“And the circus isn’t the same without this Herr Thiessen?” Bailey asks, wondering if this has something to do with what Poppet had told him.
“It is different without him, for us, of course,” Lorena says. She pauses thoughtfully before she continues. “The circus itself seems a bit different as well. Nothing in particular, only something … ”
“Something off-kilter,” Victor interjects. “Like a clock that is not oscillating properly.”
“When did he die?” Bailey asks. He cannot bring himself to ask how.
“A year ago tonight, as a matter of fact,” Victor says.
“Oh, I had not realized that,” Lorena says.
“A toast to Herr Thiessen,” Victor proposes, loud enough for the entire table to hear, and he raises his glass. Glasses are lifted all around the table, and Bailey raises his as well.
The stories of Herr Thiessen continue through dessert, interrupted only by a discussion about why the cake is called a pie when it is clearly cake. Victor excuses himself after finishing his coffee, refusing to weigh in on the cake issue.
When he returns to the table, he has a telegram in his hand.
“We are headed to New York, my friends.”
Impasse
MONTRéAL, AUGUST 1902
After the illusionist takes her bow and disappears before her rapt audience’s eyes, they clap, applauding the empty air. They rise from their seats and some of them chatter with their companions, marveling over this trick or that as they file out the door that has reappeared in the side of the striped tent.
One man, sitting in the inner circle of chairs, remains in his seat as they leave. His eyes, almost hidden in the shadow cast by the brim of his bowler hat, are fixed on the space in the center of the circle that the illusionist occupied only moments before.
The rest of the audience departs.
The man continues to sit.
After a few minutes, the door fades into the wall of the tent, invisible once more.
The man’s gaze does not waver. He does not so much as glance at the vanishing door.
A moment later, Celia is sitting in a chair across the circle from him, still dressed as she had been during her performance, in a black gown covered with delicate white lace.
“You usually sit in the back,” she says.
“I wanted a better view,” Marco says.
“You came quite a ways to be here.”
“I had to take a holiday.”
Celia looks down at her hands.
“You didn’t expect me to come all this way, did you?” Marco asks.
“No, I did not.”
“It’s difficult to hide when you travel with an entire circus, you know.”
“I have not been hiding,” Celia says.
“You have,” Marco says. “I tried to speak with you at Herr Thiessen’s funeral, but you left before I could find you, and then you took the circus across the ocean. You’ve been avoiding me.”
“It was not entirely intentional,” Celia says. “I needed some time to think. Thank you for the Pool of Tears,” she adds.
“I wanted you to have a place where you felt safe enough to cry if I could not be with you.”
She closes her eyes and does not reply.
“You stole my book,” Marco says after a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“As long as it is somewhere safe it does not matter whether I keep it or you do. You could have asked. You could have said goodbye.”
Celia nods.
“I know,” she says.
Neither of them speaks for some time.
“I am trying to make the circus independent,” Celia says. “To untie it from the challenge, from us. From me. I needed to learn your system to make it work properly. I cannot let a place that is so important to so many people fade away. Something that is wonder and comfort and mystery all together that they have nowhere else. If you had that, wouldn’t you want to keep it?”
“I have that whenever I’m with you,” Marco says. “Let me help you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“You cannot do this alone.”
“I have Ethan Barris and Lainie Burgess,” Celia says. “They have agreed to assume management for the basic operation. With a little more training, Poppet and Widget should be able to handle the manipulation aspects that Ethan and Lainie cannot manage. I … I do not need you.”
She cannot look him in the eye.
“You don’t trust me,” he says.
“Isobel trusted you,” Celia says, looking at the ground. “So did Chandresh. How can I believe that you are honest with me and not with them, when I am the one you have the most reason to deceive?”
“I never once told Isobel that I loved her,” Marco says. “I was young and I was desperately lonely, and I should not have let her think I felt more strongly than I did, but what I felt for her is nothing compared to what I feel for you. This is not a tactic to deceive you; do you think me that cruel?”
Celia rises from her chair.