Work Text:
Home for Christmas
Christmas at Phantasma is strange.
Although, thinks Gangle, everything at Phantasma is strange, and he should know, he’s been here since the beginning.
It’s strange for starters that they are here at all, most of Coney Island’s attractions shutting down at the end of the summer, most of those other venues’ employees scattering across the country in a bid to find a winter gig somewhere warmer and who knew who would return for the next summer.
The master of Phantasma, Mister Y, had opined it was a stupid way to do business, from the day he’d met Gangle all those years ago. “No decent place to sleep, no teaching of useful skills beyond their act, and no employment in the off-season? How can anyone do business like that? Better to work together, build a thriving park with room for living space, work toward attractions like a concert hall that can play all year round, and teach your employees skills that help them and the park grow and prosper.”
And here they were, years later, Mister Y’s plans come to fruition, the employees of Phantasma gathering in the concert hall the master had built. The goal of offering year round shows still in its infancy and still reeling from the last show of the season, after what had happened, to Christine Daaé.
Christine, so pale and cold there on the pier, and her blood so red on Gangle’s hands…
Mister Y had assured them all, though, in one of the few instances he had spoken publicly to them all in the aftermath. Phantasma would still someday be a year round affair, when they had enough shows and acts to fill the concert hall schedule, and there was no question–—Mister Y was firm here, despite a tremor in his voice and hands, so slight that Gangle thought only those who knew him intimately would notice—no question that the park would open again in the spring.
Every other plan—and Gangle is careful not to call them dreams, remembering a long ago conversation with Mister Y, although after tonight that injunction might change—every single plan Mister Y had had for Phantasma, he’d made come true, for himself and for everyone gathered here tonight. On-site lodgings for staff, if they wished it. Education and training. Year round employment, the performing staff working in other capacities in the off-season to keep the park the jewel of Coney Island. A park where no one was exploited—all were valued, every worker, and most especially the talent, the musicians, singers, dancers and sideshow performers.
Freaks, they called them in other venues, but not here at Phantasma. Those who chose to exhibit themselves did so on their own terms and were allowed and encouraged to cultivate other talents to add to their performance, or not, as they decided, as they chose. Encouraged too, to learn anything and everything Phantasma needed, develop other attributes and other skills.
Squelch did feats of strength and also had a head for logistics, and the connections of years in the business to get anything Phantasma needed more quickly than anyone Gangle had ever seen. Miss Fleck the aerialist had a fantastic eye for set and costume design. Everyone at Phantasma, encouraged to go beyond outward appearances, beyond limiting assumptions.
And because of that, instead of Phantasma being just another gig, it became a place they all had a stake in, something they all worked continually to improve.
It became a home.
A family.
With their own traditions, like this annual Christmas Eve gathering, dinner here in the concert hall lobby and a Christmas pageant, skits and songs from anyone at Phantasma who wished to perform, to follow on the stage itself. Buffet tables heaped with all the courses of a Christmas meal lined the walls, people taking turns serving so all could sit and eat together, as had been their custom since Phantasma opened…even before they opened, Gangle thinks, remembering the exhausted but exhilarated crew that first Christmas Eve, as construction proceeded throughout fall and winter and spring, the attractions taking shape, the Aerie soaring into the sky.
It’s comforting, thinks Gangle, especially after the tragic turn at the end of this season, to have things continue as usual.
Or perhaps, not quite as usual. For Mister Y has promised a special announcement following dinner and the crowd is simmering with the energy of speculation, charging the already heightened atmosphere. Gangle watches and listens to the notions being floated by the people around him, as he waits for the return of Miss Fleck and Squelch from their special errand.
Mister Y is here already, notes Gangle from his seat at one of many small tables set up across the opulent concert hall lobby, his white mask and long black coat easy to spot among everyone else’s colorful holiday attire. There is an energy, too, wherever he is, employees eager to talk to him, to wish him Merry Christmas, to thank him for all that he has done for them and for their families. A small island of quiet, of concentrated attention forms wherever he stops to greet someone.
And he stops often, speaking to every employee personally, face to face, with his usual grave courtesy and solemn attention. He did not have many personal holiday traditions, he had told Gangle once, but this was one he had started and kept—he spoke to every Phantasma employee at Christmas, and thanked them for their service.
People often told Gangle it was startling and intense, speaking to Mister Y. And not for the reasons Mister Y himself might jump to, his masked face, or failing that, his status as the owner here, the genius behind it all, without peer. No, the universal reason given to Gangle was that it was unsettling but relished to have someone give them their full and complete attention.
“He looks at you, you know? He really looks at you, like he can see inside of you,” someone had said, and Gangle thinks that captures it, that sacredness of being seen, especially for those whom the rest of society considers disposable.
He’d felt it himself. In fact, it’s the reason they had first become acquaintances, and then friends, he and Mister Y. Before he had even been known as Mister Y.
Mister Y had seen him, really seen him from the moment they met.
And that had almost proved to be a real problem.
It hadn’t been December, the summer season on Coney Island in full swing, but then who knew if Christmas had really been in December at all, or had just been placed there, a reminder that darkness was not really going to devour the light, that the sun would return.
At any rate, there’d been a stable. And a wise man. Perhaps too wise…
Gangle stretches his long long legs in front of him, comfortable in his uniqueness there among his family, watching Mister Y make his rounds, his long black coat clearing a space around him as he moves. Gangle watches and waits and sips sweet holiday wine as he remembers the day…
oo000ooo
Gangle shovels shit well. He’s been shoveling shit for years, in the various barns of the various stables for various venues on Coney Island. Shit’s the same everywhere, really, but he only fits here on Coney. He’s tall, too tall, always has been and there’s nothing he can do to hide it. Not tall enough to be a proper freak and earn his money that way, not much horror or titillation there.
