Читать книгу Clown Girl - Monica Drake - Страница 11

4.

Chance Pays the Karmic Bill; or, Give Chance Some Peace!

I WATCHED THE COP THROUGH THE RAGGED EDGE OF THE glassless window. Guilty or innocent, I couldn’t talk to a cop. Even when I knew that up close he’d smell like cinnamon, when his hair was a halo in the sun with pale streaks gleaming and golden as a wise man’s aura. Rex Galore wouldn’t talk to cops.

Herman, ex-boyfriend-turned-landlord, he’d say House Rule: No cops. Herman had long since lost his license for too many DUIs, and was busted for possession once. Low profile was Herman’s goal. In Herman’s house, I followed his rules.

The cop spun the urine-collection funnel on two fingers. He whistled the first bars of “Happy Trails.” Another spin and the funnel whirled off the ends of his fingers, whizzed past his face and over his shoulder. “Whoa!” he said. The funnel landed like a Frisbee in the dust. Good thing it wasn’t his gun—Happy Trails indeed. The dry ground of the empty lot made dust storms on the heel of each step as he walked, picked up the funnel, and kept going. His pants were too long. The cuffs dragged at the back of his shoes. He was probably single.

I needed that funnel.

I followed the cop for a block, creeping close along the wall. He swung the funnel loosely, like a briefcase. I willed him to toss it into a Dumpster or leave it alongside a recycling bin, but he didn’t stop until he reached his cop car.

He opened the door and put the funnel in the backseat. He dropped into the front seat, heavy and hot. When he pulled away from the curb, I gave up—what else?—and walked my own direction toward Baloneytown, to my room in Herman’s house. That urine funnel lasted in my hands for less than half a day.

REX GALORE’S USED AMBULANCE WAITED IN FRONT OF Herman’s house like a faithful dog for Rex to come home. The ambulance waited the way I waited—stalled out and nearly abandoned some would say, though I tried to see it otherwise: the ambulance and I, we waited with patience.

It was an old style retro Travellall ambulance, bought cheap at the county auction. Long and low, it was the same design as a hearse only two-tone, red and white instead of black, a hearse of another color. The side windows were sandblasted with a pebbled fog in white stripes. Crosses marked the windows closer to the front. Gray plastic shades, meant to shelter a patient, were pulled now to hide piles of costumes, props, and gag tricks. That ambulance was our own little chapiteau, Rex’s and mine, our collapsible, expandable mobile circus. I patted a swiveling chrome mirror, then made my way up the side yard.

Baloneyville Co op it said, on a wooden sign over Herman’s front door. My room was the mudroom, off the kitchen in back. I opened the back door, heard a screech. The first thing I saw was the muscled, nearly naked body of Herman’s new girlfriend—Natalia, Nadia, or Italia, whatever her name was. She was doubled over and laughing, knees pressed together, ready to piss her miniskirt.

Nadia-Italia, obviously wasted, snorted and stamped a booted foot. Her thighs were thick, her laugh loud. Below the thin string of knotted halter top, her bare back was the blue cascade of a tattoo, the peacock swirl of a geisha in a kimono at a waterfall. Muscles flexed under the tattoo, under her skin, over her ribs, like shifting glaciers. The weight of her foot shook the floor, the house, my nerves.

My little black dog, Chance, ran full speed in circles around Nadia-Italia. It was a scene torn from a circus poster: The Strong Lady and the Dancing Cub! Chance scooted under the kitchen table and back out, hind legs tucked in tight for speed. Gadzooks! She slid through a pile of newspapers, knocked over her water dish, and kept running.

I said, “What’s up?” I put the plastic jug and what was left of my Green Drink on the counter. “What’s wrong with Chance?”

Nadia-Italia straightened, eyes wet with tears, she laughed that hard. She snorted again, then tossed her head like a horse. “Look who’s home. Little Miss Clown Girl, everybody’s favorite tramp.” Her hair stood up in three tufts of bleached pigtails, each pigtail tied with yellow yarn. “Our own Shirley Temple for the next Great Depression.” She kicked a juggling ball into the wall and the ball ricocheted. Chance ran at the ball, fell, slid, bounced off the wall like a juggling ball herself.

Herman sauntered in from the living room. “Your dog’s OK, just wasted. It’s my stash that’s down. I ought to charge you for the loss.”

I said, “You fed my dog pot? You’ll make her brain damaged!”

“We didn’t brain damage your dog,” Italia said. She rolled her eyes and caught her breath, one hand still tugging on the pigtail. “You’re catastrophizing, chick.”

Herman tapped the ash off a smoke into a dirty coffee cup on the kitchen counter. His skin was the amber glow of whiskey, eyes tobacco brown. Everything about him was calm. Usually, I liked his calmness. His calmness was the reason we still lived together, technically speaking.

