Circus of the Grand Design (14 page)

She ended the routine, and Barca tapped the elephant's head; it kneeled so she could hop off. Lewis stood up and clapped. "Bravo," he said. Smiling, Dawn bowed, then walked over to him. He shut the legal pad so she wouldn't see his sketch. "I can't wait to see your act during a performance," he said. Flattery would be good. Show interest. He had told Gold how to act, why not use some of it himself? "You're so graceful up there." He took her hand and kissed it. "And beautiful."

"You're sweet." She sat on the stool next to his and kissed his cheek. "I need to run through it again after I rest for a minute." She unscrewed the cap of a water bottle and drank.

It was nice having her so close, wearing only a thin leotard. She said something about scraping her knee at their last stop. He touched her thigh. It was hard, like Bodyssia's arms, but he liked the feel of her smooth skin. He decided it would be better to wait until after her second practice session to try kissing her again.

When Dawn finished her second session she helped Barca unsaddle the elephant and herd it into the larger pen.

"Bye for now girlies," Barca said and shut the gate. He took a white cape with a fur collar from a peg on the wall and draped it over his shoulders. Lewis watched him leave. He didn't feel like he knew Barca at all. Had he really interviewed him?

Dawn drained her water bottle. Lewis lay his satchel on her stool and stood. She was so short beside him, eight inches shorter according to his estimate. Nineteen inches shorter than Bodyssia. He took her hand again, and feeling bolder, gave her a quick kiss on her lips.

"Your performance is so magical. I hope my description for the program expresses its beauty."

"The same thing, over and over. You don't know how it is." She bent to pull on her sweat pants.

"Would you like to go back to my room for a drink?"

"I need a shower. These damn elephants stink." She left.

~

He despaired of ever fitting in with these performers. He needed consistency. Dawn had pulled him on top of her in his room, then pushed him away. Maybe he should be more aggressive, knock on her door after her shower and invite her to dinner.

No, best to stay with the things he could control, like mathematics. He resolved to measure the train from the elephant car to the diminishing tunnel car. He walked, toe-to-heel, and the uniformity of measurement cheered him; at the end of the third corridor car he stopped and wrote 45 feet on his list.

Not ready for the diminishing tunnel again, not now, maybe never, he sat on the floor and turned to a new page in his journal notebook.

~

Chance has little to do with the elements of our situation. Once a factor has been analyzed, one hopes that the essence of belief expounds upon its recognizable qualities in a way that serves to redefine its main characteristics. Conversely, if a factor has not been analyzed, it is best left in this anonymous state, unless further deliberation is necessary. The analysis can be broken down into its mathematical dimensions, cultural significance, aesthetics, and form. For example...

~

What was he doing here? He longed to stand outside and feel the sun, the wind. The walls of the train trapped him. Nearly a quarter mile from here to the caboose. He had to get there now. He jumped to his feet and started running.

By the elephant car he was winded, gasping. He stopped, bending over, hands on his knees. So out of shape. Had to keep going though, all the way to the caboose. He ran into the horse and capybara car, ran toward the next door. A looming shape, like a tree leaning into the aisle at a crazy angle. He ducked under the low branches, but something caught him, lifted him up.

"There you are, cute guy." Not a tree: Bodyssia. She was in the pen with her animals, had reached across the pen's chain link fence to snare him. She set him on the fence, with his feet hanging down on the inside. The tops of the fence links bit into his thighs, but he was afraid to complain. He stammered something about needing to take notes on Dawn's act. For the program, for the program, he kept repeating, holding up his official duties as a shield. Her grip on his arms tightened; he stopped squirming, remembered that he had read somewhere about not allowing wild animals (and that included Bodyssia) to sense your fear, no matter how great.

One of the capybarabears padded over and sniffed his feet. It yawned, showing the fangs that couldn't belong to a plant-eater. Bodyssia yawned too, and for a moment, he thought he saw fangs in
her
mouth.

