Singing isn’t something I’m interested in learning — though I’ll gladly listen — but resurrection, that’s another matter. Alexandra dies but comes back to life. I appear to be alive but died inside years ago. Alexandra woke me from my slumber, one of those deep slumbers you think you’ll never wake from, because what’s the point? She found me working on a clogged cotton candy machine and asked if I was Orlando, because that’s who she’d been told to talk to for a job, though technically that would be Sam, the owner, who’s always too high to trust his own judgment and defers to mine. When she asked, I wanted to say I’m whoever you want me to be, but I only managed, “You got him.” Been true ever since.
Alexandra probably thought my reaction meant I was just another guy who wanted to fuck her, which I suppose I was, am. Men dream about women like Alexandra. Who wouldn’t want to make love to her? Wilbur, who keeps the ancient rides running, vehemently claims he wouldn’t, even proselytizes on the subject. At the peak of the season, Alexandra dies and comes back to life seven days a week and twice on Sunday. Wilbur believes fucking a woman like that just might kill you, and he doesn’t want to find out.
He’s not the only one who feels that way, apparently, only the most vocal. I’ve seen more than one new hand set his sights on Alexandra, only to abruptly drop his pursuit after witnessing her act for the first time. Some quit the carnival outright, as if they’ve dodged a bullet and don’t want to tempt fate any further. Not that the braver or less squeamish have any more success. She’ll have nothing to do with any of us romantically.
Just as well. It’s hard enough watching her die as her friend. As her lover I’m sure I couldn’t bear it. We go for long walks together, manage to talk for hours without revealing too much of our pasts — books, movies, the morning sky — how we feel about anything that matters but without the usual stories to explain what landed us in the same lifeboat, adrift. Nobody ever dreamed of being part of Sam’s Carnival of Dreams, not even Sam. Alexandra and I picnic on the banks of whatever water presents itself — river, lake, park pond — and I ache with unspoken love for her. Once my love would’ve been something to offer, I suppose. Not anymore. It comes with too many fuckups and regrets, not to mention a few warrants for my arrest and even more lawsuits.
If I thought for a moment she was the least bit interested, I’d forget what a bad deal I am, but for now I just try to be her friend. She doesn’t want anyone to love her. I know exactly how that feels, but sometimes what you want and what you feel aren’t the same.
No riverbank today. She’s found me finishing my breakfast at a counter seat in a Denny’s on the way to our next job. I’m not sure what came over me, but questions just started pouring out — how she does it, how she sings so beautifully, how she dies but doesn’t — a real cross-examination even though I know she doesn’t like to talk about it. She’s been acting strangely — anxious. For a woman who faces death all the time, Alexandra’s usually serene. Something’s up. I have this stupid idea I can help. That she needs it. Help. I know that feeling too.
“So what’s the song say?” I ask. “Say it to me.”
She smiles enigmatically, then a tiny pout. “You know I can’t do that. It’s an incantation.”
“Meaning?”
“It’s magical. I can’t just mumble it in some Denny’s.”
“I know. You need the threat of death. You don’t think this food will kill you? You obviously haven’t tried the Three-Grease Special. It gets a Golden Coffin Award from the American Heart Association.”
She laughs. “You’re awful.” Her favorite compliment when I’ve pleased her. She likes it when I tilt at corporate giants.
“Does it mean anything? Is it words, or is it just notes and syllables?”
“Yes.” She smiles, her eyes shining. Would you please drop the subject?
“You drive me crazy.” I say this with more emotion than I intended.
Her eyes lock on mine for a brief, thrilling moment, and there’s something there. I’ve stumbled onto one of the pathways to her heart. She likes men she crazes, apparently. Makes sense. The siren likes them wrecked. Not a problem. I’ve been a castaway on her island for a couple of years now.
The waitress comes, and Alexandra doesn’t order anything. “I came looking for him,” she tells the waitress, pointing at me.
The waitress smirks like she thinks she knows what that means, but she doesn’t, and I feel a pang of longing I usually manage to ignore.
“So what has you up at this hour?” I ask when the waitress leaves.
“I wanted to make sure the rig’s right for the private show coming up. We’re using the customer’s tent, and the peak’s at least twenty feet higher than ours. I want it to hoist me all the way to the top. No one will care if I only fall partway.”
I see her falling in my head. You wouldn’t think it would bother me anymore. “I can do that. We’ve got plenty of rope.”
“The Sands of Time will also need to be adjusted for the extra time it will take me to reach the top.”
The Sands are a hokey eye-catching contraption under a spotlight attached to a tripwire that releases the harness holding Alexandra aloft. Sam’s idea, it’s basically a balance beam with sand flowing on one side and a feather from the Angel of Death (a crow’s, I’m guessing) on the other. The sands begin to flow as her swan song begins and she rises, measuring out the last remaining moments of her life.
She drops to her death when the last grain falls.
Some suppose this is a classic distraction from whatever trickery breaks her fall, but I watch only her, ignore the sand, and I can tell you she falls like Lucifer until she smashes into the ground with incredible force.
There is always blood, usually hair. Once in the early days I found a tooth, though she is missing none now. No sign of the fractures I’ve witnessed. No scars. She coils up into a ball, but still her limbs are crushed on impact. Her legs stitch themselves back together first, apparently. Her spine. When she stands, her arms dangle all akimbo and bloody. I carry the tooth, upper front. She didn’t need it when I went to give it back. She must not have tucked in her head tight enough. Now the universe has a spare.
“Why can’t we use our tent?”
“It’s a private party,” Alexandra says. “There might be a lot of people, and ours is looking a little shabby, case you hadn’t noticed.” We were about to get rid of our big tent, do away with working acts altogether, rely solely on games and rides, before Alexandra. Sam’s Carnival of Dreams will likely die with Sam, who gave up dreaming about anything real a long time ago. The only reason he kept doing it was he doesn’t know how to do anything else, and in his burned-out, fat sixties he wasn’t likely to reinvent himself — until Alexandra came along.