by Lisa Fiedler
We fall into bed. I nip the bottom edge of his T-shirt between my teeth and tug—a request, which he fulfills by yanking the thing over his head and flinging it across the car.
“Why?”
“Because he hates that I’m Cornelius’s favorite.”
“I meant why Europe?”
“Oh.” He laughs and kisses my eyelashes. “Because it’s just different there—they respect the circus, they consider it a true art form. And I want to learn everything I can, and bring it all back here, to make VanDrexel’s the best American circus there ever was.”
And to prove to Gideon you can do it, I think.
“Can you imagine it, Victoria? Me, going from show to show, an itinerant performer, studying with every Löwenzähmer I can meet.”
“Every what?”
“Lion tamer. German.”
I laugh and repeat the word against his lips—Löwenzähmer—then giggle it into his chest, loving the way it makes him flinch. I move lower, whispering it over and over and over again as I nuzzle each carved ripple of his abdomen. “What else?”
“Pitre. Clown.” He slides my open blouse from my shoulders, then his fingers find the buckle of my belt. “French.”
I wriggle my slacks down my legs; the cot squeaks beneath me as I kick them off. “And . . . ?”
“Direttore del circo.” He takes my hand and gently brings it to the front of his jeans, his thumb caressing my palm. “Ringmaster. Italian.”
“More . . .”
“Acrobata, pagliaccio, Sprechstallmeister.”
There is something so mysterious and romantic about those words, those circus words, spoken in his voice. My spine tingles with them as they tremble off his lips and onto mine. I sigh a slow smile, thinking, Who else but a lion tamer, who else but James, could entice a girl with circus words?
Now my fingers find the tab of his zipper and I ease it down—his turn to wriggle. His progress is impeded by the fact that I refuse to unwrap myself from his body. But his jeans come off, and when there is nothing but night between us, we revel in the feeling of being this close, me marveling in him, him marveling in me. His thumb traces the line of my jaw; my instep curves against his ankle.
“Why haven’t you gone already?” I ask.
He rolls up on his elbows and settles above me. “Part of it is that Cornelius is afraid to let me go,” he whispers, kissing my lips, my nose, my chin. “He thinks I’m too much like my mother, that I’ll get swept up in the adventure and never come back.”
The thought of James leaving VanDrexel’s for good sends a stab of panic through me. I don’t know why, since I’m leaving soon myself.
“Is he right?”
“No. I don’t think so, anyway.”
“But you can’t be certain. Salzburg, Barcelona, Paris . . . you might be tempted.”
He considers this, then shakes his head. “No. VanDrexel’s is home. Home is everything.”
Home is everything. I have to stop myself from looking around for something to write on.
“But it doesn’t matter anyway,” James laments, “since we don’t have the money to fund a trip like that.”
Good, I think. Not for me, of course. For Cornelius. And the circus. James will stay and the show will go on.
“But if I could go . . . damn, I know it would be one hell of an adventure.”
I skim my fingertips across his chest to make him shiver. He smiles and dips his head; his bangs brush the base of my throat. I cradle his face in my hands to draw his mouth to mine. My eyes fall slowly closed; he is kissing me like I’m made of candy. A quiet rumble fills his chest—a tiger sound. I meet it with a sigh, then something softer: a promise.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
And all thoughts of European adventures are abandoned for the one we suddenly can’t stop ourselves from embarking on.
Right here, right now.
* * *
• • •
James is already gone when I wake up.
He and Gideon left before dawn and will be away all day. Cornelius has heard rumors of a carnival that recently went belly-up, and he’s sent the boys to see what the bankrupt owner might be willing to sell off, cheap.
It is just past sunrise when I creep out of his car to meet Sharon in the center ring.
Today I will graduate to the actual high wire—sixty-six feet high, to be precise—and I’m more than a little bit nervous. Although she never uses a safety net herself, Sharon’s insisted that I have one and I’m not inclined to argue.
