Circus of the Grand Design (7 page)

~

The CIRCUS, managed by Ringmaster Joseph Dillon, specializes in a more vaudevillian form of circus entertainment, with elephants, acrobats, jugglers, plus a mysterious, magical mechanical horse ridden by a woman who can barely squeeze into her costume. The horse is pitted against a flesh-and-blood counterpart in a masterful exhibition of equestrian beauty.

Though highly skilled on the trapeze, the acrobats' greatest forte is breaking each other's noses. The juggler, who has sex standing up, is a master at his craft, performing confidently from the inner center while obsessed with food and women's breasts. The Ringmaster operates with a metaphysical agenda known only to himself. His circus, he says, "moves in the fourth dimension—time—as a sequence of present moments flowing away to become part of the past."

~

Lewis left his room with the press release in his satchel. Let's see what kind of reaction this gets, he thought. He wasn't someone who could be manipulated. Are No had found that out, and Dillon would too.

Shouting erupted from one of the other rooms in the car, and something heavy (a body?) thudded against a door. "Don't understand Dillon's methods," Lewis said aloud. "Better be straight with me." From inside the room—crash of glass breaking, cries of pishta, and other unrecognizable words. I can break things too, he thought. He pulled out the list of personnel. That
had
to be the acrobat's room. He entered the car with the painted doors. The rainbow decal would be Dawn's room.

The train was deserted all the way to Dillon's office. He took out the press release and knocked. No answer. He opened the door. Last time he hadn't noticed the door on the left-hand wall, cut out of the paneling, with only a small iron latch showing. Maybe Dillon was back there. Lewis took out the press release and left it on Dillon's desk.

Well now. That was accomplishing something. He stood outside Dillon's office, looking toward what he assumed was the front of the train. So what was that way?

Like Dillon's, the next train car had one door in the middle of the hall, labeled Storage in blunt, orange letters. He opened the door and switched on a light. One large room, no windows, with several clothes racks (costumes?) on one side, and rows of gray storage lockers, some of which could have easily held several people. He lifted the latch of the nearest locker. The door stuck; he pulled harder, and it opened with a metal-against-metal scrape. Dust and shreds of fabric covered the bottom; a musty smell made him cough. The next locker held several coils of a thin, but sturdy-looking rope; another was filled with high-heeled women's shoes. The largest locker intrigued him. Was the mechanical horse kept here? He wanted to find it, see how it looked close up. This had to be it. But it wasn't. Nothing but folded trampolines.

He moved to the rack of clothes: long, white satin dress with frayed sleeves and hem, orange dress shaped like a tulip on a stem, with brown stains streaking the front, a suit made of dried leaves, short-sleeved red dress, covered in plastic, a lion pelt costume with the head attached. Except it couldn't be a lion. It looked something like a lion, but its body was twice the size of Lewis, with thick fur.

Then he saw the mannequin clothed with a chain mail shirt. He lifted the mail, finding it heavier than he had expected, made from a dull metal. Fake. A stage prop, but nice. He stroked the smooth metal after restoring it to its place. A sword hung from the mannequin's belt. Most likely another prop. He gripped the scabbard at the top and pulled on the sword with his other hand.

The blade sliced into his skin so easily that at first he felt nothing. Blood dripped onto the floor. He grabbed the hem of the tattered white dress and tore off a strip, which he wrapped around his hand.

Look at all this, ruined dress, blood on the floor. He held his hand over his head to slow the bleeding. They shouldn't leave dangerous props out where anyone can get hurt. With his left hand still in the air, he pulled the dress off its hanger and rubbed the floor. The blood left a dark smudge. He stuffed the dress into the locker with the rotted fabric.

His hand began to throb. He needed to get back to his room without being seen—didn't want to answer questions. There had to be rules. He had probably done something wrong. Outside the storage car, the lights in the hall had dimmed again, back to the orange glow. No one was in the dining car, but when he was halfway through the next car, the door on the opposite end opened. A woman entered. She tilted her head under the doorframe as she passed through. In her arms she held one of the giant guinea pig things.

