Page 28 of Animal Tamer
“What,” I say to him.
He huffs.
“I know.”
I cross to the performance entrance and pull the edge back two inches.
The stands are filling. Families on the lower rows, teenagers clumped in the corners, an old couple sharing a funnel cake near the aisle. My eyes sweep the bleachers left to right, then right to left, hunting for a dark ponytail, a field jacket, glasses that fog when she drinks our mediocre coffee.
I don't find her.
I check again.
“You've looked out that flap nine times.”
Logan is leaning against a tent pole with his arms crossed, fuel kit already strapped to his thigh, and the grin on his face could power the midway.
“I haven't.”
“Ten, if we count right now.” He pushes off the pole and ambles over, ducking his head to peer through the gap. “Where is she? Point her out. I'll go sit next to her and tell her stories about you.”
“Logan.”
“The one about the raccoon. She's a vet, she'll love the raccoon story?—”
I let the flap drop and turn around, and whatever's on my face makes him laugh outright, head back, the sound rolling through the staging area loud enough that Cleopatra stamps a hoof.
“Christ, look at you.” He grips my shoulder—the onlyhands allowed to land on me without warning—and gives me a shake. “Twenty years I've watched you stare at walls, and now you're wearing a groove in the ground over a girl in sensible boots.”
“Maybe she didn’t come,” I mutter.
“She came.”
I shake my head. “You don't know that.”
“Rowe.” His grin softens in a way it only does when he’s talking to me in private. “She drove out here two days in a row for a monkey with a bruise. She came.”
I don't answer. My hand starts drifting toward my scars, and I catch it, redirect it, pick up my gold, horned mask instead.
I set it against my face and buckle the strap at the back of my head, and the world narrows to two eyeholes.
Better.
“You're not going to look for her again?” Logan asks.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because if I know where she's sitting, I'll perform for one seat instead of two thousand. Because if she brought a man, some boyfriend I never asked about, and I find out in the middle of the ring with a lion at my hip, then I don’t trust myself with what I’d do.
“Because I have a job to do,” I say instead of voicing any of that.
Logan studies me as much as he can past my mask.
“For what it's worth, brother,” he says, adjusting the buckle on his fuel kit, “I like this. Whatever this is. It looks good on you.”
“It looks terrifying on me. That's the design.”
