I shivered. Just the thought of his acrid breath made my gorge rise, and the memory of his skin on mine turned my bowels to slimy Jell-O.
My fingers pressed the strange girl’s limp hand and I swore at the moon swaying playfully above us. Metal struts groaned and a light, cold breeze wiped the smell away and set the gondola in motion. The sinister skeleton of the Wild Mouse framed a grove of trees which seemed to reach for the lightening sky one last time before dawn.
My head spun and the whole thing replayed itself like a videotape when the tracking needs adjustment - the picture bounced up and down and blurred and sometimes that was okay.
I saw shifting shadows below. The plastic seat felt slippery from the dew. I wondered if I could just slide right off.
Hours ago, only hours, yet it might have been two lifetimes.
*
He swung out of the blood-red booth, a simian in loud crimson, waving a long knotty arm at me, not only catching my attention but making eye contact.
“Hey buddy, I need a favor. How far down you goin’?”
His eyes flashed urgently for a second. I was just another sucker, but how could I know that then?
“You’re not gonna play, are you?” Don asked with a smirk.
Liz giggled. She always giggled when Don made remarks with that smart-ass tone.
I shook my head and approached the booth. I wasn’t going to play, just see what the guy wanted. Maybe I could help, do somebody a favor for once. Jessica was always accusing me of living to get even. In fact, we’d just fought about it a couple hours before. This was my chance to prove her wrong. Brightly colored balloons floated on the plywood wall behind him, and his sweat-stained carny shirt matched the red ones perfectly. He smiled, yellow fangs and black gaps like Jack’o’lantern beacons between stretched lips.
“Down to the end of the row and back,” I said, almost shouting over the Eighties heavy metal chords coming from a nearby ride. “What do you need?”
Jessica applied some pressure to my arm - let’s go, she seemed to be saying - so I stood my ground.
He held onto one of the evenly-spaced metal bars that connected roof to counter and leaned out so that he did look a little like a monkey. A flat nose and yellowed teeth grinned at me as his lips brushed my ear and his free hand pushed a plastic dart feather-first into my grasp. I felt a tiny spark, like when you touch a light switch while wearing a wool sweater.
“I need you to throw one dart-bust-a-balloon. Give your ladyfriend a choice of prizes.” His voice grated on my ears like those pain-in-the-ass airport announcements no one can understand, only somehow worse.
I started to pull back and the dart followed as if it were glued to my skin. I felt his thin lips on my ear again and his warm breath ruffled my neck hairs. I shuddered.
“Just break-a-balloon buddy,” he whispered. “See-what-I’m-gonna-do-for-ya.”
I pulled away but felt his grip on my elbow and the dart was somehow nearer, almost catching the fabric of my shirt.
I knew that Jessica wasn’t near me - now she was about ten feet back with Liz and Don. Was this carny offering me a prize for a free single win? My mind raced. Purple-tusked elephants and four-foot tigers hovered in velvet ranks above and suddenly I knew how some of the people you see walking around lugging huge prizes may have got them.
Break-a-balloon-see-what-I’m-gonna-do-for-ya.
Guaranteed to bring in more customers and prove that every game is a potential winner. What a rip, I thought.
“Come on buddy-throw-the-dart-see-what-I’m-gonna-do,” he whispered again and nodded at the dart that lay like a sacred offering in his knotty palm. Was this man giving me a prize just to help his business?
I could still sense Jessica behind me, talking to Liz and Don
- the three of them tittering at the foolish way I was embarrassing myself. It was strange that there wasn’t a crowd around me. The midway was still on full-tilt, but this booth was empty of customers. Attendants in red costumes like Mr. Monkey’s stood with hands in their change aprons, either waiting for some suckers to step up or watching me win my free prize. They were all my age, and I wondered whether they were just summer workers or family members.
My fingers closed around the dart.
