Girl on a Wire (13 page)

sixteen

Leaving aside my experiment with hitchhiking to force my father’s hand in joining the Cirque, I’d never really run away or snuck out or done anything remotely like it. That night, I lay beneath the covers dressed in my jeans and slippers, and waited for any hint of noise to die down. The blanket was stifling, since I’d cracked the window before I got in bed. June had brought full-blown summer weather with it.

There was a fan in my room, and it blew the curtain as I watched. I wanted to turn it off, but would be grateful for the noise later. It made hearing movements in the main cabin difficult, but it would cover whatever noise I made too.

I waited longer than I probably needed to, then stole out of bed. I’d already decided the door was too risky. Someone in my family might be up. The window slid easily the rest of the way open, and I was grateful for its size, if not for the five-foot drop I was about to make. Standing on my bed, I eased one foot out and leapt, landing in a crouch.

No lights came on. No flurry of sound. And there didn’t seem to be any witnesses.

Excellent.

Remy was in the big top waiting for me—or he wasn’t, actually. He was already rehearsing. There were a few lights on the trapeze, the net stretched safely below. He was jackknifing through the air when I entered, the only thing in motion in the deserted tent.

I was a little disappointed he wasn’t waiting. Which was stupid. This was mainly his rehearsal time, and there’d been every possibility I wouldn’t show.

I could see right away he was in better form after that night’s performance, and he’d been better than at the morning’s practice then. But he still hadn’t come close to making it.

He went faster and higher, flung himself into the air, and began turning, turning, turning,
turning
—

The rotation was far too fast this time. His hands would have been way too high for Novio to catch. He was overcorrecting.

Remy landed in the net and lay back in it, reclining with his hands under his head like someone lazing in a hammock. I made my way over.

“Well?” he asked, when I got close enough for him to see me.

“You’re speeding up too much now.” My knees touched the edge of the net, and he looked up at me. My heart was pounding in my ears. Leftover adrenaline from sneaking out collided with all-new adrenaline from being alone with him.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “But why?”

He scooted forward and then he was on his feet beside me.

“Trying too hard,” I said. “Desperation setting in?”

He didn’t agree or disagree, just said, “You mind if I go once more before we plot?” I nodded and he jogged over to the ladder. He paused, gestured at it. “Do you want me to show you how to operate it? So I don’t have to climb every time?”

“I’m fine here. I like watching you climb.” Okay, I didn’t mean it like that, but he laughed.

I took a seat in the dust of the ring a few feet away from the swaying net, hugging my knees. It’s not like there was anything else
to
watch than his climb. When he grabbed the bar, I called up to him. “Pretend I’m not here.”

“What if I’d do better because you are here?”

I was glad he was too far away to see me blush. He
was
much better this time, the revolutions tight. But there was no way Novio and he would have connected. He was still that same half beat off he’d been when I’d seen him do the quad the very first time.

He bounced out of the net to his feet. “Better,” he said.

“But still not there.”

That might sound harsh, but coddling performers who know something isn’t working will only make them angry. Empty flattery never pushed anybody into mastering anything.

“Still not there,” he repeated. He eased down beside me, and my adrenaline surged again. He straightened his legs, and one of them touched mine. “You didn’t say much about how your chat with Nan went.”

“There’s something you probably should know.” I felt silly telling him. The cards said what Nan made them say, didn’t they? But what they’d said most recently continued to haunt me at inopportune moments. “Nan gave me a reading that wasn’t so great. More like, it was a terrible warning. And when I went up tonight, I couldn’t stop wondering, Will the wire collapse? When will this danger I’ve been warned about finally knock me flat? For the first time, I’m scared of falling. I can close my eyes and see it happen. It feels real.”

He put a hand on my upper arm, made sure I was looking at him. “Jules, you’re not going to fall. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We’re going to figure this out. Because we have to, especially if it’s bothering you this way. Now, about getting into Thurston’s. We’re doing it tomorrow.”

