Girl on a Wire

by Gwenda Bond

  “Novio danced with you?” Remy asked, incredulous. “Who were you . . . This is to me. Were you going to send it?”

  “Give me that. I must have hit your number by accident.” I swiped the phone back from him.

  “Stop,” he said.

  “What?”

  He grinned. “Remember when you told me you wanted to add the word stop at the end of all your texts? To make them more like an old telegram?”

  I smiled, momentarily warmed by the inside joke. Our inside joke. Then a chill slid over me.

  When I’d imagined Remy talking to me again, I hadn’t realized it would hurt to be so close in proximity—now that we didn’t share any other kind of closeness. I changed the subject. “Why would Novio do that?”

  “Novio,” he said, not a question. “Who knows? Maybe he has a crush on you.”

  The way he said it made me pause, and then so did the words. “What does that mean?”

  “You danced with my brother who you can’t stand, so anything could happen. And how can you act so normal? You were threatened today.”

  “I told you already I’m the one person you don’t need to worry about.”

  “I wish I could . . . stop,” he said. “And I wish you would start. If you don’t owe it to me, then don’t you owe it to your cousin, Sam?”

  Before I could say a word, he disappeared into the tent.

  Nan sat at the table in her wrap when I got home, drinking a glass of wine. I went to my room and retrieved the white box with my name across the top, then plunked it in front of her.

  “Jules,” she said, “what is that?”

  I took the chair beside her and pushed the box closer. “Look inside.”

  Someone who knew her less well than me would have missed her intake of breath when she saw it.

  “Creepy, isn’t it?” I asked.

  She closed the lid, examined the block lettering. She traced one perfect red nail across it. “I don’t suppose you know where it came from.”

  “Someone left it at dry cleaning day pickup.”

  She lifted the tacky red, white, and blue scarf from the box, and it took strength I wasn’t sure I had not to cringe as she held it up at my neck. Like she was testing how it would go there. Then she cupped both of her hands and held the scarf draped within them, closing her eyes and murmuring unintelligibly.

  “Nan?”

  Her eyes flicked open and she dropped the fabric back into the box, shut the lid, and slid it toward me. “Throw that away. It wasn’t a gift, but it has no power to hurt you.” She paused. “But, remember, that doesn’t mean nothing can.”

  She hardly needed to say it. I was hurting enough already.

  I crawled into bed and tapped out a text to Remy: That new scarf scared me. You’re right. I do owe Sam. I owe you. Then I plunked the phone onto my nightstand without sending it or even bothering to save it.

  thirty-three

  * * *

  Finally, the next day, I did send a text to Remy. Not any of the ones in the saved drafts folder, but a new one, asking for help.

  And then I nervously spent a half hour in my room sorting through outfits. I wanted to look my best, but without obviously attempting to look my best. It was an insanity-breeding state of affairs, especially since I couldn’t consult with Nan, given what I was up to. I settled on a black top with a V-neck that segued into a gathered front seam with tiny red roses along it, paired with my favorite pair of worn jeans and sequined slippers.

  I had no idea whether Remy would meet me or not. But I let myself hope as I made my way to Thurston’s office. A place I hadn’t returned to since our breakup.

  When I arrived, there he was. Waiting. His eyes raked me from head to toe.

  “Hi,” I said, muffled when the wind blew my hair into my face. I had to fight to push it back. A few strands stuck to my lipstick, and then got caught on my costume jewelry ring. Nice and awkward.

  He was almost smiling at my ridiculous flailing.

  I extricated my hand from my hair. That part was graceful enough. “Thanks for coming.”

  Remy pushed away from the side of the trailer and went a few steps toward the door. “You know I have your back on this.”

  Well, that was noncommittal about us. But he was here at my side to confront Thurston. I wanted to map the territory, know if the distance I needed to travel to get back to him was impossible.

  “What should we say if someone sees us together?” I asked, though we hardly planned to stay out here long.

