by Monica Drake
He whipped his head around, looked at me, then looked away again. The edge was back in his voice when he said, “I didn’t plan on spending it to bail you out.”
“All right, all right, so I’ll pay you back my own money. No reason to be uptight.” Again I took his elbow, laced my fingers around his arm, and held on. I said, “I can make more money.”
He said, “Don’t whine like I’m your pimp, it’s just that I need that cash. If I didn’t need it, I wouldn’t’ve taken it in the first place. But listen, there’s another way you can help me. I’m working on this thing, Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’…”
I stopped fast, and his elbow tugged against my folded-together hands. He jerked away. I said, “‘The Metamorphosis’? Rex, that’s…That’s my thing. I’ve been working on my ‘Metamorphosis’ sketch for years. You’ve watched me develop it—watched me practice the transformation into vermin on my back, seen me work out the surrealist confusion, the naturalist horror. The modernist angst.”
He said, “Sure, I know you’re into it, but mine’ll be different. In this one, it’s like the guy’s job is as an office executive…”
In my version, the woman was an office assistant. I never did think big enough.
“…and he turns into a snake instead of a bug. It’s hilarious, and it’s sad. It’s really something.”
“Turns into a snake?” I said. Somebody had turned into a snake, right there in front of my eyes. I felt a wave of nausea.
“I think mine’s pure, undiscovered genius,” he said. “Besides, if mine’s different, or the same, what’re you worried about—you’re not using it. It’s just an idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen.”
My throat was tight, my head a scream of swarming bees. I couldn’t believe my ears. I staggered, clutched my one fake breast. The rash of panic in my brain broke into all-out cerebral hives. I said, “I am using it. I work on it all the time. I just can’t get it into production, because I’m trying to make a living. Trying to pay your way to Clown College.”
He laughed. “Looks like you’re making a pretty fast living to me.” He shook his head. “Those johns need Kafka?”
“I’m not a hooker,” I said again. “There’s just not the same fast cash in Kafka as there is in the corporate work. Not yet, not until I get ahead.”
“Get ahead, or give it? And since when is whoring corporate?”
If Jerrod was right, if clowning was my addiction, then this—not jail—was as low as I could sink; watching my gilded savior, Rex, tarnish. His brilliance was nothing, not even his own. Actually, this round? The ideas were mine. “Rex, you haven’t even read Kafka.”
He said, “I’ve seen you practice the skit like a hundred times, right? And you just said you’d help. Give me a little more of the structure then.”
If I went along with him, I’d be an enabler, a participant in my own defeat. “There’s all kinds of material, pick something else. Pick, like, Pride and Prejudice, or Romeo and Juliet. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Anything, OK? Kafka’s my deal.”
He said, “No need to be possessive. We’ve got enough to go around. We’re doing OK, you said so yourself.”
“Sure, but I was feeling a surge of love for you then. Hopeful.” I’d been noting his humanity, not his greed.
He shrugged. Smiled. “You’ll feel another.” He was so confident!
“Rex, could you just please lay off my material, until I get it together?”
He said, “Nita, cultivate some professionalism. You don’t have the rights to Kafka. Just because I haven’t read the dude doesn’t mean I can’t do my own thing with it. You know what Gold-digger the Great said—‘Cheap clowns scrounge, great clowns steal.’”
“Sure, Rex. I’ve heard the phrase, but I don’t subscribe to it,” I said. “Great clowns have a little integrity, I’d say. What about the Clown Commandments?”
He stopped walking then, stood on the sidewalk, and blocked my way. “So, what’re you saying—I bail you out, and you won’t help with the most important act of my career? This is the thing that’s going to get me past the club circuit.”
“You bailed me out with my own money, and I’ll pay it back. I didn’t sell the Kafka sketch.”
“Jesus,” he said. “That was our money when you gave it to me. Knock off the bullshit generosity next time.”
“It’s not bullshit generosity,” I said. “I wish you weren’t stoned right now. You’re impossible. You make it impossible.”
