Chapter 12
The sun was still high when they got back to the faire grounds, Chicot offering again to help with the bags so Monty could drop Lyza and Elvis off by the dog park.
She hadn’t expected Elijah to leave with them, stating that he had to meet with one of the other performers for some sort of jam band.
This left Chicot and Monty alone, and while things were easier between them than they had been, they certainly weren’t perfect.
This led to Chicot babbling nearly nonstop from the time they were left in the car to when they got to the employee parking lot.
She wasn’t really talking about anything in particular, just filling the dead air with anything she could.
Her mind bounced around on topics from music to clothes, Monty giving short but polite answers the whole time.
That was really all Chicot could ask for at this point.
Even if she’d made Monty feel better at practice, it wasn’t like Monty owed her some sort of sudden friendship.
Chicot knew she very much wanted to be friends with Monty.
She liked the music she listened to, her cottagecore aesthetic, the way she’d drum on her steering wheel as she drove.
If Chicot let herself be completely honest, she knew somewhere deep in the flutter of her stomach and the flush she got when Monty held her just right that her crush was worse than ever.
She just tried to tamp that all down like grass at a campsite and pretend it wasn’t there.
“… and maybe we could go to the thrift store together sometime?” Chicot didn’t know where she was going with this line of rambling as they walked toward the dog park when their bags were in place. “I kind of need new workout clothes and I have a bit of money for them.”
Monty’s chest puffed up, her fingers no longer drumming on the strap of the bag she was holding. “You want to go shopping with me?”
“Yeah.” Chicot shrugged. “I think it’ll be fun. Plus, I like your style a lot.”
“It’s nothing like yours though.” Monty chuckled. “For one thing, I wear color.”
Chicot pouted. “I wear color sometimes!”
“The occasional dark blue or maroon doesn’t count,” Monty said.
Chicot scoffed, glowering at the pebbles in the walkway because she knew Monty was right, only stopping when Monty let out a delighted giggle.
Chicot’s throat caught just for a moment, her hands feeling numb and light as she bounced while she walked.
“You say that as if you wear anything other than earth tones and pastels.” Chicot smirked, the expression quickly turning into a wide grin when Monty laughed again.
“Okay, you’ve got me there,” Monty admitted. “And yeah, let’s go to the thrift store sometime.”
They took just a few minutes to work out that the best time to go would be in the afternoon after Chicot’s first lesson with Sunnie, which they’d planned for Thursday.
She didn’t tell Monty that was what she would be doing that morning, just said she had plans, and Monty didn’t ask questions.
Once they agreed and Chicot helped her get the bag of blades back into the outdoor storage on her RV, Chicot waved and went back to her own so she could immediately step into the shower.
Being hungover and then working out made her skin feel like it was covered in oil.
Elijah and Chicot spent the next couple days hiding from the heat in their RV.
It was hard to justify being outside when it was nearly a hundred degrees and 90% humidity, especially when they had to be outside all day for work several times a week.
Then suddenly, Chicot had to meet Sunnie for her lesson, and she stopped caring about the temperature entirely.
She quickly pulled on a pair of joggers over her leotard and grabbed her water bottle.
Chicot briefly contemplated her simple jester hat with the bells, the one she wore to kids’ parties because the mask would sometimes scare toddlers, but she opted against it.
For now, she just wanted to go as she was, nearly jogging out of the RV park past a group of performers doing yoga led by one of the Laundry Ladies.
Chicot briefly caught Monty’s eyes as she ran past, her head following Chicot as she headed farther out into the field near the old barn stood, where people entered the parking lot on faire days. She just waved at Monty in acknowledgment.
Sunnie was waiting under the shade of the large Albion Renaissance Faire sign at the entrance. It was a clever choice, since most of the field wasn’t shaded. He’d clearly been here long enough to know the good spots.
He happily waved at Chicot, and she quickly realized he would not be saying a word this entire lesson.
That made sense. The point of pantomime was to be silent but still understood.
While Chicot could do that for larger, broader things, she wasn’t as good at the minutia.
