Chapter 24: Learning to Fly

"Kurt, if I did the routine with you instead, do you think it would be safe?"

Wolfgang led Maria in a winding path through the various tents and trailers. They had spent four days together in Madrid before driving northward, back to Canet de Mar and Circus Gehlhaar. It was early evening, the sun just beginning to set. They could hear James and Brin over in the outdoor kitchen; it was their turn to make dinner that night. After dinner the acrobats would take a break, but James would be in the tent rehearsing the band. Wolfgang stopped at the Szardos' trailer and smiled at Maria. He pushed open the door and looked in.

Kurt was stretched out on his bunk with a book.

"What are you reading?" Wolfgang asked. Kurt held up his dog-eared copy of Captain Blood. "Again? Can we come in?" Wolfgang asked.

Kurt looked up. "We?"

"Yeah, I want you to meet Maria. We just got back."

"Oh, No! I'm busy. Sorry." Kurt leapt out of his bunk with the speed and agility he normally reserved for the trapeze. He pushed Wolfgang out the door and slammed it shut. Wolfgang heard the lock click. He frowned, exchanged a glance with Maria, and knocked on the door.

"The door is shut." Kurt called from inside. Wolfgang saw blinds drop down inside the trailer's windows.

Maria looked confused. Wolfgang made a mental note to explain the whole door opened/door shut custom of circus privacy. In this particular case though, he didn't think it counted. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his back against the door.

"What's this about Kurt? I want to introduce you. Why don't you come out?" Said Wolfgang.

"That's okay. I'd rather stay in. I have a lot to do." Kurt said through the door. Wolfgang could tell he was right on the other side of it.

"What do you have to do? You're reading a book you've already read fifty times. This is ridiculous." Wolfgang rolled his eyes. Maria was watching him with interest.

"Go away!"

"I'm not going away until you explain what's going on." Wolfgang turned to face the door and tried the handle. It was still locked. He suddenly realized what the problem was. He was afraid of Maria's reaction. "Did we or did we not sit on the roof of a church and have a conversation about this very subject?" Wolfgang said. Maria looked at him quizzically.

"Yes."

"Well, this isn't exactly the kind of response I was talking about. What happened to being confident?" Wolfgang said.

"I changed my mind."

Wolfgang sighed and shook his head. He was about to knock again when Maria took his hand in hers. "He can be a little skittsh at times." He told her.

"Then maybe a different approach is what needed." She said. Maria didn't speak as many languages as Wolfgang, but she spoke German and English as well as she did her native Italian. She gently guided Wolfgang aside and took his place at the door. She tapped on the door softly.

"Kurt?" She asked. There was no answer. "Kurt, I'd really like to meet you."

"Please leave me alone."

Maria twirled a strand of her long dark hair around one finger thoughtfully. " Wolfgang's told me so much about you." She said, "I was really looking forward to meeting you in person."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you." Kurt said.

"Hasn't Wolfgang told you about me?" She asked. There was a long pause.

"Yes."

"And so aren't you the least bit curious?" She asked. There was another pause.

"Yes. But I can't." Kurt said from the interior.

"You can't what?" Maria asked. Her voice was soothing and at the same time almost playful.

"I don't want you to see what I look like." Kurt finally admitted.

"But I already know what you look like." Maria said. "Do you think that matters to me?" There was no answer.

"Well, it doesn't," she continued in a conversational tone. " So. I want to meet you. You want to meet me. Why don't you let me in? It's not polite to keep a lady waiting on the threshold." Wolfgang was watching her with a small smile on his face. She smiled back. "Are you going to open the door?" She asked.

"No."

"I'm sorry," Maria said, "But I just won't take no for answer."

"What!" The door swung open. "What do you mean you won't take no for an answer? How can you say that? Wolfgang?" Kurt asked. He glared at Wolfgang accusatorially.

"Don't look at me." Wolfgang said.

Kurt turned his attention to Maria. She smiled. "Ah. There you are. So, can I come in?"

Nodding his head in defeated acquiescence, Kurt put out a hand and she took it and stepped into the trailer. "This is so much nicer than Wolfgang's trailer." She said as she opened the blinds. Kurt backed away as Wolfgang stepped in and closed the door.

They had the same type of personality. From the moment Wolfgang entered a room to the moment he left, he owned it. He didn't hold court or command everybody's attention, but he made subtle adjustments to conversation and the atmosphere, just enough of a change so that his influence was obvious only to those who knew him. He was like the perfect party host, he made everyone look better and sound wittier.

