The Pilo Family Circus (8 page)

Jamie couldn’t answer. Shalice nodded, and said, ‘The magic is here for a reason. It is not safe loose in the world. Neither are we. And the clowns, in their wisdom, have seen
something in you they can use, that the show can use. You are fortunate.’

She traced a finger over the glass orb and said quietly, ‘Look.’

The surface flickered white. Jamie stared at the glow and could soon discern shapes. Suddenly there he was in the glass, like a character on a silent TV show. Before him was a familiar scene; he was in his bedroom getting ready for work at the Wentworth Club, in the midst of the usual frantic search for his shoes and socks. He was flailing his arms around, swearing and crying to the heavens. Shalice said, ‘This is you, one month ago. Time shows me some of her secrets, you see. Just here and there, like wind blowing back a curtain from a window. Sometimes, when I ask her nicely, she shows me what I need to see. Now, if she will oblige, we will see what would have become of you, Jamie, had we not brought you to us.’

Jamie’s mouth hung open, his eyes locked on the glass ball, mesmerised by the fortune-teller’s silky voice. He was just aware enough to see himself going through the motions of everyday life, though it seemed already like years before. And as he watched himself running around, desperate to get to work on time, it struck him that he looked ridiculous; what a strange
purpose
to have in life, what a strange thing to take so seriously.

Shalice whispered something he didn’t catch, and the picture changed. At first he had to do a double-take, for he thought he was staring right at his father. The resemblance was almost exact, down to the stress lines, the thinning hair, the stubble. But no, it was Jamie, perhaps in his late forties, sitting in an office. There was a beer gut ballooning beneath his shirt and tie, sagging over his belt, absurd on his slender frame.

‘Look,’ said Shalice. ‘This is just twelve years away. You got a dead-end government job. You swore off alcohol in your twenties, but now you are as alcoholic as they come. There are times when you sneak into the bathroom for a swig of bourbon. Your co-workers laugh about it often. See that picture?’ She pointed to a framed photograph on his desk that he couldn’t quite make out. ‘You never married, but you have a son. He was born retarded, so your child support is not cheap. It is where most of your salary goes. You are earning enough for a nice place, but every night you go home to a roach-infested apartment, alone. The other men in the office talk of their vacations and their entertainment systems, but you? You have nothing. Despite twelve years of hard labour, Jamie. It has taken its toll on you. See that twitch below your left eye? That is permanent.’

Jamie watched the hollow-eyed scarecrow with dizzy horror. Throughout life his father had seemed an almost melancholy figure, overworked and trapped in a loveless marriage, but the wreck before him now surpassed anything his father had been. ‘The mother of your child was your first girlfriend,’ the fortune-teller went on. ‘You were together two years. Protestant girl, very pretty. She wanted to be married but you didn’t. She stopped taking birth control pills in secret, knowing you would do the honourable thing. You were wrapped around her finger. But it fell apart after your son was born that way. She blamed
you
. Keep watching.’

At his desk, the wreck Jamie had become was staring at a huge pile of folders and sheets. A clerk of some kind waddled over and dumped another stack beside the first. Older Jamie buried his face in his hands.

‘It never ends,’ Shalice said. ‘Decades of this, Jamie. No reward. No way out. Inside you grows a tumour of cynicism
and bitterness. Look at yourself. This is what fifteen years of study and twelve years of work have brought you.’

Older Jamie snapped out of his morbid trance with a start to answer the phone on his desk. His resemblance to his father in that moment was so vivid Jamie had to look away, and his mind went back to the morning his father took the phone call telling them Jamie’s uncle had hung himself. His father’s body had slumped like a sack of loose bones, and he’d burst into tears. It was the first time Jamie had seen the man cry, and for some reason the sight had struck an obscure nerve of pleasure inside him which he’d never felt since. Nor did he want to.

‘This phone call will be important,’ Shalice said, drawing him back from the reverie he had been slipping into. Her eyes flickered constantly from Jamie to the ball, back and forth in a flash. ‘This call is from the mother of your child. She’s threatening to take you to court for more money. Your son needs minders, medication, equipment, special ed. Her pill collection is not cheap, either.’

Jamie’s throat was dry and he swallowed what felt like a mouthful of lint. Opposite him Shalice was nodding. ‘You discovered six months before this phone call that you were entrapped. Your child’s mother and sister had a nasty falling out, and her sister told you out of spite. So now, every time you think of the mother of your child, you just want to kill someone. There is no respite from your anger. You want to wrap your hands around somebody’s neck and squeeze. That is what goes through your head, nowadays.’

Jamie shut his eyes. His voice came out as little more than a croak: ‘What’s so special about this phone call?’

