Page 121 of Catcher's Lock

It’s not supposed to be a lie.

40

Folded

Gemiah

Age 24 (Now)

In retrospect, I should have seen it coming.

I should have recognized the warning rumbles, even muffled by the push and pull of new/old patterns in the familiar routine of launching the tour. I know what to expect—every stop is different, and every show goes through birthing pains once it moves from concept and creation to the daily grind—but it turns out that three weeks is not enough time to reintegrate when I spent most of it feeding my Josha obsession.

It also doesn’t help that I spent the last several years attempting to raze my place in the family business to the ground.

To their credit, everyone tries. I’m included in the postshow analysis and given tasks of various importance. But I’m not on stage, sharing the risk and the adrenaline. As the weeks pass and the camaraderie of inside jokes and shorthand evolves amongthe cast and crew, my fetal sense of belonging begins to erode.

My mom fucks up her wrist when a tie-down snaps during the first weekend. The limitations of the injury make her even bossier than usual, and though she lets me pick up some of the slack, she’s in full control-freak mode. She declines my offer to work the concessions wagon, claiming the apprentices need the experience, and I pretend the real reason isn’t the stock of beer and wine behind the counter. Despite both our best intentions, I can’t help being reminded of my earliest years with Big Top and the constant struggle for approval that colored them.

The only good thing to come of the accident is Josha taking her place in the knife-throwing act.

I expect him to balk—he’s always adamantly refused to let my parents bully him onto the stage, but he steps in with easy grace. When I give him shit about it, he raises an eyebrow and says, “They put me in the show the year after you disappeared. It was mostly to distract me, but it worked, and it turns out it wasn’t as bad as I feared.”

So now I spend six-and-a-half glorious minutes of every show holding down the fort in the tech booth with a hard-on, watching Josha sink blade after blade into the moving target—while wearing a tight tuxedo vest and a pair of slinky silver pants that are decidedlynotG-rated. After the first time, I make him fuck me in the costume backstage once the rest of the crew has gone to bed. I don’t even mind the extra laundry the next morning.

I doa lotof laundry.

And coffee runs and lunch pickups and fetching of phone chargers and hunting down of hair ties and missing shoes. During the shows, I stay as busy as I can, taking tickets and handing out programs and bringing cushions to little old ladies.

Setup and teardown are all-hands-on-deck, and jump days are a welcome reprieve from the close quarters, when Josha and Iget anywhere from two to six hours alone in the truck between towns.

It’s early enough in the summer that the nights are cool, and tempers haven’t yet flared from burnout or proximity. The first few runs are predictably messy but well-received, and spirits are high.

Ishouldbe happy.

I should be going to meetings.

As a last-minute addition to the crew, with no onstage role demanding my presence at rehearsals and two-plus performances a day, I have more idle time than anyone else on the lot. More than enough to find a local AA group in each town or city we visit.

Josha checks in with a kiss or a passing squeeze to the back of my neck every chance he gets—stolen moments of solace in the chaos that keep me from going crazy most days—but he’s too busy and preoccupied with his own responsibilities to ride me about missing meetings. Most of the tech is held together with luck and electrical tape, and after every show, he spends half the night patching cables and putting out metaphorical fires.

Meaning all too often, he’s too busy to ride me at all.

Since I refuse to bethat guy—whining about losing his undivided attention like the husband whose wife’s career takes off faster than his—I satisfy myself with exchanged blow jobs in our wagon, which don’t sully the sheets, and the back-seat quickies we sneak in during our drives.

Any shared downtime is fleeting and precious—an hour in the shade under the Airstream’s awning, with his head on my lap and my hands in his hair, or an episode ofDaredevilon the laptop in our cramped loft above the ticket wagon on the rare single-show nights.

He’s my Rocket, and he makes space for me in every wayhe can. It’s not his fault I lie awake at night listening to him breathe, anchored only by the warmth of his body at my back. We’retogether, but we’re not equals. Not partners the way we dreamed when we were teens, poring over YouTube videos and schematics and plotting how to get my dad on our side.

So the black-sheep insecurities are creeping back in at the corners, and though he never turns away, I’m sore from sharing him when I feel shadowy and extraneous, and from needing him so much more than he needs me.

On the lot,everyoneneeds Josha.

Whatheneeds is clean laundry.

I find him in the tech booth, of course, cursing out the soundboard.

“Let me guess,” I say. “Something’s fucked up, and I’m on my own for the laundromat?”