Caudal Fin

            Isabelle had dreamed of being an Olympic gymnast before a terrible dismount from the uneven bars. Her nascent fame became notorious through viral videos that warned of the “graphic, gruesome” content and feigned well wishes for some kind of recovery. Sixteen years old, however, is forever away from such truisms like ‘baby bones bend, not break’. She rehabbed until her team funds dissolved,  floated around dance clubs awhile, using her upper body strength on the stripper pole. Finally, she took a job with a travelling circus.

            Matt would show her the ropes, literally. She’d start as a solo act, tethering her ability to do amazing splits and contortions, twirl as the rope would descend and rise up on a pulley, synched with canned music that milked the audience’s oohs and aahs. From there she’d train with Matt on the trapeze. While he wouldn’t call himself an ‘artist’, he put special care in catching her as aesthetically as possible.

            Jerry, the ringmaster, told her his door was always open if she needed anything. Sort of an asshole, he was one of the few who never shared a trailer, stout on his unwritten rule that sex and sleeping with someone were different deals. Nightly arrangements were fluid, anyway, especially in summer’s swelter. Sharon, the animal trainer, often bedded down with her poodles and pekingese, leaving her new roommate Isabelle to sleep by herself or have sex to her heart’s content.

            Sometimes their trailer stayed empty all night, the ghouls of the try-your-luck booths having their way. Gavin, the most organized (managing hundreds of betta in softball-sized fishbowls), knew how to pace the coffees and cannabis and brandy and brownies—magically fresh from his backroom kitchenette. Matt called him ‘Gavin the Gateway’ and warned of horizonal strife, but Isabelle patted away that worry, wrapping herself into his doffed jean jacket before passing out.

            Weekends meant two shows a day: afternoons full of families, evenings wafting a more perfumed sweat. After such shows, the ghoul booths were busy, so Matt and Isabelle would stroll to the city, take in a movie, eyeball the balconies of lives more worth living, a little tongue in cheek. And then they’d talk shop: “What stuck out, today, for you?”

            “I don’t know. Just the routine. Jerry ordering me to smile more—be a crowd-pleaser.”

            “Crowds love you,” Matt assured.

            “Nine-year-olds do. And their dads.”

            “C’mon. And I’m there for the moms?”

            “Maybe. Their eyes eat us up.”

            “No. We’re more than just cotton candy. We’re more like…”

            “Hash brownies?” Isabelle wanted a laugh out of that.

            Instead, Matt brought her hand to his lips and pleaded, “keep Gavin at arm’s length.”

            “The Gateway! You’re jealous.” Maybe so, silent minutes ensuing.

            Autumn took the operation south, glomming onto the coastal kitsch of places like Myrtle Beach. Jerry, counting costs, fired Sharon for the increased hassles of animal regulations. To cover that gap in the show, he made Igor, the aging strongman, dope around an extra set with the clowns, who had to jump through hoops of fire without a regulatory sense. Then Jerry sold the trailer where Desirée and Tammy resided, throwing them in with Isabelle. They all got along, fortune teller/juggler/acrobat, but it was cramped. Isabelle wound up wandering to the ghouls more often.

            Gavin was feeding the betta when she gravitated toward his empty booth. “Business slow?”

            “Depends. Sometimes I’ve sold one of these guppies for a hundred bucks when the ping-pong doesn’t bounce right.”

            “Like today?”

            “Why, you need a hundred bucks?”

            Isabelle laughed. “No. What for? Like I’d go out and buy something nice...”

            Gavin lifted one of the water globes. The flaring caudal fin was iridescent fuchsia striped with indigo, a king bound in a nutshell. “Want this one, for free?”

            “Desirée and Tammy are company enough. Thanks, anyway.”

            She hung around to watch a gradual flow of suckers—gigolos preening to impress their gals. Gavin, with now a fistful of bills and a few less fish, flashed a grin at Isabelle. Somebody recognized her as the woman on the rope, and that brought more chatter, more customers.

            “Don’t show that cash to Jerry,” Isabelle thought to say. “He’ll pimp me here every night.”

            “Fuck Jerry. And I wouldn’t want you here against your will.” He poured her a brandy and put in a Blue Öyster Cult disc. “Agents of Fortune,” he answered her nod of vague recognition. “I usually skip the third track for all the confusion—Romeo and Juliet, together in eternity kinda crap I can do without.”

            “Oh, but I like that song.”

            “So then we won’t skip it.” They leaned back and talked through most the music before he pulled a latched box from under his cot. He had, a week ago, introduced her to a tame way of taking heroin, rubbing the inner wrist with tiny grains of glass inside the mix. Messier, less potent, but also less bruising. “You ready for a better trip?”

            There was no show scheduled tomorrow. Before he even opened the box, Isabelle stammered, “I hate needles, you know.”

            “I know. Me too.” They listened to the disc change songs. Gavin slid the cover to her when she asked about the current track. “‘Morning Final’—another tune kinda over-the-top—”

            “Catchy.” She leaned back. “I can hardly feel my heart,” she mouthed the second time that phrase played. She was blindly conscious of Gavin stroking the middle of her arm and released a hiccup of fear in her throat. She made herself agree with the whisper that this would be heaven, because something must be. Something in this shit—“skip this new song, please,”—and Gavin interrupted the tourniquetting to appease. “Ok, it’s better.” Breathe. “What’s it called, please?”

            “‘Debbie Denise’.”

            “The last track?”

            “There’s always replay.”

            No. No! Matt would not burst in to be hero, she now knew. She sprang up and ran to his trailer to punch him awake and hold him and weep. And sleep. 

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)