The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (15 page)

Glancing down again at poor John, akimbo on the ground, I suspected his trouble was whiskey and not women. Circus folk had it so much harder than we museum performers, and the poor man deserved to sleep off his misery in some comfort. Turning away from the plaques, I lifted his head and placed his hat underneath as a cushion. “Sleep in peace, old man,” I said, and pushed through the door of McNealy’s.

The familiar wave of heat and chatter inside the pub warmed my heart. I’d forgotten how thrilling the place could be, full of tattoos and third arms, feathers and spangles and golden crowns. The tavern used to be an old farmhouse. It had wooden plank floors and hand-hewn rafters, and, judging from the streaks on the walls, Mac still had its clapboard whitewashed with buttermilk and lime like most of the houses in the old days. But the family that lived here now was made up of show folk: handlers, bosses, specialty acts, and freaks. Here we were all welcomed. Despite the tang of stale beer and urine, and the fact that I had to brave the outside world to get here, I realized that I’d missed the place.

I stepped farther into the big open room. As always, the tavern was packed with performers: fire eaters, leapers, tumblers, slack-wire artists, contortionists, vaulters, trapeze swingers, pantomimists, even a well-known globe ascensionist (though why anyone would spend a lifetime rolling a globe up a wire and down again was beyond me). A dozen or so equestrians jigged in bowlegged abandonment to fiddle music coming from the rickety stage. In the far corner, a table of clowns wrestled over who was going to pay the bill.

When I removed my jacket, every agent in the room turned their eyes to look at my bony arms and chest. As Prodigies employed by the great Barnum, Alley and I were given a lot of respect at McNealy’s, even though all performers had worth here. But my thinness was legendary, and it felt good to be admired by my own people.

“Alley!” McNealy lifted his arm above the crowd and motioned for us to join him. He stood six feet tall, his shaved skull covered in tattoos
of vultures and flying peregrines. Although he wasn’t a Prodigy in any way, Mac was a man who knew what it was like to be an outsider.

Alley pushed me ahead of him. I maneuvered through the crowd to a table laden with cards, lit cigars, and tankards of dark brew. Because of the spittoons on the floor, the sitters’ knees knocked together beneath the tabletop in a twisted little bunch.

“Is that the great Bartholomew Fortuno with you? How long has it been, my man?” Mac scraped back a chair and beckoned me to sit. “The cards are falling well tonight. Glad you could come.”

I saved the open seat for Alley—gone to answer a call of nature—and drew up an extra chair, tipping my hat in respect to Eli Bowen, who sat across the table. An Ohio boy with two feet of distinctly different sizes sprouting from his hip joints, Eli was one of the few True Prodigies in the business. He was famous for tumbling tricks and pole acrobatics, though what really made him a legend was his gorgeous sixteen-year-old wife.

The other person at the table was a tall swarthy man who was busy fondling the woman who sat on his lap. The woman looked a bit familiar, but for the life of me I could not place her.

“You remember Willie, don’t you?” Mac asked. “Not the best poker player, maybe, but he sure keeps Niblo’s hopping.”

William Wheatley. An ex-actor, now manager of the prestigious Niblo’s Garden. A bit of a nasty temperament, or so went the rumors, but exceedingly well placed in the theater. “A pleasure to see you, sir.” I nodded, wondering what he was doing in our bar. Maybe expanding his repertoire?

“I’ve had the worst luck known to man,” Willie said, poking at his cards while slipping a look at my arms and torso. “Not a decent hand all night.”

Mac nodded to the woman still perched on Willie’s lap. “And that there is his companion, Madame Zouve, a new face in town.”

The woman smiled at me. “Evening, Mr. Fortuno.”

She knew me. How could that be? I squinted my eyes. Maybe she was with one of Niblo’s theater troupes that occasionally joined the
Museum. Or an acrobat or dancer. But she didn’t look like any of those things. Her frizzy hair stood out wildly against a heart-shaped face punctuated with kohl-edged eyes and darkly rouged lips. It wasn’t until she held up one arm as if carrying a tray that I recognized her.

“Bridgett?” Sure enough, it was Cook’s helper, the mousy little Irish girl, all done up and wiggling about on the lap of some impresario in the middle of McNealy’s. “What in the world do you think you’re doing, girl? Cook will have a fit.”

“I ’shure you,” Bridgett said, nose in the air, “I don’t know no Cook anymore. You have to call me Madame Zouve now. That’s what Mr. Barnum says.”

“What has that old coot gotten up to?” I asked, honestly surprised.

“He gave me a new position.” Bridgett smiled again, a twinkle in her brazen Irish eyes. “I’m going to play a beauty, he says. Starting this week, and only in the mornings. I’m supposed to be from Circada—Cacasan—somewhere like that. I can’t say the name yet.”

I remembered then an ad Barnum had put in
The Clipper
a few months ago. He’d offered a reward to any agent who could bring back “one of the beautiful white women from the mountains by the Black Sea.” The ad claimed that the sultans filled their harems with these girls from the slave markets of Constantinople. I examined Bridgett more carefully and noted her high forehead, deep-set brown eyes, and clear skin. Still, I couldn’t believe that Barnum had stooped to using our kitchen maid.

“Circassian,” I corrected her, tapping at the tabletop with my fingertips in order to avoid saying something rude.

“That’s it!” she clapped. “Cacassenan.”

“Surely you don’t want to be a Gaff, do you, Bridgett? Look at that woman at the table over there.” I pointed to a ragtaggle of a creature drinking shots of whiskey with a tattooed man. She slumped in the corner, her teeth filed down to razor-edged points and her hair shaved off to replicate the smooth head of a man-eating shark. “She used to be a perfectly respectable barmaid and now look at the poor thing. Works the Panny Palace, I think.”

