by Meg Mundell
‘Hello, yes.’ He is embarrassed. ‘Sorry. Could I have a word?’
I indicate my hard-won audience, but the man already has a reply: before I can register it, the folded fifty-dollar note has made its split-second journey from his hand to mine.
He speaks quietly. ‘Please don’t take offence, but I wonder — is there a chance you could move your show to a different spot?’ His eyes skip around the mall, avoiding mine.
The permit I wordlessly produce has no effect. He merely stares after the departing dog, addressing its hindquarters: ‘You see, my co-worker is terrified of clowns. A phobia, really. Nothing personal. But we would really appreciate you picking another spot, because you’re right in her line of sight. Her window’s just up there.’ He points.
I do take it personally — how could I not? — but graciously I put the man and his nervous eyes behind me. Something sweet has crept into my bones and settled there like warm syrup. The little girl’s laughter. What looked like a glimmer of respect in the old gentleman’s eyes. Or summer itself, perhaps.
Here’s a little secret. The clown’s trademark tools: wisdom disguised as stupidity; the childish pleasure of being naughty; mimicry, mime and surprise; the blow (slap of wet fish, slop of custard pie in face); and the fall.
The fall is my speciality. Hard to do with style, but a crowd favourite. Bam. Splat. Whoops … They love it.
At first there were bruises, but I soon learned to soften my body, to roll with the fall. Children do this without thinking and survive nasty tumbles that would leave their adult selves with broken bones. Humans are born with the fear of falling — put a puppy on a high window ledge and it will cheerfully gambol right off the edge, but a baby will back away from that empty space. It gets worse as we age: we brace ourselves, forget how to fall. But the fear can be unlearned.
I should know. It’s a family joke that my mother dropped me as a baby not once but twice. ‘He land on his head? Sure seems like it! Huuurggh-huuurgh.’ (How I hated that uncle.) No, fortunately I landed upright and nappies were thick in those days.
As a first memory it’s hardly promising, but others have suffered far worse and spent their whole lives trying to forget. You can see it on their faces, in the way they laugh or don’t laugh on cue. My own early slips were not so bad.
That slipping sensation does return unbidden sometimes, just on the verge of sleep — I jerk awake, saving myself from a minor mishap on the stairs, or one of those sickening, panicky plunges into some godless void.
But don’t read too much into that childhood business; I’ve been held tight plenty of times by plenty of women, and fallen from very few. I have mastered the art of the soft landing. And there are some excellent foam-lined shorts available by mail order if you are prepared to shop around.
Gravity waits for us everywhere. A scene I once witnessed sticks in my mind. The stage was dimly lit but the actors’ voices carried clearly to the edges of the room.
‘You’re bored,’ he said accusingly.
He was standing near the door, holding a cigarette that had gone out. She sat at a table, sorting papers.
‘I wouldn’t say bored,’ she said without looking up. ‘Just a bit restless.’ Her gold hair shone under the stage lights, but her face was in shadow.
‘You’re bored,’ he said, folding his arms tight against his chest, the unlit cigarette looking foolish now. ‘You can’t even look at me.’
He waited like a high-diver, gauging the drop. She squinted at an envelope. ‘Do we have to go over this again? It seems kind of pointless.’
‘You’re right.’ There was a thickness in his voice. ‘It is pointless. You don’t feel anything for me.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not it.’ She looked at her watch.
‘You always do that, whenever we’re together. How can I be good company when you’re always checking the time?’
‘I’m late,’ she answered, standing up. ‘I’m late for work. I have to go.’
My days no longer fit any conventional pattern. Since the change, I’ve spent more and more time in costume: there is no longer a split between life and art. I remove my greasepaint and wig at bedtime, but I don’t sleep much these days. (Don’t think I’m one of those clowns who wear the same thing every day. I have seven full costumes in my wardrobe and my dry-cleaning bill is huge.)
When I’m not out in public I order groceries over the internet and watch DVDs late into the night, practise my routines in front of the mirror and plan the week’s movements. Spontaneity is all very well, but there has to be a master plan. You can’t just drift aimlessly from one day to the next.
