Ring Toss

We found April Fool easily enough. She was a six-foot tall shorthaired blonde wearing a conquistador helmet and standing on a box, so approaching her was akin to circling the Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis. You might have obstacles between yourself and the edifice, but you always knew how far she was and in what direction you’d have to go to reach her.

“Hey!” The zither music was particularly loud here. “Hey! Hi there. We’re looking for Spiked Punch.”

She bent down and tapped my chin with a scepter topped by a cap ‘n’ bells. “And who are you?”

“Miles Hopper.” No reaction. “The juggler.”

April raised one eyebrow comically high, presumably determining my fitness for entry into the Foolmobile. It occurred to me that her size and her helmet might signify her as the closest thing Punch’s Fools had to security. I opened the rucksack to show her the pins, the balls, the sacks, and the rings.

Then she moved on to my friends, who acquitted themselves just as well as anyone stuck waiting in a station wagon for an hour with a pair of spliffs. Still stuck on our last adventure, Cal couldn’t stop fiddling at the bone buttons on his leather jacket, and in solidarity, Isabella petted the fringes on his sleeves. I felt my temples burn, and I thought of all the curses I would hurl at them when the Foolmobile left us in a cloud of dust and zither twangs. But then April just shrugged, and we got on anyway.

We passed a couple making out, each relieving the other’s pockets of their stash and storing it in their own, ensuring a never-ending cycle of grope and misplaced trust. We passed another small group dropping acid and holding hands like children crossing the street. One of them looked as young as Sherry, so I pressed forward to the back of the bus.

Like his bodyguard, Spiked Punch was as easy to locate. He reclined on a small mountain of pillows and played with the waist-length hair of two beauties in the skimpiest take on jester regalia that we’d seen so far. He himself wore a green tunic that seemed no different from those worn by everyone else, but he also wore a gold-foil laurel wreath headpiece that couldn’t disguise – in fact, drew attention to – his receding hairline.

Cal started to laugh, and although I dearly wanted to join him, I stepped hard on his foot before Punch could notice. Fortunately, the master of the Foolmobile was tripping, too.

“Juggle… juggle… juggle?”  He’d closed his eyes, but slowly came to attention and pushed his pink rectangular frame glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Miles Hopper, is it? Well, let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

“First I was hoping you could tell me…”

He half-closed his eyes. “Mmmm-mmm. Can’t tell you nothing, ’till you let us see.” He pointed his scepter at me, and I had time to see that it was very… symbolic. But this was the best lead I had for finding Sherry, so I set the rucksack on the nearest empty seat and removed the five metal rings.

Click. Swish. Click. Two separate rings connected. I held them up so April and the rest of the Fools could see, but only Punch’s druggy eyes mattered now. Click. Swish-Click-Click. Swish. Click. All five connected. Faster than they could see, I reversed the process and tossed the separated rings over my shoulders in two separate arcs. It was hard – the low ceiling meant I had to keep the arcs even lower than usual, which decreased the time period between throws. I began to sweat under the strain. One ring audibly slapped the ceiling, and I spun around like a helicopter propeller, retrieving all of the rings on my arms and passing off the error as part of a big finish. The riders who were still conscious cheered, and Punch smiled.

“April. Get this man some motley.”