The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(23)

“Your loss,” he says, and disappears down into the darkness.

*

“Tex,” Tommy whispers, breaking my stare. Red’s blockhead act with the nails up his nose is over, Snickers is sitting in the ticket box beside our front bally stage, and Tommy has spotted approaching marks.

“You ready for the snake?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, meaning no. Meaning, clearly, completely, no. Tommy uses two hands to lift the snake off his shoulders and set her onto mine. She’s shimmery and cold, eyes milky blue because she’s readying to shed. The meat of her middle rests on my shoulders and throat, sliding across my body as she squeezes my limbs. Approaching kids point and call out, specks of spit flying from their wet mouths. “A snake! A big snake!” one squeals.

A carnie shaped like an apple stops as he’s walking by. “Red-tailed boa?” he asks. I nod.

My heart is clomping and kicking with such ferocity beneath the snake’s heavy body that I’m afraid she’ll mistake it for the quick pitter of a rat’s heart, her dinner, and this very thought makes it pump faster and sweat bead on my hairline and upper lip and my wet fishnetted feet slip inside my heels.

The carnie takes a few steps back but keeps his eyes on the snake. “Had me a red-tailed boa for ten years,” he says. “Loved her. Had to kill her, though.”

“Oh?” I say, curious, but not sure I want to know why.

“I was at the vet buying her some medication, and just as I was leaving, I mentioned how strange it was that the last few weeks I’d been waking up in the night with her stretched out long beside me on the bed. I let her roam free in my house, but she’d never done that before. I was just telling the vet sort of as a joke, ’cause I thought she wanted to snuggle with me. But the vet stopped what he was doing and looked at me so seriously. You need to go home, put her in a cage, and bring her back in right now, he told me. I asked him why. Because, the vet said, she’s measuring you to see if you’ll fit in her body. She’s planning to eat you. I have to kill her. And he did.”

Tommy starts laughing his high-pitched cackle that sounds too performer-perfect to be real. I’m about to pee myself.

“Just know that when she stretches out long beside you, it’s time to say your goodbyes,” the carnie says. “Anyway, boas are sweeties. Aren’t you, baby?” he says to the snake. “Better get back. See ya,” he says as he walks away, throwing a peace sign over his head as he leaves. I have a lot of questions for Tommy, but before I can get any of them out, he ups the ante.

“You think you can do the dollar-bill trick and still keep hold of that snake?” Tommy asks.

“Sure,” I say, gulping, and try to force a smile.

The night before, Tommy had asked for one of my dirty socks when I was getting ready for bed. I’d dug one out of my stash of dirty laundry, a sock I’d worn during a long, sweaty day of setup, and he’d dropped it into the snake cage for the night. So they can get used to my smell, he said. So they’ll be comforted by it. But all I can imagine is the sock gripped in one’s coils while it is shredded completely by the fangs of the other, the snake’s best attempt at a dead animal warning on a doorstep.

Tommy reaches into the ticket box for a dollar and hands it over. Both my hands are on the snake’s body, and it takes me a few seconds to rearrange them enough to free a hand to take the bill.

“Know what? How about you just get used to the snake a while,” Tommy says. “We’ll add the bill later.”

It occurs to me that there is no real reason why they should keep me on. And then, as suddenly, that they might not. That they could decide that I don’t have much skill or strength or experience or whatever the things are that everyone else seems to possess. They could ask me to leave.

I take a deep breath and resolve to dig deeper. To make myself necessary. To stay.

The big beauty lies across my neck.

I feel the snake’s tongue flick against my earlobe. I feel it on my cheek. I’m smiling, I’m waving. The kid is pointing at the snake. We are luring them into the tent. I try to focus on that feeling—my job as a conduit of wonder for this kid. I feel the snake’s face slide onto the hand I have beside my neck, my fingers pressing against her coil to keep her from strangling me, calm, calm, peaceful and calm, I chant to myself. People do this every day. Some people, somewhere. The snake does not want to hurt me because she thinks I’m a tree, I think, and then I feel a sharp pain on my finger. I yank my hand back, hold it up in front of my face. It’s bleeding.

The snake bit me.

Now, I die.

I am standing onstage, waiting to die.

Tommy continues ballying. I hold my finger in front of my face for two, three seconds, watching the droplets of blood bloom from the flesh, sure someone will notice and start screaming, but Tommy is getting ready to swallow his sword, and nobody is looking at me. I use the back of my hand and wrist to push the snake’s face as far from me as I can get her.

I have been bit. I have been bit by the snake. I repeat these unbelievable sentences in my head.

I do not believe that this snake is not poisonous. Sure, I’ve been told she’s not poisonous because she’s a boa, and sure, boas don’t bite, they squeeze. But she bit me.

I look over to Tommy dramatically, not quite wanting to interrupt his bally but also desperately wanting him to notice. To get ready to catch me as I faint.