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and an acrobat,” she said, in a hushed voice with an inflection of
     doubt, as if she was afraid he wouldn’t believe her.
    But he hadn’t been the doorman of this theater this long without knowing how to judge
     who was a performer and who was not.
    “The show’s on now,” he said, in as kindly a voice as he could manage. “But the position
     is still open, and it’s getting a bit urgent to fill it. Here—” he handed her a ticket
     for the gallery. “Why don’t you run along to the front, watch the show and rest your
     feet, and come back here after? I’ll make sure Lionel sees you, and you’ll make a
     better impression if you’re rested.”
    For a moment he thought that she might take that as rejection, but after a moment
     of hesitation, she accepted the ticket and squared her shoulders. “Thank you,” she
     said. “I will come after the show.”
    And with that she turned and went back into the oven-hot alley.
    •   •   •
    For one moment, seeing the doorman in his respectable suit, Katie had been tempted
     to flee. But then she had seen that his eyes were kind, but pain-shadowed, and that
     he had only the one leg, and felt a stirring of pity for him.
    He hadn’t been haughty with her either, and took her statement for what she was at
     face value. When he offered her the ticket, though, she almost refused. She was getting
     quite hungry now, and she would gladly have traded that ticket for a penny bun—
    But she didn’t know where to get one here. And at least she would be able to sit down
     and rest.
    And . . . she had never actually
been
in a theater before.
    She thanked him, and went around to the front, presenting her ticket at the booth.
     Already she was feeling very much out of her depth. She was not used to buildings
     this tall, and they were all around her, towering over her like mountains. The Andy
     Ball Circus confined itself to entertaining villages and small towns; the tallest
     building she had ever seen, an old Tudor inn of the sort built in a square around
     a courtyard, was only two stories tall. This theater was four!
    Once inside, she wasn’t allowed to linger in the lobby, but ushers directed her to
     a set of stairs, and then up and up to the highest floor. She came out at the back
     of the top gallery, a full four stories above the stage, where she gasped and put
     her back tight to the wall. It was so high she felt dizzy for a moment, the bright
     lights on the stage dazzled her, and it seemed too warm and stuffy. She was afraid
     to move for a moment, until the usher, getting impatient, hissed at her to “just sit
     anywhere.”
    Moving gingerly, she shuffled sideways along the wall until she came to the corner.
     She could see that the chair in front of her was empty, so she groped for the back
     of it, and took it.
    Only then did she really look at the stage, and felt dizziness come over her again.
     She had never, in all of her life, been so far from the ground.
    It took her a good three acts to recover, as she clutched her bundle on her lap and
     peered shakily at the performers below her.
    It was the acrobats, and the dancers that followed them, that finally shook her out
     of her nerves. The acrobats were not as good as she was—the dancers were doing the
     same bouncy-kick, skirt-tossing routines as she had seen out on the Boardwalk, but
     when you managed to look past the tinsel and glitter, their costumes were a bit . . .
     tat. They certainly wouldn’t bear close inspection—unlike those of the boardwalk dancers,
     who looked gaudy, these costumes seemed nearly worn out. And when she watched more
     closely—well, as “close” as this lofty perch allowed—she could see the little tricks
     both the dancers and acrobats were using to make it look as if they weren’t taking
     shortcuts. If this was what the magician was looking for, well . . . she could do
     this! She could do better than this!
    She relaxed a bit after that, though the