I really should unpack the boxes still stacked in the back of the wardrobe. Perhaps next week. They catch me by surprise when I flick through my costumes and catch a glimpse of cardboard; I can’t recall what the boxes contain, or why I owned so many things I no longer seem to need.
Living on the eighteenth floor lays the city out before me, a sparkling map of possibilities. I descend into it.
The week is over. It is late afternoon and the nine-to-fivers are heading for the restaurants and bars and taxis, back to their private lives, their own personal Fridays.
I arrive at the train station and choose an unobtrusive seat on the platform to sip a takeaway coffee, but my shoes protrude into the walkway and cause a ripple in the flow of the passing crowd. Cryptic train-departure times crackle over the system in a thick European accent and strangers pull puzzled faces, ask one another: ‘What did he say?’ This is not my station but I know it well. I have waited here before.
A couple on the next bench is having a silent argument, her cheek turned against him, his cigarette burning down at a punishing speed between tight lips. Words have been exchanged, and now there is nothing they can say to fix the mess.
The things lovers say to each other! You don’t know me at all. Your skin is so soft, I can’t stop touching it. Just look at the price of this salmon! For you, anything. Come here, come to me. How do you defrost this thing? You have become my worst nightmare. Get out! All this is over.
It’s a shame. And not easy to forget.
Across the other side of the platform is the city square, with its sea of heads bobbing homeward. The late sunlight streams across the people at a low, rich slant and picks out the blonde heads in the crowd — little golden moths caught in the rays.
I stand and walk down to the far end of the platform. Another senseless burst of Russian staccato crackles from the overhead speakers. The train is approaching.
I’m not sure exactly how it happens. This time I see her first; that I know. A sound comes from her mouth, a puppyish whimper, which I am close enough to hear. I spread my arms in a gesture that should be placating, give a wide bland smile, but her fear has blacked out all sense and she backs away from me blindly. My open palms show I am harmless — why can’t she see that?
We never touch, we don’t get that close, but the edge of the platform sucks her backward. Terror catches in my throat as she tips. It is a masterful fall, no flailing limbs or undignified screaming. Just a slow, graceful drop, her fine legs askew, arms raised like a dancer’s, that golden hair flying. There is one deep, deafening blast of the train’s horn. Then another sound. Then the screams begin on the platform behind me.
All this grief for a stranger: people sob, someone is sick, a thin gormless wail pours from some unseen mouth. A siren cries its way toward us.
Men in uniform appear and begin to herd people away, pull some aside; they run their eyes over faces and flick open notebooks. I see a stretcher carried past and feel a hand on my arm.
‘Could we have a word?’ Faces gather around me but I can’t make out their features. I give my name several times before they write it down.
Through a gap between the stilled train’s carriages, I see a slice of the city squa
re. But its rhythm has changed. The steady stream of bodies has been muddied, broken into bewildered, zigzagging patterns.
Far off I spot a low, familiar shape: nose down, tail up, following some obscure trail. I’m sure it’s the same dog, the lone labrador, wandering through the legs of the milling crowd. He wags his tail over a patch of pavement, fixes his nose to the clue and disappears stage left.
My legs are weak but the grip on my arm is reassuringly firm. I let it lead me away. I trust these hands: I’ve been held tight plenty of times, by plenty of people, and only a few have ever let me fall.
The overhead lights are coming on. As the great Friday and his entourage leave the aftermath of the show and head for the exit, the audience parts to let us through.
THE CHAMBER
If she’d quit smoking the week before, like she’d planned, Penny never would have found the gun. That summer a heatwave was crisping the hedges, killing old people and making the birds pant helplessly, beaks agape. Bushfire smoke drifted into the city, tinting the daylight amber and giving the air a sweet, woody scent. Walking home from work that night Penny was pissed off, and she’d flicked her cigarette butt into the bushes without thinking.
