Circus Read Free Page A

become friends. Instead, Garry tends to check his emails on his phone while Henry and Penny practise their falsetto singing along with The Darkness or watch
Amélie
again. He closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he is faced once again with the miniature portraits on his screen.
    Online dating is the right thing to do. It must be.
    When Henry arrives at the café for lunch the next day, Penny is already sitting by the window with her laptop open. She is unusually pale and wearing an oversized knitted sweater with leggings.
    “Don’t come too close,” she says in a rough voice, gesturing at the chair across from, rather than beside her.
    “Feeling poorly?” Henry asks, still standing.
    Penny nods.
    “Well, you needn’t have come for my sake. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
    “I wouldn’t miss the start of your romantic adventures. Anyway, what would I do in bed all day aside from feel miserable? I might as well have a distraction.”
    “Right, then. Here we are.”
    As he settles into the seat opposite Penny, Henry silently wishes that she hadn’t come. He is fervently fearful about illness, and absolutely does not want to catch whatever she has. He feels repelled and ashamed all at the same time – perhaps he is the worst friend the world has ever known for being so fickle, when only the other day he was gazing at her and wondering if she was the hidden love of his life. Now he cannot think of anything less appealing than kissing her.
    “I’ll have the soup,” Penny orders, as Henry logs on to the dating site on her laptop.
    Henry orders a chicken sandwich and when he turns his attention back to the laptop, his own face smiles up at him from the screen. “Here’s my bit.” Henry turns the computer towards her.
    Penny leans over the table and points to the yellow star at the edge of the page. “You have a message! Go on, open it!” she says, before lapsing into a coughing fit that rattles her chest. Henry does his best not to wince as he runs his finger across the doubtless germ-covered trackpad of her computer. He begins to read aloud.
    “Linda Rosenberg says, ‘Want to get together? I am American. I work as a waitress in Camden. See my profile for details. Let’s meet, semi-colon, close bracket, less-than symbol, three?’ Wait, what does that punctuation mean?”
    Penny laughs. “It’s a wink and a heart! You’ve made quick work of it all, haven’t you? Don’t you think this is exciting?”
    “Seems a bit much, doesn’t it?”
    “It’s a dating site. She’s supposed to be forward. Here. Let’s check out her profile.”
    The food arrives and Henry excuses himself so he can wash his hands before picking up his sandwich. He washes them three times with antibacterial soap before he feels satisfied. When he returns, Penny is peering intently at the computer screen.
    “She’s super pretty,” Penny says, turning the computer back to face Henry.
    “Unfeasibly beautiful,” he agrees.
    “So? You only have thirty days, right? You might as well answer.”
    Henry takes the computer and composes a terse, matter-of-fact reply to Linda Rosenberg’s message, suggesting coffee at a bakery near his flat next Saturday at two p.m. She is a vision in her white blouse and rosy cheeks and voluminous hair, and he is certain that as soon as she sees him in the flesh it will all be over, but he presses “send.” Perhaps she will turn out to be as kind as she is pretty, and then he can stop Internet dating and just love her.
    “Just one other reason I wanted to have lunch today,” Penny says, watching him as she picks at her fingernails. “Although,you’re right, I should have stayed in bed.” She contemplates her hands and her messy gathering of hair flops to one side in what would under other circumstances be a comical way. “Garry slept behind the couch last night.”
    “Why would he do that?”
    “He’s been seeing someone else.” Penny sniffles into a tissue.
    Henry simultaneously