The crew has just finished setting up the net, and they’re bouncing on it to make sure it’s properly arranged. A giant’s fishnet stocking. The only thing between me and the hard-packed dirt floor of the Big Top.
I have been doing fabulously well on the low tightrope Sharon’s had me training on. And I love the feeling of holding motion at bay by creating motion of my own. I am, as Mr. VanDrexel pointed out, a natural. I am graceful, nimble, mighty.
I am also, as it turns out, slightly afraid of heights.
But when the crew guys are gone, I tamp down my nerves, make the climb, and position myself on the wire.
The band is having one of their casual practice sessions; they good-naturedly announce my moment with a long, exaggerated drumroll.
“Very funny,” I shout down, but somehow their teasing makes me feel better, braver. “I’d like to see you fellas try this.”
A rim shot: ba-dum-tsh . . . how drummers laugh.
I begin my walk and Sharon calls out corrections, encouragements . . . It’s all as it always is except from here she looks much smaller. I think about how, for me, in Brooksvale, ground level was so much more precarious than this, and my fear begins to wane.
I do as I’m told and succeed in skipping, turning, bowing, even walking backward. I am an athlete, an artist, a magician. An angel, a daredevil, a dancer in the sky. The band is delighting themselves with their own sound, and without even trying to, I find myself moving in time to their jaunty tunes.
“Don’t get carried away, sister,” Sharon warns, during a pause in the music. “Just do what—”
She cuts off, turning abruptly toward the tent’s entrance as if she’s heard something, something I can’t hear from up here. But the musicians have heard it and they put down their instruments and go out to see what’s what.
Sharon listens a moment longer, then calls, “Victoria, come down.”
“Why?” I ask, but I’ve already begun picking my way cautiously to the opposite end of the wire. She’s not so small that I can’t see the expression on her face. Something’s wrong.
“Victoria,” she says loudly when she sees what I’m doing. “Come down now.”
“You mean . . .” I eye the net. I know it’s safe but I don’t want to do it. It is counterintuitive. It’s scary.
“Victoria! Now. Trust the net.”
I know better than to question her twice, so I fall. I just . . . fall, letting myself spill from the wire like a tear from the eye of God. When I hit the net, I become an animated version of a flailing Vitruvian Man, vaulted upward ten feet—my stomach leaps and drops at the same time, then I’m falling again, back into the net; it cradles me just as briefly, only to belch me upward once more into another shallower bounce. Finally, the net goes still and I scuttle to the edge to somersault off.
On the ground, I can hear what Sharon heard—running feet outside the tent, voices raised in authority, Oklahoma accents. It’s barely eight o’clock in the morning. Something is very wrong.
Now the tent flap slaps inward; a column of light slices into the gloom and in it stands Cornelius, fastidiously put together even at this hour. His red coat is buttoned, his precious top hat sits upon his head like a crown—he is, even at sunrise, a force to be reckoned with. And when he speaks the single word he’s
come to tell us, I know why.
“Police.”
TWENTY-ONE
CALLIE FOLLOWED QUINN UP the stairs into the carriage house.
Needless to say, the open house had ended early. A John Robinson if ever there was one.
All Mayor Baylor’s concerns about the animals on the reserve posing a safety hazard to the citizens of Lake St. Julian had been summed up one in single public relations–crushing phrase, a phrase that had interrupted—and negated—Brad’s flawless, heartfelt speech assuring his guests of their town’s safety, because Callie had been unable to keep from screaming it at the top of her lungs:
The chimpanzee could actually kill you.
Quinn flopped onto the couch, kicking off her shoes. Callie went to her room, returned the Husky Pete’s napkin to the corkboard, and stood in front of it, wondering if there could ever be a saying or a lesson to explain how something that had been planned with such good intentions could have gone so horribly wrong.
Her phone warbled and she grabbed for it. In all the commotion with Kristi, she’d almost forgotten about Jenna.
But it wasn’t Jenna. It was Kip.
