“Did I hurt you, fooling around down there? You should’ve told me. Hurt your wrist?”
“Nothing, damn it—I slept wrong on it, or something. Now get going, willya, or get down?”
~o0o~
Tommy reached for the bar and swung out. Their swings and practice maneuvers, run through for limbering up, went well enough, but Mario was in one of what Angelo called his prima donna moods. Absolutely perfect swings and spins would be followed by returns so clumsy that even Tommy felt privileged to jeer, and twice, going for a double, Mario broke off at the last moment and dived into the net, without explanation. Even Angelo, the most even-tempered partner in the world, finally pulled himself upright at his end of the rigging and yelled wrathfully that if Mario was going to practice with the net, he’d go get a cup of coffee, and why in hell didn’t he remember he had a catcher waiting at this end?
Finally Papa Tony called for their duo routines, and it became immediately obvious—if it wasn’t already—that this was one of those days when nothing could possibly go right. They got off the platform so raggedly that Papa Tony shouted them back. On the next start Tommy lagged behind, his hands touching the bar a perceptible quarter of a second after Mario’s, and under the uneven pressure the bar swung crooked and curved so far sidewise that there was nothing to do but drop into the net. As they climbed up again Mario snarled, “What the hell’s wrong? Will you take your confounded timing from me, instead of trying to get it off in the sky somewhere?”
Nervously anxious not to repeat his mistake, Tommy reached too quickly this time; he caught the bar before Mario had his hands on it, so that it flew sidewise, striking Mario’s bandaged wrist. Mario, clutching at the side rope for balance, yelled with pain, grabbing at his wrist. “Damn it, will you watch what you’re doing?”
Papa Tony, swinging upright, called, “What is the matter with you two?”
Mario’s hand, cold and callused, rested for a moment on Tommy’s bare shoulder. “Let’s get with it, ragazzo,” he said savagely, “before they kick us to hell out of here!”
This time they managed to get off the bar together, but went into their turn raggedly and off beat; Tommy reached Papa Tony’s outstretched hands a fraction of a second before Mario’s wrists slapped into Angelo’s outstretched hands. The return threw them out together again, but they landed on the platform so raggedly that Tommy had to fling an arm around one of the pedestal supports to keep from tumbling ungracefully out into the apron. Mario got his balance without grabbing, but he turned on Tommy and swore furiously in Italian.
Papa Tony let go the second catch trapeze and dived into the net, signaling them down. He faced them scowling, his hair damp and disheveled and standing up like, Tommy thought, small twisted devil’s horns. “What is the matter with you two?” he demanded savagely. “This is not a Punch-and-Judy show! I have never seen you act like this! Tommy, is this how you react to a word of kindness? I have confidence in you, and you reward me this way? Shame!”
Tommy swallowed, feeling sickened. But he had learned never to make excuses. “I—I’m sorry, I just don’t seem to be able to get it. Can we go up and try again?”
Papa Tony scowled at Mario. “Matt, you trained Tommy to take his signals from you, and you are not giving them. You’re slack, a puppet—someone has to pull wires! Nothing inside here!” He gave Mario a brief, hard tap on the breastbone. “In your own routines, sure, you get by because Angelo, he takes his timing by watching you, he can—what is it?—he can compensate. But in the duo—”
“I signaled,” Mario said edgily, “but the timing’s all shot.”
“Look, it’s my fault,” Tommy said anxiously. “I just got out of step—”
“Now listen,” Papa Tony said, his eyes on Mario, ignoring the younger boy, “no matter how well Tommy thinks he knows this trick, he thinks he takes his timing from your call; but really he has to get it from something inside you, like an electric current. You called the signal out loud—I heard you—but you didn’t give him the timing; you were following what you were doing. Now, in this duo with Tommy, you two, you have to move like you have one head on two bodies, and it’s got to be your head, Matt. Tommy’s trying to work with your timing, and it’s not there. You ever see a car with two drivers? You can’t do this trick yourself, and let Tommy do it alongside you, and expect it to work, any more than one person can make love. If your timing is off, don’t blame the boy if he goes ragged.”