"You're just in time to watch me feed my little darlings." She moved closer, pushing against his dangling legs, squeezed him to her...now the pain in his thighs was unbearable but...too weak to push her away. She squashed her lips against his. He couldn't breathe, she was pressing him so tight. He felt himself fainting.

She finished the kiss just before he passed out, then lifted him and put him down inside the pen. He leaned against the fence, heaving, gulping air.

The other two animals came over, grunting and growling. In that film he had seen them tear apart the large bird—he put the tip of a shoe into one of the links of the fence, a few inches off the floor. He wasn't sure he would be able to pull himself over. He had to though, before the animals or Bodyssia...She bent over a canvas shoulder bag. The animals moved toward her, and she reached back to pat one on the head. It sniffed her hand and made a sound somewhere between a bark and a growl.

"Not yet, boys. In the bowls." She pulled three pieces of hacked-up bloody meat out of the sack.

That was it—had to leave now, while the animals occupied her attention (and the meat occupied theirs). He closed his eyes and pushed up, over the fence; she must have heard, must have seen, she would pull him back, but no, and he kept going, running without stopping until he reached his door.

Lewis retreated to his shower, allowing hot water and steam to soothe jangles mental and physical. The importance of a good showerhead could not be minimized. The spray needed to be thick and forceful, a strong, determined flow. A few years ago he had purchased a marvelous showerhead that he took with him on several moves, replacing the apartments' inadequate devices with his own. But where was it now? Still secure in Martha's shower—no one could say he left her with nothing to show for their time together. Few things on the train were his alone, few things that weren't new or insane. His room, his shower, welcome sanctuaries. He hadn't known what he would find on the train, hadn't known whether he would even
have
a private bathroom; his happiest moment came when he discovered that his new bathroom possessed the equal of his abandoned showerhead.

Afterwards, he dried himself and examined his tender thighs. There were red splotches from that chain-link fence. He didn't think Bodyssia meant to hurt him—an over-affectionate giant, that's all, giant bear woman with her trained capybarabears. He turned off the room lights and got into bed. The bathroom light was still on, but he didn't feel like getting up again.

What would it be like to share a bed with Bodyssia? She was so thick. At least in bed he wouldn't feel so dwarfed. He closed his eyes, but reopened them, aware of a limonene fragrance and a presence beside him. The citrus woman—Cybele?—occupied the space between him and the wall. Naked, on her side, facing him, and from her body, warmth reached out, wrapped long fingers around him. He lay on his back, head turned toward her just enough to catch her profile. He was afraid to change his position, break the spell that had brought her. His eyes were a movie camera panning from her toes upward. She is woman, flesh, features, shape. She is here, close enough to touch, but inches became miles, chasms black with depth; only his eyes could span the distance, body trapped and longing. The gulf separated them, as if his narrow bed had grown to the width of one of the train corridors and they occupied opposite ends. At the thought of reaching toward her, extending a hand into the inconceivable gap, a great fear overcame him. The gap, aside from its vastness of horizontal distance, encompassed a depth that reached past the center of the earth. If he moved...and he dared not...he would fall, and in falling, tumbling infinite, would pass from the world.

Could she read his longing? She pressed a palm to his chest, resting it there, warm and prickling. His breath stopped, unwilling to intrude, to move his chest while her contact lingered.

His camera gaze continued to traverse her landscape, stopping when it reached her face. She smiled and in his next moment of awareness, she lay on top of him.

As with her first visit, he thought he was merging with her. He reached frantically for her lips with his and ejaculated against her belly.

Quiet spread through him, a flow of soft light, the patterns of which spelled out his desires in blue and green. The quiet invited him to doze, but he wouldn't, not while she was here, finally, beside him in bed, the position he had yearned for her to take all these long nights alone. He held her on top of him, and her skin beneath his fingertips spoke the seven tongues of desperation, each as distinct as the petals of a rose.

~

From a brief, dreamless sleep, he woke refreshed, better even than waking after drinking Cinteotl's tea. But Cybele was gone. He rolled onto the other side of the bed, trying to absorb the warmth and smell left by her body, but found only the chill of his cotton sheets.

