The poignard gleams in its makeshift cauldron, an empty garbage bag tugged open, bulk of it rucked up and cuffed to make a lip about a limpid pool of vinegar. Jo sits to one side, legs folded tailor-fashion, wall of junk behind her, and the deepening sky above.

“You sure?” says Jack.

“Yes,” says Jo. Taking delicate hold of the wire-wrapped hilt, turning the blade over in its bath. Wiping her fingers on meagre grass.

“There’s no,” says Jack, “strings. If that, it that’s what you’re. Thinking?” Flat on his back in his button-dappled jacket, head pillowed on a rumpled sleeping bag. Smoke tendrils from the hand cupped on his chest.

“What I’m thinking,” says Jo, “is I don’t want any.”

“Who doesn’t like pot?”

She leans over cauldron, pool, blade, the vinegar faintly hazed, wispiest threads of rusty milk seeping from those orange blotches, fading to nothingness almost immediately. Her lips purse, her shoulders shift, a suggestion of a shrug. “Who,” Jack’s saying, clink of buttons as he lifts a hand, “doesn’t,” back of it hung above his supine face. Crunch of grass as Roy steps out from around the tent, chewing absently, dipping to nuzzle up another scant mouthful. “I was,” says Jack, hand floating down to settle on Roy’s haunch, that shivers at his touch.

“Maybe you’d better,” Jo sighs, “just give me however much of whatever it is that’s left, so you don’t smoke yourself into orbit.” He giggles, sputtering into a coughing fit. Jo’s holding out her hand. “Come on,” she says.

He’s peering at a singed twist of paper and ash. “Ossifer,” he says, “I think,” more giggles, “you’re too late, officer.”

A sigh, a shake of her head. She lifts the poignard dripping from the vinegar, wipes the blade down with a bit of cloth, holds it up, sleekly flawless in the light. “Would you look at that.”

“But,” says Jack. “I mean.”

She sniffs the wire-wrapped hilt, pats it dry with the cloth. “Never had to do this with my sword.”

“You had a,” says Jack, his frown growing more elaborate, “a sword?” He tries to sit up. Tries again. “You got blood? On your sword?”

“Not blood,” says Jo, slipping the poignard into its sheath. She jumps at the rip of grass too close, Roy nosing a last lush tuft there by her knee, “Jesus!” she blurts, and Roy prances away, setting Jack off on another round of giggles. “You have got to keep him away from me,” she snaps.

“You,” says Jack, giggles subsiding, “have to relax.” Making his way toward her on hands and knees, buttons a-clack. “I told you,” says Jo, “I don’t want any, and anyway, it’s, it’s all, used up.”

“There are other,” says Jack, plopping himself beside her, propped on an elbow, “ways,” he says, hand placed quite deliberately there, on her knee, “to relax.” She looks at it, half-swallowed by his jacket-cuff, knuckles delicate against the rough folds of her jeans.

Crunch of a guitar chord squalling echoes loud enough to drown a moment the shrieks, the screams, the cheers, the hissing groans and knocking chugs, the claps, the barking shouts, the whistles and dings and bleeps. Becker leans an elbow on a little standing table, there in a crowded corner roped off by yellow ribbon slung from flat-footed stanchions. No Alcohol Beyond This Point, says the sign facing them thronged within. “They’d keep us penned, as livestock,” says Joaquin, setting by that elbow a red cup brimming with beer.

“And charge us ten dollars for the privilege,” says Jimmy, a small clear cup of something dark in his hand.

“What’d you get?” says Becker.

“They said it was a Manhattan. I’m dubious.”

“Maybe one of the lesser boroughs?”

“I’m afraid,” Jimmy takes a sniff, “we’re somewhere in New Jersey.”

“Quien no recorre,” says Joaquin, crumpling his empty cup, “no se corre! Shall we go and see what carnival this county fair affords, or order up another round?”

Becker eyes his own, still full. “What about, ah – ”

“Mr. Pyrocles?” says Jimmy. Joaquin cranes up to peer over the shoulders of the crowd, “There,” he says, pointing. “Still waiting to be served. I’ll chivvy him along, and then, perhaps, we’ll see what’s to be seen.” He sets off, strings of colored light striking gleams from his embroidered shirt, his slick black hair. Jimmy seizes Becker’s hand. “You have got to tell me everything.”

“Jimmy,” says Becker.

“Arnie. Yon Mr. Pyrocles is your mysterious silverback, or I’ll buy a hat to eat.” Becker closes his eyes, and Jimmy’s smirk becomes something more considered. “Now.” Nudging the crumpled cup between them. “What’s with short, dark, and thirsty?”

Becker shrugs. “He’s Joaquin, from Sacramento.”

“I bet. Okay, give it to me straight: on a scale of one to ten, how,” Jimmy looks up, away, for just the right word, “exciting,” he says, “is tonight likely to get?”

