“Now stay right here,” he raged at me when he was done. “The police are on their way.”

“As I walked back to the cannon to tell Sean, the owner walked directly behind me and came to a stop in front of the barrel. With his fists cocked at his waist and his face swelling like a child’s, he looked like a taller, thinner version of Sean: the Short-Order Cannonball. Faced with such vaudevillian valor, we decided to wait. Five minutes passed. Then ten. After fifteen minutes I stepped out of the cab and said to the man, “Sorry, it looks like the cops aren’t coming. If they do, just tell them they can find us at the circus.”

I started up the cannon and drove to the light. Just at that moment the cops arrived. For a moment I was overcome by the thought of a high-speed chase through New York City at the helm of a thirty-foot-long silver-and-red cannon with a stream of blue-and-white police vehicles stretched for miles behind us as we sped across the Verrazano Bridge, up Wall Street and the FDR Drive, through Central Park, down Fifth Avenue, past F. A. O. Schwarz, Tiffany, and Saks, before dashing to safety on the Staten Island Ferry and floating triumphantly alongside the Statue of Liberty as our pursuers snapped their fingers in frustration: “Damn! Foiled again.” Then I changed my mind and pulled to the curb.

By the time I got out of the driver’s seat the manager had already headed off the officer and was ranting about how we were in jeopardy of putting him out of business, how we wanted to break down his door, how we were a threat to Western civilization, or at least that much of it that is practiced on Staten Island. This little tantrum only riled Sean even further. By that time he had burst from the cannon and was waving his crutch in a manner that seemed to validate everything the owner was saying. I motioned him back to the cannon.

“Good evening,” I said to the officer when the owner was done. I stuck out my hand in greeting. He looked at me skeptically. I started explaining what had transpired, having already decided that I was going to bore this poor officer to death with every detail of our evening. “We’re with the circus,” I said. “We’ve come to Staten Island to entertain the people…” What followed was the kind of sickly-sweet speech that came partly from my experiences as a onetime student in peace studies and partly from my experiences as a teacher’s pet. “My friend was seriously injured during our show tonight…The kind people at the hospital recommended that we get something to eat at this diner.” The more obsequious I became, the more bemused the officer got and the more irate the owner. He interrupted me several times, jabbing his finger into my chest and saying things like “Do you know how much that door cost?” and “If I keep that door unlocked people will leave without paying their checks.” Each time he burst into a tirade I would turn to him and say in my most angelic voice, “Excuse me, sir. I didn’t interrupt you while you were speaking. Now, if you don’t mind…”

By the time I finished the officer was almost asleep. He turned to the owner of the restaurant and asked, “So, is there any damage?” The manager seemed stumped. He thought for a second, then said, “No,” at which point the officer turned around, got into his car, and drove away. I nodded and walked back to the cannon.

The next day I telephoned the New York City Department of Health.

“I would like to file a complaint against a restaurant for violating my handicapped rights,” I said to the woman who answered my twice-transferred call.

“Were you in a wheelchair?” the woman asked.

“No, I was on crutches.”

“Then you weren’t handicapped.”

“What do you mean I wasn’t handicapped? I had just come from the emergency room, where I had been in a wheelchair.”

“Were you in a wheelchair at the restaurant?”

“No, but I couldn’t walk up the stairs.”

“Handicapped means you have to be in a wheelchair.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then I would like to file a complaint against a restaurant for violating my civil rights.”

“You don’t have any civil rights to be in a restaurant.”

“Sure I do. They were keeping me out just because I couldn’t walk. They have to keep their doors open to the public.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do.”

“No, they don’t. People might leave without paying the check.”

“Okay,” I repeated. “If that’s the case, I would like to file a complaint against a restaurant for violating my legal rights.”

“Fine,” she said. “Call a lawyer!” And with that she hung up the phone.

Triple Whammy

The best trick of the show begins the second act. It’s magic in the air. It’s hell on the shoulders.

At the end of intermission four jugglers appear—Kris Kristo; his brother, Georgi; Marcos; and Danny Busch—who perform for several minutes while the audience returns to its seats. At the end of the routine the ring lights go out and these youthful veterans, like a barbecue quartet, juggle among them a dozen burning clubs. The darkness, the fire, and the sizzling pop music all provide cover for a surreptitious entrance by the grandest artists of them all.

“Introducing…those celebrated stars of the flying trapeze…the Pride of Meeexico…the Flying Rodríguez Faaaaamily…”

With a flourish of sequins, the team of flyers—Big Pablo, Danny, Little Pablo, and Mary Chris—toss off their capes, kick off their clogs, and begin to climb the two flimsy ladders that lead into the darkness above ring three. As they clamber toward the top of the tent, the lights gradually illuminate their rigging, their breathtaking scaffolding sky. Stretching fifty feet long and ten feet wide, the cantilevered rigging that supports their act looks like a giant bear trap suspended upside down in midair. On one end, hanging eight feet down, is a single trapeze with an aqua-blue wrap where Big Pablo, the catcher, finally sits. On the other end hangs a giant multitiered platform covered with blue carpet where Danny, Mary Chris, and Little Pablo convene. Below them, stretching the entire width of the tent, is an enormous all-cotton net; while in front of them, dangling twelve feet from the top of the tent, is the somber means of their flight, a three-foot-long solid-steel bar, one and a half inches in diameter, and fifteen pounds in weight.

“It’s my baby,” Little Pablo said. “It’s my life. It’s more important than my pillow.”

It’s also subtly patriotic. The bar that hangs thirty-two feet from the ground and vaults the flyers through the sky is wrapped entirely in white gauze with two inches of red tape on the right fringe and two inches of green on the left. “Red, white, and green,” Little Pablo boasts. “The colors of the Mexican flag.”

“Hey!”

As soon as the entire family is in place they shout a mutual salute. Then the warm-up begins. The first on the bar is Little Pablo himself. Like his brothers, he is wearing neon-pink tights with flaming sequins on the side and a pink see-through vest that barely covers and in truth only accents his well-sculpted upper body. The look, sort of Mr. Universe meets the Sugar Plum Fairy, is an homage to the inventor of the flying trapeze and, after Robin Hood, probably history’s most famous man in tights, Jules Léotard. In further homage to Léotard and his effete French aerialist tradition, Little Pablo and his brothers have shaved their underarms. In deference to their own Mexican macho background, however, they have not shaved their chests. “A bush under my arms would not look good,” Little Pablo said. “But my chest, that is manly.”