Albert and Zelda

Albert was a knife thrower. One of the last.

He’d seen one once when he was a kid and knew immediately that that was what he wanted to be. A knife thrower.

Now a knife thrower does one thing. He throws knives. Big knives, small knives, spinning knives, flat knives, butterfly knives. One potato, two potato it was all the same. Throwing knives at different targets, spinning, swinging, falling, jumping. He could throw at balloons or apples or put a small duckling in a box and pop the top with a perfectly placed blade. Watch it peek over the edge and chirp to the audience’s delight. Oh, the children loved that one – precisely because they didn’t understand the imminent danger posed to the duckling until it was over. And then they would deny themselves the knowledge of it. We are built like that, keeping secrets even from ourselves. Maybe it starts when we are kids and we call something magical and fantastical when in fact it is horrible.

But how often do you get to see a knife thrower perform. My god it’s a lost art.

Albert shared the stage with his lovely wife Zelda. Zelda was her stage name, but they had been together for so long and done so many shows that she forgave him when he called her Zelda in their private moments together. She would have been shocked had he not, he was more a knife thrower than anything else. So much of their life was make believe. If he had used her real name, which was Amanda, it would have left her wondering whether he was going to tell her something she didn’t want to hear. Like when your father calls you in the middle of night and addresses you as “son.”

But sometimes Albert forgot to play his part and that was not so much a problem as it was just something that kept her wondering if he was still a knife thrower.

But he had given her a glamorous life. She was a star. Amanda was just a woman without an audience.

In truth, Zelda had as many fans as Albert. Maybe more. The shows were packed and the audience sympathetic. Albert was a marksman, an artist. But Zelda was a fragrance so delicate only fairies had name for it.

Albert and Zelda have playbills from their career stored in boxes on a shelf in their apartment. They had been performing for so long the boxes carried the names of companies and products long since expired, out of vogue or simply defunct. Everything had changed but the pictures of Albert and Zelda. As yellowed and friable as they were Albert still looked as handsome as a knight and Zelda, well, she is as alluring in sequined sleeves and knitted turtlenecks as ever she was. They tempted danger with their feats and looked marvelous while doing it. Fifty years’ worth of playbills. At church bazaars, auto shows, conventions, anywhere between from Topeka to Tarzana, the Ozarks to the Poconos

They lived in an apartment in Bushwick, closer to Wilson than not and further from the L than they wanted. Particularly now that Zelda was feeling her knees more and more. They had been living in Bushwick since the Blackout in ’77, but now gentrification was erasing most of that history and more, most of what they could remember.

What their apartment offered in familiarity it took in comfort. The paint was faded except where the landlord was forced to make repairs and the second-floor railing was loose and posed a threat to Zelda who needed the extra support. In the dark she had to count the steps to knew where she was and most of their shows ended late, after 9:00 on weekends and they needed another hour to pack up the knives and props and collect the donations boxes Albert had placed near the exits.

“You were on tonight,” Albert said when he had all the knives collected.

“I thought I moved during the Illuminata bit” Zelda said.

“Not at all,” he reassured her. “But we didn’t do the Illuminata bit tonight did we?” He didn’t want to worry her.

They had done so many shows over the years that it was easy to forget. And they had so many bits, each with kitschy names that could excite an audience. The Illuminata skit was one of their most popular. It required Zelda to wear a corona of blinking lights and Albert to pierce the bulbs as they blinked on and off using a Japanese kunai knife – a knife that was difficult to throw because of its design, but one Albert had perfected.

“No one else throws the kunai,” he would tell the audience, “Because of its design it’s difficult to balance, you have to have the perfect touch, a fraction of an inch off and…” he would linger as he bounced the knife in his hand, gripping and releasing his hold while Zelda’s expression went from anticipatory to alarmed. Then in an instant his hand would rise and the bulb would pop. Exactly as planned. The crowd loved looking at the kunai as he bounced it in his hand.

The knives, that’s what made knife throwing so fascinating. Sure, there was the risk of missing his target and hitting Zelda – possibility of seeing blood – and sure there was the spectacle, the trick props, Zelda’s costumes and her expressions. But it was the knives, their shape and how they flew, so fast that when they struck the wood backboard it almost seemed as if they had sprouted from the target itself. And then there was the throw, the silence that precedes it, the momentary pause to calibrate weight and distance and then the motion, the quick and specific release. It went so fast it had a magical quality to it.

______ ___

On the way home Zelda reminded Albert, “Ted’s coming in tonight. He might already be there. I told him where he could find the spare key.”

“Ted,” Albert said, then continued walking. “Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“The last time you said he was coming he didn’t. I just want to know what to expect.”