  “That we’re just friends.”

  I kicked the grass. That had been our first cover story. “Are we?”

  I didn’t want to say anything more, and I didn’t have to. He was so good at anticipating where my thoughts would go. I’d missed that about him too.

  “Just friends, you mean?” he asked, quietly. He took a step closer.

  “Friends,” I clarified. “Are we friends?”

  He gave me an odd look. “As far as I’m concerned, we are.”

  It was a starting place I could work from. After all the mystery was behind us, maybe it could be like the bad part of our past never happened. I wasn’t ready to give up on the possibility, no matter how slim and delusional.

  “Okay, then,” I said, “friend. We’d better do this.”

  “You brought the new scarf?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Nan said it’s not magic.”

  He shook his head at that, but stepped forward and knocked on Thurston’s door. “Remy,” I blurted before I could stop myself. He half turned. “I’ve missed you. I watch your act, every time.”

  No visible reaction. But he said, “I watch yours too.”

  “I . . .” I wasn’t sure what to say, but there had to be something else. Or I could reach out and touch him. Try to make things right between us that way.

  The door swung open, Thurston checking his watch. “Right on time. Come in.” But then he did a double take. “I was only expecting Jules. I hope you don’t think I’m leaving you two alone in here.”

  “We have something to discuss with you,” I said.

  “Maroni-Garcia business,” Remy added.

  A spark of intrigue flared in Thurston. He swept a hand out, indicating we should come in. I could see him watching for any tiny clue about whether we were together together.

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to my family,” I said, sending him a message that this wasn’t for gossip. “For the time being.”

  He shut the door behind us, made the “lips sealed” motion with his fingers. “As long as they don’t ask, I will continue not to tell.”

  The valise with the posters was out on the coffee table. I settled on the couch and Remy eased down next to me. Not so close we were touching, alas.

  Rather than start with the creepy gift scarf and a direct confrontation, I decided to go fishing first. Giving Remy a look, I opened the valise and flipped to the poster of our grandparents’ joint act. Nan was as radiant as I remembered, and Roman was the picture of strength.

  Thurston sat down in a chair to the side of the table. “I’m aware you have a family rivalry,” he said, “but I didn’t think there was anything major between you now. Is there?”

  Remy ignored the question. “What do you know about that act?”

  Thurston studied the poster. “It wasn’t long-running. That’s why the poster is so rare. I believe they only did it for three months. By the end of the summer, your grandmother had retired from that show. She didn’t perform again until the following year, and by then she’d moved to a small circus out in the Midwest.”

  Remy touched the plastic beside his grandfather’s face. “What about Granddad?”

  “You knew him,” Thurston said, carefully. “I don’t see how I can add anything more. I just know the stories. That he had a reputation for high standards. That he wanted everyone to excel, and that he expected it of them—demanded they try to be as good as him. That was probably impossible for most peopl
e. Your mom is said to have some of his hard-driving qualities.”

  “You know more about that summer, don’t you?” I asked. “We want to hear it.”

  Thurston hesitated, then cleared his throat. “You must mean the way your grandmother left it. You’ve never heard the stories?”

  “Never,” I said.

  “Well,” Thurston said, his eyes fixed on the painted versions of Nan and Roman, “it wasn’t pretty. The accounts I’ve read come from journals, a few personal interviews. It was . . . operatic. Your grandmother was confronted by the entire circus community. They showed up at the door to her small caravan, where she lived with your father and Sam’s, both just boys then. Roman, I’m sad to say, was leading the charge. When she opened it, they stood there, a sea of angry people, convinced she was a witch and that she’d caused harm to the circus. I know the circus is a family, but families can be cruel. They told her she was no longer welcome. One person remembered people shouting that they would not suffer a witch to live among them. She had no choice but to leave. She had to protect her children.”

  Somehow, despite everyone saying Nan had been run off, I hadn’t taken it so literally. Hearing this, it made sense that she’d had no second thoughts about taking Roman’s coin. “That’s terrible,” I said.

