Clown Girl (11 page)

She patted me down, then reached up and pulled the red rubber nose from my face. She tossed the nose over her shoulder.

“Hey,” I said. “That’s bad luck.”

In a halo of smoke, Crack said, “No, it’s tough luck.”

The nose rolled across the table and fell off the far side. She reached for my ruffled collar and gave it a shake. “Slut it up a little, you got it? Think audience.”

I pulled away from her, climbed under the table, over the white sheets.

Crack crouched down beside the table and said, “Ask yourself—who do you want to engage? Who’s got the cash? Who’s going to pay your way, see?”

My nose was a red sun setting on the horizon of the sheets, guarded by the photographer’s tapping foot. “Parents? They cut the check.” A guess. I grabbed the nose. As I stood, my head knocked on the edge of the table. I slid the nose in my pocket and reeled back, a hand to the knot on my skull. The bees took up their swarm in the distance. A strike crashed in the alley above.

Crack dropped her stogie and ground it out under the heel of one Mary Jane. “You want to throw strikes, or you going to throw balsa at them pins the rest of your life?” She unbuttoned two buttons on my striped satin shirt. “Got anything like a push-up bra?” She dug in my pink bag. Missing Plucky posters fluttered to the floor. “Maybe a couple balloons. Blow these up.” She shoved two balloons at me.

“Those are banana style,” I said. “Twisters, long as my legs.”

The photographer gave an eyebrow raise that lifted the folds of his puffy eyes; a stirred sea turtle, he murmured, “There’s a thought…” He checked his watch. “When’s the other skirt getting here?” His voice was gravel, like he drank whiskey out of an ashtray. He dropped a pack of smokes, hands shaking.

It was hard to think of Matey, all bones and fists of muscle, as a “skirt.”

Crack said, “Matey’ll be here any minute.” She turned to the photographer, pulled me by the shoulder and said, “Now you tell me. Would you pay for this?” She pointed to me like I was merchandise, straight out of For-Salesville.

He stuck a bent cigarette between his teeth, shrugged, and smiled out of half his mouth—a smile I didn’t like at all. He ran the back of his thumb over his bottom lip, hand trembling, and swiveled in his chair. “She’s a real trouser-crease eraser,” he said. His moustache jerked under the words. “I just might.”

“Oh, lovely,” I said. “You two are a fine pair.” Over the crash of pins and a cheer upstairs, I said, “I’m a good clown. This is a good clown look. It’s classic.” I took the balloons back and put them in my pink bag. “I’m not trying to be a glamour girl.”

“As boss of this rig, I say it’s time to start. Do the glam-clown thing, a big-ticket item. You read me?”

“Glam clown?” I said. “No, no I don’t read you. Glamour and comedy, they’re opposite sides of the same coin. Sexy or absurd. One or the other. It’s not the stripper doing pratfalls, the clown with the pasties.”

“Look,” Crack said. “I’ll give you a clue: we’re in this for money.”

I nodded.

“Show her the graphics, Pete.” She snapped her fingers.

The photographer lifted a shaky hand and unrolled a poster on the table:
For a Good Time, Call Trixie, Twinkie, and Bubbles!
Crack’s cell phone number was printed at the bottom. In between was room for a photo.

I said, “Who’s Trixie, Twinkie, and Bubbles?” I’d never heard of these clowns, not in our neighborhood.

Crack and the turtle traded a shifty glance. The photographer smirked and Crack laughed out loud, a single note: “Ha! Could be anyone. That’s the whole deal of it—fantasy. Where the skirts are short and the party’s long,” she said. She tapped a finger to the poster as she said it, as though adding the words.

“Oh shit,” I said. “Us, Crack?”

