Only Pretty Damned

by Niall Howell

  He—no. She. She is crying.

  When I spot her, I can tell she doesn’t see me. She yanks the cork out of the bottle she’s carrying and takes a long drink. When she’s done, she snivels and wipes her eyes with one side of her arm, her mouth with the other.

  “Eva, what’s the matter?”

  She screams and jumps, causing booze to splash out from the bottle. “Toby—what the hell is the matter with you? You scared me half to death!” She shakes her head all disgusted, like I’d been waiting up here all night for the sole purpose of making her leap out of her skin, and then takes another drink. “You want a sip?” She points the bottle at me.

  “Nah. Thanks for the offer, though. Next time, ask me a week ago.”

  “Huh?”

  “Forget it. What the hell are you doing wandering around here for?”

  “Aw, I don’t know.” She shrugs and crosses her arms, slouching a little. “I needed some space, that’s all.”

  With both arms, I gesture in all directions. “I can’t fault you for that.”

  She comes over and stands next to me, offers me the bottle one more time. “You sure?” I shake my head and she takes my drink for me. “It’s your buddy,” she says, “Julian.”

  “Oh?”

  “That baby can’t pop out soon enough.”

  “Not enjoying the knife gig?”

  “Not one bit.”

  “Well, I guess it takes a certain type. I can certainly see having knives thrown at you every night being the sort of thing that takes a toll on a person.”

  “You know what? The knives I don’t even mind all that much. It’s him that’s taking a toll on me. My God, what a piece of work that man is. Every day, accusing and nagging, nagging, nagging. I swear, Toby, I can do no right in that man’s eyes. He gets on my case for the most trivial things. I don’t walk right when I go to the target. The way I wave to the crowd is all wrong. I look like shit in the costume. I show up too early for our set. I show up right on time for our set. And now, tonight, the jackass accuses me of losing one of his precious knives!” The whole spiel looks to have exhausted her. She takes an appropriately long drink and mutters, “Stupid man,” as soon as she’s got the air to.

  “Yikes. Well, if you lost one of his knives—”

  “I didn’t lose one of his fucking knives!”

  “All right, all right. All I was going to say was that even though Julian’s awfully picky about those things, they’re not irreplaceable. If one got lost, the world will likely keep on turning. He’s probably just stressed about the baby coming and all that.”

  “Well, if you know any way to speed a pregnancy up, would you let me know? The sooner that thing pops outta Susan, the better.” She takes another drink.

  Before tonight, I’d never really said much to Eva. Nothing beyond the occasional nod or good day. Still, something tells me that Eva did lose Julian’s knife. She strikes me as the kind of girl who loses a lot of things. “Yep, the sooner the better,” she echoes. “Time to push the little demon out and get your behind back to the bull’s eye, Susan.”

  She pulls out a cigarette. I ask her if she’s got an extra one and she produces another, pops them both in her mouth and lights them, then hands one over to me. We sit there together in silence, puffing away, not quite rushing. When I’m done, I stand up, stretch, and snuff my stub out on the bottom of my shoe. “You know, if you hate it so much, you could just pack up your shit and leave.”

  “Pardon me?” she says in the irritated way people say it when they’ve heard every word you just said.

  I shrug. “I said you can pack up your shit and you can leave. No one’s holding you hostage here, are they? If you don’t like it and you can’t be a professional, you can hitch a ride to the city, head to the bus terminal, and go to Los Angeles and star in a stag film.”

  “Son of a bitch,” she mumbles, then reaches for her bottle. I kick it away before she gets to it.

  “You don’t like L.A?. Go to Des Moines and become a waitress. Go to Minnesota and become a school teacher. Go to the fucking North Pole and raise reindeer. But whatever you do, get the hell out of here, because if you don’t want to do it, I guarantee there are a dozen other girls who’d jump at the chance to stand in the spotlight and have knives whipped at them.”

  She doesn’t say anything else, at least not while I’m still in earshot.

  WHEN I NEAR MY TRAILER, I NOTICE THAT ONE OF THE drapes in my window is twisted up near the bottom. The window, as always, is closed, so unless a windstorm had happened inside the trailer while I was out, it’s safe to assume that someone had snuck inside.

