Pudgy Di Battista drank the air that Doris breathed, which was hardly surprising, since when it came to drinking, he could knock back even the bad blood coursing through his veins. Essentially, the circus was a prison where he purged the accursed nature of his existence. It could have been worse. It can always be worse. He could have purged his accursed existence at a stroke with a eugenic bullet to the temple, which never happened, though several in the circus would have applauded heartily. Pudgy Di Battista’s liver must have tasted of cognac, which he’d have willingly given up for a taste of Doris, if he’d been able, but she was always on the alert and kept a diplomatic distance, though never entirely dodging a future commitment, emboldened by that kind of equivocal yes but no some women cultivate so artfully. Pudgy Di Battista would have squandered money he didn’t have to savor the trapeze artiste’s skin. He often suggested as much, and she’d reply the color of your money first, then full steam ahead, though at the moment of truth, I’m sure she’d have refused to allow even the fingertips of his shadow to touch her. Basically, she didn’t lack a moral side and would only have tasted temptation to fulfill a pledge, to mortify herself, and maybe redeem some lost soul with her self-sacrifice, like an early Christian martyr. Doris was from a sleepy, bad-sounding village in Badajoz and spoke with its weary piggy snuffle. Words seeped slowly across her head from her fount of understanding and surfaced from her lips worse for wear, distorted by her accent, though she always kept quiet on the trapeze and let her contortions speak for her, which was what really mattered. Doris’s skin still retained the veneer of youth but already showed a tendency to beget varicose veins and hemorrhoids, which betrayed the future her body was fermenting. She’d stand and look me in the eye when she walked past a cage I was cleaning out, and her broad smiles made me feel on top of the world. I didn’t credit them to begin with, but then gradually recognized they were for real; the girl must have had a weak spot for me. “Gregorito, one day you should come with me and have a swing on the trapeze, you’ll see what fun it is.” She’d drawl slowly, relishing the words in her mouth before uttering any. I feel I can still hear them. I used to nod and hang out my tongue like a dog being offered a bone, and my eyes followed her as she walked away, staring at the cocktail of her swaying hips as they melded into the colorful spectacle of the circus. Gelo de los Ángeles, her partner on high, also desired her mentally, though he said nothing, in order to safeguard the smooth running of their act. He knew his strength was waning, but he gritted his teeth and kept silent, because all he was good for was swinging through space. In secret he coughed up sputum flecked with blood and drank lots of chicory coffee, bottomless wells of it that steeled his spirit and geared him up for their strenuous routines. “Hey, dwarf, look how I drink coffee to thicken my blood. I couldn’t care a fig for anything else. I’m tired of wandering the atlas of the world and not taking root, but now I really couldn’t care less.” Athletic and stoic, Gelo de los Ángeles continued to perform and fill the breech in the program but kept quiet about the disease squirreling away his strength. He also kept quiet about how he was longing to let his desires loose on Doris’s flesh, but all the males in the circus kept that to themselves, except for the elephants who signaled it with a retractable erection of their trunks the moment she and her female scent peered into their cages. Many spectators — and pudgy Di Battista made the most of her as bait — only came to the show to ogle at the curves that Doris funneled tightly into her leotard. The key aspects of her anatomy were thus put into relief, were marvelous to behold, and the success of her act was assured in advance in an upfront manner unusual for the times. It was an era of secrecy and darkness, an era when one could only sin in the mind amid feverish, filthy fantasies one could never confess.