by Hart, Taylor
“Good to know.” Eric casually slipped his hands into his pockets, but the hint of disappointment in his voice didn’t escape Lauren. She tried to imagine him as a scary clown bent on killing children. She couldn’t do it.
Suddenly she wanted to see what he looked like as a clown cheering sick children. “Maybe I’ll tag along after all. I can show you the way to the hospital.”
His eyes came to life with what Lauren could only describe as a spark. The kind she missed inside herself. He was glad that she wanted to come. And she sincerely wanted to go.
“I’ll go get ready in the locker room, then,” Eric said. He pressed the elevator call button. “Meet you in the lobby?”
“Sounds good, but—” Lauren felt a tickle of a smile on the corner of her mouth. “How will I recognize you?”
“I’ll be the one with the polka-dotted top hat.”
“What about your makeup? You’d better look nothing like Pennywise.”
“My nose gets a little blue circle, and on my cheek, I draw a big blue thing that I meant to be a dimple, but most people think is a giant comma.”
“Ah.” Lauren pretended soberness as she nodded. “I’ll be sure to watch for the giant blue dimple comma.”
“There’s a little more makeup, but not much. Trust me, Stephen King would be very disappointed.”
“Can’t wait to see it for myself.”
The elevator dinged, and he got on. As the doors closed, her mind posed two questions:
First, why was she about to go out with a literal clown, who happened to be the assistant of a man she couldn’t stand?
And second, did he like her back, or was that her imagination?
For several seconds after the elevator had left, Lauren stood there, staring at it, thinking of Eric. She couldn’t put her finger on why and didn’t want to settle on the obvious he’s really cute. While that was true, there was something more about him.
Maybe because it was just the stark difference between him and Carmichael. But no, she couldn’t believe that. Even without seeing the two men together, she would have found herself drawn to Eric.
Why? The question pinged in her mind again. He was attractive, no question. Funny. Smart. Put together, but not in a way that shouted money, status, or the need for attention. Something else tugged at her that she couldn’t pin down and examine under her mental microscope.
She heard someone clear their throat, which startled her back to the present. Ulla had wheeled herself into the door of her office, where she folded her arms and grinned. Lauren blushed—hard, judging by how hot her face suddenly felt. She cleared her own throat. “I’m going out. Let me know if you hear anything from Carmichael while I’m away.”
“Okay,” Ulla said in a singsong voice. Then she wheeled backward into her office while throwing Lauren a knowing look.
As for herself, Lauren returned to her own office quickly to grab her purse, which she was somehow too flustered to find at first. There it was, under her desk. She got onto her knees and pulled it out, still thinking of Eric.
Something made him different. Maybe it was simply the clown thing. Never before had she met a man who sought out opportunities to make others have a better day, let alone while disguising his appearance. She idly wondered if he’d ever used her products as part of his getup. He had flawless skin, which meant he had to use a high-quality makeup, but Vista didn’t produce anything a clown was likely to wear.
She took her long trench coat from the coat tree in the corner of her office, slipped her purse over her shoulder, and headed out. She stopped only long enough to talk to the receptionist, Sirkku. “Take messages if anyone calls,” she said, very aware that Ulla’s office was only a few steps away, and the door was open.
“Yes, Miss Fisher,” Sirkku said, though it sounded more like Fisser. “Anything else?”
“I’ll be meeting with Carmichael again tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll need the conference room and breakfast brought in.”
“I’ll take care of everything,” Sirkku said.
With a quick thanks, Lauren left through the stairway instead of by the elevator, a habit she’d picked up from being around Finns, who walked and biked even in the dead of winter. She knew a lot of people who didn’t set aside time to work out, but their active lifestyles made them fitter than Lauren had been in LA even with a well-used gym membership.
After trotting down four flights to the lobby, Lauren paused at the metal door, suddenly nervous to push through and see Eric as a clown. Yet she wasn’t nervous in a bad way. She trusted him when he said that his clown wasn’t the Stephen King type.
