Page 16 of Outback Reunion

As everyone applauded, the music changed, and Lorenzo launched into Queen’s ‘Let me entertain you’ at the top of his lungs. Mark knew all the words because it had been one of his dad’s favourite songs when he was growing up. Lorenzo sang about welcoming ladies and gentlemen, then asked if they were ready for a show and as he got to the chorus, one by one, more performers exploded from the curtains behind the ring, joining the ringmaster in song. There had to be about fifteen of them all up. Kids squealed, parents clapped in time to the music, and Mrs Brady tsked at the ‘indecently revealing’ costumes and the fact that there was a mere child in the mix.

Mark thought the child looked vaguely familiar, but before he could consider this any further the entertainers formed into two lines and Gabriela cartwheeled into the ring. His breath caught in his throat as he drank her in. She was wearing a pink and silver leotard with shimmery stockings, and had a parrot clinging to her shoulder, as if she was a dancing pirate.

He immediately remembered the bird she’d shown him all those years ago. Was this the same one? What was its name? Blabbermouth or something like that?

The crowd laughed as Gabriela and the parrot righted themselves and took a bow, the bird even raising its wing to salute.

‘Let’s hear it,’ boomed Lorenzo, ‘for the one, the only, the beautiful, Gabriela Jimenez.’

Lorenzo must be her father. Mark wondered if coming from a line of circus folk was anything like being from generations of farmers? A contradictory feeling of satisfaction at being a part of something that had lasted for longer than most people lived, yet also the heavy weight of obligation to keep it going. To not be the one to stuff it all up.

She blew a kiss at the older man as applause broke out all around the tent. Despite Lorenzo being the ringmaster, it was clear she was the star of the show, and Mark felt a weird surge of pride inside him.

He wanted to stand up and shout, ‘I know her!’

But that would be laughable. Because he didn’t. Not really.

When the music finally died down, the performers vanished behind the curtain.

Lorenzo waited for the audience to go silent, then opened his arms wide. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you our first act tonight, the—’

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A short stocky man, dressed as a clown and pretending he was driving around the ring, pressed an imaginary horn, which sounded all around them.

‘What are you doing in my circus?’ he yelled at Lorenzo as the audience tried to contain their laughter.

‘This isn’tyourcircus; it’s my circus,’ Lorenzo replied, looking most put out, ‘and I’m trying to speak to my guests.’ He gestured to the audience. ‘I was just about to introduce the Saad sisters.’

The clown mimed getting out of his imaginary car and slamming the door, then he dug three rubber ducks out of his enormous pockets and started juggling them.

Lorenzo looked the clown up and down with a distasteful expression. ‘No one comes to a circus to see juggling ducks; they want to see dangerous acts, fire and knife jugglers, performing dogs, camels and contortionists.’

Again, the ringmaster addressed the crowd. ‘Let’s take a vote. Do you want my circus or his?’

Gabriela’sthought Mark. He didn’t give a damn about watching anyone else.

‘Yours,’ shouted everyone else.

The clown was furious. He started hurling rubber ducks at the audience and he didn’t just have three. His pockets seemed to be reproducing them. Kids shrieked as ducks rained down on top of the audience and Lorenzo began chasing the other man around the ring. For a middle-aged dude, the clown was fast and nimble. It was slapstick humour, but everyone was in hysterics as the two men dived in and out of the stage props. Mark couldn’t help grinning.

He even heard Mrs Brady stifling a giggle.

Eventually, two men wearing head-to-toe black ran into the ring, picked up the clown like he was a plank of wood and carried him off stage.

Lorenzo wiped his brow, then straightened and resumed his introduction. The first act was the Saad sisters, Jasmine, Amina and Dalia, three contortionists from Egypt, dressed in full-body red, gold and beige leotards that left little to the imagination. Mark recognised two of them from the food truck. As the sisters twisted and folded themselves into impossible shapes, he couldn’t help thinking how much his muscles would hurt if he tried to do anything like it. But this was only the beginning. Soon, stagehands rolled out a couple of small black boxes and two of the women folded themselves inside before the third stuck swords all through the boxes.

He had to admit, he was impressed—even though he knew the third sister wasn’t really hurting her sisters, he couldn’t work out the logistics behind their act—but he just wanted them to hurry up, hoping Gabriela would appear next.

Disappointingly, the clown came out again, this time pretending to take photos for people in the audience with a massive Polaroid camera. He proceeded to pull cardboard images of horribly ugly animals out of the fake camera to show his subjects, distracting everyone while behind him stagehands erected a massive metal apparatus with two big wheels on each end. Lorenzo returned to the ring to shoo him off again and introduce the Dangerous Duo, ‘All the way from Old Mexico on the Wheel of Steel.’

The lycra-clad usher Mark had seen earlier burst through the curtain and leapt up to grab the smaller of the two wheels. He swung it towards him and when it was low enough, he leapt inside and started to run like a hamster, setting a giant pendulum in motion. The wheel lifted higher into the air with each rotation, and when he finally got to the top, he balanced precariously while another man jumped into the second wheel, now at the bottom. Before long both wheels were spinning and the whole apparatus was turning, the men running and jumping in and out of the huge wheels with impressive precision. They used skipping ropes and covered their heads with black bags, their efforts getting more and more terrifying.

There had to be a lot of trust between them because if one of them made a wrong move, both of them could get hurt.

Next came a beautiful sandy-haired woman who mesmerised the audience with her hula-hoop routine. She started simply with only one, then the little girl Eileen had commented on earlier entered the ring and began to toss more to her, until at one stage she was spinning ten hoops around her body, arms, legs and neck. Mark thought that pretty impressive, but then the hoops came to life, glowing with flashing neon lights and creating actual images in the air as she twisted and turned them. It was magical.

Lorenzo came out between each act, each time dressed in a new, equally extravagant outfit and the clown materialised at strategic times to distract the audience from the movement of equipment. Whenever another act was introduced, Mark held his breath, hoping it was Gabriela.

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