Bound in Blue (29 page)

“It’s like being on a plane,” Jason
groused.

“These chairs are designed for an
average-sized person. Which you are not.” Lemaitre clicked a few
more keys and tugged at his lips.

“What’s wrong? Chewing someone out via
email?”

Jason was joking, but Lemaitre answered him
in seriousness. “There are problems in Paris. Attendance is down
now that
Tsilaosa
is getting older. They want new acts but I
don’t know if new acts can save that show.” He sighed. “But to let
it go? It was my first production. Then other shows want updating,
performers want to transfer, or tour, or stop touring, or have
babies.”

“Yes, they’re people. They have lives.”

“Aside from the artists, my directors are
fighting, stabbing each other in the back and demanding special
benefits for their shows and their casts. Then the disaster with
the Exhibition.” He threw up his hands.

“You’re the boss. You’ll handle it. Things
will work out, they always do.” He studied Lemaitre’s drawn
features. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like
hell.”

“I spent a restless night.”

“A ‘restless night.’ Is that shorthand for
brutally and repeatedly sodomizing a writhing bevy of slaves?”

“A writhing bevy of slaves? So poetic. But
no. If you must know, I spent last night visiting Kelsey and Theo’s
place, where I expected to find my daughter.” He looked at Jason in
consternation. “She was not there.”

Jason thought his smile probably said
everything. Theo would have filled in the rest. “You should be
happy, Michel. Happy for her and happy for me.”

“I told you to leave her alone until she was
finished creating her act.”

“She’s finished with it. She’s performing it
for you in a couple of hours,” he said, looking at his watch. “And
for the record, I didn’t go to her. She came to me, just as you
said she would. We got engaged for real last night, which I guess
means I’m going to be your son-in-law someday.” He shuddered.
“That’s disturbing.”

“To you and to me,” Lemaitre snapped. “I hope
you plan to keep the promises you made to her. You’ll have to leave
Paris.”

“Or you could keep her there,” he pointed
out.

Lemaitre didn’t reply, just tightened his
lips into a hard line.

“I think you’d like to keep her near you,” he
poked. “And God knows, she’d like to stay.”

“She can’t. She does trapeze.”

“If the trapeze thing’s such an issue, how
about making a new show? Retire
Tsilaosa
and mount something
different. You said yourself it’s aging out, and Sara’s right, this
Minya-curse thing is bullshit. Maybe it’s time to scrap everything
and start again.”

“Hmph.” Lemaitre flushed around the ears, a
brewing storm about to break. “Last I checked, you don’t run this
goddamn circus. I do. It’s my company. My vision. My facilities. My
people.”

“Your daughter.”

He gave Jason a withering look. “I have an
ungodly amount of work to do, and a meeting with staff members in
an hour. Perhaps you can find someone else to irritate for a
while.”

“You never used to be afraid of trying new
things,” Jason said in a parting shot. “The riskier, the better. I
always admired that about you.”

A muscle ticked in his boss’s jaw, but he
made no response.

Well, Jason couldn’t make Lemaitre be a
father to his daughter. All he could do was shelter Sara from the
pain of that loss.

* * * * *

“Jason, I swear to God.” Kelsey pressed down
on his knee. “You’re shaking the entire row of seats.”

“I’m nervous, okay?”

“No need to be nervous,” Theo said. “Not this
time. She’s got this.”

Of course she had it, but Jason stewed over
other things, mainly his conversation with Lemaitre. Jason could
try to be everything to her: father, Master, lover, friend. But
Lemaitre would always be there in the background, because they both
worked for him. He’d be a constant reminder to Sara that he didn’t
want to claim her. It seemed an untenable situation, but what was
the alternative? Going to some other, lesser circus?

“Lemaitre’s in a mood,” Jason said under his
breath as the Cirque owner entered the theater. He was impeccably
styled, as usual, in a designer suit and tie, but he didn’t look
like he had it together. Various staff members trailed behind him,
some from Paris and other places, but most from Marseille.

“Who’s that?” Jason asked Theo, pointing to
an older man he didn’t recognize.

“The director of
Brillante
.”