“That’s not,” says Becker, lifting his cup, “that’s not on me.” Swallowing deeply.

“Get your head in the game, Arnie. You’re here for a reason. Figure it out.”

“You dragged me here, Jimmy F.M. Dupris!”

“Some people have all the class,” says Jimmy, but he’s looking past Becker, past the crowd, the lights, the trees and the fence to the parkway, the stop-and-go traffic, the halting limo long and pink in the thick of it, and the girls stood up through the sun roofs, cheering, dancing, waving.

“Wait,” says Jo, drawn back, “wait.”

“For what?” says Jack, shifted closer, over.

“You’re sure.”

“About what?”

“I, ah,” says Jo. Rustle of grass, clack of buttons.

“Sure,” she says. “Okay,” she says.

Jack smiles. Another kiss.

“Where we going? Where are we going?” Penelope dancing ahead through the midway crowd, Olivia hastening after, and Lizzi her bangles a-clatter, “Tilt-a-Whirl!” cries Chloe, pointing, strings of tickets fluttering in her hand, but “Kurve!” shouts Edith, pointing somewhere else.

“We just gotta make sure we’re in time for the parade,” says Olivia.

“That’s next week,” says Edith.

“Every time,” says Lizzi, and “We have to tell you every time,” says Edith.

“We see the parade every time,” says Olivia.

“Not on the first night,” says Penelope. “God, Olivia.”

“The Starlight Parade is not on the first night,” says Edith.

“I,” says Sanaa, “am getting me one of those,” as a kid traipses by with a stuffed giraffe not quite as big as he is.

“Tilt-a-Whirl first,” says Chloe.

“In this dress?” says Gloria, spreading her arms, full skirts a-sway.

“What, you’re not gonna ride any rides?” says Olivia.

“Princess Gloria’s here to be seen,” says Chloe. “Enjoying herself would defeat the purpose.”

“Like I’m the only one,” says Gloria, with a look for Edith, who’s unbuttoned her shirt to reveal a black lace bra. “I’m fine with rides. Just,” pointing off toward the end of the midway, the imperially wheeling magenta lights, yellow and orange, brightly shining green, of the Ferris wheel. “Something more genteel.”

“We,” says Chloe, lifting her hands full of tickets, “will ride all the rides, win all the games, eat so much fried dough and tacos and all the cotton candy, we will scam drinks from pretty young men, and throw up behind the Honey Buckets, and we will know we had a hell of a good time, and we are going to start with the goddamn Tilt-a-Whirl!”

“Why not split up?” says Melissa. “If everybody,” faltering, as they all turn their various attentions to her, “wants to, ah,” a shrug, “different?” she says.

“We can do more damage that way,” says Olivia.

“The point is, we do it together,” says Sanaa.

“We always have,” says Chloe.

“Why are you even here?” says Lizzi.

“I, ah,” says Melissa, a sidelong look to Gloria, who’s balled up her fists, scowling, “She’s my friend, okay? So fuck you, that’s why.”

“Whatever!” shouts Chloe. “Who cares.” She starts handing out tickets, a string each to Olivia, Lizzi, Penelope, “Split up, hang out,” she says, handing tickets to Edith and Sanaa, “whatever.” Turning to Gloria, peeling a couple more strings away from the hank in her hand, fluttering as she waves it about, “CityFair, bitches,” she says. “What’s it gonna be?”

Plastic crinkle, splot and squish, “Ah,” he says, “I got my knee in the, I’m sorry. Vinegar.”

“Oh, shit, I meant to,” she says, and “It’s okay, I wasn’t,” he says, and they’re both laughing. Scratch and scuff as Roy steps close, light shifting, and all the colors, as he lowers his head to snuffle the rumpled garbage bag. “Take ’em off,” she says.

“What?”

“Your jeans. Go on.”

“I don’t think,” he says, and “The smell,” she says, and “Oh, like you’re so,” and “I had a shower,” she says, “I smell fine.”

“You do,” he says, nuzzling close, a kiss for her cheek, the line of her jaw, her throat, “Are you sure,” she says, “you’re up for, whoa! Not there,” grabbing the wrist of the hand well up under her T-shirt. “Not there. Don’t.”

“What is it,” he says, muzzily, hands planted now in the scruffed grass, either side of her hips. “Why’d you, you’re, so scared, of Roy. Why? Why did you – ”

“He’s a fucking unicorn, Jack!”

Rocking back on his heels, blinking once. Propping up on her elbows, shaking her head, “I’m sorry,” she says, but “You really, need,” he says, tugging at the waistband of her jeans. Roy steps daintily away, over toward the tent, watching as he undoes her fly, as she lifts her hips.

