Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [61]
I pushed the door to the train open and walked into the narrow hallway. Another door to my right was ajar, I saw, and it swung forward at that moment, just as I was noticing the name FLYING LOLLIE scrolled along the top in large gold letters and before I had a chance to even think about knocking. I had thought I’d have a moment to prepare myself, but then there she was: dressed in spangles and high heels, her hair pulled back and strewn with silver sparkles, her skin like soft sand under the sun. Her hair was even brighter up close, a shock of red against the pale, thinly lined mocha of her skin, and her eyes were large and hazel-colored, rimmed with lashes so long they made her eyes look like stars. She was much more dramatic-looking than Mary. I couldn’t imagine her bent over an herb garden or a pot of tea or a crumbling book of poems. She seemed like she would always be wearing stockings and glitter, surrounded by velvet and fur and glass. She was breathtaking. I scrambled to gather my senses and remember why it was I was here, why it was I had sought her.
“Who are you?” she asked, looking surprised and disappointed to see me quivering in front of her. Her eyes searched behind me, as if she were looking for someone else, and then focused in on my face. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was haughty and flecked with Spanish.
“My name is Tessa Riley,” I said, rushing through the words. “I’m a friend of Mary Finn.”
She just stood and stared, raising a painted eyebrow. It was like a bird’s wing over her eye. “How did you get back here?”
“Through the back door, the flaps in the tent. I’m sorry, I had to find you.”
She looked me over. “You say you know who?”
“Mary Finn,” I said, and then, “Marionetta.” My heart pounded. “She told me all about this place. And you, and your brother Luis, your villa in Mexico.”
She looked at me a moment longer, then shrugged. “Many people knew Marionetta,” she said. “Why are you bothering me about it?” And with one more look at the air behind me, she closed the door in my face.
As disoriented as I was by her beauty, as long as I had anticipated this moment, I had not been prepared for her to reject me. I stood staring at the gold letters that spelled her name, the door that shut me off from everything, all the possibility in the world.
I knocked again.
The door flung open and there seemed to be a different person standing there—her face soft and hopeful, her body pressing forward. When she looked down and saw me, she seemed crushed, and then I almost saw the fury descend on her.
“What are you still doing here?” she said, her eyes watering. “I said go! Véte!”
“But I came here for you!” I screamed, suddenly hysterical. “I’ve practiced for years, for this, to find you!”
I kept screaming after she slammed the door again. “Please!” I said. “Please just talk to me!” I pounded on the door.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked behind me. I immediately recognized Flying Geraldo from the ring, though up close he was not the same man at all. There he had seemed romantic and darkly handsome, but here, in the train car, there was something in his eyes I didn’t like, something that reminded me of my father. I backed away.
He looked me over once, quickly. “Véte, niña!” he said, and made a shooing motion with his hands.
I walked slowly out onto the lot again, then turned and stared at Lollie’s door, at the painted lady swooping on the side of her train car. I felt unbound, completely without anchor. The life I had created in Kansas City was gone, dismantled in an instant and forgotten. Oakley was a million miles