Somewhere in the back of my mind a decision door slammed shut. A stuffed animal of some sort would look good in Jessie’s arms - and maybe later, she’d kiss me good night in her own special way, too. I pictured one of those huge plush elephants cradled in her tanned arms, framed by her long chestnut hair, nestled in front of her red-striped camisole top. I pictured the camisole crumpled up on the floor of my bedroom. I pictured her lithe body writhing under mine.
I threw.
Four feet away, the balloon curtain parted and the dart joined the many other darts stuck to the plywood. Then, just for humiliation’s sake, it tilted and fell off.
“Come on buddy-make-it-look-good,” he said and pressed another dart into my hand. I couldn’t see where it had come from and now I was aiming it and praying to burst a balloon and get away from this monkey with the intense eyes and the smirk of a magician.
And all the hours spent throwing darts at Suds Bar added up to wasted time, like practicing the piano even though you’re tone-deaf.
The dart stuck to the wood, but nowhere near the balloons, and I knew that my face was at least as red all that stretched rubber.
“Come on just-get-one-in-there.”
Didn’t this guy ever need to breathe?
The dart grew into my fingers and I felt a tiny prick, as if the tip had punctured my skin, but the plastic shaft had already left my hand and a balloon popped.
I glanced at Mr. Monkey and knew it wasn’t over.
The smile flicked up the corners of his simian lips and his eyes sparkled, but the two seemed unconnected. I took a step back but felt myself leaning up against the counter even more. His rancid breath washed over me.
“Did you win something, Bobby?”
Jessie’s voice, distant. As if she were walking away.
I nodded and the midway blurred around me and the sounds seemed filtered, as if my hands were covering my ears. Except that my left hand grabbed for the counter and the other grasped a dart. And Mr. Monkey was grinning in my face - nostrils wide, hairy and twitchy - as his voice wrapped itself around my head like a warm towel.
“Got one go-fer-two-see-what-I’ll-do-fer-ya-come-on.”
I threw the dart that had appeared between my fingers. A pop rewarded my efforts.
“Got two go-fer-three-see-what-I’ll-do-ya-come-on.”
I threw and another balloon burst in a blaze of red.
“Got three go-fer-four-see-what-I’ll-do-come-on.”
I opened my mouth to talk and barely heard my own voice. “I’ll just take a prize, if you don’t mind.” The words came out a croak.
A close grin and a wink - a clear wink - and the words tumbled over me and I was glad Don and Liz and Jessie were so far away. I wondered why, for a second, but then those other attendants inside the booth smiled as another dart appeared in my grip. I didn’t know how it got there, and I didn’t care.
“Go-fer-four. Come on see-what-I’ll-do-for-ya.”
I threw. The pop was far, far away.
“That’s it!” I said between clenched teeth. “I just want my damn prize.”
“Okay you-owe-me-six-bucks-take-your-choice.” He grinned and pointed at one side of the booth.
Flat little plastic things, four-inch dolls and action figures, badly-painted rubber puppets - toys my dog Rolf wouldn’t bother with.
Deep inside of me I knew I was caught. I had tied the strings around my wrists and ankles and the marionette dance was beginning. And there was no end.
Six dollars for a prize that would fit my shirt pocket, and utter humiliation in front of my friends and Jessie. Why were they standing so far away? But thank God they were.
“An elephant,” I said. I tried to look tough, squaring my shoulders.
“Pick from that wall,” he said around his rictus grin.
I ignored his gesture. Wrong fucking wall.
“A dog?”
He pointed again. No quarter given.
Shit.
I reached into my pocket and found loose paper - one bill. I pulled it out. A twenty.
Mr. Monkey saw it - how could he when he was so much higher than me? shouldn’t the counter have blocked his view? - and he called to a younger clone of himself. “Change! Big bill here.”
My hand felt pulled outward as if on a string, even though the string was invisible. A claw reached out for the bill and it disappeared into a greasy apron. “Gotta get more bills,” mumbled the clone as he sidled away.
“I’d like my change now,” I muttered so my friends wouldn’t hear. I felt the flush creep up my face. The grins came at me from every direction, and I couldn’t turn around to face the three people who mattered to me. They still seemed to prefer the relative safety of the main drag.