Now if I see him carrying red balloons, I might run away.
Her nerves were based on what he might think of her. Shaking her head to rid herself of the thoughts, she pushed the metal bar and walked into the main lobby of the building. Eric wasn’t there, so she took a seat and read a book on her phone until she heard a heavy footfall and looked up. There was Eric in full clown makeup and a clown costume. Not a crazy, out-there costume, just a loose white shirt with a colorful vest and what looked like a tie-dyed bow tie as wide as his face. The ensemble was finished off with baggy pants. No big, clomping shoes, no rubber-ball nose, and not even a wig. The floppy top hat, so colorful it might have been cut from Joseph’s dream coat, was the most attention-grabbing part, and that included the white makeup around his eyes, shaped like arches, and his mouth traced in red, white, and black to look wider, with a lip that dipped downward like an innocent puppy’s.
Eric, yet not Eric.
He stood and held out his hands. “Here I am.”
“Yes, you are.” She took him all in and found herself strangely attracted to a clown. “You look good, Eric.”
“Oh, right now, I’m Bow Tie the Clown.” He bent at the waist in a bow and then made an exaggerated show of adjusting the bow tie.
“My apologies . . . Bow Tie.” Lauren looked out the big windows to the busy street outside. A tram rattled by, then several cars. Dozens of people walked along the sidewalks in both directions. Did he realize just how much he’d stick out here? As a rule, Finns didn’t draw attention to themselves unless they were hammered, like on May Day, which wasn’t for a few more weeks. “Do you want to walk, or would you prefer to take a bus?”
“Whatever’s quickest.”
“Bus it is.”
They caught a bus almost as soon as they reached the stop. Once aboard, Lauren couldn’t help but smile to herself at how the other passengers stared at Eric but pretended not to. Putting on his clown character, Eric waved broadly and opened his mouth as if to speak, but she grabbed his arm and tugged him down to the seat beside her.
“You don’t talk loudly on public transportation here.”
“You don’t?” he said, loudly. When several passengers stared, he lowered his voice and tried again. “I mean, you don’t? Why not?”
“For starters, it brands you as an obnoxious American.”
With a totally flat expression, he gestured up and down at his getup. “I think they’ll know that even if I don’t say a word.”
She couldn’t help but laugh, but she covered her mouth to keep the volume down. He laughed—quietly—too.
A few stops later, they left the bus and walked the rest of the way to the children’s hospital, part of the Helsinki University network. It had techniques and research that led the world in many areas.
Standing in the ultra-modern-looking lobby—stainless steel, white floors, wavelike lines and curved hallways—Lauren felt an ache, as if she’d come close to a home she’d missed. The smell of antiseptic, the sight of people in lab coats, signs that, even though they were in Finnish on top with Swedish on bottom, clearly had Latin roots for medical words—like the sign with the word RÖNTGEN. That had to refer to radiology; Wilhem Röntgen was the father of the X-ray. She was surrounded by science, but she didn’t get to participate in it.
Eric had a note card he handed to a receptionist. She read it, then we
lcomed him in English and gave them visitor badges and directions for finding the correct wing. As they walked through the halls, Lauren worried about entering sick children’s rooms and how depressing that would be. She questioned coming along but then thought of the other women and children she’d helped with financially. Shouldn’t she see people who needed comfort and support, not be afraid of suffering?
Only when Eric found the first room did Lauren wonder how he planned to communicate with the children. Mimes didn’t rely on words, so maybe clowns didn’t either. Suddenly it dawned on her that laughter was a universal language.
They entered and found a bald child of about five. Marja was written on cards, on a sign, and across a white board. This bald child was a girl. Eric didn’t wait to jump into his act. He showed Marja a yellow pocket square, tucked it into his fist, then opened it to reveal that the cloth had vanished. Marja giggled, and when Eric—Bow Tie—looked around, dramatically confused, she pointed to his hat, where a little corner of yellow peeked out. He nodded with understanding, took off his hat, and pulled out the cloth—as well as about twenty others in various colors, all tied together.