“Together?”

“Yes and no. I asked if I could stop by in the morning and check out his vintage poster collection and talk to him about how the quad practice is going. We set it for ten forty-five. You’ll interrupt us and provide a distraction—”

“Yes,” I said, catching on. “I’ll say I need to talk to him privately, and be all snobby when I see you in there and insist it has to be outside. I can keep him there while you read the letter. Except I want to read the letter. Maybe we should switch?”

“No,” he said. “If he catches me, it’s a letter from my grandfather. I don’t want to risk Thurston finding out that you’re part of it.”

Sound reasoning. “Okay. You can tell me what it says tomorrow night.”

And all day long I could look forward to us being alone together in the big top again. Even if he hadn’t made any move to kiss me again.

“Mind meld,” he said, and nudged his leg against mine. “That was my plan.”

It got my hopes up, but he just brushed my shoulder as he got up to make another attempt.

I was dying to get there and play my part the next morning, but I waited until ten fifty before I marched through the grass to Thurston’s trailer. At first, I’d obsessed over what I should claim I wanted to see him about. But in the end, coming up with a few items of business to take care of hadn’t been hard.

Stopping at the door, I reached out and knocked three times. It didn’t swing open right away, but just when I was about to knock again, it flew open. I barreled right past a surprised Thurston, inviting myself in. “Hey, boss,” I said, breezily, “I wanted to talk to you about a couple of things.”

At the sight of Remy, I drew up short like I’d discovered a vampire on the sofa. I considered making the sign of the cross, but decided that would be going too far.

“I already have some company at the moment,” Thurston said. “But I’d be happy to discuss whatever you like later. Give us half an hour?”

The leather portfolio was unzipped on the table in front of Remy, who, while Thurston was fixated on me, shot me a wink.

“Don’t mind me,” Remy said. “I hear the Maronis are temperamental, but I have the patience of a saint.”

I pulled a face at him. “That’s what’s required for anyone else to be around you.”

“Now, now,” Thurston said. “Peace. Do you mind if I talk to Jules for a moment?” he asked Remy, who nodded. Thurston then turned to me. “This will be quick?”

“As a shooting star,” I said.

“Fine,” he agreed.

I cleared my throat and spoke in a stage whisper. “But outside in private, please?”

Thurston led the way to the door with a put-upon sigh. I returned Remy’s earlier wink. We made nice partners in subterfuge.

Once we were safely on the lawn, buying Remy his chance, I came to my first point. “You shouldn’t have shown that poster to Nan the other day. She had a migraine afterward.”

Or she’d faked one to avoid me, but he didn’t need to know that.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. I would never wish any ill on her, you must know that. I’m a huge fan of your grandmother’s.”

By all appearances, he was sincere. “Have you heard the rumors about her?”

That much was common knowledge, and not risky to mention.

“I don’t put much stock in rumors. I require proof.” He saw I was on the brink of interrupting and rushed on. “And from what I have seen, your grandmother is a class act who was a victim of rumors at a time when they were rich currency.”

“She still is.” But I did feel slightly better about him.

“If that’s all?” he asked.

“One more thing,” I said. “I’ve been thinking we need to up the ante on my walks. We need one that will top Jacksonville.”

“I’m listening,” he said.

“We have the big Fourth of July weekend in Chicago. Why don’t you get your guys to send us some options and work your permit magic and the like?”

“I love this idea.” Thurston grinned at me, a happy billionaire. “It really is too bad your grandmother still gets the whispers she’s bad luck, because as far as I’m concerned, you Maronis are my lucky charm.”

The door of Thurston’s trailer swung open, and Remy appeared in it. “Pretty sure shooting stars are faster than this. I had a question for you about one of these, Thurston?”

Thurston apologetically left me standing there. Remy waited until he’d passed to go inside, then gave me a slight shake of his head and lifted his hands in frustration.

