J was a serious actor, with exceptional talent. His body was stretched and bony, and his gestures were mannered just enough to make his movements mysterious and French-seeming he was from Kansas, so this was a real trick.
He took his workβand, unfortunately, himselfβvery seriously. The job of OPs was to do whatever we wanted. For the first six weeks, my home was in room at the Renaissance Amsterdam Hotel on Kattengat 1 in the Netherlands.
J had been there for a month already, and to make my transition less jarring, he promised to set up the Internet and get me a phone card. He did neither. I was jet-lagged and premenstrual and all I could do was cry. The bed was disguised to look like a double, but really it was two twin mattresses hiding under a bedspread heavy with dust mites. I took a nap on it anyway, and when I woke up, J had gone to rehearsal and I was feeling good enough to figure out how to navigate Dutch transportation and travel to the big top aka Le Grand Chapiteau.
He was scrambling for a powder puff and makeup remover to undo an eyeliner mistake. J explained that everyone who does Chinese Poles gets it. Now I was no longer worried about bloody eyes, but velocity. And spinning. But at least I knew which performers did Chinese Poles. The family who did The Adagio Trio was too serious to be sweet, and the rumor, J told me, was that M, the five-year-old, was conceived to take the place of D, who was then 13 and too big for the part.
I met C, whom I liked instantly. He looked like a movie star, but a French New Wave movie star from a Godard film. In his regular life, he was a professional wire walker, but at the circus that job went to a Russian and C was playing the part of The Child. I left after an hour and when J came home from rehearsal and leaned in to kiss me, I saw remnants of white face makeup collected like shale in his pores.
