three feathers

Sharing a barren and seemingly endless parking lot with Target, the Dollar Store, Papa John’s, and Office Max, the Three Feathers Casino projects little in the way of pretense. Its very shape offers no relief from rectangularity beyond a negligible slope in the cedar-shingled awning, and a pair of sad-looking totem poles flanking the entrance like panhandlers. On the outside, the giant gray edifice broadcasts none of the opulence, possesses none of the gaudy flourishes—no fountains, no doormen, no pissing cherubs—that I’ve come to expect in casinos. Just those hard-luck totem poles looking all the more miserable in the rain and a dented yellow cab idling out front.

Checking my fly and mussing my thinning hair, I enter the lobby, where I’m greeted by the cold stink of conditioned air and stale smoke. The riotous clanging of a thousand one-armed bandits, the pulse of garish light from all quarters, the muffled protestations of Buffalo Springfield over the house intercom—all of it is an assault on my senses. The worn carpet is a fussy and overworked pattern somewhere between Mayan petroglyphs and art deco. The patrons themselves are something out of Nathanael West: a groping horde of doughy Midwesterners, hopeful against all odds as they waddle up and down the aisles with their plastic tumblers heaping with tokens and their colons packed with reasonably priced buffet fare.

The dinner theater is none other than the Bayside Circus, opposite the buffet and behind the dollar slots. Never mind that there’s nothing resembling a bay within four miles. Never mind that the place is practically empty. What impresses me the most about the Bayside Circus is how badly the proprietors have botched the circus theme. This is not the Cirque du Soleil. Not even the Teatro ZinZanni. If Chili’s opened a strip club, it might look something like the Bayside Circus. Through the narrow entrance and past the hostess station I see a slice of tawdry stage, lined with Christmas lights and speckled with glitter. Center stage, in a puddle of murky light, hangs the vacant trapeze bar. Nothing about this place—neither its busy decor nor its high ceilings nor its odor of fried chicken and mop water, nor the fact that it’s too dark to see your food—is appetizing. One look at the hostess in her tight pink leggings tells me that she could use a Brazilian. No sooner has this hairy attendant greeted me at the podium than I spot Katya across the dining room in her fringed blue leotard, serving oversized cocktails to a party of revelers.

While there’s nothing particularly nimble or athletic in Katya’s comportment, she is not without a certain knobby-kneed grace as she circles the table balancing a tray in one hand and dealing out drinks with the other. Her big hair has been wrestled into a knot on the back of her head, presumably to keep it out of people’s food and avoid wind drag. Without that mess of hair to compete with, her dramatic jawline and big avocado eyes are all the more striking, even in this dull light at a distance of forty feet. My instinct is to turn and flee before she sees me. Instead, the hostess leads me the length of the dining room, seating me not ten feet from where Katya is delivering the last of her cocktails. It’s still not too late to lower my head and avoid detection, but why come this far? What do I hope to accomplish here? Am I really trying to win a girl or just unraveling my most recent failure to some pitiful conclusion so I can keep feeling sorry for myself?

Though she passes within three feet, her chin held high, Katya does not recognize me. Not until she comes for my drink order. I see at close range that her leotard has a few snags in it and looks worn about the edges. The low light is agreeable to her complexion. Her crazy hair threatens to explode the little bun on the back of her head.

“Oh. Hey,” she says, almost like a question.

“I tracked you down,” I say, regretting the stalkerish implications immediately. “Don’t worry,” I add, in attempt to right my ship. “I’m not stalking you or anything.”

This doesn’t seem to ease her mind. “Um, o-kaay,” she says. “Well, that’s good. So, can I start you off with something to drink?”

“Just a Coke, I guess.”

“Pepsi okay?”

“Sure.”

She scratches the order out onto the pad.

“So, how have you been?” I venture.

“Not bad. Really busy. My plate’s way too full right now, with school and work and everything else.”

“Did you get my note?”

She wants to say no—I can see it in her eyes as she hesitates.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” she says.

“I hope I didn’t scare you off.”

“No, it was sweet, thanks. I’m just really busy.” She steals a glance over her shoulder to the wait station, then toward the stage.

“I didn’t know you were in school. That’s cool. What are you studying?”

“Just basic stuff.”

“Math? Lit? What?”

“Yeah,” she says glancing back toward the wait station once more. Her body language is shifty and impatient, her manner slightly hurried—all of it suggesting that she’s in the throes of a dinner rush. But the place is dead. The din of the surrounding casino bleeds in through the false walls, dinging and donging, as Katya awaits my order.

“How come there’s no net?” I say, nodding toward the stage.

“Huh?” she says, unable to belie what I’m beginning to suspect is annoyance.

“No safety net, I mean.”

She looks to the stage, then back at the bar. “Yeah, well. It’s static. So it’s not like I’m flying through the air or anything like that.”

“Did you ever see that movie Trapeze?” I venture. (I rented it two nights ago for this very reason.) “With Burt Lancaster? Totally cheesy, but some of the trapeze stuff is—” I stop myself when I see that her body is actually stiffening before my eyes, like she’s drawn a deep breath and held it in.

“So, uh, do you need another minute? I can have Misty come by for your order, if—”

“I’ll have the fish-and-chips,” I say, without opening the menu.

“Soup or sal—”

“Soup.”

“Okay,” she says, dotting an i and turning on her heels. “Right back with that Pepsi.”

What kind of world is it where you write a poem for a girl and she holds it against you? What benevolent God would conceive of a dynamic where the impulse to nurture repels? I had hoped to get beyond her pity, and it looks like I’ve succeeded, one way or another. It is Misty who delivers my Pepsi as the lights dim. The party behind me begins to jockey their chairs around and reach for their coats, even as Katya, in her sad garish leotard, takes the stage and approaches the bar. The wooden stage sounds hollow beneath her steps. When she turns to face the dining room, scrupulously avoiding my gaze, her tenuous beauty fails her beneath the murky glare of the spotlight. Her big eye sockets look alien. Her sloping forehead is freakish. Her bare knees look like frozen game hens. And to think she pitied me.

Katya mounts the bar, swings her legs up, and dangles by her knobby knees for a long moment, as though concentrating her energies. Her spine runs straight and dimpled down the length of her back. Upside down, all the missing sequins of her leotard come to light, exposing little piebald patches like dry skin. Arching her back in a Bird’s Nest, clutching the rope a foot above the bar, Katya expertly swings herself headfirst and backward into a shaky handstand. Slowly, she collapses herself like an accordion on the strength of her stomach muscles, splaying her legs in a V as she folds herself nearly in two. By the time she swings her legs out in front of her into an L-sit, we are alone. The revelers have cleared out. Misty is probably out back smoking a cigarette while my soup grows cold. Katya cannot help but feel me there, folding my arms and hating her, as she swings a seven-twenty, reversing her hands, and comes to an abrupt stop with her back facing me. How can I hurt this woman if I can’t even reach her? And why should I want to? We all run hot and cold, so why blame Katya? She spins a quick one-eighty, reversing her hands once more, and comes to rest facing me. I narrow the focus of my hatred right between her hairy eyebrows. This is for your pity. And this is for withholding it, you crazy bitch. But Katya looks right past me.

I stand, fish out my wallet, drop a twenty on the table, and turn to leave without looking back. When I hit the cold stale air of the casino, all I can feel is shame.