Tommy listened in astonishment. He was so accustomed to Papa Tony’s explosions of rage that the mildness of this lecture astonished him. Papa Tony said, “Avanti, you two—and, Matt, you light up inside, will you? Or this will be nothing!”
As he went back to his own place, Mario managed an edgy grin at Tommy. “I been throwing you off beat?”
“I thought it was my fault,” Tommy said honestly.
Mario grinned, a shadow of his usual grin. “Yeah, you would.” He turned toward the ladder. “Come on, let’s try to stay in step this time.”
But, Tommy realized, that was the trouble. Instead of moving in unison, perfectly timed, they were trying to stay in step, and it wasn’t the same at all. He knew, reluctantly, that it was not his fault. Mario was not giving in the extra something that made the trick go over. Instead of a duo routine, they were just two flyers, a veteran and a novice, doing the same trick at the same time—but not together. After another poor try, Papa Tony gestured with disgust.
“Basta! You two have gone stale, that is all—it is no good. Put away the duo rigging—we work on something else.”
But as they finished putting up the extra catcher’s trapeze, Angelo broke off and called down, “You want something, Margot?”
“Tonio?” Margot Clane shouted. “That new Roman-ladder team is having a fit, and they seem all of a sudden to have forgotten what English they know—and nobody here speaks enough Italian to figure out what they’re all yelling about! Will you come and straighten it out?”
Papa Tony climbed down and went off with Margot, and Angelo shouted, “Okay, Tom, try a forward over and try to keep your feet where they belong this time, okay?”
Tommy went through the trick easily enough, which made him feel considerably better. His confidence, badly damaged by the fiasco they had made of the duo routine, returned as Angelo called him over twice more. Then he called to Mario for a back double. Mario went out, swinging high, but as Angelo caught him, even Tommy could see the fumbled catch, and almost before Mario landed back on the platform, Angelo somersaulted down into the net. He was almost speechless with anger. He shouted, “Let’s call it a day before you break your goddamn neck—or mine!”
When Mario and Tommy were on the ground again, Angelo sent Tommy on an errand, then beckoned Mario to him.
“I want to talk to you.”
The younger man came, shivering, his sweater tied by the arms over his shoulders, his face dripping wet. Angelo, buttoning his own sweater, picked up his cigarettes. He lit one and demanded, “What the hell goes with you today?”
Mario shook his head irritably. “You got complaints, make ’em.”
“I don’t have a free weekend to start listing them in order,” Angelo said. “That wrist bothering you as much as that? You better see a doctor, then.”
“It’s all right.”
“Well, something isn’t, that’s for damn sure.”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Neither did any of us. I drove all night—remember? And I’ve seen you work with your wrists rubbed raw, so it’s not that, either. Listen, if the kid’s getting in your hair—”
“Tom’s okay—for God’s sake, don’t go blaming him. Here, give me a cigarette, will you?”
“Certo.” Angelo shook one out of the pack for him, then held a match for him to light it. “Might do you good to take up smoking, kid, you’re so damned edgy all the time.”
Mario laughed, taking a careful puff—a nonsmoker’s puff, without inhaling—at the cigarette.
“You slay me, Angelo. All through my impressionable years you lecture me, night and day, about how I ought to avoid all the pleasanter vices. Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t—well, no need to get into that. But now you want me to take ’em all up for my nerves.”
“No need to overdo anything, even abstinence.” Angelo sat down on a ring bank. “Come on, ragazzo, what’s eating you? If you’re sore about something, get it off your chest.”
Mario stubbed out the cigarette. He had smoked less than half of it. “No, nothing. Just nerves or something. Can’t I have an off day like anyone else? Come up and we’ll try again, if you want to.”
“Forget it. You’re all tightened up. I’d advise a hot shower and a drink and a long nap, but you suit yourself.” Angelo crushed his cigarette out in the sand, carefully scraping his foot over the ashes. “And—look, kid, I yell a lot, but if anything’s really bothering you, we can talk about it. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure, Angelo,” Mario said, but he did not look at him. “Thanks for the cigarette.”
