Only Pretty Damned

by Niall Howell

  Again, I follow Genevieve off the platform. The manoeuvre goes off without a hitch on the first try. And as Genevieve leaves my arms and returns to her bar, an exclamation of glee escapes her. Like all the others, we practise the double angel three more times, and, after that, run every move a few more times, adding a couple new parts to the routine as we go.

  It’s sometime after noon when we decide to call it a day. I don’t even realize how much my body aches until we’ve gone down the ladder and returned to the ground. And anyhow, it’s a good ache. “That went well.” I’m still catching my breath as we make our way to the performers’ door.

  “It did,” she agrees, dabbing her towel on her chest, her forehead, the back of her neck as we cross the vast floor of the big top.

  When we’re just shy of the exit, I stop. When she notices, Genevieve stops as well. She turns to me. “What is it?”

  “I, uh. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About all you’re going through with Andrew and all. I know that he and—”

  “Don’t, Toby.” Ice dangles from each of her words.

  “Look, I don’t mean to—”

  “Toby. Please, don’t,” she says, then turns and continues walking. “We’ll run through it a couple more times tomorrow morning and that should do it. If things go half as smooth as they did today, we’ll be in great shape for the show in the evening.”

  THE TWO OF US WERE GUZZLING BEERS, SITTING ON A fence that marked the border between private land and the field the circus set up in. It was dusk. The sun had fallen just behind the big top, back-lighting it in a way that made its boldest colours—the yellow on the flag at its peak and the swooping thick red and blue stripes that lined it—look stronger, more defiant, than ever. I felt like I was looking at a backdrop from a Hollywood movie.

  Together, me and Wally watched the crowd funnel in. It was the first night in many that I wasn’t performing.

  “Because it’s my home,” Wally said. It was an answer to a question that I forgot I had even asked—Why do you care so much about a place like this? Maybe it was the couple beers that I’d already downed loosening my tongue, widening the gaps in my internal filter, but I hadn’t meant it to sound so rude when I said it.

  It was something that I’d wondered about for a long time. Why? I could understand if Wally had been a performer. If you’re a performer, the answer is simple—you care because it takes care of you. It brings you the glory and the validation that, admit it or not, you are so desperately addicted to. But when you’re not a performer, when you’re stuffing suppositories into elephants’ asses, or you’re out on a cold, early morning hammering stakes into the ground until the skin on your chapped hands cracks open, or you’re down on all fours in a vacant lot picking up litter—empty bottles, popcorn containers, dead balloons, shitty diapers ditched before the car ride back to the city—how do you do it?

  Because it’s home. That’s how. Because it’s home and you take care of your home.

  “Yup,” Wally said, but I got the sense he wasn’t really speaking to me, “it’s home right up until it’s not.”

  I nodded. Wally popped the lids off two more beers and handed one to me. I hadn’t finished the bottle I was working on, but when he handed the fresh one to me, I pounded what was left of it back as quick as I could. “Shame about your friend there,” Wally said as I was catching my breath.

  “Yeah, it is a shame.” Clay had been goofing around on a horse late last night. For the life of me, I don’t know what would have enticed Clay to go anywhere near a horse—he was very allergic to horses, and anytime I’d seen him get within ten feet of one, little red bumps would erupt all over his skin and he’d sneeze so hard and so often you’d think his head was going to explode. Anyhow, while I don’t know what got him on the horse, I sure know what got him off. He’d been bucked and landed flat on his head, leaving him with a broken neck and leaving me down one performing partner. The doctor said that Clay likely wasn’t paralyzed, but that a full recovery—if there was such a thing—would take a long time. If it hadn’t been for Wally, though, Clay could have been much worse. Wally was the one who found him shortly after it happened, and the doctor said if Clay had ended up spending the night like he had landed—lying in the cold, damp grass in only his tights and an undershirt—he could have gotten hypothermia and died.