‘This is the call that drives you over the edge,’ the fortune- teller replied. ‘Watch.’

In the crystal ball, older Jamie hung up the phone, gently, calmly, then sat back in his chair. He stared into the distance as another clerk came to dump more folders on his desk. Older Jamie didn’t seem to notice; he just stared into space, then calmly, gently, picked up his briefcase and strolled out of the office, to the lift, through the lobby, out the building’s front door.

‘Where’s he going?’ said Jamie. ‘Why are you showing me this?’

The look in her eyes answered him, and a cold chill raced up his spine. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘It is not a particularly unusual thing to happen. Most murders run to this script. Love gone wrong. A shame, but not unusual.’

‘I don’t want to see the rest,’ said Jamie, for he felt nauseous. ‘Turn it off. Please.’

‘A little more,’ she said softly. ‘You need to see it all, Jamie. I show you this for a reason.’

In the glowing ball, Jamie was now walking up a flight of steps. The building looked like an inner city apartment block, a little rundown and in need of new paint. There was a slump in his shoulders, like a great weight hung from his neck, and a slow dreamlike rhythm to his footsteps. The door opened and a woman stood in the doorway, a thirty- something brunette with a bathrobe tied at the waist and sedated eyes. The look on her face said she’d been neither expecting nor hoping for a visit from older Jamie. The pair of them exchanged words for a minute, then she tossed her hands up in exasperation, stepping aside to let him in.

Once inside she went to the kitchen and put on the kettle. Older Jamie watched her with a blank look on his face. With that same blank look he walked to the kitchen and stood directly behind her. She seemed not to have heard him as she
reached to take two coffee cups from a shelf. Older Jamie raised his hands and placed them, calmly, gently, around her neck.

She tensed and wheeled about, tried to shove him away, shouted something, and that seemed to break older Jamie out of his blankness. He grabbed her fiercely and threw her to the floor. She fell hard. Her robe came undone and parted, showing legs as white as wax kicking at the linoleum floor as she tried to back away. He took a knife from the rack, his face strangely expressionless as he fell on top of her and, without pausing, rammed it into her guts, again and again and again and again …

Blood poured, coating his hands and wrists like another skin. Finally she stopped struggling and curled into foetal position, face gripped in a spasm of pain as her killer stepped away to let her die.

Jamie watched all this and felt sickness rise in the back of his throat. He swallowed and kept it down for a moment, then stumbled out of the hut, bent over and threw up in the grass. Down on all fours, panting and sweating, he tried to swab his mind of what he’d just seen, to think of absolutely nothing.

Across the path, two dwarfs eyed him with suspicion. One muttered something to the other behind the back of its hand.

‘Come back,’ Shalice called from inside the hut. ‘It’s almost finished.’

Legs rubbery, he somehow made it back inside and sat on the crate. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘No more. Please.’

‘Just a little,’ she whispered. ‘The worst is over.’

It took effort to focus again on the glass ball, but he did it. He watched his older self in the bathroom, before the
mirror, staring at his reflection. Older Jamie seemed to have washed the blood from his hands, and there were little specks of it over the mirror and sink. He held his hands together and said what looked like a prayer. His face still had that blank look he’d worn when stabbing the mother of his child to death. He retained that blank look as he walked through the apartment, passing the body on the floor without giving it a glance. He opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the balcony. Impassively, without hesitation, he stepped over the rail and dropped from sight.

The pictures in the ball faded and its light went out. Shalice replaced the cloth cover. ‘I know that was hard for you to watch,’ she said sympathetically, ‘but you had to see it. That is what you were spared by coming here. That is what awaits you, out there.’

‘I can avoid —’

‘No. You cannot. You would forget about us. We would arrange it. The clowns would knock you out, the appropriate rituals would be performed, you would be taken back to your room in the dead of night, left there, and you would wake thinking you’d had a very strange dream, though the details would escape you. Your present and this future would at some point coalesce. And you would be finished.’

Jamie stood. ‘Okay … I need to go. I need to … think about this. Okay?’

‘Yes, Jamie.’ She reached for his hand and held it. Her fingers were cool and smooth. ‘It is better this way,’ she said, looking him in the eyes. ‘Much better.’

He swallowed, nodded, and staggered from the hut. Shalice watched him go, then gave the ball a quick rub with its cloth cover.

Gonko came in a moment later. She didn’t look up at him. ‘Did he buy it?’ Gonko murmured.

‘Of course,’ the fortune-teller replied. ‘Some of us are masters of our craft. Now get out of my hut.’

