Rates of Exchange, Chapter 4

I lived in Vera's trailer for a while. She got sick a lot in that last year, before the end, and couldn't do her show all the time. The owner was a thoughtful man and so when I did her show in her place he covered Vera's marquee with a sign that read, Reptilian Love - Man and Woman in the Garden of Evil. Vera's sister did the show with me but she wanted nothing to do with me, Vera, or the rest of the deal. She was there for the snakes. I was there for Vera - we were lovers, sort of. About a month into our affair she started coughing blood. Just a little at first and then more. A year went by before she would see anybody about it and when she figured out what the doctor had to say she didn't want to be... close to anyone. She barely spoke any English but she managed to convey to me that she didn't want me to catch what she had. I couldn't seem to convince her that that wasn't possible so we became separate. I moved out of the bedroom and onto the couch. Together but very separate.

Ivan the strongman carried a torch for Vera and started spreading the rumor that it was I that had made her ill. Eventually Vera couldn't leave her trailer, much less do her show. She passed away at about 2 am on the longest day of that year. I was there and made all the arrangements - I spoke enough French and the rest of the troupe wasn't really that interested in dealing with officialdom. But I didn't think that an unmarked grave on a roadside somewhere was fitting for the Snake Lady so we pulled a little money together and put up for a bronze marker and an urn. She had folks back Stateside - up in North Dakota - who would take her remains in the family crypt.

I walked out of the crematorium with Vera's remains in a heavy-gauge plastic bag in a cardboard box that was about four inches on a side. She rode the carrier on my motorcycle back to the fairgrounds. I pushed the little 400 up on its stand and turned in the dust. The rest of the troupe emerged from various places around the grounds and approached me. I couldn't move. They stood in front of me - somber faces and hands hanging limp at the ends of their arms. Vera's sister, Stasia, smoked. Everyone had put on their best clothes and they looked like something out of one of those old Italian films that Vera used to watch. The ones shot in Rome before and after the second world war. One by one they all came and paid their respects to Vera, right there under the arch of the little midway. Then they all walked away to their trailers. The last was Gorno, the owner. He handed me a folded piece of canvas that I immediately identified as Vera's marquee. He said we should talk but not tonight. I went to our trailer and I put Vera's remains in the urn and placed her on the little fake fireplace that she had decorated with scarves and little forms of Ganesh and Buddha and other, more obscure, deities. I lit some incense and sat for a while looking at the place where over the course of two years I had come alive. The place where I had watched the one thing I loved die. I felt free, I felt empty, I felt invisible - as if I could do anything and nobody would ever see me or know who I was. I fed the snakes.

A few hours later I woke up completely disorientated. I couldn't see and my throat was clogged with smoke. I fell out of my chair and crawled to the source of the pounding that I had first thought was my heart. I found the door after a few detours; it's amazing how little you know your own home when it's burning. When the door was opened a blast of cold night air rushed over me and for a moment I felt as though I could levitate. Hands grabbed at me pulling me toward the cold air. I thought of Vera.

I woke up in Vera's sister's trailer. She explained that the troupe had thought that I wanted to die and had set the trailer afire myself. Then Gorno came into the room and said that he had gone to Ivan's trailer to discuss business with him but couldn't find him. He was walking back to his trailer when he saw Ivan running from the end of our trailer and flames licking up the outside. After Gorno sounded the alarm, he went looking for Ivan. Couldn't find him.

Vera's sister put the urn in my hands. It was blackened in spots but the temperatures in the trailer hadn't destroyed it. She said, "I have the snakes. But Max. I can't find him. His cage..." She gave a diffident shrug and performed a motion with her hands. I knew she meant the six-foot female constrictor named Maxine. Vera's sister didn't have the female pronoun in English. Not a big snake. I switched to German. "Ivan's missing," I said to her. "Yes, Maxine and Ivan," said Stasia.