He went off between the wagons, and Angelo stood watching the younger man move away with that walk that was graceful even when he was slouching. Papa Tony came up behind him and said in Italian, “Did you discover what was troubling him, son?”
Angelo shook his head and replied in the same language, “The good God only knows. Perhaps it is only that he has lost confidence for the moment; he will be well enough when we open, Papa.”
“Do you think I should make him see a doctor for his wrist? Is he in pain?”
Angelo shook his head slowly, still gazing at the spot where Mario had disappeared. “No, Papa,” he said at last, “leave the boy alone.”
On the road, the Santelli family lived in their old house trailer, but during the season, by a special concession in their contract—a concession given to no other act with the Lambeth Circus—they were allowed to use the rigging truck as their private dressing quarters so that they did not need to clutter up the house trailer with their costumes and makeup. (For although they used no makeup in the ordinary sense, Tommy had quickly learned how to keep his unruly curls out of his eyes with hair cream, to powder over a sunburn, or cover a small cut with flesh-colored adhesive, so that he always had the immaculate, unruffled look they insisted on.) The rigging truck was empty now; all the heavy aerial rigging was set up for the final dress rehearsals, and Tommy was transferring wardrobe from the Santelli house trailer to the rigging truck. He hung their big mirror on a hook on the wall, arranged the folding dressing tables they used, then began to set up the costume racks and spread out the first night’s wardrobe on poles and hangers. He had nearly finished when Mario came in behind him.
“My God, you’ve got this nearly done! One of us would have helped you with all that!”
“It’s okay. I figured you all had something else to do,” Tommy said. “How’s your wrist?”
“Okay, I guess.” Mario took off the leather wrist guard, unwrapped the muslin strapping under it, and started to pull the adhesive tape loose. He couldn’t get at it left-handed, so he tried to tear it with his teeth. Finally he stuck his arm out to Tommy.
“Here. Jerk this damn thing off for me, will you?”
Gingerly Tommy tried to work the stuck ends of the twisted tape apart. “How’d you get it screwed up like that?”
“Sweat under the leather band, I guess.”
“I’ll have to get the shears and cut it.” He worked the heavy points under the tight tape, and Mario winced.
“Easy, easy! If you break the skin I’ll kill you!”
“Well, if I put tape on like that, you’d have me on toast for breakfast, you dope.” Tommy was using both hands on the shears, maneuvering them carefully, trying to get them through the tangled adhesive. Finally he snipped, carefully, and the ends came apart. Tommy laid the shears down, grabbed the ends of the tape, and jerked.
Mario gasped. “Ouch, dammit!”
“You told me often enough to rip it off fast, not do it by inches. Doesn’t that feel better?”
“I guess.” Mario took Tommy’s wrist, still wrapped in the light fold of muslin strapping, in his hand. The touch was so deliberate, in contrast to the light tap that was their usual signal language on the rigging, or the rough shove with which Mario commanded attention or enforced an order, that Tommy glanced up, startled, half inclined to pull free. Then, slightly abashed, he forced himself to relax and let his wrist lie in Mario’s hand, just at the precise moment when Mario sensed his rigidity and started to let him go.
“Listen, Tom—” Mario began. Then, ruefully, “Listen, I wanted to talk to you about—well, about last night—and all of a sudden I don’t know what to say.”
Tommy fiddled with the tangle of sticky cut tape. He looked very young and confused, his forehead peeling, the naked skin of his shoulders shredding off in little flakes. Mario said at random, “You look like a hunk of raw meat with all that sunburn. Rare or well done?”
Tommy wadded up the tape into a little ball, still without looking up. “You don’t have to say anything,” he said. Then, suddenly dropping the sticky clump of tape on the floor, he looked straight up, accusing.
“You knew goddamn well I wasn’t asleep, didn’t you?”
