My Faire Lady

by Laura Wettersten

  “Terrible taste, the whole lot of you,” Quagmire mutters. “Especially you, Indy.”

  “Aww, sore loser,” Will chides and bites into his sausage, chewing triumphantly, and Patsy beams while Quagmire scrapes the scrambled eggs around on his plate, sulking quietly.

  I take the moment of reprieve to poke the prongs of my fork into Will’s hand. He turns back to me, scowling. “Hey. That hurt.”

  “You’re such a baby. It did not.”

  “Okay, no, but you got syrup on me.”

  “Whatever,” I say. “Why do they call you Indy?”

  Will raises his hand to his mouth and licks, and it’s kind of cute the way his pink tongue darts out in search of the sticky syrup. He’s wearing his glasses again, and he adjusts them as if stalling. “I’m not just the parking lot attendant. I do other things here.”

  “What other things?”

  Davis leans across Will so that I can hear him. “He’s a whip cracker.”

  “A whip cracker? What’s that?”

  Davis and Will both mime flicking a whip, and make the “whip-pash!” sound effect to go along with it.

  I’m still not following. “Like, with the horses?”

  “Ha. No. The knights would kill him if he got near their precious horses with that thing,” Davis says, and Will shrugs. I can’t tell if he’s smug or embarrassed that we’re talking about him.

  “I do a show. Whip tricks. Hence, Indy. Indiana Jones.”

  I nod as if I understand. “So you just . . . whip things? In your show?”

  Will waves his fork. “Nah. It’s more than that. Flicking things out of my assistant’s hands. Swinging from it. That sort of thing. There’s fire and stuff.”

  “Fire?” I eye him, not sure how to reconcile the unassuming Will I know with a person who knows how to wield a whip on fire. “How on earth did you get into that?”

  “It’s a Fuller family talent. My dad cracked the whip, and his dad before him. I guess you could say I come by it honestly.”

  “He’s funny, Ro,” Patsy adds from across the table. “Hilarious. I can’t believe you haven’t seen his show yet.”

  “He never told me about it,” I say to her, shaming Will some in the process. I add for good measure, “Maybe he didn’t want me to see it.”

  “I want you to see it,” Will says softly. “My stage is close to your tent, actually. I do shows at the odd-numbered hours.”

  Now that he’s mentioned it, I remember hearing cracks off in the distance, but I always thought it was the little snapping fireworks they sell in the toy shop, and that certainly explains why he walks through the kids’ section frequently.

  “Well, I’m coming to see you today,” I tell him in a tone that means he’s not getting out of it.

  “Looking forward to it,” Will says, but it doesn’t have his usual swagger, and I have to wonder if he really means it.

  Cassie’s in the tavern today, leaving me on my own, which I’ve decided is my new favorite thing. When she’s not around, I don’t feel any obligation to stick to the B.A.B., and I do things the way I want. I even clean the brushes the way I want, taking my time to rinse out every little bristle and hum along with the distant minstrels while I do it.

  Today a boy wanders in, probably not more than six years old. His older brother has clearly been given the task of escorting him into the tent and looks as bored as can be, tugging on the child’s hand as if to lead him out of the tent.

  “Come on, Colin. Let’s go see the sword fighters or something,” his brother urges, but the younger boy looks absolutely miserable at the thought of leaving my tent. His eyes are wide as he looks around, taking in all the Polaroids I’ve taken of my previous customers, the B.A.B., which lies open on Cassie’s station, and the rows and rows of paints.

  “Do you like the colors?” I ask him, and he turns to me, sucking in a breath as if he’s been caught doing something terrible. I give him my softest, friendliest smile, and he timidly returns it. “Which color is your favorite?”

  He doesn’t give me a verbal answer, but he points toward a fantastically bright fuchsia.

  His brother snorts. “Of course you’d like pink . . .”

  I wish sometimes that looks could kill, because this child’s brother would have keeled over right then from the cold stare I give him. I smile at the child again. “That’s fuchsia. Do you want me to use that color?”

