for every degree the temperature rose. The air bloomed with heat—outrageous weather for northern California in April, ninety-five degrees as they approached two o’clock. Every citizen of El Campo should have wanted ice cream in weather like this—cones and sundaes and cool coffee drinks mortared with whipped cream. Hank Shank was driving people away. Not an inconsiderable achievement, Vivy thought.
Now that she was thinking, her thoughts carried her well past Hank Shank, stooped on his stool on the little oak stage. The Etch A Sketch Drill Team! Teeny Marteeny the contortionist! Unchecked, her angry memory was running through Stage Left’s entire old corps of acts. Any of them would have had the store full to bursting, selling ice cream hand over fist. In the corner, teenagers rolled up their T-shirts, rubbed ice cubes over one another’s bellies and moaned. “Oooh, baby. That’s so good.” Then, bored, they pulled balloons down from the ceiling and mangled them. They ignored Hank Shank, finally on his feet and bowing for the few people applauding—Nancy, basically.
Vivy stooped to pick up a napkin at her feet, noting its slogan: “Know Your Vision. Embrace Your Vision. Make Your Vision.” Without hesitation, she envisioned a stack of hundred-dollar bills, enough to buy a few weeks’ vacation. Then she glanced out the door and envisioned Fredd the Juggler.
She found Fredd ten years before on the boardwalk at Sausalito, where Vivy and Sam had gone because Vivy was hungry for mussels and Sausalito still had some cheap restaurants then. Fredd was enormous, his shoulders like hams and his thighs like bigger hams. He spilled out of his tank top like fruit spilling out of a bag, and his grin was unexpectedly sweet, wide-spaced teeth set into his gums like individual pieces of corn. His size alone would have made Vivy stop, but then he wrenched the concrete top off of a trash can that had Sausalito Clean! stenciled on it. Sam was watching too, and whistled. “Gotta be at least seventy pounds.”
Tossing the rough green top lightly from hand to hand, Fredd grinned. “What do you think?” he called to the growing crowd.
“Awesome!” said a kid.
“Scary,” said a girl who didn’t sound scared.
“Not bad,” Sam said, “but one is easy. Let’s see you do it again.”
Fredd beamed his corn-kernel smile back at Sam as if he’d hoped for just this invitation. The next trash can was about fifty feet away, and by the time Fredd got there, he was balancing the first top on his thick forearm. Wrenching up the second one took even less time. Maybe another strong man had been there earlier and loosened it up for Fredd.
“Now juggle,” Sam said.
Even Vivy murmured, “No,” but Fredd looked delighted. With a soft grunt he heaved the first trash can top into the air, then the second. His catch, as the first one plummeted, was delicate to the point of daintiness, and he relaunched it well before the second one fell into his big, waiting hand. Vivy had seen a lot of juggling. She didn’t much care for it, all that circus shtick. But watching Fredd juggle those heavy, rough concrete wheels, with grace, was watching something impossible happen. After about a minute, Fredd started to giggle, as if he couldn’t contain himself. Naturally, the crowd burst into applause, and so he caught both tops and bowed, but she could see his disappointment. He wanted to juggle more. By the time they left Sausalito that day, Vivy and Sam had a contract with Fredd, written and signed on a series of bar napkins.
No Stage Left act had been as popular as Fredd. Once, at an outdoor festival with the Etch A Sketch Drill Team, she watched him juggle two unicycles, the ungainly machines glittering as Fredd heaved them six feet over his head. She still shivered when she remembered it. Nancy would have had a cow. That thought was all it took for her to fish her phone out of her pocket. She still had Fredd’s number. He answered on the first ring for Vivy, his old friend and biggest fan. No, he wasn’t far. He didn’t often leave the area anymore, what with the kids.
“Kids?”
“Jesus, Vivy. Don’t you ever open your Christmas cards?”
Sometimes she did, though sometimes not until March. He would come on over. It would be fun. “Will I get paid?”
“You will be paid,” she said. He would. Somehow.
“I’m on my way.”
She hung up as another trio of teenagers sauntered to the door, and she put a hand on the girl, a twig of a human being with magenta hair. “You should stay. There’s a juggler coming who’s amazing. You’ve never seen anything like him.”
“And as long as we’re in here, you’ll want us to order more ice cream. No thanks.” The girl pulled her wrist away.
“I don’t care if you sit there and play five-card stud,” Vivy said. “But you should really see this guy.”
“You work here, right?”
“I’m just trying to tell you. It’s not something you’ll want to miss.”
“You know, if you really want to please your audience, can the juggler and bring in somebody to fix your air-conditioning.” The girl flipped her pink hair over her shoulder and sidled past Vivy, the two boys in knee-length cutoffs and eyebrow rings attending her. All of them practically fleshless, nothing but sinews and joints. Fredd would be able to juggle them, if Vivy could keep them here. Over at the counter Nancy and Sam stood rinsing scoops. Nancy’s lush, showgirl body commanded the narrow space; beside her Sam appeared practically elfin, although he was not a small man. Later Vivy would tease him about spending the day at eye level with Nancy’s breasts.
Twenty minutes passed before Fredd pulled up in the rusting, belching VW van he had been driving since 1988. Ignoring Nancy’s pointed look, Vivy hurried out and let Fredd wrap her in his burly arms, his orange and purple shirt smelling like old cheese, his shaggy mustache scrubbing her cheek. “Still a lady-killer,” she said as he beamed at her.
“Still a flirt.”
“Me? I’m a business gal. I’ve sold out.”
“Don’t try to fool me. You’ve still got it.” He looked at the sign in front of the store. “Really?”
“Don’t get all choicey now. I’m about to put you back onstage.”
He glanced at the store, its small platform and low ceiling. “If you want to call it that.” He trotted to the back of the van and unloaded clubs, knives—he held up a torch and looked at Vivy questioningly.
“Are you nuts?”
Shrugging, he pulled out a box of ping-pong balls. If there wasn’t much wind, he could juggle six of them. If there was no wind, he could juggle a dozen.
He paused and considered every bit of paraphernalia until Vivy grabbed his massive arm and pulled him into the store. She was a tugboat with a wayward tanker. Fredd kept trying to shake hands with everybody he could reach, including a stubble-headed teenage girl with two rings connected by a tiny chain in her nose, who looked up from her pocket-sized video game and said, “Jesus. Finally.”
“You won’t be sorry you waited,” Vivy said to the whole store, yanking at Fredd’s elbow. “This is an act worth waiting for. The Man of a Million Moves: Fredd the Juggler!”
She pushed him onto the platform, half afraid to let go even then, but nobody liked a stage better than Fredd. A moment after she freed his wrist he was flipping knives into the air, slinging the bright
