Goldenland Past Dark (30 page)

Assuming this was all part of the act, the spotlight operator followed him with the beam, serving, like a prison searchlight, to keep him in full view of his pursuer. Which Webern suddenly was. He knew now that one punch just wasn’t enough to get his point across. With a blood-curdling roar, he leapt over the gold frame and sprinted at top speed after his doppelganger.

Happy Herbert raced up into the stands. He collided with a peanut vendor and knocked an ice cream out of the hands of a little girl, who let out a siren-like wail. Webern scaled the steps two at a time just behind him. The cardboard of his robot suit ripped at the seams, but he didn’t care. Happy Herbert pushed his way through a row of seats, upsetting sodas, buckets of popcorn, and falling, for a moment, into the lap of a tremendously endowed matron in a floral print dress, who shrieked in horrified delight. Then he descended the bleachers on the other side. But Webern was undeterred: he made a U-turn, wheeling around to bound back down the way he’d come. As soon as Webern hit the sawdust ground again he gained on Herb, who was running now like a child in a nightmare: in a zigzag, and always looking back.

Happy Herbert dove beneath the lowest safety net; Webern ducked his head and followed. Bent nearly double, he could barely see where he was going. But as soon as Happy Herbert came out into the open again, Webern knew he had him. Happy Herbert veered toward the lion cages at the other end of the arena, but he was too tired to make it there; his breath came out in high-pitched squeaks and wheezes. With an otherworldly howl, Webern leapt onto his back.

“You’re a disgrace! A disgrace!”

“Get your hands off me, you fuckin’ psycho!”

The two tiny spacemen rolled around on the ground, screaming obscenities and punching each other in the face. Webern grabbed a handful of Happy Herbert’s hair; Happy Herbert kneed him in the groin. Their blood stained the sawdust. They were evenly matched—too evenly. Webern whacked Herb’s chin with his hump, and he felt he was finally coming out on top, when Happy Herbert’s elbow landed an unexpected blow to his ribs. Gasping for breath, Webern was powerless as the other clown rolled on top of him and grasped his throat in two small grubby hands.

Webern thrashed and slapped and kicked and kneed and elbowed. Happy Herbert’s grip only tightened. Black spots swarmed the big top’s dome; the roar of the crowd sounded like it was coming from inside Webern’s head. It occurred to him that he had been making some very bad decisions lately. Somewhere offstage, an elephant trumpeted.

He was almost unconscious when Happy Herbert began to rise, the pressure of his body lifting from Webern’s as though they had entered a realm of zero gravity. When his hands finally, grudgingly, released Webern’s neck, Webern sucked in a mouthful of air—sweet clean air—and opened his eyes. Pipsqueak and Professor Shim Sham, in full costume, had come out into the ring to pull them apart. The two clowns now struggled to hold back Happy Herbert, who noisily twisted in their arms, screamed for his rights, and called all of them “cocksmokers.” Webern watched for a second, then rolled over on his side and chomped on Happy Herbert’s ankle.

“I’ll tear you a new one!” Happy Herbert bawled. Webern crawled out of the spotlight. “He’s getting away!”

“He’s got no place to go,” Pipsqueak reassured him.

Webern looked out at the crowd. Utter terror stilled the faces of children, some of whom stared with mouths agape, forgotten cotton candy melted in their sticky hands. Grown men and women bore looks of horror, outrage, and disgust; some covered their eyes; others pushed toward the exits. Only Wags, standing in a distant row, clapped his hands and shook his head and stamped his feet. Only he was laughing.

A wooden platform, five feet by five feet
, boxed in on three sides with canvas partitions. A single spotlight, trained on the dead centre of the stage. A red vinyl chair, orphaned from a dinette set, with a V-shaped rip in the seat. An unplugged floor lamp, made of tarnished brass. A dustball, a gritty feeling underfoot—sand or the memory of sand.

