by Niall Howell
Copyright © Niall Howell 2019
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication—reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system—without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from Access Copyright before proceeding.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Howell, Niall, 1985-, author
Only pretty damned / Niall Howell.
(Nunatak first fiction series ; no. 49)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-988732-53-4 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-988732-54-1 (EPUB).--ISBN 978-1-988732-55-8 (Kindle)
I. Title. II. Series: Nunatak first fiction ; no. 49
PS8615.O942O55 2019 C813’.6 C2018-904444-6
C2018-904445-4
NeWest Press wishes to acknowledge that the land on which we operate is Treaty 6 territory and a traditional meeting ground and home for many Indigenous Peoples, including Cree, Saulteaux, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, and Nakota Sioux.
Board Editor: Jenna Butler
Cover design & typography: Kate Hargreaves
Cover photograph from the collection of the Schenectady County Historical Society
Back cover photograph by Darius Soodmand via Unsplash
Author photograph: Alicja Pawlak
All Rights Reserved
NeWest Press acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council for support of our publishing program. This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada.
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No bison were harmed in the making of this book.
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA
For Alicja
IT'S BEEN THREE YEARS SINCE WALLY JAKES DIED, AND NOT a day goes by that I don’t think of the old bastard.
The other chumps around this place, well, I’m sure they think of Wally often too—at least the ones who were around during the infamous Jake-obean era—but not as often as I do. And certainly not in the same way as I do.
See, Wally had a personality that was an acquired taste in the same way that sucking vinegar from a mangy sponge is an acquired taste. Nobody could stand the guy. Nobody except me. But then, I have a high tolerance for all things acidic.
I respected Wally, though I could sure see why others had a hard time digesting him. He was loud-mouthed, crass, insensitive, and horribly opinionated. He rarely shaved or showered, and dental hygiene mattered to him about as much as arithmetic matters to a snowman. And if all that weren’t enough, Wally Jakes was also uglier than a couple of rats fucking on top of a pile of trash, which was partially due to a horse booting him square in the kisser when he was a kid, and partially due to him just being Wally Jakes. He was a natural pariah, born to be detested.
But as I said, I respected the guy. He wasn’t a performer, like me, but I think that once you got right down to it, he and I were pretty much the same. Now, I don’t mean to say that I’m a walking aerosolized can of human-repellant, like Wally, but on the inside, on the inside where it really mattered, we were the same. If you were to take a blade and carve us both down to our respective cores, once you scraped off all the pulpy muck and rinsed away the blood, you’d be staring at a matching set. Two of a kind. You see, like me, Wally did whatever needed to be done to keep things running around here. One day you’d see him tearing tickets, the next you’d see him cramming a suppository into an elephant’s ass. Whatever the task, if it needed to be done, Wally would do it. He knew damn well that the show mattered more than anything. More than anything at all.
SOME OF THE SLACKERS AROUND HERE LAY ON THE COLOUR so heavy that they might as well have ‘compensation’ written across their foreheads in thick black letters. Don’t get me wrong, I know that a certain cartoonish quality is necessary to seize the attention of a child. I don’t blame the performers for the garishly bright, loose-fitting clothing, the pointy hats, the bulky collars, and the grotesque patterns—shimmering silver stars and malformed crescent moons—that lie scattered across their costumes with no discernible sense of order or even a hint of symmetry. I don’t blame them for any of that. It’s the faces that get to me. The faces steam my blood. Blue-lidded eyes with lashes so large you can spot them from the parking lot; gaping crimson mouths that stretch from above the upper lip down to the chin, bordered by blushing cheeks nonsensically outlined in black, as if you’d have trouble noticing them on their own against the colourless base they sat against; thick eyebrows that start by the ear and curve all the way up to the bridge of the nose.
The nose…oh, the fucking nose.
That’s another thing altogether. Those fat prosthetic bulbs are without a doubt the most embarrassing detail of them all. You wouldn’t catch me fastening one of those things to my face in a million years. Not a chance. For me, subtlety is the name of the game. But then again, I don’t need to rely on an outlandish getup to arrest an audience.
I don’t realize how close I am to the mirror until I exhale and see a portion of my face vanish behind a cloud of fog. Inching back, I stare at my reflection and drink up every detail. The perfect amount of bone-white applied and blended evenly from my skull, down my face and neck, to just below the line of my top. Not a dot of stubble can be seen on my head. I shave it thirty minutes before every performance. I’ve been doing it since the day I was thrown into this gig, whether it looks like I need to or not. I tell you, I’m so adamant about shaving my head that the hairs burrowed beneath my scalp probably quiver at the thought of even trying to grow—stay subterranean, where it’s safe, you little bastards. My nose has been painted on—a tiny red square, right on the tip. A slender black diamond runs vertically over each of my eyes, and my thin eyebrows are arched into a surprised but subtle curve. I’m quite a minimalist when it comes to my face. The only detail remaining is my lips. Those are always the last to be added. I have a routine, you see. I make sure every detail of my face is perfect, then I allow myself one cigarette before adding my lips. I have to have my smoke before my lips go on because I don’t want any smudging. A lot of the hacks around here rib me for that; Toby, you think anyone notices a little smudge on your lips while you’re out there flipping around and bouncing all over the goddamn place? Christ, you’re like a woman with yer makeup!, but I couldn’t take them seriously if I tried. Just one look at them—with their patchy, caked-on faces and their yellowing, sweat-tainted bald-caps—is enough for me to blot out their very existence.
