The Troupe (24 page)

“Okay.”

“You ready to go back to the hotel? You look like it.”

George nodded, and his father helped him off the stool and held him up with one arm as they lurched back to the hotel.

“What’s today?” asked George.

“Today? I don’t know. March second, I think.”

“That’s what I thought,” said George. “It’s my birthday.”

“It is?” said Silenus. “Shit, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I guess I had too much on my mind.”

“Well, hell,” said his father. He grunted as he tugged George up the front steps. “Happy birthday, kid.”

For a little while after things felt much easier between George and his father. He was still not particularly happy with his place in the troupe, but for now he was content to simply do as his father asked. And Silenus bought him a music box for his birthday, and Stanley a
pair of white satin gloves: “For when your day comes,” read the note. It was nice to know that at least someone was thinking of him.

But then, two weeks after George’s debacle at the audition, he had a distressing encounter. They had just checked into a new hotel, and George was down in the lobby restaurant getting a midnight snack when a man stopped at his table and stared at him.

“Can I help you?” asked George.

“You were the kid in the tuxedo,” said the man. He was extremely tall and broad, and clad in an ill-fitting suit. “Weren’t you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yeah, that was you,” said the man. He grinned. “It was just a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it? At Herfeitz’s Theater in Lansing. That had to have been you.”

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that establishment,” said George.

“No, no,” he said. “You was there. It was the place that had the butcher’s counter in the back.”

George stiffened when he heard this. “You what?” he said. “You were in that audience?”

“Yeah, I was there. I was in town on business, thought I’d catch a show. I have to admit, you were something else. You were great.”

“I was… I was
great
?” said George. “Then why on Earth did you throw tomatoes at me?”

“Oh, I didn’t,” he said. “Not me, I didn’t throw a thing.” He stopped smiling. “And the other guys… well. They didn’t
want
to. They thought you were pretty great too, really.”

“Then why did they?”

“Well, we was told to.”

“Told to?” said George. “I knew it! The theater owner made you, didn’t he? I bet they did that to all the acts, the bastards!”

“No, not the owner,” said the man. “And not all the acts. We were told to boo just at you.”

“Me? And it wasn’t the owner? Then who?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know,” he said. “He just gave everyone a quarter and said to boo the kid in the tuxedo.”

“What did this man look like?”

The man shrugged. “Well… he was kind of a short fella. Had a big top hat and a big black mustache. And he had funny eyes. Really, really blue eyes. He was sort of an odd bird, really.”

George’s belly grew cold and his mouth went dry. “W-what?” he said faintly.

“I wasn’t sure why he’d pay us to throw food at you, but, well… a quarter’s a quarter. I’m sorry about how they treated you. I hope you keep playing.” He saluted. “So long.”

George sat at his table, still as a stone. There was only one person that man could’ve been describing, and George knew immediately that he’d been snookered yet again. His father must have somehow known
exactly
what he was going to do, and taken steps to ensure that George’s ambition was safely quashed. And then after, when Harry had found him in the bar and talked to him about being ready… He had sounded so sincere, so genuine. And yet he’d engineered
everything
.

George had never felt so manipulated in all of his life. He stood up from the table and dashed for the stairs, intending to rush up and burst into his father’s office and confront him. Yet on the first landing was Stanley, and he saw that something was wrong.

He stepped to the side to block George’s path, and wrote:
WHERE ARE YOU GOING
?

“I’m going to see Harry!” George said. “I’m going to kick his damn door down and tell him I know what he did, that’s where I’m going!”

Stanley gently pushed him back.
CALM DOWN
.

“I won’t calm down!” said George. “I don’t need to calm down! It is perfectly just for me to be angry about this!”

ABOUT WHAT?

George stood there for a moment, quivering. He wanted to hold
his anger back, but it was difficult to do so before Stanley, who had always been so kind to him and always seemed to understand everything. So it all came pouring out: he told Stanley about how he’d wished to become more important to the troupe, and yet had been refused every time, and about how he’d gone to the audition to try to test himself, and yet he’d been humiliated and pelted with rotten vegetables… and how just now, there in the lobby of the hotel, he’d learned his father had been behind it all.

Stanley seemed to briefly share George’s anger. But then it was gone, and he only looked regretful. He wrote:
YOU ARE RIGHT. THAT WAS NOT THE BEST THING TO DO
.

