Clown Girl

by Monica Drake

  I shrugged. “That? I call it the Juicy Caboosey Show. Still working it out.” The outfit needed a few patches after the fire.

  “Well, hey, why save it for the opera?” she said. “The thing is, there’s no money in art, but there’s an art to making money and it’s in my blood. In yours too, I’d say, with the Caboose Suit. You just ain’t actualized yet. Stick with me, I’ll show you how.”

  If it was enough money, it could be my last gig with Crack. I’d cut her loose. “OK,” I said. “But those are the rules: no sex, and a big paycheck.” Then right away I changed my mind. Who was I kidding? A clown date was all about sex. They always were. I said, “No, I can’t do it. I don’t do dates. I have to draw the line…” I said, “Never, never, never.”

  I was an artist.

  Crack said, “Listen, it’s an easy deal. I’m cutting you in, and I’ll say it frank here—you got one thing I ain’t got, and that’s natural good clown looks. Guys like it.” She said, “So you know those old buildings at the edge of King’s Row?”

  The Ruins? Our Ruins. A private place made public, or perhaps a public place made private in my mind and memories. “Sure.”

  “Cool,” she said. “Meet us there tomorrow night, nine o’clock. He’s got a big green van.”

  A big green van, at The Ruins. And nothing would ruin them more than a cheap clown date in the place of my grand romance. I wavered: “I can’t do it, Crack.”

  “It’s easy. Just look sexy, play it up, something like you got on now, maybe. Oh, shit,” Crack said. “I hate to be the hair-bringer of bad tidings, but…”

  “Harbinger,” I said. My dress fell off one shoulder. I pulled it into place.

  “Who?” Crack asked. She ducked behind the open ambulance door, and looked through the frosted, cross-marked window.

  I said, “You said the hair-bringer. It’s harbinger.”

  “Harbinger’s the hairbringer?”

  “No, you’d be the harbinger. Harbinger of bad tidings.”

  “I don’t know about that, but what I’m getting at is, bad news—a cop, at six o’clock, heading our way. We’ll talk later.” She hid beside the open door.

  I stepped out of the van, one bare foot at a time, and a pile of clothes followed, stuck to my hot skin. My knees were numb from kneeling. Tucked beside Crack, I peered around the side of the open back door. It was Jerrod, urine funnel in front of him like a white plastic shield. He turned where the sidewalk met Herman’s crumbling cement walkway and went right up to Herman’s house. That was the last straw.

  “I know that guy,” I said. I had to stop him. “I’ll do the gig.” I needed the cash, to get life moving again. There was no more time to waste as a trapped rabbit. Berkeley, here we come.

  He was about to knock on the door. How could I insist I wasn’t dating cops if Jerrod asked for me by my clown name? “Jerrod.”

  He dropped his hand and turned, looked surprised, flashed a smile and sauntered over. Crack and I were kids in costume playing in the street, the ambulance our toy box. Jerrod tapped a light hello on the side of the ambulance. It sang like a bell.

  “You must be Harbinger,” Crack said. She tipped her hat. “And I must be going. See you later, Sniff. Good luck.” She ducked out.

  Jerrod said, “Who’s your friend?” He pointed toward Crack’s fleeing, striped back.

  I took the urine funnel and threw it over my shoulder into the mess of props. “Jerrod, what’re you doing coming around here? It’s not OK with my housemates.”

  “Well, last I checked this was a city street. As a cop, it’s my job to hit the streets.” He showed me his open hands, Mr. Innocent. “Besides, you left your halo in the car. Thought I’d bring it by.”

  “I’m serious. You can’t knock on my door, carry my stuff around…” I picked up a handful of fallen scarves, an errant feather boa.

  “So they didn’t kick you out…” With a palm to the doorjamb, he leaned into the ambulance, took a look around. “ You got a great setup right here. Who needs the house?” He picked up my purple satin cape and swung it over his shoulders. Superman.

  I reached to take the cape back, moved in close just as he handed it over, and our fingers brushed. Sparked. Silently greeted. I pulled my hand back, bundled the cape, looked away. I didn’t tell him that I already lived on the street, slept in the ambulance, broke a vagrancy law every night. Instead I said, “I’m in a tenuous situation here. Your presence? It doesn’t help.”