The horror’s all on the inside, and the story, the titillating story—that he can’t tell to anyone.
The papers a few years back told it all too well. Well enough that he’s had to lose his name, shave his head, and find a place where a too tall man with a face covered by clown white makeup during every waking moment is more the norm than the exception. The black greasepaint triangles beneath his eyes hide the shadows of the past, the tear tracks, the sleepless nights.
And he’s discovered that the old turn of phrase holds true—he hides in plain sight, a barker for a freak show by day, and a shit shoveler at night. Considering the lies his patter is composed of, it’s all the same, really.
Naja Haje the snake woman isn’t a snake woman at all; she has scoliosis and an untreated case of psoriasis. ManCrab—man, yes, crab no, a rare but simple case of ectrodactyly, cleft hands and feet. And Bigfoot Sam? Severe yet common lymphedema of the legs.
Of course, Gangle never says any of this in his patter—in fact, he stays as far away from medical terminology, medicine, even simple first aid, as he can. And if there comes a day when his feigned ignorance could cost a life through his inaction?
He spouts inane patter by day and shovels shit at night and hopes it never comes to that.
Keeps his head down, ha, and keeps shoveling the shit, the same thing day in and day out. World without end.
Except tonight is different.
He finds the last stall already cleaned, fresh straw spread, and on the straw, too large for a manger, a man in silent repose beneath a beaded black cloak.
Perhaps the man sees the slight hint of panic in Gangle’s eyes.
“I’m not dead,” the man offers. “Nor injured, nor drunk. I just need a place to sleep.”
Gangle knows this man, a recent freak show hire. His face, half covered with a white porcelain mask now, is hard to forget. One of the most severe cases of deformity Gangle has ever seen and between his former profession and his current one, he’s seen a lot.
This is the man billed as Mystery Man, although the sign is old, and whoever painted it neither knew how to spell nor do graphic design, as the sign reads “Mister y Man” with the forlorn “y” on a separate line entirely from the other words.
Not the best name, but the former Mystery Man had quit or rather had simply failed to show up for work for several weeks running.
This new fellow hadn’t been too particular about the name of his act, which consisted of him sitting maskless on a stool and ignoring the horrified stares of onlookers. The display was empty, the sign already hung, and the name suited, well enough.
They haven’t really spoken previously, Gangle keeping a distance as always when a strange new element is introduced into his world, looking for any glimmer of recognition, rehearsing his ever-ready plan of escape if things should go wrong. The man had handed him some handwritten lines of patter, pretty good too, something about the angels of our better nature and the devils that seek to overcome them, and seated himself on his stool, watching. Always watching.
Gangle is so relieved not to have to extend any sort of medical attention to the man that he can’t even find it in himself to be anything other than curious.
“Why don’t you just go home, or find a room? What are you doing here?” Barring heavy intoxication—not an uncommon occurrence among the freaks, Gangle has learned—there seems no reason to sleep here, in the straw. And interrupt Gangle’s necessary solitude, besides.
The man comes up onto his elbows, the black cloak he was using as a blanket shifting. “You mean, here in this stable, or here in this park?”
Gangle is struck by the oddity of the distinction. He decides to go for the less obvious question. When you shovel shit for a while, sometimes you long for a little distraction.
“I’ll bite. This park.”
The answer is as immediate as it is unexpected. “Looking for people like you.”
Gangle feels his hands tighten on the shovel’s handle. It’s too late to hope the man hasn’t noticed. It’s beyond strange. Gangle has developed quite the nose for policemen and detectives over the years, and this man...had not set off any of those alarms at all.
The man looks pointedly at the shovel and pointedly at Gangle. “If you plan to kill me with a shovel, could you do me the courtesy of using a clean one?”
Gangle looks at his hands, knuckles white. The newspapers had named him a murderer. Was he ready to become one in fact?
No. Not then. Not now. Not ever. Not even to keep from prison.
Gangle turns, slowly, carefully, to lean the shovel against the wall. Despite his size, head and shoulders taller than this considerably tall Mystery Man, he’s not a fighter. This man…looks as though he could be. With a face like that, he’s probably had to be, his whole life.
And while Gangle knows he’s extremely fast, much faster than people expect from a man his size, he has no notion if this man is armed, and he’s not fast enough to outrun a bullet.
There’s nothing to be done but see what fate has in store here. And so he crosses to the empty stall across from the man, and seats himself on a bale.
“Friend, even on Coney Island, I’m a rarity. So I think…you must be looking for me specifically.”
The man comes to a seat himself, flicking the cape off with an elegant move of his arm to lie draped across the straw next to him.
“Forgive me, I can see how my words could be misinterpreted,” says the man, and while there is a sense of true apology in his tone, Gangle is more convinced that those earlier words were said for a specific reason: to see what he would do. Apparently, he has passed the test, for the man continues.
“Given my own circumstance, I myself would doubtless have a similar reaction, were I so addressed. Please, allow me to rephrase, and elucidate.”
Gangle blows out a breath and gives a small nod. The man continues, his formal and educated manner in contrast to their surroundings causing Gangle to choke back the beginnings of inappropriate laughter. Hysteria, he notes clinically, brought on by long term unresolved stressors.
“I am here at this park for the job I now hold, to earn money by putting my…self on display. However, that is not the sole reason I am here. My longer term goals are to own and run an attraction such as this, and eventually to build and operate a park of my own.”
Oddly, Gangle finds himself relaxing, although he realizes he may be in the presence of a madman. He’s a well-spoken madman at least, which is surprisingly refreshing, and his speaking voice…Gangle has never heard a voice more compelling or persuasive in his life. Almost enough to make him forget that this man with his dreams of an empire is sleeping in a stable in a fourth rate—no, fifth rate venue like Shandy’s.
