XV
The Ringmaster stood naked in front of his dresser mirror, pressing his stomach out as far as he could and spinning on his toes like a stuffed ballerina, in awe of his full figure. As he spun, he imagined a full crowd under The Big Top, all cheering and standing up on the rafters, clapping their hands and stomping their feet, begging for more. As their applause grew, The Ringmaster ran his hands along his body, curling thick, wet mounds of stomach hair in tight circles over his bulbous index finger. It wasn’t until he caught sight of the unsightly scar below his bellybutton that he was reminded of the girl and his mood turned, like spoiled milk.
“My love.”
On the steps to his carriage, Delilah stood with a folded document in one hand, and a serrate, boning knife in the other. She seemed quite calm, all things considering; quite the contrary to her disguised intentions.
“Oh Delilah, dear Delilah, dear Delilah, my dear,” said The Ringmaster, almost breaking into song. “Must we meet with trouble, always in this way, before something grand and spectacular is expected of us?”
He didn’t bother to turn and see her at the door. His full focus was on cramming each foot into the slim fitting tights, which were at best, designed and sewn to warm a skeleton, or shield a leafless branch from a strong, cold breeze. He teetered back and forth, struggling to hold his balance as each foot fought through the tight, stretchy, mauve fabric. He didn’t even notice the small, serrate knife, aimed below his lowest rib.
“Do you love me?” asked Delilah.
“What?” he asked, having expected her to be pestering about the finale.
“Do you love me?” she said again, this time pushing the knife so that its point was but a mere atom away from bridging with rolls of insulated fat. It was now that she wondered whether the knife would cut deep enough.
“Is that all this is about?”
The Ringmaster was tied to absent relief. She might as well have asked him what he thought of dinner last night, or whether the sky was still blue, even after the sun had gone down.
“Love? What a silly question. Do you not feel it? Do you not feel in love?” he asked.
“Do you love me?” she asked again, this time with her voice hoarse, as if the back of her throat were a dam, holding back a flood of anger, rage, hurt, disgust, and rejection.
The Ringmaster thrust his pelvis forward in front of the mirror, practicing one of his famed corporal manoeuvres that drove women insatiable and insane, a move of which there were many. He was dreaming again, and so disconnected from the present was he that he didn’t even notice that which each backwards thrust, he almost speared himself onto the serrate, boning knife, and doing for Delilah, what she had not the courage to do herself.
She wanted to dig the knife into his crotch and open him up like an overfed salmon. She wanted to carve the letters of every hurtful emotion she felt onto his back so that the next whore who rode him like a prized pony would be able to read what their future beheld.
She wanted to, but she couldn’t.
She was like an infant, desperate to form a sentence or a word, to ire their apparent discontent and dislike for this inappropriate time to be hungry, and yet still so very awake. And like the screaming infant, she was illiterate to the words that described how she felt, and she was deaf to how they sounded out. And though her blood boiled with rage and revenge, her hands were placid, like dainty statues, and she had no idea how to make them stab things.
“Do you love me?” she asked again.
“Of course I do,” said The Ringmaster. “What a silly question.”
“Like I love you?” she asked.
The Ringmaster’s face wrinkled, and looked sour.
“What an annoying and selfish proposition,” he said, “to assume that one love can be any more or less than another.”
“Why do you love me?” she asked.
“Because…” said The Ringmaster, becoming riled.
“Because what? Why do you love me? Give me one reason, just one.”
“What an absurd and redundant question, my dear,” he said. “One does not love out of reason. One loves out of heart, and with one’s entire soul. Love is not a shoe that one wears on specific occasions. It is not a norm, a fashion or a rule. Love is not a measuring tool or a garment for surviving the cold. It is not an accessory or an upgrade that one chooses, out of purpose and necessity. Love has no reason. Love is...” he said, triumphant.
“Why do I love you?” she asked.
The Ringmaster huffed and puffed, and then turned to Delilah, stroking her softly bristled beard, oblivious to the knife that barely poked his belly button.
“That is not my question to answer,” he said.
“But it is,” she said, “if the choice were not my own.”
“My dear Delilah, the choice is never our own; who we love, and who we leave behind. The choice is never our own.”
Delilah squeezed her left hand, and the sound of crumpling paper was like a floodlight and a siren, in The Ringmaster’s guilty conscious.
“What is this?” she asked, holding the scrunched up paper to his face.
“I don’t know,” said The Ringmaster, though his gurgling stomach, the sickly, white look on his face, and the guilt-laden distress that he perspired into his aura, said differently.