Canvas roughly stolid under his hand stroked back and forth, “Through here?” says someone behind him, and “He said it was this one,” says someone else. “I should not have had that second beer,” he says.

“Third,” says someone behind him. He turns, blinking at a guy rope abruptly angled before him. “I thought,” he says, “we were leaving? The alcohol tent?” Frowning. “Pavilion,” he says, with great care.

“We did,” says someone, now before him. “Are you sure it was this one?”

“The roustabout said. Look for the flap.”

“Roustabout,” he says, the word rippled by a chuckle. “Rostabit.” He’s laid a hand on the rope, too bristly thick, too tautly strung to pluck. “Your pardon,” says someone, moving past him, a hand on his shoulder he reaches for, but doesn’t clasp. “You’re certain.”

“No other tent like it is pitched on the field,” says someone else. “There should be a loose flap.” The canvas behind him wobbles as it’s pushed, pressed, he looks up at it, rising taupely sere to a rumpled eave reinforced with dark saltires of gummy stitching and about it, beyond it, a vast emptiness of such an unearthly indigo. Slowly, tenderly, he lets out the breath he’s caught.

Looking away from it when he can. Someone’s to his right, and he smiles to see him. Someone else to his left, slapping the canvas wall, a jump of dust. He looks back, over his shoulder, turns about, “Where’s,” he says, “there was,” a frown, troubling his face, “Jimmy?”

“Here we go,” says someone else, lifting a weighty panel of canvas, and he turns back, someone’s hand on his shoulder once more, to see the color within.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh, my.”

Fuchsia twirling lofted wobbles dropping clang and skip a-clatter rattling to drop a ring upended between the close-packed bottles, next to a green ring similarly trapped. A pink one there on the edge of the low wide bin that holds the ranks and files of tinted empty glass, an apricot ring bright against the grass below, and only baby blue is neatly snugged about a slim glass neck. “Five up, one on,” says the woman behind the counter, rotely gathering up the rings. Her T-shirt, elaborately ripped and tied into a halter, says Ten Minutes of Gunshots across the front. “First tier only,” she says, setting the rings in a stack on the counter.

“Again,” snarls Sanaa, slapping a handful of tickets by the rings.

Close-quartered in a gondola high above the bustling midway below, the busy bridge behind, that stretches out across the river to the left, and unskeins to the right through the brightening lights of downtown. Thrum and groan, the Ferris wheel starts up, lurching the gondola down a few degrees from its perch at the top toward the darkening river, toward oncoming night, then groan and clank it stops again, setting the gondola a-sway. Gloria grips the pole behind her for support. Melissa’s braced a boot against the spoked wheel like a table in the center of the gondola, careful of the stuffed and bustling overspill of Gloria’s gown. “You guys do this every year?” she says.

“Since, ah, sixth grade. That was me, Chloe, Olivia. So.” Gloria shrugs. “This is the seventh time, I guess?”

“And you always wore a prom dress?”

“No,” says Gloria, “no, this?” Smoothing the satiny skirts. “This is what I wore to the Bellamy Bach show.” Sitting back, tightening her grip as the great wheel thrumming groaning slips them down another few degrees, clank and groan and sway. “Me and Chloe, Sanaa, Edith, and Rod,” she exaggerates the name, “with his fucking top hat,” a sigh, another shrug. “Dolled up all gothic punk because, you know, Bellamy Bach. And there was this guy? This, beautiful man, sitting, all by himself, in a booth. And I,” a shake of her head. “Chloe dared me, to go talk to him. So I did.”

The thrum knocks up, clanks into a groan, the wheel turns, jerks to one more halt. Gloria lets go of the pole, leans forward, elbows propped on her skirt-clouded lap. “That,” she says, “was the last time any of them saw me, until today.”

Buckles chime as Melissa sits back, looks away, out over the downtown lights.

“And I mean,” says Gloria, “it’s not like we weren’t little shits to each other, before. And it’s not like I haven’t done shitty stuff since, you know?” A corner of Gloria’s mouth reaches for something sheepish. “But I started a, a support group. An art studio. A gallery. I’m running a fucking palace for a regular Mother Goose queen and all her fucking butchers and bakers and candlestick makers, and I,” sitting back, round face softly shadowed, pink bangs struck by a flash, “I’m stuck in a goddamn pissy mood because it’s like they never noticed I was gone.”

Melissa says, “It’s almost time for fireworks.”

“Were you even,” says Gloria, but once more the thrum, the grinding groan, it all slips into smooth acceleration, and their gondola swoops toward the bottom of the wheel’s rotation, aways through bright fluorescent light past waiting riders cheering, jeering as they swing through climbing up over the trees that line the parkway, the sudden lights of the city, up and up toward the top again, and the midway spread below.

