Yes. And also many things they would not want me to know. Very beautiful things sometimes, and sometimes very ugly. She heard a poet’s yearning in his tone of mind. He wanted to take what was in people and make a song, a saga great enough to hold all of it, everything he had heard and learned. But she did not wish to be in his song.
She could not ask him how much he knew of her. Why would he tell her the truth, anyway? He lied constantly.
So whatever questions the marks ask you, you could answer correctly every time.
Yes.
They why do you so often give the wrong answer?
To please them. People like to win. So I let them win sometimes, and then they come back, you see, and try again.
She turned and walked away. Behind her she could hear him as he started ballying: “I can guess your age, your weight, your occupation! Challenge my skill, ladies and gentlemen! Ask me any question. See if I can answer.”
Cat made sure she was well down the midway before she allowed herself to think it: He keeps them coming back. He keeps me coming back.
And then she thought, If I win, will it be because he has let me?
And she thought, Who is he? What is he?
But her sense of fear felt eased somewhat. If she did not know those things of him by touching his mind, there was little reason to think he knew more of her.
That night she lay with a mark again, and found that she despised him and what she did with him. “You should charge,” Melons told her crossly after the man left. “It’s stupid not to charge. You’re making it bad for the rest of us.” She glared at the kootcher, but she could not have loathed herself much more if she did indeed perform the holy act for pay. Even the thought of how insanity would punish the man for his daring did not comfort her.
The next morning she went to find Ollie in his trailer with his young son. For hours she sat in their kitchen, and conversed in her silent way with Ollie, and had fried trout, fresh caught, for breakfast with both of them. The boy tended to the breakfast, mostly, just as he tended the booth in the evenings, making change for his father, and for the same reason. The Guess Anything man could not do it for himself.
Ollie was blind.
Blind? But—I didn’t know!
Hardly anybody does. Keep it to yourself, will you? His smile told her this was a small joke—he knew she could speak to no one. Yet it was no joke. A guess-man is supposed to see, to find clues with his eyes, to surmise, not to know. Anything else is too frightening. Ollie would be out of business if the marks knew the truth.
Of course.
Cat felt at the same time very foolish and strangely lighthearted. So he had never seen her in her red dress, he did not know how golden her hair glowed in the carnival lights, he had never seen the carnation softly bobbing at her temple, he could not see how beautiful she was at all. Yet he had been sorry to offend her. Yet he had greeted her the first time he felt her walk by.
Your eyes—how did it happen?
In the accident.
The fiery tragedy that had killed his wife. Afterward, he had sold his home, quit his job, and started traveling with the carnival. Built a life for himself the way he liked it. Letting people win. Giving them happiness.
Or—touching their minds, and learning all the truth about them, then telling them lies.
There was a pause. Then Cat asked gently, May I see your eyes now?
He hesitated only a moment, then reached up and removed the dark glasses. His eyes were not ugly. Really, she had known they could not be ugly. They were gray, misty, and seemed to stare far away, like the eyes of a seer. And his face, without its dark barrier in the way—how could she ever have thought his face was commonplace? It was exquisite, with arched aspiring cheekbones, brows that dreamed.
You are very beautiful.
You—they tell me you are also, Cat. I know—the feel of your mind—it is beautiful to me. It is proud, like a golden thing, a sunset thing.
You knew everything. Right from the start.
A silence. Then he admitted aloud, “Yes. I know.”
I do not understand this strange barbaric language. I understand only what I feel in your mind. Which is now a great sadness. You know I want you. But you are still in love with your wife.
I think—I am now only in love with my memories of my wife.
You are afraid, then. You think I would punish you, as I did the others.
No, I am not afraid. Danger is part of the beauty of you. Everything that is beautiful is full of risk.
But when I came to summon you, you did not want me.
I do not know… I am stubborn. Mostly I did not like the way you planned to take me.
You did not want me.
I want you now.
She had won. But perhaps he was letting her win?
The boy, who had finished scrubbing the dishes, smiled in the same winsome way as his father and went outside to wander the carnival grounds, to admire the motorcycle daredevil’s new Harley, and watch the roughies play poker, and talk with the Bearded Lady, the Breasted Man, the Wild Woman of Borneo, the Amazing Alligator Girl.
Cat touched Ollie’s fine-sculpted face. He leaned toward her, and let her touch guide him, and kissed her.
His body, she found within the next hour, was as beautiful as his face, and as ardent and clumsy as if he were a boy again. It truly had been years since he had given himself to a woman, a verity that made the gift all the more precious to her. She hugged him, she cradled his head in her arms and kissed him, she adored his awkwardness, she felt her heart burst open like a red, red flower into love of him.
Afterward, she was afraid. She was afraid. Love harrowed her with fear. She had sworn never to give her heart to a man again.
He said softly, “The carnival moves on tomorrow.”
Yes.
“There is this about a carnival, it takes in all kinds of people. Criminals, whores, freaks, geeks, holy rollers, crap shooters, it doesn’t matter, we’re all carnies. We all belong. You, too.”
Yes. She heard the wistfulness in herself. I like that.
“But there is also this, that we’re like wild geese, we carnies. We move with the seasons, everything is always changing. We get used to leaving places behind, people behind, losing bits of ourselves. My problem is I look back too much. I’ve got to learn not to do that.”
She no longer cared that he was letting her win. It was his gift to her, this offering of a choice. He knew what she was. He knew that a cat must walk by herself.
And perhaps he hoped to keep her coming back.
But she did not leave him yet. She put on her dress, but lay down again on his bed. A dying blossom fell from her hair. Her fingers interlaced with his. She thought to him quietly, Guess my name and age?
Why, Cat?
You said you would guess for me someday.
Okay. Because you want me to. He took a deep breath. Or perhaps he sighed. Your name is Freyja. Or that is one of them, anyway. You were the great goddess of fruitfulness, you had many names in different places.