Only Pretty Damned

by Niall Howell

  I notice her lower lip tremble, but she’s quick to rein it in. She opens her mouth to speak, but stops herself, shakes her head, and storms past me, out the door. As she walks by, I see the mist of tears to come glazing her eyes.

  I keep the door open and watch her walk away. When she disappears from my view, I close the door. I get a grace period of about fifteen seconds before I feel like the King of the Heels.

  It takes me a while to sweep up all the glass, but you have to be thorough when it comes to that sort of thing. There are pains worse than a shard of glass in the foot. Plenty of them. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less when you step down and feel that stabbing crunch on the bottom of your foot.

  SHE WAS ANGRY BECAUSE I COULD HAVE CHOKED ON IT IN my sleep. “I don’t want to wake up next to a corpse,” she told me.

  The trail from the corner of my pillow to the edge of the bed had hardened by morning. Much of what had pooled on the floor was still wet.

  I was embarrassed, so I got down on my knees and began cleaning right away. When that was done, I stripped the sheets off the bed and balled them up. I tossed them outside and assured her I’d wash them that day. She wasn’t impressed. “This is getting out of hand,” she said. “You need to fix it.”

  I did need to fix it.

  I was only getting worse. I’d woken up to a hellish hangover every morning since Wally went missing. Genevieve could usually tell. My smell would give it away, or sometimes it would be my lack of appetite or my swollen face that betrayed me. There were two or three times, though, when I was able to hide it from her. My head would be spinning and the contents of my stomach would be organizing a coup, but there were a small number of times I somehow managed to sneak under her radar.

  Waking up and finding I’d vomited in my sleep, though… well, that wasn’t one of those under-the-radar instances.

  That morning was the first time that I felt she’d had enough. I mean, really had enough. She’d usually say something like, ‘Hungover again?’ or ‘Is life so boring that you need to poison yourself for kicks?’ She’d express her disappointment, but never anything beyond that. And I was usually pretty good at dealing with it. I’d say, Sorry, I was trying to keep up with the fellas last night and I guess I got a bit carried away—you know, try and spread out at least some of the blame. And most times that had been enough.

  But not that day.

  It was her tone—‘Fix it.’ She sounded so matter-of-fact, so cold. It was a demand. ‘Fix it’— it was a threat.

  “I’ll fix it,” I said. “I promise I’ll stop.”

  THE DAYS WERE NEVER A PROBLEM. I WOULDN'T TOUCH a drop during the day. Risking even one before our set? Not a chance. No, during the day, that’s when I would deal with the hangover. I’ve always been a resilient man, so the right mix of water, salty food, and sweating would usually cleanse my system and get me on my feet. If everything worked out—which it almost always did—I’d be feeling decent in time to run a few practise manoeuvres and enjoy a couple hours of sober downtime before taking the stage with Genevieve. The days were never a problem.

  It always started after the show, with dinner.

  Most nights, Genevieve and I would eat outside with everyone else. I’d be coming down from the high of performing and, like clockwork, thoughts of Wally would seep up from the grounds of my subconscious like black oil. Wally was always lurking around in my mind somewhere. I could push him back sometimes, but only sometimes. After performances, he’d always come rushing out at me. I don’t know why, but Wally’s ghost was irrepressible after performances.

  Back then, everyone at the circus drank during dinner. If you didn’t, people would either get it in their heads that you were pregnant, or they’d say, Oh, you don’t want a drink? What, do you think you’re better than us? And that kind of pressure, teamed with Wally stomping around in my brain all the time, well, you’re damn right I had a drink or two with dinner.

  And that slope, that one or two, even an idiot knows it’s a slippery bastard.

  I was drunk every night for three weeks and four days before that morning when I woke up in a splatter painting of my own creation. When Genevieve told me to fix it, there were just enough icicles hanging from her words that I knew I ought to fix it before she fixed me.

  So I did just that. She told me to fix it and, by God, fix it I did.

