Two of Fools

The glaring lack of applause was enough to make any performer cower in shame, but for Charlotte, it was enough to propel her into a maddened frenzy. Her chest undulated in a quaking rhythm; shallow breaths whistling between gritted teeth as she posed beside her partner with arms outstretched. It had been Charlotte’s one chance, and in her starry eyes, Joanie blew it.

Charlotte stormed off stage, oversized shoes clacking to the soundtrack of crunching peanuts and judging whispers. She swatted away a fly that buzzed scorn in her ear and attempted to intrude her jungle of a scarlet wig. Joanie did her best to keep up with Charlotte’s angered pace as the two flew through the rubber flaps of the circus tent, winding up in the chilly embrace of autumn at dusk.

“Oh, come on,” Joanie whined as the sun sunk lazily down a tangerine sky. “You know I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Charlotte scoffed. “And I’m supposed to believe that? I’m supposed to forgive you for completely humiliating me?” 

“Listen, I’m sure the crowd won’t even remember our act tomorrow.” Joanie tugged off her rainbow boots and slipped into tattered sneakers.

“Fuck the crowd,” Charlotte retorted. “You knew what tonight meant to me and you pulled that shit on purpose. I just know you did.”

Charlotte removed a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at the sweat coating her dense makeup. The cloth absorbed a blend of reds, yellows, and blues, blotting her face in polychrome patchwork. She stomped towards one of the few cars in the desolate parking lot.

“Hey! Slow down, will you?” Joanie yelled over muffled cheers from within the performance tent where stringed golden bulbs shone on trapeze artists. She limped her way to Charlotte with shoes on the wrong feet.

“Fuck you, fuck this hell of a job, fuck this dumbass nose,” Charlotte grumbled as she tore off the styrofoam ball and chucked it far into the abyss of asphalt. Just as Charlotte grasped for her car door handle, Joanie caught up and wedged herself between her coworker and the vehicle.

“Listen,” Joanie began. “As a friend who cares for your wellbeing and would really appreciate if you didn’t total your Jeep tonight, I’m gonna have to take your keys.”

“Jesus, it was three beers! Big whoop!” Charlotte insisted, attempting to reach around Joanie to access the door, but Joanie’s heftier frame made for an impenetrable barrier.

“That’s about two and a half beers too many,” Joanie said, poking a white-gloved finger into Charlotte’s chest. “Hand ‘em over.”

Charlotte groaned, pulled her frizzy wig from her head, and reluctantly dropped her car keys into Joanie’s palm. Hanging on the keyring was a glass-protected photo of Charlotte with a grinning toddler perched on her hip. The casing of the photo bore a multitude of scratches from years of clanking against a bottle opener keychain. Joanie held her gaze on the image.

“So,” Joanie exhaled. “How’s the kid?”

Charlotte laughed dryly. “Like I would know. Oliver hardly said a word about her on the phone this morning. I didn’t even get a ‘Happy Birthday’ from him.”

“Typical man behavior. That’s why I stick to chicks.”

Charlotte was silent. Unamused.

“Anyways,” Joanie continued, “you up for a walk?”

Under the flickering light of a lone streetlamp,  Charlotte kicked around a crushed can that once held tuna. The scraping caught Joanie’s attention.

“Huh. Tuna.” Joanie pondered. “Remember those days?” 

“Not really,” said Charlotte. “Should I?”

Joanie rubbed the back of her neck and looked away. “Nah, I guess not.”

“Where are we even going? The sun’ll be down soon.” Charlotte gestured to the sky, which had recently exchanged its amber hues for dull indigo. The two strolled towards the lot’s woodsy perimeter. “Then again, if I manage to get a tick or two, I can have the satisfaction of formally calling this the worst birthday ever.”

“Oh, lighten up. It’s the big four zero!” Joanie exclaimed as she reached for Charlotte’s arm, which was subsequently dodged. “Anyways, you and I both know you’ve had far worse.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

Joanie led the way as the two stepped over twisting roots and ducked under branches that donned lacy spiderwebs, as well as fuzzy fungi that slithered between stems, tickling the tree’s nooks and crannies. Charlotte tugged on a hanging leaf that was blocking her path, the underside of which had been housing a colony of beetles with kaleidoscopic abdomens. A few crawled onto her hand, spilling into her palm for warmth.

Charlotte shook off the insects. “Ugh! Alright, I’m officially getting freaked out.” She stopped briefly and turned around, squinting to make out the blur of a festival they had abandoned.

“Wait... up ahead! I think I see something,” said Joanie.

“Can’t we just head back and get wasted? Pretty sure you owe it to me after that shit-show,” Charlotte complained as Joanie quickened her stride deeper into the forest.

“I don’t know why you keep bringing it up, Char,” Joanie said between pants as she trudged through the hilly terrain. “If anything, it might have made the routine even better.”

“Do I need to get my hearing checked?” Charlotte asked. “Or did you actually just say the routine was better with your moronic improvisation?”

“You say ‘moronic’ like it’s a bad thing, meanwhile we’ve made our entire living off of being morons since college,” Joanie jeered.

Charlotte sighed. “Nice way to spend a life. Sometimes I forget why we even signed up for this.”

Joanie looked over her shoulder at Charlotte with a smile. “Because you’ve always been good at capturing attention and I’ve always been good at cracking jokes. You’re the looks, I’m the brains. We’re a good team that way.”

“The brains? I would have thought of you as the muscle,” Charlotte teased.

Joanie’s grin faltered. “Good one.”

The light source was dwindling faster now, offering sparse illumination every few feet on the ground as it slipped through holes in the overhead brush. It was getting colder.

“Oh, check it out!” Joanie said as they emerged from the woods and found themselves beside a large body of water.