While everyone settled into seats, stagehands
prepped the act, dragging out Sara’s safety mat and lowering her
trapeze. It wasn’t shiny and red like the last one, but a dull gray
color with a thick rope hanging down from one side. A chill chased
down his arms. The trapeze was a close replica of the one back in
Mongolia.

He started bouncing his knees again, then
stopped. He couldn’t let nerves get the best of him. He had to be
strong and support her efforts, whatever she chose to do, whatever
she chose to reveal in her act. Wherever she chose to go afterward,
even if it was back to Mongolia.

A few moments later, the house lights dimmed.
Sara walked onto the stage in a blue and white leotard, nothing
fancy. Her hair was done up in two buns with hair sticking out
every which way, for a childlike, innocent effect. Her legs were
bare because she needed them to grip the trapeze, but their
bareness also added to her character’s vulnerability. She stared up
at the bar, touching the rope, studying it. Someone in the audience
let out a soft laugh, unsure whether to be amused or not.

After testing the rope’s strength, Sara began
to climb up to the bar, flailing and straining as if it was a great
challenge. Acting. She could have scaled it with one arm and two
legs tied behind her back. Some of
Minuit
’s musicians
provided the score, a spare, atmospheric melody, almost like a
child’s song. When she reached the top of the rope, she turned
toward the audience, clinging to the bar.

Jason squinted, bemused. Her eyes were
garishly blue, made up with jewels and what appeared to be bright
blue feathers glued to her lids. She fluttered them with an
exasperated expression. He laughed, everyone laughed, but some part
of him was unsettled by the gravity in her features. From the
comedic beginning, things got serious fast.

Sara hopped up on the bar, testing it with
her toes. At one point, she pretended to lose her balance and fall,
clutching the bar on the way down to save herself. Everyone gasped
and many leaned forward in their chairs. It was a good sign her
audience was engaged. From there she did another funny split that
ended in her hanging upside down. Flutter, flutter, flutter. Those
blue feathers fluttered like fake eyelashes gone wild.

She pulled herself up again as the music
increased in complexity. Some deeper notes sounded. Sara’s tricks
grew more daring, more driven. If she was telling a story, it was
her own story of experimenting and taking risks. After one release
she fumbled the bar and caught the dangling rope instead. The
audience gasped, someone even yelped. Theo growled beside him.
“It’s part of the act. She never misses.”

Sara twirled around the rope, out of control
but not out of control. She struggled back up to the top, pathetic
and heroic. The blue-eyed girl who wouldn’t give up.

Jason watched her, lost in the precision of
her athleticism, and her body’s strength. He’d watched her practice
with Theo many times, but she had some heightened beauty when she
performed, some artistic mojo that came from within. She did
another series of tricks, splits and handstands and contortions of
her body as she clung to the bar. She didn’t smile. She did no more
fluttering. Her features twisted in determination—

Then she fell and grabbed the rope again,
sliding all the way down to the edge, so far down her toes almost
touched the stage.

It was a performance. Jason knew that, but
his heart ached for her. She hung from the rope with her head
bowed, facing the audience. The blue feathers rested on her cheeks,
the jewels at the corners of her eyes glistening like oversize
tears.

She climbed again, pausing with each
handhold, looking up in miserable resignation at the trapeze. Aside
from the haunting music there wasn’t a sound in the theater. No
coughing, no shifting or shuffling papers. Jason could see Lemaitre
down in the front, his eyes fixed on his daughter.

This time when she climbed up, she only sat
on the bar, legs dangling. With the help of the spotlight, the
feathers cast a long shadow on her cheeks. A moment later she
reached over and unbound the dangling rope from the side of the
trapeze, and dropped it to the ground in an exaggerated shove.

Oh, good girl.

Sara’s blue-eyed character stood with a new
conviction in her manner, and did the tricks again with all the
energy of the previous attempts, only this time she didn’t fall.
She did handstands on the bar, spun around in flips, did a frozen
split in mid-air with only her arms to support her. Her skills
built to a rousing climax, her full artistry on display. Her
strength and courage astounded him.

