Nothing to Lose (14 page)

“It’s not me!” But I grab the paper from him.

“Hey!” A voice interrupts. “Hello? Anyone there? I won. Where’s my prize?”

“Sure.” I walk away, still holding the paper and barely able to see the prizes through the blur from the ride lights, and the haze of smoke from hamburgers burning.

Later, on my break, I go to the men’s room and stare at the photo for a long time. Then I tear the article into little pieces and flush it down the toilet.

I forget all about Lisette until I head back to my joint and see her walking away, mad. I wish I cared, but I don’t. There are only two people I care about in the world, and I can’t be with either of them.

I left the double Ferris wheel at ten with twenty-five dollars in my pocket.

“Aw, you don’t have to,” I said, when Cricket handed me the money. “I’d have been here anyway.” I tried to give the money back.

Cricket waved me off. “Fuggedaboutit. You work, you earn cash. That’s life.”

I pocketed it. It was mostly ones, and they felt heavy and good in my pocket. I raised a hand to Cricket and went back to find Kirstie. I was tired, I realized. Not sleepy but tired like I used to get after a football game.

Kirstie put me to more work, closing up her joint. While I pulled down the awnings, she finished counting her money and wrote the final figure on a slip for her money bag with a satisfied smile. I checked the beeper in my pocket. Still silent. But, of course, if Walker had my mother up against a wall, she wouldn’t be able to call.

“I can’t stay long,” I told Kirstie. “It’s late. I should get home.”

“Early bedtime?”

“No.”

“No,” she agreed. “You’re afraid something will happen if you aren’t there.” Not a question. She tossed the money bag to a guy who came around collecting them, then came outside the joint to help me close up.

“What’s your problem?” I said. “You tell me to come here tonight, then ignore me for hours. Now, when I have to go, you say stay. I just have school tomorrow. That’s all.”

She shrugged. “You want to go home, go home.” She started to walk away.

I don’t know if she walked really quickly or if I just sort of blacked out, but the next thing I knew, she was yards away, across the nearly empty fairgrounds, and I was listening to the thuds of my running shoes against the pavement, watching her hair, raven-colored, full of moonlight.

“Wait!” I said. “Wait for me. Please.”

When she heard my voice, she stopped for me.

She took me back to the circus tent. It was a lot different than when Karpe and I had been there. Then there’d been hardly any audience. Now it swarmed with people, most of whom would have qualified for the misfit table if they’d gone to my school. I inhaled heat, smoke. A guy with tattoos all over, including his face, had a shouted conversation with his friend, who was over seven feet tall.

“Is there a freak show at this fair?” I asked Kirstie. I hadn’t thought there was.

“They’re my friends.”

“I just meant … you don’t seem like them.”

“I am like them.”

I was stammering out
I’m sorry
when Cricket showed up.

“What’s the deal?” With Kirstie there, he ignored me. “We getting saved again?”

Kirstie laughed. “Not tonight.”

“Good,” Cricket said. “I been saved in Apopka and again in Savannah—and the season’s just beginning.”

Kirstie turned to me. “Every town or so you get do-gooders from some religious denominations who think it would be a new idea to try and convert the carnies.”

“I got so many Bibles, I could make table legs out of them,” Cricket added.

He laughed, but Kirstie said, “I hate them. They don’t know anything about me, but they assume I need saving just because I’m here. I came to get away from that stuff.”

“Hey, I came to get away from people beating the hell out of me,” Cricket said. “That, and for the parties.”

“Us against them,” Kirstie said.

“Sleeping late. Eating an unbalanced diet.”

“Not judging anyone, ever.”

“Wild sex, cool drugs, free rides on the Himalaya,” Cricket said. “That’s the best part.”

Kirstie glanced at me. “Michael thinks we’re trippin’.”

“No, I don’t.” I touched her fingertips.
Us against them
, she’d said. I used to be
them.
Now I wasn’t, but I wasn’t part of any
us
either. I was no one.

The guy with the tattoos came over and handed Kirstie and Cricket each a beer. He kissed Kirstie on the cheek. “A townie?” He gestured at me.

“’Fraid so,” Kirstie said. “Stan, meet Michael.”

“I’d make you happier.”

Kirstie laughed. “Oh, I don’t doubt it, Stan. I don’t doubt it.”

The guy walked away, and Cricket raised a beer to his back. “To irresponsibility!”

“To having nothing left to lose,” Kirstie said.

“What does that mean?” I asked her.

“At some point, when you give up everything, there’s nothing left to worry about.” She handed me her beer. “It’s freeing, in a way.”

I raised the bottle. “To having nothing to lose!”

I moved closer to her, farther from the tightness of the group of strangers. Her hair smelled like outside, and I inhaled deeply. The girl from the show the night before, the contortionist called Ni-Jin, stood outside the circus ring, eating a hot dog and smoking. Up close, I could tell she was my age, not ten like they’d said. Then the ringmaster showed up.

He was still in his ringmaster suit, which is how I knew him. When he reached the center of the ring, someone yelled, “Now Bill’s gonna talk.”

“And talk,” said another.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the ringmaster, Bill, announced. “Children of all ages.”

