Tommy raised his head. “Who’s that on the stairs?”
Angelo came into the change room. “Trailer’s all packed. Any of this stuff go in the trailer? Sure that’s all? Okay, Papa and I will take it out tonight.” He looked around the room. “All cleaned up, I see—nothing left for Lu to do down here. Somebody will come in and do the floor next week, after we’re gone.”
Barbara joined them in the hall. “Mario, Lucia wants you to stay in the house tonight so you can get an early start tomorrow. If you have to drive all the way out to that place of yours and all the way back in tomorrow morning, she said it will hold up Papa Tony an extra hour.”
Mario shrugged. “Okay with me. I ought to call Eddie, though. I sublet my place to a kid from the ballet school—”
“Anybody I know?”
“I don’t think so. Eddie Keno.”
“I’ve seen him,” Barbara said. “Chubby guy with dark curls, the one who did the Toymaker in The Nutcracker last year? Nice, high voice, kind of sissy?”
Mario nodded. “Yeah, that’s Ed. Been so many years since I’ve seen the Nutcracker you kids do at the school, I’d forgotten he was in it this year.”
“But the whole school was talking about it—didn’t Mr. Court tell you? There was this big fuss, because he wanted to do it on pointe the way Sergiev did it in New York—”
“I don’t really know him all that well, Barbie,” Mario said, frowning.
Even Tommy could see that the frown meant Drop it, but Barbara chattered on, not noticing. “There was quite a row. Eddie said that Nijinsky did Spectre de la Rose that way, and it was stupid not to let the men do it, and Court said that in his ballet only women dance on pointe.” Barbara giggled. “What he said was, ‘In my ballet, only real women dance on pointe—’”
“For God’s” sake,” Angelo broke in, strained, “don’t you two start yammering about ballet! If you’ve got anything to take care of out there, Matt, I can drive you out before supper, pick up anything you need, get you back in plenty of time.”
“Good old Angelo,” Mario chuckled, “Still checking up on the kids.” He added to Tommy, “He used to do that all the time when we were on the road—line us all up and count noses before the train pulled out.” He put an arm around Angelo’s shoulders. “Thanks anyhow, Angelo, but I brought all my stuff up here, and Eddie’s got a key already. But he ought to know I’m not going to be back, in case he wants to use the place tonight.”
“Why would that make any—” Barbara started, then giggled. “Oh, you mean in case he wants to take his girlfriend there or something?”
“Yeah,” said Mario, “that’s it. I’ll call him after supper.”
Barbara said, “I found your other sneakers, Tommy. They were with Clay’s in the back hall.”
“Thanks, Barbie.”
“I’m going to miss you,” she said as they moved along the hallway. “It’s dumb going to the movies on Saturday with my kid brother. And Clay goes off to sit with that batch of little brats from the grade school. I wish I was coming on tour with you. Liss did when she was my age.”
Angelo smiled down at the girl. “You ought to have fixed that up with Lucia. Too late for this season. Next year, maybe.”
“Anyway, that would get Lucia back on the road,” Mario said. “She’d have to come and look after Barbie, and what do you want to bet she’d be willing to manage us again?”
“I wouldn’t want to bet either way,” Angelo said. “But with you doing the triple, it’s a cinch we won’t be with Lambeth any longer than this one more year.”
“I haven’t seen it yet,” Barbara complained as they started up the stairs. “You always practice when I’m at school. Are you going to do it tonight?”
Mario looked across at Tommy and asked, “How about it? Is this one of my lucky days?”
“What do you think I am, a crystal ball or something? I don’t even know if you’re going to do it in the act regular this year!”
“If I was, we wouldn’t be going with Lambeth.” Mario said. “No, I’m not ready for that. I want to do like I did last year: practice it, stick it in the act now and then when I’m feeling on top of it—no fanfare, no fuss. I don’t want to put it in regular till I can get it every time.”
“Pipe dream number seven,” Angelo laughed. “Even Barney Parrish never managed to do it more than nine times out of ten.”