No dice on reading the letter, then. So much for the luck of Thurston’s lucky charm.

seventeen

Almost a week later, I still hadn’t managed to talk to Remy to confirm that we’d struck out. I was almost crazy with the need to see him when I dropped out of my bedroom window and crept across the grounds by the riverfront in Cincinnati. A whole city’s worth of dates—in Richmond—had passed since our try at the letter. June was flying by, and unfortunately my dad had taken to staying up late and drinking Chianti while I stared at the ceiling and willed him to go to bed. Finally the late nights must have caught up with him, because he headed to bed early and left the coast clear.

I picked my way through the damp grass, heading for the big top. Nan’s reading was still on my mind. It kept returning again and again, both in dreams and on the wire. The cards’ verdict was like the blade of Justice herself pressed against my neck. I felt it there, sharp and cold.

Not that everything was bleak. My outdoor wire walk here had been one of my favorites yet, between two ten-story buildings downtown, with streets in the distance curving up steep hills. Cars crawled along those streets while I walked. From the wire, I’d seen the crowd gathered to watch the parade. It was the biggest so far, and four shows had sold out in advance. After my performance, Thurston had glowed with the satisfaction of someone who had gambled—yet again—and was winning.

When I reached the big top, I double-checked to make sure no one was around, then ducked inside. Remy was just finishing a somersault.

He landed, and bounced out of the net. He started talking as soon as he saw me, before he was even on his feet. “I thought you’d decided it was too painful to watch me fail over and over,” he said, moving toward me. His tone was pitched so I wouldn’t think he was serious.

“Miss me?” I quipped.

“Maybe a little.”

I rolled my eyes, crooked my head toward the trapeze. “Are you getting any less sucky at that?”

A hand over his heart. “You wound me.”

But he was grinning.

I’d been strangely not nervous during this exchange, which made me 100 percent nervous. “You’re in an awfully good mood for someone I’m assuming did not find the smoking gun letter from your grandfather the other day?”

The grin vanished. “I didn’t. The slipcases in the back were empty, so he must have moved it. But I did find something else—and it was from the posters. I really did have a question for Thurston when I called him back in. I thought I recognized someone in one of them, and so I asked if he knew who she was. And I was right. It was Kat, way back when, but in an act without her dogs. She was helping her older sister with tigers. Apparently the sister was the next best thing to the great Mabel Stark, and Kat was her assistant before she retired to get married.”

People who ran tiger acts tended to end up mauled or dead. Marriage was a better fate. Maybe the tiger costumes on the dogs in Kat’s act were a nod to her sister. Kat certainly was old enough to be one of Nan’s contemporaries, with her thick wrinkles and silver hair, and a dog act was one where age didn’t matter much.

“But what does this have to do with Nan?”

“The date on the bottom of the poster. I checked. It was the same as the one from the summer in the sixties when our grandparents were in that act together.”

“Nice job, boy sleuth.” He smiled at that. “So, Kat might know something.”

This was an encouraging development. Kat had deigned to speak to me, which was more than most people around here had done. Though I doubted that meant I could count on her divulging all.

“I did mention to Dad about how I heard Nancy Maroni once did an act with Granddad. He grabbed my arm and towed me down the hall so no one else would hear. Even though we were the only people home. He said not to ever bring it up around Mom, no matter what. That it had all happened when she was a little girl.”

“What all happened?”

Remy raked a hand through his hair. “Dad didn’t know the details. He said it was the summer Nancy Maroni left, and that whatever went down upset my grandma—and by proxy, my mom too. I bet if we could see the dates on the newspaper articles on the murder board, they’d all be from that same summer.”

A chill ran up my spine, down my arms, out through my fingertips as I thought of the stories about the “accidents.” I joined my hands together, to prevent trembling. We’d discussed how the gossip about Nan might have its origins in those articles. Articles that described people not just getting hurt, but killed. It was a logical conclusion that the dates would match up, but it also put faces and facts to the rumors about Nan, which made me feel sick.

