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     Franz Babel, a Justice on the Republic’s High Court of Final Supplications, was a serial seducer. His third wife, like the previous two, refused to engage in atypical forms of sex with him. Unable to experiment at home, the elderly jurist found unconventional partners elsewhere, typically in traveling circuses.

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   Aware that carousing carried risks for a High Court Justice, especially a septuagenarian who espoused a belief in the sanctity of marriage, Babel was careful to wear disguises and use assumed names when on the prowl. 

 

      One evening, after a tedious hearing, he donned a fake beard and taxied to the Fettig Fairgrounds, the Capital City’s mecca for traveling circuses. His heart fluttered in feral anticipation as he purchased a front row, center aisle ticket. The featured act was The Flying Trotskys, a troupe of trapeze artists comprised of five men in tuxedoes and thirteen women in skimpy outfits.