“And I figure I get four out of ten, and I never try it unless I’m having a good day.”
They were in the upstairs hall now. Tommy noticed an old and battered suitcase outside his door and asked, “You going to sleep in here with me tonight, Mario?”
Mario hesitated. “Guess not. The room Johnny had is empty now. I’ll put my suitcase in there. Is all your stuff down in the trailer, Tommy?”
“Everything except my costume for tonight and the clothes I’m going to wear tomorrow.”
Mario took the suitcase from Barbara when she picked it up. “Don’t you haul that heavy stuff around, honey. You want to see a triple? Okay, I’ll show you one. Considering, of course, that all you might see is me going for the net.”
“I’ll settle for that if I have to,” Barbara said, “but, Mario, why is that triple thing so fantastically difficult anyhow? Every flyer worth the name does a double, and Lu used to do a two-and-a-half. Yet only one in a hundred ever does a triple. There was Gerard Might, and Barney Parrish, and Jim Fortunati, and now you. Does that extra somersault really make all that much difference?”
Tommy had wondered about that himself. His own transition from a single back somersault to a one-and-a-half, with the extra half turn that threw not his wrists but his feet into the catcher’s hands, had been accomplished without much trouble.
Mario leaned against the doorframe. “Damned if I know,” he said, frowning. “There used to be a theory that after two turns an acrobat couldn’t control his muscles anymore, that his body was moving too fast for the brain to control. Parrish and Fortunati tore that theory all to hell. But unless you’re awfully good, even two turns will get you so confused you can’t get yourself sorted out in time to find the catcher.”
“I can’t figure that out,” Barbara said. “When Johnny was teaching us to work on the trampoline, he could do six, seven somersaults. Even Clay can do two, and once I did four. Why is it so different? Is it just because it’s forty feet up?”
Tommy said, “Look, on the trampoline, you don’t—”
Angelo said, in the same breath, “For God’s sake, there’s a lot more momentum—” then stopped, laughed, and looked at Mario.
Barbara said, injured, “I was only asking.”
Mario did not smile. “No, Barbie, nothing to do with the height. The thing is, on the ground, or on the trampoline, you touch between each turn and get yourself sorted out, reoriented. But up on the rigging, you have the momentum of your swing, and the weight of the bar, to give you more speed. If you make two whole turns between the time you leave the bar and the time you reach the catcher, you’re moving twice as fast, and you’re fighting gravity, too. Two turns at that speed will make anybody dizzy, but if you have your muscles under control, you can make two fast flips and still have just a tiny fraction of time left to find out where the catcher is. But in order to have room for three whole turns between the fly bar and the catcher, first of all you have to swing so high, and so fast, that when you come off that bar you’re moving like a cannonball.” He gestured. “Jim Fortunati told me, when I was a little kid, that he figured it out at sixty-two miles an hour, and he’s more of a brain than I am, so I’ll take his word for it. It’s not much of a trick to get yourself into that third turn—your trick is to get yourself out of it again. At that speed you black out, just for a tiny fraction of a second—I do, anyhow—and when you come out of it, you’re right on top of the catcher, everything’s still foggy, and there he is coming at you like an express train. And if you make a ragged catch the way kids do”—he gave Tommy a little tap on the arm—“you know y
ou’ll tear his arm off, or he’ll tear yours. At that speed every catch has to be just perfect, dead center—just ask Angelo—or somebody’s shoulder gets ripped right out of the socket. And if you miss or fumble, you’re out over the net apron, and there goes your neck.”
Barbara shivered. “Remind me not to ask so many questions! Now I’m going to be scared to watch you tonight!”
“Hey, hey, honey,” Mario said, putting his arm around her shoulders and giving her a little squeeze, “that’s no way for a Santelli to talk!”
Tommy said quickly, “Yeah, but Mario, I’ve seen you miss the triple a hundred times, and you never miss the net, you never come down in the apron, and you never get hurt. How do you manage that?”
