Better Food for a Better World. Erin McGraw
thighs like bigger hams. He spilled out of his tank top like fruit spilling out of a bag, and his grin was unexpectedly sweet, wide-spaced teeth set into his gums like individual pieces of corn. His size alone would have made Vivy stop, but then he wrenched the concrete top off of a trash can that had Sausalito Clean! stenciled on it. Sam was watching too, and whistled. “Gotta be at least seventy pounds.”
Tossing the rough green top lightly from hand to hand, Fredd grinned. “What do you think?” he called to the growing crowd.
“Awesome!” said a kid.
“Scary,” said a girl who didn’t sound scared.
“Not bad,” Sam said, “but one is easy. Let’s see you do it again.”
Fredd beamed his corn-kernel smile back at Sam as if he’d hoped for just this invitation. The next trash can was about fifty feet away, and by the time Fredd got there, he was balancing the first top on his thick forearm. Wrenching up the second one took even less time. Maybe another strong man had been there earlier and loosened it up for Fredd.
“Now juggle,” Sam said.
Even Vivy murmured, “No,” but Fredd looked delighted. With a soft grunt he heaved the first trash can top into the air, then the second. His catch, as the first one plummeted, was delicate to the point of daintiness, and he relaunched it well before the second one fell into his big, waiting hand. Vivy had seen a lot of juggling. She didn’t much care for it, all that circus shtick. But watching Fredd juggle those heavy, rough concrete wheels, with grace, was watching something impossible happen. After about a minute, Fredd started to giggle, as if he couldn’t contain himself. Naturally, the crowd burst into applause, and so he caught both tops and bowed, but she could see his disappointment. He wanted to juggle more. By the time they left Sausalito that day, Vivy and Sam had a contract with Fredd, written and signed on a series of bar napkins.
No Stage Left act had been as popular as Fredd. Once, at an outdoor festival with the Etch A Sketch Drill Team, she watched him juggle two unicycles, the ungainly machines glittering as Fredd heaved them six feet over his head. She still shivered when she remembered it. Nancy would have had a cow. That thought was all it took for her to fish her phone out of her pocket. She still had Fredd’s number. He answered on the first ring for Vivy, his old friend and biggest fan. No, he wasn’t far. He didn’t often leave the area anymore, what with the kids.
“Kids?”
“Jesus, Vivy. Don’t you ever open your Christmas cards?”
Sometimes she did, though sometimes not until March. He would come on over. It would be fun. “Will I get paid?”
“You will be paid,” she said. He would. Somehow.
“I’m on my way.”
She hung up as another trio of teenagers sauntered to the door, and she put a hand on the girl, a twig of a human being with magenta hair. “You should stay. There’s a juggler coming who’s amazing. You’ve never seen anything like him.”
“And as long as we’re in here, you’ll want us to order more ice cream. No thanks.” The girl pulled her wrist away.
“I don’t care if you sit there and play five-card stud,” Vivy said. “But you should really see this guy.”
“You work here, right?”
“I’m just trying to tell you. It’s not something you’ll want to miss.”
“You know, if you really want to please your audience, can the juggler and bring in somebody to fix your air-conditioning.” The girl flipped her pink hair over her shoulder and sidled past Vivy, the two boys in knee-length cutoffs and eyebrow rings attending her. All of them practically fleshless, nothing but sinews and joints. Fredd would be able to juggle them, if Vivy could keep them here. Over at the counter Nancy and Sam stood rinsing scoops. Nancy’s lush, showgirl body commanded the narrow space; beside her Sam appeared practically elfin, although he was not a small man. Later Vivy would tease him about spending the day at eye level with Nancy’s breasts.
Twenty minutes passed before Fredd pulled up in the rusting, belching VW van he had been driving since 1988. Ignoring Nancy’s pointed look, Vivy hurried out and let Fredd wrap her in his burly arms, his orange and purple shirt smelling like old cheese, his shaggy mustache scrubbing her cheek. “Still a lady-killer,” she said as he beamed at her.
“Still a flirt.”
“Me? I’m a business gal. I’ve sold out.”
“Don’t try to fool me. You’ve still got it.” He looked at the sign in front of the store. “Really?”
“Don’t get all choicey now. I’m about to put you back onstage.”
He glanced at the store, its small platform and low ceiling. “If you want to call it that.” He trotted to the back of the van and unloaded clubs, knives—he held up a torch and looked at Vivy questioningly.
“Are you nuts?”
Shrugging, he pulled out a box of ping-pong balls. If there wasn’t much wind, he could juggle six of them. If there was no wind, he could juggle a dozen.
He paused and considered every bit of paraphernalia until Vivy grabbed his massive arm and pulled him into the store. She was a tugboat with a wayward tanker. Fredd kept trying to shake hands with everybody he could reach, including a stubble-headed teenage girl with two rings connected by a tiny chain in her nose, who looked up from her pocket-sized video game and said, “Jesus. Finally.”
“You won’t be sorry you waited,” Vivy said to the whole store, yanking at Fredd’s elbow. “This is an act worth waiting for. The Man of a Million Moves: Fredd the Juggler!”
She pushed him onto the platform, half afraid to let go even then, but nobody liked a stage better than Fredd. A moment after she freed his wrist he was flipping knives into the air, slinging the bright blades so close to the light fixtures and few remaining balloons that Vivy cringed. Parents pulled their children back while the teenagers started to inch forward. Behind the counter, Nancy looked like thunder, but Sam grinned. Vivy relaxed. This was going to be fine.
“Sorry I was late. I’ll make it up to you by giving an extra good show,” Fredd said, working his toe underneath the knives at his feet and flicking them up; he was juggling five, then six, then seven—big blades, real chef’s knives. Vivy wondered whether she could get him to give her one. She could use a good knife.
In a nice segue, he switched from knives to clubs, tossing and catching the big wooden bats behind his back with an easy grace that she’d always found sexy. Sam chafed her from time to time about the hungry way she watched Fredd, and his lengthy, smelly, muscle-bound hugs.
“Okay, we’re moving into the audience participation part of today’s show,” Fredd said, the clubs circling around his head like a menacing halo. “What do you want to see me juggle? I’ll take anything you give me.” A kid threw a napkin that Fredd used to dab at his neck before he tossed it up. The paper’s slight weight sailed slowly, out of sync with the bright red and blue clubs. Another kid lobbed one of the store’s beige coffee mugs at him, and a woman, looking daring and embarrassed, ducked up to the stage and handed Fredd her wristwatch. Vivy couldn’t imagine how he kept all the oddly weighted objects in rotation, much less how he could do so while he showboated, catching the wristwatch under his leg, strolling around the stage, whistling. Spontaneous bursts of applause bubbled up, and Vivy glanced back at Nancy, who was transfixed like everybody else.
He finished by setting the clubs upright, one at a time, in a circle around his feet, and throwing the other items back out to the audience members who’d given them to him, even the napkin. People were laughing, a few kids over by the window whistled, and Vivy looked at Sam, who mimed wiping sweat from his forehead in relief. Vivy mimed the same gesture back at him, wiping off real sweat. Despite the fans whirring away from every side, the room was a slow-bake convection oven.
“Okay, now let’s try a real challenge,” Fredd was saying. “Hey