“I bet you’re right,” I said.

“Nothing else weird has shown up?” he asked.

“No roses wrapped in elephant hair or peacock feathers, or . . .” I had to think to picture what else had been in the photos on the board. The clowns standing around the battered old steamer trunk with gold studs, with one of them holding up that square scarf. “No clown trunk. Or scarf.”

He said, “I went ahead and told Kat I was going to stop by her place sometime soon, but she doesn’t know why.”

If I told Kat or anyone else I was dropping by, the reaction would probably be along the lines of asking what was wrong with me and why I thought I was invited. “She didn’t think that was weird?”

“We’ve been on a lot of the same shows over the years. She’s circus family, feels like a great-aunt.”

No way I was missing out this time. “I’m coming too.”

“But what if someone sees us together?”

He had a point. Not that I was willing to concede. “I can meet you there, as long as you can trust your not-really-a-distant-aunt to not tell anyone we paid her a visit. Together.”

“I trust her to if I ask.” He shrugged. “She likes me.”

I envied that sense of a big, extended community he could count on to have his back. But I had a closer-knit family than most. I batted my eyelashes innocently. “But why?”

He gave me some fake affront. “Most people like me, Jules. Don’t you?”

Embarrassed, I resisted telling him to shut up.

But he saved me. “I stop by and hang out with her dogs sometimes. We never got to have pets, and I always wanted a dog.”

“Me too.” Mom was scared of them. Ironically, since giant horses spooked her not in the slightest. I asked him, “What would you name your dog?”

He grinned, making fun of himself a little, in a way that made him even more attractive. I could tell he had an answer, but he hesitated.

“Don’t you dare say Jules,” I joked.

The grin widened. “Okay. Dragon.”

“You’d name your dog Dragon?” Before he could get offended, I rushed on. “I think that’d be a great name for a dog. Dragon.” What dog wouldn’t feel somehow more impressive wearing it? Not what I’d expected, but I liked it more because of that. I liked him more because of it.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Oh,” I said. “Asta.” And when he tilted his head in question, “It’s from
The Thin Man
movies. That was the name of Nick and Nora Charles’s dog.”

“Of course,” he said, and started backing up, heading toward the ladder to rehearse. “By the way, I missed you more than a little, First of May.”

I pretended consternation by whirling like I was about to stomp out, but it was just to hide the wattage of the smile on my face.

The next day after dinner break, Remy and I met outside Kat’s small trailer. The only outside adornment was the painted logo of the Cirque. But if it was visually quiet, the racket coming from inside was loud. Barks sounded in a thousand—or at least a couple dozen—registers, tiny delicate
arf
s to outright howls.

If someone spotted us, our cover story was “just friends,” and I couldn’t help crossing my fingers that it was a lie. Friends was fine, but I wanted more.

I wanted another kiss.

“The dogs like me too,” he said, by way of explanation for the howling.

“And they’re not shy about it.”

The door swung open before we could knock, and Kat was beaming until she spotted me at Remy’s side. “What’s this? Why is Jules Maroni with you?” she asked, forehead wrinkles deepening as she frowned. Despite it, she made way to let us in.

Kat’s dogs surged around Remy—big ones, small ones, the barks and yips not necessarily matching up with the size—and he bent to scratch at ears and endure a few face licks.

“We’re, um, checking into our grandparents’ pasts a little,” Remy said.

I interrupted. “Think of it as an ancient history project. We’d really like it if you didn’t mention that we came here. Together,” I added, in case she was unclear on my point.

Kat glanced at Remy, and he nodded. “Fine,” she said. “I don’t imagine anyone will ask. I won’t volunteer the information. What kind of ancient history are we talking?”

I bent to pet a blonde dog with a big fanning knife of a tail that beat back and forth in approval at the attention. She had long, soft ears. A mutt. Beside her was a brown dog with odd eyes that resembled a fox—he could have been named Dragon, though I imagined Remy would probably prefer one bigger and fiercer.

