– Midget Vampyre? How’s that work? Find it a bitch getting to someone’s neck?

He smiles, flashing full sets of steel dentures, canines every tooth, and points at my upper thigh.

– Usually find something I can get to in a pinch.

I think about kicking him down the beach. Wonder if I could get him to the water. Wonder if he would float.

He takes a silver flask from the side pocket of the overalls, swigs from it and holds it up.

– You the guy from Manhattan?

I wave the flask off.

– I’m the driver. One you want is by the water.

He takes another slug of the thick dark rum I smell in the flask and slips it away in his pocket.

– Whatsay you come in and take a look at the finale?

– Whatsay we skip the donkey fucking, or whatever you close with and you grab your boss so we can do the swap and I can get back where I belong.

He looks up at me, blows a stream of smoke that just reaches my face.

– Buddy, I am the boss. And till the show is over, no one goes anywhere.

He drops the half-finished smoke at my feet.

– You can finish that if you want.

He turns and heads for the back of the tent.

– Me, I got an entrance to make.

It’s a showstopper.

People cover their eyes, howl, run from the tent, one or two start crying, a couple who’s been here before laugh and shake their heads, still not believing what they’re seeing.

The midget is standing in the middle of the stage, tugging lengths of intestine from the hole he’s chewed in his own belly and draping them over the shoulders of Vendetta and Harm, who admire them like mink stoles, giving them the occasional lick.

Lydia watches, nothing about her moves except her discontent. That’s all over the fucking place.

The midget brings a loop of intestine up to his mouth, shows the steel teeth, the music crescendos, a full-fledged Guitar Wolf freak-out, he opens his jaws wide, the torches flutter suddenly, his teeth glitter and snap down and the torches go out and red and blue strobes pulse and everyone screams as the midget collapses and the girls fall on him and tear his flesh and stuff their mouths full of it and the guy who did a strongman act at the beginning of the show appears in his executioner’s hood and swings a broadsword and hacks at the girls as they continue to feed.

The strobes stop. The tent goes black. The screams kick up a notch.

I smell the midget’s infected blood, whiffs of his bowels, the kerosene the torches were dipped in, seaweed, salt air, stale beer and corndogs from the trash barrel, cigarette and pot smoke and the blush of uninfected blood freshly drawn.

I grab Lydia and push her behind me and put my hand on the butt of Solomon’s hogleg.

Lights come on, strings of red Christmas lights looped among the rigging wires and poles of the tent.

The people on the bleachers stop shrieking.

The midget is standing center stage, dripping gore, he steps forward, does a pratfall over his own intestines, gets up and takes a bow.

The place goes nuts.

The Strongman lifts the girls, placing one on either shoulder, and they wave at the audience with fake severed arms and legs.

Lydia wrenches free of me.

– Fuck are you thinking, Pitt? There’s trouble, stay out of my way so you don’t get hurt.

I raise my hands.

– Yeah, my bad, forgot who’s wearing the trousers.

– Fuck you.

The Freaks wrap their curtain call. The audience laughs and claps and hoots and hollers and throws crumpled bills and loose change and the performers clear the stage and Tom Waits sings “Singapore,” their exit music, and the show is over.

I count heads as the audience files out of the tent, try to figure who’s missing and how many.

– Unconscionable! Immoral! And fantastically idiotic!

– Oh! Oh sweet Jesus! Oh my Lord in Heaven, fuck me now!

The midget has tucked the last of his intestine where it belongs; gritting his fake teeth, he pinches the edges of the wound together as Vendetta pulls a glowing iron rod from the brazier where it’s been heating in a pile of white coals and presses it against the torn flesh.

The midget drops his head back and laughs and screams like a little kid on a roller coaster.

– Hooooo! Whhooohoooo! Oh my! Oh my God! Sheeeeit!

Vendetta pulls the rod away and the Glasseater pours cold water over the steaming cauterization.

The midget brings his face down, tears running from the corners of his eyes, and exhales. He leers at Lydia.

– Sorry about the language, just that hurts like a motherfucker.

He peels one of the Pabst Blue Ribbons from the six at his feet and cracks it open.

– So now, unconscionable, you were saying? I’m not sure about that part, not knowing what the word means and all, but fantastically idiotic is a phrase I could learn to love. That right there, that just about sums up the whole Freak, whatyacallit, value system in two words. Hatter, what’s a good word for value system?

The MC takes a coverless pocket dictionary from inside his tailcoat and looks at a page.-Ethos.

Lydia has her hands on her hips.

– Make a joke out of it, make a joke out of it, but this is not the way we do things. If you plan on joining the Society, there’s going to be a whole new set of behaviors to learn. Because behavior like that?

She points at the corpse flopped across the table they used in the Glasseater’s act, the chump they snatched and slashed during the finale blackout. The Strongman, still in his hood, pumps the dead guy’s chest, the last of his blood sputtering from the hole gnawed in his neck and filling the mason jar Harm holds against it.

– Behavior like that will not be tolerated. A random act of violence, an outright murder that begs for attention, that will not be condoned in any way, shape or form by any Clan in Manhattan, let alone by the Society. The waste of blood aside, the moral issues aside, there’s just the practical question of exposure. A display like that? In public? You can make it look as fake as you like, but it’s going to draw attention. And what about the legal implications? This is an unlicensed operation. You’re only a half mile from the amusement park. What about the police?

He drains his beer and grabs another.

– Cops we got no problem with. Coney cops, you pitch them a C-note they could give a shit what you do. As for attention, well, that’s the whole point isn’t it? No attention, no audience. We do things the freak show up on the boardwalk can only dream about. Funny thing is, they get up on their high horse ’bout what we do. Talk ’bout how faking is counter to the freak way of life. They only knew, they’d shit little purple HoHos.

– Uh-huh, and what about other kinds of attention? You know we have a Van Helsing in Lower Manhattan right now? What happens if a Van Helsing hears about your act? Do you think he or she will have trouble telling the difference between pig intestine, Karo syrup and red food coloring, and the real thing? What you’re doing, it puts all infecteds at risk. Utterly without sanction. With no mandate at all. With no aim at all. Simple willfulness. Unconscionable.

– Sister, ain’t no such thing as a Van Helsing.

Her eyes bug.

– No such thing?

– You ever seen one? I never seen one. Urban legend. Stuff to scare kiddies with. Trust me, work in this game long as I have, you know a fake when you hear ’bout it.

Lydia looks at me.

– Joe?

I look at my watch, the second hand sweeps around, shaving another sliver from the edge of the night.

I look at the midget.

– Got a guy on Rivington, in chunks.

He looks down at his beer.

– Cut up? How many pieces?

– Fuck do I know, didn’t bother counting.

He swirls the beer in his can and takes a swig.