The Lonely Hearts Hotel(14)
“I read it in a Russian novel,” she said, looking at Pierrot again. “The Russians have figured everything out because their winters are so long. It makes them very thoughtful.”
“How do you know all these wonderful things?” Pierrot asked.
One of the things that Rose really enjoyed about Pierrot was how quick he was at understanding what she said. She couldn’t count on her hand the times when she had told an especially clever thought to one of the nuns at the orphanage and their response was to consider having her lobotomized.
They passed a billboard with a group of posters plastered to it, advertising a show that was going to be performed downtown in the near future.
There were the Parisian cancan dancers. There was a group of tap dancers from Poland. There were aerialists from Bulgaria. There was a contortionist who claimed she had mailed herself in a box from Germany. There was the White Bat Orchestra from Russia. There was a group of Ukrainians who shot themselves out of cannons. There was a Russian flea circus. A man with a big mustache and a fur hat yelled at the wee little fleas. He brought them across the sea in a suitcase with a fancy lining. They each got their very own matchbox to sleep in. Pierrot and Rose agreed that if they had any money, this was the show they would go to.
“I think I would like to make a show of my own,” Rose said. “I am going to find all the clowns in the world and take them out of whatever circus they are in and make them perform in mine. I am going to find really, really sad ones too. I need some who can ride on bicycles.”
“Oh yes. You should have a clown who always falls off buildings and then cries.”
On the trolley, Rose took a piece of paper out of her pocket and a stub of a pencil. She put the paper on the seat between her and Pierrot. She began to write down everything she had just told Pierrot.
“We can travel from town to town and be world renowned. There will be stories about us in the newspaper.”
Pierrot looked impressed. As he always lived entirely in the moment, it never occurred to him to look into the future. But Rose was always looking so far ahead.
“Let’s leave our act to the very end,” Rose declared. “Let’s make a giant moon, and we’ll dance underneath it together.”
“What if the moon falls on our heads and kills us?”
“We’ll hang it from really strong ropes.”
“What will the revue be called?”
Rose looked at him intently for a brief moment. And then she looked back down at the paper and scribbled on it. She held it up afterward, and at the top of the page, in bold letters, was written: The Snowflake Icicle Extravaganza.
“What do you think?”
“Lots of clowns, right?”
“All the clowns we can find.”
They knew they worked well together. The melted snow dripped down from Rose’s hat and fell on her nose, warm like holy water.
“If you have a good show, then you get to travel the whole world. Can you imagine that?” Rose said. “Packing all our gear into trains and boats and heading out to the world’s most wonderful places.”
“I never did. That’s a marvelous thought.”
Pierrot sat there for a moment, letting his head grow and expand so he could fill it with all this new information. He considered her dreams to be downright miraculous.
“It’ll be a lot of work, though,” Pierrot said. “I personally consider myself a very lazy person.”
“Well, my darling, you can be lazy when you’re lying in your coffin.”
The trolley came to their stop and they descended the steps onto the sidewalk and back onto the road. The snow fell all around them. They began to cross the field to the orphanage. The top layer of snow had hardened and now cracked under their feet like the surface of crème br?lée, something they’d never had the privilege of tasting.
“I like it when you call me darling,” Pierrot said.
“You do?”
“Yes. It’s surprising just how much I like it.”
“Why don’t you try saying something like that back to me?”
“Okay . . . well . . . how are you today . . . sweetheart?”
They both started to giggle.
“Well, and so, how did that make you feel?”
“Really, really good.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Sweetheart.”
“Darling.”
“Sweetheart.”
“Darling.”
They paused, just staring at each other. The snowflakes fell down, landing on their noses, landing on their lips, melting and turning them redder.
“Sweetheart.”
“Darling.”
And their lips shone and grew darker and became more and more enticing to each other. This was how they made a marriage vow at thirteen years old.
? ? ?
THEY CONTINUED TO TOUR AROUND the city into the spring. Colors began appearing everywhere on what had previously been a white page. The blossoms were like underwear blown off the laundry lines. The orchids hung over the cast-iron gates like girls in just their petticoats yelling at the postman for a letter. And they continued to tour into the fall, when all the leaves were like colorful candy wrappers, leftover from the very sweet days of summer.
Rose and Pierrot performed in all the big houses in Montreal. They were perfectly bilingual so they were able to perform in both French and English households. The city was the most magnificent in the world. It wanted to tell the two orphans its stories. What city doesn’t like to brag about itself? The gargoyle fauns leaned off the front of the buildings, whispering about their sex lives. The fat catfish in the greenhouse swore they had stock market tips. The horses on the carousel reared their heads, ready for a battle against the mermaid statues in the pond. An electric train rode around and around a tiny mountain in the toy-shop window, while its Lilliputian passengers dreamed in tiny berths. Rose and Pierrot’s feelings for each other during this time grew deeper and deeper.