Finn pulled his badge. Neither of us was in uniform, and the young man did a double take at the brass. He rubbed his chin again and said, “So this isn’t your woman, huh?” and Finn shook his head.
If he’d shaken it any harder, he’d have gotten whiplash.
The young man grinned at me and I winced at the tobacco-stained Chiclet-like teeth that crowded his mouth. “Well, now, I’m going to be getting off in a few hours, how’s about you and I grab a beer tonight?”
“Listen, that’s tempting but as you can see,” I said, and turning sideways, pointed at my belly with both thumbs, “I’m already taken. Now, my partner has identified us as police officers. If you don’t tell me, with the next words out of your mouth, where I can find the trapeze artists, the only coins you’ll be collecting will be the quarters you’ll need to use the pay phone. At the jail.”
The man sighed. “Ah, I was just having a little bit of sport with you. No harm intended, right? My daddy was a policeman. They’re all up in that tent, up that way… that big blue one, see? They’ll be rehearsing right about now.”
We cut across the grounds toward a blue-and-white-striped tent, dodging strollers and shrieking kids with sticky fingers and tall clowns with bunches of balloons floating like tethered clouds above their wigged and hatted heads.
Next to a hot dog stand, one of the clowns jumped in front of me and I reared back as he stuck his face into mine.
“Wanna buy a balloon?” he whispered. Black paint as thick as axle grease covered his entire face and a large floppy hat was pulled down low over his ears. I said no and moved to go around the clown but he leaned to the side, blocking me.
“Wanna buy a balloon?”
I shook my head and went to the other side and the clown mimed my movement, blocking me again. Ahead, I saw the back of Finn’s head moving farther away as he continued toward the tent. All around me, kids swarmed; their heads brushing against my hips and thighs, their cries and shrieks of laughter piercing my ears like the call of a thousand tiny birds.
They closed in on me, surrounding me, filling the air with their small bodies. So many small bodies! I couldn’t catch my breath.
The clown lowered his bunch of balloons over both of us, blocking my last point of reference, the sky.
I panicked.
My heart hammered and I couldn’t draw enough air into my lungs. I wheezed and the clown seemed to loom closer and then farther away, up and then down and then up and I saw the ground rushing up to meet me and then an arm gripped my elbow.
“Gemma, c’mon. You can get a hot dog later,” Finn hissed in my ear, and pulled me toward the blue tent. I drew in a big breath of air and yanked free of his grip.
I turned around in a circle, scanning the crowd, but the clown, and his balloons, was gone.
I was really starting to dislike clowns.
Chapter Twenty-six
The blue-and-white-striped tent was deceptive; small from the outside, it was enormous on the inside, easily the size of a large theater space. I suddenly understood why they were called big tops. Bleacher-style seats ringed the inside edge of the tent, and in the middle, a large dirt space had been circled off. Above the dirt, a green net stretched between four pillars, and above the net, five trapeze bars swayed gently in the air at varying heights.
I watched as four people began climbing two sets of ladders at either end of the tent. They wore Zorro-like masks and black costumes that obscured their faces and bodies. Their feet were bare and they climbed quickly, confidently, like monkeys. A sense of déjà vu came over me, and I remembered something that I had forgotten, from a long time ago. I would have been about three, and my father was home for the weekend, a rare occurrence. He was a pilot for Southwest Airlines and he flew the Denver-Las Vegas route, Thursdays to Sundays.
He must have been sick, or maybe it was a holiday, I don’t remember. But he was home, and I was thrilled when he packed me in the station wagon and took me to the summer fair. It was here, on these same fairgrounds, and we saw acrobats perform in a similar tent. I remember how small my hand seemed in his, and how his long mustache would tickle my ear when he kissed my cheek.
The memory made me sad; my father would have enjoyed being a grandpa.
“Gem, check it out,” Finn said. He pointed up to the top of each ladder, where a long plank, similar to a diving platform, was set with handrails made of thick twine, and rope strung waist-high. The ladders were at least fifty feet in the air and I gulped. Heights have never been my thing.
“Scary, isn’t it?” a voice said behind us.
I turned around and shook Joe Fatone’s hand. I introduced him to Finn.
“Wonderful to be back in business. We carnies go real crazy, sitting around like a bunch of goobers,” Fatone said.
Finn asked, “Has anyone ever fallen?”
Fatone shook his head. “Not on my watch. Couple of close calls, of course, but no real fatalities.”
Except in the clown department, I almost said, but instead asked, “Is Tessa around?”
“Oh, she’s around. She’ll be down in a few minutes,” Fatone said with a laugh, and jerked a thumb at the ladders. I looked closely and noticed one of the masked figures had a petite build and cropped pixie-like hair.
“You gotta see this,” Fatone said. We followed him to the benches and took a seat. High above us, the group paired off so that two figures were on each of the platforms. They stretched their arms and legs and backs, leaning into and against the wooden planks and the rope rails and each other.
Fatone whispered, “That’s Tessa there, the little one… and Doug Gray, the one on her right. That’s Twosie McDonald on the other platform, with Onesie, her sister.”
“Twosie and Onesie?”
“Yeah. Onesie, because she’s only got the one eye. Twosie… well, hell, I’m not sure why they call her Twosie, maybe since she’s got the two eyes,” Fatone said. He belched, a low burp that wafted toward me and smelled of peanuts and beer. “Pardon.”
I asked, “She has one eye and she can still do the trapeze?”
The sisters mirrored Tessa and Doug’s actions on the opposite platform. Then they pretended to sword fight, pushing one another to the edge of the plank, feigning fear, and then pushing back toward the ladder, their arms the swords.
Fatone nodded and let out another burp. “Excuse me, damn heartburn is going to kill me. The trapeze is never about sight, Deputy. It’s about touch, and timing, and illusion. The best trapeze artists in the world can do their routines blindfolded. Damn it, I can’t explain it, but it’s like they’ve got a sixth sense.”
We watched, spellbound, as Tessa skipped to the end of her plank and then without so much as a pause swan-dived into the air and grabbed the trapeze bar closest to her. She swung up and hooked her legs over the middle bar and then swung down and looped over the third. As she hung, upside down, one of the sisters on the opposite platform did a swan dive of her own and landed on the middle trapeze bar. Then, the remaining two jumped in and soon all four were swinging up and over one another, sometimes holding on to one another, sometimes holding on to the bar, sometimes appearing to float in midair before grabbing a leg or an arm.
“They make it look so easy,” I breathed.
Fatone nodded. “It takes years of practice to get that good. Up there, it’s like a secret world.”
I felt his eyes on me.
“Speaking of secrets, seems like Reed had some of his own, didn’t he?” Fatone asked. He pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth, but didn’t light it. “Or should I call him Nicky?”