  Jerrod said, “Sniff, you’ve got to recognize it—you’re not in jail.”

  Not yet, I thought.

  “You can choose your own friends.”

  Fast, I said. “It’s the cop thing.”

  He said, “I’m not always a cop. Right now, I’m off duty.” He reached to fumble with his badge.

  I kept an eye on the house and folded a long scarf into tiny squares. “You’re still in uniform, and even if you weren’t…”

  Jerrod watched me work. He said, “What about you—are you working now, or just favoring the clown wear?”

  I hoisted the fallen shoulder strap of my big red clown dress. “Doesn’t matter, I’m still a clown, same as you’re still a cop, on the job or off. And clowns, cops…We’re from opposite sides of the tracks.”

  Jerrod said, “Sniffles, if it’s what you want—and not just what your friends want—then fine. I’ll walk the other side of the street, but you could stand to look past the costume, the police work…When I see you in clown clothes I know there’s more.” He nodded toward the house. “That’s got to be worth something.”

  “Of course it is, but…Just go on. Walk your beat. There’s nothing to see here, right?”

  “Except you,” he said.

  The front door of Herman’s swung open. Rex stepped out. Rex! My savior. This was my chance to clear things up, maybe introduce the two of them, make it known who was my man.

  “Rex!” I called. Rex, my king, took one look at Jerrod, and his whole body jumped. His shoulders tightened. Even his curls tightened. With a fast step backward, he went inside and slammed the door.

  Rex was scared?

  Jerrod didn’t flinch, but stayed strong and steady. “See that?” he said. “Still think you’re the only outsider on the block? I know what it’s like to walk Baloneytown in costume all day. I get the stares. People run. Hide. They drop their plastic whatever-that-is.” He tapped the urine-collection funnel. “Or else they come at me with expectations. Either way, let’s just say I don’t get many dates…”

  He said, “People don’t see me as a guy, doing my job. They see the job.” He pulled a loose thread on my oversized dress. “I understand more than you think.”

  Inside, Herman’s shadow moved past the living room window. Sun hit the glass. The orange curtain gave a flutter, and my heart did the same. Rex was hiding, peering out, watching me talk to a cop.

  Rex, rendered audience.

  Over Jerrod’s shoulder the orange curtain dropped, as though a play had just ended, an act over. Rex’s act. The one I was meant to star in. I didn’t want it to be over! Rex and me, we had a whole show ahead of us, a life. Jerrod touched my arm. I held my breath.

  21.

  Granulation and Ruination

  SO I’D DO ONE INNOCENT CLOWN DATE FOR THE MONEY. No sex. Then I’d top off my savings, follow Rex to Berkeley, and move into the art-clown life happily ever after. The date, Crack, and corporate clowndom would melt into the gentle fog of a bad dream.

  In the Ruins the van loomed in the dark like a rocky cliff, the precipice I’d soon throw myself over. I wore the top half of the patched Caboosey suit under the red sequined dress. It was a quick patch job with electrical tape, for the occasion. I stepped one teetering, clown-style Manolo Blahnik knockoff into the loose sand of the open lot. The Pendulous Breasts jiggled. The van door slid open and Crack tumbled out, a bottle in hand, as dust danced in the twilight.

  “Here she is!” Crack called. “Our clown lady of the evening.”

&nb
sp; “I’m not a clown of the evening,” I whispered, maybe only to myself. “I’m an artist,” I said louder, to the open lot, as though to convince the world. Then I tripped on a piece of rebar, snagged my dress, caught myself with a hand to a cinder block, and skinned my burned palm.

  “Yes,” Crack said. “Our artiste, star of the show!”

  Behind her, a bouquet of pale blond hair cut into the moonlight; a man climbed from the back of the van.

  I straightened up, stood and brushed off as Crack came forward, took me by the hand. She passed me the bottle. The bottle was hot at the neck from her clutch. Freixenet.

  “Meet your date, Rich Johnson.” She waved a hand. “Rich, meet Juicy Caboosey.” She slapped me on the rear, hard enough to knock me forward and toss champagne from the bottle’s mouth in a moonlit gush.

  “Hello there, Juicy!” His voice was low. His suit was nice, well-cut and dark.

