night he dresses up in a long, shiny pink dress and wig, parading around the tents, flirting with the men, doing his bit. Then, at the end of the night, he removes his wig to reveal who he is, and the crowd is always uproarious while Barbette’s young male victims are left red-faced and stuttering. Then, of course, there’s The Madame. She sounds exactly like you’d think— our resident fortune-teller; a dramatic, ancient husk of a woman. Always wrapped up in dark green and purple cowls, pointing ring-adorned fingers with flourish, she draws in customers with a husky, foreign rasp and the promise of ancient wisdom or secrets of the future. She never goes by any name other than “The Madame,” and I’ve never heard anyone try to call her anything else. Even Marlo’s memory is hazy as to how long she’s been a part of the show. Every night, the line outside her tent is almost as long as the line to the Big Tent. What else can be said about The Madame? Each of them has a role in the ever-changing mechanisms of the show. They keep everything running smoothly, make sure there’s an audience to entertain, make sure everyone’s where they need to be— things like that. And then there’s Lorna. How on God’s green earth could I forget about Lorna? PART THREE— Lorna Lorna Hearse is the stuff of fairy tales around here. She’s a singer, and a damn good one at that, but that’s not what makes her so mythical. She’s a cub— she wasn’t born to parents that do this kind of thing for a living like most of the rest of us were. She showed up out of the blue, just like every other cub that comes through here. She doesn’t have any obvious deformities or oddities about her. I happen to know she can be smart when she decides to grace us with her attention. There’s no good reason that any one of us can figure out for why she should be here at all. Riggs thinks she fled an abusive household. Marlo jokes that she’s a reformed diamond thief, on the run from the law. Danny thinks she’s just a kid who got mad at her parents and made a bad decision one night. Danny’s eyes always get a little distant when he says this, and all of us pretend not to see. Once you meet Lorna, any one of those conspiracies is believable, so it’s impossible to decide which one is the Gospel truth. She’s just so unreadable, any one of those things could be true. It’s all equally impossible and likely. The girl’s an enigma. I said Lorna Hearse was a good singer. That’s underselling to an unforgivable degree. Her voice is hypnotic. If she wasn’t so elusive, she’d have reporters and agents breaking her trailer door down after every show, begging to sign her. She’s Harvey’s secret weapon— the thing that keeps people coming back night after night. Nights like tonight are a good example. The Big Tent is full tonight— people come for the acrobats and brushed, white horses and contortionists— but they’ll stay for Lorna. Archives After Dark
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