XVI
The line to get into The Big Top was just that, magnificent.
“It’s magnificent,” said The Four-Legged Woman.
Beside her stood her faithful assistant, carrying a heavy bag full of her many vials of glitter and nail polish between his two snapping claws. “Isn’t it just,” he said, ignoring the long line of grey people and instead, focusing on how her shoulders shone in the moonlight, thinking of her body as some ethereal wave that he wished he could dive into. “It’s dreamy,” he said.
“Master was right. He was right all along. I never doubted him, though, but this is so exciting. My first show. Our first show. Oh my God,” she said panicky, “how do I look? Really? I mean,” she said, pouting and exposing her crooked teeth while she wiggled her twenty-two toes. “Are they delectable?”
“Like fireflies,” said her assistant.
Inside, The Big Top was almost full. There were only a few of the very worst seats still untaken, but they were being eyed off by the thirty or so desperate townsfolk who jostled with one another on the spot, peering impatiently over each other’s shoulders, and past the man with no arms and legs, who swung back and forth like a pendulum, shouting out the names of every star in tonight’s spectacular, between every puff of his smoking pipe. And the line of people, it stretched more than the tents simple capacity would allow.
Backstage, frantic preparations were well underway. Everything felt like it had been left for the last minute, and it seemed as if every mechanical problem that could go wrong, had, was, or most certainly would. Pulleys wouldn’t pull, lifts weren’t lifting, and the stars of tonight’s spectacular were near on imploding from all the stress and anxiety. There was a specific kind of energy backstage, and an abundance of it too, enough to suffice a thousand death rows. There were people running this way and that, swinging hammers and spanners, and cables and ties. And there were people running that way and this, hauling dress pins and ribbons, and bucket loads of glitter for eyes.
It was chaos yes, but from up on his perch at the height of The Big Top, above even the tightropes and fly men, to The Ringmaster, it all looked so neatly woven and carefully planned. He sat on an oversized wooden, rocking horse, sipping from a cup made out of dinosaur bones, and getting the thick fat on his neck massaged by whore number five, for she had baker’s hands, the kind that could knead a mountain range into a flat and even dough. To his left, the little monkey sat on an even littler stool, its faced blocked by a little canvas, and its busy, little hands, busy painting away its master’s portrait.
As he took everything in, The Ringmaster smiled, first at the little monkey, whose focus was immutable as it brushed and stroked away, and then at the whore, whose invigorate fingers worked their magic, loosening the tough mounds of fat that built up around his neck and on his shoulders. His troupe had come so far, and they had weathered a great deal of burdens and misfortune. The pride that he felt perspired onto his whiskers, and it tickled and rumbled his belly, but then again, that might have just been gas.
It was a sight to behold, though, and literally nothing could upset it, except maybe, an angry whore. The platform where they stayed began to rattle and sway, and though neither the little monkey nor the fifth whore stopped what they were doing, both grew a deal of concern, but no way near as dire as The Ringmaster.
“I assume she has heard then,” he said.
Below them, Delilah scaled the thin, wobbling pole like an experienced climber. She did so with her knees pressed together, so as not to expose her frilled knickers to the stagehands below. She was a whore after-all, and whores were women of class, education, and dignity. But there was nothing ladylike or whorish about the violent look in her eyes as she stormed her way upwards, step by step.
“Bastard,” she screamed.
Looking over the railing, The Ringmaster barely battered an eyelid. He sank back into the grooved saddle of the rocking horse and continued to drink his potent and stinking liquor from a purple, winding straw.
“Don’t even think about stopping,” he said to the whore, whose grip had weakened, and who was obviously distracted by the swaying platform; that and the sounds of expletive cursing, coupled with the clanging of steel capped stilettos, on tiny metal rungs.
Delilah was barely half way up the pole when something grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and shook her free. She dangled in mid-air, her arms and legs drooping as if her spine had been severed.
“Let go of me,” she screamed, fighting to squirm free.
It was no use, Rex had a firm grip. Delilah was garbed in so many trinkets and dangling accessories that the tiny handed giant had only to open his gargantuan mouth and snap blindly to grab onto anything at all that would suffice ample leverage. Were he chasing a mime or a publicist, there would have been a great deal more scratching and bruising. But whores dressed, for all occasions, like thrift store vitrines, so whatever angle one stood, there would always be something to grab, be it a jewel, a polyester button, the tight knots of a corset, or the studded collars and dog chains that had become kitschy fashion since spring. Either way, nabbing a raging whore from a teetering ladder, was easier than picking fruit from a tree.
“Let me go you oaf,” she screamed.
Rex lowered Delilah to the floor, back behind the rafters, and out of view of both the audience and the other whores, who Rex knew, had insatiable egos that would turn ravenous and riotous at the sight of such weak spirited desperation. What he did, he did for the best.
“Don’t do this now,” he said.
“You would not know,” she said, squeezing her hands into throttling fists, “the hurt that he causes.”
“I wouldn’t?” said Rex. “Wouldn’t I?”
