by Anne McAneny
He snickered. “A wet blanket, so to speak.”
“Yes. Our little flurry of winners came with a wet blanket of tragedy. That’s what my upcoming article is about.”
“I can’t wait to read it.”
“Soon enough. But first, explain this gadget-filled room. Most people have a new-model smartphone. You’ve got Q’s laboratory from James Bond.”
“Ah, Q. Clever fellow, though I could teach him a thing or two.” He touched a button on a nearby remote control and made Hologram Rafe appear, motionless and daunting. “The name of my game is illusion. The details involve mirrors, beams of light, and utter stillness. But knowing what’s behind it detracts from the magic.”
“You said you’d show me which of your many pursuits helps you make a living.” I gestured to fake-Rafe. “Is this it?”
“No, my livelihood is rather boring, bordering on shameful. But it has allowed me the freedom to pursue my passions.” He gestured halfheartedly toward his laptop. “There. That’s how I make my living.”
“Must be more to it than that.”
“There is. Have you ever heard of the Forenza-Galasso circus?”
My shock was such that the swinging breeze of an empty trapeze could have knocked me over.
Rafe gaged my reaction and smiled. “I’m afraid it’s not as exciting as you might be imagining.”
“But the circus used to perform here.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here. My uncle, Berrio Forenza, knew the place and recommended I put down roots. I have clients in the area.”
I swallowed hard. “You’re a Forenza?”
Rafe grinned. “No, if I were a Forenza, I’d probably be a Galasso, too. They’ve created rather their own scary species—intermarriage and all that.”
I laughed, but internally, my mind buzzed. I’d tried for years to find an insider with the circus, but like a magic trick, they’d disappeared without a trace, physically and virtually.
“I’m a Forenza by employment,” Rafe explained. “But if you can tolerate their eccentricities and caginess for more than a few weeks, they essentially adopt you and become your uncles, aunts, and cousins.”
I tilted my head. “You don’t strike me as a carnie.”
“Far from it. Like you, I grew up in a small town where the circus made one of its stops. For three seasons, I even smoked the good stuff with Sacchi, one of the more rebellious Forenza boys. He’d sneak out with his spider monkey on his back, meet me in the woods, and we’d create all sorts of havoc. Amazing what a spider monkey will do with cannabis smoke in its system.”
“That’s cruel.”
“We didn’t do it on purpose. That little guy would lean forward from Sacchi’s shoulder and inhale as if a cloud of gold was floating by. Anyway, when I got out of school, through a rather circuitous route, I got hired to hide money for both families.”
“Buried treasure sort of thing?”
“Money laundering sort of thing.”
“Was your degree from the Tony Soprano School of Finance?”
“Impossible to learn the good without knowing the bad.”
I took a moment to process. “So staying off the SEC’s radar requires knowing what puts you on it?”
Rafe smiled and shot a finger in my direction. As he did, he used his other hand to steer his hologram self around the room. Was I only moments away from some kinky twin orgy? I didn’t tell him to turn it off.
“Ever notice that if you research the Forenza-Galassos,” he said, “you don’t find much?”
“Yes. I tried several years ago. It’s impossible.”
“Let’s just say I introduced them to the dark corners of the internet.”
“Didn’t know it had corners.”
“Far more than four. Ever hear of TOR, the onion router?”
I shook my head.
“It was founded by the Naval Research Laboratory to help people in oppressed countries stay anonymous yet provide a way for them to get word out to the world. The onion router can bounce signals to five-thousand relays if it needs to, to help mask online identities. Quite intriguing, really.”
“So . . . the money I spent on cotton candy and peanuts . . . did it travel along this onion thing and get laundered?”
“Not directly. Laundering requires that the money be dirty first, but I can’t say much more than that. Unfortunately, TOR is now exploited by sex predators and drug dealers, and it’s one of the things that helps me make a living.”
I cringed, fearing he was about to reveal a life of crime.
He knitted his bushy brows, the thickness of which now seemed to fit better on his face—a match for the intensity of his eyes. “I shine light in the dark corners.”
I brightened. “You work for the good guys?”
“Among other things, I act as a consultant, combatting those who exploit the dark side.”
“And this justifies the money laundering you did?”
Rafe narrowed his eyes and reflected. “Both professions involve cleaning up.” He made his hologram sit on my other side and put an arm around me. I blushed. “I also do significant investing for a few wealthy clients. But these topics are so boring. Tell me, Chloe, why did you try to contact my uncles in years past?”
“I was searching for a friend.” I shifted to face him more fully on the couch, turning my back to the hologram as I grew more interested in the solid version. “Do you by any chance have a roster of performers, anything like that?”
He grinned. “A circus that swings beneath the radar, deals in cash, and specializes in breeding people with inhuman flexibility, does not keep a roster.”
“But you must have known everyone. Were you there twelve years ago?”
“Ouch. Do I look that old?”
I sighed. He looked thirty at most, making him eighteen or younger when Hoop went missing—just entering school, not finishing it. But perhaps Hoop was still there when Rafe arrived, having become a full-fledged carnie under a different name. As I tried to hope, images of blood and green flannel streaked my thoughts. Optimism won out, so I asked. “Did you ever come across a boy named Hoop Whitaker? He might still have been there.”