Marja clapped in delight and laughed some more, her face lighting up despite the gray tinge to her face and the hollows in her cheeks. Lauren watched in awe. She was witnessing something holy—this moment of pure joy and delight between to strangers. What a gift Bow Tie was to this sweet child.
They went to several other rooms, with patients of different ages and backgrounds. Most were typically Nordic white, but one little boy was an immigrant from Africa—he’d tried to explain. Lauren did her best to translate.
“His family left Africa because of a war. They heard that Finland was the best place to live, so they came here.”
The boy looked at her with an even bigger grin than before. “Puhutko Suomea?” he asked, turning to her.
She shook her head and laughed. “Ymmärrän parempi kuin puhun.”
Bow Tie’s eyes widened, and he pointed at Lauren, then at his mouth, and mimed speaking, ending the acted-out question by pointing at her again.
“I understand Finnish better than I speak it,” Lauren said, saying in English what she’d said to the boy in Finnish.
Bow Tie mimed applause. Lauren found herself stepping closer, drawn into the little circle of joy that included the refugee boy on the hospital bed and Bow Tie.
As they visited more rooms, Lauren acted as interpreter more often, at least when she could understand the patients. At one point, Bow Tie raised a finger and drew a circle around his face with it in the air, then, eyebrows raised, he asked a silent question of the ten-year-old girl named Varpu as he pointed at Lauren’s face. Then he dug into his messenger bag, which he’d placed at the foot of each bed, and from which he pulled out magic tricks.
This time, he withdrew a makeup set in one hand and several application brushes with the other. Lauren’s eyes widened, and she was about to protest, but the girl clapped and pleaded. Lauren still hesitated. She looked at Bow Tie, who clasped his hands and gave her a dramatic expression, complete with lower lip pushed out, to enhance his melodramatic plea.
“Okay, okay,” she said, raising her hands in surrender.
Bow Tie guided her to sit at the foot of the bed. Lauren sat with one leg on the mattress and turned so Varpu could watch. He pulled out a variety of supplies, but when she tried to look at them, he shook his head and wagged an index finger at her. Varpu laughed every time.
He used brushes on her cheeks, forehead, and eyes. Pencils like big eyeliners traced areas all over her face, including the bridge of her nose. A big brush came near the end, and she caught enough of a look at what he held that time to know he was adding glitter to her face. He finished it off by pressing three hard things to the sides of each eye. He packed up his supplies, pulled out a hand mirror, and with a flourish, held it up.
He’d transformed her face into something of a blend between a butterfly and a fairy—blue, with pink and purple accents, the wings taking up most of her face, and delicate lines adding to the effect, along with the little plastic jewels he’d added at the end, which sparkled in the sunlight coming through the window.
“Onpa kaunis!” Varpu cried. “Se on ihana!”
Lauren gave a nod of appreciation. “Kiitos.” When the little girl held out her arms, Lauren gave her a hug. The thin arms wrapped around her neck, melting her heart. No wonder Eric loved this.
When they finished the rounds on the oncology floor, Lauren didn’t want to leave, and she said so.
“I have an idea,” Eric said as they took an elevator to the main floor. “There’s something I can’t do in a hospital that you might enjoy.”
“What?” Lauren asked, intrigued.
The elevator doors opened, and the people standing on the other side gave Bow Tie and her blue butterfly face some odd looks.
“Hyvää päivänjatkoa!” Lauren said cheerfully, knowing full well that her American accent was thick as anything.
They left the hospital, stopping only to return their visitor badges. Once outside, Lauren demanded, “Okay, what are you going to show me?”
“I need an audience first.”
“Silly me,” Lauren said, loving that the two of them looked so out of place in a metropolitan city but not caring at all. She looked around. “There’s a park a few blocks away. Would that do?”
