A muscle ticked in his boss’s jaw, but he made no response.
Well, Jason couldn’t make Lemaitre be a father to his daughter. All he could do was shelter Sara from the pain of that loss.
* * * * *
“Jason, I swear to God.” Kelsey pressed down on his knee. “You’re shaking the entire row of seats.”
“I’m nervous, okay?”
“No need to be nervous,” Theo said. “Not this time. She?
??s got this.”
Of course she had it, but Jason stewed over other things, mainly his conversation with Lemaitre. Jason could try to be everything to her: father, Master, lover, friend. But Lemaitre would always be there in the background, because they both worked for him. He’d be a constant reminder to Sara that he didn’t want to claim her. It seemed an untenable situation, but what was the alternative? Going to some other, lesser circus?
“Lemaitre’s in a mood,” Jason said under his breath as the Cirque owner entered the theater. He was impeccably styled, as usual, in a designer suit and tie, but he didn’t look like he had it together. Various staff members trailed behind him, some from Paris and other places, but most from Marseille.
“Who’s that?” Jason asked Theo, pointing to an older man he didn’t recognize.
“The director of Brillante.”
While everyone settled into seats, stagehands prepped the act, dragging out Sara’s safety mat and lowering her trapeze. It wasn’t shiny and red like the last one, but a dull gray color with a thick rope hanging down from one side. A chill chased down his arms. The trapeze was a close replica of the one back in Mongolia.
He started bouncing his knees again, then stopped. He couldn’t let nerves get the best of him. He had to be strong and support her efforts, whatever she chose to do, whatever she chose to reveal in her act. Wherever she chose to go afterward, even if it was back to Mongolia.
A few moments later, the house lights dimmed. Sara walked onto the stage in a blue and white leotard, nothing fancy. Her hair was done up in two buns with hair sticking out every which way, for a childlike, innocent effect. Her legs were bare because she needed them to grip the trapeze, but their bareness also added to her character’s vulnerability. She stared up at the bar, touching the rope, studying it. Someone in the audience let out a soft laugh, unsure whether to be amused or not.
After testing the rope’s strength, Sara began to climb up to the bar, flailing and straining as if it was a great challenge. Acting. She could have scaled it with one arm and two legs tied behind her back. Some of Minuit’s musicians provided the score, a spare, atmospheric melody, almost like a child’s song. When she reached the top of the rope, she turned toward the audience, clinging to the bar.
Jason squinted, bemused. Her eyes were garishly blue, made up with jewels and what appeared to be bright blue feathers glued to her lids. She fluttered them with an exasperated expression. He laughed, everyone laughed, but some part of him was unsettled by the gravity in her features. From the comedic beginning, things got serious fast.
Sara hopped up on the bar, testing it with her toes. At one point, she pretended to lose her balance and fall, clutching the bar on the way down to save herself. Everyone gasped and many leaned forward in their chairs. It was a good sign her audience was engaged. From there she did another funny split that ended in her hanging upside down. Flutter, flutter, flutter. Those blue feathers fluttered like fake eyelashes gone wild.
She pulled herself up again as the music increased in complexity. Some deeper notes sounded. Sara’s tricks grew more daring, more driven. If she was telling a story, it was her own story of experimenting and taking risks. After one release she fumbled the bar and caught the dangling rope instead. The audience gasped, someone even yelped. Theo growled beside him. “It’s part of the act. She never misses.”
Sara twirled around the rope, out of control but not out of control. She struggled back up to the top, pathetic and heroic. The blue-eyed girl who wouldn’t give up.
Jason watched her, lost in the precision of her athleticism, and her body’s strength. He’d watched her practice with Theo many times, but she had some heightened beauty when she performed, some artistic mojo that came from within. She did another series of tricks, splits and handstands and contortions of her body as she clung to the bar. She didn’t smile. She did no more fluttering. Her features twisted in determination—
Then she fell and grabbed the rope again, sliding all the way down to the edge, so far down her toes almost touched the stage.
It was a performance. Jason knew that, but his heart ached for her. She hung from the rope with her head bowed, facing the audience. The blue feathers rested on her cheeks, the jewels at the corners of her eyes glistening like oversize tears.
She climbed again, pausing with each handhold, looking up in miserable resignation at the trapeze. Aside from the haunting music there wasn’t a sound in the theater. No coughing, no shifting or shuffling papers. Jason could see Lemaitre down in the front, his eyes fixed on his daughter.
