Clown Girl

by Monica Drake

  The cement floor was cool and smooth under my bare feet. I brushed a finger over the door’s ragged metal edge, where a bullet’d cut through. Maybe Jerrod shot one of the bullets. “Were you there?”

  He nodded and shrugged, then leaned the door back against the shelves. “I was working.”

  I followed him down an aisle. “So you could’ve been shot?”

  “Had my vest on. But that doesn’t protect a guy’s head, I guess. Weed whacker?” He grabbed a plastic-wrapped bundle.

  “Ah, now there’s a civilized weapon,” I said. “The great weed-whacker massacres.”

  “You’d be surprised. But think about this stuff. It’s the real deal. People’s lives, death. Yard work. Somebody could write a book about evidence and the stories behind it.” He picked up a plastic-wrapped golf club and swung, following through, then looked up toward the fluorescent lights as though watching a ball sail. “Everything turns up here.” Under an opaque sheet, there was the gleam of chrome. He pulled the plastic back to show star-shaped hubcaps glossy as the liquid roll of mercury. “Your punk neighbor Willie’d love a set of rims like that.”

  The burns on my arms hummed with the buzz of the fluorescent lights. I was tired, bleary-eyed, and fevered. I asked, “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

  “Not for hours.”

  We passed racks of stereos, a shelf of TVs, answering machines, and car parts. “California King.” He pushed one hand against a mattress that rested against the wall. “Try it out.” He dragged the mattress to an open space. The mattress hit the linoleum with a smack that echoed through the warehouse. “Go ahead. You look tired.”

  “Exhausted, even.” I bent, ran a hand along the plastic, and pressed the plastic flat to look through for the rest of the evidence of whatever crime had brought the mattress to that warehouse—bullet holes, blood. All I found were tiny blue flowers embroidered into fabric and an ordinary white tag, the old Do Not Remove Under Penalty. “What’s a mattress in for?”

  “Could be anything,” Jerrod said. “It’s a pillowtop,” like that was an explanation.

  The mattress was inviting as a hammock. I’d been up all night. Gravity called, with its own unbreakable law. I stretched out. The mattress was solid and springy, better than a hospital mattress, better than my futon. Still, it was strange to lie flat in a warehouse without a sheet or blanket, with no right place for my hands. It felt like a visit to the acupuncture clinic before the needles started. One hand was stiff, under blisters and the IV gear taped to my skin.

  It was strange to lie down in a room, a big room, with a man who wasn’t Rex.

  Jerrod sat on the mattress and bounced up and down. He said, “Look. You’re hardly moving.”

  “Rock me to sleep.” I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t notice he’d gotten up until his voice came from farther away. He said, “Maybe you need a teddy bear.”

  Something slapped me gently on the shoulder. I opened my eyes to a flash of yellow. Plucky, the rubber chicken! There she was, in all her glory, with her tattered red comb and the black indelible ink heart on her bumpy yellow chest, unmistakably herself, mine. Ours. I sat up and held Plucky in both hands.

  “Where’d you find her?”

  He shrugged, looked away, then back. “The first time I met you. On the street. Some kid dropped it, and I picked it up after you left. I tried to tell you, but you ran.”

  “I never thought I’d see her again.” I held the chicken by her slender neck. Her yellow feet dangled, and I swear her rubber beak showed an open smile like a crow on a hot day. “You get the reward.”

  He waved a hand. Laughed. “Nah. It’s nothing. And hang on—”

  He headed down an aisle.

  I sank into the mattress, curled up with Plucky, and sang her a little chicken song, all clucks and trills.

  Plucky, that souvenir, me and Rex, our first real date. Our useless rubber, a shared joke. Between clowns, a shared joke is a shared prayer. Jerrod had given me a little piece of Rex back.

  “Behind door number two…” The tools on Jerrod’s belt jostled. He jogged down the aisle and pushed a lawn mower. I sat up. He stopped in front of Plucky and me on our raft of a mattress. “Take it home.”

  “My lawn mower?” I hardly recognized it. “Don’t they need it, as evidence?”

  “In theory, but nobody’s working on the case. It’s a dead end.”