  The boy nods, much to the chagrin of his brother, and I pat the chair opposite me. The boy is so small that his feet don’t touch the ground beneath us.

  “What would you like to be?”

  Again, the boy doesn’t use words but points instead at the painting hanging above Cassie’s station. It’s a dragon of the Chinese variety, and it’s incredibly detailed and gorgeous. The name scribbled at the bottom says “Janet.” When I’d read that, I’d sighed a huge sigh of relief that it was my predecessor and not Cassie who had painted such a marvelous creature.

  “Okay,” I say, and as his brother grumbles something about how at least the kid chose a cool animal, I vow to do my best. I pick up my thickest brush and get to work painting his whole face fuchsia. “I’m Ro. What’s your name?”

  “Colin,” he says, his voice just as small and timid as he is. “I’m six and a half.”

  “I’m seventeen and three-quarters,” I say back, which earns me a surprised grin. “You want big scales and scary eyes?”

  He looks unsure, so I lean close to his ear and whisper, “Maybe you could scare your brother if you had scary eyes.”

  Colin nods emphatically, but presses his lips together tight, making sure it’s just our little secret.

  By the time I’m finished with him, I’ve used not just the fuchsia but some purples, blues, and golds to make some shaded scales, and his eyes come out to dark black points almost above his ears. It’s similar to an idea I saw in the B.A.B., but with an Asian twist and a lot of color and detail. I stand back and admire it before taking a Polaroid. It’s really good, even if it’s my own work and I’m probably biased. I’ve never done anything quite that intricate, especially not on a face, and I’ve managed to make him look both fierce and beautiful.

  I feel puffed up with pride, and when I show Colin the Polaroid, I can tell he feels the same way. He holds it in his small hand, smiling at the fierce creature he sees as the gray image darkens into color. I want him to remember this feeling for a long time, so when he tries to hand the picture back I tell him to keep it and snap another picture of him. He’s smiling in this shot, all that pride coming out in one giant, crooked grin.

  His brother hastily hands me a ten, wanting to get a move on, but even he seems astounded when Colin turns to show him. He quickly recovers from his shock and grumbles, “Dad’s gonna hate that.”

  Colin doesn’t say thank you to me as his brother pulls him out of the tent, but the shy wave and that giant grin are all the thanks I need.

  Cassie was not pleased when I excused myself hurriedly for a break at five till three and dashed out of the tent while tossing a careless, “Going to Will’s show. Sorry if I’m not back in twenty!” over my shoulder. I could feel her dislike for me burning a hole in my back as I scurried down the hill, in the opposite direction from the stables, but I don’t care. There’s no way I’m going to miss this.

  There’s a small crowd gathered around a stage that can’t be more than fifteen feet long. The curtains look like a few canvases woven together, very homespun, and in pointed calligraphy, the title of the show is written large and looming:

  WHIP CRACKER JACQUES

  I don’t know whether to groan or chuckle.

  The crowd is decent: definitely smaller than the number of people you see at the jousting match, but a whole lot more than the acrobats and Patsy and Quagmire manage to pull together, combined. There’s a large group of preteen girls gathered by the edge of the stage, whispering to one another, several men who look like they mistook the faire for a Viking festival, and some young boys
who are playing with the toy weapons they must have just purchased. One of them, I can see, has bought a whip.

  When the curtains open and Will steps out onstage, I’m glad the audience cheers and claps because I’m a little too dumbstruck to do anything myself.

  Will has combed his hair down with what looks like a metric ton of gel (how does Jeff let that go?), and it’s slicked back and up like a pompadour. He’s also pencilled in a hilariously fake mustache, the handlebar variety, with the ends curling tightly like scrolls. Someone offstage tosses him a whip, which he unfurls with great flair and then launches into a story about how he, Jacques, came all the way from “old Paree” to be with us today. His accent is over-the-top fake, and he plays up the French snob act. He sees me standing in the back, and although he doesn’t break character, the ends of his mustache rise up with a slight smile.

