She giggled, pushing the book aside and wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’m a stunt rider. Bareback, acrobatics, leap through fiery hoops. All that kind of stuff.”
“I’ll have to buy a ticket for tomorrow’s show,” Mike said. “I’ve spent most of my life trying to find a girl who can jump through fiery hoops. How long you been with the circus?”
“I joined up last fall, in Florida. Had to go to school all summer before that. Circus school.”
“Have any new girls been around lately?”
“New girls? Doing what? I mean we always bring on some locals—you know, as ushers or ticket takers. But I don’t have anything to do with any of them.”
“I wouldn’t think so, you being a pro and all.”
I might as well have been on another planet. Mike seemed totally taken with his Dallas cheerleader. Maybe it was the bareback thing.
“There must be lots of guys hanging out at the stage door for you, Kristin.”
“Yeah, if you’re into twelve-year-olds,” she said with a laugh. “Not so much as you’d think.”
“And girls, looking to hook up with guys?”
“Occasionally.”
“Anyone been coming around named Naomi since you’ve been at the Garden?”
“Nope.”
“Ursula? Or Chat—short for Chastity?”
“I’d remember that one for sure,” she said. “Are all these girls missing? That’s so weird. But then, my mother warned me that New York was like that.”
“Not usually. Not with me on the job.”
“People always joke about running away to join the circus, but that’s not how this works, Mike. There’s all kinds of training before anyone gets hired. We don’t pick up any strays along the way. We’re a family, is what we are.”
“Tell me about this family, Kris. We got a long ride ahead of us tonight.”
“You both coming to Providence?” she asked, shooting me a sidelong glance.
“Yeah. What should we know?”
Kristin Sweeney was practically gushing now. “So, think of this as an apartment building. Like, thirty-five stories tall, except it’s horizontal. The only thing we don’t have is a zip code.”
And, I guessed, a police department.
“Doesn’t look like you have any privacy,” I said. “Eight of you to a suite? No bathroom?”
“There are just a few cars like this. Works fine if you’re single, like I am.”
“Who gets to ride the train?” Mike asked.
“The artists, of course. Cooks and stagehands and prop guys. Mechanics and electricians. Elephants, horses, wild animals. The costume lady and all our glitz. Cast and crew, Detective. We’re all here.”
“Some of the rooms are larger?”
“Yeah. Some of the couples have their own little apartments. They bring their kids along, or their in-laws. Flat-screen TVs and toilets and all that. Kitchenettes, which is something I miss a lot,’cause I enjoy cooking. The rest of us eat in the Pie Car. That’s what it’s called, but it’s really a diner. Mr. Delahawk even has an electric fireplace in his suite.”
“You like this kind of life?” Mike asked.
“I like it fine, for now. Better than what was waiting for me home in Spur after my cheerleading days were over. Better than circus life used to be, moving from hotel to hotel, always packing and unpacking. I’ve made friends here. I said it’s like family, right? Well, for me it’s better than hanging with most of my family.”
“How about the guys, Kris? You know all of them?”
“I sure do. It’s not like I date any of them, if that’s where you’re going. Most of us in the troupe are pretty young. Hardly anybody over thirty-five. We work together, we live together. Spend a lot of time with each other. Some of them have grown up in this business, Mike. They’ll have kids who’ll be Ringling babies.”
Kristin Sweeney stopped talking and pointed at me. “She’s looking at me like it’s all strange, what we do. It’s not. It’s really not.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” I said. “I apologize. Your life sounds really interesting to someone like me who sits at a desk a lot of the time.”
I was actually thinking how lucky we were to get such a cooperative talker in the first room at which we stopped. And trying to remember the last time I’d spent a full day at my desk.
“You ride this train from town to town?” Mike asked.
“All over the country.”
“Can you—do you—ever get off?” Mike asked. “Have you been into Manhattan on your own?”
“Oh, sure. They run a shuttle bus for us, almost wherever we go, so we can get around. And there’s a flatbed freight train that travels behind