“Especially if there are kids.”
“There might be. Definitely tourists, though.”
She led the way down Micheleninkatu, one of the busiest streets in the city. When the park appeared on their right, Eric seemed to be waiting for her to head across the grass.
“A little farther,” she said, until they reached the unpaved drive that led to the Sibelius Monument, which you could see from the street if you knew where to look, but it wasn’t obvious until they drew a little closer. When the way opened into the parking lot, the monument stood straight ahead of them. That’s when she stopped and waited for his reaction.
“Whoa,” Eric said. “What’s that?”
“It’s one of the most-visited sites in the city, a monument in honor of the most famous composer from Finland.”
“It looks like a huge set of organ pipes floating in the air. That’s so cool.”
Lauren grabbed his hand and pulled him onward. “I figured there would be people here, whether or not they were children.” Sure enough, several small groups of people were gathered around the main monument, and others took pictures at the smaller display on the side, which featured Sibelius’s likeness made of metal. A tour bus pulled in behind them, and more people got out.
She nodded toward the tourists, a group growing by the second as the tour bus unloaded. “You’re on, Bow Tie.”
Rubbing his palms together with excitement, Eric slipped into character. He walked over to the rounded granite beneath the monument and hopped onto it. He waved to get everyone’s attention—a cluster of Americans and the trio of Japanese women, among others—and he reached into his bag and pulled out something small and yellow.
He pulled it, stretched it from both ends, then stuck an end into his mouth—a balloon. In no time, it was filled and tied off. Eric twisted and turned the snakelike balloon, his fingers moving so fast that she hardly registered the shape when he tucked it under one arm and blew up a pink balloon. As if by clown magic, with a swift motion, he combined the two balloons and presented his creation—a flower, with yellow petals and a pink stem—to a little girl.
The boy beside her, likely her brother, looked immediately jealous. Bow Tie clearly expected as much, gesturing assurances to the boy. In no time, he’d blown up a red balloon and turned it into a sword. The boy ran off, joyfully swiping his sword back and forth like a charging knight.
Someone in the crowd pointed at Lauren and asked what her role was—understandably, as the butterfly makeup made her look like part of the act. On a whim, she hopped onto the stone and held out a hand for a balloon.
Eric gave her a blue one. They began blowing at the same time, but while his quickly filled up from one end to the other, she couldn’t get the slightest bit of air into hers. Worse, the pressure made her cheeks hurt. The audience laughed, as if her failure was planned, so she went along with it and made an elaborate bow, then offered to take the bag from Eric and hand him the balloons. He happily handed it over, likely glad to not have one more thing to worry about.
She selected balloons in every color she could find so he’d have a variety to choose from. Sometimes he had a child pick which color, though sometimes she had to ask Eric which balloon was which color, because some, like blue and purple, looked awfully similar until they were blown up. Who would have thought that the very basic Finnish she’d learned, including colors, would come handy so much? They were a good team.
When at last everyone who wanted a balloon creation had one, and the crowd was thinning, Eric gestured for Lauren to come over. She zipped up the plastic bag of balloons and walked over to give him the messenger bag. When she reached him, he glanced over at the sandy parking lot and the drive from the street, as if checking to see if anyone else had come. He then nodded, indicating a spot farther into the park. Going that way required they duck under the “pipes” of the monument.
“That was so cool,” she said, following him onto the grass toward a cluster of trees.
“Thanks.” He reached back and took her hand, which felt both normal and electric at the same time. The feel of his hand around hers was warm and strong. He squeezed her hand gently, and she squeezed back, liking the moment far more than she should have, especially considering how she was about to reject Carmichael’s offer. If he found out that she liked Eric at all, he’d probably be fired. No, she wouldn’t worry about that now. She hadn’t done anything wrong. What was a few hours with Eric, with balloons and children?
“I enjoy doing balloons, but I can’t do them in hospitals.”
“Why not?”
