by Monica Drake
“Which what?” Crack reached for her makeup kit. “Bottom or fool?” She pulled out a tiny mirror and put another layer of mascara on her giant fake lashes. She used a special oversized mascara brush for her oversized lashes, carried in a big tube.
“No. Trixie, Twinkie, or Bubbles?” I asked. “Who, in the show?”
She shrugged. “What ever you want, Sugar. Makes no diff to me. A name’s just another kind of package. Marketing. Starts the day you’re born.”
11.
The Tidy Side of Hell; or, Tonics, Soporifics, and Palliatives
ONE LONE LOBSTER BEAT A CLAW AGAINST THE GLASS wall of a small tank. The lobster’s narrow, empty world was perched over a frozen sea; blue Styrofoam tray after tray of Dungeness crab, leggy purple squid, and bundled smelt rested on chipped ice below. Tick, tick. The lobster knocked, as though to flag down help. Across the aisle what had once been a herd of grass-fed cattle now lay silent in bloody pools of iced New York strip steak, flank steak, ribs, tongues, and burger. Edible flowers bloomed on a small green stand, a miniature field ready for harvest. Tap tap. Tap. Tap tap. A lobster SOS. Get me out of this dead heaven. I knew the feeling.
Luxury FoodSmart was a warehouse-sized nightmare of money just beyond the borders of Baloneytown, where gentrification spilled over from King’s Row. The building used to house the YMCA. Now, at Luxury FoodSmart, even a two-pack of hard-boiled eggs cost half my day’s spending allowance. I kept my big-frame squirting sunglasses on as a shield against overly enthusiastic fluorescent lights and wore my wig riding low. I tapped my cane against the polished linoleum, sucked on Chinese BBs like a PEZ addict, and slunk farther into the store.
Leonardo da Vinci said water was the most destructive force on the planet. Water corrodes metal and eats through rock. But da Vinci forgot about the corrosive power of cash; when money came into a neighborhood, the old buildings toppled. Even people disappeared.
I headed fast for the corner marked Holistic Pharmacy Lounge. There, beyond the organic loofahs and prescription bubble bath, one wall was lined with amber and blue vials that glistened like jewels. Tinctures. Cures.
After four hours of Crack’s photo shoot, I needed any cure I could find. My nerves were rattled. My mouth tasted like metal. The fear that Chance would never come back tugged at my throat like I wanted to cry. The Chinese pills wouldn’t last forever. I couldn’t afford to end up back in the hospital, and I’d already blown the day’s urine collection—hadn’t been able to hold my piss until I got back home. I needed a panacea, a remedy for the ache in my gut, in my heart, in my head. There had to be a cure for the broken heart of a lost dog, a miscarriage, and a missing rubber chicken. The cure for a life where family slid away, where nobody stayed and nobody lived long enough. The family tree was a hedge, a shrub, a lone weed. The only cure I knew was Rex, but Rex wasn’t around. I needed a cure for that more than anything.
The first tincture I picked up, Go-To Formula Forty-Nine, promised to cure depression, mania, indigestion, indecisiveness, stubbornness, weak circulation, confusion, and skin abrasions. Sounded good to me. Without thinking twice, I slid the vial into the wide sleeve of my clown shirt. Ta da! Magic; the vial disappeared. I’d fight the neighborhood’s financial erosion. My own little battle was an economic cure: shoplifting.
Clowns have an edge as shoplifters. Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, works in our favor; people don’t look when they don’t want to be involved, to be burdened with invisible objects, imitated in public, or made to hold a clown’s leg, a slippery fish, an exploding hat.
It was completely against the Clown Code of Ethics to use performance as a weapon: I will use my art only for the greater good, to create happiness, never to inflict harm. But yes, I did it. In clown gear, I stole.
There were liver cleansers, colon cleansers, and gallstone removers. Valerian, passionflower, and hops promised to relax muscles, heart muscle included. I slid a vial of valerian into my other sleeve.
My heart beat faster with each tincture. A cashier read a magazine behind a shiny Courtesy Counter. She licked a finger, turned a page. I reached for a vial of Chaste Tree Berry tonic.
A low voice said, “Find everything you need?”
I whipped my head around and looked up from under the off-kilter wig. A man in a cream-of-chicken-yellow button-down oxford swung his hands. Tim, his name tag said. How may I help you?
