Sky Tongues (3 page)

   “
Doing what?” I asked suspiciously.
   He shrugged. “Running the rides, the concession stands, the games. Pretty much everything.”
   “Why aren’t you there now?”
   Smiling, he said, “That’s the best part, Sky. We basically only work weekends until later in the summer. Then it’s every day
and
night, but that just means a lot more cash. Unless you’re afraid of a little work, it’s the perfect gig.”
   I considered this and sipped my soda, hoping the aspirin would kick in soon. After a while, he asked, “So, what do you think? You wanna come work for me?”
   Here it was, the moment I’d been waiting for. Now he would ask me to fuck him or jerk him off or some other nasty thing I didn’t want to do.
   He appeared to read my mind and raised his hands in submission. “No funny stuff. Swear to gods. It’s all on the up and up.” I was still doubtful and he knew it. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we ride the train over to Eastie and I’ll introduce you to a couple of the kids in my crew. That sound ok?”
   “You’ll just take me to some motel or somewhere, right?” I asked, surprising myself.
   Gus, however, didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised. Or offended for that matter. “Nope. Just over to a big field where with a bunch of hauling trucks and another whole bunch of tents where the kids stay. A couple trailers, maybe a camper or two, but we can stay outside the whole time.” He raised his right hand, the three middle fingers held straight up and added, “Scouts honor.”
   I was still skeptical and he asked, “So, you think you might go home?”
   “Hell no!” I was somewhat irritated that he would even mention that as an option.
   “Well, where then?”

   
Where indeed. I admitted I didn’t know.
   “Then what do you have to lose? Other than being raped and murdered that is.”
   I laughed and then he laughed too, lighting another cigarette. “Just think about it for a while,” he said. “Hang with me a little longer and if I seem like a creep you can go along on your merry way to wherever. But if I seem like a pretty good guy—which I am—then just take a ride with me on a public train to a public place. No harm, no foul.”
   “Ok,” I agreed finally. He did seem like a pretty good guy. So far anyway.
16
   The scene was exactly as he’d described it: trucks with long beds and disassembled rides and beyond that a little tent city and a couple of crappy campers. There were several teenagers about, some sitting around talking while others kicked a hackey sack back and forth between them. A few adults lingered about too, sitting in folding chairs, smoking, talking. Everyone seemed to have a transistor radio and music could be heard from every direction. As soon as you passed one and the song would fade out, another one was fading in in front of you.
   Night had fallen and there was a general feeling of ease and relaxation in the air all around. The feeling I had was instantly a good one.
   Gus led me to the kids with the hackey sack. They we all Mues and they all smiled when they saw him. One boy left the game, came over to us and gave Gus a high-five. “Gus, my man! Missed you! Where’ve ya been?”
   Pointing at me, Gus said, “Trying to rescue another stray. Everyone, meet Sky. Sky, this is everyone.”
   “Like hell!” Someone yelled from one of the tents. Another person called, “Get out while you still can! He’s a slave driver!” And everyone laughed, including Gus.
   A shiny female fish-Skin stepped forward and shook my hand. “Don’t count on him to give us proper introductions. He has no manners. My name is Milo.”
   “Hi,” I said, instantly reverting to my shy nature.
    Milo introduced all the other Mues to me, which took a while and I forgot their names the moment I was on to the next, but every one of them gave me a friendly smile and somehow, I knew I was home.
17
   And so it was that I became a carnie.
   I was assigned a ring-toss game, working alongside Milo exactly two days after we met. Once again, I was told I needed to raise my voice and I did, pretending that my father could hear me and it was killing him to be able to do nothing about it.
   Milo was truly beautiful, even more so than Zion. Her scales threw rainbows off themselves whenever the sun hit her just right and as far as I could tell, she never neglected her skin, always keeping it moist enough so that it never flaked or became slimy.
   Like me, Milo dreamed of one day becoming an actor. Only unlike me, she wanted to do it in the movies, not on the stage and she’d never actually done any studying or spent any time on a stage or before a camera.
   But she was eager to learn and most of our time off was spent with me instructing her in the little ways that I could. I taught her what I knew of mime and tricks for memorizing lines, that anger was the easiest emotion to portray and happiness the hardest.
   Together we wrote mini plays and acted them out in our tent at night, with other Mues sitting around laughing at us, cheering the heroine and booing the villainess.
   We were silly teenagers, outcasts, and we accepted each other without question.
    I discovered that most of the kids Gus had recruited were runaways, or, like myself, throwaways. All had suffered abuse in one form or another and all adored him like a father. A
good
father, gentle, caring and loving unconditionally.
   It was many weeks before I discovered that he wasn’t human.
18
   We were all sitting around one night, talking and playing cards while Gus strummed an acoustic guitar and attempted to sing an old-time folk song. His voice was horrendous and by then I’d moved past my shyness enough to tell him so. “You really need to stop smoking,” I said. “You might be a decent singer if you did.”