AT JENNA’S. PLEASE COME.
There was a brief hesitation, during which Callie quickly, instinctively untacked a business card from the bulletin board and slipped it into her pocket where the cocktail napkin had been. Then . . . warble.
Kip: HURRY.
Callie ran into the living room with the color draining from her face and showed her mother the phone screen. Quinn was on her feet in a flash, stepping back into her shoes.
Ten minutes later, they pulled up behind Kip’s Jeep—and the two police cars and the ambulance that had gotten there before them. Callie sprinted up the walk, the seashells gnashing like teeth underfoot. When she pushed open the screen door, she saw Jenna, perched on the edge of the couch cushion, her body bent forward with her elbows resting on her thighs and her wrists dangling between her knees, gazing straight ahead with vacant eyes. Except for the fact that her hair was down and beautifully brushed, and she was wearing a cute little sundress with strappy sandals (one of which was missing its heel), Jenna could have been sitting on a bench in a dugout waiting for her turn at bat.
Kip was sitting in a wooden rocking chair watching Jenna watch . . . well, nothing. The room—all pale beach colors and beadboard and driftwood, something out of a breezy bed-and-breakfast—was a shambles. Books scattered, a broken vase, an overturned coffee table. From upstairs, Callie could hear voices—firm, calm, insistent:
“Mrs. Demming, can you hear me? Mrs. Demming, I’m here to help you. Can you move your head, ma’am? Can you hear me?”
Quinn rushed in and went directly to Jenna, catching her in a hug and smoothing her hair. “What happened?”
Jenna continued to stare and, like the ballplayer she seemed to be impersonating, let Kip field the question.
“Her mother was drinking all morning,” Kip relayed. “Jenna kept trying to get her to stop. I guess because she wanted her to be able to come to the open house.”
Jenna nodded. Then sighed, then nodded again.
“But when Mrs. D opened another bottle of vodka, Jenna got super frustrated and kind of lost it and threw something across the room. Mrs. Demming freaked out and started trashing the place. Then she went upstairs—”
“Crawled,” Jenna interjected dully. “She crawled upstairs. With the vodka.”
“Yeah. Crawled.” Kip rubbed his eyes. “Anyway, I guess she locked herself in the bedroom, and Jenna just decided to leave it alone for a while—”
“I did my hair. I never do my hair. I’m always too busy watching her to have time to do my hair.” She looked at Quinn. “I have great fucking hair.”
Quinn stroked Jenna’s cheek and whispered something soothing as Kip went on. “She was leaving for the open house, but then she heard this, like, thump—”
“Thud. This thud.”
“So she went upstairs and knocked on the door, but her mother didn’t answer. So she tried to kick it down.”
Jenna rolled her eyes. “Like that was gonna work.”
But it did explain the heel.
“So she called 911, and they came and they broke down the door, and I guess Mrs. D had fallen out of bed, but something about the way she landed—”
“She broke her neck!” Jenna finished, her daze lifting, her anger burning hot. “She broke. Her fucking. Neck. Her goddamn fucking drunk-ass neck! Broke it.”
Kip puffed out a long breath. “They think she broke it. They won’t know until she gets to the hospital.”
Quinn pressed a kiss to the top of Jenna’s head, then went upstairs to talk to the EMTs.
Callie went to sit beside Jenna, placing a business card on the couch cushion between them.
Jenna looked at it. “And why exactly do I need the phone number of a deputy sheriff in Oklahoma?”
“Other side, Borderline.”
“Ah.” Jenna flipped it over.
Trust the net.
“Hm. Nice thought.” Jenna cast a meaningful glance toward the stairs. “But you can’t trust what you don’t have.”
“Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”
When Jenna didn’t answer, Kip said, “Why didn’t you tell any of us?”
“I guess I thought you’d get the hint. I mean, it was kind of obvious, wasn’t it?”
Kip sighed, then shrugged. “I don’t know . . . I mean, maybe.”