She pulled a bottle from her pink prop bag and sprayed my red wig with a candy-smelling hair gel. “Look, grown-ups have money. They spend it. And they don’t care about rubber noses.” She combed her fingers through the fake hair, twisted the front of the wig, pulled the curls away from my face, and slid a bobby pin in to set a hank of the wig in one little pin curl. The knot on the back of my skull was hot and throbbing under her hands. “Corporate parties can’t hire strippers anymore, but they can hire clowns. Got it?” She said, “Can’t have a lady in a cake, but they can have heavily made-up chicks in Lycra paid to do anything.”

My head jerked each time she ran her fingers through the tangles of the plastic wig.

“That’s where we cut in. Opportunity. Trixie, Twinkie, and Bubbles! We’ll make a killing, I tell you—a killing!”

She stuffed Kleenex in my bra and pinned Rex’s acrobat pants back to make them snug over my thighs. I let her work, and thought about the stack of business cards on my shelf at home, the endless string of suggestions, dates, and phone numbers. The architect. Those spatial use and planning consultants. The dishwasher. So where were clowns on the titillation continuum? Somewhere between sex with a nun in full habit and a stripper, I’d guess, made-up and covered up. Not what I wanted to be.

“I don’t know about this, Crack. It doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t feel like art to me.”

“Art?” she said. “You’re joking? It’s the oldest art in the book. And listen, I know your best interest—you’re looking to make enough lettuce to hook up with Mr. Sexy Rex. Plan to do that by tying knots into a balloon Jesus?”

Christ.

I glanced down at Rex’s acrobat pants. The stripes of the cloth outlined the muscle of my thighs and made a tight V at my crotch, an arrow to my Mound of Venus. Stripes aren’t just for clowns and cons; stripes are also for prostitutes, all the way back to Leviticus. The mark of the sinner: striped stockings, striped cloaks. Indulgence and punishment.

Crack was right—I needed the cash. I was stuck. Trapped. Rexless. This was Rexless behavior I was caught up in.

She brushed my tangled wig and her fingers clawed their way through the synthetic strands. My neck was in a kink the way she held my head. I looked at Crack over my shoulder. Her eyes were circled in black. Her lips were brilliant red, her neck was marked with the creases of new wrinkles, age finding her already. “Got a problem with strippers?”

I said, “It’s not what I’m trying to be.” My voice was thin; the words fell apart, breaking as I spoke.

“You’ve already got a client,” she said, like this was a good thing. “We ain’t even started this joint venture yet, and already Lover Boy, from the Chaplin gig? He left a message on my cell—says he wants a private show, you and him. How’s that grab you?”

“Exactly—I don’t want him grabbing me! Crack, I don’t think it’s my thing—”

“What, to be a breadwinner? I’ve been a stripper, a hairdresser, and I managed a bank. There’s no difference.” The cobalt heart high up on her cheek danced as she spoke. “But trust me, I’ll make you some cash. That, I know.”

It was true; Crack was the only reason I could lend Rex cash to travel to Clown College.

She leaned in closer. “What’s on your face, motor oil?”

I put a hand to my skin. My fingers came away black and oily. The trash can, the rubber glove. The greasy reminder of porn in a Baloneytown alley.

She pulled my head back, looked into my eyes, and asked, “You OK in there? You’re pale as a ghost.” Crack and the photographer laughed. She let go of my hair, smacked me in the butt. “It’ll work out. Don’t worry so much. Now go freshen up before Matey gets here. You look like you been crying all night.”

It still showed? I took my bag back to the mirror on the wall beside the toilet.

“Make it pretty,” she said. “Sexy. Like the ad says, a good time, right? A party. Put a little heart, like this one.” She pointed to the heart on her cheek, bit the edge of her fingernail, and spit it on the floor.

The photographer pointed his camera at me.
Flash
. “Sad clown on the way to the john,” he said, through yellow teeth. Did he mean the toilet or a hooker’s john? In the mirror’s chipped reflection my orange wig, parted far to the left, now was decorated with a row of twisted curls in Crack’s design.

“One thing,” she called over. “I’ve got a job for us day after tomorrow. Noon. Supereasy. Clown clothes, clown face. All you have to do is show up, but it’s a high-buck gig; I promised ’em three girls.”

