“I know you’ll find her. You have that quiet persistent determination. It’s a rare quality. I’d better be careful or I’ll spill all my secrets to you.”
“You can do that if you like.” Leon barely believed the words had come out of his mouth. Was he flirting? Was this how you flirted?
She laughed her infectious laugh. “I might not be able to help myself.” They were bent together over the screen, talking at it instead of facing each other. He couldn’t bear to turn and look at her face in case she was toying with him and he would see her lip lifted in a sneer or her burned-toffee eyes rolling in disbelief. He could smell her skin, sweetish with a hint of cardamom. A teardrop crystal dangling on the end of a chain at her throat caught the light from the screen and gave it back as a rainbow. It was too much. He stood up.
Minh stayed leaning into the screen. She closed the Susan file. When she turned to face him, he noticed fingers of pink on her throat.
“I read about Rhona’s father’s circus too. An incredible story,” he said.
“So tell me. We all want to know. She never gives much away.”
He told her what he’d learned. In 1949, when the circus was performing in Idaho, the safety tie-rope of a young trapeze artist snapped as he flew beyond the top of his usual arc and somersaulted too late in a practice session. He fell forty feet to the sawdust-covered floor. The rope was frayed and untwisted, fifteen years old, gray and tired and worn. The Penny King had laughed when the trapeze boy asked for a loan against his salary to buy a new rope. The report on the incident quoted the trapeze artist’s father, a strongman in the circus:
He laughed at my boy and sneered and told him not to be a sissy. Well, my boy was no sissy but now he’s dead and that man has the blame right there on his shoulders. Only he won’t take it. He won’t take the blame and to my mind that makes him a coward. A real sniveling coward.
All of the performers had attended the funeral in their costumes as a mark of respect. After the funeral they returned to the camp, had a few drinks in the big top under the trapeze wires, and fueled their resentment at their treatment by the Penny King.
Later that evening they gathered at the circus gate where crowds were queuing for the night’s show. The Penny King had refused to close the circus, even for one night, even though the performers had offered to give up their night’s wages.
The dead boy’s father spoke to the crowd first. He had a fellow performer bring him a crate to stand on. He was weeping as only a strongman can weep, with his whole body. He asked the audience to go home, to respect the memory of a young man who had died. Some of the people looked away as if not seeing him might make him vanish. The ticket seller was counting out change as slowly as she could, placing the coins one by one on the lip of the wooden counter that jutted out from the window of the booth.
About half the people in the queue drifted away. The dwarf clown walked along the line of the people who remained and spoke to them individually. “You think about how you’d like someone turning up to your house when your son has just died. Asking to come in and play a game of cards or listen to your radio. How’d you like that?” More people left. As the demonstrators passed around the whiskey and the remaining small crowd shuffled uncertainly around the ticket booth, the Penny King appeared at the gate. He wore his ringmaster costume, red and gold with brass buttons and shiny black knee boots. He carried, as always, his whip.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted in the voice that never failed to thrill children and convince their parents that the ticket price was money well spent. “There will be a show tonight. You will see performing elephants, wild tigers, a strongman”—here he focused his attention momentarily on the father of the dead boy—“and everything you ever expected from the greatest circus in the United States of America. This will be a show to commemorate the life of one of our special performers who died in a tragic accident yesterday as we rehearsed to bring the show to you here in Boise. So tonight will be a tribute show in honor of our terrible loss and in honor of all the great circus performers who have lost their lives bringing joy to audiences around the world. Our people”—he gestured at his disgruntled employees—“want to show their respect. And because of that, all tickets will be half price.”
The people waiting to get in sent their children to let everyone know about the cheap tickets, and the crowd swelled to its largest-ever size for that town. The strongman retired to his van, but the other performers, except the high-wire acts who were too drunk to take the risk, came out for the spontaneous “tribute” show, which was reported around the country and gave the Enchanted Circus more publicity than it had seen in years.
The next day the strongman left the circus and applied to the US Postal Service for a job.
That was the first demonstration, and the smallest. The big ones came a couple of years later. The two strikes by unpaid workers, followed by the humane society rally in 1953 that brought animal lovers from across the country. Nine hundred people protesting the beating and starvation of circus animals that had been documented by an undercover reporter and published with graphic photographs and eyewitness accounts in a major daily newspaper.
The Penny King managed to ride that out too. He was a masterful manipulator of people and of the truth. Whether he cleaned up the circus or not isn’t clear, but he managed to keep out of the press for the next couple of years. Then came the fire, and his disappearance.
The most curious thing about Leon’s research into the Enchanted Circus was that every source said the Penny King was single and had no known children.
IT SEEMED TO Leon that two cracks had opened in the world. Out of one poured the human longing for mystery, bringing love letters and exaltation. From the other spewed the ghosts of human discontent and envy. The leaked ugly photos. Hate letters. Threats boxed like gifts, nestled in tissue paper and ribbon. Religious groups had been muttering online that the “freaks” were devils or messengers from hell. The complaints came from fundamentalists of all different denominations: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, even Satanists. The worst of them took everything literally. In their rantings, Leon was a demonic machine, Kathryn was a talking animal and Christos was an evil angel. Security had to be tightened, Hap said. He could provide the staff, but the Wonders needed to be more alert themselves. “Do not relax in public,” he told them.