Kat was watching me, and apparently my petting the two dogs had earned me a pass. The blonde one followed me as I trailed Remy to the couch. We sat down and were immediately covered by several more dogs, but when Kat took an armchair for herself and said, “Off,” they all moved, settling down on the floor in complete obedience.

“Impressive,” I said.

She shrugged one shoulder. “What kind of dog act would mine be if they ran it instead of me?”

“Good point.”

“What history?” she asked.

Remy leaned forward. “You were on a show with my grandfather, Roman, one summer.”

“More than once. We were on the same circuit for a long time.” Kat measured each word.

“But you weren’t on that many with Nancy Maroni, were you?” I said. “There was a summer when she and Roman performed together.”

Kat sat back in her chair. I worried she might deny it, but she said, “I was fourteen that summer. A pest. That’s what my big sister called me. That’s what everyone called me.”

“She was a tiger trainer?” I asked to keep her talking. “Was she crazy?”

“As the day is long,” Kat said. “She quit not long after that. I couldn’t manage the tigers, so I did other things instead. But you don’t care about that. You want to know about Nancy.”

I nodded.

“I don’t know anything for sure. Just rumors. Although these rumors are about things that are true. Things that happened.”

“There were accidents, deaths,” Remy prompted. “We know that. What did people think caused them?”

“They thought Nancy caused them,” Kat said, sounding regretful that she had to say it in front of me. “Times were different then. Everyone was anxious. You think we’re competitive now? Back then people were clinging to what they had. It was worse. Nancy and Roman—their chemistry was unmistakable. I was only fourteen but everyone knew what was between them. His poor wife . . .”

I swallowed. Remy’s face revealed nothing of what he must have felt.

“But were any of these rumors specific?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, hesitating. But then, “The thing is, the people that were . . . affected . . . they weren’t any competition for Nancy. Roman had eyes only for her at the time. But he had been involved—Remy, are you sure you want to hear this?”

Remy gave a tight nod.

“Roman was an old-school ladies’ man. He loved his family, but he got around. There were rumors. There was a ring girl who died—who happened to be Roman’s girlfriend before Nancy. And there were others. Some sisters that people said had both been with him at different times. A clown he punched out one night, for dating one of his girls. People noticed, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume Nancy did too.”

“You’re saying my grandmother hurt people because she was jealous?”

Kat didn’t flinch. “I’m not saying anything. Only telling you what I remember. I also remember that Nancy Maroni’s mother gave tarot readings that were scarily accurate. I hear your grandmother can do the same.”

It was my turn to nod tightly. “I think I’m going to go.”

Remy reached out and caught my wrist in his hand, and the light, comforting pressure held me there when I would have left.

“There’s nothing else?” he asked.

Kat shook her head. “Roman was the kind of man who inspired obsession in people around him. Always the center of attention. He encouraged it. He loved admiration, especially from women, no matter how young or old. His wife was no exception, but it must have gotten old, being married to him.” She turned to me. “Even as a young girl, I could see how much your grandmother was in love with him. Her passion, it wasn’t healthy.”

“Do you think they had an affair?” I asked her, point-blank. No use in leaving with only vague ideas.

“Yes, I do,” she said, with regret. “And the truth is, it all stopped—the accidents, the rumors about some kind of mystical voodoo—all of it stopped after Nancy left. I’m sorry. But it did. That’s what happened.”

I wondered if their affair had been based on obsession or love. Because none of that sounded anything like love to me. I had to admit, though, it certainly sounded like something that would provoke a response—even if I still couldn’t believe in Nan’s magic, or that she’d use it to hurt others. Crazy in love or not.

I wrapped my arms around myself like I was cold. And I was grateful when Remy made our good-byes.

Right up until we were outside. I wanted to say something, to process what we’d just heard together, but the sound of nearby laughter reminded me that we couldn’t say a word to each other. Not out in the open where someone might see.