Three girls. I wiped white pancake off my blotchy skin. I opened my kit and began again. In the mirror I watched Crack sit on the photographer’s lap. She ran her tongue over her deep fuchsia lips.

The door swung open. “Ta da!” Matey flung herself into the room and slid on the nest of the photographer’s white sheets mixed with empty beer bottles and ashes. “Whoa!” She caught herself from falling. Her pink bag swung on her shoulder. “Badaboom!”

“Ah,” Crack said, and jumped up again to clap her hands. “Our favorite S&M clown.”

Matey took a fast bow. Her hair was slicked up onto her head and decorated with Christmas ribbon. Her dress was tight, cut low, and her fishnets snagged. “Thanks, but don’t flatter me,” she said. “Every clown’s an S&M clown, even the ones that don’t know it yet.” She dumped her pink bag upside down on the floor near the slice of mirror where I worked on my face.

“I’m not,” I said. I feathered in a heavy, cobalt blue line of eyeliner.

Matey dug through her things until she found a cake of white paint. She looked up, rolled her eyes, and said, “And then the other ones that don’t know it yet.” Her wrists were freshly bruised, her arms tough and knotted. Her dress fit like a plastic bag around a pack of carrot sticks.

Crack put her hands on my shoulders, gave me a backslap. “Sniff here’s the high artiste.” She winked. “Remember? Riding our sorry gravy train until the local Shakespeare troop comes along.”

Matey bit down the end of a fat covered brush and pulled the cover off with her mouth. “Can’t separate it out,” she said. “Every clown’s a bottom and every bottom’s a fool, and there’s money in taking the underdog role.”

I leaned in toward the mirror, didn’t say anything. That wasn’t how I saw it. Sure, a clown’s an underdog, but that didn’t make every clown a fool. It was an art, in my book, to take on the role of the oppressed. We spoke up for those without a voice. We
were
those without a voice—voluntarily relinquishing speech—and we illuminated the plight of the impoverished through every act. I let it go. Instead, I changed the subject. “Which one am I?” I drew my left eyebrow in a high, puzzled arch.

“Which what?” Crack reached for her makeup kit. “Bottom or fool?” She pulled out a tiny mirror and put another layer of mascara on her giant fake lashes. She used a special oversized mascara brush for her oversized lashes, carried in a big tube.

“No. Trixie, Twinkie, or Bubbles?” I asked. “Who, in the show?”

She shrugged. “What ever you want, Sugar. Makes no diff to me. A name’s just another kind of package. Marketing. Starts the day you’re born.”

11.

The Tidy Side of Hell; or, Tonics, Soporifics, and Palliatives

ONE LONE LOBSTER BEAT A CLAW AGAINST THE GLASS wall of a small tank. The lobster’s narrow, empty world was perched over a frozen sea; blue Styrofoam tray after tray of Dungeness crab, leggy purple squid, and bundled smelt rested on chipped ice below.
Tick, tick
. The lobster knocked, as though to flag down help. Across the aisle what had once been a herd of grass-fed cattle now lay silent in bloody pools of iced New York strip steak, flank steak, ribs, tongues, and burger. Edible flowers bloomed on a small green stand, a miniature field ready for harvest.
Tap tap. Tap. Tap tap
. A lobster SOS.
Get me out of this dead heaven
. I knew the feeling.

Luxury FoodSmart was a warehouse-sized nightmare of money just beyond the borders of Baloneytown, where gentrification spilled over from King’s Row. The building used to house the YMCA. Now, at Luxury FoodSmart, even a two-pack of hard-boiled eggs cost half my day’s spending allowance. I kept my big-frame squirting sunglasses on as a shield against overly enthusiastic fluorescent lights and wore my wig riding low. I tapped my cane against the polished linoleum, sucked on Chinese BBs like a PEZ addict, and slunk farther into the store.