JAMIE found his way back to the clowns’ tent and sat outside on a log. From Sideshow Alley came the final distant sounds of carnies packing up for the night. Overhead the sky spread out like a vast black lake, with no sign of the stars or moon.

He was trying, without luck, to put the day into perspective. The show as he’d seen it came back in blurred, disconnected snapshots. The fortune-teller’s story had shaken him badly, but he’d already seen so many things that should not be real, there was no reason not to believe what he’d seen. And it stung to think it could end that way; he’d never had grand ambitions, would have settled for the standard package: job, house, wife, 2.3 kids. Enough holiday time to see some of the world, the odd game of golf. It wasn’t too much to ask, and he’d been willing to work for it.

So, this was a second chance? Maybe, but she had not really answered any of his original questions. Who, what, why, where, how — those pesky little details.

He turned at the sound of footsteps and saw Gonko squinting down at him. ‘Get some rest,’ said Gonko. ‘Not a good idea to be out alone after dark. Not here.’

‘Why not?’ said Jamie despondently.

Gonko peered around into the gloom. ‘Stay and find out if you want to. Them dwarfs ain’t too fond of anyone who ain’t a dwarf. Or anyone who is. And they ain’t the only thing that comes out at night. Come on. Up. Inside.’

Jamie sighed. He stood and followed Gonko into the tent. Shadows cast by kerosene lanterns flickered on the walls; the body bag still lay in the corner. Jamie and Gonko sat down at the card table, where Doopy and Rufshod were in the middle of a round of poker. Goshy and the apprentice were nowhere to be seen. ‘Deal JJ in next round,’ said Gonko, dropping a handful of odd copper coins in front of him. The clowns glanced at Jamie for a moment but took no further notice of him, and he was glad. He sat back quietly to wallow in his confusion.

‘What’s with your brother?’ Gonko said to Doopy, who flicked cards around the table. ‘Really, no bullshit now. I want to know why we can’t get through a single act these days. Kurt’ll put us on notice if we don’t get through a show sooner or later.’

Doopy glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t overheard. ‘Well, Goshy … He’s got a problem. With his girlfriend. With his
girlfriend
, Gonko.’

‘I’m listening,’ said Gonko.

‘He …’ Doopy glanced over his shoulder again. ‘He pooped the question, Gonko.’

‘Popped?’

‘Yeah, that’s what he done. Goshy done went and pooped the question.’

‘Right. And?’

‘And he’s blue, ’cause she didn’t give him no answer. She didn’t say nothin’, Gonko! Nothin’ at all. She gone all quiet. She just sat there, Gonko, you shoulda seen it.’

Gonko took his cards. ‘Doops,’ he said, ‘she’s a fucking plant. How’s she supposed to answer?’

Jamie sat forward. ‘She’s a what?’

‘She’s a fern,’ said Gonko. ‘Goshy’s in love with a fern. He’s probably in his room with it right now, whispering sweet nothings. God knows.’

Jamie remembered the first night he’d seen the clowns, the sickening thud Goshy made as he slammed headfirst into the pavement outside the … Yes, the gardening supply store. He gave a startled laugh in spite of himself. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, but …’ Gonko made a hush-hush gesture. ‘That’s the problem, huh?’ he said to Doopy. ‘He’s ruining our act because the goddamn fern didn’t say yes?’

‘Yeah, Gonko!’ Doopy cried. ‘I’m mad at her, y’know. She coulda oughta said somethin’. She shoulda oughta said
yes
, is what she shoulda said.’

‘Well,’ said Gonko, leaning back in his chair, ‘we’ll have to get him an answer, somehow.’

‘The MM,’ Rufshod said, tossing down two cards and picking up two from the deck. ‘We could make him, you know, change the plant. So it can talk.’

‘No,’ said Gonko, slamming his fist on the tabletop. ‘That creepy shit ain’t coming in here.’ He turned to Jamie. ‘You see the freak show today?’

Jamie nodded.

‘The MM is the matter manipulator,’ said Gonko. ‘Flesh sculptor. Old forgotten art form practised by certain sick fucks in the Middle Ages, only back then they usually used dead bodies. The MM made the freaks what they are. Nasty shit. Small guy, shifty eyes, wears a hat. Lives in the funhouse, which between you and me ain’t no fun house, and hardly ever comes out, except when someone’s been actin’ up and
the boss wants to scare ’em straight. Got a nasty dog he takes with him everywhere to protect him. Few gypsies have lost relatives, you see, though if they attacked him they’d be next in his studio. Don’t go near him, I don’t care how righteously mad you might be. Been known to grab stray carnies for practice.’