I put a hand to my brow and turned to survey the wall of tinctures, from the Pacific aaawll the way to the Atlantic. I whistled long and loud, and turned back to Tim. I wiped the back of my hand across my brow and nodded. Yes. Yes, I found everything I needed, and then some! I gave the A-OK sign, thumb to forefinger, but Tim didn’t run. Instead, Tim’s eyes turned to my pink bag. I wrapped my hands around the handle of an imaginary shopping cart and lurched off, down the tincture row. Tim stood there a moment longer, watched my act, straightened a Miracle Cream display, and moved on.
I slid a vial of licorice concentrate in my bag.
Even with Tim gone, the tincture aisle was getting hot. I had to work fast. No time to research. Pau D’Arco was for blood; I liked the name—Brazilian, maybe. Where in this country would we say D’Arco? Cleavers was a good name too. I slid a vial of each into my bag and could hardly breathe, loaded down with tiny tinctures, stolen promises. I reached toward a winking golden bottle.
A hand tapped my shoulder. Tim? The blue cuff of a uniform, golden hair on the wrist. The cops! Lightning danced at the edge of my vision; the ceiling fell and my heart squeezed. Arrested? Again, so soon! When I turned and saw his face, for a minute I was relieved—at least it was the cop I knew, Mr. Magic, charming and helpful. But still, it was a cop! I was glad to see him, but didn’t want him to see me. Distance.
“You shop in your clown costume?” Jerrod asked. I could barely hear his words over the knock of my heart, the brain buzz. He held a banana pointed at me like a gun. In his other hand he had a plastic bag with two kiwis inside. It was the law enforcement weaponry of some peace-loving island paradise.
“It’s a free country.” I spoke too fast: “You shop in your cop costume.” I shouldn’t’ve said cop. Police. That’s the word. I shouldn’t’ve said anything. I felt the weight of stolen valerian slide inside my big sleeve. I added, “Right?” and smiled harder, wider. “How are you?”
“I’m all right. Thanks for asking. And no. First of all, it’s a uniform, not a costume, and I don’t usually shop in my uniform. I’m supposed to be off duty, actually, but said I’d answer this one last call. Heard over the car radio they needed somebody to diffuse a potential situation.” He waved the banana toward the front door.
“A situation?” I looked around. The place was calm. No alarms, no gunmen. Only the racket of my beating heart. “What’s going on?” My heartbeat confessed to thievery: he knows, he knows, he knows…
He shrugged. A tendon in his neck flickered to the surface, then disappeared again. “Let’s just say, I’ll give you a police escort out this time, Sniffles.”
“Me?” I reached for an empty shopping cart as though to prove my good intentions, to tether myself to the world of shoppers. The cart slid away, I slipped, and the world was untethered, off-kilter.
“The call said there was a clown scaring customers… I thought it might be you.”
I righted myself, grabbed the cart again, and reined it in. “They called on me? Who did?” My heart murmured, Run, run, run away.
“This is a family place. The clown getup makes people nervous.”
“Family? What do you mean—clowns are family fun.”
Jerrod gave me a doubtful eye. He scratched his head with the banana and took a deep breath. I took a breath too, and felt the walls expand for a moment, giving me precious room to breathe. He said, “I’ll tell you the deal—it’s more the whole John Wayne Gacy thing.” He slid the banana in the plastic bag alongside the two kiwis.
Shit. Gacy. “That guy ruined the gig for a lot of clowns. His act fostered the whole prejudi
ce… If one Asian woman commits a crime, does that bar Asian women from grocery stores?”
Jerrod said, “Well, save that question for debate team. Here, they just don’t want kids to see it.”
I said, “Gacy was more of an ice-cream man with a clown suit for the holidays—”
Jerrod cut in: “You can finish the shopping if it’s fast, I’ll escort you, then we need to move on.”
The shopping. Stealing, more like it. Stealing and tapping into a collective coulrophobia, using the worst of the clown for personal gain. I threw a box of Mediterranean Bath Salts in the basket, to look like I was shopping. Mineralized Tension Relief Mined from the Gaza Strip. If I left with Jerrod, would he arrest me outside?
“You don’t live far from here. I could give you a ride home.”