The fluid may have been crystal clear when viewed in daylight, but the women wouldn’t know– the evening horizon doused the ripples in a muggy grayness. No geese peppered the lake, no children splashed about, and no fishermen drifted along the tide, for they would have no fish to capture. The only sound was a subdued chorus of a faraway cricket orchestra.

“It’s sorta magical, isn’t it?” Joanie marveled at the dimly-lit landscape, breathing heavily from her exertion.

“Which part? The polluted water that reeks like ass or the slimy dirt stuck to my shoes?”

Joanie rolled her eyes. “Can you be positive for one minute? There are worse places to be on your birthday.”

“Right,” Charlotte replied sarcastically. She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and the plaster-white residue reminded her that she was still partially in costume. She retrieved a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, then groped around in search of a lighter.

“Fuck,” Charlotte muttered with a Camel Crush hanging from her lower lip. “Just what I need.”

“No worries, I got you,” Joanie said smugly as she pulled out a small matchbook. She looked down at the open book for a moment, then back up at Charlotte with a plotting smirk. “Just... give me one second.” Joanie turned around to face away from Charlotte.

“What is it now?” Charlotte asked, more impatient than ever. Joanie secretly removed something else from her pocket and fumbled with it. The unknown object made a crinkling sound, which combatted the stillness of the atmosphere, making Charlotte flinch.

Moments after the audible strike of a match, Joanie returned to face her friend. In Joanie’s joined, offering hands sat a chocolate chip cookie, crumbled off at one end and sloppily impaled with a matchstick. Joanie, her chubby face spotlit by the feeble flame, did not attempt to hide her pride.

“Happy Bir–”

“Please,” Charlotte interjected. “Please, just don’t.”

Joanie’s grin stumbled off her lips. “Oh.”

The two stood there in silence until the wind put the fire out. They hadn’t acknowledged just how dark it had become until the disappearance of the celebratory glow. Something shifted in Joanie’s expression: a sort of sneering disgust.

“I see,” she started. “Just like high school, right? Walk all over me because you know I won’t do shit?” She pulverized the cookie with one squeeze of her bulky fist.

Charlotte opened her mouth, but Joanie stole the stage before she could speak.

“Trust me, I know,” Joanie continued. “You were the pick of the litter. You could fuck anything that moved and it wouldn’t complain,” Joanie said as she shoved Charlotte’s chest. Agape, Charlotte retreated, but Joanie still closed in until mere inches separated their faces. “You don’t scare me, you know that? As much as you like to think I am, I’m not ‘Tubby Tuna’ anymore.”

Charlotte’s bewilderment dissolved as the memory burrowed into her skull. The radiating stench of canned tuna was conjured deep within her nostrils, as it often had in the cafeteria. At their current claustrophobic standpoint, Charlotte’s view of Joanie was an icy set of eyes, steadfast in their resentment but watering at the corners. Charlotte remembered how Joanie would unzip her lunchbox every day and expose her trademark tuna sandwich, much to the amusement of snickering students.

“I’m–” Charlotte choked out, as quietly as the crickets chirped. “I’m sorry. But one nickname doesn’t constitute sabotaging our performance. My performance, if anything.”

“Your performance... right,”  Joanie’s voice was deadpan and self-assured. “Because Oliver was supposed to miraculously fall back in love after seeing your pompous ass beat the crap out of me for a couple pathetic laughs? News flash, Char: he hasn’t given enough of a fuck to show up for one show in 15 years until you managed to convince him tonight.”

“Don’t act like you know jack shit about our relationship!” Charlotte shouted as she grabbed Joanie by the shoulders and shook her. “You didn’t hear him on the phone saying he wished things were different. You didn’t see his face in the crowd, looking at me like he wanted me. Like he mourned for me. You were too busy breaking the script as if you run things around here.” Spiteful droplets of Charlotte’s saliva spattered on Joanie’s chin as she continued on. “You weren’t there to watch him fall apart time and time again throughout our relationship, draining me from the inside out. He came for me tonight, not for you. He came to fix it all.”

Joanie laughed, halting Charlotte’s tantrum.

“Well good luck waiting on that,” Joanie started, arms still locked in Charlotte’s grip. “But before you say for sure that he didn’t show up for me, remind yourself who was his lab partner for all four years. Y’know... his shoulder to cry on?”

Charlotte’s eyes widened, exposing tissue that used to be white, but was now reddened in fury.

“Fucking cunt!” Charlotte cried out as she tackled Joanie to the ground, dunking them both in what might as well have been sewage.

Half-submerged in the shallow liquid, drenched in mud and soggy remorse, Charlotte and Joanie sat up, coughing out grains of dirt. They were waist-deep in water that appeared jet black, highlighted here and there with shattered fragments of the moon.

The two breathed heavily, leftover makeup dripping into their eyes and seeping between their worn-out lips. Although they were no more than shadowy silhouettes, they both knew they were sizing each other up, and thus, themselves.

“Damn,” Joanie began. “You look like shit.”

Charlotte laughed dryly, lips creeping into a rare smile.

“Look who’s talking,” Charlotte responded. “And I thought you smelled fishy before…”.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough.” Joanie grinned, too; Charlotte could hear it.

Charlotte dug into her pocket, removing the doused pack of cigarettes and shaking it off. “Still got that matchbook, Joan?”

“Nope. That birthday candle you so greatly appreciated was the last of them.”

“Shit,” said Charlotte. “I was hoping to inhale both tobacco and swamp germs at the same time. You know... double my chances of a pitiful, tragic death.”

Joanie chuckled. “And leave me all alone?”

Charlotte gazed upward, connecting the dots of stars to draw a mental picture of a boundless audience alight with praise. Distant camera flashes twinkled and twinkled, capturing the show she and Joanie performed as one.