Gangle is ahead of schedule, tonight, and no one seems to be about to murder anyone here, clean shovel or no, and it is somehow almost intoxicating to be in a conversation with words consisting of more than one syllable.
“I can’t help but notice,” he offers, “that these plans are spoken in your…present circumstance. You have a job, as you said. An empire builder’s got to be good with money. How is it you can’t afford a room somewhere?”
“Ah, Mister...” The man trails off. “What may I call you, sir?”
Such an odd phrasing. A test again, Gangle’s sure of it.
“Gangle,” he says. “Around here, I go by Gangle. While we’re on the subject, what should I call you?” He returns the volley of the unusual turn of phrase. Somehow it feels right to do so.
The portion of the man’s lips not covered by the mask twitch into a quick, approving smile. “I haven’t chosen a name yet,” he says, with a candor that feels like a knife thrust to the chest.
A knife to wound, or a curative, a cut to release pent-up poison—Gangle is not sure which, only that the pain is real.
The knife twists home, hitting bone as the mystery man concludes. “I’m certain you know how hard that can be, discarding the old, deciding on what to take with you into a new life. Please, Mr. Gangle, do breathe. Breathing is so important, I find.”
Gangle breathes.
Whatever is happening here continues to happen. And as they say, where there’s life, there’s hope. Shows how much they know.
The mystery man waits for Gangle’s riposte. Gangle has none.
The past has come for him again.
There’d been no hope for Louise. Just a slow, agonizing death. Cruel. Cruel for her, who had been so kind, running their home, taking care of him through the grueling years of medical school. Waiting, waiting too long to have children, until he had graduated, built a practice of his own. By then, she was sick. Sick and wasting.
And all his years of training meant…absolutely nothing.
She had begged him. Begged him and he had refused, once, twice, a dozen times. Until the night she said…God will understand. Compassion is not a sin. Please, please let me go. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the pain and I can’t bear hurting you.
He loved her. He loved her so much that he let her go. Just a little stick of the needle. A droplet in an ocean of pain. She had smiled as her eyes fluttered closed…making him promise not to punish himself, not to allow others to punish him.
He promised. He never could refuse her anything.
Her father was the one who doubted, who pressed and probed. Who used his wealth and his political power to get charges filed, who said his wealth and power were why his daughter had been murdered by her husband the doctor.
He had promised Louise and so he ran before they came to arrest him. All the way across the country, to the Atlantic Ocean, and then to Coney Island. Where he used his mind honed in medical school to remember the patter for dozens of freak show acts and his trained surgeon’s hands to shovel shit.
And now he’s been found. Not by the police. Not by a private detective. But by a Mystery Man, without even a name.
“Mr. Gangle? Mr. Gangle?” The beautiful compelling voice is calling him back. “Are you quite all right?”
Gangle has had enough. He makes no threatening moves, but he is done.
“Why don’t you cut the crap. You already know who I am. You came here looking for me, didn’t you?”
The man blinks at him mildly. “As I said, Mr. Gangle, I came to the park to work. I came to this stable to sleep. Finding you was not at all my intention. And if you wait, and listen, you’ll find I mean you no harm. If you’d like me to leave, and we two never to speak of this again, I can do that. Or there is of course always the option of the shovel. While you ponder your choice, let me say this.” The man idly brushes straw from his lapel with long fingers. “I do know who you are, I have read many newspaper stories about you and about what you did. I believe the stories are factually correct. But their conclusion, that you are a murderer, is entirely wrong.”
“How would you know?” Gangle’s voice sounds strained and foreign in his own ears, years of running, of hiding, of unrelenting torment having taken their toll.
The man continues, his words rhythmic and musical. “I have been watching you. I have seen you. You are a good man, who has had to do a terrible thing, and who pays a terrible price every day. I know because I am a terrible man, who aspires to do a good thing, to pay my own price. I have the clear advantage of you—I am not from this country. I go to the library and I read newspapers to continue to learn the language, to learn the customs, to learn the flow of power and privilege here so I can make my way to my goal. But it is too slow. I need help. Help from someone like you, Mr. Gangle.”
The shovel is right there. He should take the shovel and end this. He would take the shovel, if he could move his arms. He finds he has no strength to do anything at all save listen while the man continues, his voice carrying a strange power, though now listening more closely Gangle can hear the oh so faint hints of an accent, a subtle blur of consonants, unexpected shifts in intonation.
“Had you read the papers in my home country, Mr. Gangle, you are doubtless too good a man to even engage in conversation with someone like me. I offer this information to even the playing field between us, so neither has any advantage.”
Abruptly the soothing voice changes, the odd lassitude that has overcome Gangle suddenly lifting, as the man gives a shake of his head and a small laugh. “Forgive me, Mr. Gangle. Old habits die hard.”
The voice, still cultured and of surpassing beauty, is simply a voice now, free of compelling undertones. Gangle could grab the shovel, if he wanted to. But he knows that was never really an option. Never really will be an option. He cannot lose himself, to keep the letter of his promise to Louise. That is not what she would have wanted for him.
The man continues from where he sits, cross-legged in the clean straw. “I would imagine, among the many things I have imagined as I sit on my chair for passers-by to gape at, that in addition to many possible reasons why you confine yourself to this state, one is that you are and have been a good man, without the slightest notion of how to procure documents that will serve well enough to allow you to seek more legitimate employment. This is what I offer, Mr. Gangle. I do have money, money enough to rent a room should I choose, but my money is all at work to serve my goal and I save where I can. Currently I have papers of my own being drawn up, and if you choose to assist me, I can pay you with a set of your own.”
None of this makes any sense. The man must be crazy. Gangle cannot afford to entertain any kind of hope that this strange miracle being proffered could possibly be true. He scrapes together one last attempt to deflect this evening back into the rut he has lived in for years, where there are no expectations anymore. Expectations died with Louise.
