Three, two, the audience shouting along with him. Sparks flew, smoke billowed as a raven-haired goddess in white lycra leotard soared above the waiting clowns, the silent crowd. In the pink afterglow of their cotton candy cones, thousands of upturned faces lit up when she hit her target at the opposite end of the concrete floor, and the airbag quivered from the impact of a momentarily unidentifiable flying object traveling 60 miles per hour. They thought it was hokey. They couldn t see the humor in it.
People are so serious nowadays.
But nobody living had seen this before. We ve seen a woman lie on the floor while elephants step over her. We ve seen men fired out of cannons the human cannonball. The act was Holst s idea, and he thought it was original until he did some research and learned of Alar, who may or may not have met her demise in a flying stunt that covered the length of the Hippodrome in 1896. Holst s secretary pages him over the intercom system.