  I open the door to a deeper darkness than the starlit night sky has to offer.

  “No one saw me.” Her voice comes from the corner where the bed is. My eyes are still adjusting; I can barely make her shape out.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.”

  “I guess I must be pretty oblivious if I’ve managed to go all this time without noticing the eyes you’ve got on the back of your head. And eyes that can see in the dark, no less. Cat’s eyes.”

  “Aren’t you a riot.” She stands up and moves to the nightstand. Something slides, something clinks. A match head scrapes, then hisses.

  “Why are you here, Gloria?”

  She picks up the lamp and walks over to me. The flame’s light dances across her face spastically. “Don’t you want to see me?”

  “Oh, cut the shit, will you? You know what I mean.” It all comes out in one quick breath and she gives a little start. I walk over to the drapes on the window and straighten them out. When I turn back around, Gloria is right in front of me.

  “What are you planning?” she asks, a slight tremor rocking her voice.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “What are you two planning?”

  “What do you mean two?”

  “You and her! You and Genevieve!”

  “Keep your voice down, would you?” I place my hands on her shoulders. They’re shaking. “I don’t know what you’ve got in your head, but whatever it is, I’ll tell you right now that you’re being paranoid. There’s nothing going on with Genevieve and I. Our relationship is strictly professional, get it?”

  Gloria considers that for a moment and then swats my hands off her shoulders. “Strictly professional—like hell! I’ve been watching you two. The way you look at her, Toby, the hand-holding, everything,” she shudders, “it makes my skin crawl.”

  “Can you hear yourself?” Now I’m the one who needs to keep his voice down, but damn it, I can’t help it. “The way I look at her—Christ! I don’t know what the hell’s gotten into you, but you need to cut it out! We’re in a tight spot here. No one suspects we had anything to do with what happened in Baltimore. We’ve got some serious money stashed away—and we’re going to get more as soon as I’m done this stint—and we’ve got a plan. The cops are probably this close to wrapping the whole Andrew thing up. I bet he’ll be back here in a day or two. A day or two—that’s all it is! By this time a few days from now, we’ll be cruising down the highway together, away from this damn place, on to better things! All that can muck it all up right now is you acting crazy, seeing things that aren’t really there, making up stories in your head and sneaking around like this. You know one of the detectives was here earlier today, don’t you? They’re still interviewing people. I don’t know why—by the sounds of it, they know who did it—but they’re still sniffing around here. All it takes, Gloria, is one person noticing that something funny is up with us. That’s all it takes. They don’t need to know what. They don’t need to figure it out, that’s the detective’s job. All anyone here needs to do is say, ‘You know, Detective, I noticed Gloria sneaking into Toby’s trailer last night. It sounded like they were arguing about something.’ And that’ll be it. That’s all the excuse they’ll need to come over here and start sniffing around. We’re so close here.” I put my hands back on her shoulders. Th
is time, she lets them rest there. “So please, stop looking for problems that don’t exist. A few more days—tops. That’s all.”

  She nods. “Yes. A few more days. I can do that, Toby. I’m…I’m sorry. I’m acting crazy.”

  “As long as it’s only an act.”

  She smirks and takes my hands, gives them a squeeze. She kisses me. “Maybe I’m just practising for Hollywood.” What a loon.

  I’m escorted to the edge of the bed. When I sit down, Gloria steps away and starts rummaging around my cupboard. She takes out two glasses, places them on the table, and goes to fetch the bottle of gin from the cabinet. “Oh no,” I say. “I can’t have anything to drink tonight.”

  “Why not?” she asks innocently, not looking up from pouring.

  “I don’t want to drink when I’ve got to perform tomorrow.”

  “Is there an early morning matinée show no one told me about?”

  Gin sloshes into the second glass. I open my mouth to protest again, but then I figure, what the hell? What’s one drink? Well, one drink is one goddamn drink—and that’s all it is.