  Wally and I stayed out there for the duration of the show, the cheers, the applause, the music all softened by the distance and carried over to us by the rambling night air. The two of us were flat-out drunk by the time the Fly De Lis, now boasting a third member—their daughter, Genevieve—closed the night. An unmistakable crashing of cymbals marked the end of their routine, and the audience trickled out into full dark shortly after, followed by Thunder and Blazes.

  Noticing that that was our cue to hurry back in time for the barbecue and bonfire, Wally pulled two final beers from the leprous brown paper bag he had brought out with him, then balled the bag up and tossed it over the fence. He popped the caps off both, handed one to me, and we began to make our way. We didn’t say much on the walk back. I was having trouble walking straight, but Wally seemed fine in that department. His only tell was the volume of his voice. Whenever he drank, his voice would rise and fall, rise and fall. One minute he’d be barking about everything wrong with the goddamn place (which was a list that covered topics ranging from the logistics of moving from one city to the next, to the existence of a secret hierarchy that decided the names of new animals coming to the circus), and the next he’d be mumbling in a manner that was so soft and guarded that the words he spoke couldn’t have been for anyone but himself.

  The fire was alive and raging when we arrived. Flames shot high from the tipi of burning wood, licking at everything around them like tongues sprouting up from hell, eager to get a taste of things to come. I don’t know when Wally left my side, but by the time I felt the warmth of the fire on my face, he was gone. I stood there for a moment, enjoying the sobering heat, mesmerized by the movement of the flames. Then someone came along and gave me a slap on the arm.

  Rowland’s wrinkly face was scrunched into a drunken grin. His eyelids had jammed up at their halfway mark, and his mouth was trying to decide between three or four different makes of smile. I smelt the booze wafting from him and took a few steps back from the fire, realizing that at that moment, he and I had more corrosive potential than a human ought to have.

  “C’mere,” Rowland said to me.

  “Where?”

  He waved his hand, pointing nowhere specific. “Over there. With me. We have a meeting.”

  I followed him through the crowd of hungry performers and crew, taking a few pats on the back and a few more Tough break about your partner, kid, comments on the way. Rowland stopped near the edge of the fire’s throbbing glow. He looked confused for a second, but then, scanning the crowd, saw who he was after and called out. “Hey…hey! Over here!”

  Genevieve was at his side a moment later. He went to put his arm around her, but she deflected it, doing so with such subtle grace that even a drunken pig like Rowland couldn’t be put off by the refusal. “You two have met, I presume?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t believe we’ve had a proper introduction in all this time.”

  “Tragedy,” Rowland said.

  She extended her hand. I reached out and shook it. “Toby. Very pleased to meet you.”

  “I’m Genevieve. And likewise, naturally.”

  Rowland clapped a hand on both of our backs. “You two are top-notch. You’re top…top-notch, and I want…” he turned and belched over his shoulder and then paused, belched again, then stood completely still for another few seconds, looking rather worried. He relaxed again once it became clear that nothing more substantial was coming up. “I want you two to start training together once we hit Ottawa in a couple days,” he said.

  Genevieve flashed her smile at me for the first time. It was the kind of smile that didn’t let go of you until it was good and done. The
kind that pierced you with its pointy morphine tip and lulled you and carried you off. And you let it. No matter who you were, you let it. Because it belonged to a queen and because it made you feel so damn good.

  THE MORNING IS A CAKE WALK. PROFESSIONALS- true professionals—are creatures of instinct. From the time we both step onto the platform, neither of us says a word. We don’t have to. We run it, then we run it again. After the second time, Genevieve turns to me. “Let’s not wear ourselves down. We’ve got it, Toby. We’ll be fine tonight.”

  We climb down the ladder, first Genevieve, then me, and walk out of the big top together. Outside, we part ways without a word.

  I stop by Rowland’s and tell him we’re good to go for tonight. I know he wouldn’t have any doubts that we would be, but hearing the news from me gets him all giddy and chummy and over-the-top-thankful to the point that it seems phony. I get out of there as quick as I can and head to my trailer.