  Remy reached out, and took my hand. It helped. More than he could know.

  “That’s not all you know, boss,” Remy said. “We read the letter my grandfather sent you. We know he told you about the old magic everyone believed in back then. Do you believe in it? We want to know if you’ve been trying to scare Jules, to get the coin back.”

  Thurston’s head went back like he’d been struck. And then he leaned forward. “I never believed the coin he mentioned had any power. I believe in illusion, not magic. I believe in feats of daring that are real. I chose to court the Maronis with a more generous paycheck. Now, what has happened to Jules? What do you mean about scaring her?”

  I nodded, convinced. I’d never felt like Thurston had any desire to cause me harm. But Remy said, “Show him.”

  So I removed the scarf I’d received from my jeans pocket. Being balled up on the trip here had caused creases in the thin fabric, but he’d recognize it if he’d seen it before. I lay it on the poster of our grandparents.

  “What is that?” he asked, genuinely bewildered.

  “Nothing,” I said. “A practical joke.”

  “It’s the furthest thing from a joke,” Remy said. Tension stretched out in the air between the three of us. I said, “It’s not him.”

  Remy said, “I think you’re right. Did my grandfather tell you anything else we should know?”

  Thurston shook his head. “I assumed it was all a fantasy of his. He was bitter when I met him. Like he had a poisoned soul.” He blinked as he realized what he’d said. “I’m sorry.”

  Remy swept the scarf off to one side and closed the book. “You’re right. He was.”

  There was a long silence, and then Thurston spoke again. “You know, when I decided to start the Cirque, it was just something I could afford to throw money at. It didn’t really matter if it crashed and burned. If it did, I could have gone back to HQ and rededicated myself to my original mission. And if it succeeded, then I’d have another win on my hands. This summer has helped me understand that I’ll never be born-and-bred circus the way you and your families are, never understand it like you do. But the safety of my performers is of the utmost importance to me. I’d never put them at unnecessary risk.”

  “Give it a generation or two,” I said. “Or at least a few years. After a while, no one will ever know you weren’t circus to start with.”

  He nodded, thoughtful. “How did you do it, Jules? Push yourself from good to great? Should I put stock in the notion of magic coins?”

  Remy stilled. It was impossible not to notice when he went motionless, because he was usually so filled with energy. He was rarely truly still. Some part of him was always swinging through the air at high speed, even when he was sitting next to me.

  I worried that Thurston would notice. The last thing we needed was to have him start believing in magic now.

  “You should know my secret better than anyone,” I said. “Aren’t you the king of the overnight breakthrough?”

  He rolled his eyes at himself. “You’re right. We don’t know. It just happens, after a million hours of work. And then we forget about the million hours.”

  A little truth wanted to show itself, to offer an apology that we’d come here to accuse him. “I do think something spurred me on, during that walk in Chicago. It was anger. I was angry about Sam.”

  Thurston’s relaxation vanished. I was almost sorry I’d said it.

  “Oh,” he said. “But that was an accident. Terrible. But an accident. One I will never forget as long as I live.”

  I wanted to say, No, no, it wasn’t. Instead I said, “That you kept going after that tragedy, despite the pain, is what will make you circus. Just give it a while.”

  Those of us who were born into the circus grew up with the sad stories. The fires, the train crashes, the overtired brother who brought down a pyramid stunt. They were the worst-case scenarios, not something any of us would ever court. All the superstitions were designed to protect us from them. But whoever had planted those objects was flouting that tradition. The red, white, and blue scarf was a reminder that someone else’s clock was ticking. The note had said “until the end of the season,” a handful of shows away now. The coin prevented me from being harmed directly, but the fact was plain: whoever had started this twisted game was playing with our lives.

  That girl above Jacksonville had been desperately certain that all she needed was what I now had. Our family’s spot on top reclaimed, our name remade. But she’d been wrong.