Rafe tilted his head and paused. “Hoop Whitaker,” he repeated. “Good circus name.”
Hearing the name uttered with no trace of sadness seemed odd. It had been so long since anyone in Beulah had been able to do that, but Rafe had used an upbeat tone that Hoop would have appreciated. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It doesn’t ring a bell.” He leaned in closer. “Is he the one you mentioned at Grinder Minder, the one who disappeared?”
“Assuming it was only a disappearance.”
He reached out and pushed a strand of hair away from my face, the tips of his fingers caressing the edge of my skin. Incredibly intimate, strongly reassuring. Shockwaves reverberated through me and almost created the illusion that life was normal and unscarred.
“I’ll tell you what, my intrepid little reporter. My uncles can be tough to get a hold of—they stay away from all modern trappings—but if you give me a few days, I promise you an answer on your Hoop Whitaker.”
I wanted to feel elation but couldn’t banish the chilling reality of Boyd’s basement from my mind. “That would mean a lot. Thanks.”
“I’ll get back to you by”—Rafe glanced at the huge, multi-functional watch on his wrist—“April Fools’ Day. Deal?”
My gut clenched. April Fools’ Day was Macy’s birthday. But it seemed as appropriate a time as any to hear the truth. I touched his hand and a charge shot through me. “Thank you, Rafe. Truly.”
The hologram floated in front of us. Suddenly, in Rafe’s voice, it said, “You’re welcome.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. “It talks?”
Rafe chortled. “The house is laden with speakers, and you’re welcome happens to be one of the phrases I programmed in.”
I gestured to the apparition. “Why don’t you make this your profession?”
“I’ve h
elped at concerts and done plenty of private projects, but I plan to use my holograms for much more than money.”
“Hopefully not for spying on neighbors.”
“I think one spy is enough for this swamp, don’t you?”
I blushed again. “Hardly my fault if you’re exercising when I’m gator-gawking. Besides, I think you like that I watch.”
He stroked my face again. “I’d much prefer you watching me without those silly binoculars between us.”
I resisted the urge to lean forward and kiss him. “How are you controlling your hologram, anyway?”
He held up the remote in his hand. “I’ve custom-programmed this. Click here if you want it to do something, and here if you want to do something to it.”
“It’s that easy?”
“It is if you think of the remote as a supercomputer with a billion lines of code and patentable technologies that the government would ban if they knew existed.”
After some struggles and corrections from Rafe, I made the hologram float to the ceiling and back down. “What do you plan to use this handsome guy for?”
He stood and grabbed the wine bottle, then gestured dramatically to the ceiling. “For disillusionment.”
I arced my neck up to take in the details of the fresco, but Rafe extended his hand toward me. “Easier to appreciate if you lie down.”
I hesitated but took his hand and stood. He put down the wine and reached into a wooden chest, pulling out a thick blanket and one pillow.
“Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?”
“Because I have. But notice, only one pillow. I usually gaze up there when I’m alone and need inspiration.”
He spread out the blanket and positioned the pillow. We lay down together, our heads close, but my feet pointing at seven o’clock, his at five. I looked up and felt pummeled in the heart by the beautiful but harsh montage above: flowing robes; shining swords; bright blood; a brighter sun; manes of hair on full-busted women; layers of muscles on barely clad men. All of it violent, passionate, and demanding. “What exactly are we looking at?”
“Betrayal.”
“More specifically?”
“Over there, Medea killing her own children to get back at the husband who betrayed her. There, the sons of Pelops, Thyestes and Atreus. The latter killed and cooked the former’s children—and fed them to him—but of course, Atreus had slept with Thyestes’ wife who bore a child that was raised to kill his uncle.”
“And these scenes are your inspiration?”
“There”—he pointed to a depiction of the poet Horace with a feather pen—“is my favorite. ‘Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus’.”
“I’m afraid my Latin is rusty.”
“That a god not intervene, unless a knot show up that be worthy of such an untangler."
“I remember that. Referring to the old Greek plays using deus ex machina, right? The god machine?”
He swiveled his head to look at me. I could feel his warm breath on my neck. “Not so rusty, after all. Yes, in the old plays, they used cranes to lower gods who, in turn, would extricate the characters from all sorts of treacherous and convoluted situations. Horace, however, found the arrival of the gods a weak solution to a story’s problem.”
“I kind of like the idea.”
“Horace believed such a device should be limited to difficulties so insurmountable that they were worthy of a god’s unraveling.”
“Do you agree?”
“Well, we don’t have the option of lowering a god from the ceiling, do we? But it reminds me to be my own god, my own problem-solver.”
I pointed. “What about that section, there?”
“My tribute to Judas, of course, and next to him, a montage of images from King Lear. Brothers betraying brothers. Children betraying fathers.” He turned to me again, but I kept my eyes upward. “They say that at the heart of every betrayal lies a warped set of values, which in the end leads to the betrayers betraying each other.”
“But you said this was about disillusionment. All I see is betrayal and cruelty.”