  Temporarily.

  I fixed it like tape and bandages over a leaky pipe.

  We started eating our dinners in our trailer, away from other people, their boozy breath and their shiny suggestions.

  Wally was still a nagging force in my mind—his betrayed eyes, his bloody head, and his pleading hands, that first shovel-full splashing dirt over his dead old face—but I dealt with it, one way or another. I’d fidget with my hands, I’d chew on the inside of my mouth, I’d grind my teeth, and I’d sleep in short spurts and then wake up teary-eyed, gasping for air.

  But I dealt with it.

  For as long as I could, I dealt with it.

  I stopped dealing with it about thirty minutes before I broke Genevieve’s nose and her cheekbone and sent her plummeting unconscious into the harsh embrace of a net.

  I was two weeks cold turkey in Albuquerque. I was also celebrating two weeks without a good night’s sleep and two weeks of being just about the most miserable bastard anyone had ever set eyes on. I was a fucking mess. A pale, jittery mess who mumbled to himself and had puffy, dark bags under his eyes.

  I met Genevieve outside the big top ten minutes before our set. Before coming to the big top, I drank a bunch of coffee and chewed a stick of gum to blanket my booze-breath. We did our stretches. At that point, we hadn’t slept in the same trailer for nearly a week. I guess I had been whining and blubbering in my sleep every night the second I conked—when I managed to conk, that is. Genevieve had tried remedying it by sleeping with wads of cotton jammed in her ears, and that worked all right for a while, until I started thrashing in my sleep. One night, I’d booted her while I was out, leaving a big fat bruise on her left thigh. She told me that when she woke up, I was kicking and flailing my arms about, and that tears were pouring from my closed eyes. After a repeat offense two nights later, we both agreed it would be best if I sought out different accommodations for a while. Rowland offered me the circus’s one vacant trailer, which had belonged to one Wally Jakes, and you can bet I had some choice words for that suggestion. Plan B was that I sleep on Rowland’s floor, so I opted for that—beggars and choosers, right?

  “…for Mister and Missus Angel!”

  Raised hand in raised hand, we ran into the big top, lighting the stubby wick on a tumultuous panorama of cheers. The race up the ladder was business as usual: moving in time to the beat of our music—high-tension horns and heroic twin base drums.

  I felt great. I wasn’t drunk, but the alcohol had calmed me.

  The band cut it when we reached the platform, leaving us with only a rolling snare. Genevieve grabbed her bar and swung out. I heard a few gasps over the snare—nothing new. A moment later, I followed. The two of us took a few swings to get our rhythm, then we clicked: one clock with two mirroring pendulums.

  Genevieve set up for her first dismount, a frontend straddle planche.

  She leapt. The snare halted.

  Gasps and squeals rose from the crowd.

  I caught her by the wrists. It was textbook. Cheers burst all around us, heat searing off them.

  I returned Genevieve to her bar.

  As I released her, it grabbed me. My head felt light, my arms felt gone. The fatigue that had been stalking me for weeks had finally made its big move. I blinked hard, trying to push it back. I opened my eyes to pure distortion. I opened my eyes and a snare drum I didn’t even realize was rolling stopped dead.

  A somersaulting woman was coming at me. No. A smear was coming at me. Fast.

  I flung my weightless arms out. I connected with something.

  Gasps and squeals rose from the crowd. They were differe
nt gasps and squeals than before.

  Screams followed. Lots and lots of screams.

  "IF IT'S ONLY AN APOLOGY, YOU CAN FORGET IT." GLORIA is doing her best to look indifferent. She occupies herself by tracing the lines of her palm with her finger. Her lips are pursed. She’s trying real hard. “An apology means jack unless it comes with an explana—hey, what are you doing?”

  “What the hell does it look like I’m doing?”

  “It looks like you’re locking the door. And if you’re going to talk to me that way, you can go right ahead an unlock it and let me out.”

