Harry shook his head. “Oh, no. You see, we have to tell everyone it’s me because Bess looks so young, Welsh would try to pay her as a child, and we couldn’t live off that.”
The men laughed and clapped him on the back. “I’ll take some of that cake,” one of them said.
Saint looked at Bess. “Don’t you have a towel?” He turned to one of the younger players. “Lenny, get ’em a towel, would you? Don’t you have any manners?”
Bess looked over at Harry and smiled.
Bess didn’t notice until the morning that there was a tiny window cut into the side of the truck. When she woke up Harry was gone, and the day was bright and warm; there was no trace in the sky of the storm of the night before. She hurried to get dressed, then wandered around the grounds until she found the breakfast area. Half a dozen long pine tables had been set up under one of the open tents, and there was a sour-faced woman cooking eggs and toast on the far side of the dining area, in the shade. Another woman, wearing a warm, crooked smile, came up to her as she stood hesitantly at the entrance to the tent.
“Come on, you’ll sit with me, dear,” the woman said. “You don’t want nothin’ to do with those men over there. Are you a Houdini?”
Bess nodded.
“I’m Mrs. McCarthy. I’m a juggler. We’ve been waiting for you. Heard you got a good show going on. And you see we ain’t got nearly enough women here.”
“Yes . . . I see that.” Bess looked around at the men who were shoveling food into their mouths, spilling much of it onto the tables.
“Did Welsh really put you in the trailer with the canvas men? Does he want you to up and quit before you even start?” Mrs. McCarthy led her into a smaller tent adjacent to the breakfast tent. “Come on. The performers eat in here. Breakfast is almost over.”
“They’re not so bad,” Bess said.
Mrs. McCarthy appeared to be in her late thirties, and she was dressed decently enough, in a cream-and-purple-patterned day dress. The performers’ tent was much quieter than the other. The men and women—there was only Mrs. McCarthy and one other woman—sat together, and the younger one flirted with a blond-haired man in low whispers. There was a sense of familiarity to it, almost like home. Here, in this Pennsylvania field, the grass dusted with the dew of last night’s storm and the veil of light coming through the canvas, everything seemed still; Bess wanted to hold this gleaming moment before it slid away.
She spotted Harry at one of the tables and took a seat next to him. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Good morning. I didn’t want to wake you. You’re not mad I left you, are you?”
Bess shook her head. “Of course not.” She was stunned he had ventured off on his own.
A waiter put a cup of black coffee in front of her. “Ham or—?” He stopped. Bess looked at Harry, confused.
“One ham, one or, please,” Harry said, and everyone laughed.
“Or means eggs,” Mrs. McCarthy told Bess from across the table. “You can only pick one.” But she was amused. Harry looked at Bess, pleased with himself.
They both ordered eggs, and Bess turned back to Mrs. McCarthy. “Last night, Welsh said something about cakes. What are cakes?”
Mrs. McCarthy laughed again; it came from deep in her stomach, a kind of bellow. “Cakes means meals. He means you get your meals included when you work here.”
Bess nodded, relieved. At least they wouldn’t have to worry about food for the time being. She wondered what they would do with their salary if they didn’t have to pay for meals or lodging. She supposed Harry would want them to save it.
“Does anyone ever take a room in town, away from the trucks?” she asked, out of curiosity. She worried how Harry would fare in their close quarters over time.
Mrs. McCarthy shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that, hon. It’ll look bad for you. Everyone here does everything together. That’s the way it’s always been. There ain’t no privacy, but that’s the life.”
Bess looked over at Harry, who was talking to two of the men animatedly about their acts. She turned back to Mrs. McCarthy. “I almost forgot. Do you know where I can find an oven?”
“Bribed some of the men with food, did ya?” She nodded toward the back of the tent. “There’s no oven, but there’s a stove back there. I did the same thing when I first got here. It’s about the only way to get ’em to like ya if you can’t sleep with ’em.”
“What a sweet creature—what a beautiful face my wife has!”
Harry knelt beside Bess behind the curtained puppet theater, voicing the role of the male puppet, Punch. Beyond the stage, ten circus goers had gathered to watch their performance. Most seemed only minimally interested; the men were chewing tobacco and the children were looking around the tent. In the back corner, Welsh leaned against the pole, his face cool as stone.
Bess slapped Harry’s puppet with hers and looked down at the script. “Keep quiet, dummy! You’re a terrible husband.”