“It’s all yours.” Frank, manager of the Parliament, dropped his hand familiarly onto Webern’s hump. His straw hat sunk his face in shadows. “It’s a step down, I know, but after what happened I’m surprised old Billy could get you this much. Hell, I’m surprised he wanted to, if you don’t mind me saying so. Guess the guy felt he owed you something.” Frank smiled all the time he said this, but Webern knew it didn’t mean anything. Nepenthe had told him a long time ago that the guy couldn’t stop even if he wanted to—some kind of muscle damage from the Korean War.

“Tell me what you need, and I’ll pass it on to Wardrobe. Can’t do much about props, though. For those you’re on your own.”

“When do I start?” Webern asked.

“Bright and early.” Frank patted Webern’s hump once, then let it go. As he hopped down from the stage, he called over his shoulder, “Don’t take it the wrong way—we’re glad to have you. We’ve been expecting you a long time.”

Webern waited until Frank had disappeared. Then he pulled the chair out, straddled it, and sat down, resting his head on the upholstered back. He gazed out at the narrow space where the crowd would file in, where they would stare at him for five minutes before shuffling on to the next attraction. He thought of Nepenthe, coming in here every day for years and years—now it made sense to him why she would want to lie motionless on her rubber alligator, why she didn’t bother putting on a show. It took all the energy he could muster just to keep breathing in this place.

Webern took off his glasses and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He could have gone to Europe. He could have gone to San Francisco. He could have made her stay, somehow. Instead he’d chosen this.

The Parliament freaks kept a different schedule than the performers under the big top. Their show started two hours earlier, to catch the midway crowd, and it ended whenever the traffic through their tent slowed to a handful of vulgar old men and bored teenagers looking for somewhere dark and quiet to squeeze each other. As a consequence of this, the freaks put on their costumes in daylight and took them off at night. The giant milled around the cookhouse in his cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat, and Fat Rhonda washed her ruffled skirts as often as her underwear. For the freaks, there was no going into character, or coming out of it either. Except for Jody, the half-man, half-woman, none of them had a face to put on that was different from their own.

Their acts were almost as everyday as the clothes they wore to perform them. Most were simple embellishments on the daily routines the freaks performed every morning before coming to the tent, endless repetitions of the mundane. They spent their days playing solitaire, combing hair, eating, weighing and measuring themselves, as though life had an awful stutter in it, a crack where the needle had lodged. The Skeleton Dude stood on a scale, endlessly munching apples and reading the newspaper. The Elastic Skin Man got up off his cot and stretched, then lay back down again. The Human Torso, who had recently quit smoking, unfolded gum wrappers with his tongue. Only the blockhead and Serpentina, with her drugged snakes, had acquired anything resembling a skill, but their attitude was the same as Happy Herbert’s: why bother improving an act that works? Nobody ever comes through this place twice.

Strangely enough, only Venus de Milo seemed to have taken any care with her act. It was simple enough: she styled her hair, painted her lips, all while describing how lonely it was to be a girl like her. But every time Webern had come through the tent, he’d seen little changes, a new double entendre or a shade of toenail polish she’d never worn before. And, in the end, she played the ukulele, her toes deftly plucking strings while her Brooklyn accent raised in the plaintive melody.

“Drop a nickel in, gimme a whirl. Turn my crank, I’m your kinda girl. You wanna catch my number, again and again. I’m your nickelodeon.” She sounded like Betty Boop, but at least she was trying.

Once, the prospect of doing the same routine day in and day out would have depressed Webern beyond all reckoning. But that evening, as he walked home from the Parliament with Frank’s smile still lingering in his mind, it comforted him that so little was expected. He climbed the stairs to his boxcar and stepped inside. Marzipan glanced at him from where she lay on the couch, then turned her eyes back toward the wall. Webern swung open the lid of his trunk and dug through the wigs and tights until he reached the very bottom. He pulled out his pair of green frogman flippers, kicked off his shoes, and stepped into them. They were old and faded, with a crack along one toe, but they fit him like his own skin. They would have to do for now.

