The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [59]
I take a deep breath. From my back pocket, I produce Magdelena’s old red silk camisole. I washed it in a sink at the bus station in Stockton, but it doesn’t look nearly as precious as it did the night I stole it—that shimmering promise of sexy-cool. “I took this.”
She doesn’t seem surprised, says only, “Thanks,” as I place it on her dressing table.
I hold out the flowers, shrug stupidly. “I brought these for you and Pia.”
Now Pia stands filling the doorway, as if magnetically drawn to the mention of her name. She smiles, sad-hurt, and I know all the greed in this room is my own. Ever since that night in our student house in Santa Cruz when Tony told me I had star talent without the necessary ego, I’d dreamed of outshining them all. Blanketed vanity.
“So the hypochondriac’s come down from the mountain,” Pia says. That’s the way she talks when she doesn’t want to get hurt by anyone anymore. Just trying to be an oak.
I place the flowers on the table, not quite sure what to say next. I hadn’t rehearsed anything, had imagined some lengthy processing session, but what’s there to process, really? “I didn’t—” I start to say, but Pia just holds up her large hand.
The silence tastes like shattered rocks. I want to turn everything into gravel.
“Big venue,” I finally say.
Pia nods, looks me up and down. “I certainly hope you’re not planning on performing in that outfit.”
My dried mud jeans and sweaty Sesame Street T-shirt. I clutch my plastic bag of new clothes. “No,” I promise. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Barbaro’s red and white canvas backpack sits in the corner, propped against a black wall. I take the smiling newspaper clown from my other pocket, smooth it out, and place it on top of his bag.
Magdelena winks at me, knocks back her shot of brandy.
“Break a leg,” Pia says.
Chapter 22
ALL SOUND OUT
Close your eyes.
The audience waits in a pool of darkness, seated and hushed, waiting for miracles.
I can feel my heart pounding even in my veins. Sometimes a moment can last so long. Volcanic mountains and hundred-mile views. A starless homeless night. Moonlight shining in limestone caves. A miraculous heart preserved in a stone cathedral.
Madre Pia’s great bellowing voice explodes into the black: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit moved across the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light!”
A billow of flame bursts from stage left.
Madre lifts her hands and the lights rise, illuminating shy Paula the Bearded as she begins to sing like some lost shore-bird in the burnt night.
Tony’s bass line starts so low and builds so slow, you’ve already succumbed to his craving trance by the time he picks up his tenor sax. You recognize the beginning of that jazz suite from a CD you once heard in a stranger’s apartment in a city whose skyline you no longer remember.
Backstage, Manny tells me about Snuffleupagus, about how he used to be invisible to everyone but Big Bird, and that nobody believed he even existed. “But he was real!” Manny insists, stretching out his arms. As I hand him off to Paula, he says, “I wanna build a LEGO castle!”
New day, new state, same show.
I join Magdelena, Tony, and Lupe onstage as the curtain rises deliciously familiar on this small circle of friends. We sing and clown, make music and dance, drink and laugh like nothing’s ever been fucked up between us, and I imagine my fellow travelers aren’t just performing. They love me still, don’t they? Like famiglia.
Barbaro waits in the shadows, watching, but each time he starts to approach, we push him away. Stranger. Outsider. Betrayer. Asshole or liar or worse. Repentant sinner.
Focus on the performance, Frankka.
Barbaro rustles though his bag for his carnival mask, tries to get our attention, but we refuse to