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Working on my beautiful, outlandish dress helped to fill the long, monotonous hours until the carnival left town. The loneliness and boredom, familiar and unpleasant, provided me an unwanted reminder of home. The silence in that house had had such freedom and space that it could expand and warp back around until it stopped being itself and became the sound of murmured conversation in the whirring of the refrigerator or maybe high-pitched singing as the water squealed out from the bathroom tap. Jim and Gigi were both over at the sideshow tent. Once the carnival closed for the night, they would go to the G-top, which I had learned was the tent housing a sort of after-hours club for the carnival workers where they could drink, socialize, and gamble.
We were scheduled to leave town the next day. No matter how my mind whirred with anxiety about what the future held, anything had to be better than continued confinement. The trailer was hot, like always. Maybe I could put a chair outside to sit where there was some breeze, at least. The kitchenette stools would be easy to lift, but balancing on them would be too much work, with too much risk of falling, so I decided to bring out the wooden chair wedged in the corner of the bedroom. A pile of dirty clothes covered it. Moving them to the bed and clearing out the chair legs tired me. Pulling the chair out of the corner and getting it to the doorway entailed a lot of sweaty, noisy scraping and maneuvering. I paused bent over the chair, gripping the wooden arms. My heart pounded with such intensity I could hear it banging outside my body. The idea terrified me. I clutched my chest.
There was a tapping on the window, the tink tink of something touching glass that sounded like my heartbeats but was not.
“Jesus, Lola, open the door and let me in.” Gigi’s voice, low and intense, startled me. For a moment, I thought she was tapping on the wrong window until I remembered that my new name was Lola. Gigi was standing outside the trailer with a long stick in her hand.
“Gigi?”
“For God’s sake”—she banged the bottom of the stick on the ground—“douse the lights, and let me in.”
The ferocious urgency of her tone and the unexpectedness of her presence terrified me to immobility. Gigi dropped the stick and ran to the front of the trailer. I snapped back to action when I heard her rattling the knob. I pushed my way to the door as quickly as possible to let her in.
Gigi squeezed past me with surprising strength and scrambled to the bedroom. “Get the kitchen lights,” she whispered. “And lock the door.”
“Oh my God, what’s going on?” I asked, doing like she said. We sat down together on the mattress in the bedroom. Gigi held my arm, straining to hear some sound. When there was nothing but silence, she released me from her grasp. “Okay, good,” she said in a quiet voice. “Whooo...” She exhaled.
“Gigi, what is it?”
“Oh Christ. The fuzz showed up here looking for you, so Jim had me run over to tell you to turn out the lights and hide.”
My stomach dropped to the floor. “The fuzz? You mean the police? They were here looking for me? I mean, why were they here?” I clarified.
“I don’t know,” Gigi said. “I seen Jim talking to them, then he sorta motioned to me on the sly. So I go over, and I hear him tell the fuzz, ‘Now, gentlemen, I’m happy to escort you anywhere, if you’d like to see for yourself that, unfortunately, we don’t have any fat-lady act at present.’ And then, he turns to me and says, ‘Gigi, honey, I’m going to be tied up with these officers for a bit, so would you be a dear and stop by my trailer to pick up the props and make sure everything is locked up when you leave.’ So I come running over here, and then I almost had a heart attack when you didn’t answer right away.” Gigi patted my hand. “Don’t you worry, though. Jim’s the best patch there is.”
“Patch?”
“The person who fixes things, especially when stuff needs to get smoothed over with the police.” Gigi shifted her position. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could make out the shape of her on the mattress, see the muted shimmer of her neckline. Her expression was invisible, though. “Basically, he makes sure that people have what they need so there’s no trouble. Like he gets speed for the workers so they can get their shit done then gets them bennies to bring them back down. He hustles some business on the side with the marks, but that’s just for the cash.”
I knew “mark” was the name for people outside the carnival, the ones who paid money for the games and shows and rides, but I didn’t fully understand the rest of what Gigi had said. I just replied, “Oh,” because I was picturing Jim, red-faced and enraged, threatening to leave me alongside the road, then his annoyance again when I couldn’t keep my mouth shut with Hinkle. Now, he had to run interference for me with the police while I holed up in his trailer, taking up all the space.
“Maybe I should go out there and talk to the police myself. All this is probably more trouble than it’s worth for Jim.”
“No, no, no.” Gigi dug her pretty fingernails into my shoulder. “Jim wanted me to keep you here, so that’s what I’m aiming to do.”
