Part 12 (2/2)

He pushed a piece of pepperoni around with his fingertip, then licked the grease off the nail. ”Boring. We need cuter priests in this town.”

”They don't pick them for the way they fill out their trousers,” I answered complacently. I a.s.sembled a forkful of lettuce, onion, and a bite of pizza with crushed reds and parmesan, and stuffed it into my mouth. No matter how many times I did that, Stewart still looked at me in disbelief. Hey, it tasted good. ”What do you want to do tonight?”

”Dunno,” he said. ”Sunday night in Vegas. We could go to a movie.”

”We could go to a bar.”

”Mmmph.” Not such a bad idea, though, by the way he tilted his head and lifted an eyebrow. ”What did you do today?”

I shrugged. ”Hung out at the Crown and Anchor. Drove around. The ghosts are back.”

”Ah, so,” he said, and flicked beer at me. I ducked, laughing, and the waiter shot us a dirty look. Didn't bother me: Service is always slow in there, and Stewart and I overtip. ”Sounds like a thrilling day.”

I didn't decide not to tell Stewart about Ms. Bukvajova. It just, you know-completely slipped my mind.

It turned out that what we did that night was go to the circus. I like circus folk, and I love the circus. So because Stewart loves me, we go to the circus every time it's in town.

Well, Vegas has its own local circuses. A new Cirque du Soleil every couple of years, and we've seen them all, including the traveling shows. The animal acts are being phased out after what happened to Roy Horn. But it's a big deal when an arena show comes through, and an even bigger one when it's a tent show.

Call me old-fas.h.i.+oned, but it's not really a circus without a big top.

Oestman Brothers Circus and Traveling Show had set up on the desert lot near Sahara, the one they're always going to build a casino on any day now. We arrived an hour and a half before showtime, light still smeared across the sky, holding the dark at bay.

Not that darkness stood much chance against Vegas. Night tried to fall as we wandered the side tents-viewing fortune-tellers and caged tigers in their shaded enclosure, munching on cotton candy-and it only changed the quality of light. Neon saturated the atmosphere, heavy-hung, so I expected to see it move in swirls with each current. Stewart and I walked through it as if it were a fog. At one point he grabbed my hand and I turned to look at him and saw him crowned in ghostly radiance. I ducked down and kissed him on the grin, despite the sharp intake of breath from a scandalized matron on the far side of the candy-apple booth. I hoped the guy guessing her weight guessed high.

When I leaned back, the light was still there, and it buoyed me.

It has its own otherwise energy, that light in Vegas. It's as much me as my skin and fingers, as much my partner as Stewart is-alien and present-so sometimes I feel it from the inside and sometimes I feel it like a caress.

Somewhere between the rigged dart game and the crocodile boy, we finished our junk food and joined the people moving inside. Under the big top, it was sawdust and lights and collapsible bleachers, and Stewart and I clomped up them to find our seats. He promptly got up again to fetch popcorn and c.o.kes-I have no idea where he puts it-and was back before the seats finished filling up. He's got a knack for picking the quick line. Just lucky like that.

I had my head craned back, staring up at the highest point of the big top, when he slid a bag of roasted chestnuts into my hand. ”They call it the king pole,” I said. ”The whole tent hangs off it. That used to be one h.e.l.l of a tree.”

”Yeah,” he said. ”So was the one Odin hanged himself off of. And look where that got him-overrun by Christians.”

”Blind and forgotten,” I said, and touched my eyepatch.

Stewart winked under blond bangs and stole a chestnut back.

It was a nice enough little circus. They had a couple of elephants that came on toward the end of the show, and as I sat there and ate chestnuts I wondered if they were abused. Not everybody treats their animals as well as Siegfried and Roy. Yeah, I worry more about animals than people, which is stupid. Some folks justify it by saying that animals don't make the choices that lead to their torment and destruction, but it's a bit facile to pretend people have any more autonomy.

In reality, the rat race is a handicap. Except the previous winners start with less weight, not as far to run, and a better knowledge of the track. And the more you fail to keep up, the more weight gets piled on.

It's a scary business, life.

This was a three-ring circus, where there's a big act in the center ring-that's where the elephants were-and something smaller on either side. Because we got our tickets late, we were over by the concurrent clowns, and Stewart seemed to be watching them more than the elephants. He doesn't like animal acts.

I like watching the ringmaster. When the elephants trouped out, I knew it had to be time for the capper. The man in the sequined red topcoat ran out to the middle of the center ring and gestured for his microphone, which glided from the bigtop to be caught with a conjuror's flair.

Behind him, trapezes snaked from the scaffolding. Running men brought out a pedestal. The knotted shroud of the net rose and grew taut, like an emerged moth plumping chrysalis-rumpled wings, while the ringmaster's voice rang across the stands.

”Ladies and gentlemen. Children of all ages! May I direct your attention to the center ring!?

”You have seen aerialists and acrobats. You have seen wire dancers and tumblers, funambulists and flyers. But you have never seen anything like this.

”All the way from the primeval forest of mysterious Moravia, I give you-the Flying Bukvajovas!”

”Huh,” I said, as the catcher was winched up to his trapeze and the first of the flyers began to ascend the platform. ”I could swear I've heard that name.”

Stewart gave me a funny look. ”They've been through town before. We saw them about ten years ago. With a different circus then. And I don't think that was the first time. I'm pretty sure they were here when the dam was going in....”

”Oh,” I said. ”Of course.” And ate another nut. One of those multigenerational circus families.

The ringmaster's microphone reeled back into the stratosphere. He fled the ring in a scatter of sequin reflections, something like an animate mirror ball. I shrugged off a chill.

”Jackie?”

”Somebody stepped on my grave.”

Stewart stole another nut. ”Maybe the ringmaster is evil.”

I tried to steal it back, resulting in a wrestling match that scattered popcorn across the floorboards and glares across nearby patrons. Casualties of war. To add insult to injury, Stewart popped the kidnappee into his mouth before I managed to retrieve it.

”No evil ringmasters,” I said. ”I won't allow it. Screw Ray Bradbury.”

”That was a carny,” Stewart said complacently, defending what remained of his popcorn. ”And anyway, Bradbury's not my type.”

Later that night, when the city glow was creeping around the edges of the hotel-room blackout curtains brightly enough to compete with my bedside lamp, I lay staring at the ceiling. I was supposed to be reading a book. Stewart was playing a Gameboy, but the beeps were intermittent.

I let the paperback fall across my chest. ”Hey, Stewart?”

”Mm?”

”Have you noticed yourself forgetting things?”

”Like my car keys?”

Smart a.s.s. ”No. Like things you used to know. Street names. Your first girlfriend's favorite color. That sort of stuff.”

”I wonder how you'd know if you forgot something,” he said, hitting pause on his game. ”I mean, really forgot it. Do you ever think about Alzheimer's? Or a brain injury? You'd never know what you were missing, would you?”

”No,” I said, picking up my book. I hadn't been paying enough attention to the last three pages and had to flip back until I found something I remembered reading. ”Or yes, maybe. I don't know. I mean, if you were losing time, like not making new memories, probably not. But if you were forgetting things like your husband's or wife's name? Then probably. And you might try to cover it up.”

He looked at me suspiciously.

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