  “Rich?” I said. “That’s his name, or his tax statement?”

  He laughed. “A regular Mae West, just what I ordered.”

  Ordered. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “To you, that’s his name,” Crack said back, fast. She gave me a wink, clown sign language for Don’t Ask.

  The man had a narrow chin, ruddy cheeks, and eyes that were too vacant. He seemed familiar, like I’d seen his pompadour and ruddy cheeks before. “I know you, don’t I?”

  He chuckled again, nervous this time. “Strangers is better,” he said, and tugged on his shirt cuffs.

  Of course—coulrophiles always preferred the anonymous thing.

  Crack whispered, “Don’t blow it, Sniffers.” She wrapped her arms around my neck, gave me a smooch on the cheek like some kind of staged lesbo clown moment, and it was all an act until she hissed in my ear, “Play it right, in twenty minutes it’s over and you’ll be the richest joke in Baloneytown. No kidding.”

  She laughed loud and fake, like our powwow was one big party. One big lie. Rich looked over his shoulder, gave me a profile view of his long nose, sharp chin, and then the flash of teeth, and in that flash I remembered exactly where I’d seen him—the hallway, outside the Chaplin gig. Old Blondie. He’d done his hair differently. And at the street fair, the day I fainted, hanging around with another pompadour altogether. He wore his hair like a costume, but it was the same guy. This was no generic clown date, it was personal. I folded my arms across my chest, held the bottle of grocery-store bubbly against my hip. Crack took my hands, as though to loosen me up.

  She whispered, “Plan to be a party pooper or a party trooper? We’ve only got room for troopers around here. I need you on board.” She straightened my dress. Plumped my fake cleavage.

  With her face close to mine, I whispered back, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what, Clownster?” She reached for the warm champagne.

  “You set me up. We know this guy—he’s practically a stalker.”

  “We don’t know him. He’s a date. You’re dating, right?” She turned away. I followed her toward the van. A second, shorter man spilled out the open van door, his hair pressed tightly to his head like a stocking cap, then I saw it was a stocking cap. Crack reached for his hand. She’d take the little guy, and leave me with Mr. Blonde and Blow-dried.

  I wasn’t ready to pair off yet. “Can we talk?” I asked her.

  Crack looked to Rich, his hair bright and pale as a streetlight. She looked back to me. “You and me,” she asked, “or, like, talk as part of the show?”

  A date wasn’t a show in my book. I said, “You and me, alone.”

  Blondie shrugged, gave the go-ahead. Crack and I walked into the dark.

  I said, “I can’t do it, Crack. It’s too hookerish.”

  She said, “It’s a piece of cake. Let him do all the work. All he wants is a brush with fantasy, maybe to cop a feel of your plastic hair. These guys, they’re a dime a dozen and simple as flapjacks, no joke.”

  “But why this one? He’s seen our shows. I don’t want to be in his high beams.”

  Crack shook her head. “He’s been to our gigs, so what? He likes what you put out.”

  “Put out?” I said. I felt the blood drain from my face.

  “What you offer, I mean. You don’t have to put out.”

  My mouth was dry; my mind broke out in a rash of panic. “Feels like I’m cheating on Rex. It’s not good. I love Rex, and he trusts me.” What I didn’t say was that it felt like I was cheating on art too. Cheating myself.

  Crack laughed then, and not her bitter or fake laugh, but a deep belly laugh, loud and for real. “Oh shit,” she said. “You’re still hung up on Rex? And we thought Matey was the sadomasochist in the group…”

  “Hung up?” I said. “We’re in love.”

  She said, “Sheesh…Good old sexy Rexie back in town, and you’re his puppet all over again. Don’t think Rex hasn’t had his share of clown dates.”

  My heart was a knotted balloon then, a stopped watch. “What do you mean?”

  She said, “That old rubber-chicken routine? It’s a classic. Hell, even I fell for it way back when.” She slapped an arm over my shoulders. “How do you think he paid for that fleet of unicycles?”

  “What are you saying?” Her arm was heavy across my back. I tried to shake her off, the way I wanted to shake off new information, the possible truth.

  “Don’t be shocked, little Sniff. You make too big a deal of it.” With a gentle pressure she steered me left, and then left again, and we made a U-turn until we walked toward the van. The men were outside tipping bottles back. Crack said, “Get in the game, give it a good play. If you don’t want to do it again we won’t. My word.”