She trudged behind Albert as they walked to the subway. His silhouette sharpened against the street lamps and faded just as quickly. Suitcases dangled from each arm and his shoulders sloped under the weight. In the exchange of light to dark she though she was watching a kinescope film of Albert aging, frame after frame he appeared to shrink and fold into himself.

“Are the suitcases heavy?”

“No more than usual.”

“They look heavy,” she said.

“Maybe Ted should have met use. He could have carried on of these bags.”

“Ted’s at home.”

“I know that’s what you said.’

“That’s what I said.”

“Never mind.”

Ted was at home, in the apartment, asleep on the couch when Albert and Zelda arrived. He was slow to wake. Albert dropped the suitcases as the door.

Ted was Zelda’s younger brother. He was living in Vermont and came to New York twice a year to see Zelda. The couch was his bed and he was already tucked in when they arrived.

“Made the bed yourself,” Albert chided.

Ted smiled.

“Hello my love.” He jumped up, wearing only a white t-shirt and briefs, and swept Zelda into his arms. “You look pale, thin, thinner than last time I was here. Is Albert feeding you?”

Zelda smiled. It was always the same when he first saw her, commenting on her health and the work, the late nights, the grind, then over the next few hours their roles would change and she would worry about him and the cost and effort it took him to visit her. He would always be her younger brother.

“I brought some sweet bread from home,” Ted offered. “Albert, you need to feed her more.”

Zelda clung to her brother’s arm.

“Why didn’t you come to the show? You could have met us there.’

“The train was late, but how was it anyway? I’m sure it was fantastic. They always are.”

Ted hadn’t seen one of their shows since the 80s – when he was in college and needed somewhere to escape to.

“It was. We did the Illuminata,” she said, still holding on to him.

Albert squeezed the suitcases behind the kitchen table where they served as legs for a wooden bench Albert had built years before.

“The one with the light bulbs, blinking or something. Don’t you wear them,” he played along. “I thought they don’t let you do that one anymore. Something about mercury or neon or something,” Ted said.

“They don’t,” Albert confirmed.

“How long can you stay this time,” Zelda cried out.

“Forever,” Ted joked. “Or until Albert throws me out.”

___ ___ ___

The next morning Zelda stayed in bed. She often slept-in after a show, more lately, and sometimes into the next day. Albert forced himself to the edge of the bed and placed his feet on the floor. He pulled at the comforter and the side table to sit up and still she didn’t stir, not even when he let out a singular groan and consequent fart.

Ted looked up as Albert stumbled into the living room. Zelda called it Ted’s room, but it was really not a room at all as much as an extension of the kitchen or the kitchen an extension of the living room depending on how you saw things. Just two different spaces with different equipment, one a stove and refrigerator and the other a couch.

“Want coffee?” Albert asked.

“Sure,” Ted replied, his body hidden beneath a swirl of sheets and blankets.

“I won’t bring it to you.”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“Nothing ever will.”

Both men knew that wasn’t true. But the differences between them – the differences that had emerged years ago – would not let them admit it.

When Zelda finally joined them, they talked about unimportant things, the weather and lost friends. They went for dinner at a pizza shop near Irving Square Park and sat up talking in the apartment until the sirens stopped. The next day Ted and Zelda walked to the cemeteries along Jackie Robinson Parkway. The air was crisp and the leaves looked heavy and weary. Albert stayed home and read. He found it hard to hear Ted call his sister Amanda. It made him feel uneasy. Ted’s visit always did, so he pulled out the suitcases, spread them open on the floor and smelled the oil and sweat and the years of use they represented. The knives gave him comfort and a sense of meaning.

By Sunday afternoon the conversation both men had avoided all weekend, spilled out. Ted was sitting on the bench, rocking back on forth on the suitcase legs and Albert was flipping through his scheduling book. Zelda was in the shower with the door closed. She would take a while.

“How many more shows you got this month?” Ted asked.

“As many as we need to pay the bills,” Albert replied.

There it was. Nothing else needed to be said. But it was never that simple. In a world in which differences rest on simple, plain facts people always need say more than they should.

“How much longer can you go on throwing knives at car dealerships and county fairs?”

That was the real question.

“For as long as we can.”

And that was the only answer.

“And then what?”

An unanswerable question.

“And then I don’t know.”

Because that is the truth. The one truth no one wants to accept. “I don’t know.”

So, we keep talking, dragging up things from the past or projecting into the future. And it can go on and on.

Ted and Albert had been here before. They had had this same discussion with each other and with themselves and it seems it came up more and more frequently. So, they had lots to say, lots of reasons for not accepting the simple truth: the fact that they did not have an answer to the one question they both were asking. Instead, they tore into each other, their discord fueling their passion and denying them relief or insight. That’s the truth of it. The one trying to lessen his sister’s burden knowing he could not and the other refusing to acknowledge that he was to blame for it. They both loved her too much to agree.