He leans forward, knowing his sheer size, shovel or no, is intimidating to most people. “You know my secret. You know my name. You don’t know the first thing about power if it doesn’t occur to you to blackmail me to get what you want, instead of offering me a choice and paying for my services.”
“It has indeed occurred, Mr. Gangle.” The man’s gaze is suddenly possessed of lightless depths, his unmasked eye intensely direct, the other somehow even more piercing, glinting from beneath the mask.
Then—the gaze softens, as do his words, now humble and with a desperate sincerity. “But I find I no longer wish to conduct myself in that manner. I am choosing a different way, going forward. So this must remain your choice, ever your choice.”
Gangle has made choices in the past that he could never have envisioned for himself. What, he thinks, with an odd spark smoldering fitfully to life in his chest—is it hope that burns thinly there, attempting to cauterize his heart’s gaping wound—what is one more choice, really, in the current scheme of things.
“I accept,” he hears himself say, “on three conditions.”
“Name them,” says the man.
“One, that you won’t sleep here in this stable, at least for tonight. I have a set of rooms with a bed I do not use, as I find I do not fit in it. You are welcome to the bed, while I take my customary couch. Two, that we spell out this agreement more fully over a drink, with me being free to reconsider pending further clarification. And three...that you give me something to call you.” Gangle raises a hand quickly, forestalling an answer. “It does not need to be your real name, though you have mine. Lesson one, retain what advantages you can, when you can.”
The man smiles a genuine smile at that. “Alas, I really have no notion, Mr. Gangle. I readily agree to your first two terms but find myself at an unaccustomed loss on the third.”
“Tell me,” says Gangle, picturing the badly designed sign that crowns the Mystery Man sideshow display. “What do you think of Mister Y?”
ooo000ooo
One drink becomes many, both of them large enough men to hold shot after shot of potent whisky.
Gangle hits Mister Y with many and varied questions about the park, Phantasma, and learns Mister Y’s immediate plans, to work at or visit every venue he can gain access to, to get to know the acts, the people behind the acts and what they want and need so he can eventually build them all something better than anyplace they’ve ever worked at. He’ll start with the sideshow, it’s what he has most experience with, but in time wants to expand to include every known attraction and then some.
The vision is more intoxicating than the whisky, of a place where people are valued for who they are, and the notion that what they do will be better for it.
Late into the evening, Gangle counts the shot glasses lined up before them, and asks, “So you have had this dream for a long time then?”
“It’s not a dream.” Mister Y’s eyes blaze with intensity, a fire that can create or destroy. “It’s a plan, a goal. Amends, for having done the opposite, for so long, with such disastrous consequences. I have only one dream, and she…”
He stops, perhaps realizing the drink has caught up with him, in a way that it has not with Gangle, taller by almost a foot and heavier by far. “Advantages kept, Mr. Gangle. Well done. Have you learned enough to reconsider your decision, that we join forces for now, watch each other’s backs, while you help me learn the overworld and underworld of Coney Island?”
Gangle has learned a number of things. That the man has two associates, a mother and a daughter, who know Mister Y’s history and help him anyway, though not out of any sort of intimate entanglement between any of them. That they are his countrymen, and thus also at sea in an alien culture. That the women had recently found lodging in an all female boarding house that was cheaper and safer than where they had lived previously, Mister Y again reiterating that what money he had was for the park, and for forged identification to pass here in this new country.
Gangle has also learned that what had read as madness tips quite a bit more to the side of genius, in a way that begins to make Mister Y’s goals and plans sound quite a bit more possible.
He has learned enough that he shakes Mister Y’s hand in agreement and pays their tab, enough that he opens the door to his rooms to him, and sees him settled, as Gangle had said, on the bed he himself has never used.
On his back on the couch in the middle of the night, Gangle learns that Mister Y talks in his sleep.
Gangle recognizes French, but doesn’t speak it, so he hears only the sound of heartbreak. The beautiful language he has heard spoken before, fluid, liquid, lyrical, now breaks the dark of night in jagged bursts of anguish.
The word most often repeated is the only word he understands, a woman’s name. Christine.
Some years later he asks a member of a French-Canadian act, hired into Phantasma to perform their amazing highwire act, to translate phrases that still haunt his memories.
He is not surprised to learn their meaning. They are the same as he speaks in his dreams to his Louise, Louise who he let go on ahead, alone.
I’m sorry, Christine. I love you, Christine. Please forgive me, Christine.
ooo000ooo
Sooner into their acquaintance than Gangle can anticipate, the promised documents arrive, of an astounding quality.
“You get what you pay for,” says Mister Y, as they peruse the sets of papers there in Gangle’s tiny apartment. “The better the forger, the more money they can command. This…is the work of a most excellent forger indeed.”
Gangle makes note of Mister Y’s now official name, though he realizes it is doubtless just as far from his true name as what shows on Gangle’s own papers. He starts a bit at the collection of diplomas in his new name.
“Yes,” says Mister Y. “I took the liberty of giving you a doctorate in the humanities. So there is an explanation for why your head snaps around the way it does whenever you hear the word ‘doctor.’ In fact, I think it would be prudent if you change your stage name to Dr. Gangle. Bit of a ring to it, don’t you think?”
“And I see you have given yourself a last name that serves as an explanation for it being shortened to ‘Mister Y’.”
“Yes, I’ve become rather fond of Mister Y, actually. A name for the impresario I hope to become, while keeping any other names, real or acquired, more obscure from the public eye.”
Always thinking, was Mister Y. “Thank you for these,” says Gangle. “Although next time, I’d take it as a courtesy if you consult me on matters relating to things as basic as my own identity, if you please.” The words are softened, but the point is made, as Gangle can see from the flush that brightens the pale unmasked cheek.
