"Patented Virilixer™ ointment remedy!" called the barker. He drawled out the last syllable of every sentence with a sort of slovenly grandiloquence. "Enhance your pulchritude! Increase your potency! Give your sweetheart something to sing about! Your money back if you are not completely satisfied; twice your money back if she's not!"
"Oooh, that sounds promising," laughed Rini, licking a bit of cotton candy from her thumb. "Maybe you should go back and ask for a sample pack."
Alex waved her off, smiling a somewhat pained smile.
The sun was setting, and lights were coming on along the midway. Alternating red and yellow bulbs painted the stalls and tents with a cheery, jack-o-lantern glow. Rini finished her cotton candy, then poked her husband in the ribs with the still-sticky cardboard tube. "So," she said, all business-like, "...is she cute?"
"Oh, man," Alex cried. "Do we have to? It's— I told you, it's a crush. Just a stupid crush."
"I know that. I just want to know if she's cute. It's relevant."
"She— I— yes," he sputtered. "I don't know. She's a girl, for crying out loud."
"She's a student," Rini corrected. "She's what, nineteen?"
Alex slapped his forehead. He made dramatic, strangling noises. Rini poked him a second time.
"Are we there yet?" she asked after a while. "We're about to run out of fair."
Alex spied a small, dingy-looking tent near the end of the midway. "That's it, I think. Green and white stripes. He said there wouldn't be any sign."
She eyed it dubiously. "And how long ago did Doug see this thing?"
"A few years ago, when the fair was in town."
"And it's really that good, huh?"
He shrugged. "He said it changed his life."
"Mm-hmm."
He recognized her tight smile as a sign of disapproval, but declined to call her on it. "You sure you don't want to come along?" he asked.
She wrinkled her nose. "You know I don't like the scary stuff. Besides, it's probably just a cow fetus."
"Okay. Hey, listen." He hesitated before turning to look at her. "You uh, you believe me, right? I would never—"
"Sweetie." She laid her hand on his cheek. She shook her head, but her eyes were smiling. "I'm teasing you. Go on."
He smiled, relieved. "One please," he asked the ticket-seller at the entrance.
The sallow old man took his money. He carefully detached a ticket from the enormous roll in his lap. With painstaking deliberation, he tore the ticket in half. Then he handed the stub to Alex.
Alex glanced at Rini, rolling his eyes.
Rini cupped her hands to her mouth and said, "Moo."
A wooden picture frame hung in midair in the center of the tent. Alex knew that there must be wires holding it up, but he could not see them. Small display lamps in the ceiling lit the frame but left the rest of the tent in pitch blackness. The angle was such that the lights somehow cast a deep shadow over the painting itself, so that the frame appeared to be empty.
Maybe it is empty, Alex thought. A typical carnival trick. But when he stepped forward the shadows parted like curtains, revealing the image beneath.
It was a picture of a woman's naked body. It lay in a clearing, surrounded by thick, black trees. It was, literally, just a body — the edge of the painting cut the woman off just above the shoulders. Her pose was not erotic, nor even suggestive. Flat on her back, arms at her sides, fingers relaxed and slightly curled against the damp earth.
Alex leaned closer. There was a definite sense of decay in the environment around the woman's body. The trees were old and rough. The ground she lay on was a crumbled mixture of dirt and lichen and moss. But the body itself was pristine. The skin was almost perfect, porcelain-white, unbroken and uniform except for the nipples, which were brown, and the black tangle of pubic hair. Alex wondered if the woman was supposed to be dead. Without seeing the face, it was difficult to tell. There was no mark or blemish to suggest a wound.
Alex leaned closer. There was a blemish. Or rather, not a blemish. A speck. He leaned closer. It was an ant. A single, tiny, black ant, rendered in excruciatingly perfect detail, crawling up the woman's hip. Alex could count its individual legs.
Once he had noticed it, he could not tear his eyes away from the singular detail of the ant. He could imagine the feeling of it crawling on his own skin. A muscle in his leg twitched in involuntary sympathy for the woman in the painting. He found himself wanting to reach out and brush the ant away. It seemed as though he could. It seemed as though he could reach right through the frame and just brush the ant away. It looked that real.
He wondered what the woman's skin would feel like under his fingertips.
Alex reached out his hand.
Rini sighed. She didn't think there had been anyone else in the tent when Alex had gone in, but she wasn't sure. Maybe it was bigger on the inside than the outside made it look.
The ticket-seller had made himself scarce. Most of the other tents had closed. A few fair-goers still wandered about, but most of them were straggling in the general direction of the exit.
Rini considered going in to fetch him... No. Give him a few more minutes. She sighed again, and composed a suitably annoyed expression with which to greet her husband when he finally emerged.
She waited.
And waited.
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