The Strongman
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.
Like acrobatic gymnastics, we needed to be perfectly timed to the music. We had just three minutes max to impress the judges and then receive their votes. We ran that opening sequence a dozen times before we moved to the next move. In this one, I’d lift Sydnie on the platform and toss her into the air. She would do a single salto and land on the platform where I’d just vacated it. As soon as she was launched, I jumped off the platform onto the springboard and did a full layout with a one-and-a-half out, landing facing Sydnie as she jumped, did a single with a half twist and landed on my hands.
We were thankful for Jon and Steffan spotting us. It took several tries to coordinate throwing Sydnie from a cannonball into the air and vacating the platform so she would have someplace to land. Jon and Stef were up on the platform with us and we’d decided the surface of the platform could be padded. I launched onto the springboard and Nicole kept me from falling on my face several times. She was small, but as strong as any gymnast I’d ever met.
Stef and Jon removed the springboard and platform after that trick, but we were far from finished. By the end of our training day, we’d worked through just half of our routine. We saw Eva come into the gym just as we were finishing up.
After greeting her wife with an enthusiastic kiss, Sydnie excused herself to the therapy room where she took an ice bath. The work we were doing to prepare for the audition was the hardest either of us had worked on extending our abilities in a long time. We had our share of falls and stretched muscles. I’d get an ice bath when I was done with Eva.
“You really took some punishment in the accident,” I said as I worked on her body. Even with the lightest of touches, there were places where she winced or even cried out. “I had no idea the extent of your injuries.”
“I didn’t tell anyone but the doctor,” she said. “Please don’t tell Syd.”
“You can’t mean to say she doesn’t know!”
“How could I talk about my injuries to her when we’d just lost our partner? Lena wasn’t our lover, but we’d been together for ten years. We shared everything. She kept us stable in more ways than in our formations. I thought… I was afraid Syd would divorce me when she found out I could no longer support her.”
“Oh, Eva! Sydnie loves you.” It wasn’t exactly professional, but I took Eva in my arms and held her as she cried. “I mean she loves you like my parents love each other. They’re always there for each other. They’ve been together for thirty-two years. You and Sydnie are going to last like that. The only thing it needs is for you both to want it.”
I sounded like a marriage counselor. I hadn’t been successful in my own relationships. It was just so easy to encourage my friends.
‘Friends’ was a concept that was taking on a new dimension of meaning in my life. Yes, I had friends among the gymnasts I’d trained with. I had friends among the coaches. But I’d had no friends in high school. At the academy, my friends were those who wanted a ride to the beach. On Team USA, my friends had been those who competed with me. But I felt a deep and comfortable friendship with Sydnie and Eva. I felt like it could last as long as we all wanted it to. I could see our friendship extending to going to the beach together when we were all in our sixties or seventies.
I realized that it wasn’t just Sydnie I was here for. I was here for Eva as well. I would care for and protect both these women as long as they would have me around.
“Thank you, Paul. Thank you for being here for us. Take care of my Syd on the floor. I trust you with the most precious person in the world.”
“I’ll protect her with my life,” I said.
Occasionally, that became a promise I had to fulfill. Our stunts were incredibly difficult and we were no longer working with even a mat under us on the hardwood. Just like it would be on stage. And that stage was rushing toward us for a Saturday night performance. Nicole briefed us on the entire process. She had an ‘in’ on the production team for NTS.
“National Talent Search has been holding open auditions for the past months, with agents traveling from city to city to watch every level of talent and determine who would be invited to audition. This year that includes a guy who does bird calls, a fire eater, dozens of acrobats, magicians, contortionists, singers and dancers, and a guy who played the National Anthem in his armpit. There have been garage bands and professionals who make a living with their talent—no matter how meager. They’ll all audition here in the next three weeks.”
“So how did we manage to get into the audition tonight?” I asked Nicole.
“Talent scouts. This is Las Vegas. I was one of the agents who traveled and reviewed acts in the Southwest. As soon as I saw the two of you working together, I submitted your names for an audition. The only difference between this audition and the open auditions from around the country is there will be a single panel of four judges who will decide who goes to the next round, and there will be an audience. The open auditions were all private and several scouts went to hold them.”
“I’m ready,” Sydnie said, bouncing up and down.
“You’re always ready, little dynamo,” I laughed.
Saturday we were ready by noon, but spent most of the day just waiting. Auditions took place in three blocks of three hours each. The audience was dismissed and a new audience invited in for each block. The poor judges were sitting through nine hours of acts during the day. I had some sympathy for them. Order was supposedly determined through a drawing, but I suspected there was some manipulation of that so they wouldn’t have five singers followed by three acrobats followed by two dog acts and seven comedians. We were finally drawn for the last block of the day, starting at eight o’clock.