Mister Y has admitted to trying to change his ways and some of them seem to be very ingrained indeed. He seems to recognize this, as he asks, glancing at the promised payment now delivered, “And will there be a next time, then?”
In answer, Gangle…Dr. Gangle, if you please…collects all the precious documents, each of their new identities and returns them to their respective folders. Removing a certain set of floorboards, he stows them there next to the few pitiful remnants of his former life.
He glances up, rare condition as it is for him, from his kneel on the floor. “I believe we have an appointment, at the Fantastical Emporium, to see the Mighty Squelch and whatever other acts on display as may catch our fancy?”
ooo000ooo
The Fantastical Emporium turns out to be two rungs lower on the Coney Island ladder than even Shandy’s, which is hard to believe. One of the main attractions keeping it afloat is the Mighty Squelch, a storied strong man act.
“People have been trying to lure him away for years. Word is that he and Miss Fleck are a team, and he won’t leave unless they offer her a job too.” Gangle points out Miss Fleck, assisting Squelch with his act. He is a bull of a man, and she is a little person. Achondroplasia, his medical mind fills in automatically. Dwarfism, with shortened limbs that leave her standing somewhere around four feet tall. “But she won’t do the sideshow. She’s an aerialist, and the Fantastical Emporium is the only place that will let her fly.”
Mister Y is listening intently, as he does, his eyes flicking from Squelch to Miss Fleck to the rather dilapidated rigging in the musty tent.
“The Fantastical Emporium is old by Coney’s standards,” Gangle says, shifting his hips and turning his legs to have a prayer of fitting in the bleacher seat, not designed for a man of his stature. “It’s one of the very few places with an aerial act. One of its founding acts was a troupe of aerialists, but that was long ago now, and the venue has changed hands many times.”
Mister Y agrees that Squelch is an act to keep an eye on, and they decide to stay to see the aerialist act, although Mister Y expresses his doubts. “Perhaps it is an illusion, to heighten the risk of her act, but much of the support structure, up by the tent roof, seems rather suspect to me.”
Gangle has learned that Mister Y has a keen eye for details, and he squints up into the dark past the lighted areas of the rigging, trying to see as he sees. Which he is also learning is nigh impossible in many ways. Mister Y’s viewpoint on many things is exceedingly…unique.
Miss Fleck’s Little Bird of the Air act begins, with some bored looking spotters manning the corners of a net that has seen better days.
From the first, she is extraordinary; she does indeed seem to soar like a bird, freed from any limitations anyone would care to imagine she has due to her shorter stature. Gangle sees Squelch in the ring below, far too big to venture up onto the rigging towers with her, but watching with an expression that shows they are quite probably more than just a professional team, a look of pride and love writ large on his expressive face.
Miss Fleck performs several amazing feats on an aerial hoop, twisting into improbable configurations, then moves to the trapeze, leading to her signature climax, a heel catch, leaping from one trapeze to another to catch herself by her heels.
She completes it, to well-earned applause that fills the tent, when Gangle sees Mister Y’s head flick up, a sharp movement, accompanied by a sharper intake of breath.
And then he hears it, above the applause, a groaning, wrenching sort of sound as something parts near the tent’s roof. The aerial towers shudder, the trapeze swinging suddenly wildly out of control. The spotters on the floor come alive, snapping the net taut as Miss Fleck flies, not far enough, not far enough to grasp for any firm hold as the rigging around her shudders into instability. Gangle can see her twist and turn as she falls, and she is close, so close; she hits the edge of the net, which slows her fall just enough, but bounces out at an uncatchable angle and hits the ground with a sound that Gangle is glad he can’t hear amid the tumult of screams.
Then the call went out, the call Gangle has dreaded these long years.
“A doctor! Is there a doctor in the house!”
Gangle freezes. Near seven feet of solid ice, he sits in his seat and wills this all to be a dream.
Beside him, Mister Y is already on his feet, pulling at his arm. “Come on, man. You must go to her!”
“I can’t,” he moans, the ice crushing him, smaller and smaller, constricting around his heart until he can no longer breathe.
“If you don’t,” comes Mister Y’s voice hissing in his ear, “you will become everything that you are not. Your wife’s husband is not a coward, not a murderer who will let people die by his inaction. I will cover for you, we will not be found out. Now. Get. Up.”
With that, Mister Y heaves him to his feet and Gangle has no choice but to catch himself or plummet down the steep bleacher seating.
Miss Fleck is awake and talking, though still flat on her back, comforting Squelch, telling him she will be all right, when her eyes flare into panic and she loses the ability to speak. Squelch moves to pick her up, when Gangle finds his voice.
“Don’t move her. Let me in, I can help her.”
He and Mister Y kneel at the stricken woman’s side, Squelch behind them, blocking anyone else from approaching. Debris is still raining down from above, from whatever has given way, and the spotters have fled, while the ringmaster shouts for people to evacuate the tent.
Miss Fleck is struggling to breathe, grasping at her chest. Gangle finds her too rapid pulse with a hand, and watches the rise of her chest with a critical eye. He probes her side with an ungentle touch and she pulls away, unable to cry out.
“Tension pneumothorax. She’s got air in her chest where it shouldn’t be and her lungs can’t inflate. I need a knife, some alcohol.”
Mister Y unsurprisingly supplies both, a sharp pocketknife and flask, and as Gangle cleans the knife and Miss Fleck’s skin, he casts about in his mind for what will serve to do what he needs done. He has it. “A pen! A fountain pen!”
Mister Y again is the source, and Gangle works quickly, removing the pen’s nib, cutting the end with the knife, alcohol over all again, and then with a glance to Squelch and a look to Mister Y that he hopes conveys “don’t let him murder me,” he uses the knife to cut into Miss Fleck’s chest at the appropriate spot and pushes the pen, now a hollow tube, into the wound he has made.