That cop car again. No way could I pull up in a cop car. The vial in my sleeve was cool against my skin where it leaned against my pulse point and spoke to the beat of my heart. My heartbeat whispered, Stolen lawn mower, stolen tinctures…save yourself.
I had to keep the upper hand.
“Nice package.” I pointed. He looked down at his yellow banana in the plastic bag. The two soft, hairy kiwis rolled to either side like wrinkled testicles.
“What?” he said. “It’s a snack.” But he blushed, a quick red flush along his jawline. A shy cop.
I had him off guard and kept my advantage. I said, “I’ve seen bigger bananas.”
He said, “Listen, Sniffles, enough. You’re lucky I heard the call. Somebody else might not be so nice about the whole setup. Now let’s go. I’m doing this as a favor, and I’ve had a long day.”
Another favor. His second favor for me.
“And because you’ve got a good heart,” he said. He smiled then, and pointed to his own cheek.
I mirrored his move, touched my face. My fingers came away tinted with red and white paint. It was the heart drawn in makeup, from the photo shoot. I said, “Thanks. I forgot about that.”
“It’s very becoming. But it’s not OK to wear the face paint in a place like this. It’s like wearing a mask in a bank, makes people worry.”
I followed him to the front of the store. At the checkout line, he threw his fruit on the scale. My chest was tight, my throat a knot. The cashier rang Jerrod’s fruit up. Jerrod peeled dollars from a wallet. I pushed my cart into an aisle.
“You buying that stuff?” he asked.
“Gaza Strip Bubble Bath?” I shook my head. “I’m not that kind of girl—not a Gaza Stripper,” I said. The valerian rattled in my sleeve.
On our way out, we passed Tim, the clerk. Tim stacked boxes of organic pesto-laced mac’n’ cheese. Two boxes for ten bucks. Talk about robbery! He said a fast, “Thanks, officer.”
Jerrod tipped his head back, a quick nod. The electric doors slid open.
Outside I said, “I’ll take it from here.” I couldn’t get in his car again.
On the outer wall of Luxury FoodSmart they had a public billboard. Wellness and Community Building, it said across the top. I pulled a Missing Chance flyer from my pink bag, then pulled out the heavy weight of the staple gun. Jerrod waited, watched. I hung the flyer.
“This isn’t illegal, is it?” I said. “I’m sure you’ve got bigger prison fish to fry.”
He said, “You lost your dog? Shoot, Sniff. When did that happen?”
“Well, actually, it was when you sentenced me to an afternoon in the Ruins. While I was busy pretending to be booked at the station, after you arrested me.” I said, “My roommates let her out.”
“Jeez, sorry to hear it.” He sounded sincere. He leaned in over my shoulder, and his cinnamon scent wrapped around me. He studied the drawing. “You know, I think I saw her. Right around here…I saw a little black dog, earlier today, that made me think of you.”
“You saw her?” I turned, fast. My cane spun out and knocked into his shin. My big clown sneakers kissed the toes of his shoes, our feet tangled. “Where? When? You sure?”
“Just a couple blocks down,” he said. “I’m not sure it was her, but maybe.”
It was a possible sign anyway that she was alive. My dog, my little clown pup in training! I followed Jerrod’s lead, though stayed a few steps behind, and as we walked I let the valerian slide down my sleeve into my palm. I shook the gotu kola down the other side and dropped it into my deep pants pocket.
Clink. The gotu kola hit another vial, already in my pocket, and the clink was to me the sound of a tiny jail cell door falling closed. Clink! You’re a thief! We passed Jerrod’s parked prowler.
Jerrod said, “It’s walking distance. She ran when I came near her. Just like somebody else I know, now that I think about it.” He turned to me. I palmed a vial fast.
Up ahead was the blue sign of Hoagies and Stogies, a cigar bar sub shop. It was no kind of place to eat, because the meat and cheese and bread all tasted like stale cigar smoke. But they sold cheap beer.
He said, “It’s hard to arrest a dog.”
“Arrest?” The last thing I needed was to pay bail on my dog. “What sort of charges?”
“Vagrancy,” he said without hesitation. Then he looked at me. “It’s a joke.”
A cop joke. I didn’t even know cops made jokes.
Hoagies and Stogies had dark, smoked glass in the windows and tiny purple lights strung up above. Anybody could be in there and could look out those dark windows and see me with Jerrod, sauntering alongside an officer. I took a few steps to the left.