Rex laughed then, a mean, sharp snort. “Impossible? You want to talk impossible? This is all bullshit, babe. You want to think you’re not a hooker, just a clown on a private date. Think you’re an artist, working a new car lot? I’ll tell you something—that’s not art. It’s just a story you’re making up. Maybe the same story you’d tell our baby, if we still had a baby. Mommy’s not a hooker, she’s a corporate party girl. No wonder the kid bailed. Christ, maybe the thing’s lucky you dumped it.”
I stopped fast. My boob swung forward with momentum, then slapped against my real boob underneath, a thump to the heart. “What’re you saying? Like the miscarriage was my fault?” I held my torn dress like a sari wrapped around me. He shrugged.
“You haven’t exactly been leading a healthy lifestyle, have you?”
I crouched on the sidewalk. It was either that or fall over. The bees, the bees! I could barely hear. “I can’t believe you’d say that.” I whispered, “You’re blaming me.”
“Well, it wasn’t my fault.” He towered over me. His pants billowed in the night air. “My part worked out just fine.”
I couldn’t stand up. My eyes watered, my chin trembled. Since when was a miscarriage about blame? That was so like Rex, to make it adversarial. I said, “Where were you, Rex? When I was bleeding? I called you, needed to hear your voice. You never called back.”
Rex rolled his eyes. He said, “I called you back.”
“Once. After it was over. Way late.” I stood up. Put a hand to my head. I said, “And now your big concern is that you want ‘your’ money back?” I used my fingers to make quotation marks in the air. It was a jab—Rex hated the quotation mark gesture. He turned away. We were almost to Herman’s. “That money I gave you? I’ll give it back, right now.” I kicked off the high heels and ran the last block to the ambulance.
“Don’t be melodramatic,” he said behind me.
“Don’t be an idea thief,” I yelled back. I flung open the ambulance doors, hitched up my big skirts, and climbed in. I wiped tears from my eyes. The ceramic Rex-head stared from a dark corner with empty eyes, with that slight smile—Rex, immortalized as stoned and trying not to get a hard-on.
I put the head under my arm and climbed back out. “Who’s the whore now, Mr. Galore? Come get your cash, if that’s what you care about.”
I pulled the pair of socks from the bottom of the clay head, threw the socks back in the ambulance and took out a fistful of dollars. “Does that keep you from stealing Kafka?”
He walked on past, to Herman’s. “Jesus, Nita. You’re so over-the-top.”
I said, “Take it. I don’t want to be in debt to you.” I followed, and pressed the money up against him.
“That’s great.” He pointed at the bust under my arm. “You keep your slut money in my head. What’s that, irony? Art and ideas, sex, money and commerce. That’s so, so like you.” He brushed me away with one big hand.
“What, you’re too big for money now?” As I sidestepped his brush-off, barefoot, I teetered. The heavy ceramic head slipped in my hands. Rex’s head smashed on Herman’s sidewalk. Dollars scattered like spent tickets.
“Shit. Pick that up, would you?” Rex said. “Someone’s going to hit us up, or think we’re doing a drug deal.”
Nadia-Italia’s laugh screeched from the darkened porch like a bad gag gift. I wiped my eyes again and said, “It’s your money. You pick it up.”
“Whatever. Forget it.” Rex kept going up onto the porch. He said, “Guess I’m on my own.” He was a
king, head held high. He was a prince, a dog, a man I didn’t even know, and he didn’t look back as our future, my hours spent in clown wage-slavery, rustled like garbage in the gutter.
23.
Harsh Medicine; or, My Strabat
REX COULD DO WHAT HE WANTED, BUT WHEN A BALONEYTOWN wild child swooped out of the dark and nabbed a twenty, I chased the kid off, got down on my knees, and picked up the cash. Let Nadia-Italia laugh, but no way would I watch the fruits of my clowndom drift like yesterday’s lottery tabs. My bad leg whined with the motion. Rex triggered Herman’s floodlight and made himself the star of a one-man show. His curls caught the high beam, his muscles were sculpted with shadows.
Nadia-Italia, still hidden in the dark, said, “Hey, superstar, how’s’bout a smoke.” She giggled. Stoned. Rex’s dream audience. Three little pigtails poked up where she slumped on the couch.
Rex stopped to dig through his pockets.
He said, “How’bout a trade. A little more of that smoke you got for a few of these,” and shook a cigarette out of the pack.