“Ouch,” I said, pulling Gigi’s hand off me.
“Oh, sorry about that,” she said. “Just don’t worry, okay? Jim’s good at handling stuff like this. Besides which, he would never turn anyone over to the police, not when his daddy died in jail, and he’s done hard time himself.”
I stared at Gigi in the dark. “What was Jim in prison for?”
“Some shit or other. Jimmy never told me. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but I guess I can’t blame him there.” Gigi fanned her face with her open hand. “It’s hot in here. I think I’m going to sneak out to the kitchen to get myself a drink. You want me to bring you something?”
“Huh? Yeah, there’s a big bag of popcorn on the counter. I might as well eat some of that.”
Gigi and I sat there side by side in the dark. She sipped her glass of whiskey, gasping after each swallow. I listened to her sip and gasp, sip and gasp, and to the sound of the popcorn, covered with congealed butter flavor and salt, squeaking against my teeth. As the initial wave of anxiety abated a bit, my eating slowed.
“So how come the fuzz are looking for you?” Gigi asked.
I made a big show, which Gigi could probably only half see anyway, of prying stuck popcorn from my back molars. “Well...” I began. “Um... I’m not really sure. It might have something to do with my brother, Jared.”
As I began my story, a bumbling weave of fact and fiction, I had the feeling that Jared was listening to me, maybe even watching me from the floor, waiting to see what I would say. “So, he and I didn’t get along at all. That’s a big part of the reason I left.” The sensation of Jared staring at me with cloudy, unblinking eyes made me so uneasy that I hugged a pillow to my chest. He seemed to become more present and active with every word I spoke. “Anyway, when I called my stepmother... You know, the one I told you about who was our housekeeper but like a mother too. She told me that Jared was dead, that he had some kind of problem with his head.” In the uncertain light, it nearly seemed that a pale-gray hand, drawn in white outline, may have reached out to touch one of my feet. I shuffled back farther on the mattress, too terrified to continue any version of my story.
“A problem with his head?” Gigi asked. “You mean like he was crazy or something like that?”
“No, like it was bashed in.” I stuffed another double handful of popcorn into my mouth, chewing as hard as I could.
“And so what? The fuzz think you know something about that?”
“I don’t know what they think,” I answered truthfully. Gigi and I lapsed into silence, her drinking and me eating in our dark, quiet little world. I don’t how long we stayed like that.
“Anyway, I should probably get back out there,” Gigi finally said.
“What? No. Can’t you wait here with me?” Jared still felt present in the room. I had the impression of him stretched out on the floor, waiting in patient silence for Gigi to leave.
“Yeah, I wish, but if Hinkle don’t see me around, he’ll start asking questions, and then I’ll have to hear all about it later on.” Gigi’s voice sounded flat, dead.
“How do you mean? Does he come over and yell at you at the end of the night?”
Gigi sputtered her lips. “I wish that was all he came around for.”
The thought of Hinkle slinking over to Gigi’s trailer, sidling up to her door, and then spending the night in her bed disgusted me. Judging by her offhand disdain, I knew she didn’t relish the thought either.
“Hey, you know what?” Gigi asked with such suddenness that it startled me. “Don’t worry, though, all right? I mean, even if you did do something wrong, because there’s always a reason.” Gigi got up from the bed and stood on her tiptoes to stretch the backs of her legs.
“I was thinking about my father before,” she continued. “Yeah, he used to tell me all kinds of stories. His favorite was about Judge Roy Bean, who was some hanging judge down in Texas from when they still did that kind of thing. Anyway, Judge Roy Bean used to hold court right in his saloon. So one day, he orders this horse thief to be hanged. And then the next case was this man who killed this other guy. After Judge Roy Bean hears his story, he lets the man go with no punishment at all. And everyone is shocked, and they ask Judge Roy Bean how he could let a murderer go free after he sent a horse thief to hang. And he says, ‘Well, I’ve met plenty a men that needed a-killing, but I never met a horse that needed a-stealing.’ God, that used to make my father laugh, but you know, that’s how it works sometimes. I think about it once in a while, especially for Hinkle.”
After Gigi left, the air in the trailer felt blacker and took on a persistent meaty smell, like ground beef left too long on the kitchen counter. The sensory overload had to be my imagination, and the unshakeable sensation of Jared’s presence was only illusion. I told myself these things. I knew these things to be true. Jared, bolder now that we were alone, stood and started moving around the room.