But then, it always had.

As the music reached a crescendo, a projector
turned the scrim behind her a brilliant blue. Sara swung her
trapeze, higher and higher. No tricks now. This was a different
kind of finale, just Sara’s wide blue-feather eyes looking into the
expanse of “sky” above her. She’d completed a story arc...the
struggle, the comeback, and now, the appreciation of her dreams.
The lights faded until you could only see the barest flutter of her
jeweled eyelashes, and then went out on the music’s last note.

No one moved for long moments. The trapeze
sailed up into the rigging with its blue-eyed passenger, and then
the half-lights came up, illuminating the theater. Theo stirred
beside him, glowing with pride. “My work is done here, no?”

Before Jason could frame some kind of
response, Lemaitre was on his feet, heading for the doors.

“Where’s he going?” Kelsey asked. “That’s not
the way backstage.”

“Is he leaving?” Theo craned his head as the
Cirque director disappeared down the aisle.

“He better not be fucking leaving.” Jason
jumped up and followed him. Sara had just poured everything inside
her heart onto the stage, told her story with the entire audience
in the palm of her hand. Michel Lemaitre wasn’t leaving, not until
he congratulated his daughter for what she’d accomplished.

“Michel,” he called, following him down the
narrow hallway that led outside. “Michel, stop. What the fuck?” He
caught up to him and grabbed his arm. “You can’t just leave.”

Lemaitre shrugged his hand off. Jason stepped
back as the dark-haired man faced him, his features twisted with
anguish. Michel Lemaitre was in tears.

For a moment, Jason was struck speechless. In
all the years he’d known Lemaitre, he’d never seen the barest hint
of softness or sensitivity. Power, insistence, command, even anger,
these were the faces he recognized. Not grief.

“You shouldn’t be sad,” Jason said when he
recovered himself. “You should be proud.”

“Proud of what?” he said, turning away.
“Proud of all Sara had to endure while I cavorted around my
theaters and clubs, thinking only of myself? Proud of how I didn’t
even bother to find out if she was dead or alive?” He walked a few
more feet and pushed through a set of double doors to an outside
patio. He collapsed on a stone bench and leaned his head against
the balustrade. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the last
day.

“Why are you still here?” Lemaitre said after
a moment. “Go to her. She’ll want to see you.”

“You think she won’t want to see you? You’re
her father. That means something.”

“In our case it means nothing.”

He crossed to sit on the bench beside him.
“Don’t be pathetic, Michel. It doesn’t suit you.”

Lemaitre turned to him, his piercing eyes
clouded with pain. “I made her, Jason. That wondrous, talented
artist on the trapeze. She’s mine and I adore everything about
her…but I have to send her away.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do, because I don’t know how to
do
this
.” He twisted fingers in his thick, black hair. “I’ll hurt
her, even more than I’ve already hurt her. I’m not nice. I’m not
fatherly or nurturing. I’ve thought about it, and I just can’t
see—”

Jason cut him off. “You can’t see? Jesus, you
see everything. You see things none of the rest of us can see. How
it is you can’t see opportunity in this? Opportunity for growth,
opportunity for a relationship that might bring joy to both of
you?”

“I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”

“It’s not that hard, damn it. Start by
telling her how you feel. Tell her what you just told me, that
she’s wondrous and talented. That you adore her. You should be
backstage right now talking to her, telling her how great she is.
Telling her you’re proud of her. That’s what fathers do.”

“I’m not her father. I don’t have it in
me.”

The double door scraped open, and they turned
to find Sara standing with Theo. She still wore her pale blue
costume, her jewels and feathers obscuring her troubled gaze.

“Sara wonders if she could have a minute to
talk to you,” said Theo to Lemaitre. He nudged her forward at the
same time he beckoned Jason to leave with him.

Let them work out their own affairs.

That had been Theo’s take on things from the
start, and as much as Jason wanted to protect Sara in this moment,
he also knew she didn’t need his assistance.

“Tell her what you told me,” he said to
Lemaitre before he stood. “She deserves to hear it. No matter what
the two of you decide in the end, she deserves to know how you
feel.”