“You left this behind, at that woman’s house. The girl found it. About the only useful thing she’s ever done. What is it?”
“You tell me,” he said. “I’ve never seen it before.
“It has your seal. It has your signature. It has your scent,” she said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said The Ringmaster, making this, his chosen defence.
“Interpersonal and Loving Closeness; An Experiment,” she said, having memorized the title. “Warning, not to be used outside of controlled laboratory conditions.”
The Ringmaster turned white - whiter than he already was.
“Oh that,” he said nervously. “That’s just…that’s just nothing. It’s umm. No, I don’t what that is. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never…I… Is this about the finale? Is it? Is that what this is about?” he said, his nerves turning to anger.
“Do you love me?” she asked again, tears now welling in her eyes.
“Ok,” he said. “I know this looks bad.”
“What is it? What the hell is it?” she said, waving the document in The Ringmaster’s face. “What is it? Magic? Sorcery? Prayer?”
“It’s science,” said The Ringmaster, in a soft, confessional tone. “It’s just… it’s a bunch of questions is all.”
“And what happens when you ask these questions?”
“I don’t know for sure,” said The Ringmaster. Like I said, it’s experimental.”
“What happens?” shouted Delilah, touching the tip of the knife into The Ringmaster’s belly, and finally getting his attention.
“Delilah, my dear, please…”
“What happens?”
“At the end of the experiment,” said The Ringmaster, his eyes on the small cutting blade. “The participant will fall in love. In theory mind you.”
“Did you use this on me?” she asked. “Is this why I love you?”
“Preposterous,” shouted The Ringmaster.
Delilah felt a wave of guilt for making her lover feel such mistrust and betrayal, but it was swept aside by a specific rage for how his love made her feel.
“These same questions, all of them, you asked me when we first met. Do you remember?”
“My dear Delilah, my favourite whore, how could I ever forget? My life began, the moment we first kissed.”
“Did you use this on me - this experiment? Is this why I love you?”
“Stop with this. If you loved me, you wouldn’t be asking such questions.”
“It’s because I love you that I have to ask.”
“This experiment was something recent, something I picked up.”
“When? Last night? At the last t
own?”
“I told you, my dear, that was an accident; a mere excursion. But that’s not me, you know that. I wouldn’t ever do a thing like that again, especially knowing how much I hurt you.”
“And this woman, the one we brought back. What is she then?”
“My dear she is nothing to me, part of my work and the good that I do. The poor lass is infatuated, nothing more. We helped her with her child, and she sees me as some idol of worship, as all women do, you know that my dear. It’s difficult being me, it really is.”
He spoke with such gentle and tearful honesty, it was hard to negate.
“Does she love you?”
“Delilah, you are my number one. And you always will be unless of course, you drive yourself away with such ironic suspicion. Don’t let these fraudulent thoughts become a wedge between your heart and mine.”
“I feel as though I have spent my entire life loving you,” said Delilah. “And as much as I devote myself to you, I am mocked by that girl, who has not an inch of love for you, and whose bind on you chokes me. She gives you nothing in return for the life and love that you offer. She is a shadow of disrespect that stalks your Light and runs from your affection. And yet, none, not even I, can get so close.”
“Delilah, you know your love is special.”
“My love is scripted,” she screamed. “I am just an integer. All of us are. We were interchangeable, and so long as we answered your questions, as long as we participated in your experiment, there was no will that was our own. Love was a spell that you cast.”
“Such is love, my dear.”
“Should not a woman have a choice in whom she loves?” asked Delilah, ready to stab her lover’s bloated chest.
“The heart makes no deals with the head. Your love for me is as real as any love. And mine for you. And yes, I love many women, but I love each one with as much passion and sincerity as if they were the only one. You would never find love like the kind that I offer. I only love so many women because I can; because I can love each with as much amorous appetite as I do the other.”
“How can one man love so many women?”
“How can one sun warm so many hearts?” he replied.
“Do you love me?” she asked again.
“Of course I do my dear, of course, I do.”
“Like I love you? Do you love me, like I do you?”
The Ringmaster paused for a second, and he thought of last night’s dinner.
“Of course I do,” he said. “Maybe even more.”
“That’s impossible,” said Delilah, still wishing she had the nerve to kill him.
“Tear it up then, if that’ll make you happy, if that’ll ease your conviction.”
“I will,” she said, holding the document like an armed explosive.