This time when she climbed up, she only sat on the bar, legs dangling. With the help of the spotlight, the feathers cast a long shadow on her cheeks. A moment later she reached over and unbound the dangling rope from the side of the trapeze, and dropped it to the ground in an exaggerated shove.
Oh, good girl.
Sara’s blue-eyed character stood with a new conviction in her manner, and did the tricks again with all the energy of the previous attempts, only this time she didn’t fall. She did handstands on the bar, spun around in flips, did a frozen split in mid-air with only her arms to support her. Her skills built to a rousing climax, her full artistry on display. Her strength and courage astounded him.
But then, it always had.
As the music reached a crescendo, a projector turned the scrim behind her a brilliant blue. Sara swung her trapeze, higher and higher. No tricks now. This was a different kind of finale, just Sara’s wide blue-feather eyes looking into the expanse of “sky” above her. She’d completed a story arc...the struggle, the comeback, and now, the appreciation of her dreams. The lights faded until you could only see the barest flutter of her jeweled eyelashes, and then went out on the music’s last note.
No one moved for long moments. The trapeze sailed up into the rigging with its blue-eyed passenger, and then the half-lights came up, illuminating the theater. Theo stirred beside him, glowing with pride. “My work is done here, no?”
Before Jason could frame some kind of response, Lemaitre was on his feet, heading for the doors.
“Where’s he going?” Kelsey asked. “That’s not the way backstage.”
“Is he leaving?” Theo craned his head as the Cirque director disappeared down the aisle.
“He better not be fucking leaving.” Jason jumped up and followed him. Sara had just poured everything inside her heart onto the stage, told her story with the entire audience in the palm of her hand. Michel Lemaitre wasn’t leaving, not until he congratulated his daughter for what she’d accomplished.
“Michel,” he called, following him down the narrow hallway that led outside. “Michel, stop. What the fuck?” He caught up to him and grabbed his arm. “You can’t just leave.”
Lemaitre shrugged his hand off. Jason stepped back as the dark-haired man faced him, his features twisted with anguish. Michel Lemaitre was in tears.
For a moment, Jason was struck speechless. In all the years he’d known Lemaitre, he’d never seen the barest hint of softness or sensitivity. Power, insistence, command, even anger, these were the faces he recognized. Not grief.
“You shouldn’t be sad,” Jason said when he recovered himself. “You should be proud.”
“Proud of what?” he said, turning away. “Proud of all Sara had to endure while I cavorted around my theaters and clubs, thinking only of myself? Proud of how I didn’t even bother to find out if she was dead or alive?” He walked a few more feet and pushed through a set of double doors to an outside patio. He collapsed on a stone bench and leaned his head against the balustrade. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the last day.
“Why are you still here?” Lemaitre said after a moment. “Go to her. She’ll want to see you.”
“You think she won’t want to see you? You’re her father. That means something.”
“In our case it means nothing.”
He crossed to sit on the bench beside him. “Don’t be pathetic, Michel. It doesn’t suit you.”
&
nbsp; Lemaitre turned to him, his piercing eyes clouded with pain. “I made her, Jason. That wondrous, talented artist on the trapeze. She’s mine and I adore everything about her…but I have to send her away.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do, because I don’t know how to do this.” He twisted fingers in his thick, black hair. “I’ll hurt her, even more than I’ve already hurt her. I’m not nice. I’m not fatherly or nurturing. I’ve thought about it, and I just can’t see—”
Jason cut him off. “You can’t see? Jesus, you see everything. You see things none of the rest of us can see. How it is you can’t see opportunity in this? Opportunity for growth, opportunity for a relationship that might bring joy to both of you?”
“I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”
“It’s not that hard, damn it. Start by telling her how you feel. Tell her what you just told me, that she’s wondrous and talented. That you adore her. You should be backstage right now talking to her, telling her how great she is. Telling her you’re proud of her. That’s what fathers do.”
“I’m not her father. I don’t have it in me.”
The double door scraped open, and they turned to find Sara standing with Theo. She still wore her pale blue costume, her jewels and feathers obscuring her troubled gaze.
“Sara wonders if she could have a minute to talk to you,” said Theo to Lemaitre. He nudged her forward at the same time he beckoned Jason to leave with him.
Let them work out their own affairs.
That had been Theo’s take on things from the start, and as much as Jason wanted to protect Sara in this moment, he also knew she didn’t need his assistance.
“Tell her what you told me,” he said to Lemaitre before he stood. “She deserves to hear it. No matter what the two of you decide in the end, she deserves to know how you feel.”