Nightmare Carnival

“I wasn’t cursed by a wizard or anything, or maybe I was — the Wizard of Mediocrity. He ruled everything, every fucking cul-de-sac for miles around. We lived it, we breathed it, we ate it breakfast, lunch, and dinner by the bucketful. We sure as fuck drove through it. But I was smart, which meant I took the smart classes, which meant, you know, I had to work a little harder, smoke a little more dope to finish my math homework. But I was real good at it, and I did a science project. A science project. I don’t even remember what it was about exactly, some barely coherent sustainable habitat horseshit I came up with when I was high on several substances, including weed, speed, and acid. Certainly beer. Ended up a winning combination. I won a ribbon at a science fair. I think the judges liked the model I built to go with it. I later ran over it repeatedly with my car but that’s more the middle of the story. I cashed in the ribbon for a scholarship, started believing my own bullshit, and next thing you know I had more or less faked my way into grad school until I landed an internship at an environmental agency on my way to green science stardom.

“I was supposed to monitor a major watershed for toxic substances. I didn’t do it. Busywork, I figured, for a smart guy like me. It was a hot, unpleasant summer. I had interviews for real jobs. I faked the data. I’d faked everything else in my life. Why not? I looked at the last three reports and wiggled them this way and that. I was a master faker. Only trouble is I missed a toxic bloom you might’ve read about. Google liver cancer, and it’s bound to turn up. Birth defects is the latest, most horrible consequence, but they didn’t know all that back then, how bad it was going to be, because thanks to me, it had gone virtually undetected for months.

“The minute I heard the analysis of the shit I allowed to go right into the reservoir, I knew enough, smart bioscience whiz that I was, to know how bad it was going to be, enough to know I was basically a slow-motion mass murderer, visiting death upon several generations. When my laptop was seized as evidence, I knew I was screwed and ran.

“Sam was looking for someone with my skill set, someone without a past to keep his carnival running. Running from pretty much everything else, I spent a few years feeling ridiculously sorry for myself. I was scarcely worthy of my sympathy.” I look at her. She’s listening intently. I’ve never spoken to her like this, ever, opened up to anyone since I joined this carnival over a decade ago. We’ve talked about books and movies and music and food and the first time we swam and the way the striated clouds looked in the slow sunset and the calm that comes with listening to the river flow, but not our stories. What was it she said? Not the silenced anguish of our lives. “Then you showed up, and like you say, at first all I could think was, ‘That’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’ Then I heard you sing, saw you die — the most beautiful, and the saddest things in all the world, in a single moment. When you came back to life in my little fortress of solitude, hugged my toilet, bled on my sheets — that broke the wizard’s curse for good, I can tell you. Love you? Oh, it’s much worse than that. Love you doesn’t begin to cover it.

“The last class I went to in grad school I was high and totally unprepared, scared out of my mind because everything was starting to fall apart, and I was supposed to make some presentation on the research I hadn’t done, and the professor asked me if I was ready, and I started to give him some lame excuse, when somehow the truth just came out, and I told him I wasn’t ready, that I’d never been ready my whole fucking life. What was the point? The fucking point. I’m sure I said fucking. Ready? For what?

“Then I met you.”

Her eyes are full of tears like mine. She lays her hands on my cheeks. “You know what I’ve wished for? Someone like you, Orlando. Someone who loves me because of who I am — what I am — no matter what. You think I’m brave?”

“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known.”

She kisses me softly on the lips. She lingers a tender moment. “Orlando, we have to go back. I’ve promised to perform.”

“Promised who?” I ask, though I already know.

“Bartholomew.”