  Ignoring her, I move to the window and close the curtains. I tug the two pieces of fabric closed until they’re overlapping and not even a sliver of twilight can sneak in.

  “Toby, what on earth are you—”

  I shush her. “Be quiet, would you?”

  She looks me in the eye for the first time since I let her in. “This is ridiculous!” she says, and gets up off the bed.

  I move in front of her and push her back onto it.

  “It’d be worth your while to stop hassling me for two goddamn seconds.”

  She doesn’t like that. Not one bit. When she walked in here, she thought she’d brought the upper hand in with her. This turning of tables is getting her rattled, but I can see that flicker of intrigue dancing in her eyes. She’s mad, but I’ve got her. I know I’ve got her.

  I strike a match and light a couple extra candles, double check the door, double check the curtain. I motion for Gloria to slide over to one side of the bed and I kneel down and reach underneath.

  “Toby, what in the hell are you up to?”

  “Shh!”

  When I slide my Samsonite across the floor, a miniature galaxy of dust floats out from under the bed. Once the suitcase is out, I take it by the handle and place it on the chair that’s facing Gloria. The opening end of the suitcase faces her.

  Both latches pop. I force it open. The Vampire Master is on top of the magazine stack, staring me down. Bit by bit, I take everything out—magazines, elastic-fastened postcards, nudie pictures—and place them neatly on the kitchen table. Once the belly of the case is empty, I unzip the top half and pull out an envelope.

  Gloria doesn’t speak. She looks nervous. Her fingers are resting on her lap, laced together. In one corner of her mouth, she’s biting down on her lip. I tear the envelope open and dump its contents into the empty suitcase. I pull another one out and do the same, then another and another. Her eyes are wide and lit now. She’s still biting her lip.

  I keep at it with the envelopes. Ever the showman, I start adding a little flare to each tear. When I dump the contents into the suitcase, I shake the money out like I’m peppering a dish.

  More envelopes.

  More envelopes.

  Gloria doesn’t speak. Her eyes are at capacity, her posture tenses and her shoulders rise. She’s still biting. I’m starting to feel sorry for that lip of hers.

  I keep pouring.

  The bill pile is moving closer and closer to the brim. I need to direct the flow of the last few envelopes to the middle of the pile so they don’t start spilling out from the suitcase. When the final envelope has been emptied, I whip it into the air. I cross my arms and take a step back.

  “Whose money is that, Toby?”

  “It’s my money.”

  “Yours?”

  “Every goddamn penny.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  “How much is there?”

  “Lots. Enough to for me to leave here and get settled somewhere else. Somewhere better.”

  “So…so you’re planning on leaving, then?”

  “That’s something I’m planning. But I was thinking maybe I don’t have to go alone.”

  That gets me a smile, but as quickly as it appears, it’s washed away like shoreline sand. “Where, Toby? Where would we go?”

  “Wherever we want to. There’s enough here to take us anywhere and get set up some place decent.”

  She stands up and walks toward me. No, toward the suitcase. She dips her hand in and swishes the money around. A bunch of bills fall onto the floor. She picks them up and returns them to the case, then swirls some more. “What would we do, though?” She looks from the suitcase to me but keeps her hands submerged. “There’s plenty here, but the well would run dry eventually.”

  “Eventually is a long way away. This could get us set up. Away from here. Away from this dead end, Gloria.” I reach into the suitcase and grab a fistful of bills. I raise them to her eye level and squeeze. “Just think, we could take this and go to New York. You could dance in Broadway shows.”

  “What would you do?”

  “I could do anything I wanted to out there. A performer of my calibre? There’d be a mile-long list of things I could do in a city like that. And, hell, New York is just one place. We don’t have to go there. We could go to Los Angeles and work in pictures—I bet I could find work as a stuntman in a snap. And there’d be no shortage of pictures needing talented, easy-on-the-eyes dancers like yourself. Imagine that, Gloria, going to the movies and seeing yourself up on that screen. Dancing up front, where you belong.”