We weren’t the first to appear that night. We waited backstage in a kind of cattle pen with all the other acts that were scheduled for the evening. I didn’t count, but I understood there were twenty-five or thirty acts in each block, with the option of delaying some until the next day if the show ran long. The theatre had reserved VIP tables with eight people at them near the front, around the judges’ table, and then rows of seats sloping upward. They could seat around a thousand people. There was a huge bar with waitresses serving all the tables in front, and the ‘cheap seats’ people getting drinks and snacks to bring to their seats with them.
What we hadn’t been told before we arrived was there were cameras and the whole thing was being videotaped. We had to sign a release for the filming and a waiver of liability before we could be a part of it all. A close-up view of each act was projected onto big screens on either side of the stage to make it easier for people who weren’t in the select seating up front to see.
At intermission, our number still hadn’t been called. There had been some pretty good acts. On the other hand, we wondered why some were there at all. Apparently, the performers were immune to the hooting of the audience and the buzzers of the judges. They’d been on a stage with a thousand people in the audience and that was enough, I guess.
Finally, we were called and went to the front of the stage to face the judges for our introduction and round of questioning while Stef and Jon set up our equipment for the start of the act.
“How long have you been performing together?” one of the male judges asked.
“This is our first time in front of an audience,” Sydnie responded. I was in favor of her answering all the questions.
“Have you worked together long?”
“We met and worked together about eight years ago, but our paths were different. Paul is a four-time national gymnastics champion in floor exercises and team silver medalist at the 2028 Olympics. I was part of a women’s acrobatic gymnastics team with two World Championship gold medals and have been touring with the group for the past five years. Paul and I met again at the Las Vegas Circus Gym.”
“And why are you with Paul instead of your women’s group?” asked a blonde lady who looked vaguely familiar, like someone I should know. Her nameplate just said, “Donna.”
I thought this judge was more interested in our background than she’d shown for most of the other acts.
“There was an accident and we lost one of our team. I’d rather not go into that any further,” Sydnie choked out.
“Enough said. Take a minute to compose yourselves and good luck.”
We stepped over to the wings and I hugged Sydnie. She, in turn, raised her lips and gave me a toe-curling kiss.
“Ready?”
“Let’s do this!”
I signaled to the tech to start our music. At the first stab, I raced across the floor, did my double pike salto and hit the springboard perfectly, flipping with a one-and-a-half turn to land on my perch and wait for Sydnie. She was on her way and fifteen seconds into our routine, she was standing on my shoulders on the platform and the audience was cheering.
That’s the last I was aware of the audience. We focused on our music and moved through each of the elements in our performance. I had no room in my head to spare for what was going on in the theatre. All my attention was on Sydnie.
The music ended and we ended on exactly the last beat in our final pose. Then the sound of the audience crashed in on us and we saw people standing to applaud, including all four judges. We stood to face their evaluation and judgment.
“Wow!” said the first. “My only question is how are you going to improve on that for the live show semi-final? Do you have anything else to give?”
Sydnie shoved the microphone at me.
“We believe it’s our responsibility to give the best we have to offer at every performance,” I said. “That means we have to get better each time.”
“Well, you have my vote.”
“I have never seen two people take up so much space in a performance!” said the other woman at the table.
“Our choreographer said we would be competing with some acts that had as many as twenty acrobats in them and we needed to be just as big,” Sydnie said.
“I vote yes!”
The next two judges were also complimentary and we ended up with four votes to send us to the next round of the selection. We left the stage to more cheers and applause from the audience.
Offstage, Nicole, our spotters, and we were immediately conducted to an associate producer who explained the details of the next round. It would be in about three weeks, depending on what night that week our act was called back.
“The acrobatics director for the revue will meet with you and give you some coaching for the next round,” The producer said.
That was news to me and I glanced up at Nicole. She nodded. Okay, then.
“What sort of coaching should we expect?” Sydnie asked, her nostrils flaring a little.
“She will have advice on preparing a performance for a Las Vegas revue. She won’t be interfering directly in your training. She’ll have ideas and suggestions for staging, decoration, effects, lighting, and music. You’ll have the opportunity to consult with her on your ideas for the next round and she’ll come to see your act again as we get closer to the event. Remember, the next round will be recorded for television broadcast and the audience will be voting for which acts should go on. You won’t know until after the eight sessions have been recorded.”
“That won’t give us much time to prepare the next act after that,” I mused.
“Oh, the semi-finals won’t be held until all eight episodes of the next round have been broadcast. It will be a live broadcast and the viewers will be able to vote as well as the studio audience. So, you’ll have about two months from the conclusion of the next round until the live semi-final round. The final will be a month after that, so all the acts have a chance to get fresh material after they know what competition they are up against.”
“I guess we’d better get to work,” I said.
We left the theatre.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
