Chapter 23: Back in Competition

“THAT’S EASY,” I said without thinking. “Work with me.”

“Work with ... You mean acro gym or circus?”

“We can try acro gymnastics if you want, but I think I’m destined to become a circus act.”

“I’m into that. Show me what you can do.”

I got into my routines and each time I finished something, Sydnie jumped in and showed me something she’d been working on. We put a few of our moves together and liked the combinations. Nicole saw us working and came over to watch.

“Are you going to become an act?” she asked. I looked at Sydnie with my eyebrows raised.

“Yes! That’s exactly what we’re going to become!” she exclaimed.

“Good! Paul, I’ve been thinking for a while that you need a partner to work with. Sydnie is perfect. Have you worked together before?”

“Only once a long time ago. Sydnie helped me in my audition at GAC Academy in Florida. She was part of a women’s group, though, and I was working on becoming the world’s greatest gymnast. We know how that one turned out.”

“There is nothing to be ashamed of in your gymnastics career, Paul. But you are both too old to compete in acro-gym. Let me see what you can do together.”

I consulted with Sydnie briefly and we lined up on the floor. I did a double salto followed by a single and dropped to my knees. Sydnie was right behind me with her double. Then she landed her single perfectly on my shoulders. I didn’t even have to steady her with my hands.

“Yes!” Nicole said. “A good start. I will start designing moves for you. You will compete in three weeks.”

“I thought you just said we were too old to compete,” I said.

“To compete for USA Acrobatic Gymnastics, yes,” Nicole said. “A new season of National Talent Search is beginning soon. You will audition here in Las Vegas for the next level. It is not a gymnastics competition. Musicians, singers, magicians, ventriloquists, acrobats, daredevils. There will be a little of everything. The top acts, as determined by judges and the audience, will be put together as a variety show for a year run at the New Trop.”

“I’ve seen those talent-kind of shows before,” I said. “They all seem to end up with impressive little children winning.”

“Well, this is different. It’s for a revue in Las Vegas. Children aren’t allowed. You are over eighteen, aren’t you?”

“Oh, God yes,” Sydnie laughed. I just nodded.

“One always has to check these days. Okay. Work on what you’ve got so far and I’ll join you tomorrow to review it and suggest some new things. I’ve been thinking about this for years, ever since I left the stage myself.”

Sydnie and I started working, putting some of our moves and ideas together, and ended up on the mats until eight o’clock in the evening. She had to rush home to Eva and tell her what was going on. We’d all get together over the weekend.

I felt something that night. After I stopped for a light dinner at a nearby casino, I went home and crashed. Lying in bed, thinking of what the day had brought, I felt ... happy.

It took me a while to realize what it was. I was heartbroken about Lena, but working with Sydnie had woken something inside me. We clicked as quickly as we had when she fell into my arms in the cafeteria the first night I was in Tampa. Maybe I should have followed Coach Li’s suggestion and become an acro gym partner then. I was so dead set on my goal of an Olympic gold medal that I shrugged the suggestion off, though she’d often asked me to work briefly with a new flyer to help build their confidence.

No. I wouldn’t trade in the past eight years of my journey. I’d been challenged and trained by the best in the world. I’d won national championships, European and Asian competitions, received an Olympic silver for our 2028 team, and had traveled the world. But I’d seldom thought about being happy.

Even when I fell in love with Teodora, it was filling an empty place in my life and it left me feeling gladder to have company than it did happy. Maybe that was why we dissolved our love affair so quickly when we had career goals that took us in different directions.

The very idea, though, that I could help and support Sydnie when she was at her lowest, just made me happy.

I had no notions of sex with Sydnie, any more than I’d ever had with my sister. But I would do anything for either of them.

There was a pang back in the furthest reaches of my heart for having lost Tara. Working with her had made me happy. Being her lover had overjoyed me. Before I went to sleep, in those last moments before I lost my waking consciousness, I thought wistfully of Tara and hoped she, too, was happy.

The first thing Nicole did was move us off of the sprung floor onto just mats.

“The mats are for safety while you are learning things. While they provide some cushion for an unexpected landing, they aren’t a soft and comfy place to land on your face or your back, not to mention your head,” she explained. “But we can’t move an entire sprung floor onto the stage for your audition. As soon as possible, we’ll map out the stage area onto a hardwood floor and prep your performance there. If we have to spread mats before the audition, it will limit how much of the stage floor we can use.”

“I don’t think I can bounce high enough to get to Paul’s shoulders without the sprung floor,” Sydnie said disappointedly. “We’ll have to work out a different mount.”

“Ah! Just because you can’t have a sprung floor, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a springboard. You might even get enough height to do a double for your mount.”

“Oh, wow! That would be cool. What else can we do?”

“Throws,” Nicole answered immediately. “Launching you into the air and having you land on his shoulders or even hands should be a breeze for Paul.”

“We can do that,” I said.