“Where?”

“A disgusting dive on the Bowery. A place for indiscreet practices. Men wearing dresses. That sort of thing.” I gave her my best fatherly scowl. “That’s where you’ll end up if you don’t watch yourself.”

“Oh, no, sir. Mr. Barnum will take care of me just fine. And he don’t ignore me, like some folks.”

In truth, I suspected that Barnum had lied to the girl. Most likely, he dressed her up, telling her he would make her a star if she would be kind to him. He’d have his way with the girl and ship her off within a week.

Bridgett shrugged me off when Alley showed up at the table. As he slung into the empty seat between Mac and Willie, she stood and blushed wildly. When it was clear that Alley was not going to acknowledge her, Bridgett let Willie pull her back down on his lap, but she slapped away his hand, her eyes glued on Alley the entire time.

Alley stuck a cigar between his teeth, interested only in the game. He won the first hand, his mood high as he tossed in the greasy cards, and when he scooped up his winnings, Bridgett threw him a love-struck look.

“Look at that,” Willie complained. “Didn’t I tell you I was the unluckiest cad in this whole place?” But at the end of the fifth hand, Willie made a wild bet that Alley called, and when Willie tossed down his cards, calling out, “And there!” while sweeping in the huge pile of coins, Alley slumped into his chair.

“You said you didn’t have nothin’.” Alley lifted his arm in protest, and three women sitting behind him laughed nervously over the sheer bulk of his muscles.

“And you believed me, did you?” Willie gathered up his money, clearly debating whether to be afraid of the muscleman he’d just cheated. Once he was sure Alley wasn’t going to harm him, he grabbed Bridgett by the hand. “If you want a bit of wisdom to take with you, my friend, there’s a sucker born every minute. Try to make sure it ain’t you.”

“Well,” I said to Alley as Willie walked away, “you have to admire
the man’s turn of phrase. We should pass that line about suckers on to Barnum. He’d appreciate it if anyone would.” But Alley wasn’t listening to me. He stared at Willie’s back, his balled fists rapping steadily against his own thighs.

“If you like, we can set up a dart match in the back,” Mac said, doing his best to comfort Alley. “Or how about some of our good boar stew? I’ll get the girl to bring you a bowl.” Although Alley had not been drinking—he and Mac had made an agreement years ago that as long as Alley stayed sober he was welcome in the bar—Mac moved the whiskey bottle out of reach.

But Alley’s attention shifted again, this time to the front door. He stood stock-still and then hunkered down between Mac and me and whispered, “Find your own way home, Fortuno, I gotta go.” Then, staying low, he slipped into the crowd.

I had to climb on top of my chair to see what had grabbed his attention.

There, at the front door, four policemen stood openmouthed, stunned for the moment by the sights and sounds before them. It took them a good minute to regain their senses, straighten their ragged uniforms, and lift their clubs, before they made their way cautiously into the room. By that time, Alley was nowhere to be seen.

M
Y NEW TIGHTS HAD ARRIVED
! M
Y
heart leaped at their vibrant red color and fine stitching, and they were almost enough to mitigate a stab of irritation at the changes in the schedule posted in the Green Room.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. There it was in black and white: Bridgett slated to perform. Who would have believed such a thing could happen? She was a total Gaff, yet Barnum was going to have her stand next to Matina as if she were one of us.

And then there was Emma. Clearly she was on the schedule to replace Zippy, who’d been sent on the road. I could accept Barnum’s political ambiguity—his support of Negro suffrage was fine and dandy, so long as no one mentioned that he displayed our one Negro performer as the missing link—but he had given Emma
my
slot, for God’s sake, and scheduled
me
to go first! No one wants to be the lead-in act. I’d have complained immediately had it not occurred to me that changing my show times aligned me with Iell’s schedule, giving me more of a chance to find her alone. Clever Barnum. Clever me. And maybe the altered time would allow me easier access to her show, lessening the need for Alley’s help.

But opening the show set me completely off my stride. My new tights stunk of elderberry, and—though they fit like a glove—the material made me itch. Twice I missed a cue, and Thaddeus was so displeased that at one point he stopped his chatter. We might have come to words again, had I not seen Alley in the wings. Dark purple bruises covered the entire left side of his face, a cut festered across his lower lip, and one of his burly arms dangled in a sling.

“My God, what happened to you?” I demanded the second I got offstage. Standing next to him in the wings, I wiped down my neck with a towel and tried to avoid staring directly at his wounds, not that he’d done much to hide them. “Did the cops do that? What do they want with you?”

Alley shrugged. “Bar brawl is all,” he muttered. “The other guy, that’s who’s really hurting.”

Watching him slump by me, eyes darting everywhere but toward my inquiring gaze, I suspected he was lying. He tugged up the waist of his blue-and-gold short pants with his usual laziness and gave me an all-is-well nod that sent his tawdry crown off kilter. But his forearms, oiled and shiny, reeked of camphor ointment, and when I put a consoling hand on his shoulder he flinched.

“One of our finest specimens, ladies and gents. Once a Hungarian prince. Royalty from a wild country. With the strength of Atlas, the temperament of a wild tiger—”

“Don’t go out there,” I said. “I’ll take you to Nurse.” But Alley yanked the sling off, tossed it to the floor, and headed center stage.

I watched the act through the part where Alley picked up a boulder the size of a full-grown man and slammed his head into it once, twice, thrice, until it broke into a million pieces. As the audience squealed and broken rocks scattered across the stage, I hustled away to find Matina. We’d need to keep a closer eye on Alley.