‘I’ll kill that dog of his,’ Rufshod said. ‘Look at the bite he gave me.’ He lifted his calf onto the table and pulled back his pants. A long thick purple scar ran from ankle to knee.

‘That’s a burn mark,’ said Gonko. ‘You did that, not the dog.’

‘I had to, you know, burn the bite. So it wouldn’t get infected.’

‘That looks ouch, Ruf,’ said Doopy. ‘It looks
ouch
! Hey, Ruf, remember when I told you it looks ouch? Remember when —’

‘Ruf doesn’t mind a little pain,’ Gonko said to Jamie. ‘Do you Ruf?’

Rufshod’s eyes gleamed. ‘I don’t
mind
it,’ he agreed. ‘Here.’ He held his hand flat on the table and produced a knife from somewhere. He handed it to Jamie. ‘Cut me,’ he said.

Jamie stared at the knife. ‘I don’t think …’

‘Come on,’ said Rufshod. ‘Cut me. Do it.’

‘Why don’t you cut yourself?’ said Jamie.

‘Not the same if I do it. Stab me. Cut me.
Do
something.’

‘One thing you’re going to have to become accustomed to,’ said Gonko, pulling a steel hatchet from one of his seemingly bottomless pockets, ‘is a little violence, here and there. It’s good for you. Bracing, like cold showers.’ He span the hatchet on his hand as he had the knife, earlier. ‘You’ll get used to a little violence,’ he said. ‘Or, like Rufshod, you’ll get a little
too
used to it. But different strokes, right, Ruf?’

In one smooth motion Gonko held the hatchet up, closed his fingers around the handle and smashed the blunt end down on Rufshod’s knobbly battle-scarred hand. There was a loud fleshy sound of bones being crunched to powder. Rufshod screamed, clutched his wrist, and fell from his seat, the bells on his hat tinkling. He rolled around under the table, kicking it as he wailed.

‘There, genuine slapstick,’ said Gonko, putting the hatchet away. ‘That’ll keep him happy for weeks. STOP BUMPING THE FUCKING TABLE! Now, where was I? The MM. Stay away from him. He can
change
people. Could take your arm and add something to it. Feathers, say. Could give you wings if he wanted to. You seen Fishboy?’

Jamie nodded.

‘Fishboy looks like that thanks to the MM,’ said Gonko. ‘Disgusting, ain’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ Jamie said. ‘He seemed … friendly, though.’

‘Fishboy’s a good feller. Nicest sonofabitch in the whole show.’

Jamie sat upright in his seat and sucked in a sharp breath. Gonko eyed him. ‘What’s up?’ he said.

‘Steve, ’said Jamie. ‘I left him there, at the freak show … Oh no …’

He got up and ran out of the tent, down the battered path, hoping he was going the right way. Up ahead the funhouse was an orange glow in the darkness — now he remembered, the freak show was nearby. He sprinted off, ignoring the dwarfs crowding in the alleys and the eyes peering from parting curtains.

Behind him, Gonko followed at a brisk walk, hands in his pockets. As Jamie paused to catch his breath, Gonko tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Easy feller,’ he said.

‘I’ve got to find my roommate,’ Jamie said. ‘He was at the freak show.’

‘Yeah, all right,’ said Gonko. ‘We’ll take a look, but we’ll be quick about it. Follow.’ Gonko led him off the main path and threaded his way between shanties and some closed-down stalls. They stopped a few metres from the freak show tent and Gonko held a finger to his lips. ‘
Shhh
.’

Through the tent’s door they could see nothing but the dim yellow light of incubators. The sound of pained moaning came from within — Jamie couldn’t tell from this distance whether or not the voice was Steve’s. A shadowy figure passed through the doorway, heading towards the funhouse. Walking ahead of him was a large black dog on a leash. The dog turned its head towards Jamie and Gonko and growled, but its owner didn’t look their way.

‘That’s him,’ Gonko whispered. ‘Don’t get no closer to him than this.’ Soon the matter manipulator disappeared from view. Gonko said, ‘If
he’s
been in the neighbourhood, your friend probably ain’t having a good day. I recall the boss saying we needed more freaks. Hope you weren’t too attached to your chum. Hold onto your guts. Here we go.’

The moaning got louder as they neared the door. The freak show exhibits seemed to be asleep. A severed head in a fish bowl stared straight ahead without blinking.

Then Jamie spotted him — Steve was alive and seemingly unharmed. The moaning came from Yeti, who lay on his back, his giant furry body flecked with blood that was rushing from his gums. Steve was wiping his fur with a wet rag which he squeezed out into a plastic bucket. Fishboy crouched beside him, stroking Yeti’s head like a nurse.

