Some time later, after watching dozens of videos of tumblers and ropewalkers and sword swallowers and static trapeze artists, Madam Oksana looked thoughtful and Lenka was exhausted. Watching the trapeze acts was torture, especially one in which two women and a man twisted, swung, and maneuvered their way around a rigid rig like a giant skeletal cube.
There wasn’t a trick she saw that she couldn’t have done before she got sick.
If she could just get in shape again. If she could just practice.
Everyone slept late at the Cirque des Chauve-souris. With no matinees, there wasn’t any reason for the performers to be awake before two or even three in the afternoon, and as far as Lenka knew, they never were.
At eleven one morning, Lenka crept across the parking lot to the tent, telling herself there was no reason to be nervous. Madam Oksana had never said the tent was off-limits, or even the rigs, if nobody was using them.
The tent was dark and smelled of dust and rosin. Heart beating and palms sweating, Lenka turned on a work light, checked the guy ropes on the static trapeze, then chalked her hands and leapt up to grab the bar. Her shoulders screamed as they took her weight, and her belly muscles protested as she beat her legs up and over. She hung there a moment, then hauled herself up to sit on the bar, where she sat, swinging gently, getting her breath back. Her muscles were unhappy, and she should definitely put on a safety harness before she tried anything fancy. It wouldn’t do any harm, though, to throw one simple trick.
Lenka slid her butt forward, arched her neck and back, and spread her arms stiffly along the bar in a crucifix. As she swung, staring up into the peaked roof, she thought she saw a shadowy stirring among the lights. Her vision sparkled and faded. Her ears buzzed.
I’m going to fall, she thought calmly.
When Lenka woke, her mouth tasted of metal and she hurt all over, but in a strained-muscle way, not a broken-bone way. She opened her eyes to a ring of faces.
Madam Oksana was annoyed. “You are not obeying the rules.”
Lenka rolled herself to her side, pushed herself weakly upright. “I wasn’t in the backyard,” she said. “And nobody was practicing. I checked.”
Madam Oksana’s snarl made her look very like one of her cats. “You are a lawyer now, you argue with me? You kill yourself, maybe that is the end of your troubles, but not for us. You are here to make things easy, not bring police to ask questions. You practice, you must wear a belt, ponimaesh?”
Lenka grinned. “I got it, boss.”
Madam Oksana threw her hands to the heavens and disappeared into the shadows.
Lenka clambered to her feet and staggered dizzily.
Rima steadied her, her grip cool and strong on Lenka’s arm. “Maybe you should build up those muscles more before you go up again.”
Lenka laughed, embarrassed. “You know it.”
The thing about working out is, you feel weaker before you start to feel stronger, especially if you’re coming back from a long time away and you’re impatient.
What made it harder was that suddenly, Lenka was very much in demand.
Rima and Evzen wanted to learn to navigate YouTube. Then Cio-Cio and Hector and Boris got interested, and after that someone or another was constantly dropping by the office to use her laptop and study new moves and new routines. Hector built a cube like the one in the video, and Rima and Cio-Cio started working on it. The Sokolovs obsessively practiced new tricks. Every time Lenka turned around, someone was pestering her with questions about American circuses, American slang, American taste, until she started to feel like a human search engine.
“Watch this sequence, Lenka. Is it now smoking?”
“There is a man who swallows a bar stool, Lenka. Is this cool for me to do, or lame?”
She was welcome at practices now, which was what she’d wanted, but somehow, their attention made her feel lonelier than being ignored. Lenka tried not to mind that they never asked her questions about herself. It wasn’t that she wanted to talk about her family or her illness. But it might have been nice if they’d wanted to know.
After Columbus, they went to Chicago. A week into the run, Lenka took herself out to dinner. She’d been feeling kind of punk lately — too much fast food, too much pushing herself to get stronger faster so she could work herself into Rima and Cio-Cio’s act on the cube rig. Possibly too much Madam Oksana and Company, although she was hardly ready to admit that, even to herself.
In any case, she needed to get out, and Madam Oksana had decided the circus was doing well enough to pay her. So Lenka borrowed a dress from Rima and took a taxi to a restaurant she’d found on the internet. It was Italian, her favorite kind of restaurant, not fancy, but nice enough for tablecloths and candles. She ordered insalata mista, garlic shrimp, and a glass of white wine, which the waiter brought without comment. The garlic shrimp reminded her of Papa, who always ordered it. As she ate, she thought about calling her parents. Not that she wanted to give up, of course, not when she was just starting to feel at home. But they must be worried, and she wanted to hear the voice of somebody who loved her, even if it was yelling at her.
It was nearly one in the morning when Lenka got back to the circus. She was exhausted, achy, and a lot more lightheaded than she should be on a single glass of wine. Heading for the office truck and her bed, she hoped a cat was waiting for her.
When she heard the groan, her first impulse was to ignore it. She knew the performers sometimes hooked up with townies and brought them back to their trailers, especially Boris and Evzen. It didn’t bother her — it was what circus people did. But it wasn’t anything she needed to know more about.
Another groan — unmistakably not that kind of groan. Someone was hurt. Someone was in trouble.
Lenka groaned herself, softly, and padded around the costume truck toward the back door.
Per municipal regulations, a security light illuminated the area immediately around the door, which was currently occupied by Hector, Carmen, Kazimir, Madam Oksana, and Boris, who was holding the body of a young woman in his arms.
Lenka shrank back into the shadow of the costume truck, cheeks tingling with shock. The woman groaned again, and her head rolled back in a horribly final way, revealing a wound in the angle of her jaw. It was bleeding sluggishly.
Hector said a word Lenka would have sworn he didn’t even know.
“Shut up, Hector,” Madam Oksana said dispassionately. “She is not yet dead — although she may be if Boris insists on stupid clowning.”
Boris bared his teeth and hissed at her, reminding Lenka strongly of a cat defending his kill.
Madam Oksana hissed back.
Boris laid the girl on the ground and watched unblinking as Madam Oksana knelt, turned the girl’s head to one side, then bent and delicately licked at the seeping wound.
After a long moment, Hector laid his hand on her shoulder. “You must stop now,” he said.
Madam Oksana straightened and licked her lips. Her face was as blank as a doll’s.
Lenka looked at the girl. She lay as she’d been arranged, arms sprawled, neck pathetically arched to display an unbloodied expanse of white, unbroken skin.
While Lenka was digesting this, Kazimir swung the girl up and over his shoulders like a dead deer. “I’ll get some water down her and sprinkle some gin around. She’s already drunk, right, Boris?” Boris yawned. “Right. With any luck, she won’t even remember where she’s been when she wakes up.”
Boris stretched sleepily. “Why risk it? Why not make sure she won’t wake up?”