In the mornings, while Fat Rhonda served donut holes on her Christmas plate and the Missing Link—really a kid named Nevis from Tucson, Arizona—brewed coffee in the back of the Parliament tent, the clown who had once been called Bump Chuckles assumed his post as Frog Boy.

The freaks shared their beds as freely as their gin, creating an elaborate and ever-changing network of flirtation and dislike, and they constantly loaned money, argued, and gossiped through the thin swatches of canvas that separated them. But, as he had with the other clowns, Webern held himself apart. Just before they opened, he arrived, dressed in green tights, his flippers, and a white T-shirt. He wasted little time setting up. He spread his lilypad—really just a green tarp—and fitted his lamp with a special green light bulb, just like the ones Nepenthe used to bask under at Dr. Show’s circus. Then he stripped to the waist, wadded his T-shirt into a ball, and tossed it to a corner of the stage. In this place, his hump was more performer than he was. It was what people paid to see.

Sometimes, as he sat under the green light, Webern had the feeling he had arrived, a little too late, in the swamp where Nepenthe had been dwelling all these years. He closed his eyes, and marsh gases exploded in the distance, burning their blue fires, while close by cicadas shrilled. He imagined leaping off his lilypad deep into warm, brackish water and opening his eyes to find a trace of her: a single scale, shimmering grey-white in the muck like a sunken treasure. There was so much about her he had never understood.

A hundred times a day, Webern heard Venus perform her ukulele song. “Peek beneath the curtain, get a surprise. I’ll sing a lullaby to pull you inside. Grab the brass ring, I’ll give you a thrill. I’m your nickelodeon.” When he listened closely, the melancholy in her voice surprised him. It comforted him, too. It made him feel less alone. “Are you listenin’? I’m ringing your bell.” As he swam through the murky swamp, her song became his underwater jukebox, a sign he was not the first person to visit these depths.

One evening, after work, she came over to his stage. He was rolling up the dusty lilypad, but when he saw her he stopped and pulled on his T-shirt before speaking.

“Hey.”

“This was her booth, y’know,” Venus said. She snapped her gum.

Webern nodded slowly. “I know.”

“Stop moping around, you cretin.” She pronounced it “Cretian.” “You’re not the only one she left. She didn’t even say good-bye to me. Miss Hoity-Toity. Like she thought I didn’t know. See you in the morning, she says. Where? I says back. The goddamn beauty salon? Some of us still have jobs, y’know. Well, she laughed at that. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing her again, not around here, anyways.”

She stared at Webern, as though she had just delivered her argument in full and it was up to him to rebut it. Despite the warmth of the night air, she had on a white bunny fur jacket with the sleeves tucked into the pockets. If he hadn’t known better, Webern would have thought she had arms in them.

“I did take her to the bus station,” he finally admitted.

“Yeah. Figures.” Venus jerked her head toward the egress. “Wanna get a bite?”

“What?”

“Get-a-bite. Or have you stopped eating too, ya chump? Christ.” She shook her head disapprovingly. “I always told her you were the sensitive type.”

Venus and Webern walked out of the Parliament together, out onto the midway.

“Tonight’s on me,” Venus told him. “My sweetie runs a corndog stand.”

“What happened to Zeus?”

“That creep?” Venus glanced at a stand selling monogrammed Peter Pan hats. The green lights reflected in her rhinestone glasses. “He went the way of all flesh. All flesh except mine, seems like. So I called it quits.”

“Oh.” An old lady and her grandson stood at the shooting game, firing plastic rifles at gophers with glowing eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You know what your problem is? You’re a romantic. Love’s a nice thing, but when it’s gone, it’s gone. You stay stuck on somebody forever, that’s how you go crazy.” They arrived at the corndog stand, and Venus sashayed up to the counter. “Hi there, Charlie.”

Behind the counter stood a guy in a tank top and jeans sawed off at the knees. His crew cut sparkled with sweat.

“What’ll it be, toots?” He crossed his arms over his chest.

“C’mon, Charlie.” Venus wiggled. “You know how I like it.”

