A ticket taker floats in the archway. The crowd moves around him in a glittering stream of scales. “First box,” the man says, and when his lips move, a string of bubbles escapes, rising slow as minnows through water.
We’re all underneath the surface—the gaslights wavering like sunbeams through waves, gowns drifting like seaweed. The carpet breathes soft and red under my feet, velvet as a womb.
He rips our ticket.
“My darling, Gertie,” Kodiak says, in that gentleman’s voice he wears like a costume, pressing the other half into my hand.
Gertie. I nearly laugh, remembering the names he teased about. Had I found a name and forgotten the one I asked for? Perhaps I am no one. Or perhaps someone new.
We take our seats, so high the whole theater spreads beneath us like a pancake. The orchestra prepares below, the brass gleaming under the lights, bows rising and falling like silverware. The air squeezes my chest. I gasp. Had I been holding my breath?
“What’s the matter?” Kodiak asks in a distant voice, fuzzy under the singing strings.
I hadn’t noticed it before, not really—the ticket pressed in my hand that trembles when I tilt it toward the light.
Krewe of Proteus.
Some sort of parade society it seems. Thoughts spill through the words, slick as fish. I freeze at the image. A bear, drawn in black ink against the paper stub.
Below it, a single word: Callisto.
My Callisto. The one I whispered to through the telescope.
The ticket burns in my palm. I asked for signs, begged for them, and here it is: a bear made into flesh, into the man sitting beside me. Despite falling stars, learning the coincidence of hisname, and his sharing the Shawnee’s tales of the stars, I’ve resisted every fleeting clue.
But this is tangible proof. The truest evidence.
“You all right?” he asks, wrinkle in his brow.
“You’re mine.” I rest my gloved hand against his face, his clean shaven cheek warm through the satin fabric. “My bear. I prayed, and the stars sent you.” My voice breaks as I draw back and press the ticket hard in my fist.
His lips part, eyes flutter with flabbergast, before a smile quirks up the corner of his mouth. “My drunk little lamb. Ought to strap you to your seat ’fore you try to fly.”
The lights dim, and the voices fold into a hush. Curtains part, and the orchestra rises like a tide. Costumed figures surge onto the stage, painted faces beneath the flame. I try to follow, but the story swims out of reach, foreign words drowned by absinthe. The Devil’s shadow looms over the stage like an anvil.
Then, warmth. Breath at my neck. The bass of his voice prickles up across my arms. “Stay put. Don’t go losin’ yourself while I’m gone.”
I nod. At least I think I do. Or perhaps I stared. But I blink, and he’s disappeared through the velvet curtain. Turning back to the stage, nuns rise from their graves, veils flapping like the market awnings in the wind. They dance in holy robes turned to sin, and my pulse quickens. The green opal spirit whistles in my veins like a harmonica. Or is that a violin, the sound distorted underwater?
Minutes pass, perhaps hours, then he’s back in his chair, arm laid easy. When did he return? Had he even gone? I tug at the long satin at my forearms. My skin is too warm, the fabric too tight.
“I think my hands are growing too big for my gloves,” I mutter, turning to him. “Bear, could it be that my hands are hot but my bones are cold?”
Kodiak shrugs slightly, reaches over and takes my hand in his, fingers lacing with mine. “Reckon I ought to hold ’em, then.”
Chapter 17
KODIAK
This ain’t the show I’d hoped to make, but it’ll do. The open, closed, and proscenium boxes are packed tight with money, old and new. My sweet girl in her pink gown, drunker than a skunk and prettier than a rose. Softest touch I ever knew, and tonight she looked at me with tears in her eyes, damn near singing me a love song. I’ll be damned if I ain’t swooning like a debutante at her first waltz.
It ain’t right to give a man something to live for right before he risks life and limb to secure a bag of loot. But I reckon this pot’ll be ’specially sweet. All that coin will spoil my woman to death—assuming I make it out alive.
The opera’s a perfect mark. Everyone here’s scrubbed clean and smelling nice. Who ever heard of an opera robbery? Most men outside the law I’ve met on the road don’t know a damn thing about this world. They hit small-time targets—cash boxes, registers, homes. Biggest they can dream up are trains and banks. But a box office?
No. This’ll be another pilferage for the record books. Nobody thought one man could derail a train and run off with moremoney than God. Ain’t nobody going see me coming now. By the time these bastards realize what hit them, I’ll be long gone. Me and my woman, heading west to lay low in the mountains. I imagine Alice big and round, carrying my young. I’d get teary-eyed if I weren’t on the way to knock some poor sap’s lights out.
I slip away and saunter down a dark hall. The boom of the orchestra drowns each footstep, and the floor watchman don’t hear me coming. I’m close enough to hit ’fore he nods at me. I tip my head in reply. My sharp smile’s too pretty to suspect of anything less than complete gentility.