That was the first of Nicole’s additions. By the end of the week, it looked and felt like Sydnie and I had been working together all our lives. She was a natural and had as many good ideas as Nicole had. I was glad to be able to make a few suggestions myself, including a Thomas salto. I’d done it with a two-and-a-half on the sprung floor. It didn’t seem to be a problem to do a one-and-a-half and land on my hands on the mat as long as I was wearing wrist braces. I didn’t try to stick it there, though. Without the cushion of the sprung floor, I decided the better, and slightly safer, choice was to roll out of it.

Nicole saw it and immediately made that my entrance piece. The trickiest part of it was that I had to launch myself from the springboard and stabilize quickly enough that Sydnie could spring, do her pike position salto, and land on my shoulders.

“We will need spotters working with you, even in the audition. I’m going to ask Jon and Steffan to join you. It will still be a two-person act, but I’m not willing to risk your lives for it. You look comfortable doing these tricks on the mat, but when we move to the hardwood next week, it will be a different story. Besides, we need to have someone who will move the springboard into position and remove it until you need it next.”

“Will we need it again?”

“I think so. You’ve been working on flipping up a level. With the springboard, you could get much higher. If you threw Sydnie up even higher, she could jump off a level onto your shoulders when you get up.”

We were being filled with new moves every day and by the end of the week, we had the structure of a routine. The next week, we’d add music and move to the hardwood. I was glad Nicole was managing our time at the gym and the people and spaces we’d need. She was also working with a corde lisse act that had been performing for two years. She’d registered us both for the auditions and saw to it that we were performing on different nights.

“The type of performance you are going for is normally done by a larger group,” Nicole said before we broke on Friday evening. “If you have three or five or twenty performers, spotters are integrated into the action, the thrower and catcher need not be the same, and launches can be much higher. You have an advantage, though. Even with an unobtrusive assistant or two acting as spotter and equipment mover, a two-person act is much cheaper than a large group act.”

Well, that was one edge we might have over other acts. I considered it as I took my daily ice-bath and ate Advil for dinner.

Dinner with Eva Friday night was a little strained. She was still moving slowly and said her broken bones had healed but everything was still sore. I offered my services as a massage therapist and she checked with Sydnie before saying she’d like that and would come to the gym on Monday.

“That’s great. I’ll let them know I’m expecting a client and then you can spend some time giving Sydnie and me some tips and pointers,” I said enthusiastically.

“I don’t think I can do that, Paul,” she said quietly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked naïvely.

“I’m happy you are working together. It means more than I can possibly express,” Eva said. “But I can’t help being a little jealous of you. I wanted so badly to be there for my Syd.”

“Honey, you are here for me. I come home to you every night, bursting with news about what we’re learning. You always perk me up when I’m down and give me tons of great tips. Am I hurting you by working with Paul? Paul, we might need to quit this.”

“No!” Eva said. “I’m happy for you. I want you to continue and to succeed. I’ll keep picking you up as long as you’ll let me. I’ll keep giving you tips. I’ll keep loving you and always be there for you. I just wish I was the one able to help you and be your base. But I can’t be the one anymore. My body was wearing out before the accident. It’s never going to be what you need as an acrobat.”

“I wish I could give you a massage like Paul can,” Sydnie said. “At least we each get something from him. Now what are we going to give back?”

“Please, don’t,” I said. “I don’t know how to say this, but I’ve been in a vacuum for weeks ... months. I was working on becoming a circus act because that was all that was left to me. But when you came along, it gave my work meaning. It gave me hope. I’m going to be your base because you need it and I’ve discovered it was what I need, too. That’s all I’m asking of the two of you.”

Sydnie leapt into my arms and planted a kiss on my lips and well into my mouth. I started to splutter as Eva laughed.

“And sometimes...” Sydnie started.

“ ... a friendly kiss,” Eva finished.

“Okay. Sometimes.”

We were back at work again Monday morning. I think we all needed the weekend rest. I was at the gym a couple of times to use the ice bath and hot tub, but didn’t do more than stretching exercises.

Nicole had mats out in the gym marked to the dimensions of the stage. It was larger than a competition floor. She emphasized, however, that we should use and fill the entire stage. Many acts benefit from being performed in a very tight area with everything around them being dark.

“If you were a roller skating duo competing for a spot on the revue stage, you would perform on a circular platform that is only eight feet in diameter. That makes it necessary for the pair to contain everything within that spotlight. But acrobatics like you will be doing require run-ups and passes that need to show you can fill the stage with just the two of you. And a few props,” Nicole said.

We ran through our moves, getting used to the openness of the space. When we performed in the auditions, the audience would all be in front of the stage, looking in. It wasn’t like a circus with a ring in a tent.

“Now let’s start putting this to music,” she said.

Nicole had access to about as much music as the academy in Florida and knew the catalogue inside and out. The music was mostly brisk, but started with a slow crescendo. This was going to be our big entrance. I did my double tuck salto with a one-and-a-half out to land on the platform, five feet above. I was no more than landed when Sydnie made her pass, launched off the springboard, did a single pike with a half out to land on my shoulders. If that didn’t grab the audience right there, we had no hope of anything else moving them.