As she stamped out the butt, she spotted something nestled in the parched shrubs, a shape glinting under the streetlight. At first she thought it was a toy, some plastic replica lost in a game of cops and robbers. But when she picked it up, the weight of it sent a quick thrill skating through her. She checked the street: empty.
The gun had a blue-black sheen, a grooved cylinder and a textured handgrip with indents for your fingers. The barrel had tiny writing printed on it. She was careful not to touch the trigger. The metal felt warm — how long had it been there? But it was a hot night, she reasoned; everything was warm.
There was nobody around, no witnesses. Penny put the gun in her shoulder bag and walked away quickly, her blood banging out a loud pattern. Maybe it was a good-luck omen; what had her fortune cookie said this morning? It is better to be the hammer than the anvil. She smiled. Some good luck was way overdue. She rolled another smoke and decided not to head home just yet. Her housemate spent his life inhaling bongs in front of the twenty-four-hour news channel, and she wasn’t in the mood for him.
A siren wailed to life nearby and Penny made a quick decision to cut through the unlit park. You weren’t supposed to walk here at night, but nobody could fuck with her now. Dead grass crackled underfoot, cicadas shrilled from all directions and a plane rasped overhead, blinking upward and out of sight. She walked faster than usual, taking long strides, a new confidence welling up inside her. Her bag swung heavy on her hip and she felt strong.
Next morning she phoned work to ask about the roster. The manager picked up. A sour man with a neurotically thin moustache, Greg liked to play favourites, and Penny wasn’t one of them. His answers were curt, and he kept saying her name like it tasted bad. No shifts available next week, Penny; I’m in the middle of a stocktake, Penny, we’ll be in touch if we need you. She hung up and swore at her bedroom wall. She’d like to punch that asshole right in his stupid moustache.
Five weeks into the job she’d balanced the till wrong twice, and yesterday had lost her temper with two pimply jerks in the fruit aisle who’d made repeated enquiries about ‘them melons’ while gawking at her chest. Penny was sick of it, all the ogling and moronic comments, and her reply had been quick-witted and lacerating. It had also been loud. The two creeps slunk away but Greg appeared at her elbow. Next thing she was in the storeroom listening to him cite a long and viciously exaggerated list of her shortcomings as a grocery worker. He didn’t need to remind her she was just a casual. He refused to let her explain, so she’d been reduced to glowering.
Out in the lounge room her housemate, Derek, was hunched over a breakfast of Cheezels, watching TV with the curtains shut. The ceiling fan spun sluggishly, stirring the bong-scented air around like soup. Onscreen the bushfires devoured whole swathes of the map; the camera panned across the blackened shells of homes, and emergency workers led weeping people through the smoke. ‘Hey,’ said Penny. Derek grunted a hello.
She took her daily fortune cookie to her room: Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday, it informed her. What the hell was that supposed to mean? It was no help at all. Today she should re-jig her CV, look for another job and sign up for the dole. Glumly she fired up her laptop, angled her desk fan for maximum sweat evaporation, and began her weekly email to her mum.
Everything was great, she reported. Her housemate was really laid-back and into current affairs, and uni was going well. She hit send without getting too elaborate. The lies had begun two months ago, with the discovery that she’d missed the application date for her design course. Sorry, the admin person had said, try again next year. Three weeks later she was packing groceries under Greg’s militant gaze: not a great result for moving halfway across the country. Most nights she had a recurring dream she was stuck on a train that ran a circular loop of track, over and over. It wasn’t that hard to interpret.
Her sketchpad lay on the desk. Penny regarded the gap beneath the wardrobe for a while. Then she kneeled down and slid the gun out, positioned it in the sunlight, and began drawing. This was the first gun she’d seen up close, and it was a beautifully designed thing. She sketched its outline, blocked in shading, copied the curlicued logo and the tiny writing stamped into the metal: 38 S&W SPECIAL CTG. / REG. US. PAT. OFF. / MADE IN USA / MARCAS REGISTRADAS / SMITH & WESSON, SPRINGFIELD MASS. She held up the final result: not bad. At least she could still draw.