  On the way over, I spot Gloria. She’s sitting on a fold-out chair, flipping through a magazine—Life, I think—with her hair rolled up in curlers. She takes quick, modest puffs from a skinny little cigarette that pokes out from between her fingers. I walk over to her.

  I pop a cigarette in my mouth. I can’t find my lighter anywhere. Gloria sparks hers. She holds it up for me, but she doesn’t get up from her chair, so I have to bend down to light up.

  “How are you doing?” I ask her once I’ve taken a few puffs.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Yeah?”

  “All right, I’m anxious. But I’m fine.”

  “What’s got you anxious?”

  “What hasn’t?” she almost laughs, but only almost. “A few days ago, I figured you and I would be zooming down the highway together by this time.”

  “So did I, but things change.”

  “Boy, do they ever.” She hooks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then fidgets around in her chair and leans forward. Before looking up to me, her eyes shift from side to side a couple times. “I understand why we have to stick around a little longer. It’d look shifty if we split right after Andrew got caught up in that mess.”

  “Gloria, it’s not just that we should stick around—we have to. Police orders. Everyone in the circus stays here until they give us the go-ahead.”

  “Right. Right. I get that, and it’s fine. I just…it bothers me that you’re performing with her.”

  “Aw, come on, would ya? What am I supposed to do? I don’t like it any more than you do, but if we need to keep on like everything’s tickety-boo, then I don’t really have much choice, do I? It’d look suspicious if I were to say no to headlining for a few nights. Rowland knows how much it hurt having that gig taken away from me in the first place. And not only that, but the money he’s throwing in—I’d be an idiot not to take it, Gloria. An idiot.”

  In the moment she takes to mull it all over, I flick my cigarette stub away and get started on another, this time reaching down and snatching the lighter up off her lap.

  “All right,” she says. “All right. I’m sorry, Toby. It’s just nerves.”

  “It’s all right,” I tell her. I take a quick look around to make sure no one’s watching, then I lean in and plant a quick one on her cheek. Her cheeks flush red right away. I’ve never done that before, kissed her out in the open like that. She smiles up at me and I smile back.

  “What’s a couple extra days, anyway?”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  THE PARKING LOT IS NEARLY FULL AN HOUR BEFORE the show starts. I don’t know how they did it—whether it was rock-bottom admissions, two-for-one-entries, or whether I’ll be performing to a tent full of hostages held at discreet gunpoint—but Rowland, and whatever razorbacks went back to Baltimore today, found a way to wrangle up enough of a crowd that it looks like we’ll have a close to a sold-out show tonight. From the top step of my trailer, I watch them scurrying about like ants, hitting the concessions in mobs and stocking up on popcorn and drinks. I look at the big top. My eyes move to its highest point—the flag that stands on top of it, flapping in the wind like a pervert’s tongue—and without warning, I puke all over the steps of my trailer.

  It’s a good puke, though. A healthy puke. Cathartic.

  A few packs of stragglers quicken their pace when the first notes of the night are played. Children with balloons on sticks rush ahead of the crowd, their squeals cutting through the music and drifting over to me. I can’t help but laugh.

  Back inside, I put my tights on, then drop to the floor and do fifteen push-ups. I sit on the bed and sip some water and run my hand over my bristly head. It feels strange having this much hair before a performance. And no makeup. If this were any other night, I’d be dragging a razor across my scalp and getting ready to put the paint on. I’m leaving the clowning to the clowns tonight; Biff and Boppo and Mucko and Fucko. Have at it, boys.

  I light a cigarette and do my stretches. I’m antsy. The trailer feels small. I throw on an undershirt and start making my way to the big top.

  Julian and Eva, his substitute target, greet me. I think Eva usually dances with Gloria and the girls, but someone new was needed to fill in for Susan, who’s been looking mighty pregnant lately. Thank God we had someone else with a talent for getting knives thrown at them. “How does it feel, pal?” Julian says, cigarette smoke blowing from his nose as if he were a cartoon bull.

  “Right,” I say. “That’s how it feels.” He throws his head back and laughs.