  I was numb. Rex and the rubber-chicken routine? What did she mean? Plucky. Plucky the chicken, who was even now in my pink shoulder bag. How many clowns had Plucky been with?

  “Call the shots on the date,” Crack whispered. “Do what you’re comfortable with, and no more.” She dropped her arm from my shoulders. “I got the down payment, but set your own prices as you go, and make sure you get cash before it’s over.”

  I teetered in my oversized heels, across chunks of broken concrete.

  “You get the clubhouse. We’ll find our own space.” Crack grabbed the short man by one of his thick hands. I watched their backs as they climbed over a pile of broken joists, then disappeared into the dark.

  “Come on in,” Rich Johnson said from the dark cave of the van.

  I was there to do a job—not a hand job, not a blow job, but the same logic applied: the faster we got started, the sooner it’d be over. I hitched up my dress. Sequins fell and glinted against the ground, caught in construction debris. I took his hand. His palm was damp. In one big step, I launched myself into the back of the van. He reached to close the door behind me. I intercepted with my elbow.

  “Like a tab, let’s keep it open, right?” A quick exit route.

  He shrugged. “It’s your show.” I liked the sound of that. My show. Then he said, “Besides, there’s nobody out here. Just you and me. And I thought clowns didn’t talk.”

  He put a hand up as though to cover my mouth and winked. That I didn’t like, but it was part of the fetish: muteness, not mutiny.

  He spit out the side door and popped the cork on another bottle of cheap champagne. The cork hit the side of the van like a bullet. I ducked. My ears rang. He sat hunched, a vulture, on a narrow, cramped wooden bench that was attached to one curved wall inside the van. He patted the plank beside him.

  I crouched on the wheel well. He held a plastic champagne glass my way, pulled it back and tipped it toward his lips, then raised his eyebrows in his own little act meant to be a question: did I drink?

  I fanned my hands in front of the Pendulous Breasts and pushed the air away, a flutter of sign language to say no no no. The breasts crowded my knees.

  He dropped the plastic glass, took a swig off the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and murmured, “Juggle something.” He rolled an
old beer bottle toward me.

  I didn’t reach for the bottle, but dug in my bag for juggling balls, then chicken-walked toward the open door and dropped a foot outside.

  Rich snagged me by the dress. “Ho-no! The act stays onstage.”

  The dress stretched like a bungee cord; sequins sprang like fireworks while I hovered between the fresh breeze and fetid air.

  I pointed at the ceiling, a pidgin version of clown sign language: too low to juggle.

  “Let’s see,” he said. He pulled me deeper into the dark corner of the van, wrapped his arms around me, and slid up close behind. We were both on our knees, against the matted carpet. Something on the floor cut into my kneecap. “I want to feel your jugs while you juggle,” he said, and his breath was a death wheeze. “Get it? Jugs and juggling? I always think of that. Since I was a boy at the circus.” He ran a hand over the Pendulous Breasts.

  He had me in a tight squeeze. I tossed one ball, tried to lunge for it but couldn’t move. The ball hit the side of the van, rolled, then nested in a carpeted corner.

  He hiked up my skirts. I tried to wriggle out of his arms.

  “Why the resistance? I’ve got money.” With one arm still around me, he pulled a wallet from his pocket. The wallet flipped open. He shook it like a kid pretending the wallet was a seagull, and the gull dropped bills. He laughed as dollars drifted.

  He undid his belt and his pants fell all too willingly down around his knees. Rich whispered, “Feel my big balloon dog.” His breath was murky with the smoke of old pot and soured champagne. He rubbed himself against my thighs. I fell forward under the pressure of his weight, onto my hands on the loose bills scattered on the dirty carpet. “Feel it?”

  I could feel it. I nodded, and broke a rule as I said out loud, “Is that a big balloon dog, or a whoopee cushion? Maybe someone forgot to inflate—”

  He said, “Hey—sh sh sh. Just give it to me, Juicy,” and he rubbed himself against my underwear. He twisted my Pendulous Breast nipple, except it wasn’t a nipple. It was electrical tape that came off in his hand, and the scorched threads gave in. Sand rained down.