Miss Fleck coughs and sputters and pulls in a great gasping breath, and Gangle feels his own heart begin to beat again.
A man and woman come pounding across the ring toward the scene, presumably medical personnel, but Mister Y has placed Squelch’s hand in place of Gangle’s own at the base of the tube, and turns himself and Gangle away from the line of sight of the approaching team, even as he speaks rapid fire to Squelch.
“We can’t be seen here. Please tell them it was a retired Navy surgeon who helped your friend, if they ask any questions.”
Squelch appraises them with a remarkably shrewd eye. “I owe you her life, and my own. I will do as you ask, anything you ask.”
Mister Y grips his arm at that and says, “It’s a bargain. We will find you later, and we hope she fares well.”
More than Miss Fleck’s life had been saved that day.
Gangle owes Mister Y, every moment of his life from that day forward, for forcing him from inaction, helping him throw off the grey cloak of guilt and despair he had shrouded himself in for years. For understanding and making Gangle understand that he had not murdered Louise. For helping him finally truly accept that he was not a murderer, not capable of murder, either through action or inaction.
“She chose, Stephen,” Mister Y had said, later that same night, as Gangle was still processing the events of the afternoon, whisky again loosening both their tongues. “Louise chose her course of action, and you helped her to achieve it. You honored her choice. Would that I had been so wise, my own circumstances would be quite different. She would not want you to live in this limbo you have created for yourself. You do not need her forgiveness. You need only your own.”
“And you, Erik?” He saw the man start at the use of the name that Gangle had only heard him speak in his dreams. “What will it take for you to forgive yourself?”
Mister Y had no answer for him, at least none that he cared to share that day. Gangle stayed with him, through the years, watching him work, helping him build Phantasma, and hoped someday he would find the peace he craved.
Later that week they had sought out Squelch and Miss Fleck, recovering in the hospital from broken ribs, nothing that would keep her from flying again.
A productive meeting, thinks Gangle, in the lobby of the concert hall at Phantasma—smiling up at Miss Fleck and Squelch who have arrived to join him for Mister Y’s announcement and the Christmas pageant to follow—a meeting which led to them being the first two acts signed to the plan of Phantasma, before even a spade of earth had been turned.
ooo000ooo
After dinner concludes, and willing hands whisk plates and food away, leaving the bar open and serving, the lights blink quickly off and on to indicate it’s time to enter the concert hall proper, drinks welcome, of course.
Gangle is relaxed, at ease. He’s been running the show, literally and figuratively for months now, with Mister Y…otherwise occupied, and it has been a long time since he has had an evening off. His small part in a last minute addition to this evening’s pageant—in this case the pre-show—had been concluded, mainly ensuring that a particular idea was a good one, and that it wouldn’t get anybody fired. It was a small group in on this last decision, he and Squelch and Miss Fleck, the only ones fully in the know about the master’s plans for the evening.
With Gangle in charge of Phantasma as a whole, Squelch and Miss Fleck had been tasked with coordinating the dinner and the pageant proper. And they had certainly helped with the rest of the plans for the master’s pre-show announcement, which had taken quite a bit of prep work on all their parts, including enlisting a few deputies who knew some pieces, but not every facet, of the plan.
And then all that was left was hoping that time and tide, both quite literally, would be in their favor.
They all need something, thinks Gangle, as he makes his way with the crowd of co-workers and friends into the waiting concert hall. Something to bring them back from that night on the pier, which replays in his mind, again and again.
Gangle remembers how fast things changed, how fast he moved, how very red her blood had been, spilling out onto the pier, when Mister Y’s dream, finally realized, had been shattered by a single gunshot.
ooo000ooo
Gangle is the only one moving, the only one thinking. The rest are in a frozen tableau of horror. Madame Giry holding a stricken Meg. Christine, pale and lifeless in Raoul’s arms. The master and his son at the end of the pier, hopeless and overcome, their resemblance even more obvious in their attitudes of grief.
Gangle has time only for one person. He is at Christine’s side in an instant. His left fingers find her neck, his right hand the tear in her side, coming away deep dark visceral red. Blood wells from her wound in rhythmic, dear God, blessedly rhythmic pulses. Her face is white, the shape of her lips lost as all color recedes from them. She is cool. Unmoving. Starkly beautiful.
And alive.
He yells to Squelch, get a cart. Call Dr. Abramovitz in from the city, he’s at his sister’s. Dr. Bettina is here, find her, get her to prep the dispensary. Get every nurse there. And Hans and Smitty and Saul.
All big men, Gangle thinks, as he uses his bloody hands to rip open Christine’s bodice, the blue silk parting like paper from neckline to hips. All type O, universal donors.
“Get this off her, get this damned corset off her,” he barks at an astounded Raoul. “She’s alive, she needs to be able to breathe, get this off her!”
Raoul to his credit snaps to, shifting Christine quickly from his lap, onto the pier, trying to work the fastenings of the corset until he finally takes to it with a pocketknife, cutting it from her body.
Gangle tears her skirt into strips, folded and pushed into the wound, tied in place as tightly as he can, speaking to Raoul all the while. The blue silk goes purple, soaked with red blood.
“Keep them safe, don’t let anyone leave Phantasma, keep them all safe, Squelch will be back to help you,” he says, indicating the Girys, the master, the master’s son.
Then Gangle lifts her, a clean lift, tipping her legs high and her head low as he runs, as fast as he can, faster than death, running to meet the cart that has pulled up where the pier meets the shore.
In the cart, her breathing stops. He won’t allow it, digging deep into his training.
Her heart stops. He makes it beat.
The dispensary is up, running and ready when they arrive. Dr. Bettina, who worked as a nurse for want of patients to patronize a female doctor the granddaughter of slaves before being welcomed to Phantasma with open arms, works on the bullet wound while Gangle sets up the transfusions himself.