“That’s why I stopped showing up at stuff.” Jenna flexed her fingers as if she might make a fist, then let her hand fall back down to her thigh. “I got tired of making excuses for her when she’d pick me up wasted. Remember when she came stumbling into our seventh-grade choir concert smelling like tequila? Or that time she got loaded at the gumbo cook-off and everyone pretended it was perfectly normal for a fourteen-year-old to get behind the wheel of a car to drive her mother home?”
Kip squirmed. “Yeah, I remember,” he said softly.
“The only thing I couldn’t quit was work, but of course that came to a screeching halt last week when she showed up stinking drunk during my double shift and tried to steal a hundred bucks out of the cash register. Which, needless to say, was the real reason I got shit-canned.”
“I guess we thought we were being respectful by giving you your space,” said Kip, “but what we should have done was step up.”
“Good times,” grumbled Jenna, sliding the business card into her jeans pocket. Then with a jolt of realization, she turned to Callie. “How was the open house?”
Callie sighed. “Funny you should ask.”
TWENTY-TWO
Oklahoma, 1965
CORNELIUS IS SHAKING HIS head. “Seems a few of our rowdier lads lingered in town last night and failed to mind their p’s and q’s. One of them paid a bit too much attention to the sheriff’s wife.”
Sharon rolls her eyes. “Lemme guess. Shaw.”
Cornelius does not confirm or deny. “The unfortunate result of this indiscretion is that we now have a disgruntled law enforcement agent meddling in our business.” His eyes flick to me, holding for the space of a heartbeat. “In particular, he would like to speak to any young ladies currently in my employ, and they will be expected to present proper identification for his consideration.”
“But why?” I croak. “How could he know—”
“Mrs. Sheriff, who, I feel compelled to mention, was in fact a willing and enthusiastic participant in this ill-advised little dalliance, was coerced into giving a description of the lad, and noted that he’d been wearing a rather pristine Red Sox ball cap, from which her husband rightfully deduced that the young man had recently spent time in Boston.” Again, his gaze grazes me. “It seems the sheriff has been reading the newspapers.”
My legs buckle under me; I would have crumpled to the ground if Sharo
n hadn’t caught me. She hauls me to an upright position.
“He doesn’t know what you look like,” she says, and I realize with a jolt that Cornelius must have shared the article in the Globe with her. I’m not angry, nor am I surprised that he would have; I told her as much myself that day by the elephant trailer, and we both know she’ll take my secret to the grave. But I also know that if the sheriff discovers that Cornelius has been transporting an underage (not to mention missing) girl across state lines, the ramifications could be as devastating for him as they’ll be for me.
“Naturally I’ve told the lawman that we will be happy to oblige him in this quest,” Cornelius explains. “Which is why, in a few moments, he’ll be going from car to car to examine each female performer’s paperwork.”
“Hell of a wake-up call,” Sharon grumbles, looking around the empty tent. “Can we hide her in here?”
Cornelius shakes his head. “His deputy will be searching the grounds, and I suspect he will not ignore the Big Top. He’s already started poking around the midway stalls.”
“What about the menagerie?” I blurt. An idea, born of desperation and terror, has begun to bloom in my mind.
“He has instructions not to go near those cages without me.”
Struggling to get my bearings, I glance from one rippling canvas wall to another. “The menagerie’s . . . that way?” I point to the north-facing side of the tent.
Cornelius nods.
I tell him what I’m thinking. He agrees that it just might work.
Sharon kisses me hard on the forehead, then leaves through the front flap to return to the train car she shares with Genevieve, the tattooed lady. Cornelius follows her. I turn and sprint to the north wall. A moment later I see the Ringmaster’s distinctive shadow splashed upon the canvas. He makes a quick motioning gesture with his arm. The coast is clear.
I crawl under the tent wall, scramble to my feet, and run full tilt to Rabelais’s trailer.
The elephant looks pleasantly surprised to have company at such an early hour.