‘Good Yeti,’said Fishboy in his helium-voice, ‘
good
Yeti. The pains will fade; I’ll prepare some powder for you.’ Fishboy
turned to Steve. ‘He’ll recover fast, always does. Some days he can get away without eating the glass, but today Mr Pilo was watching. Oh, and Tallow’s cage will need to be mopped every two hours on show days when we have the heat on. I imagine they’ll have you helping carnies in Sideshow Alley, but try to do that work in the morning — I’ll need you here in the afternoons …’ Fishboy trailed off and glanced through the doors to where Jamie and Gonko waited, watching.

Gonko pulled at Jamie’s sleeve. He followed the clown leader away. ‘
That
feller lucked out,’ said Gonko with a chuckle. ‘So far, at least. Being errand boy for carnies he’ll never pack any clout around here. But by hell it could’ve been worse.’

Jamie swallowed and nodded his head, surprised at the relief he felt that Steve, of all people, was okay.

Back at their tent, Gonko announced that Rufshod was to quit his bitching and show Jamie around his new home. The clowns’ tent was bigger than it appeared from the outside; past the parlour, through a draped canvas doorway, a hall skirted around in a wide semicircle, branching off into several rooms. Jamie had been allocated the apprentice’s room, a cramped space not much bigger than a closet. There was a decaying wooden cupboard, and what looked like a medic’s stretcher as his new bed. All floor space was taken up by boxes and crates of clown uniforms and broken practical joke parts. He saw a palm-buzzer, a squirting flower, a rotating bow-tie, and some less innocent — knives, spent cartridges, dildos, syringes. There were dozens of broken plastic noses and a couple of plaster casts with dried blood hardened into rust-coloured shells.

The apprentice himself lay asleep on the medic’s stretcher. He’d smoothed a thick layer of greasy white face paint over the fractured mess of his face.

At the sight of him, Rufshod ran off and returned with Gonko, who squinted at the sleeping apprentice and bared his teeth. He crouched down next to the stretcher, took a box of matches from his pocket and struck one. ‘JJ,’ he said, ‘don’t think this is how we treat all new recruits.’ He set the match to the apprentice’s pants. A lick of flame crawled over the flower-printed fabric, sending up thin ribbons of black smoke. Gonko stood in the doorway and watched with a smile. The apprentice stirred and rolled around as the fire spread to his shirt, then his eyes flickered and shot open. He let out a wheezing strangulated croak before bolting up and out into the night. Gonko stuck out a boot and tripped him as he passed. The apprentice got to his feet and staggered away, the fire blazing across his shoulders. His screams soon faded in the distance.

‘All yours, JJ,’ said Gonko, wiping his hands, and he stalked off with Rufshod following.

Jamie lay down on the stretcher, glad to be left alone to speculate on how much trouble he was in. If the fortune- teller’s words were true —
You are not strictly
in
the world anymore
— escaping might not be a matter of jumping the fence and running.

It did occur to him that getting on Gonko’s bad side was always an option if he wanted a
real
ticket out of the circus.

Next morning the hammering of tent pegs and the distant babble of coarse voices woke him, and Jamie sat up, surprised
to find he’d slept. The stretcher was surprisingly comfortable, and his dreams had been vivid and hallucinogenic.

He rubbed his eyes and gave a startled cry — someone was in the room with him.

‘Shh,’ the stranger said. ‘Keep it down.’ It was an old clown, one Jamie hadn’t seen before, his face impressively aged with stress lines and crow’s-feet and sagging bags under the eyes. His body had clearly once been of bullish strength, and was still quite solid beneath his clown uniform of bow-tie, striped shirt, oversized shoes and pants. Thin strings of white hair hung from his head; he wore no face paint. His wet red eyes regarded Jamie sadly. ‘So, they got another one,’ he said, sighing. ‘Another one joins the show.’

Jamie glanced around for a weapon; his eyes fell on a rusty knife within arm’s reach in the mess. ‘Who are you?’ he said, edging away from the stranger and making the stretcher creak.

‘Name’s Winston,’ said the clown in a slow mournful voice. ‘And you must be JJ. JJ the clown.’

‘Jamie, actually. And yes, I guess I am.’

‘Didn’t mean to startle you,’said Winston, fiddling with the bowler hat in his hands, ‘but I didn’t want to wake you either. You looked pretty peaceful just now … Suppose I figured you’d need what peace you can find from here on.’ Winston scratched his neck absently, setting in motion many flaps of wrinkled skin. ‘Don’t recall when they got me,’ he said, sighing. ‘Was a while back. Was minding my own damn business is all I know for sure.’