“Not the best!” cried George. “Not the best! Having your son pelted with rotting tomatoes? I shouldn’t think so!”

Stanley wrote:
I WILL TALK TO HARRY
.

“No, you won’t! It’s me who’s suffered! I deserve to be the one! What he did was unbelievably selfish!”

LIKE SABOTAGING COLETTE’S PERFORMANCE
?

George paused as he read this. “What? N-no. That’s… that’s completely different.”

Stanley cocked an eyebrow.

“Messing up a bit during Colette’s act and… and being hit with rotten fruit are not the same thing.”

SHOULD WE ASK COLETTE
?

George, remembering how furious she’d looked when she hit him, shook his head. “No. I don’t think that’d be wise.”

Stanley wrote:
PROBABLY MADE HIM THINK YOU NEEDED TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON
.

“And what lesson was that?”

Stanley shrugged, and wrote:
HUMILITY
?

“What?” said George. “What would I need to learn about that?”

Stanley rolled his eyes, but smiled at him and wrote:
ONE DAY YOU WILL HAVE TO LEARN THAT YOU ARE NOT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD GEORGE
.

“I know I’m not! I just… I just wish things weren’t always so awful.”

This surprised him.
THINK THINGS ARE AWFUL
?

“Well… not awful. But I never thought traveling with my father would be anything like this.”

Stanley looked at him sadly. Then an idea seemed to come to him.
COME WITH ME
, he wrote.
SHOW YOU SOMETHING. AND GET YOUR COAT. WILL BE COLD
.

George put on his coat and followed him up the dark, musty stairs. They circled around and around, passing through cavernous attics and empty storage closets and halls of rooms. Finally they came to a thick heavy door, and when Stanley pulled it open a blast of icy air barreled out at them, and they both bent over and pushed ahead. When they were finally clear of the door George managed to open his eyes and look around.

They were on the roof of the hotel, surrounded by a forest of chimneys and vents and leaning columns of steam. Fat flakes the size of his thumb twirled down around them in winding currents. Stanley gestured again and led George toward the edge of the roof, and pointed at something.

George was not sure what it was as he approached. It looked like there was a huge light or lantern hanging off the side of the roof, shining incredibly bright, but when he got near he saw it was not on the side of the roof at all, but in the distance. The light was very, very far away, in fact, almost on the horizon. It was just so large it’d confused him.

George squinted at it. It was ghostly and strange-looking in the night, and he thought he could discern forms in the light, huge structures and blocks nearly eclipsed by iridescence. “What is it?” he asked.

Stanley wrote:
CHICAGO
.

“Chicago? That’s a
city
?” said George.

Stanley nodded.
LOOKS GOOD AT NIGHT. WE ARE JUST ON THE OUTSKIRTS
.

“I had no idea we were so close! I’ve lost track of things so much that I didn’t realize… How far away is it?”

Stanley wrote:
FAIRLY FAR. IT IS A VERY BIG CITY
.

“Have you been there?” asked George.

He nodded.

“What was it like?”

VERY PRETTY PLACE. THEY KNOW IT IS A STOCKYARD CITY SO THEY TRY AND COMPENSATE. WINTERS ARE HARD. NEVER BEEN SO COLD. EXCEPT MAYBE TONIGHT
. He erased, wrote:
SITS ON THE EDGE OF THE KEITH CIRCUIT. BEYOND THAT IT IS THE ORPHEUM. ALL THE WAY TO THE PACIFIC
. He thought, then erased his message again.
COME HERE OUT OF THE WIND. EARS ARE PINK
.

Stanley led him behind a chimney. It was much warmer there, and they held their gloved hands to its brick surface and stamped their feet while they gazed at the city on the horizon. When Stanley’s fingers grew numb it became difficult to write his messages, so he was forced to hold his hands much closer to the chimney than he normally would have.

“Does it bother you much?” said George. “Not being able to speak?”

Stanley shook his head, smiling.

“Why not?”

MOST PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS FILLING TIME UP
, he wrote.
ALWAYS MOVING, SPEAKING, WAITING. A MOMENT IS A THING TO TOLERATE FOR THEM, NOT TO ENJOY
. He erased what he’d written, and wrote:
SILENCE MAKES ME APPRECIATE IT. THINK OTHERWISE. THERE IS PEACE IN LETTING GO. ERASING THINGS FOR SILENCE. PLEASURE IN JUST SITTING
.