  Herman only had a charred patch for a yard. “Jerrod, I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “Sniff, trust me—take the lawn mower now, or the next time you see it some rookie cop’ll be cutting his own grass. This stuff piles up so fast, we can’t keep inventory.” He waved a hand at the endless shelves, then leaned on the mower like a man finished with a job well-done. The lawn mower tipped back, a bucking pony.

  What to confess? “I burned Herman’s yard. All the grass. It’s gone.”

  He shrugged and tapped a foot against the blade guard. “Heard a little about that…and…” He pointed at me, my charred clothes and hair. “I’m no farmer, but don’t they burn fields sometimes, to get a better crop next season?” He tipped his head sideways, half question, half answer, eyes squinted, both elbows on the mower.

  “I won’t be around for next season’s crop of yard.” I ran my blistered hand along Plucky’s rubber comb. “I just may be kicked out.”

  He stopped tapping his foot against the back of the mower. “Kicked out? That’s harsh, Sniff. Got a place lined up?”

  I shook my head.

  He pushed the lawn mower aside and said, “Well, take the mower back to the old Baloneyville Coop anyway. Maybe it’ll be your ticket back in. If not, I’ve got an extra room…”

  I shook my head again before he even finished the sentence. No way. I couldn’t live with a cop. Rex’d never come back if I roomed with an officer. He wouldn’t come within miles.

  “OK, well, listen. We’re not done yet. This is just like Christmas, right?” He let go of the lawn mower and headed down the aisle again.

  “See you later, Santa,” I said, and bounced Plucky against my toes. Her yellow legs dangled like wilted flowers. The plastic over the mattress was soot-stained now, and I pressed my blistered fingers into it. Then, from the piles of confiscated goods, there came the tap dance of toenails skittering over linoleum. Chance swam toward me. She ran down the aisle and it was a dream. My dog, in full health, coat glossy and eyes bright! Ka-zoom! She ran into my lap. My little football, she almost knocked me over. She stepped on the rubber chicken, knocked into the IV gear. I put my face to her fur.

  Then I had it all again—my firstborn chicken, my baby dog, and the lawn mower. Jerrod came down the aisle with the urine funnel in one hand, like a lucky horseshoe. He put it on his head and crouched into a duckwalk. In the other hand he had a gray metal tackle box, and held the box out as though for balance. When the funnel fell, he picked it up and tossed it Frisbee-style. It skidded across the mattress and hit the end of a shelf that rattled and reverberated like a gong. I laughed out loud for the first time in, what? Decades, ages, eons? The first time since Rex left. There was such luxury in having everything back all at once.

  “What more could I want? Thank you. It’s crazy, better than Christmas.” I ran my hand over Chance’s fur. That sweet dog. “You’ve fattened her up.”

  Jerrod sat on the mattress behind me. Then we were a family on a Sunday morning in bed—Chance, Jerrod, and I. The mattress shifted. Jerrod lifted my hair away from my neck. I didn’t turn, but I wanted to, to put my arms around Jerrod, hold on, and say thank you. How nice it all was! I stayed frozen. Cautious.

  Jerrod ran his fingers over the thin, torn cotton of my striped pants. He said, “Give me your hand.”

  “Is that a proposal?” I turned toward him, safe behind a joke.

  “Well, marriage is beyond what I had in mind.” He opened his gray tackle box. Band-Aids rustled out. “Give me your arm then. How’s that?”

  I held out an arm and couldn
’t help but smile.

  “The other one. With the IV in it.”

  He wrapped his hand around mine, held my hand the way he’d held it on the street the day I fainted. He used three fingers to hold the IV works against my skin and with his other hand gathered a corner of the tape. “Trust me,” he said.

  “You’ve done this before?”

  He ripped the tape off fast, leaving a burnt feeling, a zap of lightning, the ache of a deep bruise, hot and sudden.

  “Shit.”

  He said, “Now I have.”

  I smiled. “Just like getting a bikini wax.”

  “Really?”

  I laughed again. “How would I know? I’ve never had a bikini wax. I’m a clown, not a beauty queen.”