His voice sounded like a drill, boring through teeth and bone. Rex thought, in an instant, of every occasion where he had felt like her - kicked aside, left out, and second handed. He thought of the first time the master had found him, as a young man, curled in a foetal and blubbering mess, beneath a buzzing neon sign for a two dollar peep show; stripped naked, beaten to near death, spat at and pissed on, covered in cuts and bruises, and spray-painted with slurs of graffiti. In that instant, Rex thought of the look on his master’s face as he covered him in his mauve jacket. He looked like a child, who, whilst digging through dirt and scrap, had stumbled upon the most magnificent toy. And Rex felt, as he thought of his master’s face, the same as he had in that instant, that very same air of relief that one might feel after a night of hard drinking, looking down upon their warm and made up bed, or in how a prisoner might feel after the firing gun has clapped in their ears, and the bullet rips through their heart, ending that dreaded silence and contemplation. He felt that relief for an instant, far shorter than it took to write this down and to tell it to you now. The feeling came and then turned, as quick as a child’s promise to ‘never do that again’, and in the next instant, his mind flicked through all the memories of hurt and abandon he had felt, feeling like the third child, or the obese and mangy dog; fed and disciplined like all the rest, but never touched, and scarcely played with. He thought about all the whores that had come and gone over the years, not just Delilah and her entourage. And he thought about his master’s face, whenever he crept closer for mere attention. And over the years, though the whores changed, the pain that he felt never did, and neither did the look on his master’s face as he shoved him away and postponed his affection.
“We’ve all been there,” he said, in a deep and burrowing voice that sounded somniferous, like a pilot, an oncologist, or a moving train. “We’ve all felt as you feel right now, once or twice in the past. Some of us even feel it more, to the extent where it has become our culture, and our climate. You are not new to this experience. Don’t act like you are.”
Delilah gripped the sides of her beard, her fingers clenched as if she were about to tear out every hair. Rex, though, with his tiny hands, pulled hers free.
“Do not spite your face,” he said, “if it is the only one that you have.?
??
“Why does he do this? Why does he treat me this way?”
“It is love,” said Rex.
“Love? This is love?”
“It is apparent, Delilah,” he said, actually saying her name, “that one can love, especially, at a time when another does not. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not loved, or that you no longer make your bed in their heart.”
“If he doesn’t want to be with me at all hours of the day, then how is that love?”
“Oh, what you’re describing is obsession. Love is something else. Love is far more complex. It is without ego and it defined as not in having, but in having been.”
“What is love if it absconds when it cannot be shared?”
“Love is having the courage to let someone go; to treasure someone so dearly, and to be so brave as to let them be free, to not cage and suffocate them so that your love conspires with the fear of being left alone. If you love someone then let them be. For if its seamless companionship you want, then look no further than your own shadow, but God you help at night.”
“I can’t compete with that girl.”
“She is his child, Delilah. How could you possibly compete?”
“She is not his child.”
“Delilah, she was born from his womb. Though it was not his at the time, it was in his body. He bears the scars and the stretching on his skin. He carried her, though he was not himself at that time, for nine months in his belly. Yes, he is a different man today, the man that you obsess over, but his bond to that girl in inexplicable. Even if it seems spoiled and quarrelsome, nothing will be able to come between it, not even you. The moment you truly accept that, at that point, your obsession will dissipate, until all that is left, is love for yourself. And how can you love another, if you cannot love yourself?”
“But he doesn’t love me? And I do not love him.”
“Then why are we here?”
“He used magic on me. He used magic on all the whores. A bunch of questions, an experiment; I found it. He used it on that dying bitch. He used it on me. And I know he used it on every fucking woman he met. That’s why we all put up with him. It’s why he’s allowed to treat us this way.”
“There is no science to love.”
“You assume that science is not a faith; that it is not magic. That alone is its sleight of hand. That is how it fools you. That experiment, it is magic.”
“Don’t be rash. Don’t be silly,” said Rex.
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re always there, at his feet, outside his door, curled up beneath his bed. If it’s not her, it’s you. But you’re no threat, not even to yourself. But you know, don’t you? What is it? What is the experiment? Has he used it on everyone?”
Rex said nothing.
“He has, hasn’t he? What about you? Did he use it on you too?”
“No,” said Rex.
“So it’s real then. The experiment, it is real. You admit it.”
“That’s not what I said,” said Rex, flustered.
“How do you undo it?” she asked.
Rex sighed. He didn’t want to let his master down. He had seen so much since he had been taken in. And the love that he felt for his master at first grew, like all the whores, as obsession. But that was just what love did. It cocooned itself inside a hard, and jagged casing; one that stabbed and pricked when any threat came close. He had seen the experiment many times. He had seen it and watched it with his own eyes. And he had cleaned up the mess, time and time again, as spurned and obsessive whores had fought one another, thrown themselves off bridges, and torn apart their own faces, at the behest of their obsessions.
“There is no way,” he said, “to undo what has been done.”
“Habit cures habit,” said Delilah. “I just need to find a new habit, someone else to love.”
“The habit is not in the thing, but in the desire itself. You could choose from a thousand dresses, but your compulsion to be clothed will have you outwear them all. If you were to unstick yourself, and to find someone new, the adhesion of your obsession to them would be immeasurable, and believe me, as it is, you’ll tear your skin trying to pull yourself apart. Be thankful your love was not born in this town, and that you’re not cursed like all these people; and that you will not die in three days.”
“I wish I would,” she confessed. “What, if anything, can I do?”
“If you are a victim of this experiment then there is nothing you can do.”