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When Harrow steps off the train, clutching the handle of a black suitcase as big as she is and a small white one that bangs against her shins with every step, it’s raining. The glass roof over the platform was a dramatic choice by some designer, but every seam where glass is supposed to meet glass and show dramatic city skyline views just drips down onto her hood. She tugs the suitcase closer to her.
Through the glass the city is shades of gray and smudged facades of buildings. She walks, like she always walks these days, to the beat of the song, the same one that’s always in her head, her routine. Almost fast enough for a walk, if she does two steps per beat, heavy on the left foot, now heavy on the right foot. Thrown off by the big suitcase, because she usually doesn’t carry it. As she walks she pictures it, like she always does, mentally rehearsing. Camilla was big on mentally rehearsing. The reach, the climb, the invert. Cool black fabric under her hand, snagging on the rough skin on her palms.
The walk to the hotel from the station lasts just a few blocks, and when the glass gives away the city throws rain up on her boots, her black coat. The white suitcase collects the slush thrown up by cars. Gray splatters on the textured surface. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Her costume is still clean. At three blocks the song starts over in her head, like it always does. Her fingers flex on the handle of the suitcase. Under the black mask her lips are moving softly, not enough to change the lines of her face. Under the black mask her lips are moving softly, not enough to change the lines of her face.
The hotel is fancy, because Camilla goes for fancy. Glass doors with fancy gold edging that open automatically for her. A long expanse of black carpet clears the slush off the wheels of her suitcase, the rough soles of her boots. The carpet turns red, after a while, narrow and stark against the black tile. The heavy black suitcase clinks over each gap in the tile, the tiniest shifting inside of metal against metal. Outside the windows on her left, all the cars in the covered underhang are expensive boxes with tinted windows, blocking out the light from the gray sky.
It gets picked up by the chandeliers that come from the main lobby, open to four floors, and like she always does when she enters a tall room Harrow looks up, between the hood and the KN95. No ceiling supports, but the drops would be magnificent. She could wheeldown for almost the whole chorus, between those two spiral chandeliers dripping light onto the black tile below, the ones that are twenty feet tall with space to spare. Her practice room is twenty five feet tall, with two feet lost to rigging. It’s not enough, you can never get enough height for silks.
Somewhere underneath all that height is a bar, doing the type of thing bars do nowadays, mirrors and expensive bottles. White couches—bold for a hotel lobby—against that red carpet, very visually striking. On her left the windows go as high as the ceiling, this time no more smudged skyline but concrete corners that cut the clouds, colors extra vivid by the cloud-diffused light, edges crisp and unreal. The endless geometry of windows, sconces, angles going away to a vanishing point towards the river. Set up for views at sunset.
Across the labyrinth of white couches and red-carpet paths, with the big suitcase clicking on every seam of black tile. The lady at the desk asks her to remove her mask when she confirms Harrow’s ID, widens her eyes briefly when Harrow wordlessly complies.
The elevators in glass, too, carrying her away to the seventh floor, and that’s where the lobby stops, turns out. She climbs without effort, without movement, to the chandeliers then above them, and then she’s looking down over the maze from above and she can follow the carpet and the furniture and the people with her eyes, close to being able to understand it all–and then the elevator goes through the ceiling, plunging her into darkness. On the other side, the door opens.
Hotel room, standard, no overhead lights, entryway light when she opens the door, leaves the card in the slot. She leaves the suitcases at the end of the bed and goes into the bathroom, fluorescent lights too harsh. Staring at herself, only three inches of face visible between the hood, the bangs, the mask, dark eyes with yesterday’s eyeliner still smudged. Usually she has—someone else—to help clean off her makeup.
Off with the coat, knee-length, untying the belt, undoing the buttons, hanging it on the back of the bathroom door to dry. Off with the black sweater, knee-length, sleeves to her fingertips. Off with the thin long-sleeve turtleneck, the black tank, the black bra. The tall boots that zip across the back of the calf in a seam, with the slush of winter stuck in the deep grooves on the bottom. The black skirt, the black leggings, the black underwear, and then it’s just Harrowhark Nonagesimus and her own black eyes staring into the mirror, naked and still hating herself.
It is sunset when she leaves the room again, showered and fresh black eyeliner over-applied, back in her KN95 and a different black outfit. The big suitcase with the aerial rig someone will from the club will come pick up from the hotel so she lugs it down to the waiting room, descending in a smooth slide in that glass elevator, thinking about the tension of silk sliding through a fist bunched under her weight, body held taut in space, c-shaping and pointing toes and grasping fingers, how to control speed by the tension of her hand supporting her outstretched weight. In the elevator she just stands there, next to the suitcase, while someone next to her in a suit is on his phone. Meeting someone for drinks in the lobby, she reads over his shoulder, without trying.
The woman greeting him at the elevator wears a beige cocktail dress and smiles at him before she sees Harrow and her smile changes. “Are you coming to a convention or something?” she asks, excited, and it’s not the first time Harrowhark gets asked things like this, dressed like some movie poster for Cyberpunk 4269, and so she doesn’t react, just shakes her head mutely.
“Performance,” she says, after a few seconds, indicating the suitcase, and the lady’s eyes light up.
“Cool,” she says. “Good luck!”
