by Monica Drake
“You can’t perform all the time.” When he leaned in, I let him. Slowly, carefully, he wiped makeup from under my eyes. The cloth was cool against my fevered skin. He ran it along my jawline. My throat tightened. My eyes grew warm, like I was going to cry, and I felt like there was something I meant to say, but couldn’t remember what.
Jerrod said, “Maybe, sometimes, I hide behind the cop clothes too, in my own way. It’s a costume, sure, but what I know from experience is, you’ve got to let yourself breathe. Right? Keep some private time. Give in a little, and relax. I don’t even know your real name.”
If that was a question, I didn’t answer it. Jerrod ran his damp cloth down the side of my face.
I said, “I relax in costume.” I felt more at ease when I was close to Rex, and I was closer to Rex when I wore Rex’s clothes. The work was our work, Rex’s and mine. With each swipe over my skin, Jerrod moved me further from clowndom. Further from Rex. I grabbed his arm. “That’s enough. Don’t.”
The mattress crinkled. Here it comes, I thought. The moves, the fetish. The kiss. I held my breath. The warehouse hummed. The lights were bright and timeless.
He said, “OK. So show me something then.”
I turned, looked at him. What did he mean?
“A trick, a skit, a sketch… ” He waved a hand, as though at an invisible stage, and so called on the Clown Code of Ethics to hold me accountable: when in costume, in character.
“Fair enough.” His request wasn’t so different from every kid on the street, every coulrophile and corporation, but this time it was more than a fair trade for the return of Chance and Plucky. Besides, I could use the audience feedback. “I’ve got a little something I’m working on.”
I stood and found a spot on the floor in front of Jerrod. There was an awkward moment of calling up my character, getting into the swing. I wiped my hands on my thighs. “Don’t look at me,” I said, and gave a nervous smile.
“Don’t look?” With a hand on Chance’s back, he said in her ear, “We must have the cheap seats.”
I laughed, embarrassed. “Just give me a minute, like the curtains are closed?”
He averted his eyes, hummed, tapped his hand against the mattress. He leaned back against his palms and crossed his feet at the ankles. I looked to the ceiling as though to a guiding star. Then I turned my attention inward, took a long, deep breath, stood up straight, shoulders dropped, and counted backward from ten. Concentrating on each movement, I faced my audience, Jerrod and Chance.
“Here we go.” Right away my breathing was wrong but I plunged in. “This will be a brief presentation of the introduction to an interpretative version of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’! My work in progress.”
Jerrod clapped, I gave a little bow, and took another deep breath to ready myself. Then all was silent except for the humming lights. I bent my knees, as though to sit in an invisible chair. My thighs ached, my groin muscle was tight. I straightened up, broke character, shook it out. “I should clarify, it’s not a literal rendition, if you know the story.”
“No need to explain.” He waved a hand, as though drawing me forward.
I said, “Ignore the bandages.”
He nodded, settled in, reclined with all the ease of a man eating grapes and wine in the grass on a summer day.
I bent my knees again, relaxed into it, kept my back straight, and sat once more in my invisible chair. I lifted my arms, elbows out, hands poised as though to type on a keyboard. And then I typed—stiff, burned fingers and all. Click click click click click click… There was no sound, but I heard it. I cocked my head and pretended to read from notes as though transcribing. Click click click. The bandaged arm was hard to work with, but I did my best. It’s important to stay with an action long enough for it to sink in. A novice would move from typing to the next phase too soon. Me? I typed. Methodically, meticulously, each gesture articulated and clean. Click, click. I leaned toward my imagined notes, squinted at the pages, and when I reached the end of a line—because, in my mind, I used an old-fashioned typewriter—I hit the return with a zing! Click, click, click! And after a while, as I typed I slowly, almost imperceptibly, started to hunch forward. I brought my elbows up higher, shoulders raised. I bent my knees, swayed my back until my rear stuck out, crooked my neck, and with the pacing of a bud turning into a flower on a stop-action film, my typing movements morphed from poised and efficient to pinched and harried. I bent forward farther, brought my elbows up level with my ears, opened my hands a bit, and soon I wasn’t a transcriptionist at all anymore, but was an insect, arms and legs frantically fighting the air, head rotating. With a swivel, I fell on my back, trapped! I was a bug on my back, typing or flailing, and it was one and the same: a menial job turned into a meaningless life, a short life, the life of an insect.