   Gus laughed. “Darling, smoking has nothing to do with my voice. It’s just the way I was made.”
   I was clueless and said, “Well, whatever, but your lungs would love you more if you quit.”
   “You think I might get cancer, Sky?” This time everyone laughed with him, leaving me confused. He saw my bewilderment and rapped his chest with his knuckles. “I’m all synthetic inside, darlin’. I can smoke a hundred packs a day for a hundred years and cancer still won’t get me.”
   I gaped at him. “You’re a Split?”
   “Damn right. A proud one too!”
   Shocked, I couldn’t say another word. Splits were the lowest of Mues, even lower than Norms. They were mostly man-made and therefore, not considered Mues at all by some, my father included.
   Hillel, an Outie like myself, spoke up. “You have something against Splits, Sky?” he asked, clearly ready to defend Gus if it came to that.
   “No,” I said quickly. “I’m just surprised. I didn’t know.” I faked a chuckle, putting all of my training into it, and smacked my tongues into my forehead. “Gods, what an idiot I am.”
   The tension that had been building in the air quickly dissipated and everyone went back to their cards and Gus’s guitar once again twanged out its folksy tune.
   It seemed that my father had been wrong yet again and yet again, the thought made me smile.
19
   Towards the end of summer, the carnival traveled to the west coast where both the weather and the people were always beautiful. We were in San Diego, both Milo and I leaning on our counter watching the marks go by, one of us occasionally shouting at them to come and try their luck, when Milo said, “You know where we’re going in a couple days, right?”
   I didn’t, nor did I particularly care. Every place, I learned, was pretty much the same as the last and so were all the people. At first, I’d been excited to travel around and see new places but basically the only things that ever changed were the accents.
   “L.A.,” Milo told me, a tinge of excitement edging her voice.
   “Yeah?” I tried to feign interest. “Cool. But isn’t there a lot of pollution there? I’ve heard it’s kinda gross.”
   “Sky! Who cares if it’s gross! It’s LA! Do you know what that means?”
   I shrugged. “What?”
   “Hollywood!” she practically shouted. “We could get our big break!”
   “Ohhh.” I reached under the counter and grabbed a cigarette. I’d been smoking quite a bit by this time. I’d even mastered holding them only by the filter so my tongues wouldn’t make them too soggy to smoke.
   Milo gave me a look. “You don’t seem very excited for someone who feels she was
born
to act.”
   Dragging on my cigarette, I said, “Hollywood is about movies and that kind of shit. That’s not what I want.”
   She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure they have theaters there, Sky. Gods!”
   It was then that two teenage marks strolled up to our booth and wanted to toss a few rings around, so we got to back work and the subject was forgotten about for a while.
20
   Everything I’d heard about LA was true.
   The pollution can cause your eyes to water and birds fall from the sky choking so frequently that no one even pays attention to it. The streets are littered with every kind of imaginable debris and then some unimaginable. The people are rude and mostly not as beautiful as the media wants you to think. I hated the city immediately but fortunately, we set up in a parking lot across from a beach, which wasn’t bad. It kind of reminded me of home a little bit. It was August and little kids, Mues and otherwise, ran around with sunburns and sticky faces, having themselves a good old time. It was fun and I spent a lot of my time off riding the Ferris wheel over and over, looking out for miles across the blue Pacific ocean.
   While we were closing up a little after midnight of our first night there, Milo said she’d bought a paper on her break and circled all the open-call auditions. “You wouldn’t believe how many there are!” she declared, grinning from scale to scale. “Like, hundreds! I figure we can ask Gus for some time off and check out a few of them. It couldn’t hurt right?”
   On the contrary, I knew that auditions could often hurt quite a bit, but I kept my mouth closed on the subject. Instead, I said, “What makes you think he’ll give us the time off? He’s never given us time off.”
   “That’s my point. We haven’t had a single day off the entire summer. I’m sure if we beg enough he’ll say ok, especially if we can get Hillel to run our booth for a while.”

   “
And why would Hillel do that?”
   Milo wiggled her eyebrows up and down. “Let me worry about that.”
   I stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?
Hillel?”
   Laughing, she continued packing up all the plush prizes and never did answer me.

21
   That night Milo cornered Gus and begged him for the following day off.
   “No way,” he said quickly. “I need your booth open.”
   “Hillel will cover for us!” she insisted.
   Gus eyed her skeptically. “Is that so?”
   “Yeah. Go ahead and ask him.”
   “Hillel is the laziest son-of-a-bitch gods ever put on this planet.”
   Milo repeated her statement, telling Gus to ask him, which Gus immediately did, calling Hillel away from his hackey sack game.
   “Yeah, I’ll do it,” Hillel said. “No problem, boss.”
   Looking even more skeptical, Gus gave in, shrugging his shoulders. “Alright then, but if any of you kids give me any grief, if I lose even a single dollar tomorrow, you’re all gonna be on my shit list for a year.”