Lewis hid his bandaged hand behind his back. They moved toward each other, and he began to feel as though he was shrinking with each step, until they stood about two feet apart. She was at least ten inches taller than him, with a mass of coppery hair that made her appear even taller. She filled the hallway. The throbbing in his hand worsened.

"Haven't seen you around here, buddy." Her voice was as immense as her body. She smiled, revealing an expanse of large teeth. She had a wide, square jaw and thick neck. The animal was the size of a Saint Bernard dog; she held it comfortably in her massive arms.

"I'm Lewis." It appeared that she wanted to talk. He tried to ignore the pain in his hand. He worried that it would bleed too much now that he wasn't holding it up.

"Bodyssia, and this is Fib." She lifted the animal a little higher for emphasis. "I've got three of them, but Fib's the smartest. You've seen my act."

"I saw you at the end, parading with your animals." She could probably lift him as easily as she held the animal, unless it was lighter than it looked. If he fainted, maybe she would carry him to his room.

"Fib's a capybara. From South America. He only weighs fifty-six and a half kilos. My others are seventy-two and seventy-five. You want to pet him? He likes being scratched on the top of his head."

Thinking it wouldn't be wise to say no, he rubbed the coarse, reddish-brown fur. The animal looked more like a bear than a capybara, a bear with a furry tail. It turned its head to sniff Lewis's arm, and voiced a series of clicking sounds, then whistled. It had bear-like teeth. Lewis withdrew his hand and the animal whistled again. He wondered if it could smell the blood on his other hand.

Bodyssia put down the animal. It sniffed Lewis's feet, then pawed at his leg just below his bandaged hand. Lewis wanted to push the thing's head away from him, but was afraid Bodyssia wouldn't like that. He leaned against a window, keeping his bandaged hand behind him. The animal wandered down the hall.

"A whistle like that means he likes you." Bodyssia reached toward him. Her hand was larger than a baseball glove. "He hasn't whistled like that in a long time." She pulled him into a hug, mashing his face against her breasts. "Just make sure you don't miss my next show, buddy," she said, and released him.

Once safely in his room, Lewis unwrapped the dress fabric and washed the cut. At first, he was afraid to look. It was bloody but not deep, on the edge of his palm between thumb and forefinger. He pulled the case from one of his pillows and trimmed off strips for a bandage, then swallowed three aspirin. He would find a real bandage later, and some disinfectant. He took off his pants and lay down with his injured hand propped on a pillow.

He wondered whether anyone was searching for him because of the fire. Tracing him to his apartment would have been easy. Martha would hate having to deal with the police. They might not believe she had no idea where he had gone. The thought made him smile.

Before closing his eyes, he looked up at Are No's etching. The faces on the sphinx were so sad and beautiful. He would like meet the model the artist had used. A beauty, so sad, so sweet.

A citrus bouquet, spicy and beguiling, overflowed the confined space of Lewis's room. Invisible lemon, orange, and grapefruit zest carpeted the floor. Had he been asleep? He lay on top of the covers with the wall propping his injured hand. He didn't remember turning out the light. He sat up, turning his head to find the source of the odor. A shape emerged, a woman-shape outlined by the darkness of the room, so indistinct he wasn't sure he truly saw her. The shape drew closer to him, and despite the gloom, he recognized her as the dark-haired woman he had seen at the circus. So she
had
been following him. But was she connected to the circus? Or to his burning of Are No's house?

He opened his mouth, but said nothing, instead watched her continue to float toward him. Her face was as haunting as those of the etching. Her long black hair, blacker than the night—at the circus he had wanted to dig his fingers into it. He looked down. That was odd—he had slid his uninjured hand beneath the elastic band of his underpants. He had never touched himself in front of a woman. What must she be thinking about him?

She stopped beside his bed. His injured palm tingled, and he reached toward her with it. She leaned over him. Warmth emanated from her. He felt himself merging with the warmth, with her. First his hands sank into her breasts, then arms, then his chest melted against her. His groin merged with her thighs and he ejaculated.

~

Lewis's name, in a voice like a song, rose from his unconscious to awaken him. For a moment he thought he saw sunlight flowing into his room, then it vanished; he doubted he had truly seen it. Sitting up in the bed, he caught a fragrant trace of citrus, but the woman was gone. He rose from bed and went to the shower.