Maria did the same thing only differently. Whereas Wolfgang leaned in the direction of turning everything into a raucous party, Maria did the opposite. She made things calmer, safer. They should have neutralized each other, but they didn't. Instead, their influences intertwined created an atmosphere of encouragement and creativity.

"Well, now that that's taken care of." Wolfgang said. "Kurt, Maria. Maria, Kurt."

"It's nice to meet you." Kurt said and held out his hand.

"Oh, don't be silly." Maria said. "The way Wolfgang talks about you I was expecting you to walk on water." She pulled him into a hug and gave him a peck on the cheek. "Thanks for keeping him out of trouble."

Kurt stepped back, surprised, speechless for the second time in his life.

When she wasn't choreographing their few dance numbers Brin usually stuck around in the big tent to act as sort of consultant. Wolfgang was right, occasionally the transitions were not so much sloppy as they were utilitarian; no more than a way to get from one place to another. Even if she couldn't block out precise steps and movements, she could usually make subtle adjustments so things looked smoother.

Laurentiu and his family had strung their tight wires and were practicing. Brin had done gymnastics in school as a child and the balance beam always seemed a ridiculously tiny place to do anything more than walk across. The Wollecks confidently hopped up and down, turned cartwheels, and balanced sometimes three people high on a cable no thicker than a telephone wire. It made the space provided by the balance beam look generous.

Other things were going on in the periphery. Sven and Nils were on the narrow trampoline doing flips with so many turns and twists it made Brin dizzy just watching it. Christian was on his bike, riding it up a ramp, and turning lazy backward and forward rolls. It always amazed Brin how he had turned what was basically a kids' sport into a circus act. He finished giving Kurt a break and they returned to the project they were working on together.

Christian wanted to bring more gymnastic type moves into the show and so he was trying to do things like throw himself forward over the handle bars so his legs came up and the back of the bike lifted off the ground. Then he would land on his feet, bring the bike over his head back to the ground and jump back on it. It was basically a forward somersault with a bicycle, the ultimate goal being to skip the step of putting his feet down. Kurt was trying to spot him while he got the hang of it and was having a difficult time dealing with the fact that more often than not Christian lost control of the bike in the air and it fell on one or the other and sometimes both of them.

Christian didn't seem to mind it. He was probably so used to crashes he hardly noticed it, but Kurt clearly wasn't enjoying himself. As Christian started forward over the handlebars Kurt would put his hands on Christian's back and legs to guide his body through the arc until he was back on the bike. When it worked it looked great, but when it didn't Kurt couldn't seem to decide whether to let go of Christian and run for cover or risk another pummeling by the bike while he stayed to make sure that Christian got back on the ground safely.

Christian finally called it a day and Kurt looked visibly relieved.

"Thanks," Christian said, "but stop worrying about me running over your tail. I won't. You looked like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

"My tail was the least of my worries." Kurt said.

"Well, we can work on it again tomorrow." Christian said.

"I can hardly wait." Kurt said balefully. Brin couldn't help stifling a giggle. Laughing, Christian peddled toward the ramp, made a final back flip and rode out of the tent.

Brin was distracted by the Wollecks who were now practicing their dismounts. Laurentiu and his brother climbed down from the tight wire platform and caught the rest of their family as they came down from the wires in various ways. They needed to provide filler while above them their tight wires were reeled in to make room for other acts.

They were decent acrobats on the ground as well as on the wire so she helped them move through a coordinated series of tricks that allowed more than enough time to take care of the wires. The end of the routine was their bows. They ran through it several times and by the time they were ready for a break, Brin noticed that Kurt had laid out a bunch of mats and was now working with Amiri Black while Amiri's father watched.

They started out with simple tumbling, forward and backward rolls and cartwheels. After a few passes they switched to more complex front and back handsprings; Kurt spotting Amiri in much the same way he did for Christian. They played around some more doing combinations of various balancing and tumbling tricks. Brin was amazed at how trusting Amiri was. Even when he was trying something new, he did so with the confidence gained by the fact that he knew Kurt would always catch him. It made Brin wish she could do the same thing, but Kurt didn't need a spotter for any of her choreography and so once again she had reached a dead end.