“Watch your language,” Mario warned automatically. Then, realizing exactly what Tommy had said, he dropped his forehead on his clenched fists.
“Jesus, Tommy!”
“Well, didn’t you? Know I wasn’t asleep, that is? You think I couldn’t figure out what you were up to? What kind of dumb bunny do you think I am?”
Mario’s face flushed darkly. The veins stood out, ridged, in his forehead. “Yeah,” he said, “I knew, all right. I knew you wouldn’t make a fuss with the others there, and I guess I wanted you to know you could stop it, any time you wanted to, by—by waking up. Or pretending to. That I wasn’t trying to—to make you do anything you didn’t want to. I wanted you to know—” He couldn’t finish. “Skip it, skip it, I never should have brought it up.”
Tommy said in a low voice, “I’m glad you did. I’ve been—oh, wondering.”
“Well, now you know.” Mario turned away. “Call it any filthy name you want to. Queer. A fairy. A pervert. Or something worse, maybe.”
“Do you have to be so rotten about it?” Tommy heard his own voice shaking and tried desperately to steady it. “I wanted to talk about it because—I was going to say I—I guess I kind of wanted you to, and if you’re what you say, I guess that sort of makes me one, too, doesn’t it?”
Mario took a quick step toward Tommy, bending over him, his face set. “Don’t say that! For God’s sake, kid!” He was gripping the boy’s shoulders in a frenzied, painful grip.
“Ouch,” Tommy said, tremulously, “my sunburn!”
Mario’s hands loosened and slid down Tommy’s arms; he held him that way. “Kid, I’m sorry. You—you hit me on a nerve, that’s all. What did you want to talk about? I guess I owe you that.”
“I don’t know. Not really. Lots of things. You don’t like—women?”
“Not much. Not that way. Oh, God,” Mario said in a strangled voice. “Honest, I don’t know what to say to you, and Angelo or Papa Tony’s bound to walk in on us. I’m not trying to duck your questions—I swear we’ll talk about it all you want to. Only not right here, not now. But—but you’re not sore at me? I knew you wouldn’t tell on me, but I—I’ve been hating myself like hell.”
Tommy turned his face away again, not knowing why. “No, I’m not sore. But I don’t understand, not really. I do want to talk about it sometime. I’m sort of glad it happened because now we can talk about it. I thought maybe you—you’d want me to pretend it never happened. Like that other time.”
Now it was Mario’s turn to look away, and Tommy saw the red flush creeping up his face.
“Oh, hell, Tommy, I don’t—I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Mario, tell me something. Were you mad at me, this morning? Is that wh
y we blew up that way?”
“Mad at you? Hell, no, kid.” After a moment he said, “Ashamed, maybe. And taking it out on you.” Gently he turned Tommy around to face him. “It’s okay? You’re really not mad at me? We’re still friends?”
Tommy’s first impulse was to throw his arms around Mario and reassure him; then, although he was not quite sure why, he knew he could not. He said simply, “Sure. You know that.”
“I guess, this morning, I was—I was trying to turn off whatever it was inside me. I don’t know, it all seemed part of the same thing, somehow. You know what I mean?”
Tommy nodded, slowly. He had had some such confused notion before this that their work on the rigging, and the intense closeness he felt for Mario, arose from some identical inner wellspring. “Yeah. I guess I know what you mean.”
“It was me, more than you, kid. You were okay. I guess, whatever it is that makes us work good together, I was fighting it off or something. Tom—kid, promise me something.”
“Not to tell? I know that, stupid!”
Again Mario lowered his head, with that embarrassed flush.
“No, that’s not it. Something else. Listen, Tom, whatever happens, let’s—let’s never let it mess up our work again. Let’s keep it—keep it off the platform, never let it—let it make any difference to the flying. Promise me that, Tom?”
Tommy didn’t understand, not quite, but the intentness in Mario’s voice sobered him to an almost equal intensity. He said, “Okay, Mario. I promise,” and did not know that the promise he had given, without understanding, was to hold them steady through uncounted, uncountable tempests.
The Catch Trap Page 22