It was not easy to be alert to danger on a clear, crisp, beautiful night in New York City. On the way into dinner at Rockefeller Center, the Wonders paused on a walkway to look down through the glass at handsome couples spinning on the small ice rink. The skaters held hands and glided around with the precision of elegant figures in a brass automaton. Groups of onlookers hung over the rails above, their breath mingling in steamy clouds of conversation. Kathryn watched the skaters for a few moments before turning to Christos.
“Be my escort? I used to hate skating, but I feel more confident now I have extra padding. I was always a bony thing. Falling down used to hurt.”
Christos told Kathryn he would sit by the side of the rink and watch her. Risky sports put him in danger. “If I fall on my back . . .”
Kathryn sniffed. “Precious fecking princess,” she said so softly that only Leon heard.
She turned to Yuri. “Yuri? Will you?”
“So sorry, Kathryn. I cannot skate. My mother was afraid to let me on the ice.”
“How about you, Leon? Will you take me skating?”
“You know the way my heart works—I’d have to spend twenty minutes warming up to get my blood flow in sync with the pace of exercise. By the time I was ready you’d be chewing your own foot off.”
“Leon, keep making that kind of animal reference and I will smack your prissy face.”
“Stop it. I can’t stand this childish behavior.” Rhona may not have enjoyed the role of exasperated mother, but she played it perfectly.
They had come to New York to perform an exclusive show-and-tell dinner in a private room in the Maison Française build
ing of Rockefeller Center. The day had started badly with Kathryn and Christos bickering on the trip down about the use of the gym equipment. Everyone was drained by too many shows, too many nights of being paraded and gawped at. They’d been at it for six months, at least a show a week, with only a two-week break for Christmas. When the private show finished, they raced to change and escape through the service corridors. Leon was in a hurry to get home and follow up on more leads on Susan.
He and Minh were working their way through the list he had compiled on search engines and networking sites, sending e-mails and messages with a carefully worded inquiry that only “his” Susan would recognize. They each spent an hour whenever they could on the project and came together every couple of weeks to compare responses. That time spent together, poring over lists of names and following leads, was deliriously fun for no obvious reason except that they were two serious people who surprisingly could make each other laugh.
At the Rockefeller event one of the staff had leaked that the Wonders were appearing. Two paparazzi had already tried to sneak into the room dressed as waiters, cameras bulging in unsightly swellings under their uniforms. Rhona had no idea how many more were waiting for them outside, but the management had assured her that they could slip out a hidden way. Security would come around to meet them at the exit.
They filed out through a back door on the second floor of the building, wrapped in enough coats and scarves and mittens and hats to survive a hockey game. The door opened onto fire-escape stairs leading down to a cul-de-sac alley behind the building. At the bottom of the fire escape, silver spokes and eyeglasses winked in the striped light from barred kitchen windows. Steam surged from an exhaust grille in the building opposite.
A small crowd was fermenting below.
A voice shrieked, “You aren’t freaks. You’re too fucking beautiful. I bet your shit doesn’t even stink. You’re fucking movie stars. You’re fakes, not freaks.”
“Oh shit.” Rhona backed up against Leon, and he stumbled into Kathryn. Rhona’s hands were trembling. “Demonstrators.”
As Rhona and the others tripped and staggered backward in a Keystone Cops parade, Christos’s bag caught in the door, wedging it open. A young man clanged up the stairs in an arm-windmilling whirl, grabbed the door and held it wide so that they were exposed at the top of the stairs, framed and staged by the lights in the corridor behind them.
“Assholes! This is fucking exploitation!” Again from down below.
Kathryn swore and started talking. “And who are we exploiting? Ourselves? Or maybe I’m exploiting you two. Christos, do you feel exploited? Leon?”
“We’ll go out the other way. Where the hell is security?” Rhona pushed them backward into the passageway. Leon tightened his scarf around his neck. He didn’t like being pushed. He didn’t like any sudden pressure against his body. No matter how solid and securely his heart was anchored in his chest, he still feared that a knock would jolt it from its moorings, leave him spurting blood from a severed join, dying after his miracle because of some ridiculous accident.
“No.” Kathryn elbowed Leon aside and stepped onto the metal walkway that led to the stairs. “What do you want us to do, huh?” she shouted down at the group of demonstrators.
A woman and a man were in wheelchairs, one man had a seeing-eye dog and another was missing an arm below the elbow. Even in the dim alley light Leon could see the pin holding his empty right sleeve. The others seemed able-bodied. But then, so did the Wonders.
“Stop your show. You are shaming us all. You’re whores in a peep show.”
“Right. We should give up performing and go home and live on social security the way you do? You think that’s something worth fighting for? We’re making money, you fuckwits. We’re working for a living.” Kathryn’s voice was bouncing off the alley walls, a fighting punchy voice. Probably none of the people below remembered what she had been through before the Wonders.