I lunged as Chance scrambled past. I said, “Settle.” Then, “Ettle-say.” She was half-fluent in pig latin, but apparently not that half. With a second swing, I caught her. In a crouch, I held Chance by the loose skin on the back of her neck, and she went limp as roadkill. She panted like mad, her mouth split in a wide dog grin, a Hieronymus Bosch creature. “She’s fried—Herman, you let her feed my dog pot? I’m gone for one night, and my dog’s a lab experiment?”

Herman rolled a honeydew melon along the counter. He found a carving knife. “It was an accident, OK? The dog was hungry, found a bag I’d been counting out. Only a gram, two at most.” He rested his smoke on his lower lip, pushed aside old papers and empty cups on the cluttered counter, and, with a squinted eye, used both hands to push the knife through the melon. “If you’d been around to feed her, she wouldn’t have eaten the stuff,” he said.

The melon fell in two pale green halves.

I cradled my dog. “A couple grams?” When I stood, my head was last to find its way, spinning and bloodless. I put a hand to the wall for balance, propped Chance against my hip like a sack of dog food, a clown-and-canine pietà. I said, “This dog is twenty-two pounds. Enough pot, you’ll kill her.”

That dog was my sidekick, a showstopper in training. My big Chance. I couldn’t have a clown dog that drooled and stumbled, and not on command, canine mind blown, in diapers, handicapped by the herb. Her only trick then would be the famous egg-in-a-frying-pan routine, that omelet dance of a brain on drugs. I reached for the phone, hit three buttons for local information.

Herman grabbed for the phone, but I swung Chance to one side and jammed the phone against my stomach. He wrapped his arms around me and the dog, came from both directions, pressed the button on the receiver down with one big thumb. “That dog found the pot,” he said. “On her own. I’m not going to lose my income over a dog’s ganja habit.”

I wheezed under Herman’s hug. My head crackled, vision narrowed. “Poison Control isn’t the cops. It’s for health stuff. They want people to call.”

“Sure, to turn themselves in.” Herman’s breath was smoky, close to my face. His heavy breathing and sweat were all too familiar, from the old days when we were a couple, as were his hands, sticky now with the summer sweetness of honeydew melon. I dropped to my knees and made a tight ball around the phone. Under one arm I still held the drooling, zoned-out throw rug of Chance.

“Let go,” I said. “I have a right to call.”

His ponytail fell forward, over my shoulder. “Give me the phone, Nita.”

I was under a tent of Herman, breath, body, and smell. Our history. Then he let go. Stepped away. I dialed.

“Jesus,” he said and unplugged the phone at the wall. He tossed the cord. “No calls to Poison Control. And no cops. Not while you live here.” In my house. That’s what he wanted to say.

Herman had no idea how close I’d come to the cops. That gilded, golden officer, with his glass of water. “Poison Control doesn’t report to the cops,” I said again.

Out of breath, Herman reached for his cigarette and took a drag like the smoke would settle his breathing. As he exhaled with a B-flat wheeze, he said, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll fix her up.” He took another drag. “In the bathroom. There’s a brown bottle.” He waved a hand toward the hall. “Hydrogen peroxide. Two table-spoons and your Chance’ll be good as new.”

Natalia-Italia, behind him, cranked open the top on a can of sardines. She held one fish up by its tiny tail and slid the fish into her mouth. Comfort food.

Dog drool ran in a thin line over my arm to the floor. “Really?”

He nodded, and smoked like his lungs were starved, like he’d gone too long without, as though smoke were scarce and necessary. In a cloud of smoke he said, “First she’ll vomit, then she’ll be good as new. Trust me. I know how to detox, right? She just ate the stuff, like minutes ago.”

“You’ve done this before?”

He said, “My old dog ate drugs all the time. I fixed her up.”

I ran my hand over Chance’s dark hair. “Where’s that dog now?”

Natalia slid another headless, glistening bristling sardine between her lips. She leaned against Herman’s sweaty shoulder. Herman said, “She lived a long life, OK? Now go, before your dog digests the stuff. It won’t work digested—time’s wasting.” He shook Italia off.

I took Chance down the long, dark hall. Herman kept our house dark. That’s how they catch pot growers, he said, by the high electricity bills. He knew things like that, like how to do drugs and how to clean up, how to pass a urine test and how to walk a straight line. Maybe how to detox a dog.

I tripped on one of Italia’s barbells and banged an elbow and Chance against the wall. The dog didn’t flinch. Since Italia moved in, the house was crowded with free weights, sweaty spandex, and dirty towels. Instead of our old couch, her weight bench sprawled in front of the TV.

I sat Chance on the bathroom counter and tipped her head back. Her eyes rolled and showed a sliver of white at the edge like new moons. I poured hydrogen peroxide down her open throat. In seconds she arched her back, opened her mouth, and curled her long tongue. She made a prehurl urp-noise, eyes big now. “Put her in the tub,” Herman yelled from the kitchen. “Once you give her the stuff, put her in the tub.”