Leonardo da Vinci said water was the most destructive force on the planet. Water corrodes metal and eats through rock. But da Vinci forgot about the corrosive power of cash; when money came into a neighborhood, the old buildings toppled. Even people disappeared.

I headed fast for the corner marked
Holistic Pharmacy Lounge
. There, beyond the organic loofahs and prescription bubble bath, one wall was lined with amber and blue vials that glistened like jewels. Tinctures. Cures.

After four hours of Crack’s photo shoot, I needed any cure I could find. My nerves were rattled. My mouth tasted like metal. The fear that Chance would never come back tugged at my throat like I wanted to cry. The Chinese pills wouldn’t last forever. I couldn’t afford to end up back in the hospital, and I’d already blown the day’s urine collection—hadn’t been able to hold my piss until I got back home. I needed a panacea, a remedy for the ache in my gut, in my heart, in my head. There had to be a cure for the broken heart of a lost dog, a miscarriage, and a missing rubber chicken. The cure for a life where family slid away, where nobody stayed and nobody lived long enough. The family tree was a hedge, a shrub, a lone weed. The only cure I knew was Rex, but Rex wasn’t around. I needed a cure for that more than anything.

The first tincture I picked up, Go-To Formula Forty-Nine, promised to cure depression, mania, indigestion, indecisiveness, stubbornness, weak circulation, confusion, and skin abrasions. Sounded good to me. Without thinking twice, I slid the vial into the wide sleeve of my clown shirt. Ta da! Magic; the vial disappeared. I’d fight the neighborhood’s financial erosion. My own little battle was an economic cure: shoplifting.

Clowns have an edge as shoplifters. Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, works in our favor; people don’t look when they don’t want to be involved, to be burdened with invisible objects, imitated in public, or made to hold a clown’s leg, a slippery fish, an exploding hat.

It was completely against the Clown Code of Ethics to use performance as a weapon:
I will use my art only for the greater good, to create happiness, never to inflict harm
. But yes, I did it. In clown gear, I stole.

There were liver cleansers, colon cleansers, and gallstone removers. Valerian, passionflower, and hops promised to relax muscles, heart muscle included. I slid a vial of valerian into my other sleeve.

My heart beat faster with each tincture. A cashier read a magazine behind a shiny Courtesy Counter. She licked a finger, turned a page. I reached for a vial of Chaste Tree Berry tonic.

A low voice said, “Find everything you need?”

I whipped my head around and looked up from under the off-kilter wig. A man in a cream-of-chicken-yellow button-down oxford swung his hands.
Tim
, his name tag said.
How may I help you?

I put a hand to my brow and turned to survey the wall of tinctures,
from the Pacific aaawll the way to the Atlantic
. I whistled long and loud, and turned back to Tim. I wiped the back of my hand across my brow and nodded.
Yes. Yes, I found everything I needed
,
and then some!
I gave the A-OK sign, thumb to forefinger, but Tim didn’t run. Instead, Tim’s eyes turned to my pink bag. I wrapped my hands around the handle of an imaginary shopping cart and lurched off, down the tincture row. Tim stood there a moment longer, watched my act, straightened a Miracle Cream display, and moved on.

I slid a vial of licorice concentrate in my bag.

Even with Tim gone, the tincture aisle was getting hot. I had to work fast. No time to research. Pau D’Arco was for blood; I liked the name—Brazilian, maybe. Where in this country would we say D’Arco? Cleavers was a good name too. I slid a vial of each into my bag and could hardly breathe, loaded down with tiny tinctures, stolen promises. I reached toward a winking golden bottle.

A hand tapped my shoulder.
Tim?
The blue cuff of a uniform, golden hair on the wrist. The cops! Lightning danced at the edge of my vision; the ceiling fell and my heart squeezed. Arrested? Again, so soon! When I turned and saw his face, for a minute I was relieved—at least it was the cop I knew, Mr. Magic, charming and helpful. But still, it was a cop! I was glad to see him, but didn’t want him to see me. Distance.