“Tell you a secret,” Mario said, twisting his mobile face into a grin. “I made a pact with the devil. I sold my soul, and he said—”
“Hey, kid, that’s no way to talk,” protested Angelo, obviously offended. “I don’t like it. Lu wouldn’t like it. And Papa—”
“No. Seriously, Mario,” Tommy said, and Mario’s grin slid off.
“Okay,” he said, “seriously. I decided a long time ago, when I was first learning the triple—even before I started working on it—that I’d learn it the way Barney Parrish did, without a mechanic. I figured the more falls I took, the more I’d learn about how to fall without getting hurt too bad. Angelo and I argued a lot about that.”
“I thought he was nuts,” Angelo said, “but it worked.”
Mario nodded. “I must have fallen a couple of thousand times. I figure by now I could almost fall without a net and come up alive.” He rapped the doorframe and murmured, “Touch wood. I’m not figuring on trying it, though.”
Angelo reached out and unbuttoned the cuff of Mario’s long-sleeved shirt. He rolled it back and touched the red patch, always slightly scabbed over, of the rope burn on Mario’s elbow. “But you’ve always got a couple of these. Someday you’re going to get a bad infection and have some real trouble. Not to mention that it must hurt like hell.”
Mario shrugged and pulled the sleeve down. “Fuss, fuss, fuss. You’re worse than Lucia! I never notice anymore. What was it Cleo was always saying to us when we were kids, about having an open mind about breaking your neck?”
“It wasn’t Cleo,” Angelo said. “It was Barney Parrish. He used to say that anybody who wanted to fly had to have an open mind about breaking his neck.”
“Well, I don’t,” Mario said. “I have this nasty narrow-minded prejudice about breaking my neck. You could even say I’m bigoted about it. So I figured I’d better get on damn good—excuse me, Barb—on good terms with the net. That’s what the—the cussed thing is there for. It paid off, too. Ask Tommy. I taught him to fly without a mechanic—he’s never had one on—and he hasn’t had half the falls most beginners do.”
“But how do you fall without getting hurt?” Tommy persisted.
Mario shrugged. “Same way you do. Or anybody else. Instinct, I guess. By the time I’m lifting into that third turn, the clock inside says yes or no, and if it’s no, I don’t try for Angelo’s hands at all; I find I’m already rolled up to drop into the net.”
“That’s not a bad kind of instinct to have,” Angelo said. “It ought to make you a good stuntman. Winters, I do a lot of stunt work down at World Films. I could get you all the stunt calls you’d take. I know you said you don’t like it, but what the heck, it’s a living, and it’s a lot more of a man’s job than that sissy crap you do at the ballet school!”
Tommy knew Mario was angry by the sudden tensing of his shoulders, but he twisted his face into a grin and said, “Nope. Not for me. Like I say, I’ve got that nasty narrow-minded prejudice about breaking my neck—anywhere outside center ring, that is. Lay off, Angelo, we’ve got a dress rehearsal to do.”
~o0o~
Tommy lay awake for a long time that night, pictures from their “dress rehearsal” still flashing through his mind. Mario stepping past him on the board, at once relaxed and tense. His own first swing, and the sudden awareness, in the split second before he got off the bar, that this was an audience more critical and exacting than he would ever face on the road.
Mario, taut, signaling to Angelo for a triple, and the room going quiet, quiet, quiet, so quiet they could all hear the creak of the ropes as he worked the swing up and up, spun loose and over—over and over and over—broke away, turned, and fell hard. Lucia’s cry, cut off in the middle, a sound of real terror. Mario’s face as he came up out of the net, angry and thoughtful by turns.
Later Tommy had whispered to him, as they came down, “I’m sorry you missed it, Mario.”
But Mario grinned. “It’s all right. I figured out what I did wrong that time.”
Later the family had crowded around them with hugs and congratulations. Barbara had thrown her arms impulsively around Tommy and kissed him. His ears burned again at the memory of Lucia’s eyes resting on them, cool and amused. He had shoved Barbara away hard, with a muttered, “Cut out the darn kissing games, willya?”