That’s where the story began.
“Ta da! It’s just a sample.” I stood up, brushed off, and when Jerrod clapped again I took my second bow. “There’s more…but not today.” Then I added, by way of apology or explanation, “In Kafka’s story, of course, it’s a man and he isn’t at work, but home in bed. He wakes up and finds out he’s been transformed. It’s just more dramatic, I think, to add the action, the job—”
Jerrod said, “I know the story, and I’d say it works, this way.”
“You know the story?”
He laughed at my surprise. “You think police officers don’t read.”
In truth, I didn’t know they read beyond speeding tickets and incident reports, but I said, “I didn’t mean it that way. What’dcha think?” To perform and not hear how it went over, that’s like walking naked through town, worse than walking in clown clothes even, fully exposed.
He said, “The one-person production? Pretty smart. Focused.”
I never had the luxury of a grown-up audience anymore, except sometimes Rex, and now I nodded, listening, rapt. “So you could tell what was happening? The insect part?”
“Exactly! Very clear,” he said. “I had trouble with the story back when I read it, because I didn’t get it. I mean, why’d the guy turn into vermin? Whose fault is that? Making it a one-woman show cuts out the other characters. Streamlines.”
I made it a one-person show because I had no actors, nobody who was in as deep as I wanted to be with this Kafka thing.
He said, “The way you do it, I’d say it’s the character himself or, in your case, herself”—and he pointed, touched my arm—“making choices, turning herself into a cockroach, or a beetle.”
Ah! My spirits dropped. Wrong audience. Jerrod wasn’t in the swing after all. “But it’s society turning him into a bug. Society is implied, by the wage slavery…”
He listened, nodded. Tapped a finger to his lips.
I tucked my knees in, leaned toward him, and said, in a rush, “…the social expectation that we hold meaningless jobs, trade time for money, humanity for a paycheck.” This was a key point. Was that a grin behind Jerrod’s hand? I was on my favorite terrain now, and way too eager for understanding, afraid of being misunderstood. I said, “Like the whole system, capitalism, is one big roach motel and we’re all checked in, we’re not getting out.”
It was definitely a grin behind his fingers. Slowly he said, “Society, huh?” He said, “Well, I like your spirit, but you lose me in the logic.”
Drat. Of course he didn’t get it, because he was part of society, sworn to uphold society. Because he was, as I suspected, all that and middle-class too. Jerrod didn’t live the way Rex and I lived, as renegades, artists on the fringe. Putting the concept in simple terms, I said, “On a deserted island, nobody would be a transcriptionist. It’s a socially imposed role based on hierarchy—”
He said, “Sure, Sniff, but look around. There’s acres of stuff, right?” He gestured toward shelves of appliances, toys, sports gear, and car parts. The evidence room was practically a Wal-Mart.
“What’s stuff got to do with—”
“Everything here was part of a crime. And for every
last bit, there’s somebody who’ll say it was society’s fault. I don’t buy it. I mean, maybe I’m just a cop, but I make my own choices. ‘Society’ seems like another word for a whole lot of people trying to shake responsibility…”
Fast, I said, “But not everybody has the same options. Some people are born into money, others are poor, compromised… forced to—”
He laughed then, and stood up. He bent and picked up a handful of golf balls from a bucket. “You’re talking to a kid from Baloneytown. If I let society push me around, the society I lived in? I’d’ve been dead a long time back.”
He tossed one golf ball in the air and caught it in the same hand. “I started making my own choices in grade school.” He gave a second toss, one ball again. Then two, and three, juggling, and then the first ball went out of bounds, too far in front. Jerrod caught it by a long reach. The second one came down close to his chest. He stepped back, then ducked as the third fell. It was a dance, the way he grabbed out and back, arms akimbo, knees bent, and his holster danced with him; the asp and cuffs jiggled and clanked. Then I was the audience, resting on our mattress. His awkward, heavy cop dance was cute, and out of control, and he missed one ball, then a second bounced against the linoleum.