   Milo jumped up and hugged him around his neck. “You won’t lose a penny, Gus. We promise!” She then proceeded to thank him about a hundred times.
   To myself, I was wondering about the “we” shit she was promising, but as usual, I didn’t say a word.
22
   In the morning, before I was even fully awake, Milo began showing me the things she’d circled in the paper and pointing out bus routes on a map. I had to forsake a shower and get dressed as fast as I could, gloves and all, and then we were on our way, a mere twenty minutes after she’d shaken me awake.
   “This is insane,” I told her while we sat on the bus among a few dozen other people who all seemed to smell bad. “It’s hot and I’ve given up a day’s pay.”
   “Quit whining,” she said, staring out the window at the ugly landscape. “If I get even one of these jobs, I’ll pay for the damn day myself.”
   I sat back and pouted, mentally preparing myself for what I knew was going to be a long-ass day.
23
   By mid-afternoon the temperature was well over a hundred degrees, my tongues were miserably parched and Milo had yet to receive any positive feedback from any casting directors.
   “I need to find water for my tongues,” I told her.
   “Ok, just one more place first,” she said. “This audition is for an ice cream commercial, so it’ll be nice and cool inside. We might even get free ice cream!”
   I made a face behind her back but followed her onto the bus and to the next destination.
24
   We arrived late. The waiting room only contained only one actor who held a script close to his face and moved his lips while he read.
   Milo signed in, received her script and sat down beside me. “I told you it would be cooler in here.”
   Ignoring her, I pulled off my gloves and began licking my tongues to get them at least somewhat moist. A few minutes passed and a door opened. An actor came out looking dejected and the one who had been waiting went in. Impatient, I asked the receptionist if there was a water cooler around and she told me where I could find one down the hall a ways.
   By the time I returned with my tiny cup of water, Milo was gone, off to do her audition. I sat and sipped water, occasionally dipping my tongues despite the looks of disgust the receptionist was giving me. I glared right back and went on with my business.
   The water was gone by the time Milo emerged with the casting director. “We’ll give you a call,” he was saying. “But, just for future reference, you really should get yourself some headshots and a portfolio.”
   She smiled sweetly, saying yes and thank you, blah, blah, blah. I was just anxious to get the hell out of there and find a place where I could get a proper glass of water.
   “Ok, you’re up,” The director said.
   I sighed and licked my pinky tongue.
   “Young lady? It’s your turn.”
   Milo laughed and said, “Oh, she’s not auditioning. She’s just here for moral support.” And that’s when I looked up, realizing he’d been talking to me.
   “Oh, you’re kidding! With hands like that! Oh, no way. C’mon, get up.” He was waving a hand at me motioning for me to come with him through the door.
   I looked at Milo, who shrugged.
   “You want me to audition?” I asked the director.
   “Hell, yes. Now come on! Time is money.”
   “I don’t know…” And I really didn’t.
   “Free ice cream,” Milo smiled, showing me a cone of chocolate chip.
   It sure looked good. “Ok,” I said, getting up. “What the hell, right?”
   “What the hell, indeed,” the director agreed.
   I followed him through the door and to an extremely fake looking set pretending to be a suburban kitchen. “I don’t have a portfolio either, you know,” I told him.
   “Eh. Who cares? It’s always a good excuse to say that to some people though.” He grinned at as if we were best friends and I had to suppress a gag.
   There were a few people hanging around the set, camera, light and sound people by the looks of them. The director told me to go sit on a stool at the fake counter and face the camera, which was easy enough. Then someone handed me a bowl of ice cream.
   “Ok,” the director said, as he sat in his special director’s chair. “Now just act like you’re enjoying it. Like you’re
really
loving the shit out of that ice cream. It’s the best you’ve ever had in your entire life.”
   “Umm…ok.” I picked up a spoonful of ice cream, put it in my mouth and made a face of ecstasy.
   “No, no, no,” the director said, “use your hands.”
   “Excuse me?”
   “Your hands. The tongues on your hands?”
   “But…they don’t really taste that well. Only if something is really strong—”
   “Do I give a shit about that? No! How is anyone else gonna know if you can’t really taste with them, huh? They aren’t! So, just
act
like you can and what they’re tasting is delicious. Go on now, stick your tongues right in there.”
   I looked around at the whole crew staring at me. “So…uh…how much would I get paid if I got this thing anyway?”
   Five seconds later, I was sticking all ten of my tongues in that bowl and enjoying every bit of it.
25
   I got the job and Milo took the news much better than I had hoped.
   Gus, on the other hand, was extremely unhappy when I told him I’d have to stay in LA for perhaps as long as a week. “No way,” he said firmly. “I won’t allow it. Who knows what kind of trouble you could get into on your own. These people are vultures! Absolutely not.”
   I told him how much I’d be making for the work and he whistled. “Holy shit! Well, I can see why you’re tempted, Sky, but the answer is still no. I need you here. We still have the whole pacific coastline to do. Maybe I can send you back once we’re done, but—”