  Remy stood. “Sorry about this, Thurston.” He looked at me. “We’d better be going. Shall we?”

  I was surprised to see Remy offering me his elbow. I picked up the scarf and put it back in my pocket, then linked my arm through his. Every nerve in my skin gathered in the crook of my elbow as we touched. Thurston saw us out, and we kept walking.

  Finally Remy stopped and gently removed his arm from mine. I wished I could protest.

  “You’re going to have to talk to her,” he said. “Your Nan. Demand to know the truth. Jules, do you think . . . She wouldn’t hurt you?”

  I pictured the coin, and the scene Thurston had told us she’d endured all those years ago. I didn’t have many answers, but I had this one. “She would never.”

  “Just making sure.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said, and left him there, even though I wanted to stay.

  I finally had to look, unblinking, at the possibility I’d denied since the beginning of the season. What if Nan had been guilty all along? Not of coming after me, but of something bad enough that the circus performers had justification in casting her out as a witch. Terrible, destructive behavior that was still haunting her, and that had put a target on my back, and on Sam’s.

  thirty-four

  * * *

  Nan was alone in the living room when I returned. I pulled over a chair from the kitchen and sat down in it in front of her, blocking the TV and whatever movie was on TCM. It was in color, and something I didn’t recognize. Which meant she hadn’t really been watching it.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “You did it, didn’t you? Those accidents that happened back then, you did it out of jealousy—over Roman Garcia.”

  She didn’t respond right away. Her lips pressed thinner. “It’s not what you think. Not exactly.”

  “What is it? Because I’m not leaving this chair without knowing. Not this time. This time you have to tell me the truth.”

  Our eyes met.

  I said, “We have to figure out who’s behind this, and there’s not much time left. It has to end. For Sam, for me. For you. It needs to end with this season. Our lives can’t go on this way forever, wondering when that green scarf will t
urn up and where. The coin may keep me safe, but no one else is.” I realized with a sense of panic that it was true. I had been fooling myself. No more. “Someday whoever this is will get tired of failing. Or they’ll realize I have Roman’s good luck coin and move on to someone who doesn’t. Then what? What if they target Dad?”

  Nan wrung her hands like she held a cloth and was squeezing water out of it. It was a painful motion to watch.

  “The truth. Part of me has been waiting for you to demand it all along. I don’t know if it will solve anything, but okay.” Her fingers twisted around each other, over and over, while I waited. She began to speak.

  “My mother could always do magic, but she mostly confined herself to small tricks. Her talent was that she could make things more than they were. Whatever essence was in them, she knew ways to draw it out. It was a skill passed down in whispers. For her, it was about helping someone with a good luck charm, or maybe getting rid of someone who was in the way of a romance. Bringing out the essence of a mixture of herbs to heal a bad cough, to make an illness fade. Nothing so big. Nothing so dangerous. She also had a gift with the cards—the set she made was different. Special. I know how to read them because of her. But she truly just wanted to help people. She was circus, but my mother, above all, she was content with her place. Happy to be where she was, who she was. You would have loved her, Julieta. She was a light. She never hurt a soul.”

  My breathing felt thin. Souls had been hurt, just not by Great Grandnan. That was the implication. I gripped the edges of the chair beneath me on either side.

  “But I was more ambitious, I guess. I was never satisfied. I had the idea to move past simple, honest remedies. I got my start by picking the most superstitious objects I could think of and empowering them . . . and, in the process, I discovered new ways that the old magic could be used.”

  I shot her a questioning look, and then she took a deep breath and continued.

  “I’m getting ahead of myself. I told Roman about what I could do, how I’d learned to one-up her magic. How I’d found ways to call more out of certain objects, to make them actively powerful. I suppose I was . . . no, I know, now, that I was bragging. I wanted him to love me, to be fixated on me the way I was on him. To see how unique and different I was from his other women. I was young, Jules. I was all alone except for my sons. I was lonely, I wanted so much more.”