  Gloria walks over to the bed, hands me my drink, and takes a seat next to me. I wrap my arm around her and the two of us sip away in silence.

  Gloria notices that my glass is empty before I do myself. She brings the bottle over and pours me some more. “That’s good,” I tell her when the gin passes the halfway point. Two drinks is two goddamn drinks, and not a thing more than that.

  A few sips has me buzzed. My mind finally has the courage to go to that place it’s been avoiding all night. I don’t know how to bring it up, but that’s one of the best things about booze—it takes care of that for you. “Genevieve knows.” With the words out of my system, I feel a throbbing void in my guts. I pound back my drink, getting about half of it down before I erupt into a sputtering coughing fit.

  Gloria shoots up from the bed and stands in front of me. “She knows what, Toby?” I can’t stop coughing. She bends over and gives me a few hard whacks on the back. “Come on, Toby, what is it? What does she know?”

  She goes to give me another whack, but I push her hand away and bury my mouth in the crook of my elbow and ride the remainder of the cough out. Gloria doesn’t ask me again. I look up at her, and, well, I guess my expression says a lot, because after about two seconds, she gets this petrified look on her face. She wants to speak—I can tell that much—but wanting to and being able to are two very different things. I get up from the bed and hold her in my arms. “Don’t worry,” I tell her, “don’t worry.” I heard somewhere that when people are in a panic, it’s best to repeat yourself because it takes a few times for words to sink in. I rub her arms. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry, okay, Gloria?”

  “O-okay,” she finally manages, her voice barely even a whisper.

  “Now, I told you she knows, but you went and had a series of heart attacks before I even got around to telling you how much she knows.” I guide Gloria back to the edge of the bed. “Are you with me here?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. So, she knows that I was the one who did it, but don’t go all crazy just yet, okay? See, the thing is, even though she knows I did it—and you’re gonna love this—she’s glad I did it. You hear me, Gloria? Genevieve is happy about the situation. She even thanked me. I don’t quite know why, but she did. She thanked me.”

  Gloria, crossed arms, shoulders perked like she’s got a chill crawling up her back, sits on the bed in silence for what seems like a very long time. She stares down at her feet, looks up to my concerned eyes, then decides she prefers the first view. “We don’t have a choice,” she says in her hushed ghost’s voice. “We have to kill her, too.”

  “Jesus Christ. Come on, now.”

  “We have to, Toby,” she says without looking up at me, as if a swirling pool of possible futures were playing out on the floor in front of her. “It doesn’t matter how she feels about the whole thing—whether she’s glad about it or not, it doesn’t matter. She knows, and she can’t know. She’s a...” she straightens up, her eyes searching the room for the right word. “Liability,” she says after a moment. “That’s it, she’s a liability.”

  My body tenses. Veins throb. I walk over to the table and slam my fist down on it. Hard. It takes three blows for me to loosen up a bit. Three blows before my throat unwinds enough that I can speak. “You’re way off, Gloria. Way off. She’s not a liability. Not at all. If she knows about it and she hasn’t gone to the police, that would make her involved, too. If we were figured out, she’d be in just as much hot water as you and me.”

  “But Toby, we don’t have any proof that she knows. If we were found out, we could tell the police she knew about it until we were blue in the face, but it wouldn’t matter. Not without any proof.”

  “Yeah, but who says she has any proof on her end?”

  “Who says she doesn’t?”

  “I do, because I was the one who did it, damn it! She couldn’t have any proof.” I’ve got this nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that’s not true, though. I did a good job of covering my tracks, but there are always unknowns. Unknowns, I realize, like Genevieve’s whereabouts the night of the murder. As far as I knew, she was back here at the circus the whole time, but that’s not a certainty. She could have been in Baltimore. It’s not inconceivable. But I can’t think like that. I can’t let myself go down that road. The Road of Unknowns—of What Ifs—is an easy road to get stranded on. Best to avoid it altogether.

  I boot the nagging voice back down the well it crawled up from. “Gloria, Genevieve can’t have proof because nobody has proof, you got that? For all I know, she just has a hunch. And it’s not as if I confirmed that I had anything to do with it when she thanked me. I didn’t go, ‘The pleasure was all mine—anyone else you need bumped off?’ She just thanked me, and two seconds later, we were called in to perform. Nothing more to it.”