“It’s good that you’re with him. My father, I mean,” said George. “I think he needs someone like you to help him stay grounded. More than he does me.”

Stanley looked at him sadly again. He had large, soft brown eyes with very delicate, almost feminine lashes. He wrote:
DO NOT BE ANGRY WITH HIM. HE HAS KNOWN ONLY THIS STRUGGLE FOR SO LONG. DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ELSE ANYMORE
.

“You’d think he would try to know,” said George. “All he thinks of is business, and the troupe, and the song. I’m not important to him at all. He’s only called me ‘son’ once.”

CHANGING IS HARD. ESPECIALLY FOR SOMEONE AS OLD AS HIM
.

“He’s not that old. He’s only in his forties, isn’t he?”

Stanley did not meet his eyes. He wrote:
MAYBE
. Then he turned away to warm his hands, wrote something, and turned back around. He held up the blackboard, and his eyes were sadder than ever. The board read:
YOUR FATHER LOVES YOU, GEORGE. PLEASE KNOW THAT. FOR ME
.

“It’s hard to think so,” said George. “Especially when everything is so difficult.”

DIFFICULT? LOOK AROUND. IS THIS UNPLEASANT?

George looked at the snowflakes pouring down from the star-scattered sky. Chicago blazed in the distance, and he felt as though they were on the prow of a ship in a deep dark sea, sailing home.

He smiled. “No. No, I suppose it isn’t.”

Stanley nodded.
THAT IS THE BEST THING YOU CAN EVER DO. ADMIT THINGS ARE PLEASANT, IF ONLY FOR A LITTLE WHILE
. He erased what he’d written, and wrote:
LET ME TALK TO HARRY. I WILL TRY AND MAKE THINGS BETTER. FOR NOW, PLEASE TRY AND FORGET ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED
.

“It won’t be easy,” said George.

He wrote:
NEVER SAID IT WOULD BE
.

“All right,” said George. “If you say so.”

Then Stanley laid a hand on George’s shoulder, his long fingers gently touching the back of George’s neck. As he removed his hand his fingers trailed down George’s arm as though he wished to feel more of him. It made George uncomfortable to experience that, here
alone on the rooftop with this much older man, but he was not sure why.

They heard someone calling their names. They went back to the stairwell door and found Colette there, shivering in her thin coat.

“Thought I saw you two come up here,” she said. “What the hell were you doing?”

“Seeing the sights,” said George. “What happened?”

“It’s Kingsley,” she said. “He can’t get out of his bed. It hurts too much, he said.”

George and Stanley exchanged a glance and followed her downstairs.

Kingsley lay on his bed, pale and sweating and nearly unconscious, while Silenus and the rest of the troupe looked on. He dreamily insisted that they place his marionettes beside him, and Stanley was given the unenviable task of carrying these up to his room. When he laid a hand on one of the boxes he wept silently.

“Should we take him to a doctor?” asked George.

“No,” whispered the professor. “No doctors.”

“But you’re ill, Kingsley,” said Colette. “Look at you. You can’t even stand.”

“No doctors,” he said again. “I’ll be fine. Just need some rest.” Then he pulled one of the boxes to him and held it in his arms as though he were embracing a small person, and fell asleep.

Silenus took over Kingsley’s spot as the opening act of their performance. George was told he was a splendid monologist who could enrapture any crowd, but he was unable to witness it for himself; as the one member whose job could be done by a theater employee, he was assigned the task of looking after Kingsley, to his dismay.

George spent hours in their flophouse hotel holding a cold rag to Kingsley’s head and mixing tinctures of opium and guaiacum for him. Kingsley at first prissily resented George’s attentions, but he eventually relented, too exhausted to be difficult.

“Tell me,” said Kingsley once after George had given him his tincture. “Does he value you?”

“Who?”

“Harry. Does he value and love you? Is he a loving father?”

“I don’t know,” said George. He sniffed. “But maybe I’m getting used to being unappreciated.”

“He doesn’t know how lucky he is,” said Kingsley. He coughed, and said, “I should have very much liked to be a father. I feel I was meant to be one.”