Those small, subtle things that Sunnie got audience members to do with just a flick of his wrist or a point of his finger.
As a performer, but maybe in life as well, being understood wasn’t very common for her, and she wanted to be as clear as possible.
Sunnie had a series of small props to help them: a ball, a scarf, and an old paperboy hat.
He started simple: the last thing someone touched would be the first thing they thought of when given an instruction.
Sunnie taught her this lesson by handing Chicot the ball and then the hat, making a gesture like he was putting something on his head.
Chicot, without thinking, put the hat on—no confusion about which item Sunnie wanted her to use.
When Sunnie then held one slender finger in the air, a jovial smile on his face as he twirled his it like a young girl might her hair, Chicot turned her hat around.
He then did this several more times with different applications and gestures, using the ball, the scarf, or the hat as necessary.
He then set about confusing Chicot a few times by taking things out of her hands and giving them back so many times that she couldn’t keep track of what she’d touched last anymore.
When he gave her instructions, she didn’t know what he wanted her to do, either moving the wrong thing or staring blankly at him until he started over, reducing the number of items he gave her the second time.
It took a few tries, but Chicot eventually realized that this was another lesson: too much input at once meant the other person wouldn’t understand.
They went on like this for a while, Sunnie eventually prompting Chicot to try giving him the objects and directing him to do things with them. Then, at the end of their session, he had her follow him through a small series of steps of what Chicot could only call a dance.
The movements were very fluid, and once Sunnie had shown her, she was able to easily follow along with him.
She could tell the idea was for them to do it in sync, carefully flowing from step to step with their arms slowly rolling to evoke’ the sun and natural landscape.
It was beautiful and gentle. Chicot realized it was probably meant to tell a story, much like various forms of dance she’d learned in lessons as a kid.
Based on the forms, she thought the story might be about the sun itself, warming the world and making plants grow.
Her chest swelled with admiration as Sunnie continued, his lines crisper, his footwork careful and steady.
She didn’t quite know what it was, but Sunnie was teaching her something deeply important to their craft.
A sort of interpretive dance that must have stemmed from years of formal training of some sort, though Chicot wasn’t sure if it had been in modern dance or just the results of circus school.
Either way, she wanted to learn more, suddenly ravenous for an education she had cast off as a possibility years ago.
“Do you think I should go to circus school?” Chicot asked as they started back toward the dog park. The sun was now beating down on them, the shade of the sign long behind them. Sunnie hummed softly.
“That’s hard to say.” Sunnie seemed to take this explanation very seriously. “There are certainly things you can learn there, but I will admit nowadays with the amount one can learn online and the fact that you’re already working, it may not be necessary for you.”
Chicot bobbed her head. “Thank you.”
Sunnie chuckled, “For a nonanswer?”
“No.” Chicot picked at a hangnail on her thumb. “For a levelheaded one. A lot of … older people think school is the only way for a lot of things.”
“Were you about to call me a boomer?” Sunnie asked. Chicot felt sweat drip down her forehead as she looked out at the field instead of at Sunnie.
“No,” she lied. Sunnie laughed.
“I’m not that old,” he said. “But I see what you’re saying. I think maybe I have a different view because while I liked circus school, I don’t use a lot of those skills in my act.”
“Your talents mostly come from experience and dance then, yes?” Chicot asked. Sunnie winked at her, his cheeks rounding as he smiled.
“You’re quick on the uptake.” He reached out, ruffling her hair.
Chicot froze up, only for a moment as warmth drifted from her belly to her chest. Sunnie reminded her of her dad, just not a cowboy and considerably weirder.
In a positive way, of course. But it took everything in her not to burst into tears, wishing it were her dad treating her with kindness like that instead of Sunnie.
“Yes,” Sunnie continued. Thankfully, this meant Chicot didn’t have to speak. “Most of what I use in my act, I learned from dance classes. Interpretive gestures narrowed down from incredibly abstract modern dance. Honestly, I’m not even sure how I arrived there.”
That made Chicot smile.
“I also started in dance,” she offered. “I did it for years. I was my teacher’s favorite contortionist she’d ever had.”