But she grasped his hand! He thought of it with the exclamation. And thought, too, That’s the first thing that’s happened today that deserves one! And that thought (he thought) was the second ... !—which began an infinite regress of pleasure, only interrupted as she took his wrist now and pulled him around a corner: In the small square, a refuse can blazed, flaking light over the dark-haired girl’s guitar; she turned, strumming slowly. The music (the acrobat preceding them did a final flip and, staggering and laughing, stood) quickened.
Some man started singing.
Bron looked for him and saw the poster—mural rather—across the back walclass="underline"
A winged beast with near-naked rider rose through thrashing branches, the rider’s expression ecstatic, flexed arms bound in bronze. Reins of chain hung slack on the left, pulled taut on the right, with the mount turned against them.
Someone had set up a hand-lamp, with a swivel beacon, on the gravel; it put a bright pool over the rider’s jackknifed thigh. The beast’s scales were tight where the creature’s neck turned out, and wrinkled where one of its legs bent.
A dozen people stood near the fire. One woman, seated on a crate, suckled a baby: in the warm draft from the burning can, her chiffon lifted and fell.
Bron saw the rope from the overhead black ... swaying. He could only follow it up some thirty odd feet; which meant it could have been tied to a support hidden in darkness thirty-one feet above them, or, indeed, one up three hundred. (From the swing’s frequency, it was more like thirty-five.) Someone was sliding, slowly, down: gold chains hung from her toe-rings. At the end of each, small mirrors spun in the firelight (fire dots sped over the mural); the rope slipped and slid, around her calf, around her waist, around her overhead arm as, descending into the glow, she watched the company. When she halted—was she the model for the rider? Those bronze gauntlets, that leathern skirt ... ?—the highest head was some two feet below the lowest mirror.
Some of the people were swaying to the unseen singer’s song.
He’d just caught the last half-dozen words, when: “Look ... !” he whispered, pulling the woman to him. “Isn’t that the man who punched ... ?”
His companion frowned toward where he’d nodded (her shoulders moved beneath her short, gray cape), then looked back at Bron (shoulders settling) and whispered: “Look again, when she sways into the firelight ...”
He’d dismissed the “she” as a slip of the tongue, when the muscular creature with the fur-bound thigh and arm, matted hair and ulcerated eye, swaying among the dozen others swaying, shifted weight: Bron saw, across the hirsute pectorals, scars from what must have been an incredibly clumsy mastectomy. Someone in front stepped aside so that a wavering edged shadow fell away: obviously from the same bestial sect, however naked and grubby, this was & woman—or a castrate with chest scars. Neither had been the case with the gorilla assailant.
The singing went on.
Now, how (Bron looked away so as not to be noticed staring) could I possibly have mistaken her for that other? (Others had joined the singing. And still others.) Her face was wider; underneath the dirt, her hair was brown, not blue; from her neck hung only a single, rusted chain.
The song she sang (among the dozen others singing) was beautiful.
The voices were rough; seven-odd stuck out, raucous, unsure, off-key. But what they sang—
Bron felt his hand squeezed.
—kept rising, and rising over itself, defining a chord that the next note, in suspension, beat with beautifully. His back and belly chilled. He breathed out, breathed in, trying to inhale the words, but catching only: “... all onyx and dove-blood crinkling ...” to miss a phrase and catch another: “... love like an iced engine crackling ...” which, in terms of the dozen words he’d first heard, was profound.
The woman on the rope began a high descant over-soaring the melody.
Chills encased him. His eyelids quivered.
The acrobat, legs braced wide, shoulders and long hair back, face up—sparse red beard scraggled just under his chin—sang too.
Voices interwove, spiring.
His ears and tongue felt carbonated.
His scalp crawled with joy.
Something exploded in the refuse can. Red sparks spattered over the rim, spilled on the gravel. Sparks, blue-white, shot up in a four-, a six-, a dozen-foot fountain.
Bron drew back.
“No, watch ...” she whispered, pulling him forward. Her voice sounded as if it reverberated down from vaulted domes. Awed, he looked up.
The fountain was up over two dozen feet!
Sparks hit the shoulder of the woman on the rope. She was chanting something; he heard: “... point seven, one, eight, two, eight, one, four ...” She paused, laughed, let go with one hand to brush sparks away. For a moment (as though she recited some mystical countdown) he thought her image on the mural would tear loose and, flapping, spiral the bright pillar into the holy dark.
The guitarist bent over her instrument, hammering on with her left hand and, with her right, flailing furious chords. People began to clap.
He raised his hands, clapped too—weakly: but it shook his whole body; he clapped again, wildly off-rhythm. Clapped again—had the song ended? There was only the quiet chanting of the woman on the rope, her voice measured, her eyes fixed on Bron’s: “... five, nine ... two ... six ... one ... seven ... five ...” Bron clapped again, alone, and realized tears were rolling one cheek. (The sparks died.) His hands fell, swung, limp.
The red-haired acrobat started another flip—but stopped before he left the ground, grinned, and stood again. To which Bron’s reaction was near nausea. Had the flip been completed (at the silence, the baby pulled from the woman’s breast, looked around the square, blinked, then lurched again at the nipple and settled to sucking) Bron realized he would have vomited; and even the incomplete handspring seemed, somehow, incredibly right.
Bron swallowed, took a step, tried to bring himself back into himself: it seemed that fragments were scattered all around the square.
He was breathing very hard.
I must be incredibly overoxygenated! Purposely, he slowed his breath.
His body still tingled. Anyway, it was exciting! Exciting and ... beautiful!—even to the point of nausea! He grinned, remembered his companion, looked for her—
She had moved over near the people at the smoking can, smiling at him.
Smiling back, he shook his head, a little bewildered, a little shaken. “Thank—” He coughed, shook his head again. “Thank you ...” which was all there was to say. “Please ... Thank you—”
Which was when he noticed that all of them—the girl with the guitar, the woman on the rope, the still panting acrobat, the woman sitting on the crate with the baby, the matted-haired woman with the scars and that eye, and the other dozen around the extinguished can (a sooty trickle of smoke put a second vertical up beside the rope)—were watching him.
The woman who had brought him glanced at the others, then back at Bron. “Thank your She raised both hands before her, nodded to him, and began to applaud.
So did the others. Half of them bowed, raggedly; some bowed again.
Still smiling, Bron said, “Hey, wait a minute ...” Some negative emotion fought for ascendance.
As the woman stepped forward, he fought back and, for the moment, won. Confused, he reached for her hand.
She looked at his, a little puzzled, then said, “Oh ...” and showed him the palm of hers (a small metallic circle stuck to the center) in explanation; perhaps because he didn’t appear to understand, she frowned a little more, then said, “Oh—” again, but in a different tone, and, with her other hand, took his, clumsily; well, it was better than nothing. “This is a theatrical commune,” she said. “We’re operating on a Government Arts Endowment to produce micro-theater for unique audiences ...”