  She thinks about it for a minute, her face set in deep concentration, looking around the room, looking at the money. Nodding to herself every now and then.

  Finally, she gears those big hazels up at me.

  “All right,” she says, “I’ll go with you. If I stay here, I’ll never amount to anything more than a pretty background fixture.”

  I wrap my arm around her and pull her in.

  “When do we leave?” she asks.

  “After Baltimore,” I say.

  “Why wait until Baltimore?”

  “Because Baltimore’s where I’m going to kill Andrew.”

  If that rattles her, it doesn’t show on her slate-calm surface. Her set face, the firm unwavering line of her mouth, you’d think her expression had been chiselled on.

  I’m all double-time breaths and gushing adrenaline. I’m the first one to blink.

  “You’ve got to kill him, then?”

  “I’ve got to.”

  She nods. “Can I ask why?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hate him. Because it feels like the right thing to do. Too much time’s passed since I’ve put an end to the show, and too long ago it occurred to me that headlining isn’t the only way to do that.”

  She mulls that over for a minute and then gives me an approving nod. “All right,” she says. “And we leave after Baltimore?”

  “We leave after Baltimore.”

  She likes that very much.

  "WHY NOT HER, TOO?" At first, I’m not sure if I’m awake or not, so I don’t respond. If it’s a dream, I can reply however I’d like, but waking life is big on follow-through and consequences, so a more tactful answer would be needed if that were the case.

  It’s been five days since I told Gloria. She’s hardly alluded to it since. She said nothing about it on our second day in Charlotte, or on the first day in Raleigh. Yesterday, on our last in Raleigh, shortly after I’d flicked off the lights and we pulled the covers over our bodies, she gave my side a squeeze and whispered, I think Los Angeles would be just about perfect, in the soft, almost slurring voice you only ever hear from people on the cusp of sleep.

  But now…

  Had she spoken, or was I drifting into a dream?

  I wait a minute. Maybe more.

  Then: “Hnnh, Toby? Why not—” she’s interrupted by a yawn, “why not her, too?”

  I pretend I’m out.

  Gloria falls asleep without speaking again.

  MANY OF BALTIMORE'S TREES HAVE ALREADY BEGUN their autumn blaze. Their bursts blend into one another, creating a gorgeous fiery orgy when the whispering breeze animates their branches. There’s a last-rites-thin fog hanging in the air, a shade short of invisible, as if it were caught between here and another dimension. The bench I’m sit
ting on in Druid Hill Park faces the water, leaving my back turned to the path. Every so often, I’ll hear the shuffle of footsteps rising and then falling behind me, but there aren’t many people out yet at this hour, and those who are, it seems, aren’t the type to stop and chat with a stranger.

  That suits me just fine.

  I came to town last night, after performing. I’d convinced Julian and Susan to swap act times with me (a change that Rowland wasn’t at all pleased about), claiming that I was beginning to come down with a fever and time was of the essence. Once I’d finished my act, I rushed to get my paint off, changed my clothes, and then bummed a ride to Baltimore from a pair of locals I found in the parking lot who were also leaving before the show’s close. They told me that they’d heard the headliners were amazing, but the driver, Earl, hated traffic and, besides, his wife, Helena, wasn’t one for late nights. I told them I was from the city, too, but I was staying in a hotel because my wife’s family was living with us for the next month and I needed some time to myself.

  “Nothing like a night at the circus to pull you away from the tedium of reality,” Earl told me, the lines of his smile rippling so high I could spot them in the rear-view mirror from where I sat.

  “Pal, you’re telling me,” I said.

  Before they dropped me at the Bellingham, Helena threw in her two unsolicited cents, saying that the clown who went on before the knife-thrower and his target-girl was talented, but not very funny. “The bigger circuses, they always get funny clowns. Even the ones who flip around and all that are still funny.”

  I told her I’d be sure to catch the Ringling, Barnum, and Bailey show next time it rolled through town, and she told me that I absolutely must.