“I work for a living,” the blind man bellowed. “I work at a real job. I do something for the world. I don’t trade on being a freak. I don’t run around posing like a slut and trying to be a celebrity.”
Rhona tugged at Leon’s sleeve and pulled him further into the passage. The gesture made Leon think about how no one would dare touch the empty sleeve or the hard gnarly stub of the man who waited below. If the man was not married, he probably felt the same loneliness Leon had been experiencing since he was implanted with his brass heart. It was more than sexual frustration. It was a deep ache of physical loneliness. A hunger. Wanting to be gripped by the wrist when a friend was making a point or to have a hand pressed against his back as he was guided through a doorway. Leon was nervous about being touched and yet he craved it. And he knew from experience how disfigurement caused such discomfort and, at the same time, such fascination in most people that they were afraid to touch you even though it was the one thing they longed to do.
“Kathryn,” Rhona hissed out through the doorway. “Stop it. Don’t provoke them. We’re going to leave the other way.”
“Not me.” Kathryn slung her handbag over her shoulder and started down the staircase, her heels ringing on the pimpled metal.
Rhona turned to Leon and Christos. “Hell, we’ll have to go with her. Are you two okay to do this?”
Leon was afraid but too embarrassed to say so. Christos drew his overcoat around him before striding onto the metal platform and down the stairs. Yuri was still in the dining room, packing up the gear.
“Go on, have a good look,” Leon heard Kathryn say down below. “Here. This is what people pay a fortune to see. Count yourselves lucky.”
She tossed her hat behind her, unwound her scarf and threw it to the ground, and flung open her long cloak. The activists fell silent. They stared. The rest of the group arrived at the bottom of the staircase, its metal scaffolding clanging and bouncing under their weight as they each came off the last step. Rhona hurried to Kathryn’s side and nudged her to close her cloak.
“My name is Rhona Burke. I’m the manager of the Wonders and if you have anything to say you should address it to me.”
“They can’t.” Kathryn laughed derisively. “They’re gobsmacked. Hey, Leon, open your shirt. Let’s give them a really good show.”
“I can’t believe that as a differently abled person yourself, you’re calling us them.” The wheelchair woman who had been shrieking before was speaking at a lower volume now, but her voice still had the tight timbre of fury.
“I’m not differently abled. I’m super-abled.”
“Sure, me too. I’ve got wheels and gears. Most people only have working legs.”
Kathryn’s spine straightened. Leon hoped it was a straightening of interest at the smart mouth of her opponent and not a straightening of anger at someone challenging her. Christos had plumped himself down on the bottom of the staircase, exhausted from the show, while Rhona rushed around with her arm out, an odd long-necked bird trying to shake hands with people.
“Lady, I don’t have a hand. It’s a bit hard to shake.” The man with the pinned-up sleeve thrust his shoulder in her direction. “You wanna bump?” He snickered and turned to his companion. “I’ve always wanted to say that to someone.”
“What do you want from us?” Leon asked. Down among them he wasn’t afraid anymore. These people were angry. Maybe they had a point. It was only fair to hear them out.
“We want you to stop this freak show. You’re dragging the disability rights movement into the dark ages.” One of the women who appeared to be fully abled spoke. She was the same height as Leon and she moved toward him, focusing on his face like a predator who thinks her prey will bolt if she loses eye contact.
His eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the alley. The man in the wheelchair rolled his head. His mouth hung open with drool glistening on his gray lips. His neck, folded back, protruded thick and muscular from a T-shirt that said in luminous pink lettering: STEPHEN HAWKING ON MARS. His thin arms and legs embraced the mechanical an
gles of the chair. Mediated through an electronic device, his words rang out in the night. “Not all disabled people can be celebrities. We have to struggle every day to have our most basic needs met.”
Kathryn jerked around to face him. “So what? Not all normal people can be celebrities either. Most people have to work at boring jobs and struggle to make ends meet.”
Leon had learned early not to go crying to Kathryn. The only pity she’d ever shown was for mistreated animals.
“You’re disabled but you can’t be famous, you can’t get noticed, so you attack us. Is that it?” She advanced on the wheelchair-bound man, who tried to twist away from her. “Are we supposed to go and hide?”
“No,” said one of the women, who had a face tinged a bilious green by the light of the exit sign on the side of the building. “We’re not attacking you. We’re asking you to stop parading around in the media and inviting people to stare at you.”
“I want them to stare. Their parents have taught them not to stare. You should encourage people to stare. To ask questions. Then you wouldn’t be freaks yourselves, with everyone trying not to look at you.”
“Kathryn, stop it! Leave them alone. I’m sorry, everyone.” Rhona spread her hands in a conciliatory gesture.
“Leave them alone? They’re demonstrating against us! Rhona, don’t ask me to be polite to someone who has told me I think my shit doesn’t stink.”
“Hey, Lady Sheep, or whatever you’re called. Can’t you see that what you’re doing is an insult to these people here?” This was the seemingly able-bodied man muttering from behind the other two.
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