“You-owe-me-six-but-pop-a-balloon-see-what-I’ll-do-ya.”
It was a nightmare. It was humiliation and shame and a little fear, too, and it hurt. And smelled bad, like sour two-day sweat, or dried semen in the stiff folds of yesterday’s briefs.
I threw the dart that had grown with a spark between my numb fingers.
It shoved two red balloons aside with confidence and thunked into the wood.
I threw the next dart.
Another miss.
I threw again.
Pop.
“How about the dog now?” I was out of breath, as if I’d been running.
Mr. Monkey pointed to a rack halfway up the side wall. Six-inch faded Raggedy Anns.
“What about my goddamn change?”
“It’s comin’. Break-another-balloon-see-what-I’m-gonna-do-ya.”
I ground my teeth and threw again, anything to look as if I were on top of things, and popped a sickly one.
The flush seemed to have reached my forehead, where it produced acrid liquid that trickled down and burned the corners of my eyes. My glasses were fogged at the sides and no sound reached my ears but that carny’s chuckle.
“That’s it,” I said, “I’m done. Now what do I win?”
“Bust-two-more-balloons-get-a-choice-from-that-shelf,” he said with that simian smile breaking his face in two. Eight-inch koalas and raccoons, still far removed from the Grail-sized canines and pachyderms above. The clone attendants grinned at me mirthlessly.
I glared at them, helpless.
It took me three tries to get two balloons and then the first clone came with my change - a woefully thin folded sheaf of singles, I saw at a glance before stuffing them quickly into my pocket - and I pointed.
When he handed me the dusty raccoon I felt a spark shoot through my fingers again and then I was loose, as if the strings had been cut. My arms collapsed at my side as if weighed down by the weight of snipped twine.
Mr. Monkey swung out of the booth to catch someone else’s attention. “Hey buddy, I need a favor -”
I stumbled back toward my friends.
“Is that a cute chipmunk!” gurgled Liz.
I gave it to Jessie. “It’s a raccoon.”
“It is cute,” Jessie said, smiling. She pecked my cheek and let me feel the tip of her tongue between her lips - a sign of things to come.
“All that time just for this little thing?” Don slapped me on the shoulder. “That’s a neat prize - not! How much it cost you?”
Jessie punched him while Liz snorted uncontrollably.
“No, really,” Don said. “How much?” That flinty nasty side of Don flickered for a moment behind his eyes.
“Six bucks,” I lied.
“Oh, that’s not bad,” Jessie said. She hugged me, very closely. The flush on my face felt as if it were melting icicles on my back. Somehow I was holding the damn raccoon again.
“Considering you coulda bought it for a buck fifty at Ben Franklin’s,” Don said with a snicker. “Robster! The dart-throwin’ machine!”
“Let’s see,” Liz said. I handed her the raccoon and our fingers brushed and I felt a little spark - I guess there was a lot of static electricity in the air. Liz looked at me strangely, but I turned away.
I shut them all out and let my fingers unfold the bills in the security of my pocket.
Two bills. No question about it.
In the nearest john, I looked at them in the privacy of a foul-smelling stall. There wasn’t much to count. Two singles don’t make for much of a wad, no matter how you fold’em.
That was when I knew I was coming back. And why. It wasn’t the eighteen dollars. I told myself that repeatedly. But there was pain in my groin - as if my testicles had been squeezed in a vise before being removed with a rusty X-Acto knife - and that was worth more.
I was coming back for a private talk with Mr. Monkey.
The pain in my balls reached a peak and I almost doubled over.
*
Two hours later, with Don and Liz off to some bar and make-out emporium, and Jessie and her raccoon home, after yet another screaming match, I reentered the midway with my handstamp. Off to the left, a row of poplars reached for the sky. A cemetery lay on that side of the fairgrounds, while on the other a muddy racetrack pulled in the NASCAR wannabes.
