"So what's down here?" I asked.

"Cops. Marks. Rubes. Thaddeus. For safety, I'll take the Klondike every time."

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Thaddeus irritably.

"Well, you got to admit you ain't always as easy to get along with as a polar bear," laughed Monk.

"If you've come here to dump on me you can go right back where you came from," said Thaddeus. "I've had enough people telling me what they think of me for one night."

"As a matter of fact, I came over because I finally came up with our last name."

"What are you talking about?"

"The Three-Breasted Woman," said Monk. "We never could decide on a name for her."

"And now you've got one?"

"Yep."

"Just how many hours did you spend thinking about it?" said Thaddeus sarcastically.

"Came to me in a flash," said Monk.

"So what is it?"

"I figure each of those breasts is a D-cup," said Monk, a pleasant smile crossing his face as he pictured them in his mind's eye, "and she's got three of them, so how about 3-D?"

"It's awful!" snorted Thaddeus. "It sounds like a movie gimmick."

"You got anything better?"

He didn't, and no one came up with anything better, so she became 3-D, and the whole troupe finally had carny names.

We had a few more beers, and then Monk looked at his watch and discovered that it was almost five-thirty. "I'd better go," he said, draining the can he was holding in his hand. "If I hurry, my head'll hit the pillow before my alarm clock goes off." He glanced out the window. "Shit! It's snowing again. What the hell did you leave California for, Thaddeus? You must have been crazy."

Thaddeus merely shrugged.

"Where were you—north or south?"

"South," said Thaddeus. "A suburb of L.A."

"Anaheim?"

"Santa Cruz."

"Too bad it wasn't Anaheim," said Monk. "They've got the Angels and Disneyland and all kinds of good things."

"We were just a few miles away," said Thaddeus.

Monk put his coat on and buttoned it up. "We ain't either of us too smart. I could be hunting apes in Africa, and you could be watching a batch of 2-Ds shaking on a California beach." He opened the door. "See you tomorrow."

"Close that damned thing!" shouted Thaddeus. "It's freezing!"

Monk laughed and slammed the door behind him as he went out into the snow.

Thaddeus opened another beer and offered one to me.

"No, thanks," I said.

"Have one," he said, pushing it into my hand. "I don't like to drink alone."

"Thaddeus," I said slowly, "where did you grow up?"

"What difference does it make?"

"None. But I know where Santa Cruz is: it's a suburb of San Francisco."

"Big deal."

"But I thought you said—"

"How the hell do I know where Santa Cruz is?" he snapped. "I heard it mentioned in a movie."

"You didn't grow up there?"

"I've never been to California in my life," he said bitterly.

We sat, silent and motionless, for perhaps ten minutes while the wind whipped against the windows and the snow kept accumulating.

"I was born in Trenton, New Jersey," he said at last. "My mother was the cheapest whore in town. Even the black guys wouldn't touch her. She got nothing but freaks and winos."

"And your father?" I asked gently.

"There isn't a hat big enough to pull his name out of," said Thaddeus, his voice low and toneless. "I grew up in a one-room flat, watching my mother fuck two hundred, three hundred men a week and shoot every cent she made into her goddamned arm. The state kept taking me away and putting me in foster homes, and I kept coming back. Until I was twelve."

"What happened then?"

"Some junkie bashed her head in. I found her after he had gone."

"Then what did you do?"

"A little of everything." He looked out the window. "Mostly I starved and I froze. California girls—hah! I've never been halfway to the Mississippi."

"Then why say you did?" I asked. "No one in a carny cares where you came from."

"I care," he said so softly I could hardly hear him. "I spent my whole fucking life fighting and clawing for every penny so that I'd never wind up back in that goddamned room in Trenton."

"But why California?"

"Because it's clean," he said. "I like to tell myself that one time in my life I was someplace that was clean." He turned to me suddenly. "If it's dirty, I don't want to hear about it."

"It's clean, Thaddeus," I lied.

He finished his beer. "If you ever tell anyone what I just said, I'm gonna rip that goddamned hump off your back and shove it down your throat," he said. "You got that straight, you fucking dwarf?"

"I won't tell anyone, Thaddeus," I said.

"You'd better not," he muttered, and lay down on the couch. He was asleep in less than a minute, and as I looked at him, curled up in the same position as Dapper Dan and with the same unhappy expression on his face, I was struck by how little difference there was between the two of them.

I noticed that it was cold inside the trailer, so I covered him with a blanket, as I had done so many times in the past, and went off to my own bed. As I lay down and prepared to go to sleep, I found myself wondering what Dapper Dan's mother had done for a living, or if he had thought of this world as his California.

Chapter 11

I woke Thaddeus up at noon. He had his usual hangover, he was his usual irritable self, and he croaked for his usual cup of coffee.

"Thanks," he said when I brought it to him. He took a sip, warmed his hands on the mug, and closed his eyes.

"Better," he muttered. "That was some night we had last night, wasn't it?"

he said with a wry smile. "Alma being noble, of all things, and the monkeyman trying to kill himself, and . . ."

His voice trailed off, and I could tell by the troubled expression on his face that he remembered what he had confided to me. Suddenly he became very ill at ease, almost ashamed; it was a new posture for Thaddeus, and while I had waited for it for years I had to admit to myself that it didn't become him.

He finished his coffee in silence, dressed quickly, and walked across the Midway to the dormitory tent. I cleaned up the kitchen and made the beds, and by the time I followed him over he was sitting on the edge of Dapper Dan's cot, examining his pulse and heartbeat as if he knew normal from abnormal.

Then he called for a cup of soup. Queenie brought it over, and Thaddeus started spooning it out to Dapper Dan. The fight seemed to be out of the Missing Link—if "fight" was the right word for it in the first place—and he swallowed each spoonful as Thaddeus gave it to him.

When the bowl was empty Thaddeus turned to Big Alvin and Treetop, who had been standing guard since before the suicide attempt.

"Didn't anyone think that maybe he could use a little food?" he demanded. "Hell, he puked until he didn't have anything left inside of him."

Neither of the men answered him, and Thaddeus carted Mr. Ahasuerus over.

"How about you?" he said. "I thought he was supposed to be your responsibility."