  “You’re damn right it feels right!” he says. “I can’t wait to see ya up there again, Toby!”

  We stand there shooting the shit for a while. Eva stays with us. She laughs politely whenever we laugh, but her eyes keep drifting to Julian’s knife belt, which lies on the ground a few feet away. Other performers pop by intermittently and tell me to break a leg and that they’re excited for my act and all that.

  As if on cue, Genevieve shows up right as Julian and Eva are announced by Rowland. The way she arrives, it’s as if she materialized out of nowhere. She steps into the shard of light that’s being cast from the opening in the big top, and my breath is snatched from me. “I thought it would be appropriate,” she says, noticing my eyes moving up and down her. “I mean, if we’re going to do this, we might as well match, don’t you think?” Her old costume: a one-piece scarlet number covered in twinkling sequins, black boots with silver lightning bolts blasting down the sides. She’s even done herself up the way she used to—a swooping black tidal wave of hair at the front, clouds billowing down each side, cat’s eye makeup.

  “If the shoe fits,” I reply, realizing how stupid I sound about a second after the words leave my lips.

  She ignores my response and goes to take a peek inside. “You feel ready?” she asks over her shoulder.

  “Of course,” I assure her.

  She comes back over and takes my hand.

  Neither of us hears Gloria sneak up.

  I figure this is the sort of situation where the sooner someone speaks and gets things rolling, the better. “Hey, kiddo. Great set tonight,” I say.

  Gloria ignores me. She takes a couple steps toward Genevieve and I, stops, eyes us both. “I came by to wish you luck,” she says.

  I’m right about to thank her when Genevieve chimes in. “Honey,” she says in a tone that is anything but honey, “luck has no place here. Luck is for the hopeless. When you’re a performer of our class, you don’t wish for luck. You don’t wish for anything. You decide what you’re going to do, and then you do it.”

  “Come on now,” I say, “she just wants us to have a great show.”

  “And we’re going to,” Genevieve says, addressing me but looking—glaring—at Gloria. “With or without the aid of wishes.”

  Rowland’s voice booms from the big top before I can get another word out. Without thinking, I turn and look in. I turn back a second later, just in time to see Gloria storm off.

  “Toby, I wanted to thank you,” Genevieve says, pulling my focus back
to her.

  From inside, Rowland shouts, “…but, ladies and gentlemen, never before have two angels pulled such devilish stunts!”

  “You don’t have to thank me,” I tell her. “Truth be told, I’m just thrilled to be headlining again. Brief stint or not.”

  “…a man and a woman who laugh in the face of danger!”

  “No, Toby, not for that. For what you tried to do for me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “…gives me great pleasure to present to you…”

  “For exposing that rotten son of a bitch Andrew for what he is.”

  “Mister and Missus Angel!”

  The big top explodes. Shrapnel applause—Jesus Christ. I can’t speak. Genevieve smiles. A warm, knowing smile. She leans in and plants a kiss on my cheek. I can’t speak. She takes my hand and guides me toward the entrance. I take the lead once we enter the big top.

  Right—that’s how it feels.

  We kill.

  THERE'S A CLUSTER OF TREES A SHORT WALK FROM the big top. They’re the only trees in the field. They look diseased. The stump I’m sitting on in the midst of them might have once been the only decent one of the bunch. Maybe after whoever was tasked with clearing the place cut it down, he took one look at the rest of the trees—their soft, scabby bark, their limp limbs—and decided they weren’t worth the effort. They’d be gone soon anyway. Rotted out from the inside.

  I can see the parking lot from here. Only a few cars remain. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting up here. The rush that comes with performing a set like that, it’s like being drunk.

  My cigarette case is empty now. The breeze is cool, and while my body registers its chill, I still feel warm all over. What a night. I’m just about to get up and head back to my trailer—where I know I won’t get a wink of sleep—when I hear someone coming.

  His clumsy steps are punctuated by the sound of liquid sloshing about in a bottle.