Brin was happy with the opening of the show. She was pretty happy the most of the interim choreography she had done to get the performers from point to point in the ring. The only thing that wasn't working for her was the finale.

Like the arrival of the gypsies on stage, the finale also had the entire circus in the ring, but whereas the opening was supposed to be chaotic, the ending had to tie all the key story threads together. Besides the work of choreographing the movement of the entire cast, she needed to figure out a way to get the leads off stage so they could come back out as couples dressed and ready for the wedding that ended the show.

The beginning worked well enough. Nightcrawler was supposed to have been killed by Lars and is lying in the middle of the floor alone. Petra then floats down from above sitting in a loop of the same fabric she used for her silks act. As she descends, she switches so that her legs are hooked in the fabric and she's upside down. When she reaches Kurt, she kisses him the cheek, takes his hands and when she rises back up, he wakes and rises with her until she lifts him off the ground.

They are lowered back to the ground where Petra detaches the silk from the cable. Then she and Kurt dance together and are slowly joined by the others including Lars and Gretchen who watch the two lovers and realize that they feel the same way about each other. It was easy to fade Gretchen and Lars back into the crowd, but that wouldn't work with Kurt. So they solved the problem by having them go back up into the ceiling to change costumes; this time with Kurt holding on a loop at the end of the cable with one hand and supporting Petra's body as she wrapped herself around him.

The only problem was that Petra wasn't quite getting it. She understood the steps and moved through them gracefully but her problem was tempo. She was either too fast or too slow. Brin had them practice it over and over as she clapped a tempo for them, but it wasn't working. She then tried to dance in Kurt's place, but it proved too complicated for her to dance, count time, and give Petra timing cues. Petra always learned routines best by watching and it occurred to Brin that perhaps the best way was to take her place and demonstrate with Kurt instead. She looked up at the cable and suddenly Wolfgang's words echoed in her head.

She thought about the other day, watching Kurt act as Amiri's spotter and realized that it wasn't that she needed to play the same role, it was that she had to allow him to do it with her. She had to put him in the position where he was protecting her in the same way he'd done for Amiri; to show that she trusted him to do so.

"Kurt, if I did the routine with you instead, do you think it would be safe?" She asked.

Kurt looked confused. "Yeah, pretty safe." He said.

Lars laughed and said, "he hasn't bitten anyone in weeks." Kurt made an angry face at him.

Brin was undeterred. "I mean to do the entire routine, including the end." She clarified.

"Oh, you mean to go all the way to up. Of course. I won't drop you." Kurt said.

"Okay." Said Brin, "Starting at the point when Petra is on the ground."

Kurt signaled to the roustabout on the cable controller to go a little slower this time and then he moved so he was in the center of the ring. Brin joined him and she realized that she had never stood this close to Kurt. She also realized that she had never touched him either and now she would have to. There was an awkward moment where neither of them did anything, then Kurt took her hand in his. Brin rested her other hand on his bare shoulder and gasped.

"You're furry." She said. She had never felt anything so soft. She had had no idea.

"Oh, please don't say 'furry'." Kurt said, "It sounds so creepy." He smiled. "I prefer it to say I'm 'velvety'."

Brin laughed. "Okay, velvety then." She said and cued the music to start. A moment later the novelty of actually dancing with Kurt was gone as they moved through the routine while Petra watched.

When they reached the cable Kurt wrapped his hand through the loop as he spun her away from him and back in again. As Brin twirled back into his arms they were suddenly lifted off the ground, her momentum causing them both to spin in the air. It would have been frightening, but at the same time Kurt had wrapped his free arm around her and hooked his legs around hers in such a way that she knew he was right; he wouldn't drop her. They passed up through the hole in the false ceiling and Kurt swung away to the floor and set her down.

"How was that?" He asked.

"Excellent," said Brin. She looked down through the hole. "How do we get down?" She asked. They were supposed to switch out the loop for a small platform big enough for them to stand on, but the equipment wasn't up there.

"The same way we come up." He said. He took the loop in his hand again and gestured for her to join him. She felt herself once again wrapped in his arms and they descended to the ring below. She stepped away from Kurt and thanked him.

"We'll have to do it again sometime." Kurt said.

"All you have to do is ask." Brin said.

As Kurt and Petra began rehearsing together again, Brin glanced up into the stands where she noticed for the first time that Wolfgang was watching. She smiled at him and he grinned back at her, clapping his hands in a silent one man standing ovation.