By the time Abramovitz makes it in from the city, there is nothing left to be done.
ooo000ooo
Gangle sits at the back of the auditorium. He’s far too tall to be seated in front of anyone. And he already knows what’s coming and doesn’t want anyone to miss a minute. It has been half an hour since Miss Fleck and Squelch breathlessly arrived, and their expressions spoke of a mission well completed, so there’s no worry on that score. The little surprise they all agreed on is ready.
They sit beside him now, pointing out the two gentlemen easing into front row seats, one of them removing what Squelch had earlier called an astrakhan hat, so as not to block the view of those behind him. From this distance, they look like brothers, dark haired and olive skinned, though Gangle knows for a fact they are not related. They too, seem content, their ship having arrived on time this morning. They’d been settled in their rooms in the Aerie, able to have their charge pass from them now that their voyage was completed.
The tide, as it turned out, had cooperated. And so too the timing, he thinks, as he sees Dr. Moshe Abramovitz and his wife also seat themselves in the front row, next to Dr. Bettina Crumpler, a span of open seats in the center between them and the men from Persia, via France. The doctors are relaxed and smiling, a good sign. They deserve it, thinks Gangle, after how unusually hard pressed they have been in this off season.
The theater is near capacity, filled with Phantasma employees and their families. There is the rippling murmur of conversation, the clink of glassware from beverages brought in from dinner, and beneath, Gangle feels the low buzz of anticipation. He’s been in the business for years now, and he knows how to read a crowd’s mood as easily as the susurration of a pulse beneath his fingers. He feels anticipation, yes, and curiosity and concern.
The crowd’s concern is not for themselves—the word has been out for a while that Phantasma is fine, they will reopen in spring. No, their concern is all for the man who made Phantasma happen, who has been little more than a ghost since the incident at the pier, mostly absent and withdrawn, more than usual, when encountered.
The lights dim, the curtain parts, revealing the stage, and like fever breaking, the miasma of illness lifting suddenly and completely, Gangle senses a wave of relief pass through the crowd.
There, alone on the stage, is a Steinway grand piano. The master’s piano, for his hands only.
Mister Y intends to play.
The realization that his music is not gone forever skirls through the crowd like a spring breeze on this December day, lifting hearts, lifting spirits, and then a new buzz of excited speculation begins.
For there is a difference, to be noted and commented upon. There is never anything on the piano. There has never been anything on the piano. Not sheet music, not fingerprints, not a mote of dust.
Until tonight. The piano gleams black in the stage lights, the cover open, the fallboard closed, covering the pale keys Mister Y uses to make the piano sing, his music ever a siren call.
On the fallboard, vibrant, lush, unfurled in full bloom, lies a single red rose.
The audience falls into hushed silence as Mister Y strides from stage left to center, his coat sweeping behind him like smoke from a locomotive. When he turns to face the audience, he is seen to be wearing a cravat, red as heart’s blood, a shocking dash of color compared to his normally somber black and white attire.
He has been seen only rarely, in all the long weeks since the incident at the pier, and he has been thought of, and missed, and prayed for, Gangle thinks, and wonders if Mister Y knows just how much. He will now, Gangle hopes, as he stands and begins to clap, and the whole auditorium comes to their feet, in thunderous tribute.
Mister Y allows it for a time, then raises his hands—hands that turned earth, shoveled shit, built this entire park from the ground up—quieting them, urging them to be seated until, waiting a beat with a composer’s timing, he begins to speak.
“Before we begin tonight’s Christmas pageant, I want to take a moment to say thank you, to each and every one of you, who have stayed the course throughout the season and especially since our closing day. My especial thanks to Dr. Gangle, Mr. Squelch and Miss Fleck, who stepped up to fill roles left absent by myself during these past months. My eternal gratitude for Dr. Abramovitz, Dr. Crumpler and all of the nurses who endeavor each and every day to work the miracle of medicine in our dispensary for your families…and for mine.”
Gangle smiles at the wave of anticipation he can feel building in the crowd. Beside him, Miss Fleck grips his hand and Squelch his forearm. It has all come together, in this moment, for Phantasma to see and share.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Phantasma, it is my very great pleasure to present on this stage once more, the incomparable, the incandescent, Christine Daaé.”
With that, Mister Y sweeps to the side of the stage, stretching forth his hand to meet a slender white hand reaching out to his own. He turns and escorts her, dazzling in deep emerald green, a vision as they move together, slowly and carefully to center stage, lost in each other, awash in applause that just about brings the house down.
Alive. Alive and well, as they had all hoped and prayed as she recovered at the dispensary, from the wounds suffered that terrible night, Mister Y scarcely leaving her side, only to visit with Madame Giry and Meg, as she fought her own long battle against darkness.
As the applause continues, Mister Y pinks on the visible side of his face, but is not chagrined enough to loose his hold on Christine’s waist as they stand side by side, holly and ivy, symbols of survival in the dark winter of life.
ooo000ooo
He had let go of her hand only reluctantly in the dispensary, too, Gangle recalls, on his knees for hours at her bedside, until Abramovitz and Crumpler relented and let him essentially move into her room.
Before she had woken for good, Gangle found him there, beside her unconscious form, stricken and alone, tears streaming down his face.
“It is all my fault,” he’d said, his beautiful voice choked with emotion, the great passion at his core welling to the surface as strangled sobs. “Years ago and again today, I never learn. I try to force the world to my will, not listening to her, not listening to Meg, not seeing, my blind focus only on what I want, what I need.”
“But she made her choice, Erik. Christine chose you.” Gangle laid a comforting hand on the shuddering shoulder, thinking how none of them had seen Meg, seen her sharp focus turn inward, twisting and wounding within.