“Come on, babe,” the guy says, ignoring Harrow, slipping his phone into his pocket, and then they’re gone. Harrow steps off the elevator, staring up again, at the chandeliers, the seven-story ceilings, the wall of glass with the red floor. She finds a white couch near the entrance and waits with the suitcase, her own phone dark in her pocket. Camilla will be texting her something, again. The text exchange between Harrow and Camilla is approximately 1:7. Harrow will respond when she’s on her way, and then Camilla will stop worrying for two hours, until it’s over. Maybe. She worries a lot, now, since—
The guy from the venue is nice, makes a beeline for Harrow enough that she knows he must have gotten “overdressed goth” from someone who knew what to expect. She leaves him with strict instructions on setup, maximum height in the venue—which they say has 35 foot ceilings—and the paper on lighting instructions. She’s never played this club before. Supposedly there are mirrors. She’s watched videos of others performing here, mostly pole dancers, a crowd where it really seems like Harrow would fit in artistically if she could get over the necessary amount of skin for pole grip, which she can’t. She can’t even perform without the mask, because she can’t do the pretty faces required for so many performing arts. She’s always been gritted teeth and contempt and if smiles are required she was counted out. Her first teachers gave up on her until—until the mask idea, until she could cover her face and let her motion speak for her.
Harrow doesn’t do sexy or alluring. None of the stuff that the dance and gymnastics girls in her classes do, Instagram in pink matching legging sets. No footlock splits with musical theatre hand sweeps to the music. No nude tights under sparkling underwear and pretty makeup. No, among weird aerial girls, Harrow goes for the grotesque, the contortions, shapes that don’t look pretty because they don’t look human, splits with rotations under and around the fabric. Technically she focuses on support, on using the same support for as long as possible, for seamless transitions from one support to another, for not always rewrapping and awkward sliding off the fabric and grip changes. “Economy of motion,” Camilla says, in practice, over and over, and before that she had—
The club, it turns out, is nice. Tall ceilings disappearing into blackness. Probably safe enough to rig directly into the ceiling beams but Camilla keeps saying their insurance doesn’t cover that. Big mirrors on the side. She wears her costume under the big hooded coat, bag packed with the special paper-thin dress she starts the act with, and the flame retardant spray that Camilla insists she re-apply to the costume before every show, even though it’s also designed to be flame-retardant. The theatrics, by herself, feel more hollow than they used to. It was better, before—
The room is warm and the slight sweat will make it easier for her to stick to the fabric. Per request the room is dimmer than usual, blacklights on, for the white silks to glow like ultraviolet. She starts in the middle of the room, silks parted to the edge of the stage, her in the middle in black. They dim the lights further and Harrow reaches down and touches the lighter.
The dress is fast-burning paper strips, something Camilla found that someone instantly demanded because it would look “sick.” The costume underneath is flame retardant and the fire lasts for a few seconds, more light than heat, not enough to endanger Harrow. But when she sets up the spin, flames flaring out as they accelerate up the hem, going from down to out to in, burning up until the thin paper falls off her body in ash, she’s left standing in costume, black with white bones, glowing under the ultraviolet light. Then the music starts.
“The phoenix from the ashes routine, extremely predictable but extremely cool—”
Only she’s not a phoenix, she’s something else, she’s something inhuman. With the parted silks she has to lean to one side of the stage to get them and it was her idea to start with a contortion, unsettling hinge at the waist and head to the floor like a broken toy, legs swinging over to grab that glowing silk with her toes, pulling it back to midline with her still torso on the floor. From there the climb starts inverted, crochet with her back flat on the floor, then a reach up with one bony hand to claw at the silks while the other one gives her a push to get the spin going, faster with both legs up and torso in, slowing as she stretches out to snag the other fabric. Then it’s a spider crawl up, a mincing, coordinated same side movement that leaves her upside down, menacing and inhuman.
Staying upside down as long as possible adds to the inhuman vibe, and it’s amazing how many things you can do upside down on silks, especially with a thigh hitch or a waist wrap keeping you up. A quick flip back and forth to crossback with wraps not footlocks, into a neck belay, where she hangs with one fist gripping the fabric straight in front of her, feet flat, head back, dangling like one hanged. People do die on silks, tangled and hung, drops without proper support. If she straightened her neck, or let go with her outstretched fist, she could slide right through this fabric onto the matless floor below and she, too, could experience emergency surgery, weeks in rehab—
Not again.
The music is pulsing, endless. Not actually endless—4 minutes and 13 seconds—but in the club, in the dark in the faint glow of the UV light, bones against luminous silk contorted with her feet against her skull, dangling from a waist wrap—all dark bass that rattles the floor of the club. Lots of aerialists go for twirly classical piano, which always makes spins look better, forgiving if you’re not perfectly on beat with your movements. Even Harrow used to, before. Before she was a partner act.
Because as interesting as it is, the slack drop she ends with, pulling up armfuls of silk around that will eventually tighten around her ankle when she finishes in a dramatic single ankle hang, dangling like a broken doll—it was better before. Because when she was a partner act that slack drop she would wind up and then on the way down, at the bottom of the drop when she could feel the tension pick back up, she would point her foot and then the ankle wrap would slip off, and she would fall, to audience gasps and screams, into the arms of her—her partner—
“Very sick, skeletal princess,” she would mutter before they started the second half of their act, lifting Harrow one-handed with very appreciable biceps, letting Harrow alight on her shoulder, and then the second song would start.
But tonight she winds the silk around her ankle, white fabric on both sides on both arms, and at the last line of the song, 4:05.05, she lets it all fall around her and slips back out of the supports, arms wide, into the black stage. She keeps her toe pointed and the fabric catches, bungeeing her just the slightest bit as she lets the rest of her body go limp, limbs akimbo, face covered by her hair. Because there’s no one to catch her this time.