Jerrod veered in close, stayed at my side. I pulled nylon hair in front of my face.
He said, “Just another block. Down an alley.”
The whole thing made me jumpy. Anticipation, nerves, the unknown of it. I tapped my cane along the ground, then balanced it over one shoulder. Jerrod’s eyes were on an empty lot. I unscrewed the lid on the valerian vial and kept my hand down low.
“Right about here,” he said. The lot was the backside of a few weather-beaten, world-weary houses. I called Chance’s name. Jerrod cupped a hand around his mouth, called and scanned the empty lots. The banana and kiwis, sweating in their plastic bag, swung from his other hand at his hip. While Jerrod wasn’t looking I hid under the tent of my own fake hair and shook drops of valerian onto the end of my tongue.
Valerian tastes like the earth, like dirt, a bittersweet promise mixed in alcohol. It was early evening. The air was soft and skin temperature, with a quiet wind gentle as kisses, a peach sky striped with hazy blue.
“You can see OK, in those glasses?” he asked.
“Of course.” The huge sunglasses, ringed with plastic flowers. I smiled, reached up and pressed behind the earpiece. Water shot from the center in a wide arc. “Keeps people away.”
He didn’t laugh, but only nodded. “Is that the goal?” he asked.
“What?”
“To keep people away?”
I nodded, and said, “Just what the eye doctor ordered.” I pressed the back of the glasses again, but this time, instead of a wide arc, the water trailed into a trickle and hit my cheek. I said, “Really, there’s no goal. It’s a job. I’m a clown.”
He called for Chance again and kept walking. I did the same. There was no sign of her. Finally, I had to ask, “Was my dog really even out here? I mean, did you see a dog at all?”
“Of course she was here,” he said. “What do you think, I’d lie about it?”
Through my glasses, his skin was tinted soft blue in the evening light. “Maybe, to get me out of the store? So I’d follow you.” I watched his face for a sign, a way to know if he’d made the story up.
“You’re funny,” he said. He didn’t smile.
“I’m supposed to be funny.” But I wasn’t joking.
“Not that kind of funny,” he said. “You’re funny because you don’t trust me. You act like I’m the Green River Killer or something. If I wanted you out of the store, I have other tools. Things we learn in the academy, right? Not subterfuge.” He said, “I let you off easy the other day, over
the lawn mower thing. I did everything wrong just to let you off on that one. I walked you out nicely today, no big scene. Now I’m out here calling for your lost dog. Is anybody else helping you out?”
In the empty lot, a Styrofoam cup caught in the wind bumped along the rough ground.
He said, “We got a call today that clowns were congregating in the basement of the Lucky Strike. Suspicious activity. That whole place is bad news. All I could think was that maybe you were there.”
I said, “It was our publicity—”
“Stop! Don’t tell me.” He put his hands up fast, as though to shield himself from my bad ideas. “I took the report but didn’t follow up because I don’t want to know. I keep seeing you in all the wrong places. I like to see you—but not that way, not there, because I’m paid to be in the wrong places and I don’t know what you’re doing there, I just hope you’re not paid.”
He said, “You know, I’ve got a good feeling about you, but maybe I’ve been wrong the whole time. Maybe you stole that lawn mower. Maybe you crashed on that sidewalk high on drugs. Maybe you’re just like everyone else in Baloneytown. For all I know, you steal lawn mowers to support a habit.”
A habit. The tinctures clinked in my bag and in my pockets. I winced and ran my fingers over vials like prayer beads.
He said, “I grew up in Baloneytown. My folks are still here. My old grade school friends. I’ve seen it—I’ve got plenty of reasons to be cynical, if that’s what I wanted.”
He was right. I didn’t look at him. After a minute I said, “So, why are you out here? ”
“ Well, when you say you lost your dog, I want to help find her. That’s my job, and it’s the way I’m made.” He gestured, with a swing of the bag of kiwis and the banana, at the rubble of the lot. The sun had started to sink toward the roof of a house with a blue tarp tied to it. The tarp flapped in the breeze.
“I’ve never turned my back on Baloneytown yet. There’s good people here, and some troubled folks too, but I’d like to help out, you and everybody else.” He said, “ Mostly, I’d like to see that my instincts are right, that you’re someone I can respect, not suspect—that there’s at least one good clown in this burg.”