Mister Y sank beneath the gentle pressure of his hand, his voice coming muffled as he pressed his face to the bedclothes. “I can’t be sure. There were things I did, things I said. If she dies, I will never know. I have so much to tell her. I understand now. Now when it’s too late. It is her choice, her life to live. I will do as she asks, in all things, if only she will live. If she leaves me, I will bear it. Only please let her live.”
“And if she chooses to stay, Erik? Stay and love you? Will you allow it? Will you finally feel yourself worthy of living, and loving, and being loved in return? You counseled me once that the only person whose forgiveness I need is my own. Those were wise words.”
Gangle gave his shoulder a last reassuring squeeze. He knows Mister Y will sleep there, kneeling on the floor, no force on this earth sufficient to make him move.
“When she wakes, Erik…and she will wake…you must talk. You must listen. And when she makes her choice, to go…or to stay, know that all of us at Phantasma will be here to support you, come what may. You can have your dream come true, my friend, if you just let it.”
He doesn’t know at what point Mister Y had fallen asleep. The broad shoulders rise and fall in slumber, his hand still clutched around Christine’s.
Gangle recalls long watches of his own, urging the master to eat, to sleep, to let Christine rest, and then, when her strength had recovered, guarding the door against nurses who threatened to interrupt long conversations between Mister Y and Christine, conversations that Gangle knew were long overdue and as vitally necessary to her survival, to their survival, as any temperature readings the nurses needed, which could wait until the murmur of voices speaking in earnest French behind the door had come to a natural conclusion.
The outcome of those conversations stands before him now, hands clasped, glowing in the lights on the stage, glowing as they had during the brief ceremony earlier that day, high atop the Aerie.
ooo000ooo
Mister Y again raises a hand, quieting the applause.
Miss Fleck’s grip on Gangle’s fingers reaches nearly a breaking point; she’s an aerialist, her fingers are strong. He pats her hand and she lets up with a sheepish grin. Just in time. He’d have lost his fingers completely with Mister Y’s next words.
“Before we sing for you this evening, I have another announcement.” Mister Y and Christine exchange a look, and Gangle wonders if they see anything at all except each other in this moment. “Earlier today, in the presence of friends and family newly arrived from the continent, Miss Daaé and I were married. She, and our son, will be residing at Phantasma, and I would wish that you would welcome them with all the same respect and care each of you has shown me.”
Gangle can sense every eye in the house flashing to their hands, where the glint of gold bands can indeed be seen. He himself is looking upward, as the audience again erupts into applause, which turns into the din of glassware being clinked by any metal implement at hand, and in case this continental couple is ignorant of tradition, Squelch assists by loudly bellowing “KISS!” at the top of his considerable lungs.
The clinking continues, joined by laughter and pointing, sufficient to cause Mister Y and Christine to look up, where at the end of a silver rope descending above their heads hangs a huge and vigorous ball of mistletoe, Gangle’s and Miss Fleck’s and Squelch’s possibly career ending contribution.
At least they were all already at the wedding earlier today, with the two friends arrived this morning, Nadir Khan and Darius Mazenderani, who had escorted Gustave back from France where he had been sent with Raoul for the duration of his mother’s recovery.
Even if the mistletoe ends their employment at Phantasma, thinks Gangle, they will at least have that memory.
Mister Y and Christine bow to the inevitable, neither of them seeming to particularly mind as their arms twine about one another and their lips meet in a lingering kiss.
Mister Y concludes with a kiss to her hand, stepping back as Christine comes forward, her voice clearer and stronger than Gangle had dared to hope.
“I would like to thank you all for the very warm welcome, and for all the thoughts and prayers for my recovery and health over the last days. I want you to raise your glasses and your prayers to our friends who cannot be here with us this evening, in the hopes that they will rejoin us soon.”
The tears brimming in Gangle’s eyes finally crest and break free at this heartfelt concern for Meg. He has visited her so many times over the past weeks, and strokes his palm now, remembering the warmth of her small hand in his, as she clung to him for strength. He didn’t know if he had the right words to give, but as long as she wanted him to visit, he would go, and gladly.
No one should wander alone in darkness when there was someone to remind them there was still light in the world.
Christine continues, her rich voice carrying. “I am so happy to have found a true home among you all here at Phantasma, and I urge you henceforth to feel free to call me Mrs. Y.”
Over cheers and laughter, Mister Y strides to the piano, presenting his wife with the red rose, held vivid against her emerald dress, and together they beckon to stage right, Gustave stepping forward and taking a small bow before seating himself at the piano.
The piano no one save Mister Y had ever played before.
Perhaps it was calculated to cause the breathless hush which fell over the audience. Gangle wouldn’t put it past Mister Y, a showman born.
Two heavenly voices rise in song, as Gustave plays with near the skill and emotion of Mister Y, for reasons some few in the audience know.
“It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
‘Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King.’
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.”
The rest of the evening passes in a sparkling haze of laughter and joy, Mr. and Mrs. Y and Gustave watching from the front row, nestled safely between the doctors and the friends who watch to see that Christine is safe and well, allowing this one night of indulgence before a return to rest.
As Gangle heads out after the pageant has concluded, toward the visit he has promised Meg and Madame Giry, joining them for a post-midnight French tradition they call Le Réveillon, the awakening, a meal into the wee hours of Christmas morning, his heart is filled with the promise of the song sung so beautifully at the beginning of the evening. A song that sums up the journey of so many who have found their home at Phantasma.
“And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
Oh, rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
“For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.”
Behind him, the Aerie rises into the sky, bringing two of Phantasma’s residents that much closer to heaven, which they, after so very, very long, so richly deserve.
Yes, thinks Gangle. There are angels on this earth, as well as in the heavens above, and how lucky Phantasma is to be home to so many of them.
He lengthens his stride. Across town, Meg is waiting.