With a sigh, the man yanked a sizzling corndog from the deep fryer and squirted a thick line of mustard down the middle. He held it out. Venus licked her lips and lowered her head. Slowly, the entire corn dog disappeared into her mouth. When she tilted her head back, it was gone, leaving only the wooden stick behind. Webern wondered if she had a gag reflex. Her eyes closed invitingly as she chewed.

“Make it a double.” She tilted her head at Webern. “For my friend here.”

Charlie squinted at Webern, then back at Venus disbelievingly. “That little guy?”

“Yeah.”

Slowly, Charlie drew another corn dog out of the fryer and, with a pained expression, held it out to Webern. Venus grinned slyly. Webern snatched the corndog out of his hand and took a giant step back. Charlie looked relieved.

“Nice to meet you,” Webern muttered.

“See ya later, cutie,” Venus told Charlie.

Webern ate his corndog as he and Venus continued down the midway. When he finished it, he was still hungry. It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten anything else all day, maybe not the night before either.

“You’re a big talker tonight,” Venus observed. “What happened, dog burn your tongue?”

“No, it was good. Really.” Webern tossed the wooden stick in a garbage can. “Thanks.”

“Forget about it. I like having company for a change.” They passed a booth where a man arm-wrestled anyone who paid a dollar. Venus flashed him a smile.

“Where’d you learn to play the ukulele?” Webern asked.

Venus shrugged. “My dad, he loved music. Roy Smeck, Cliff Edwards, all those guys. He thought a girl like me should have a skill. Made me practice an hour a day. My girlfriends all thought it was a riot, but I kinda liked it. Old-timey, y’know?” They reached a tent with carved ostrich eggs on display, and Venus turned the corner, off the main drag of the midway. “Don’t mind walking a girl home, do ya?”

The sounds of laughter, piped-in music, and buzzing, whirring games faded as the two of them walked toward the train car Venus shared with the albino girl and two trapeze artists. When they reached her door, she stopped. A warm breeze ruffled her bunny fur jacket.

“Y’know, my roomies are out tonight. Went to some roller rink in town. Want to come in for a minute?”

Webern hesitated. “I should go home. I haven’t fed Marzipan.”

“Suit yourself.” She slipped off her shoes and stepped towards him. The sole of one bare foot touched his waist. It struck Webern that for Venus, a hug was wrapping her legs around someone. Her lips brushed against his cheek as she whispered in his ear. “I’ve always liked you, shortcake. You’re a gent.”

Webern closed his eyes. It felt good to have someone else touching him; probably no woman in her right mind would come this near him again. Barely anyone had even spoken to him the last couple of weeks. His hand sank into the white fur of Venus’s jacket, between the shoulder blades. What difference did it make now, anyway?

Inside Venus’s boxcar, two sets of bunk beds stood side by side with a narrow aisle between them. Brassieres, leotards, and stiff tulle skirts dangled from the upper beds, and the air had a ripe sweetness—shampoo and apricots. An open box of chocolates sat on a chest of drawers, the top of each candy pinched, next to a brush tangled with thick, blinding white hair. Carnations wilted in a plastic vase.

Venus sat down on one lower bunk and deftly unbuttoned her jacket with one foot. It fell on the mattress with a wriggle of her shoulders.

“C’mere.” She patted the bed with her knee. “Make yourself comfy.”

Webern sat next to her, and Venus guided her foot into his hand. He stared at her toenails. Tonight they were painted red, white, and blue, like tiny American flags. He touched the pinky with his thumb.

“You do these yourself?” he asked.

Venus kissed him lightly on the lips. The frames of their glasses tapped each other. She sank back onto her pillows. They were different shapes, hearts, a star, a bright red pair of lips—prizes from the midway.

“I don’t think I should be here,” Webern said. “I still love Nepenthe.”

Venus smiled sadly. Her toes stroked his face, his neck. She was still wearing her negligee from the Parliament of Freaks. “Yeah, but honey. She’s not coming back.”