When I laughed, he said, “See? I’m a clown too—made you laugh.” Fallen golf balls disappeared like mice into the plastic-wrapped evidence piles. “I have to warm up, but I can juggle, when I practice.”
“I believe it,” I said, though for a real juggler warming up doesn’t matter. The moves come naturally.
He bounced the last ball hard against the floor. It shot toward the ceiling, came down again, flew up, and was gone to a rattle and crash. He reached a hand, pulled me to my feet, and the two of us, trailed by Chance, started back toward the door. I pushed the lawn mower.
Jerrod said, “I’m kind of a performer myself. I’m not a real big cop, right?” He held his hands to his chest and walked backward a few steps in front of me. He wasn’t much taller than I was but he was solid. Strong. “Not half as big as most of the guys I go after. There’s an art to being tough, so I keep my act up, same as you.”
I said, “Don’t forget the gun. That’s a pretty good prop with the law on your side.” I maneuvered the mower around a spill of electric cables in broken boxes that cluttered the aisle. Jerrod kicked cables out of the way.
“Sure, and the art is to not use the gun. It’s a prop, exactly. You know what Chekhov said about guns.”
That caught me off guard. “Chekhov? The Russian author?”
“Who else?” He shrugged. “In school, I read all that stuff.”
So he’d read Kafka, and now Chekov too, it seemed. “They have you read the Russian classics in cop school?”
He pointed at me and said, “That, right there, is what I mean. People make assumptions. I’ve got an associate’s in English.”
I didn’t expect that at all.
“Anyway, Chekov said if you plant a gun in the first act, it’d better go off before the show ends. As a cop, that means I’d have to shoot somebody every time I flashed the weapon. And that’s probably about the way it goes down; a cop on the scene changes the story.”
“Bingo!” I said. “Exactly!” Precisely what Herman was afraid of.
He said, “So I keep the gun holstered.”
“You take law-enforcement tips from Chekhov?”
“And,” he said, “I read Crime and Punishment. I think about Raskolnikov and his moral code when I hit the streets of Baloneytown. I read Les Misérables.”
He was earnest and generous, and now, with literature, he was in the world of ideas—my favorite world. He held the door. Outside, morning had moved in, bright and hot. Chance blinked into the glare. I pushed the mower over the bump in the floor at the doorway and stepped gingerly forward. Under my bare feet the asphalt was soft, already ripe, rich with the smell of a hot city summer.
“Sure they won’t miss the lawn mower?”
Jerrod said, “If a case comes up, Raskolnikov, I’ll know where to find you. Otherwise, forget about it.” He shrugged. His thigh muscles were tight against the blue of his uniform pants. Golden hair along his arm glimmered in the morning sun.
I leaned over, let go of the lawn mower handle, and I kissed him. A quick kiss. His lips were open. His mouth was the taste of a stranger. I closed my eyes. I liked it. I liked his warmth and breath and mouth. His hand slid over the burnt polyester of my shirt, he held me by my arms. I half-opened my eyes, pulled away.
“Was that you, or society?” He grinned.
It was biology! Yikes. I moved out of his grip. “That,” I said, “was a thank-you. And it was nothing.” I walked ahead. But with my face turned, in the moment, tired and happy, I smiled. I couldn’t help but smile, any more than I could help the flush of heat that crept up my neck.
18.
Death Throes of a Chicken Flock
FLOATING ALONG IN JERROD’S COPMOBILE, IT WAS THE first time I rode in front, like a cop’s sidekick, like his girlfriend, like his wife. Chance climbed in back. Grit between my teeth was from soot on my lips. The seats of Jerrod’s cruiser were red and soft as a new couch, an expensive bed, a boat on calm water. I tipped my head back, looked out over the long stretch of hood, and breathed coconut air freshener. Through narrowed eyes the world was a dream that tasted of soot. My hands were hot, especially under the gauze. Chance panted, her damp nose pressed to the metal divide.
Jerrod said, “Maybe I’m a cop because I’ve always wanted to save a damsel in distress. That’s a cop’s job. And Sniff, you look pretty deep in distress to me.”