  But then he starts a sequence of whipping and fancy footwork that is a complete contrast to his goofy persona, skilled and precise. He takes aim at a beam that holds the curtains up and swings himself, in true Indiana Jones style, out over the audience and to the other side of the stage. Then he daringly cracks the whip at various targets, getting progressively harder until he finally whips an apple off of a volunteer’s head.

  And during all these dangerous feats, he tosses out clever jokes so quickly that if you don’t listen up, you’ll miss a chuckle.

  I listen. I’m giggling like a maniac by the time he asks for someone from the audience who might want to learn how to crack a whip.

  I’m pleased when Will selects the boy standing close to me who bought a whip from the toy store, and asks his father to come up as well. The boy clambers up onto the stage, so excited that he’s bouncing when he stands next to Will.

  Will does this whole routine where Jacques insists the boy will be able to, on the first try, knock an apple off his father’s head with the whip. The dad gets really into acting scared of being accidentally whipped and not believing Jacques’s comical reassurances that since he is the best whip cracker in the world, so are his pupils.

  “I assure you, zere ees no way ’e will fail with my ex-pert guidance,” Jacques says, the father shaking his head exaggeratedly back and forth. Jacques tries to make the father sit still, and twice the father scrambles up to leave and Jacques has to race after him and drag him to the chair.

  “You must trust Jacques,” he says to the father with a flourish of his hand. “Ze best whip cracker in ze world. Only three people ’ave ever died on my stage. Ze odds are good, no?”

  Before the father can protest any further, Jacques sets the apple on his head and hands a whip to the boy.

  The joke is that the boy’s whip is too short to reach the father, but behind him, Will flicks his own whip and knocks the apple straight off, and the boy thinks he’s done it. The crowd cheers and applauds as he bows, and then Will begins the second part of his show—with flames.

  It’s mesmerizing to watch the blue-orange flames of the whip dance around Will as the slightest movements from his hand control it. He’s precise but smooth, and he begins to move with the whip, in and around it, so I can’t tell if he’s dancing around the whip or it’s dancing around him. It’s all so fluid that my brain can barely comprehend that he and the whip are separate beings; the whip seems merely an extension of him, some rare kind of magic he was born with.

  The audience oohs and ahhs, and I find myself doing it as well. Then, with one final flaming flourish and several campy bows that would have made a diva look reasonable, Will disappears behind the curtain again.

  Unlike the rest of the crowd, which scatters to the far ends of the faire, I walk directly behind the stage and duck, without hesitation, behind the ropes. Will is sitting on the stairs, laughing with a small crowd of boys with toy whips. He’s still in character, using his French accent, and when he sees me he winks at the boys and says, “Oui, all ze ladies love Jacques. You want a pretty girl? Zen whip cracking is ze job for you, yes? Go and practice and remember what ze great Cracker Jacques said: Eet eez all in ze wrist!”

  Will and I watch as the boys scamper off, shouting to one another about how cool Jacques is. When they’re out of sight, Will picks up a small mirror and starts to wipe off his mustache.

  “Eyebrow pencil?” I ask, and Will makes a sound of agreement. “Eye makeup remover or Vaseline would work better.”

  “Vaseline? Really?”

  “Yeah, it works great. It always makes me break out, though,” I say, then wonder why I decided to bring up my acne problems with him. Gross. I add hastily, “You know, I could paint a much better mustache for you, if you wanted.”

  Will stops fussing with the mirror and paper towel and looks at me, expression surprised and soft. “I’d like that,” he says, then laughs a bit. “As long as it’s not realistic. Part of the joke is how fake Jacques is.”

  “Oh, I can make you a fantastically fake mustache,” I promise. I clear my throat and add, “Jacques is rather funny. Really funny, actually.”

  Will sets down the paper towel and mirror and asks, with a note of uncertainty that seems very un-Will to me, “Did you really like it?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, it’s funny, and it’s a great act, but beside that I was super impressed with all the whip stuff. I didn’t realize it was so . . . artistic.”