Crudescent light from one enormous lantern hung high up on the king pole, so bright, yet so intensely, insistently red, obliterating any other colors, leaving only outmatched shadows to suggest what shapes might move beneath, shadows, and here and there a sharply fleeting light-struck gleam of sweat on skin a-shift and push and sway and shove, and the effortful susurrus built from scuff of boots in dust, and running shoes, moccasins, clogs, the hissing shuck of denim on khaki, duck snagging jersey, chamois rubbing twill, the lop of belts undone, slither of vinyl, jangle and clank of unheeded buckles, rasp of flys unzipped, flap of plackets unbuttoned, and the sighs, the grunts, the groans, fragments of sentences too urgent to finish, too unnecessary to pay any attention, and also the wordless imprecations, but above all the slap, the pop, the slip and shuff, the lick and lap of flesh against flesh, with flesh, on flesh, but up he pushes himself and away, feet bare on trampled grass, trousers sagged about his hips, shirt long gone but his tie, his tie still somewhat knotted a mantle about his shoulders, and what’s left of his hair awry. He laughs, half-swallowed, as a glove clamps about his upper arm to spin him not unroughly about, his own hand up to catch, to brace himself against a meaty shoulder. The other glove up between them tangles his tie about clumsy fingers, yanking him close with a chuckling growl, but shaking his head he pushes back, uncertain steps away, tie trailing fleurs-de-lis from a slackening grip.

The man, stood there, apart.

Blinking, heel of his hand wiping sweat from his eyes, he steps through all that light toward the man, his back to him, not so far away as he seems, nor so tall, squat legs thickly thewed and buttocks bare beneath a jacket black enough to insist upon itself in all that red, the slogan across the back of it legible only by the prick and pucker of embroidery, a single word, IRRUMATOR.

Something, a crackle of underfoot grass, a shout, a laugh, a pop in the hum of the lantern hung up high, something catches that man’s attention, something enough to look over a shoulder, and smile to see him there, to turn, that jacket swaying open, close enough now to reach within, to lay a hand, to stroke the broad and hairless chest. That smile turns sinister, as horn-knuckled hands lay themselves on his shoulders, pushing, but he’s already sinking on his own, to one knee, both, as one of those hands shifts to brush aside the weighty tail of that jacket, presenting a cock he takes almost immediately into his mouth, hiking up a bit to manage it, hard hands gripping his head as those hips, that cock, begin to pump.

Rumpled jeans a yoke about her ankles knees spread wide one low against the grass one high and him, he’s awkward crouched above, clutching either side of her lap, the buttons pinned about his jacket clacking as his shoulders dip, I’m Not GAY I’m ANGRY can just be made out on the one, and Let GO When You GIVE another, and the back of his head in the darkness cants and nods. She’s leaned back on her elbows looking up, and up, it’s dark, so dark, the only light from a far-off parking lot, yet powerful enough to hazily pollute an empty, starless sky.

The only light, but also Roy, stepped close, those delicately cloven hooves back-and-forthing as he doesn’t quite bring himself to stamp. A brilliant shake of his mane, a blowsy whicker, and stilling he plants those hooves. She looks down to see him there, too much too close, too bright, she blinks, nods absently with the rocking effort, her breath quickening, and meets Roy’s darkly unblinking gaze, a lightless constant in the soft but relentless shimmer and pulse of iridescence that is his coat, and that horn held motionless above. She lifts a hand from the head in her lap to her breast, though there is no hole in this T-shirt, no gleam can be made out through the cloth of it, and he does not lower his unflinching horn. Still. She lays her hand on her breast, a gasp, and closes up her eyes.

Uncertain steps that don’t quite manage to stumble under the vaulting radiant effulgences that bloom above, his baggy pants, his Panama Jack shirt, limp backpack slung from his shoulder, and clamped beneat an arm a messenger bag, “Becker!” he calls, and then, louder, to carry over intermittent explosions, “Becker? Becker!” What crowd there is at the edge of the midway mostly gazes raptly up, but here and there this person or that looks down, about, to see him there, who’d been calling, who’s turning away with a shake of his head from the screams, the sparking whooshes, the bang and rattling pops above. He works a hand into a pocket of those pants, letting the messenger bag slip to dangle from its strap in his other hand, and hauls out a phone in a fake leather case. “Needs must,” he mutters, working it nimbly with his thumb, the code, the app, the green-lit icon of a handset. Holds it to his ear, wincing at all the sound and light.

A muffled chime answers from below.

His lips purse, a grimace of realization, and he stoops to lay the messenger bag on the grass, opens the flap of it on a dim light, a chime unmufffled. He fishes out a second phone, glossy and black, Jimmy F.M., says the screen of it. Accept or Decline. His own phone says Arnold Becker, Calling, Mute, Keypad, Speaker.

“Well, shit.” He thumbs the red button on his phone, and the chiming dies away. A fusillade of light fills the sky above, and oh, the applause.