XXIV
“How’s the audience?” said Rex, rushing back from some dire engagement, struggling to get a sense of the show, and more so, his work.
“We’re losing them,” said The Tiny Tattooed Man.
Rex buried his face in his hands.
“Could be all the acetone. I told her, boss. But she insists. Twenty-two toes, twenty-two prose. She could water that stuff down. You wanna know what I think?”
“No,” said Rex.
“Right. Right, you are,” replied The Tiny Tattooed Man nervously. “You want maybe I should punch someone?”
“No, I don’t want you to punch someone.”
The stress was starting to take its toll. It wouldn’t be long now until he reverted back to his old ways. God help him, should this happen. For a thousand days, he had thought about this night. As the troupe trudged along the broken, dusted path, he had spent step after gruelling step, running every facet of the show through his mind; from the placing of every nut and bolt to the size and colour of every prop and costume. He even worked out the right amount of time that would suffice the perfect round of applause. And while others cursed about their blistered feet, and their splintered shins, this grotesque giant thought nothing of his mounting starvation, or of the aches and pains that would have had an even stronger man, weeping and wincing themselves to sleep. He ignored the fevers and the shakes, and he marched through the most severe kinds of delusional lethargy. And on the coldest and most bitter eves, when the troupe made their camp, so entrenched was he in his thoughts of the show and this night, that he never once noticed the spiders, snakes, and glowing centipedes, which scurried beneath his body and warmed themselves neath the round of his buttocks; biting and stinging as they did.
All he thought about was tonight. And when he did, it always ended with applause. He’d think about the audience standing up on the rafters and almost falling over one another in sheer boisterous delight. Then he’d think about the performers, standing centre stage, each with their arms coiled around one another, bowing with such placate and generous appreciation; their backs arching like a brightly coloured wave, crashing on a sun-drenched shore.
Then he’d imagine more applause, and the deafening echo of “Encore,” and “Bravo.” And only sweeter than that, would be the thought of his stage hands, collapsed in a heap together backstage, their heaving breaths and relieved panting sounding to his ears, like white noise to a crying infant; quelling the anxiety that came with his newfound reach, and limitless potential.
Finally, he would imagine himself peering through his master’s window as he rested half naked in an armchair and drank a bottle of cherry from a hollowed elephant tusk. And in this grand thought, of which he had imagined ten thousand times, his master would catch the grotesque giant fogging up his window, and instead of hurling a rock, a handful of nails, or a tirade of abuse, so pleased and content would he be, that he would invite Rex into the warmth of his carriage, to curl in a ball and sleep by his feet. And over the course of a thousand days, this was most certainly Rex’s favourite thought.
But now, as The Young Cripple was being winched high up into the air, poor old Rex could think of nothing but disaster. And then it started. His heart beat rampant, and he could feel his pulse in the back of his eyes. Everything weighed on this moment right now. If she succumbed to fear or nerves, as was the culture of her very being, or if she forgot her cues or her lines, everything up to this point would have meant nothing.
He imagined the girl making a thousand mistakes. And then he imagined the audience, cursing a thousand vile unpleasantries. And instead of thunderous applause, his ears were deafened with the rustle of hundreds of tickets stubs, raining down like atomic ash, as the audience emptied their pockets and their frustrations and stormed out of The Big Top. And finally, as lights were being cued, and as the one man band licked his crackling lips and readied his left foot, Rex thought of his master, sitting defeated and ashamed in his armchair, with a cocked and loaded pistol in his right hand, aimed at the side of his head.
“Boss,” said a stagehand. “Everything’s cued up.”
Rex didn’t respond. It was as if he were trying to read the lips of a lover or an assailant, from a thousand miles away.
“Ready when you are, boss,” said the stagehand, masking his worry in almost condescending joviality.
There was a feeling in Rex’s stomach. It was like he had swallowed a bag full of hot coal. He hadn’t felt this way since his mother and father dumped him in a bag by a river. This time though he was sure, The Ringmaster would come with closure, as opposed to a new beginning.
“Cue light,” he said, his voice sounding droll and depressed.
“Done, boss.”
“Cue sound.”
“Cue sound,” shouted the stagehand, and the one man band tapped his left foot on an oil drum, and his right, on a shish kebab of pots, pans, and cans that were stuffed with rice and fingernails.
The troupe all looked at Rex, waiting for his final command.
“Boss, you alright? Boss?”
“Cue the cripple,” he said, almost vomiting as he did.
As the troupe pulled on cables, and as the spotlights flooded on the young girl who was dangling in the air, Rex snuck off via a series of secret tunnels that wound their way to a room that nobody knew existed. He stood there for a second, listening for any sound whatsoever from the audience, but the silence berated his ears.
On one side of the room, there was a deckchair with a cigar, a glass of lemonade, and a handful of party blowers. Lying on the right arm was a mirror with the words ‘You did it!’ taped to the bottom. And on the other side of the room, fashioned into a noose, hung enough mooring rope to carry his weight for as long as it would take.