My mouth tasted sour after the beer and harsh words, but that was over and done. Jessica was all over me about my attitude, but I wouldn’t even listen. So we’d shouted past each other in the car and I’d let her find her own way inside. The way she clutched that damned stuffed toy as she slammed the car door almost brought me out to apologize, but then the moment was gone and I was tearing down the dark, silent street and swinging back to the freeway.
“Closin’ in fifteen,” the guard said as I slipped through the dew-slickened turnstile. I nodded. Like I cared.
The crowds had thinned to streams of people heading for exits and a couple here and there taking one last dangerous ride as blank-eyed attendants stared into the darkly bruised August sky. I made my way past the custard and corn-dog stands, where the bug-infested neons now flickered more visibly than before. I walked between screeching, hissing behemoths of rusting metal and grease and watched as they came to rest like weary dinosaurs at the feet of their handlers.
Soon I reached the carnival part of the midway, where plywood slats and shutters were beginning to cover the rows of stuffed animals, cheap Metallica, Judas Priest and Kid Rock mirrors, and old Heather Locklear/Cindy Crawford/Traci Lords posters. One of a lusty babe mouthing a banana with bright red lips almost threw me off my stride. Lone contestants still locked in mortal combat with the odds pitched quarters in one booth and squirted water into colored glasses at another, while bored attendants waited for that last crumpled, sweaty dollar to cross their counters. I wasn’t much surprised to see Mr. Monkey’s booth already closed up.
A carny with a retro two-inch yellow mohawk strolled by just then, and I intercepted him. The guy’s biceps were the size of my thighs. “I’m supposed to see the man who runs this booth, about a job,” I said, trying to make my face look blank and bored. I didn’t know if it did or not.
Mohawk squinted at me. A carnival organ came to a screeching stop somewhere nearby. “He want to see you?”
“He asked me to stop by after closing, but he didn’t tell me which trailer.”
Mohawk grunted and spit into the gravel. “Row three, number six.”
The shadows followed me as I made my way to the muddy parking lot, where trailers and rust-stained RVs rested like caskets in long, snaky rows. Row three number six was a once beige Winnebago, the squared-off corrugated kind, and it had seen all sorts of road in its day. Dim light shone through threadbare curtains in the rear. The only things that identified it as a midway vehicle were the handpainted number, the big-top decal on the driver’s door, and the fairground parking sticker that covered an accumulation of worn stickers from other nowheres. I circled it warily, thankful I was wearin
g rubber-soled deck shoes.
Now came the hard part. Was I going to knock or sneak? I thought of the muscular Mohawk and those cloned attendants and shivered. And those security guards they breed on farms somewhere in the bayous. What the hell was I doing here? What kind of stupid game did I think I was playing? What was I going to do, beat him up and rob him, go through his wallet? Wasn’t this just more of the anger that always got me in trouble at work, with my students and colleagues, and with Jessica, who deserved a hell of a lot better? I shook my head in disgust and turned to go. But something stopped me.
It was a low whisper, coming from the trailer’s open windows. And movement inside ruffled the curtains, or maybe it was the breeze, giving me a glimpse of - of something. I couldn’t breathe, and my tongue rattled drily against my throat. Suddenly I realized I was standing out in the open, in the center of the narrow lane between trailers, and that I had a choice. I could steal silently away, go make up with Jessie and enjoy the rest of the crappy late summer night, or I could close the gap and do some spying.
I made my choice. I crept closer, until I could look into the long side window.
Who knows what shape each man’s life-curve will take? The thought was foreign to me. I mean, it wasn’t something I could imagine myself saying, but there it was, like a mantra, repeating itself in my head.
The trailer was almost bare, with just a sagging couch and a couple folding chairs in my view. And a card table. The old carny sat at the rickety table inside a flickering cone, his left side facing me, his hands moving over the objects spread out in front of him. He was only a few feet away, so I held my breath in case he had extremely sharp hearing. The single fat candle sat crooked in an ornate carved holder, its flame wagging like a finger in the hot breeze. I felt faint. I let my breath out slowly, and refilled my lungs, but it didn’t help much.
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