I tried to ignore their production. “Jee-zus,” Italia said. “Check this shit out.” She giggled again. I looked up then.
“This shit,” as she called it, was Chance, on the porch. Chance sat up and begged for nothing, looking at nobody. She stood up and did her soon-to-be famous hula dance, pawed the air, and bounced left and right.
Nadia-Italia snorted and laughed and said, “Hey, baby, Momma’s got your treats!”
Momma? Chance wobbled toward Italia’s outstretched hand.
“Munchies,” Italia said. “Yummy.” Chance ran in a mad scramble, the length of the porch and back.
Chance, my drug-sniffing canine, so easily swayed!
I said, “You’re feeding my dog pot?”
“She got into the stash,” Italia slurred. “Her party habit.”
“You do that on purpose…”
Rex said, “You’re always the victim, aren’t you? It’s not about Chance, it’s about you. Feeding your dog pot. It’s about your Kafka trip, your little dream.”
“Look at her, Rex.” Chance was goggle-eyed. Nadia-Italia wasn’t much better off and let her own head loll against the split fat couch. “It’s not about me.” I left the busted bust of Rex on the sidewalk, shoved dollars into my prop bag. I said, “This is what I put up with. She’s trying to kill our baby.”
“Our baby?” Rex said, and paused. “I don’t think she’s the one—”
“Our dog!” I wanted to scream. It felt good to scream. He knew what I meant.
He said, “You overreact. I’m beat. I can’t take it anymore, Nita.” He went in the house.
“Rex?” I called after him.
He was out of sight by the time he called back, “We’ll talk in the morning.”
Morning? That was hours away. Forever. I’d waited so long for Rex to come home, but he felt no urgency. Nadia-Italia followed Rex, said, “Cha-cha, clownster,” and pulled the front door closed.
Rex as I knew him—high artist, Clown God—wouldn’t waste time as an idea thief. Chance smacked dry lips. We needed hydrogen peroxide, pronto-presto. I walked barefoot to where my clown shoes lay like discarded party favors. Chance watched invisible angels in the night sky, head bobbing and loose.
At the Lucky Trucker Motel and Sundries I carried her into the store. “No dog in here,” the man at the register said. “No dog, no dog!” He flung one arm out like a wing.
A bottle of hydrogen peroxide waited on a dusty shelf. I ducked, snagged the bottle. There was a line at the register. I waved the peroxide. “Just this. One thing.”
“No dog,” he said again, “you wait in line.” The man’s teeth were a mix of gold and yellow.
“My dog is dying. Look.” I held Chance up like a puppet, the store our puppet theater. A strand of drool found its way to the floor.
Two scrawny men and a woman with shaking, veined hands all laughed. A man with a mullet and a quart of beer said, “Nice act, stooge, take it to Nashville.” He put his money on the counter. Even an old woman who watched TV in the corner, who never spoke any language at all, even she laughed.
I held my ripped dress closer and cradled Chance. “It’s serious!” They laughed harder.
And that laugh echoed what I felt inside as more real than my blood, my heartbeat: that I was a joke. In protest I said, “It’s not a joke.” But the laugh only grew. And who laughed the loudest? A hooker in a torn red dress at the back of the line, naturally. My doppelgänger. Each minute, I sank a little deeper into Baloneytown.
There was my face in the aluminum rim of the hot-foods incubator, around jo-jos and chicken. I was reflected in the glass of the Coke cooler and the grease-smeared deli case, all powdery makeup, black liner, and big red lips, the face of a clown hooker right out of an old-time jail-time act. My one Caboosey boob hung free.
The doppelgänger said, “Tha’ poodle part a your show?”
The only show was my life, and it was a bomb. The only routine was the daily one. I’d been in clown costume so long, I wasn’t an artist. I was a freak. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t blink. I felt as though I were falling, a high-wire dive, safety ropes unfurling and unraveling left and right, loose and looped. This is a strabat: an aerialist’s finale, when all could be lost.
There was nobody to be my net, to close the curtains, to know me without the makeup. Rex saw me as a muse in the worst way—a place to steal material.
Mr. Galore.
I couldn’t think of his name without love. But Rex, as I saw him, was a big projection: I wanted the artist’s life and thought I’d found it on the blank screen of his painted face.