Repelled by his empty bed, he stood and made his way to the toilet. But the scene outside the windows jolted him. The train was on the water—he could see the whitecaps of the open ocean. The rocking of the train dizzied him, and he braced himself on the desk. He leaned toward the window...no...train wasn't moving...stopped, someplace overlooking a bay. Stopped. He dressed and rushed toward the caboose.

The train stood in a meadow colored by the blues, yellows, and reds of wildflowers. Past the meadow was a small, open-air amphitheater filled with a blur of people, and beyond that, a town.

Lewis breathed his first real air since boarding the train. Intoxicated with the pleasure of being outside, he ran down the caboose steps and into the meadow, bending to look at a mass of white and yellow flowers, like miniature daisies, and a plant he recognized from his grade school playground that looked like a tiny fern, with thin, many-segmented leaves. When you touched the leaves, they closed. He ran around, stopping, touching, watching the leaves curl, running, working his way downhill.

Near a red brick building that extended from one end of the amphitheater he stopped and brushed leaves off his clothes. He entered through an open door. The building's interior was warehouse-like, with a high ceiling. A square opening led into the amphitheater, where the circus crew was finishing their final parade. He stood aside as they filed past him, first Dillon, commanding in his white coat and top hat, and the rest. Miss Linda, in clown outfit, ran back and forth handing out balloons and candy to children in the seats near the exit. But the mechanical horse was the only thing he wanted to see, and there it was, with Desmonica on its back. He wanted her off. It looked so alive, the way it moved. He had to get closer.

Everyone crowded around the exit, between him and the mechanical horse, all yelling and running. They were hard to recognize as his train companions. Larger, more alive, as though augmented by their performance. He stopped and ducked as one of the acrobats, apparently showing off for two dark-haired women, swung across the room on a rope hanging from a beam. Fragments of conversations broke through the confluence of words.

Dawn passed him. She had painted her face silver. It was unpleasant being around them. They were linked by their conquest and he was an interloper.

"...the greatest!" Gold shouted. He grabbed Leonora and lifted her. "And you were a sensation." She smiled and ran her hands through his hair.

"...ache like hell," Bodyssia said, to no one in particular.

Desmonica dismounted. Her leather outfit was mostly straps, with lots of skin showing. She shouted something about a matre de telos: "Where did you put it, János? I had to go on without it."

Up close, the horse didn't look as shiny. A few dents marked its sides. But it was still amazing. The metal where the legs joined the body looked woven. Must cover whatever piston-thing made the legs work, giving the illusion of supple flesh. He reached for the pommel to pull himself up.

"No time for playing," Dillon said from behind him. He took Lewis's arm and guided him away.

Not
away
—Lewis turned his head to keep the horse in sight. Barca passed and Dillon stopped him.

"The big one is not lame, is he?" Dillon asked. "He appeared to be favoring his right front foot." Barca shook his head. "Tomorrow then."

Dillon released Lewis's arm. He took the mechanical horse by the reins and led it away. Before Lewis could follow, Barca moved the elephants into his path. By the time they were out of the way, Dillon was gone, probably back on the train with the horse secured wherever he stored it.

Despite Lewis's disappointment at not getting up on the horse, he felt ecstatic to be off the train. He ran back outside, craving more more more of air-flowers-rocks before nightfall. He wanted to climb the hills behind the amphitheater, but a crowd blocked his way. People leaving the circus, heading into the town on foot. He couldn't wait for them to pass.

"Excuse me, please, let me through."

He forced himself in. No one was speaking English. Their clothes looked funny too, lots of parachute pants and maroon turtlenecks. He pushed his way to the other side. A rocky outcropping near the top of a wooded hill looked inviting. He climbed. On reaching the outcropping, he sat on a flat rock overlooking the amphitheater, town, and harbor. It was darker in the trees. Not much daylight left. Would this be it, then? His one chance for the open? But Dillon had said, "tomorrow then." So the circus was staying. Though what did that matter to him? His bag was packed and waiting in his closet. This town might be the perfect place to stay for a while.