I looked around to see if there really were kids there. There were a few, which seemed strange, considering the beer and booze and the way some of the women were dressed. I smelled pot, too, and thought about what Cricket had said about drugs.

“In the center ring,” the guy continued, “Jack and Denise!”

A couple came in. The guy had on a suit that looked like he’d found it somewhere. The girl was dressed like a circus performer, in silver sequins and fishnets. She carried a bouquet of pink light-up roses they sold on the midway.

“What is this?” I asked Kirstie.

“A wedding,” she said.

And, sure enough, the ringmaster started reciting, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join Jack and Denise.”

Denise did a little turn, displaying herself. She had a hot body, and some guys whooped.

“They’re really getting married?” I said.

“For the season,” Kirstie said. “Carny marriages go from, like, March to November, renewable after that. Some people have stayed together thirty years or more, season by season.”

The ringmaster was saying, “Do you promise to love, honor, and not come home too trashed at night?”

“I love you, honey,” Cricket joked by me, “but the season’s over.”

“Of course, if the guy beats the crap out of you,” Kirstie said, “it’s easier to clear out.”

I thought about that. From what I could tell, lots of guys beat on women. Maybe most. I tried to think back on girls I’d dated. I’d never hit a girl. We’d mostly made out and, when we fought, it was about my not calling enough. This one girl, Ashley Cates, I’d dated in eighth grade, said I had a problem with intimacy. Where did girls come up with that stuff? I told her I didn’t know what she meant, and she said, “Exactly.”

Anyway, I’d never hit any girls.

“Does that shock you?” Kirstie asked.

“No,” I said. “No one stays together anyway. My parents split up, and now I wish my mom would ditch my stepdad.” I stopped. That was more than I’d meant to say. “What was your family like?”

“Let’s just say I’ll never get married, not even for a season.”

“Did your parents fight a lot?”

“No,” she said. “No, they didn’t do that.”

“What did they do?”

“Mostly didn’t talk at all. I’d rather be alone than with someone who treats me bad.”

“Yeah, me too.” It was amazing, how much we thought alike. “Do you ever get lonely?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get lonely.”

I was going to ask something else, but she turned away. They were on the
I do
s.

“…in fine weather or when you get rained out, for better or worse, until the end of the season or death, whichever comes first?” the ringmaster was asking.

“I do,” said Denise.

“I now pronounce you man and wife.”

That was it. Jack and Denise didn’t wait to be told to kiss, just started sucking face right there. People whooped and cheered, then started heading outside.

“Where are we going now?” I said, glad to get out of the crowded tent.

“Double Ferris wheel,” Kirstie said. “Traditional carny wedding night’s spent at the top.”

I flashed back to being up there with Kirstie, making out. Then to the couple earlier. I looked at Cricket, and he was sort of grinning at me, like he knew what I was thinking.

“The whole night?” I said.

“That’s how you know you’re really married around here.”

We followed the group outside. I realized I’d been holding my breath a little. Now I spread my arms out, feeling better. Cricket went to help Jack and Denise, then started the wheel up and let it make a few rounds. The fairground was mostly dark now, except for the ride lights against the black sky. I wanted to be up there, suddenly. I wondered how it would be, traveling with the carnival with Kirstie, together for the season at least.

I looked at her. Her dark eyes reflected the lights. “Thanks for bringing me.”

“It’s good, getting out of yourself sometimes.” She squeezed my hand, then dropped it.

“Yeah.” I turned to kiss her.

But instead of Kirstie, there was an old woman, older even than the people I’d seen when I visited Tristan’s great-gramma at the Park View nursing home once. Her face was all wrinkles but her hair was black, pulled from her face like a ballerina’s.

“This is Antonia,” Kirstie said.

“The Amazing Antonia,” the woman corrected.

“Hi, I’m—”

“No.” Kirstie held up a hand. “Don’t tell her. Let her guess.”

“Guess?”

“That’s what Antonia does here,” Kirstie said. “She guesses.”

I got it. “Oh, you’re one of those people who guesses people’s age and weight.”

“Bah!” She waved her hand. “Age and weight is easy.” She had some sort of accent. I couldn’t tell from where. “I guess much more harder thing than that. There are some who say … I can read minds.”

I laughed, then was sorry for it and put on a serious face. “Okay, what’s my name?”

She held up her index finger. “One letter. I am always needing first letter.”

“M.” Not commenting that a real mind reader wouldn’t need the first letter.

“Then, I guess Michael. And, for make good guesses, I guess you are sixteen and weigh one hundred eighty-two, give or take three pounds.”

I’d weighed one eighty-four last time I’d weighed in, but my muscle tone was probably going. That was a good guess. I figured Kirstie had told her my name, for a goof. But I said, “That’s great.”

“Ask something else,” Kirstie said. “Ask where you’re from.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Where am I from?”

The old woman touched my forehead and her own like she was really reading my mind. A few people were looking. Finally, she said, “Born right here?”

“Yes.” I remembered telling Kirstie I’d never left Florida. I started to move away, but people were crowded around, watching like they were used to Antonia’s routine. Again, I felt crowded like in the tent.