Sitting, his feet hung just over the edge of the chair, small child's feet encased in red socks to match his suspenders, his scuffed shoes on the floor.
"Cheers!"
Kellerman drank almost half the contents of the glass, burped, and wrinkled his nose.
"So! You came. I was half expecting you not to turn up."
Ruda opened her bag and took out her cigarettes. Kellerman delved into his pockets for a lighter.
"Did you go to the cashier?" he asked, looking at the large leather bag.
"Yes."
He flashed a cheeky grin. "Good. I'm glad we understand each other. The license, all our papers, are in that drawer over there. They still look good... guy was an artist!"
Kellerman eased himself off the chair. "You may not believe this, but I don't like asking for the money."
Ruda laughed. "Asking? Blackmailing is the word I would use."
"You have to do what you have to do. I'm flat broke, and in debt to two guys in the U.S. It's been tough for me ever since you left."
Ruda smiled. "It was tough before I left. I'm surprised they employed you in Paris. Those folks worked hard for their dough. Way I heard it you were blacklisted, you'd steal from a kid's piggy bank, you have never given a shit for anyone but yourself. How long did you get?"
Kellerman shrugged. "Five years. It was okay, I survived, the cons treated me okay... the guards were the worst, bastards every one of them, called me monkey or chimpy."
"You must be used to nicknames by now..."
"Yeah, haw haw... sticks and stones may break my bones but..."
He leaned forward, a frown on his face. "I'm shrinking, Ruda, do you notice? Prison doc said it was something to do with the curvature of my spine. I said to him, Jesus Christ, Doc, I can't get any smaller, can I? I said to him, if this goes on I'll be the incredible shrinking man, and he said..."
Kellerman shook his head as he chortled with laughter. "He said, that was done with mirrors! They built giant chairs and tables, then... fuck it! How could he know, eh? How could he know!"
Kellerman was referring to his obsession, a fun-house mirror he used to haul everywhere he went. The mirror distorted a normal human being, but it made Kellerman look tall and slender — normal. One night in a fit of rage he had smashed it to pieces, and wept like a child at his broken dream image. He turned now to peer at himself in the dressing table mirror, his head just reaching the top of the table. The effect was comical, even funny, but Kellerman was not a clown. He was a man filled with self-hatred, and convinced of the fact that if he had grown, he could have been recognized as handsome as a movie star, a Robert Redford, a Clint Eastwood.
He cocked his head, grinning. "You know they got drugs now to prevent dwarfism? If they detect it early enough, they pump you with steroids, and you grow. Ain't that something?"
Kellerman loathed his deformity; when drunk he was always ready to attack anyone he caught staring at him. The circus was his only employment, his short body rushing around the ring, being chased and thrown around. He opened another vodka and drank it neat from the small bottle.
"Did you work with the Frazer brothers in Paris?"
Ruda asked the question without really wanting a reply; her heart was hammering inside her chest. She had to get him into a good mood, she didn't have the money.
Kellerman nodded. "Yeah, the Frazers had bought my electric car just before I went to jail. So when I turned up and told them I needed a few dollars they put me in the act. My timing was right — you know little Frankie Godfrey? He had joined the act about four years ago. Well, he's been really sick, water on the brain maybe, I dunno. Some crazy woman a few years back got up from her seat and attacked him, she just hurtled into the ring and began knocking him around. The audience thought it was all part of the show, but she was a nut case. Ever since the poor sod's had these blinding headaches; still they paved the way for me to earn a few bucks. Then the management found out about me — gave me my walking papers, they told the Frazers to get rid of me. Cunts all of them."
"Serves you right, if you steal from the people who employ you, and virtually kill a cashier, what else do you expect?... I did that show, Monte Carlo, wasn't it?"
"I borrowed the dough, I was gonna pay it back. Yeah, Monte fuckin' Carlo, I only went there to date Princess Stephanie!.. haw haw!"
Ruda laughed. "Oh yeah, where were you going to find two hundred thousand dollars? From Prince Rainier?"
Kellerman chortled, and pointed to her handbag. "I'm looking right at half that amount now! You know something, we made a good team, we could do it again, I'm good with animals."
"Fuck off... you hate anything with four legs."
He shrugged. "No, I'm serious. You hear what that high-wire act got paid for a stint in Vegas? I mean the real dough is in cabaret. And there's a double act with big cats, you know, mixed with magic — they make their panthers disappear. I dunno how the fuck they do it, but it's got to be a con. You ever thought of trying the Vegas circuit? I got contacts there, I mean maybe to have me in the act might not be a good thing, but I could manage you. I mean Grimaldi's washed up, or filled up with booze, I hear, and you were shit hot with that magic stuff."
"The day I need you to manage me, Tommy, I'll be washed up."
Kellerman continued talking about acts he had managed, and she let him carry on, only half listening. There had been a time when Ruda had felt deeply sorry for him, because she had been in the same dark place. In retrospect, she had made herself believe that that was the reason she had married him, it united them. Earlier, he had been the only connection to this past, now he was the reminder.
When they met, Kellerman was not as grotesque as he was now. He seemed boyish, innocent, his full-lipped mouth and exceptionally white even teeth always ready to break into a big smile. But as he aged, the anguish inside him, his self-loathing, not only seemed to have deformed his body, but was etched on his face.
She was so engrossed in her thoughts that Kellerman startled her when he suddenly hopped onto the bed beside her.
"You aren't listening to me!"
"I'm sorry, I was miles away."
Kellerman rested his head back against the pillows; his small feet in their red socks pushed at her back and irritated Ruda, so she got up and sat in the chair he had vacated. She was tense, her hands were clenched, but she told herself to be patient, to be nice to him. She mustn't antagonize him.
"Strange coming back after all these years, isn't it?"
She made no reply. He tucked his short arms behind his head, and closed his eyes. "You think it's all stored away, all hidden and then — back it comes. I've had a long time to think about the past, in prison, but being here, I dunno, it makes me uneasy, it's like a secret drawer keeps inching open."
Ruda was trying to figure out how to tell him that she did not have the money. She racked her brain for a deal she could offer him. She was surprised by the softness, the sadness in his voice; he spoke so quietly she had to lean forward to hear him.
"When my mama handed me over, there were these two women, skeletons, I can remember them, their faces, almost as clearly as my mama's. Maybe even clearer. One woman was wearing a strange green satin top, and a torn brown skirt... filthy, she was filthy dirty, her head shaved, her face was like a skull. She hissed at Mama through her toothless gums. 'Tell them he's twelve years old, tell the guards he's twelve.' My mama held on to me tightly. She was so confused and said, 'He's fourteen, he's fourteen but he's small, he's just small.' The woman couldn't hear because one of the guards hit her, then I saw her sprawled on the ground. I still remember her shoes, she had one broken red high-heeled shoe, and a wooden clog on her other foot."