“You don’t think I’ll hurt you? I’ve done it before.”
“You have.”
“And you’re not scared?”
“If you hurt me, it hurts, and then it goes away,” I said, chin up, fierce. “I’ll survive it.”
“You’re not the only one I could hurt. There’s that boy.”
“He’s not a boy.” A wave of cold crashed over me. I hadn’t immediately thought of the threat to Clyde, but of course, my tormentor had.
“Whatever he is.” Ray sneered, stepping closer. “Your manager. Your lover. The slender one with the dark hair and the fine eyeglasses. The one who rubs his thumb along the bottom of your spine when he thinks no one is watching. The one who lives in New York, in rented rooms on the second floor of a house facing Jane Street. You care about him. And if you don’t do what I say, I will kill him.”
How long had he been following us, stalking us, watching, learning? I thought I was scared before, but when he threatened Clyde, all the fear before was just like a shadow of a hint of fear. This fear hurt more than being thrown twenty feet down from a hayloft. More than the guilt of surviving a fire in which many better people had perished. More than any broken bone. It hurt the most because I didn’t know when it would end. It might never.
If he knew where Clyde lived, all bets were off. Because I had no doubt at all that he would follow through. I felt the panic set my bones alight then, worrying that perhaps he’d already hurt Clyde and this was all just for show, but I made myself think like him. Of course his ultimate goal wasn’t to hurt my lover; it was to hurt me. He would give me a choice, because the consequences would be so much worse for me afterward if I knew I’d had the power to choose. Every way he’d hurt me before would be like a bee sting compared to how I’d feel if Clyde were killed, knowing I was the one responsible.
I forced myself to stand and look Ray in the eye. Then I asked, because I couldn’t ask anything else: “What do you want?”
“Everything.”
Cold and growing colder, I said, “Be specific.”
“You let me do what I want. No objections, no conditions. I want to break you and heal you.”
“For what purpose?”
“Because I want to,” he said. “I’ve wanted to since the beginning. You’ve always looked down on me, and I want you to know you can’t do that, not ever again.”
“You’re insane,” I replied.
“I don’t see how that changes anything,” he said, almost cheerfully.
With that, he stood close to me and reached his hand around my back, stroking the base of my spine lightly, running his thumb along the thin skin over the bone, just as he had seen Clyde do. It was a threat and a promise, and it paralyzed me, because I knew exactly what he meant by it. He wouldn’t just break my bones. He would break me, period. That was his intent.
I hoped for a knock on the door. I hoped for a burst of inspiration. I hoped for the strength to bluff my way through and refuse him, catching him off guard so I could turn the tables. I hoped for anything and everything. Nothing came. Nothing at all.
I did the only thing I could do, then.
I gave in.
After a restless, sleepless, awful night, I sent Clyde a cable telling him we were through. I wrote and rewrote it a dozen times, searching for the right words, searching for a way to send a secret message that Ray couldn’t see through. He was watching me, of course. He watched silently the whole time, standing behind me without a word. He only moved when I crumpled up each failed attempt in order to discard it, reached across me to grab the ruined sheet of paper, and deposited it in the wastebasket.
On the thirteenth attempt, I finally settled on the right lies, simply told. No secret codes, no hidden cry for help, just a plain, clear message bringing everything to an end. I told Clyde I didn’t love him anymore. I told him I’d grown to hate him over the past months, unable to trust or forgive him for the wrongs he’d done me, and that his appalling suggestion of marriage was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I accused him of seducing me for money, doing what a poor boy with a handsome face and few other talents does best. I tried to be as horrible as possible, harsh and petty, hoping he would believe me capable of such cruelty. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was sure he could. I’d been distant lately, ever since we’d started sparring over the Halved Man, and perhaps he thought there was more to it; this explanation could easily make sense to him, even though it wasn’t anything close to the truth. I told him our business and personal relationships were now at an end. An intermediary would contact him to manage the separation of finances in due time, ensuring that he didn’t profit from our association any more than he should, by the letter of our signed contract.
I also told Clyde not to contact me, that I never wished to hear from him again. I threatened lawsuits and worse if he even tried. This was a specific instruction Ray had given from over my shoulder, but I quickly realized it didn’t matter. He had watched me write the telegram and watched me send it. I realized he would be with me every sleeping and waking moment. Even if I did receive a reply, he would be there to intercept it. My life was no longer my own, just like that.
Deep in my girlish heart, I wished Clyde would come rescue me. The rest of me knew better. If he came, a rescue wouldn’t be the outcome. Not when Ray was ready to kill him on sight if I didn’t obey. All I’d be doing was delivering my beloved more swiftly into the grave. A living Clyde was preferable to a dead one, no matter whether I’d ever see him again. This way at least I could daydream of him, imagine him free, his happiness in trade for my sacrifice. This way one of us would survive. And perhaps, I told myself darkly, he would be better off.