  Jerrod rubbed my skin until the pain quieted, then slid the IV out. Blood ran, dark and red. He pressed against the spot and blood seeped between his fingers.

  I said, “I’m disease-free.”

  “I believe it.” He kept pressure on the back of my hand.

  “And why? You barely know me.”

  With my free hand I helped him pull the backing off a Band-Aid. Between us, blood dripped onto the plastic that covered the mattress and mixed with soot. Evidence. Jerrod put a square of cotton against the back of my hand and drew the Band-Aid over it. He opened the aluminum package of a disposable damp cloth and ran the cloth over my soot-covered arms. The cloth was cool and smelled like baby oil.

  “You’re a nurse,” I said. The Band-Aid tightened when I closed my fist, then relaxed as I opened my hand again.

  “Just a little professional development training.” He ran the damp cloth down my arm, sent shivers down my spine. “I had the chicken and that white plastic horseshoe all week. Just found Chance yesterday. But I’d been looking forward to this, to returning everything.” He said, The best part of my job is when I can make somebody happy, and get it right.”

  It was true, he’d returned everything. Everything except Rex Galore. And the lost baby, the child I would’ve had with Rex. Or my parents. Nobody could bring back my family, future or past, because I was the single stalk of a failing family tree. I smelled the future the unborn baby should’ve had in the clean scent of the waterless wipe Jerrod used on my skin.

  He said, “The whole idea behind policing is about making the world better, but somehow, nine times out of ten it doesn’t work that way.”

  “This is a pretty good start,” I said. My voice broke, caught on a sadness that crept in.

  “You’re lucky the burns aren’t worse.”

  He put ointment on my blisters. His touch was light. He unrolled gauze, started at my wrist, then followed the gauze in circles. Chance followed his hands with her nose. With each turn I felt closer to Jerrod; his hands moved up my arm, and I held my breath. He dressed the wounds, but it felt more like he was undressing me; close enough to unbutton a shirt, unhook a bra, adjust my collar. I wanted to touch his knee, his jaw, his Steve McQueen ears.

  I wanted Jerrod as a medicine against the sadness.

  He wrapped my arm like a long white glove. His breath on my skin was a shoulder tap, a secret hello. I pulled back to see into his eyes. He held on to the gauze and as I pulled away the wrap tightened against my skin like a Chinese finger trap.

  He snipped the gauze with scissors. The tension released against my wrist, but stayed in my chest, my heart; I was waiting, but didn’t know what for. He tucked the end of the gauze under another loop and his fingers brushed my skin.

  “You’re hot,” he said.

  Sexy? Fevered, more like it. I said, “Jerrod, we should talk.”

  He looked up then, at me, all blue eyes, and his eyes were so clear, and at the corners, those wrinkles, he was almost laughing. He held my arm, held the gauze, and equally steadily he held my gaze. With the first aid cream and scattered bandages, we were adrift in a medical picnic, the mattress our blanket in a forest of confiscated goods. My blood on the mattress between us was like seeing the back side of my skin, my insides, a secret—Jerrod had seen me inside and out, burned and in the psych ward. And still here he was, beside me. But the blood and the burns were all circumstantial, a string of bad luck, the anomaly. I didn’t want to think that was me—a wreck, a mess, a mortal.

  I said, “This isn’t a date, you know. We still barely know each other. Right?” I added.

  He worked a metal clip into the end of the gauze to hold it together, then let go. I pulled my arm back. He said, “I know a few things about you.”

  “You know where I live, that I have a dog and I’m a clown. That’s it.”

  “And,” he said, “I know that you faint in the heat. You juggle. You’re pretty good at tying balloon things, animals, and some kind of knotted sculpture.”

  “Christ figure,” I said.

  He fit the roll of gauze back in the tin box, and stacked the Band-Aids. “What’s that?”

  “The one that looks like a knot? It’s supposed to be Christ after the deposition.” I nodded. “Crumpled on the ground. My own invention.” I flexed my arm and felt the muscles shift under the wrap.

  He said, “The one that’s like a knot, with two balloons worked together?”

  “Ah, the knot with two, that’s the Ascension. Kind of looks like an octopus. All white?”