In the hall, the lights were again bright. All the way to the dining car, as usual carrying his satchel with journal and legal pad, he felt as though he was walking upstream through an oatmeal current. The dining car was empty—not even Cinteotl was at his station. He wanted food and coffee, but didn't have the energy to fix anything himself. The coffeepot held enough for a cup. He filled a mug and sat in a booth, facing the door to the gym. A magazine with a cover showing a model sailing ship lay on the tabletop across from him. Ignoring it, he took out his journal notebook and began to write, but...He found himself unwilling to describe his previous night's experience. What could he say? Even in the privacy of his own journal any description would sound preposterous. Instead, he closed his eyes, trying to recall each detail of the woman's materialization and subsequent actions. She hadn't spoken, but her voice would be the sound of a cello.

The door to the gymnasium opened. A woman entered. He hid his bandaged hand under the table.

The woman's shoulder-length hair was light brown; the citrus woman's was black, and her body had been soft and curvy. This woman's was bony. She wore jogging shoes and a loose, sweat-soaked shirt. When she saw Lewis she gasped and started to edge back into the gymnasium. Then she stopped her sudden retreat.

"That's mine," she said in a shrill voice. She pointed at the magazine.

"Okay, I wasn't going to take it," he said, keeping his voice low and gentle. She took several quick steps forward, reached, and snatched the magazine. "Are you Miss Linda?" he asked. "I've met all the other women so I assume that's who you are, unless of course..."

"I work much too hard to associate with entertainers," she said, her voice now firm.

"Then why do you perform as a clown?" As publicist, he felt he had the right to know. She turned to leave the dining car, and he watched the backs of her ropy-muscled legs propel her away.

Lewis flipped his journal notebook closed and took out the legal pad, deciding to make a list of train cars. He drew four rectangles to represent cars, then wrote Gym in the first rectangle, Dillon's Office in the second, and Storage in the third.

How much more could there be?

He jumped up and walked through the gym, Dillon's car, and past the door marked storage. The next car had one glossy red door with the word Lounge, painted diagonally in bright blue. He walked in, expecting something spectacular, but found ugly vinyl furniture facing an antique-looking television. Opposite the television, bookcases covered the wall. In the far right corner was a door, and inside, a closet containing a washing machine and dryer. Seeing such a mundane thing gave him an odd sense of comfort.

He turned on the television. Sound came first, a fiddle, a man singing, then a wailing. A black and white picture emerged—the wailing sound came from a man's throat. Lewis had never heard anything like it. The singing/wailing man was huge, with a broad-brimmed hat. He sat on a stool holding a guitar that in his hands looked like a toy. Musicians (drummer, fiddler, a thin man playing a stand-up bass) grouped around him on a low stage. Though the television looked old, its picture was clear, with crisp definition. The big man began singing a bouncy song about a man named Fuzz Dixon, and the camera panned around, showing a dirt-floored arena surrounding the stage. A figure came into view: Bodyssia, leading her capybaras. Home movies? Jenkins carried out a burlap sack. The sack wriggled. He lowered it to the ground and upended it. A winged shape popped out—a bird as big as the one Cinteotl had been cooking. It shook itself, squawked, and spread its wings. It seemed to be unable to fly. Bodyssia's animals—couldn't be capybaras, more like awkward bears—circled the bird. The bird hissed at them. A capybarabear darted at the bird. The bird shook a wing at it and the capybarabear stopped. Another crept close from the other side. The bird flapped toward the stage and the three capybarabears converged on it.

Lewis turned off the set. Must have been an act. The bird was trained to play-fight...like a fighting rooster...very dramatic.

~

A musky stench greeted him on leaving the lounge car, a wet, animal smell that reminded him of the horseback riding lessons he had taken at summer camp when he was a teenager. Instead of rooms, the car contained two stalls. A thick layer of straw carpeted the first, and the three capybarabears sprawled, apparently asleep. Against the back wall were three large bowls filled with apples, carrots, and potatoes. The second stall contained the dirty-white horse that had raced the mechanical horse.