Each of them had had something nice to say to him. Papa Tony’s eyes had twinkled, even though all he said was, “Well, you will not disgrace the Santelli name this year.”
Angelo had given him a rough hug in front of all of them and a hearty “Nice going, kid!” Joe had said, with slow, considered words, that he thought Tommy would do very nicely, once he grew up to his knees and elbows.
But what had meant most to him was the quick, hard, surreptitious hug Mario had given him as they were getting out of their tights. All he had said was, “Okay, Lucky. Okay.” But it meant more than all the rest.
But later that evening Mario had gone away again, into the sudden, cold, adult isolation. Lucia had produced one of her spectacular celebration meals, but before they went up to bed, she had frowned at Mario and said, “Are you sleeping in the sewing room tonight?” When he nodded, she fretted, “Oh, Matt, I already took the sheets off in there! Can’t you sleep with Tommy or Clay tonight?”
Mario hesitated, and Tommy said quickly, “It’s okay with me, Mario.”
Then Mario’s face shut down and was cold and strange and a million miles away again. He said, “Look, we’re all going to be living in each other’s pockets in that little trailer for the next three days. I’d rather be by myself, do you mind? And for crying out loud, Lucia, I’ll make up the bed myself. You think I don’t know how to make up a bed after all these years? Where are the sheets?” And he had gone off without a backward glance.
Tommy, remembering the night they had gone to the beach—Mario had shied away from spending the night in Tommy’s room then, too—had felt flatly rebuffed. Mario was bored again with his company.
Yeah, he likes me, he thought. But I’m just a kid. He feels about me the way I do about Clay! Like I’m a pain in the neck, somebody he’s got to look after.
~o0o~
They left the next morning, early, driving Angelo’s car, the house trailer hitched on behind. It was a four-day drive, normally, to the small Texas town where Lambeth wintered. Once they had crossed the range of mountains east of Los Angeles, the terrain was flat, hot, and monotonous. The men took turns driving, mostly Angelo and Papa Tony. Mario was a good driver, but he got restless and fidgety at the wheel and tended to let the speed creep up and up, well past the legal limit, until Angelo leaned forward and warned him, “Watch it, Matt. Our tires aren’t what they used to be, and God knows when we could get new ones. Don’t you know there’s a war on?”
Obediently Mario dropped his speed back, but after a time the restlessness of the flat country began to creep over him and again the needle edged up, until finally, impatiently, Angelo gestured him to pull over and took the wheel himself.
By the end of the third day they were all restless and irritable. Mario was driving again. “Okay to let Tommy drive a while?” he asked.
“Not with the house trailer hitched on, you idiot,” Angelo snapped. “If you’re tired of driving, Matt, I’ll take over.
Not that the kid could be any worse than you are!”
“Oh, lay off, Angelo! My license is as clean as a priest’s collar! How many speeding tickets did you get last year?”
“Whether or not he is able to drive, he has no license,” Papa Tony said with firm finality, “and in any case, it is very different to drive a car with the trailer hitched on. It would take time for him to get used to it, and we have not the time.”
As usual when Papa Tony spoke, that ended it. Tommy wasn’t eager to drive with the trailer, anyway. He could feel the car sway, and he had noticed that even Angelo had to fight the wheel hard on a curve.
They stopped for supper in a cafe and argued briefly but rancorously about stopping overnight or driving through. They had all put on their lightest clothes in the blazing heat, but even so, it was cramped in the car and they were all sweaty and irritable. It was Angelo who discovered, leafing through the local newspaper, a public swimming pool, and after an hour’s swim they all felt better. While they were dressing in the room behind the pool, Angelo said good-naturedly, “I’ve been dozing all day while you drove, Matt. It would be a lot cooler driving at night, anyhow. If we drive straight through, we’ll be there sometime before noon. And if we lay over here tonight, we have to find a place we can park the trailer, and then hang around in the morning, getting started. I’ll drive; there’s no traffic to speak of at night.”
The Catch Trap Page 20