  “The one I saw was blue and white.” The lid of his box wouldn’t close. He rearranged tubes of ointment, scissors, and packets.

  “That’d be Mary. Mary at her son’s feet.” I lay back against the mattress.

  “With the little thing at the top?” He made a corkscrew movement in the air.

  “The angel, at her shoulder? That’s the Annunciation. Completely different.”

  “OK, then. The Annunciation. That’s something I know—you tie the Annunciation in blue and white.” He muscled the box closed and tried to work the latch.

  “Anybody who’s seen my show knows that…Wouldn’t they?” I added, “If they get it.”

  “Could be a big ‘if,’” he said. “And I know you love your dog.” He moved his arm to give Chance a stroke; his cinnamon apple smell reached me through the cindered bouquet of my own skin. “That shows compassion… And I know you look great in a leotard, up for anything, and equally stunning in a fat suit. Not every woman can pull that off.”

  So that was how he saw me—as a girl in leotard paid to do anything. Crack’s words. I sat up again. He smiled, a slight and boyish smile, and ran a hand over my good arm.

  “You’ve got me wrong if you think I’m a hooker, or a stripper, or a heavily made-up chick in Lycra paid to do anything. I draw a line—I’m not in the clown gigs for the free drugs, or the groupies.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” he said. “Back up. You see me as a groupie?”

  “I don’t know… I appreciate you returning my stuff. It’s wonderful even, but I have to tell you up front, I’m not looking to date, paid or otherwise.”

  “Paid?” He got up off the mattress. “Do I have my wallet out?”

  He had something out. Is that a pistol or are you happy to see me? I held the nervous one-liner back. “Could be you’re trying to buy me with favors. All I want to do is clear the air, lay my cards out, right?”

  “Maybe you’re not used to anyone being nice.”

  I said, “Nice? I’m used to nice. I’m not an S&M clown, in it for the degradation, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “That hadn’t even crossed my mind! Sniffles, you’re making some fast assumptions—”

  “Well, that’s the world we live in. I know what people think when they see a girl in a clown suit. With me, it doesn’t apply; I’m a straight up performer, in it for the show.”

  “Jeez. I wouldn’t think you’re a hooker when you’re out there tying balloons into the Madonna and Child.”

  What could I say to that?

  “I mean, if you were tying Mary Magdalene, or a flock of sinners, then maybe…” Jerrod sat back down on the mattress. “Sniffles, I see you as a person trying to do meaningfu
l work.

  Meaningful to yourself, at least. I like your work ethic. Letting people know you’re a clown takes at least as much courage as being a cop.”

  I looked to see if he was serious. There was no hint of ridicule.

  “The way you stand up to the world, despite the clown bashings, the clown flashers…”

  “Flashers?”

  “The exhibitionists. The stalkers…” he said.

  “Stalkers?”

  “And the clown identity theft, the big-shoe fetishists…Some say it’s a fool’s game to wear a clown suit in Baloneytown, but the same folks probably think I’m a patsy to wear a uniform, to be the one sworn to keep this burg together. You’re just like this room—everything you do, it’s all evidence of who you are. You’re a risk taker, wearing your art on your sleeve the way I wear my badge.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Of course I mean it. After all the times I’ve seen you, and talked to you…But you’re right. I don’t really know you. I’ve never once seen you au naturel.”

  “Naked?”

  Jerrod said, “You could take yourself more seriously—”

  I cut in: “I do! I do! This is serious clowning. Performance.”

  He tapped the daisy glasses. “I’d say the Elton John shades aren’t the way to show it.”

  “It’s a paradox, I know, but I’m a serious clown.”

  He shook his head. “I get the feeling you’re trying to hide…” He said, “This is the first time I’ve seen your hair. I’ve never seen your face without makeup.”

  “Is that so different from other women?”

  “I don’t know if I could pick you out of a lineup.” He opened another packet from the first aid kit, and unfolded the white baby-scented towelette. “So, why’re you hiding?” He started to wipe makeup from my cheek.

  I ducked, dodged his hand. “I’m not hiding. I’m performing.” I smelled his sweetness, along with baby oil and antiseptic.