The sky over People's Park was abnormally clear, scattered with a sheen of twinkling silver stars that Darius attempted to loop his puffed-out smoke rings around. But the fumes dissolved, reshaped, and faded into the distance to pop and fizzle out. Darius sighed and peered over to the final preparations rising before him. He was avoiding mucking in, preferring to sit on the grass beside his luxury motorhome. He wasn't work-shy, merely avoiding the first night shenanigans that all the other folk would be excited about. He probably should help more. But no one bothered him for manual labour anymore. He was far too important. He was the star after all.
And a grouch.
A prickly grouch.
A prickly and now officially old grouch.
Inhaling the last drag from his imported cigar, he savoured the spicy, woody taste then blotted the end on the grass. He'd been waiting to smoke that through the entire forty-eight hours of travelling over land and sea. Which was the main reason why he'd declined to aid with the raising of the Big Top to indulge himself in Ecuador's finest. It was a present to himself—the cigar, and the solitude.
He was about to clamber inside his RV for a nightcap and wash down the hints of coffee and cedar with whatever liquor he had in his stash when the door to the caravan beside his flung open. Nina stepped out, swished her black shawl around her dainty figure squeezed into Lycra, and tapped kitten heels down the three metal steps to squelch into sodden mud.
"Do not think," she barked, pointing a finger Darius's way, "that you are not joining us this time."
Darius hauled himself up from the ground, wiping his hands down his baby-blue distressed jeans. Blades of grass tickled between his bare toes. He liked it. He rarely wore shoes anymore. He'd never worn socks, even in the height of winter when his motorhome had little heat, but recently, shoes had felt like yet another restriction and another conformity to a life he'd left some time ago. Real life. Civilian life. He didn't wear anything other than his old Levis matched with a tank top for the endless journeys, or his costume for performances. Why would he need anything else?
"Domnişoară," he replied in the grating tone the others in the crew had come to despise about him. But he wasn't here to make friends. Not anymore. Friends complicated things. "I am far too old to be gallivanting."
"But you're not too old to be swinging from bar to bar twenty feet above ground, no?"
Darius chuckled. "No, dragă. That I will never be too old for."
Nina stood in front of him, hands on hips and regarded him as though he were a petulant teenager and not a man twice her age. She'd joined Godaeux's a year ago. As tiny as she might be, she was feisty and had well and truly made her mark as one of the top-billed artists among the cast. She performed an excellent hoop act, contorting herself into all sorts of angles whilst spinning hundreds of hula-hoops on every limb. It was a wonderful spectacle. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, she was hellbent on getting Darius back into the centre circle of Godeaux elite, which he'd abandoned in favour of becoming a recluse a while ago.
For good reason.
"How old?" she asked and pouted her perfectly plump red lips. No wonder she had become the belle of the tent. She worked her femininity to the best of her ability. She'd probably left a thousand broken hearts in every city they'd travelled to. He'd broken a few hearts too, once upon a time. Not anymore though.
Not now he knew how it felt to be on the receiving end.
"That is none of your business," he said.
She slapped his chest. "Whatever it is, you are not too old to come and have a drink."
He held her wrist and thrust it back at her. "Yes, Nina. I am. And one day you will know what that feels like. Especially if you do as you are doing for twenty years."
"Don't you want to sample the local delights, hmm?" She arched an eyebrow that suggested she wasn't only talking about the cuisine. Darius's past notoriety found its way to the new recruits eventually.
That was exactly what he was far too old for.
He'd had his fair share of flippant fucks.
"I'm sure you will have a wonderful evening, Nina." He turned to head into his motorhome and shut out the world for a while before he received another slap to his back.
"You cannot be a loner all your life."
That infuriated him. So he twisted back to snarl, "Perhaps when you have lived this life for as long as I have, you will understand the need for some solitude from it."
"Darius!" That holler of his name from across their pitch made Darius clench his fists. He really wasn't in the mood for this. It had ruined the slight buzz that lingered from his earlier cigar.
Benoit Godeaux, Ringmaster and overall owner of Godeaux's Travelling Circus was the man who had given Darius a job at the age of eighteen when he'd had nothing but the clothes on his back after his own parents' circus had died along with them. Benoit paid his wages. And, along with his wife, had controlled much of Darius's twenty-year reign at the top of the billed circus acts. He owed them everything he had and was.
It didn't mean they didn't infuriate the utter hell out of him though.
"You're in for it now," Nina sing-songed. Then, as elegantly as she provided her act for the locals, she glided off to no doubt find one of the others to join her in her quest for fun and frolics.
"Benoit," Darius greeted the old gent as he reached him. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"You owe the pleasure to others," he said. Benoit was in his sixties and had been Ringmaster since he'd learned to talk. He'd won accolade after accolade for his contributions to circus art. He was a great, grand man with silvery whisps of hair and kind, gentle eyes that could draw an audience into his awe and thrill.
But he was a thorn in Darius's arse.
One that wouldn't budge.
"You owe us your presence. You are not hiding away as you did in our last couple of cities. This is Jersey!"
Darius wrinkled his nose. "What's so special about Jersey?" He knew for absolute certain that he had visited this island before. It wasn't a yearly scheduled stop as many other cities were, with other circuses wanting their pitch, but he had been here with Godeaux's. He remembered nothing of significant interest.
Benoit waggled a frustrated finger. "You would do better to know the answer to that already. Dress!" He waved a hand as he spun on his heel. "In something nice. Appealing. Desirable."
If Darius hadn't known that Benoit was married to a goddess who had once graced every sparkling act in the ring but had now retired to run their business end, he would have suspected some time back that the man was gay. He was too colourful. Too camp. It was perfect for a Ringmaster, of course. But the man never switched it off. And his over-elaborate hand wave and spin on his heel in his dress shoes as he headed toward the Big Top might as well have been him sashaying those slightly podgy hips for Darius's attentions. Maybe he was bi? Many of those in the circuses he'd roamed didn't label themselves with an alphabet of letters. They were limitless. He, too, had been once.
