night security guard let him through.

  He found the double-door that opened to the loading ramp where he had entered the first night. It would be so nice to lay down beside Cybele, lose himself in her limonene scented skin. She...But no, what he really wanted was to stare at a blue sky. Long ago he had noticed that if you concentrated enough, the blue began to change form, to flow in and out of the spectrum, a living thing of blue. Damn this mall-town, Cybele, and the circus. Give him a shack in the hills and he would be happy. He recalled the first time during his tenure with the circus that he had gotten off the train—Bellmouth Bay, or something like that—and his joy at being outside. He was meant to be a man of the trees and fields.

  Where was that security guard? This city, any city, and especially the train, could never be his home. His circus friends though, he would miss them. Dawn, with her voice like tinkling high notes on a piano, Gold's arrogance, Perry. But goodbye was still far away.

  A man came down the hall and told Lewis to follow him through the double-doors. Lewis picked up his bag. The man looked familiar, but the smocks made everyone look alike.

  "We need to wait here a minute," the man said.

  Lewis recognized him from the park, the one he had seen watching the jugglers and talking to the two smockless men. The door behind them opened, but before Lewis could turn around, a weight struck the back of his head.

  ~

  Something—the passage of the train, Cybele's selection of him as myth-fulfillment consort—had elevated his awareness in such a way that he...felt. Not a physical sense, but a subconscious awareness of everything around him. Whereas the other performers withdrew on an inward-seeking course, he grew into a role far beyond what his mundane origins would have indicated. Though the understanding came to him in a rush, as he fell the four or five feet from the loading dock, he knew that in a sense it had always been with him, locked up and unusable for conducting his life. And his rootless life was but a symptom of this buried awareness. In psychological terms, he was hidden from himself.

  What course then, for this newly self-aware person? He hit the pavement and blackness replaced his speculations.

  ~

  Lewis lay in the dark. His shirt clung to his skin, damp, sticky, stiffening. Pain unraveled his right side, and the bare concrete floor pushed against his bones. He touched the back of his head: a bump, tender but it didn't feel bloody. Someone had hit him? When he tried to sit up, the pain in his side made him cry out. He became aware of loud, ragged breathing, somewhere near. His left hand touched a wall; he pushed himself against it and sat up, pulling his knees close as protection. His right leg hurt to bend.

  He strained to locate the source of the breathing and laughed, a dry gasping chuckle. The ragged breathing was his own.

  "So what the hell happened," he said aloud. He heard a rustle, barely audible over the sound of his heartbeat. This time it couldn't be him.

  "Is that Lewis?" a voice from far away asked. Who here could know his name? Again the voice. "It must be you. I can recognize your scent."

  But he didn't smell, did he? Not like Dawn when she finished her elephant rehearsals. The voice reminded him of someone, its hesitancy, the way the phrases turned down, like gasps. He had known so many people in his life. It could be anyone.

  "Are you hurt? Lewis?"

  Yes, he knew that voice, or at least one similar.

  "They got me after the dinner. Running back to my room. They were in the elevator. I don't like riding elevators with other people, but I needed to get back to my room so, no choice, and they grabbed me, took me down and down. They said they'd let me go after they got what they wanted."

  "Miss Linda?" Yes, her voice, speaking faster, but hers. He crawled toward her.

  Later, but how much later he couldn't know, he woke with his head in her lap. His body jerked, and he sat partway up. Firm hands against his shoulders pushed him back down.

  "Stay still," she said. "You passed out. You need to rest." He tried to speak, but his throat was dry.

  "They gave me a little water," she said. She pressed a bottle against his lips and tilted it up; he swallowed a mouthful, then another. "That's enough for now." She pulled the bottle away.

  He closed his eyes. Something touched his face, a soft, stroking. Miss Linda's fingers, strong fingers, they calmed him. What of their predicament? Who then, to lead the troops to victory? Shapes flowed in and out. Was the ceiling always this close? He opened the rear door of Martha's car and got out. His car was parked beside it. Martha leaned over and listed things she wanted him to buy her. Her mother sat beside her on the front seat. Was it his Martha or the smocked Martha?

  "I was just having the oddest dream," he said to Miss Linda. She bro
ught the bottle back to his lips and gave him another swallow. "Thanks." He reached up to touch her with his unhurt arm, found her shoulder with his fingers.

  "Maybe they're all in on it," he said. His arm was too heavy to keep where it was. He let it flop onto his chest. They would be missed at the matinee, but no one would be able to find them. What did these people want? It had to be the mechanical horse. Abigail had sent him down to meet the alleged security guard. She knew Lewis was the rider and had alerted the gang. They had probably taken Miss Linda first because they had the opportunity, but he was the real target. Cybele would have to rescue them. No one else had the power.

  "I think I would go mad, here in the dark alone," Miss Linda said. "I haven't even tried to find a door. Sat where they left me, then they brought you in. I'm going to get up now and feel around. I need to rest your head on something."

  "Help me take my shirt off." He tried to raise his arms, but they were too heavy.

  "No, you need to stay warm. Use mine." He felt the bottom of her sweatshirt slide up behind him. She held him by his shoulders and replaced her lap with the folded shirt.

  The sounds of her movement blended with the rushing in his ears. Was the room over a subterranean stream? Everything moved. He lay in the middle of a footbridge suspended over a deep gorge. The bridge swayed; he was afraid to stand. Far below, water crashed over rocks. Spray misted the air. He could make out a rainbow where the sun struck the spray. A cry sounded. Had someone fallen into the gorge?

  "They left my bag!" A glow appeared, revealing Miss Linda squatting on the floor with a canvas shoulder bag. Her white bra reflected the flashlight's glow. She pointed the light toward him. "I keep a small flashlight in my bag," she said.

  "I can sit up against the wall now," he said. "You should put your shirt back on."

  "It's okay. Tee-shirt in my bag, and a small can of lycopodium too. We might be able to use it to get out of here."

  "Lycopody...?"

  "Clown fire. Powder. Expose it to air and it reacts, explodes, then the air puts it out." She held the light in her mouth and rummaged through the bag.