Free A Life in Men: A Novel by Gina Frangello

bar during “afters” so wildly that I fell, giving myself a bruise on my thigh the size of a grapefruit, while the regulars cheered. I’ve watched fireworks for the Queen Mum’s birthday and braved the notorious Notting Hill Carnival (no riots this year!), and I’ve come to understand that British toilet tissue is too rough for use after sex and the myriad things this implies about England. I’ve attended parties where the guests were from at least eight different countries but basically everyone was a dealer, and when an old geezer from the West Indies asked, “Love, what are
you
doing here, who’s looking after you?” I was set to protest that I am an independent American woman who requires no looking after, but Joshua came forward and said, “Thank you,
umkhulu,
I’m keeping her safe,” and
I realized all at once that I don’t know the first real thing about him. It’s too much work being you, Nix, but maybe I am not quite
me
anymore either. I’ve done nothing I came here to do, met no one I came here to meet, and still I’ve become someone new.
    Y ANK AND J OSHUA are on the floor of the sitting room passing a hash cigarette back and forth. Tomorrow is opening night. For the first time, Joshua will do his trapeze act in public; he has gotten them free tickets, and after the show there will be a party for the circus members’ family and friends, though most have no people in London. Yank was not particularly hot to attend, but Joshua pleaded, “You’ll dig it, high-wire acts and the Chinese swing—just your speed, all high risk,” until he shrugged his helpless consent. Lately he feels weirdly connected to Joshua, a strange sense of responsibility for the kid. He always
liked
him fine—better than he liked most people—but there’s more to it now. Like he and Nicole are conspiring somehow to protect him.
    Joshua inhales, holds.
    Yank says, “Buddy, this here’s an intervention. You’re gonna drop that flying Chink on her head, you keep this shit up.”
    Joshua laughs appreciatively. “Oh, plenty of people at the circus smoke,” he says, as though Yank were alluding to the health of his lungs. “Just like gymnasts.”
    “You ever afraid you’ll fall?” Seriously this time: he really wants to know.
    Joshua chokes on his next drag. “Fuck, yeah! I’m always scared shitless on my way to work. I think,
What the hell am I doing, eh?
Gymnasts are constantly injuring themselves—everyone has surgery all the time, we’re all scarred and stitched up like Frankenstein. But I was never worried. I’ve been doing it since I was small; it’s like riding a bicycle to me. But the trapeze, bloody hell! The thing is, though, once I’m up there I can’t focus on anything but what I’m doing, what comes next. It’s the same as gymnastics that way—there’s no room for fear. Like, nothing else exists.”
    Yank ticks off things in his life that have ever offered such primacy of experience. Taking photos when he was younger, in New Orleans, New Mexico, California. The kind of fucking that comes after a hot-and-heavy pursuit. In other words, not a damn thing he’s done lately, except heroin. Even now, his heart is not in the passing of this joint. He would like to go into the toilet and shoot up, but he has to wait until Joshua fucks off to the Latchmere to pick Nicole up from her shift. Other than
her,
no one here knows he is using again. Even among circus freaks and skinheads, a junkie is a liability, and who knows, he might be asked to leave. So he hides his habit, though like the girl with her disease he no doubt leaves clues; no doubt the others suspect. He pulls the hash into his lungs hard, but it will never do enough.
    “I’m going to ask Nicole to come with me,” Joshua says, grinning behind the smoke. “You’ll have the room to yourself in a month. Cheers for putting up with us, mate; I know we’ve been a pain in your ass.”
    This, then, may be the last of the man he has been: his