Published Spring/Summer 2008
 
Trapeze
by Rachel Richardson | ns 70
Estanzo the Incredible had waxed his moustache, parted his hair, shined his shoes and donned his top hat. He flounced from ring to ring as the spotlight chased after him, an inverse shadow, to the lions, the clowns, the Human Cannonball riding his cannon like a stallion. Estanzo paraded past the horses in their feathers and finery, skipped around the poodles, danced like a man half his age, oblivious to his obesity. The ground felt brutal beneath his feet; he was used to packed dirt, shorn fields, and here, in Frankfurt, Kentucky, the brand new concrete slammed against his shoes. It jarred his bones as he jigged and so he jigged quicker, past the Strong Man, the Diving Cat, the Fire Eater, until, finally, he opened his fat lips and shouted to the crowd, who tossed their popcorn in jubilation.
"And lastly, ladies-and-gents-boys-and-girls, those Acrobats of Amore, the Flirtatious Fliers, those Sicilian Sweethearts—"
The single snare drum rolled. The lone spotlight swerved. Estanzo strung out their names like vocal spaghetti as the audience cheered, louder and louder over the calliope music:
"Yoooo-leeee-anna and Fed-er-rrrrico Santillo!"
He rolled his Rs and twirled his moustache and the crowd swooned in awe.
The lone spotlight operator was already sopped in sweat as he swung the bulky lamp. By the end of the evening—no, by the end of the Santillos' act, the light would be scalding, birthing new blisters in his callused palms. He swung the light to Mr. Santillo first, exposing his taut arms and sinewy chest, his loose pants and his tanned feet, but the display was only momentary. He swiveled to Yuliana, and the same old plummet happened under his ribs.
He'd been running the spotlight since California and they were halfway through Kentucky—he ought to be used to it by now, but she was so jaw-achingly stunning, and he yearned with the same intensity from his lonesome dark perch. Her dark, wavy hair, so dark it absorbed the light, the tropical green gaze, lashes like thick paint strokes, the way she arched herself as the light hit her. Her legs were bare below a bright blue skirt, and her arms were upheld, just as magnificent in muscle as her husband's, but with double—no, quadruple the grace. She was Tahitian, and Federico was Turkish, but they looked so beautiful together, so fitting that it didn't matter. No one's honest history mattered here. The only real Sicilian in the place was Luigi, the guy who shoveled the elephant shit, and the Eskimo Fire Eater was really Mongolian. Johnny Rocket, the dashing American Cannonball was a direct Austrian import, and he, Ronny, the lone spotlighter, has been born in a dinky hospital just across the Canadian border. But no one knew that, nor did they care about him, or Luigi, or the swarm of dazzling lies that filled the tent. But Mister and Missus Santillo—theirs was a love story for the ages, true as a book and twice as impossible, and Ronny sweated in exhaustion and envy as he beamed his lovelamp upon her shining face.
Up on the platform, Federico watched this exposure and ground his teeth. He had to admit, as he stood high above in the blue-and-yellow-striped tent, that the spot twerp deserved a little extra credit; he was, after all, the most creative in his adoration. Most men just ogled, or left trinkets in their shared dressing room—even Luigi brought a rose once, white, though, to contrast with Estanzo's nightly red one—but lingering on her with the light, providing the holy glow for all her worshippers while giving himself his own private peep show—that was clever.
Only it wasn't private. The whole crowd participated, and that pimply spot kid had the real power, truthfully, even more than Estanzo. Wherever that rat pointed his oversized flashlight, all were obliged to look, gawk, gape, drool.
Federico wished he could clear his throat over the oohing of the audience, but he stared helplessly along with the rest of them. He should have been able to resist it—how often had he shared that playing green gaze, snagged his fingers in those black falls, smashed his own clumsy body into that lithe one? How often had he caught a whisper out of that velour throat, won a kiss from those hibiscus lips? Constantly, without pause, perpetually, he would have answered once. But now, his reply was bitter and brittle: seldom, rarely, never.
He would wake in their shared trailer alone, sponged with cold perspiration, his pulse as rapid as that time the elephant got loose in the Oklahoman panhandle. Federico remembered it all too well: from nowhere the flat ground had begun to shake, and then the monster was unfettered, charging, swinging its great leather ears, its tusks suddenly mutant and ferocious as they flashed under the noon sun. Everyone froze: the Tattooed Man, his ink no camouflage, the Fire Eater with wide eyes and slack jaw. Half a dozen farmers came running, rifles in hand, and they pumped bullets into the beast until it fell and the earth shuddered. Ten minutes later, the pimply light boy ran out with his BB gun, only to watch with the rest as the red dust settled into the elephant's wrinkled dead hide.
Federico would wake and reach for her and clutch nothing but sheets, damp with his own sweat.
She gazed off when he sat across from her at meals, a bowl of tired vegetables haggled off a local between them. He said her name, her real name, and not the flashy stage one, the one her Tahitian parents gave her, the one that meant "sky angel."
"Ra'imere," he said, and her eyes narrowed like the Diving Cat's before it took its plunge.
"Don't call me that," she hissed, and when she left, he swore her tail should be flicking back and forth, back and forth.
Now she stood across from him, across the great chasm, tossing her head back, her neck so naked as she thrust her chin skyward, the shadows swirling over her, the light undulating. Federico watched, and felt a burn, a heat, a flame of lust and rage and jealousy sear across his skin. He was sharing her—his Ra'imere in all her perfection— with a slew of strangers, but worse, with partners. Estanzo, stroking his waxy moustache, Ronny the spotlighter, sweating behind his lamp. The elephants, madness in their dull orange eyes, the lions, all of them, tongues running over their teeth, mouth open and ready to feed. And Holger, the blond-haired-blue-eyed Human Cannonball, as he winked at Yuliana and Yuliana winked back.
Flying trapeze began in the toes. To successfully propel your weight off the platform and onto the bar, you must transfer your strength, balance, existence from one set of digits to the other. It began with the most minuscule of leans, from the back of the heels to the tip of the toes, and muscle by muscle it worked its way up and off till you were soaring, swooping, sailing above the ocean of amazed faces, above the distant cement floor. Your body was a line from your ten fingers to your ten toes, point to point, a strong curve of human, and as you flew you pulled yourself up, over the bar, you crushed it between your thighs and calves and squeezed as you dropped, swinging upside down now. As you swung you saw your wife flashing forward to you, rewinding back, and you strove to ignore the amazing quantities of blood filling your head, the scream of it, drowning you as you moved your arms back and forth to propel yourself, and she did too, her hands held out for you to catch.
|