  He nods, emphatic, and I know I’ve said exactly the right thing. “The flame part? It’s my favorite. I wrote that whole sequence myself, and it took a lot of time to get it right. I had to practice it for months so I wouldn’t burn myself in the process. It’s all just very precise physics, you know? Every move an equation so that the snap comes at exactly the right second, and the flames have a moment to breathe so they won’t go out. I’m considering doing my dissertation on the physics of whip cracking. You know, if I make it beyond undergrad.”

  Will squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I can’t shut up about it once I get going . . .”

  “It’s okay, I get that,” I reassure him. “Ask me about my art and I’d do the same.”

  “I’ll have to remember that.” Will’s gaze captures mine. “Do you think about it all the time? Dream about it when you sleep?”

  I think for a moment, adding up all these moments in my life: moments of practicing my lines and shading, of thinking about how to change designs or capture things I see around me on a canvas, of the way my hands seem to always be longing to hold a paintbrush. All together, the sum is pretty staggering.

  “Yes, actually,” I tell him, more than a little surprised.

  “Me too. All the time.” Will pauses, then corrects himself. “About physics, not art, of course. Why aren’t you majoring in art, again?”

  “It’s just not an option in the Duncan household,” I admit, though I have no idea why I’m telling him that, because my parents haven’t ever said that to me. Not in those exact words. But my father’s been obsessed with me going to his alma mater for as long as I can remember, and when I asked for private art lessons two years ago, they decided it was a waste of money. That was all the answer I needed, and that’s why I can’t even consider art as a career choice.

  The look he gives me is so full of pity that I turn away for a second to gather myself. Then, as a distraction, I pick up the paper towel he was using and sit next to him. He takes the hint and turns his face toward me, and I run the paper towel gently over his skin, wiping away the last traces of his mustache. “So how many times did you burn yourself learning that routine?”

  “Only a few hundred,” Will says. “No biggie.”

  “Of course not. First-degree burns? Child’s play,” I say, nudging his knee with my own. “Seriously, I was impressed. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me to come watch the first day.”

  Will doesn’t respond to that, but cocks his head at me. He’s still really close to me, his face mere inches from my own. His brown eyes are bright with the mischief I’m used to seeing from him, and for the first time I
notice that they have little gold flecks in them, all around his pupils, like the bottom of a miner’s pan after a good haul.

  “So, Cracker Jacques, want to teach me a few tricks so I can keep the unruly tavern patrons in line?”

  Will laughs. “Sure, I could teach you a few tricks, if you want.”

  “I’d love that.” I wad up the paper towel and hand it to him. “And I’m holding you to that mustache.”

  He snorts at that, then we both get quiet. I sit there stupidly, not sure of what else I can say, but then the bell tower dings once, long and somberly, and I realize I’ve been away from the face painting tent for a whole half hour. “Shoot. I’d better go or Cassie will give birth to dragons.”

  “Now that I’d like to see,” Will says. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Thanks for finally inviting me, Jacques. See you later.” I bump my knee into his again before I go, and he bumps mine back with a shy laugh.

  “Bye, Rainbow Ro.”

  12

  WEEK 1—FRIDAY

  The afternoon passes in a pleasant blur after that, one nice thing blending into the other.

  I spend the rest of my shift painting well-behaved children’s faces without incident, using some of the B.A.B.’s ideas to work from, but adding my own personal touch.

  A small group of boys wander in at some point, rambunctious and hyped up on sugar and all the awesome things they’ve seen at the faire. They look to be around ten years old, and though I wonder where their parents are, I don’t blame them at all for letting the boys roam around so they can have some time on their own.

  Cassie takes two and I take two, and maybe I’m biased, but they’re the best two I could have chosen. The first boy, who has bought a wooden replica of Richard’s sword (Richard must have won the championship today), wants the royal crest on his cheek, and thank goodness I am a good faire worker and memorized the brochure like Will suggested. Although his cheek is a small surface area to work with for such a detailed design, when I show the finished product to him in the mirror, he reacts by exclaiming, “Whoa! Guys, check this out! It’s even got a dragon on it!” and the boys clamor around him, agreeing about its awesomeness.