I opened my eyes, ran one soot-covered hand across my face. “If you’re charmed by incompetence, that’s just another kind of coulrophilia. Love of the buffoon.”
He said, “Coulro-what-ia?”
I looked out the window. Exhausted.
When I didn’t answer, he said, “One of these days, Sniff, it’ll be time to run away from the circus and find a home.”
“I have a home.” My home was wherever Rex lived. Our own clown alley. My skin ached, the burns throbbed. But the cop car was so steady, smooth and dreamy. That cop car was like Jerrod, far as I could tell. I held Plucky on my lap. Jerrod steered with one hand. “Speaking of…” Herman’s house came into view, complete with a party in full swing in the blackened pit of a yard. Herman was a mad conductor in a wild orchestration, while a swarm of people dodged his flailing arms. William was on his porch. One-Night Stan the Ice- Cream Man had his rig in the street.
In the air-conditioned cop car, the calm broke. I sat up fast. The seat belt snapped and jerked against my shoulder as though to keep me away from an accident. Danger.
And that seat belt was right, there was danger up ahead: I’d lose everything if I showed up in a copmobile. A seat belt couldn’t save me now.
“Stop here.” We moved closer. I tugged at the belt. “Stop!”
Jerrod put his foot on the brakes. The car skidded like a spooked horse on rough gravel. “We’re not there yet.” He let up on the brake, and the car lurched forward.
I took the seat belt off. “Stop, just stop. I’ll walk.”
Too late! William, Herman, and One-Night all watched the cop car from down the block, their faces round and shadowed as apple pies.
Jerrod said, “Those guys keep an eye out for police the way kids eyeball clowns.”
He was right.
“A cop car couldn’t get within miles, and they’d know. If you’re trying to hide, I should’ve let you out across town.”
I worked fast to put on my big clown shoes, now with the melted rubber toes. I opened the car door, climbed out, and bent low behind the open door like I was ready for a shoot-out. I swung the Pendulous Breasts over my shoulder. One sandbag boob hit me in the back. Ugh! My lungs spit out my breath, and from the crouch I fell over. I stayed low, caught my balance, and rose up enough to peer through the car window.
“See you later,” I whispered, and cradled the Fabulo
us Fat Ass. Still crouched down, with the front door open as a barricade, I let Chance out of the back of that red flag of a cop car. The dog and I ducked and loped to the shade at the side of the road. I ran like a hunchback, with one Pendulous Breast as my hunch while the other dangled forward as a goiter. I clutched the rubber chicken and the Ass, and huddled over the bundle like I carried a stolen child.
“Sniff, your mower,” Jerrod said.
Drat! He left the car running and went to the trunk. I hid near a thin tree until he had the mower out, push bar extended and wing nuts tightened down. He moved gracefully in the sun and brought the mower to the side of the road.
“Can you get all this?”
I piled the scorched Caboosey suit on top of the mower. Nodded.
He said, “If you need help, just call.” I nodded again, and waved him off. He gave me a salute good-bye. The melted-cheese shoes did their own shuffle to the lawn mower’s music as I moved toward the house. The rubber chicken dangled.
Herman’s voice drifted down the hot street: “I don’t have the reward. I don’t know anything about these chickens. We don’t need a dog—”
Then I saw the yellow of chickens in every hand, chicken dealers milling in the burnt yard.
“What’s that about?” One-Night called over. “Police, cab service, and yard care all one deal? Some shit like that.”
I ignored him.
“And clownin’,” he said. “Clownin’ around Baloneytown. Clownin’ with the cops.”
“Get off my lawn,” Herman said, and gave his invisible sheet another shake. One woman laughed.
“Ain’t no lawn here,” a man said, slapped his thigh with a yellow chicken and kicked the blackened ground.
A girl in a polka-dot dress said, “Think we’re going to trample the grass?” She had three rubber chickens, all different colors, like an act. Herman’s yard was a circus. He swatted chicken dealers off like flies. They circled and settled back where they started.
Herman saw me and pointed. “There’s your girl. In the stripes. Nita, pay somebody and get’em out of here.” He spit on the ground. “It gets worse every day.”