My name is Sniffles, and I’m a clownaholic…
Man is what he believes. All I knew was: Christian clowns, hookers, coulrophiles, and the fetishized silence of mime—I was bigger than the roles.
In the Lucky Trucker I took a tip from Jerrod and said, “Just because I’m a clown doesn’t mean I have to put up with abuse.” I picked up a box of travel-sized baby wipes.
“Still have to wait in line, though,” a drunk, wobbling woman hiccuped. Her hair was spun asbestos, her nose a withered apple. She spoke from experience.
Baloneytown was crowded with worn-out clowns, good intentions, and bad choices. The mistakes were easy and I’d made them all, sure, but the Lucky Trucker vaudeville team testified to Matey’s truth: S&M and clowning dovetailed into one and the same.
And the lives? Dog years.
Yes, I should’ve waited in line at the Lucky Trucker, and I would have waited if Chance weren’t digesting Herman’s pot as I stood there. I slid a bill on the counter next to the Turkey Jerky, and way overpaid in the hope that the dollars made up for my rudeness. Out in front, by the overflowing trash can and broken pay phone, I tipped Chance’s head back. She took her medicine, a harsh cure for an easy mistake, and as she foamed at the mouth I tried to come up with a cure for my own mistakes aplenty.
Chance’s steps were sloppy as we started back to the ambulance. She vomited white foam laced with dabs of pot like green sprinkles on snowy cupcakes. I opened the box of baby wipes, ran one over my cheek, and wiped makeup away. I tucked the used wipe in my bra and got out another. One swipe at a time, I cleaned up my act.
Near Herman’s, there was a fast glint and flicker of a UFO, and just as quickly the UFO crashed in a scatter of broken glass. Herman’s voice came out of the dark: “Fuck.”
A shadow ran, the soft pad of tennis shoes. I matched Chance’s tipsy stride. From somewhere, the ice-cream truck song started up in fast gear. It was either a late night sweet tooth emergency or a giveaway of a getaway car. Nearer, I saw Herman, soaking wet in the street on the ground, surrounded by glass, a hand to his head.
“Ah,” I said. “Another bashing? I thought clowns were the only fools targeted on the street.”
Herman muttered, “Never should’ve diversified… ” Chance waddled and vomited, weaving and slow. Herman said, “You know this
is about…your piss…harassment.” His forehead sported a goose egg.
Like his bad deal was my fault? I said, “Drugs, urine, and ice cream all in one vehicle—a regular Baloneytown variety store.” I kicked a piece of mason jar glass. “It cut your head, Hermes. And God, it reeks.”
He pulled his fingers away, squinted at the blood. I reached inside my bunched-up dress to unfasten the boob bib, the only thing more battered than Herman looked at the moment. I slipped the top over my head, and when I let go the single Pendulous Breast fell to the ground.
“We’ve got to get you out of the street before a car comes. You can rest in the ambulance. Put your arm over my back.” I bent to pick him up. As I brushed against him, pee seeped onto my dress.
“No.” He climbed to his feet. I offered a shoulder. He said, “If I’m going…to die…” He had to catch his breath. “I want to be …not in a clown-bulance.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Not yet, anyway.” Like a cowboy into the sunset Herman staggered toward the glow of the porch light.
I stayed where he left me, in the dark, outside that circle of light, and listened to the ice-cream truck ramble far away with a sound tiny as a music box, oddly optimistic, almost cheerful. The sidewalk was dotted with Chance’s pot-laced vomit, each tuft white and reflective as the moon, marking the path I’d walked like Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs, except in my story every dollop was a single-sized serving of pot soufflé laced with incriminating evidence. If the cops traced the path to Herman’s grow operation, we’d be cited with distributing a controlled substance through dog puke.
We? Yes. It was Herman’s operation, but the lot of us would go down. It’d be the Big Bust, starring Herman, front and center. I’d be a bit player blinking into the footlights. Then, voilà! Curtains! The co-op would fall into a Baloneytown real estate deal: confiscated, put up for silent auction, and sold back to B-town Barons for chump change. We’d all be in stripes. Not the fun-loving stripes of clowns, Pixy Stix, and barber poles, but the state-issued stripes of convicts.