The firing mechanism was hidden somewhere inside. Fiddling with guns was a bad idea, but if she was careful … A childhood spent dissecting household appliances and copping whacks around the head from her stepfather had taught her how to put things back together properly, to treat machinery with respect. She tested the cylinder but it wouldn’t budge; must be a lever. The one at the back stirred vague memories of crime shows, the bad guy cocking it just before squeezing the trigger. She tried a smaller catch below, and the cylinder gaped open. A light tremor went through her. There were six bullets inside.
That night she opened all the windows wide, but the house would not cool down. Derek was sucking at his bong like an asthma patient taking bottled oxygen. On TV a suspected arsonist was being taken into police custody, a towel draped over his head as the cops held back an angry crowd who bayed at the man like starving animals. All that pain, so ugly to see.
‘Don’t you get sick of watching that stuff?’ Penny asked. Derek, busy packing a cone, didn’t reply. The furniture was placed at awkward angles; she had to step around the couch to reach the front door. ‘I’m going for a walk. Have a good night,’ she said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.
Penny set out for the field by the airport, where you could lie back and watch the planes, pale bird-bellies exposed as they rose or sank toward their destinations. Two months after moving here she was virtually friendless. Derek, obviously, didn’t fit the bill. Miranda, the chatty girl she’d shared shifts with at work, had not returned her last two text messages, but maybe she was busy or had lost her phone. Penny crossed the bridge over the aqueduct, a dry concrete avenue with a channel running down its middle, a strip of black water at the bottom, and slipped through the wires of an old farm fence. She followed the faint track, her way lit by the eerie glow coming off the airport, and settled into the grass beneath the southern flight path.
A big jumbo lumbered over the tarmac to the runway entrance, then squatted under the lights as if gathering up courage. It rolled toward her, gathering speed, but lift-off always looked impossible from here — the runway inadequate, the machine too slow and heavy. The engine screamed as the spindly front wheels left the ground, then the heavy back end rose up too, and the huge beast heaved itself clear and tore right over the top of her. Its stomach slid past, white and vulnerable, and the landing gear folded in like lit
tle claws. She watched the plane climb steeply into the night sky and wink away until it was no longer visible.
When she reached into her bag to roll a smoke, there it was, wrapped in a scrap of velvet. Carefully she held the gun aloft, keeping her fingers well clear of the trigger. Its blue-black metal gleamed in the airport lights as she weighed the heft and menace of the thing.
She’d searched the online news for recent crimes in the area: a knifing weeks ago, a local bottle shop knocked over, and a string of 7-Eleven burglaries by a druggie with a bloody syringe — all unsolved and no mention of a gun, abandoned or otherwise. She’d read up on the model: the bullet calibre and firing pin, its double-action mechanism, the spring buried deep within the handle. The cylinder contained six chambers where you loaded the bullets; when the gun fired, one bullet shot out, the cylinder spun, and the next one was right there, ready to go.
How would it feel to point a loaded gun right at someone, someone who had it coming? Once she held it in her hands the thought came unbidden: you couldn’t help wondering. Couldn’t help imagining the look on their face, the fear dawning as the situation switched and they lost their hold. Greg’s smirk fading, those assholes who’d taunted her falling silent, backing away. Her stepdad losing the upper hand for once, his gaze wavering, palms held out all helpless, saying No, don’t … Yes, she thought, a cold kind of pleasure blooming inside her. She had some idea how it would feel.
At home Derek was watching a documentary on terrorism. He nodded hi, so Penny flopped down on an armchair. The credits rolled over shots of bombed-out buildings and military checkpoints. ‘Full on,’ observed Derek.
Penny looked around the lounge room, at the slow-spinning fan, the mismatched furniture set at odd angles, the boxes piled in one corner. On the way home she’d texted the girl from work again, Miranda, but no reply.
‘Let’s rearrange the furniture,’ she said suddenly. ‘Sort out the feng shui in here.’