his eyes pressing into me
and tracing not only
my outlines as if his gaze
were a pencil but my inner contours
as if they themselves were wet clay and I backed away, Oui, M’sieur, I would like that, and he extended his hand, which was trembling, in it a carte de visite, with his address, I will even make sure you have a chance to chat with my friend Gervex, also a painter, who is often here, and M. de Goncourt, do you know his work? he is writing a story on the circus, and I smiled and brought my palms and fingers together, and assured him I would call upon him as agreed, telling myself I would bring Kaira with me, and the strange, intense man bowed and seized my hand and kissed it hard, whispering Fort enchanté, African Princess, muttering something else beneath his breath then he spun on his heel, vanishing past a small new cluster of people waiting to speak with us, and it is early on a Thursday morning that I am now writing to Lili recounting the incident, though at first I sincerely could not remember his name, even though I will go to his studio the following day to meet him and his friend and see his drawings and exchange pleasantries, all I could recall was that he had claimed to have been drawing me, and how the next night after that encounter as I rose up on the tether, watching Kaira standing in anticipation below I remembered that after the painter left she said, Ooh La La they always come looking for you and I replied to her as I sipped my cup of tea, Yes, they do, they find me too, always, and as I rose, amid that collection of expectation and excitement, the gas lamps raking waves of shadows over them, there, in the ring’s front row, to my right, I could have sworn I saw the board which held the paper, the hands moving furiously across it, the eyes darting from it to me, his eyes, large and tourmaline and climbing their own invisible ladder, trying to seize and hold onto my waist, my ankles, the perfect aerial cross of my body, this space, performance, the one whose name I could not remember, then I do, as I elude him and all of them, gliding higher, toward the freedom of the dome, high as the summit of Mont Blanc, the mouthpiece tightly in my bite, the name, severe and aristocratic in its brevity, reappears, him, the painter,