“You shop in your clown costume?” Jerrod asked. I could barely hear his words over the knock of my heart, the brain buzz. He held a banana pointed at me like a gun. In his other hand he had a plastic bag with two kiwis inside. It was the law enforcement weaponry of some peace-loving island paradise.

“It’s a free country.” I spoke too fast: “You shop in your cop costume.” I shouldn’t’ve said
cop
. Police. That’s the word. I shouldn’t’ve said anything. I felt the weight of stolen valerian slide inside my big sleeve. I added, “Right?” and smiled harder, wider. “How are you?”

“I’m all right. Thanks for asking. And no. First of all, it’s a uniform, not a costume, and I don’t usually shop in my uniform. I’m supposed to be off duty, actually, but said I’d answer this one last call. Heard over the car radio they needed somebody to diffuse a potential situation.” He waved the banana toward the front door.

“A situation?” I looked around. The place was calm. No alarms, no gunmen. Only the racket of my beating heart. “What’s going on?” My heartbeat confessed to thievery:
he knows, he knows, he knows…

He shrugged. A tendon in his neck flickered to the surface, then disappeared again. “Let’s just say, I’ll give you a police escort out this time, Sniffles.”

“Me?” I reached for an empty shopping cart as though to prove my good intentions, to tether myself to the world of shoppers. The cart slid away, I slipped, and the world was untethered, off-kilter.

“The call said there was a clown scaring customers… I thought it might be you.”

I righted myself, grabbed the cart again, and reined it in. “They called on me? Who did?” My heart murmured,
Run, run, run away
.

“This is a family place. The clown getup makes people nervous.”

“Family? What do you mean—clowns are family fun.”

Jerrod gave me a doubtful eye. He scratched his head with the banana and took a deep breath. I took a breath too, and felt the walls expand for a moment, giving me precious room to breathe. He said, “I’ll tell you the deal—it’s more the whole John Wayne Gacy thing.” He slid the banana in the plastic bag alongside the two kiwis.

Shit. Gacy. “That guy ruined the gig for a lot of clowns. His act fostered the whole prejudice… If one Asian woman commits a crime, does that bar Asian women from grocery stores?”

Jerrod said, “Well, save that question for debate team. Here, they just don’t want kids to see it.”

I said, “Gacy was more of an ice-cream man with a clown suit for the holidays—”

Jerrod cut in: “You can finish the shopping if it’s fast, I’ll escort you, then we need to move on.”

The shopping. Stealing, more like it. Stealing and tapping into a collective coulrophobia, using the worst of the clown for personal gain. I threw a box of Mediterranean Bath Salts in the basket, to look like I was shopping.
Mineralized Tension Relief Mined from the Gaza Strip
. If I left with Jerrod, would he arrest me outside?

“You don’t live far from here. I could give you a ride home.”

That cop car again. No way could I pull up in a cop car. The vial in my sleeve was cool against my skin where it leaned against my pulse point and spoke to the beat of my heart. My heartbeat whispered,
Stolen lawn mower, stolen tinctures…save yourself
.

I had to keep the upper hand.

“Nice package.” I pointed. He looked down at his yellow banana in the plastic bag. The two soft, hairy kiwis rolled to either side like wrinkled testicles.

“What?” he said. “It’s a snack.” But he blushed, a quick red flush along his jawline. A shy cop.

I had him off guard and kept my advantage. I said, “I’ve seen bigger bananas.”

He said, “Listen, Sniffles, enough. You’re lucky I heard the call. Somebody else might not be so nice about the whole setup. Now let’s go. I’m doing this as a favor, and I’ve had a long day.”

Another favor. His second favor for me.

“And because you’ve got a good heart,” he said. He smiled then, and pointed to his own cheek.

I mirrored his move, touched my face. My fingers came away tinted with red and white paint. It was the heart drawn in makeup, from the photo shoot. I said, “Thanks. I forgot about that.”

“It’s very becoming. But it’s not OK to wear the face paint in a place like this. It’s like wearing a mask in a bank, makes people worry.”