Then I made changes. Some were suggested by Ray, in a tone that indicated they were not really suggestions, and some I did for my own sanity. I gave the twins their walking papers, then Tabitha, then Doreen. All knew me too well to think I’d throw Clyde over. They had to go. The twins stormed out, their angelic faces dark with anger. Tabitha sobbed. Doreen begged me for a reason, and while I tried to muster a frosty, imperious voice to dismiss her, the best I could manage was a simple “Because it’s time.” Ray stepped in and hustled her to the door, patting her back soothingly, and shot me a dark look. He wanted me to be a better actress, I supposed. It was all I could do to act like a human being.
Then there was a blur of work. Shifting the less experienced assistants into new roles meant more training and more trouble, and I had to overhaul the program completely. I gave up the Halved Man for several nights, which caused grumbling in the crowd. I had come up with a new version of the illusion that didn’t require twins, but I needed a new assistant to pull it off. We held hasty auditions in Bloomington. I chose a promising deaf boy who I knew would be both grateful for the work and undisturbed by the noise of the crowd or the rumors.
I missed Clyde like I would have missed a limb.
Everyone in the company knew he and I had been together this past year. It wasn’t known by the general public because we’d kept mum when asked by the newspapers, but among our little family, we’d made no secret of it. Now I wished we would have, but it was too late. They would think me a fickle whore. I couldn’t change that. I’d prided myself on building this strange family, on sowing the seeds of warmth and trust, but now a switch had been flipped, and they weren’t family anymore. I couldn’t let them matter. I couldn’t let concern for their welfare distract me from my own. There was something far more important to be done.
I had surrendered on the outside, but on the inside, I knew there were two things I could do: I could escape and outpace Ray to New York, hoping that Clyde would still be there, or I could figure out how to kill him.
Killing him should have been easy. I’d stabbed him before in desperate anger, and now I was twice as desperate and infinitely angrier. Could I do it with the straight razor again, do it right this time, in an unguarded moment? Stab him in the gut if I needed to, when he bent over my body to hurt me in whatever way he pleased? Or better yet, wait until he was asleep. He had to sleep sometime. Didn’t he?
But Ray was smart. Always had been. He was with me all the time, at every moment, when we were awake. He installed a new lock on the railcar door, and when he slept, he locked it from the inside, with the key hidden on his person, in a place he knew I’d never reach willingly. Everything sharp disappeared from the railcar. I searched in vain for the straight razor, a knife, a knitting needle, anything. He laughed, watching me hunt over every inch. He’d even stripped the car of mirrors so I couldn’t break one for a sharp edge to use against either of us.
With the mirrors gone, he did my makeup himself before each show, wielding brushes and powders with what I had to admit was a doctor’s skill. Every night, we went through the ritual. First was the flesh-toned cream, which he spread across my nose and cheekbones and blended with fluttering fingertips up to my hairline and down over my chin. The brush of matching powder danced lightly over my entire face, followed by a lighter variation of the same dance, softer, smaller bristles applying peach-colored powder to the apples of my cheeks. Gently, he held each eyelid closed with a thumb while he drew a kohl pencil along the very edge of my lashes, one eye and then the other. Last, and possibly worst, was the feeling of another, sharper pencil outlining the tender nerve endings of my poor lips, and then a wet brush of waxy lipstick filling in the outline. I was vulnerable at every moment, and I never knew if the precise, methodical application of these paints and powders would be interrupted with sudden pain, which could come from any direction. He might jam the brush down my throat, or curl his hand around a paint pot and slam it into my gut, or slowly work the point of a hat pin under my fingernail. Some nights there would be pain every minute; some nights, none at all. It seemed impossible that after such torture, I always looked beautiful. I had never applied my own makeup with such care. Ray was a brute with the hands of a surgeon, and I would have admired him if he hadn’t been as dark as the devil himself.
I knew what the future held, at least for a few weeks. The tour schedule was already in place; Clyde had set us up through the end of July. The tail end of the circuit was set. Indiana, then Illinois, then Iowa. Three states to live through, I told myself. Only three states. By then, I’d figure out my exit, one way or the other.
At first, I had plans. I’d slip out through the stage door, the moment before the show was to begin, and run for my life. I’d call for the doctor and wheedle him for laudanum, with which I could drug Ray’s coffee. I’d buy a gun from someone in the company, secret it in my blouse, shoot him dead in the railcar. But quickly, too quickly, the pain took over. I hadn’t realized exactly how, and how much, it would hurt.
The physical pain was bad enough, but the other pain, deep inside, was worse. I hurt because I’d lost. I had fought so hard to get away from that girl I’d been, the one who’d let herself be brutalized, who had accepted for a long time that she wasn’t worthy of being saved, and now I realized I’d never stopped being that girl. All those years, all that money, all the gleeful crowds, and I was still exactly as weak as ever. She had finally caught up with me.
Within a week, I had dark circles under my eyes. After two, I moved more slowly, my legs and arms turning to lead. At my best I was exhausted, and I was rarely at my best. In a town called Flora, I almost missed the show altogether, because he’d knelt on my forearm and slowly, slowly bent my right pinkie back until it cracked. The pain of the broken finger was excruciating, but just as bad was the pain of knowing he could do that, or anything else, to me that he wanted. I’d given him permission. To save Clyde, I’d signed on for that deal.