“It disillusions me. Reminds me what people are capable of, how they are not always what they claim to be. I use it to keep myself grounded. Believe me, it’s an ongoing battle.”
I leaned up on one elbow, not realizing until I was facing him how intimate it made the space between us. “Rafe, you have such a dire outlook. Who betrayed you?”
“No one, really. Not me.”
I narrowed my eyes in doubt and indicated the ceiling. “A man doesn’t turn his heavenly view into a constant reminder of betrayal because he likes the red hue of the blood.”
He leaned up on his elbow, the distance between our bodies narrowing to a thin slice. Heat ricocheted between us. Had we been standing, one of us would have lost balance and leaned on the other for support. “The art depicts duplicity and depravity,” he said, “but its purpose is to counteract the human tendency to fill in the blanks with goodness. We do that instinctively, and in ignorance, to compensate for breaches of the soul so deplorable that we can barely fathom them.”
I felt lost but struggled to stay afloat. “You mean we try to deny the worst evils, even in the face of facts?”
“Exactly. We assign good. We rationalize. It’s a coping mechanism.”
“I disagree. I’ve dedicated a career to the opposite. I don’t sugarcoat things. I report the facts, on the guilty as well as the innocent. And when people read my articles, they tend to believe them.”
Rafe smirked, and I felt like a sucker continually guessing the wrong cup under which the truth was hidden. “What if the news you report is wrong?”
“Then that’s my fault. But you can’t believe that people choose to see goodness in evil simply because the evil is unexpected or inhumane. The world is overrun with sickos doing unimaginable things every day. If anything, we’re all too aware of it.”
“And from sickos, we expect sick deeds. It’s tougher to accept those we admire as evil, those to whom we have lent credence.”
He reached behind him and opened a low drawer from a jigsaw-like table. From within, he pulled two six-inch square cards, and then resumed his position across from me. He held up the first card. It showed four black circles, one in each corner of the card. Within each circle were three other circles, growing progressively smaller in diameter
“What do you see?”
“Four individual circles with concentric circles inside them.”
He held up the second card. It showed the same circles, but with a sheer blue circle overlying their centers:
“What do you see now?”
“A large blue circle covering portions of the black circles.”
“And yet, there is no blue circle.”
I reached out and touched the card. “It’s right here.” I traced its outline.
“Your mind created the blue circle because you expected it to be there. You filled in the blanks.”
“What blanks? There are no blanks.”
He pointed. “Here. In the empty space between each of the black circles. It’s still white, still empty, but your mind completed the image you’re comfortable with. The only real blue in this picture is where the black lines have been colored blue.”
I took the card from him.
“Ah,” he said, “the reporter needs her hands-on proof.”
I stared, using my hands to block out parts of the image, verifying that the portions that appeared blue were actually white. I thrust the card back at him and spoke like a bratty teen. “Okay, you win. But so what? Eyewitness testimony is the weakest form of proof.”
Rafe stared, his black eyes sucking mine in, perhaps deeper than I wanted to go. “So true.”
He dropped the cards behind him without breaking our visual connection. “It’s hard enough to convince our eyes of horror when it’s right in front of us. Much harder to convince our minds and hearts. Ever see a wife defend a husband after he’s obviously battere
d their child? She’s desperate to believe in his goodness. She married him, after all, so she fills in the warm blue parts and refuses to see the cold red or the blank whites. The mind-torque required for her to veer so far from her core beliefs, well, it’s soul-wrenching. Once illusions like that are dispelled, it doesn’t leave a person normal.”
I felt my jaw go tense beneath quivering lips. I felt fear, a dread that I was alone with a man who might not have been left normal. “Is that what happened to you?”
Rafe didn’t respond, but didn’t necessarily seem averse to responding, either. He simply stared.
“I understand if it’s personal,” I said, “but something must have happened.”
There was lightness in his expression as he reached out and laid his hand on the side of my neck. His fingers were hot, almost blazing, his touch gentle yet imposing. The pressure of his palm felt powerful against my skin, and suddenly, my increased pulse rate became an exposed, throbbing heart in the veins of my neck. I no longer cared about the fear. We were entangled on a level I’d rarely achieved with anyone. Some might call it spiritual—I certainly had no name for it—but we were uniquely intertwined at that moment, as if he were conveying a secret directly to my soul. I struggled to decode it.
The past became trivial, as if all moments had been leading to this culmination—but a culmination of what? Had I only ever existed to be delivered to this point in time? My soul swam in the murkiness of his eyes. I became hypnotized, captivated, no longer an individual composed of my own dreams and history, but one swept away beneath his strength. Something gripped me inside, tethering me to his truth, and it became vitally important that I learn it.
“I understand,” he whispered.
“What do you understand?” My voice barely broke the surface of the dark waters under which I was flailing.
“The unimaginable strength it takes to be patient, to still the waters of your wanting.”
I could only feel: his palm on my neck, my blood against his palm, the rhythmic throb between his thumb and forefinger conducting the tempo of my heart, subduing my body. “This isn’t about me,” I said.
“It is, Chloe. Haven’t you waited? Sacrificed? Haven’t you dug, relentlessly, like a prisoner with only a single pebble to chip away at the wall denying your destiny?”