I followed him to the front of the store. At the checkout line, he threw his fruit on the scale. My chest was tight, my throat a knot. The cashier rang Jerrod’s fruit up. Jerrod peeled dollars from a wallet. I pushed my cart into an aisle.

“You buying that stuff?” he asked.

“Gaza Strip Bubble Bath?” I shook my head. “I’m not that kind of girl—not a Gaza Stripper,” I said. The valerian rattled in my sleeve.

On our way out, we passed Tim, the clerk. Tim stacked boxes of organic pesto-laced mac’n’ cheese. Two boxes for ten bucks. Talk about robbery! He said a fast, “Thanks, officer.”

Jerrod tipped his head back, a quick nod. The electric doors slid open.

Outside I said, “I’ll take it from here.” I couldn’t get in his car again.

On the outer wall of Luxury FoodSmart they had a public billboard.
Wellness and Community Building
, it said across the top. I pulled a Missing Chance flyer from my pink bag, then pulled out the heavy weight of the staple gun. Jerrod waited, watched. I hung the flyer.

“This isn’t illegal, is it?” I said. “I’m sure you’ve got bigger prison fish to fry.”

He said, “You lost your dog? Shoot, Sniff. When did that happen?”

“Well, actually, it was when you sentenced me to an afternoon in the Ruins. While I was busy pretending to be booked at the station, after you arrested me.” I said, “My roommates let her out.”

“Jeez, sorry to hear it.” He sounded sincere. He leaned in over my shoulder, and his cinnamon scent wrapped around me. He studied the drawing. “You know, I think I saw her. Right around here…I saw a little black dog, earlier today, that made me think of you.”

“You saw her?” I turned, fast. My cane spun out and knocked into his shin. My big clown sneakers kissed the toes of his shoes, our feet tangled. “Where? When? You sure?”

“Just a couple blocks down,” he said. “I’m not sure it was her, but maybe.”

It was a possible sign anyway that she was alive. My dog, my little clown pup in training! I followed Jerrod’s lead, though stayed a few steps behind, and as we walked I let the valerian slide down my sleeve into my palm. I shook the gotu kola down the other side and dropped it into my deep pants pocket.

Clink
. The gotu kola hit another vial, already in my pocket, and the clink was to me the sound of a tiny jail cell door falling closed.
Clink! You’re a thief!
We passed Jerrod’s parked prowler.

Jerrod said, “It’s walking distance. She ran when I came near her. Just like somebody else I know, now that I think about it.” He turned to me. I palmed a vial fast.

Up ahead was the blue sign of Hoagies and Stogies, a cigar bar sub shop. It was no kind of place to eat, because the meat and cheese and bread all tasted like stale cigar smoke. But they sold cheap beer.

He said, “It’s hard to arrest a dog.”

“Arrest?” The last thing I needed was to pay bail on my dog. “What sort of charges?”

“Vagrancy,” he said without hesitation. Then he looked at me. “It’s a joke.”

A cop joke. I didn’t even know cops made jokes.

Hoagies and Stogies had dark, smoked glass in the windows and tiny purple lights strung up above. Anybody could be in there and could look out those dark windows and see me with Jerrod, sauntering alongside an officer. I took a few steps to the left.

Jerrod veered in close, stayed at my side. I pulled nylon hair in front of my face.

He said, “Just another block. Down an alley.”

The whole thing made me jumpy. Anticipation, nerves, the unknown of it. I tapped my cane along the ground, then balanced it over one shoulder. Jerrod’s eyes were on an empty lot. I unscrewed the lid on the valerian vial and kept my hand down low.

“Right about here,” he said. The lot was the backside of a few weather-beaten, world-weary houses. I called Chance’s name. Jerrod cupped a hand around his mouth, called and scanned the empty lots. The banana and kiwis, sweating in their plastic bag, swung from his other hand at his hip. While Jerrod wasn’t looking I hid under the tent of my own fake hair and shook drops of valerian onto the end of my tongue.