Her hands pulled on both corners, teasing The Ringmaster at first, to see the give and pull in his word. And it did seem as if he was telling the truth, in how he stood and gazed at her, their eyes locked, as they had the first time they met. There was barely a flicker of threat or dread on his face, and his lips were unwavering, like two moist gorges, but gorges that were sparkling of course, and painted as red as the blood that beat from his loving heart.
“My dear, my number one, my Delilah, do you really know why I love you?” he asked.
When he spoke like this, it was easy to forget one’s troubles.
Delilah sniffled, and shed a tear.
Her anger begot sadness.
“Passion,” he said. “It’s your passion; your passion for me, and more so, your passion for yourself, for your own self-respect. You’re not like these others women who address a need to be loved, simply to feel love. No, you, my dear, you love, as you do, with such bold and ardent consecration, and with such revered potency. And because of that, you are loved. It is your passion that wets my tongue and has me, even in the desert of your absence, tasting you on the back of my throat, and preserving me through moments, be they brief or unrelenting, of scorching and desiccated loneliness. We each carry in us, in our Light, an element of the omniverse. You, my dear, you are the element of passion. And that is why I love you.”
“You are so full of shit,” she said, storming off and throwing the document at her lover.
“Delilah, darling…”
“That finale is mine,” she shouted, from somewhere off in the distance.
“Nobody gives two hoots to my troubles,” said The Ringmaster, picking up the document.
Outside his window, Rex crouched, in how a mountain might crouch, if it were to hide behind a leaf or a crack in the earth. “I care,” he said to himself, wishing it was loud enough to be heard and at the same time, thankful that it wasn’t.
The Ringmaster returned to admiring his reflection. He tucked his flat and flabby buttocks in, and pushed his crotch up and outwards, as far as he could, and then swivelled back and forth saying, “Oh me,” and “Oh my.”
My dear God, he was handsome.
“It’s not easy,” he said. “Not. At. All.”
He unrolled the document in his hands. It was close, it was. But the tumult had passed. In time, she would get over it, and the love they shared, just he and she, it would be stronger because of it. And the fact that little had come of her accusation meant that she would never speak of it again.
Every woman he had met had fallen under his spell and found themselves at the virtue of his sex, and his beguiling wisdom. Each and every woman he had ever encountered had fallen madly in love with him. And it was the document in his hands that was the key to their unwitting devotion.
It was, as Delilah had assumed, magic and sorcery.
And it was, as she had said, a kind of reverent prayer.
But it too was science; a kind of hope and mystery that The Ringmaster kept under his hat, something he kept hidden from the rest of the troupe. It was calculable and predictable. And it was almost exact.
God help him should he ever lose these pages.
“Delilah!” he screamed, his eyes ablaze.
Rex shook and cringed. He hated when his master shouted. It reminded him of all the kicks to his behind, all the clips behind his ear, the beatings and shackling, and the dreadful waterboarding; and of course, all the times his food had been given to someone else, for having done one thing wrong or another. And even though his master shouted out someone else’s name, he hid all the same, with just as much concern, as if the name being shouted were his own.
The Ringmaster’s left hand clenched and shook a bunch of papers in the air as if he were boxing some invisible piñata. Just visible on the paper was the sigil of their troupe, just as was, the sigil on the experiment, but, beneath his bulging fingers were the words ‘Healing Prayer’.
“What is the meaning of this?” he shouted. “I’ve been fooled, made a monkey of.”
Immediately, his little monkey felt less of itself.
“That crafty woman. That lying bitch. Oh, she maddens me,” he said, rubbing his excited penis, which erect, was no bigger than a chickpea, standing on its end. “Anything for the finale,” he said, panting, while the little monkey covered its eyes, wishing it were up a tree or stuffed in a sock drawer. “Rex,” he shouted.
The giant fell backward, crashing in a heap on top of a unicycle and a rooster.
“Yes, Master,” he said, pushing his gargantuan face to the window, unable to press no more than a single eye through.
“I have chosen,” he said.
“Good, Master, and at last minute too, a no more appropriate time. Shall I prepare Delilah’s trapeze then?”
“Prepare the girl,” he said.
“The girl?” asked Rex, baffled. “The whore will be incredulous. Are you sure?”
“Do not expel your doubt on me like old gum, buffoon.”
“My apologies, Master. Yes, I will prepare everything.”
“Good,” said The Ringmaster, returning to the mirror. “There is only one first performance, so let this be magnificent.”
&nbs
p;