“Is something funny?” The source of my amusement entered the ger. She was smiling. I loved it when she smiled.
“Sorry. I just noticed you got your things.” I pointed at the cases on the floor.
She rushed forward. “Oh! That’s great!” I watched as she opened the case and began sifting through it. I was hoping she might pull out a slinky negligee or thong. But not Veronica. All of her clothes were plain and practical.
“I guess I won’t need my laptop.” She frowned as she held the plug.
“Paper and pen will have to do.”
“I brought some, but not much.” She pulled four large notepads out of her bag, and I wondered what she considered a lot.
“How much do you actually need?”
Veronica sat on the bed, looking thoughtfully at the hole in the roof where the stovepipe went. “I need to make notes, and I have to do that interview…” She pulled a digital recorder out and checked the batteries.
I leaned back on the cot and closed my eyes. “If you need any help from me, I’ll be right here.”
There was no response.
The next two days were a blur of training. I noticed Ronnie watching me a couple of times but tried not to let her distract me. Most of the time I made it back to the ger I passed out before she showed up. This bothered me because I wanted to enjoy my time with her. And that bothered me because I was supposed to be focusing on training. Sartre spent most of her time in Veronica’s pocket. I woke up at one point to find her sleeping next to my neck, but that was the most attention I got from her.
The day of the naadam, I found my uniform washed and waiting on my trunk. I wasn’t sure whom to thank for that. After wrestling myself into it and putting on sweatpants and my deel, I headed outside to find everyone in the truck, waiting for me.
Veronica patted the front seat in the truck next to her. Yalta ’s grandsons sat in the back with him and the rest of the family. Sansar-Huu was driving. I spent the trip chewing on protein bars while my friend told my alleged girlfriend about the scenery. My thoughts drifted to my training and the techniques Yalta had taught me in the last few days. I was so focused, I almost missed the conversation going on next to me.
“Cy was so drunk, we found him out in the fields, curled up and sleeping with two goats.”
Veronica laughed and looked at me. “You have interesting taste in females.”
“Well, I do find you attractive,” I replied, watching as her face reddened. “And that wasn’t my fault. It was my first time with airag and this bastard told me it wasn’t potent.”
Sansar-Huu nodded. “It was interesting how those two goats followed you around for days afterward.”
I remembered that. Coney’s concubines, they called them at the time. Nice.
“I take it you don’t date much?” Veronica asked with a little too much interest.
Chudruk chose that moment to pop his head through the little windows to the back of the truck. “You should see his little black book!”
I made a mental note to exact my revenge later.
“What little black book?” Ronnie’s eyes grew wide. Surely she wasn’t that naive.
Chudruk was practically bursting. “Oh, you know, the groupies. Cy has them in almost every city we hit.”
My gut twisted at the reminder. I was hoping Veronica wouldn’t ask about that.
“You brought that up when I interviewed you,” she started. I couldn’t decipher the look in her eyes. “Something about women with carney fantasies?”
This time, all three faces stared at me. I read amusement in Sansar-Huu’s and Chudruk’s faces. But Ronnie’s features had darkened. I wrestled with how much to tell her.
“Come on, spill it,” she said unconvincingly. “It’s for my research.” She didn’t look like she really wanted to know.
Chudruk settled himself in the window. He wasn’t going anywhere, which would make lying impossible. I sighed. There was no way out of this.
“There are some women who have a carney fetish.” That was simple. Maybe I could stop there. I looked around so I could distract everyone by shouting, “Hey, there’s a yak,” or, “Is that Genghis Khan?”
“And?” Ronnie asked, biting her lip.
“It’s usually bored, wealthy housewives. Something about having sex with a carney turns them on,” I started slowly. She continued to stare. Okay. Fine.
I went on. “I have a few women in some of the places we go who make sure I call them when I’m in town.”
“And you have sex with them?”
“Yes.”
Veronica looked like she wanted to punch me. “So you’re a slut.”
I shook my head. “No, I just have a casual sex life.”
“Why sleep with them? They are using you!”
She was going from zero to volcanic in five seconds. “Don’t take it personally, Veronica.”
Chudruk decided this was the time to intervene. “Cy is the most popular. He has all of his teeth and is very clean.”
Oh, yeah, that helped.
“You have the perfect life, my friend.” Sansar-Huu sighed, not helping at all.
“It’s no big deal,” I started to explain. “I only hit most of those towns once a year. And it’s not like I do it for money or anything.”
“But they are using you!” she repeated.
I shook my head. “I don’t see how. Seems to me I benefit from it as well.”
If we weren’t in such tight quarters, she might have put her hands on her hips. “And how do you do that? You are just a hollow figurehead…an object of desire to them.”
“I fail to see what is wrong with that,” I answered honestly. “I have no attachments in my life, and Sartre doesn’t seem to mind. Why can’t I have sex with anyone I want to?”
“What…what about diseases?” she sputtered.
“Believe me, these women take care of their bodies. And I always use protection.” I was starting to get a little annoyed by her anger. This was my life, wasn’t it?
Veronica folded her arms across her chest and stared straight forward.
Chudruk, on the other hand, didn’t shut up. “Do you still see that one blonde from California? Man, she is so hot.”
I turned to him. “You mean Katya?” I was pissed off by Ronnie’s holier-than-thou attitude. “Yup. Saw her last year. She’s very flexible.”
Ronnie practically screamed, “You are such a poodle!”
This caught me off guard. I’ve been called many things in my life, from a greasy goon to a coldhearted killer. But this was new.
“She just keeps you in her purse! On a leash!” Veronica was losing it.
I shook my head. “Not Katya.”
“Oh, and she’s special, huh?” Ronnie snorted.
“No. She’s just lonely. Her husband is an orthopedic surgeon who bought her online as a mail-order bride from the Ukraine. She has a master’s degree in engineering, but no options at home, so she hooked up with a doctor and thought she could have a professional life in the United States.”
Veronica was very silent.
“Unfortunately, her new husband is extremely possessive. Her bodyguards are like prison guards. Katya isn’t allowed to have a job or work.”
“But that’s illegal!”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But he’ll divorce her if she protests, and her citizenship could be revoked. She’d be right back where she started, in a Soviet-style crumbling apartment block, sharing her apartment with a family of eight.”
Ronnie’s anger had turned into interest. “How can you see her, then?”
“She takes her niece and nephew to the circus. Her sister-in-law picks them up there, she dodges the bodyguards and I usually find her in my trailer.”
Chudruk slid the window shut and Sansar-Huu seemed overly fascinated with his steering wheel.
“So, without you, she’d be nothing more than a prisoner in a gilded cage,” Veronica said slowly.