I let the smoke tumble from my mouth slowly, because I know it’s got nowhere better to be, and peek out through the curtain. Julian is just getting started. He finishes restraining Susan and starts working the crowd, pacing around the ring with his knives held high above his head, making damn sure that everybody gets a good look at them, sees how sharp they are. Acts like Julian’s are all about the potential of danger, that’s their sole appeal. The audience needs to be scared for Susan. They need to genuinely believe that there’s a chance that they’ll witness some freak accident. Who knows? Maybe Julian’s aim is a little off and one of those unforgiving points finds its way into Susan’s bicep, piercing an artery and causing blood to spray from her milky flesh as she screams, bound to that giant target and unable to avoid her own spatter as it gushes across her pretty face. Horrific as it sounds, it’s what these people pay for—danger. The funny thing about these audiences is they crave peril, but the second something goes wrong, which, aside from a few minor
instances, really never happens, they go absolutely bonkers. They scream and they faint and they puke over one little drop of blood. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
I watch the first knife sear through the air and halt with an abrupt slam just below Susan’s hand, then I step away from the curtain to the sound of a thousand sets of lungs vacating. I pace back and forth, finishing my smoke and looking at my reflection, admiring my work. A few nobodies come and offer some unnecessary words of encouragement as I do my lips.
“Knock ’em dead, Toby!”
“Break a leg, Tobe!”
“Go remind ’em why they emptied their wallets at the door, bud.”
“Have a good set!”
Have a good set. Christ. I’d have to have one of Julian’s knives sticking in my guts for me to lower my set to the level of just plain old good. Bunch of amateurs.
Julian and Susan come running outside, hand locked in sweaty hand. I’m standing a few feet from the opening of the flap, so they let go of each other, go around me, and reconnect on the other side.
I close my eyes and listen to Rowland build me up to the crowd from inside the tent. When he shouts, “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, please join me in welcoming the magnificent Freddy Folly!” I charge through the flap, toward the centre of the ring, the spotlight guiding me from above fragmenting the darkness with sharp, angular cuts, illuminating my path through the void. My music—even the most brazen horn—is quickly drowned out by the explosive applause filling the tent.
I kill.
AS ALWAYS, THE BARBECUE FOLLOWING THE SHOW IS exceptional. As always, almost everyone is there. Sal, our resident hypnotist and chef, spearheads the whole operation. He stands behind the grill with the engrossed eyes of a surgeon, spatula in one hand, perspiring bottle of beer in the other, flipping and salting and saucing away until every scrap of chicken on hand has been readied for the consumption of our travelling family. He delegates menial tasks, such as the preparation of salad, to a group of four ring crew members everybody calls the Sycs, as in sycophants. These four young men, whose real names I don’t know, would dance barefoot into hell if Sal told them to. Everyone always jokes that Sal’s hypnotic powers must actually work, because since those four joined up with us about a year ago, they’ve been following him around like a pack of attention-starved puppies, jumping at his every command. I take a swig of my beer. I’m watching the Sycs, and I realize that if I were ever pressed to, I don’t think I could tell the four of them apart. They’re all slightly short, stocky young men with the same buzzed brown hair, the same beady eyes, the same stoic face. Sal’s little zombies. He’s probably got a handful of replacements growing in green pods, hidden away behind a secret panel in his trailer. Christ—listen to me. I’ve got to stop throwing my money away on Galaxy Science Fiction.
Once the meat is ready, everyone forms a line. Gloria is five or six people ahead, but when her big hazel peepers spot me, she steps out and joins me near the back. She shoots me a coy smirk and says, “I can’t stand that stuff,” gesturing with her head to my beer and folding her arms across her chest, pushing up her breasts in a failed attempt at nonchalance. She’s still wearing her costume: a navy blue halter-top and short skirt combination decorated in green, yellow, and silver sequins. A line of peacock feathers marks the v-shaped border between the flesh on her chest and the top of the dress, making it look as though her peaks are frowning at me.
“I didn’t realize you were old enough to try it,” I say, then take another sip.
She feigns offense and gives my arm a smack. “You know I am.”
“Yeah, in New York and Kansas.”
“And Louisiana.”
“Well, we’re in Baton Rouge soon, so you can buy me a beer there.”
“As long as it’s not that garbage you’re drinking now, you’ve got a deal,” she says, playfully. “What kind of name is that, anyway? Blatz. It even sounds icky.”
“I think it’s Bavarian.”
She turns her nose up and whips her head to the side dismissively. “Wherever it’s from, it’s vile.”
I give her the laugh that she’s come to expect from me whenever she pulls the cutesy shtick and reach my arm around her. The second my palm makes contact with her bare shoulder, she turns to face me, looking up with mischievous eyes and a grin to match.
“You had a great set tonight.”
