Bonbon

Bonbon sold cotton candy on a Los Angeles pier, and he had turned it into an act: spun sugar in the air, pink ribbons, the bow at the end. On weeknights the fairground stood empty — except in front of his stand, where there was a line. The school of the street taught him everything on a few square feet of boardwalk: holding a circle of gawkers with two paper cups and a story, smelling the pickpocket before he’d chosen his pocket, greeting the pier’s bouncer like a cousin. Eventually an impresario wondered why forty people were watching a guy sell sugar. He watched too. He understood.

On the sidewalk or on the floor, heads turn — he can’t help it, it’s physics, like the tide. The trouble comes after: a downpour, a vile customer, a blown fuse, and Bonbon melts on the spot, haircut included. Everyone sees the catastrophe. Almost nobody sees what follows: he slips away, falls asleep in twenty seconds on a banquette, a cardboard box, a dressing-room stool — and twenty minutes later he’s back, brand-new, recombed, brighter than before the storm. He calls it "recharging like a marquee." The old-timers have never seen anyone recover that fast. Don’t ask him for subtlety or schemes: he sells joy straight up, and joy straight up, done right, is what pays best.

A star, the real thing: he demands his dressing room even when the dressing room is a broom closet — but then with his string of lights, his mirror, and his name on the door, in chalk if it has to be. Once that door closes, he fusses: he’s the one who tucks in the new guys, fixes a haircut, whispers a cue. And at the Sunday markets he spots tomorrow’s headliners at a glance — he has brought three back to the House, address included. He wants to end up at the top of the pier. Any pier. The tallest one.