  After a moment of consideration, Gloria says, “All right,” but her eyes tell me the opposite.

  I get down on my knees, reach under the bed, and pull out my Samsonite. I place it on the bed and pop the latches, then I grab the lamp, angle it toward the suitcase, and open it up. I look over to Gloria just in time to see her pupils shrinking from the light. “We’re gonna be fine,” I assure her. “Just a couple more days, and that’s it.”

  She nods.

  “I can’t blame you for being worried, but we can’t be stupid about this. Killing someone else is the last thing we should be considering right now. It’d only serve to complicate things, make an even bigger mess for us to sweep under the rug.”

  “You’re right,” Gloria says. Her eyes move from me back to the money in the suitcase. “Just a couple more days,” she whispers.

  She finishes her drink. I don’t opt for a refill myself. When she’s done, we say our goodnights and we kiss our goodnights, and I walk with her to the door. As I turn the knob, I say, “The window’s out of service, so I hope this will do.”

  She forces a snicker. “It’s fine for now, I suppose.”

  I watch her walk away until the dark absorbs her and she vanishes from view, then I close my door, lock it, and return my suitcase to its home under the bed. I fish out a copy of Fantastic Novels. That shitty old nagging voice is causing a ruckus down at the bottom of the well, and sometimes reading something really out of this world—something with lunar conquests or gladiators on Mars—is the best way to slide a cover over the well’s opening and shut the voice up for good.

  I can’t focus. I have to read the same paragraph over and over again, retaining nothing each time. After two glazed pages and zero plot digested, I close the magazine. I’m not tired yet, but I need to be. It’s late, and a headliner needs his rest. There’s an ad for Prestone Anti-Freeze on the back of the magazine. Five or six reads of that (No rust, no foam, no freeze, no failure!) and the sheep are lining up beside my bed, ready for a quick inventory.

  SOMETHING'S GOING ON.

  I fee
l it the second my eyelids flip open. I don’t know how, but by God, I swear I feel it.

  I feel it as I pull my clothes on, and I feel it as I splash cold water on my face and neck and as I brush my teeth.

  Too much chatter. That’s the first thing I notice when I step out of my trailer: too much chatter from too many people. It’s too early in the day for that sort of thing. Except apparently it isn’t. When I step out of my trailer, the place is buzzing with men and women who, up until now, I could have sworn were the type who didn’t even know there was a seven a.m. Some of them are still in their trailers, conspiratorial faces peering out with eyes shifting back and forth like a Kit-Cat clock; they peer and then they mutter over their shoulders and then they get right back to peering.

  Others are out and about, congregating on steps in twos and threes, craning necks, concerned faces, whispering behind cupped hands.

  Something’s going on.

  I begin making my way to breakfast, but something catches my eye and pulls me off-course. Three men are standing outside of the big top at the performer’s entrance. One of them is Eddie. He’s holding two syrup-slathered pancakes in his hand. As I draw closer, I see that the side pockets of his overalls are covered in sticky globs of syrup. They’re loose overalls, and I figure he’s got at least one more pancake rolled up in each pocket—whatever’s happening is interesting, but it isn’t forget-about-breakfast-altogether interesting. The other two men I recognize, but I can’t recall their names for the life of me.

  “Morning, boys,” I call.

  They all look at each other like I’d just tossed a live grenade between the bunch of them, then look at me, and smile the three phoniest smiles I’ve ever seen together in the same place. Eddie speaks for the bunch of them: “Morning, Toby. How’s things?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll know once I get a look inside there.”

  Eddie steps aside, but he’s not really one for effort, so I still have to brush past him to get into the big top. I hear Eddie mutter something behind me, but I’m not really interested in whatever he’s got to say. What interests me is the five men inside the big top: Rowland—standing near the edge of the ring with his arms crossed and one foot sticking out like he’s waiting to trip someone—and four crewmen taking down the trapeze safety net.