“You saw it? You really think so?” she beams.
“I did and I do.”
“Thank you, Toby! Thank you! I really think I’m getting better. Harriet—er—Miss Lane, she says I’m definitely top-notch. She says with a little more practice, I could be dancing dead centre, leading the whole troupe.”
I say, “I believe it,” and I think I really do.
The two of us shuffle in form with the rest of the group, slowly inching our way toward Sal and his mountain of poultry. I half-listen to Gloria go on about the new routine they’re working out, but the bulk of my attention is focused on the remaining audience members trickling out from the tent toward the parking lot. Their giddy squeals and shouts drift through the night sky over to our barbecue area. I think of the show I put on and, sap that I am, I can’t help but smile at the glee of these strangers. Yeah, Genevieve and Andrew were the last act they saw, the headliners, if you want to call them that. But I look at the smiles people are wearing at the end of the night as the result of an accumulated thrill. They’re not just smiling because they saw a couple of big names pull off a series of mediocre flying manoeuvres. No sir, not at all. They’re smiling because they were dazzled beyond belief by the whole experience, an experience I just happen to be a damn big part of. It’s like chopping down a tree. Nobody cuts down a big hunk of timber in one swing. It takes a lot of swings. A whole helluva lot of swings from, in our case, a bunch of different axes. And as far as this show goes, I’m the biggest, sharpest axe in the woods. When you think about it, whoever delivers the final blow really has the easiest job of all. The tree’s already been hacked to shit when the last person (or, in Genevieve and Andrew’s case, persons) take their swing. Hell, you can practically tip the tree over with your foot by the time that last lumberjack gets to it.
“Hey, Toby, you fill up on the smell or you actually gonna eat some of this?” Sal says, yanking me back to the moment. He’s holding his tongs in front of me, a prime steaming piece of white meat clasped between them.
“Sorry, Sal, you know my mind wanders.”
“Well, tether it to a fuckin’ pole for a few minutes and focus on the delicious meat that’s just been lovingly prepared for ya.”
After piling some chicken on our plates and getting some salad from the Sycs’ table, Gloria turns to walk toward a group of dancers she knows. She halts when she notices my hesitation to follow her lead.
“You want to eat in your trailer tonight, Toby?” I answer with a nod. “That’s fine,” she says, “we can eat in the trailer. I like the quiet, actually.” A hurt expression begins to spread across her face when I don’t respond right away. “It’s…you don’t mind if I join you in your trailer, do you?”
“Of course not. You know I never mind your company.” I force a reassuring smile and wrap my free arm around her, ushering us toward my trailer. “Besides, the only beer they have out here is that Blatz shit you adore so much.”
We hustle over to my living quarters before anyone has a chance to accuse us of being antisocial. Before we go in, I crawl under the trailer and grab the bottles of Falstaff I stashed there earlier to keep cool.
Over dinner, Gloria asks where my mind had wandered to earlier when we were in line and she was telling me about her dance number, and I assure her I was just a little lightheaded from a mix of a vigorous performance and an empty stomach, and she eats it up like it’s a second course. The next hour or so is spent inside my trailer, spread out on the chesterfield, going through bottles like their liquid will be turning into piss at midnight. As usual, Gloria is loaded with questions. She grills me
about the supposedly checkered history of Rowland’s World Class Circus, and as usual, I let her skate around on the surface while the real stuff swims in the depths below the ice. I can tell she wants to pry deeper, but she’s about five beers shy of mustering up the necessary courage, and I’m about two bathtubs of beer shy of being willing to loosen my lips any on certain topics. Once I notice that she’s drained her fourth beer, I tell her that we ought to step outside and get some fresh air, knowing how she gets.
“But I like it in here,” she protests, a hint of flirtation in her voice.
“So do I, but didn’t Joe McCarthy say that antisocial behaviour is a warning sign of communism?” I kid her.
“Who’s being antisocial? There are two of us in here. That’s not social enough? Besides, if Low-Blow Joe had eyes around here, you’d think they’d all be on Arkady.” She begins to laugh, but is abruptly cut off by an ambush of hiccups.
“Arkady, you mean Andrew?” I say, unable to mask my disdain, not that Gloria wasn’t hip to my loathing of the hack.
Gloria throws back her head and laughs, then takes another gulp of her beer. “I heard he only goes by Arkady. I remember when I first joined, it was just his stage name, but as far as I know he’s Arkady to everyone now.”
“Everyone, hey? No shit.”
“Well, I don’t know about Genevieve, of course, but about a month ago, I even heard Mister Rowland call him Arkady,” she says, her eyes widening with interest as she shifts so that she’s sitting on her knees. It’s the kind of position you see young girls in the movies sitting in when they’re gossiping with their girlfriends in the privacy of a bedroom.
“That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Tells his own boss to call him by his—Christ! What a pompous son of a bitch! I guess I ought to tell people to only refer to me as Mister Freddy Folly, hey?”
“I guess so.” Gloria laughs, then takes a swig so big that she gasps like she’s coming up from a diving tank after she pulls the bottle from her mouth. “Stupid hiccups…gotta drown ’em.”