The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(28)

*

Back from our store run, I’m walking the darkened dirt road to the bathrooms when suddenly, from nowhere, another body is walking directly beside me, as if it always had been.

“I seen you,” the body says. “At Walmart.”

Crevices shine from the curtained windows of trailers parked along the road. The sliver of moon does not cast much light but beneath the picnic tables causes shadows to appear as decomposing bones in a shallow grave.

“Oh. Yeah. We just did a food run,” I say. He comes closer, and his face enters a slant of light. His cigarette smoke snakes up past a sweat-stained baseball cap. Smooth, tight skin across his cheeks makes him look like someone is holding his head closed, too tight, from behind. He pulls the cigarette out to exhale, and as he does, he smiles and worms his tongue out the side of his mouth. As we round a corner, two small lights above the bathrooms illuminate his whole face, sweaty and sunburned. I’d been warned about carnies a few times already. This one doesn’t seem especially harmful, and I have a sense that he, or any carnie, really, might be a piece in some puzzle I need to solve here.

“How many seasons you been out?” he asks, and I want to lie to sound like a pro, but don’t.

“This is my first,” I say. “First fair.”

“Holy shit, a greenhorn. You won’t ever be the same after this,” he says. He has a thick southern drawl, so I ask him where he’s from. If we are friendly, maybe he’ll tell me more. Maybe he won’t do any of those vague, bad things I’ve been warned about.

“I’m from Atlantic City, New Jersey,” he says. “But I put on this accent in order to catch these northern girls at the fair. They love the accent.” He laughs. “You know who is the most beautiful girl?” he says. “That one you were with at Walmart. Red hair. Black pants. Ass like there’s no tomorrow.” He means Pipscy. She is, indeed, beautiful, and has a Jessica Rabbit–meets–animé punk look she lives inside wholly and with confidence. She wears layers of long sleeves and jackets and wool hats in the daylight, tank tops at night. She’s desperate to keep her skin white as a geisha so she will be cast as Snow White in the dead princess version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show when she gets home.

“I know how to spot a true lady,” he says. “My IQ is five points less than Einstein.” We’re right beside the bathrooms, and part of me is relieved to be talking to a real live carnie, a man on the inside, a roustabout, and to find that he’s no different from other strange men I’ve encountered, but another part of me is exhausted, desperate to take the three further steps that will put me in the bathroom next to running water, to wash the layers of dirt off my face and walk back down the darkened road and climb into the truck and go to sleep and try this all again tomorrow. Do better, be stronger.

“Well, I better get going,” I say.

“Wait,” he says, stepping closer to my face, licking the edges of his mouth with his pointy tongue. “I’m gonna tell you something.” His hand grasps my forearm. “Do you know the secret to making hair grow longer?” he asks, taking off his cap and running his fingers through the short mess of brown hair beneath. I shake my head no. “Take calcium pills. Calcium is one of the key ingredients in hair,” he says, coming closer until his mouth is pressed up close to my face. “Every chick wants longer hair,” he whispers. He fingers the tips of my hair. I can feel the thump of blood in my neck, and the hairs rise on my arms.

“Well, I’ll be seeing you, then,” he says, and turns to walk away. I smile, unsure whether I’ve made my first carnie friend or invited trouble. Wondering whether there’s a difference. “I’m quite sure I’ll be seeing you,” he says, his back to me, and he begins to whistle, the notes all wet in his mouth. I’m standing still as the rain begins again, and somewhere down the road, there are children warm and asleep in their beds who will come to this carnival, and all of us, even the greenhorns, even the ones who rub a stranger’s hair, will be in charge of their joy.

I duck into the bathroom. Cassie and Sunshine are inside brushing their teeth and turn to face me immediately. “Never, never, never talk to carnies,” Sunshine says. “If you do, it’s like a free-for-all invitation for them to come to you anytime, wherever you are. They’ll try to pull some moves that I’m sure you won’t like. They will never leave you alone.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I say. “He didn’t seem that bad.”

“You just wait,” she says, a string of foamy toothpaste stuck to her chin. “You’ll see.”

The other carnies I’ve interacted with so far—the group I waited with for drug testing two days before the fair opened—didn’t seem so bad either.

*

There are six carnies in front of me, all of us crowded inside the back end of a big RV, waiting our turn to enter the small bedroom/office space up front for drug testing. We’ll pee into a cup in the attached bathroom.

It’s impossible to know anyone’s age because of what hard sun does to a face year after year, plus everything in the carnival seems to be taking place outside linear time, where each day feels as though it were stuffed with a dozen days: the day of clanging metal while the Ferris wheel, which had arrived late, was being scrambled together; the day of learning to clean clothes and dishes in the bathroom sink; the day of thinking and thinking and still not knowing who from home would be there to answer a call.