I picked her up like a child and carried her to the tub, her mouth working over a silent stammer. I sat on the side of the tub and ran my hand through her fur. My lovely, silky Chance, sweet dark-eyed stray. “You’re OK, baby,” I said, and hoped it was true. Her legs went stiff as a seizure; her nails trembled against the porcelain. She slid into a skittering dog dance. I steadied her with a hand to her belly.

When she opened her mouth again and heaved, her stomach grew small and her ribs barreled out, tight under the fur. What came from her mouth wasn’t liquid but white foam thick as shaving cream, dense as Fix-A-Flat, flecked with the earthy green bits of Herman’s harvest.

Between the gargle of vomit, she chomped her mouth open and closed, open and closed. The whole show was ripe for a ventriloquist act: A clown and a poodle walk into a hash bar…

Herman came from the dark hall and leaned against the bathroom door. He flipped the overhead lights off, turned a small night-light on. “That’s the way,” he said. “That’ll bring a dog down.” He took a bite from a slice of honeydew in one hand, and held a fresh cigarette in the other. Melon juice dripped off his fingers. The honeydew melon and the cigarette, the clean taste of fruit spoiled by ashes—that was exactly the way Herman had always been, why we once got together and why I broke us up; he was all contradictions.

Chance filled the tub with pot-spiked meringue, her stoner snowdrifts. I ran a hand over her shivering back. “Hang in there, sweets,” I said, quietly.

“So, Nita,” Herman said. “Where you been, anyway? Looking a little ravished.” He took a drag on his smoke, his best friend and pacifier.

I kept my eyes on shivering Chance. “I’m sure you mean ravishing.” It wasn’t Herman’s business where I slept, even when I slept at the hospital.

“Yeah, that’s right. Clown date?” Herman said.

Nadia came up behind him in the doorway, a barbell in one hand, a half-eaten banana in the other.

“Funny, I could ask you the same thing,” I said. I turned on the water to wash away white drifts of vomit. Chance scrambled to the far end of the tub. She slipped. I caught her.

A gentle world. Nice. A safety net, that’s what my baby dog and I needed.

Instead, Chance was a Christmas tree flocked in her own fake snow. Behind Herman, Nadia-Italia raised the barbell with one hand and looked over his shoulder. “Ought to save that stuff. Recycle the drugs, right?” she said.

If I had Italia’s muscles, I’d be a clown extraordinaire. I’d defeat physics by defying gravity, no doubt. Italia only used her muscles to build more muscles, until she was made of knotted lumps of stone.

My plan was to get out of there.

The clown money was my ticket out of Herman’s house and down to San Francisco, to Rex. I’d leave Baloneytown in the dust. Maybe I’d go to Clown College too. Then I’d sleep in the master bedroom, not the mudroom, right? Ta da!

House Rules would be our rules, Rex’s and mine. I’d have my own family again, not a makeshift sideshow.

When Chance slowed her vomit production to nil, I wrapped her in a towel and carried her against my shoulder like a colicky baby. On the way to my room, I stopped to plug the phone back into the wall.

“Hey—who’re you calling?” Herman said. “The dog’s good as new.”

She was droopy and wild-eyed, hardly new. “Rex,” I said. “Or is Clown College one more joint in the long arm of the law?” Like, the long rubber arm. I pushed past Herman and closed the mudroom door. The phone cord fell easily underneath. The room was hot and humid, musky with dog hair and breath; Chance panted in the summer sun. Along with the wet-dog smell, the room was ripe with the dizzying whiff of turpentine and the heavy linseed oil scent of paint that drifted from brushes kept in plastic bags.

Two of the walls in the mudroom were made of small squares of glass, floor to ceiling windows, and magnified the heat. The sun came in from behind a tree and made a shadow-puppet show of leaves and branches against the wall. I put the Green Drink and orange plastic jug on a shelf, where I had my own little altar to St. Julian the Hospitaller, patron saint of clowns, fiddlers, murderers, and pilgrims. As a part of the altar I stacked change from my pockets. I piled business cards of the men who asked me out, my audience and fan club.

In clown clothes you walk a thin tightrope, teetering between lust and fear, coulrophiles and coulrophobes. In that narrow band what I aimed for was the laughter of children. OK, more recently what I aimed for was a quick paycheck, a ticket out of Baloneytown. But I wasn’t in it for the groupies.

On the next shelf down there was a stack of library books. Your Baby, Your Body: Watch It Grow! These were books I didn’t need anymore: my body, my baby. Both had stopped growing. The books were overdue, and the library books were the only thing with a due date now.

I’d write my own book of miscarriage: What to Expect When You Expected to be Expecting, Until It All Went South. I unclipped the squirting daisy from my shirt and put the daisy on the shelf, next to the plastic jug.

Below the shelves, on the floor, was a collection of bowling shoes, loafers, painted Keds, and curled wing tips, everything in a size eleven or larger, specially chosen for clowning. And then there was one pair of Rex’s old tennis shoes, absolute boats, his real size. Rex’s shoes bent and crinkled where his toe knuckles had worn against the seam, as though Rex still stood there, invisible, feet in the shoes.

The room overflowed with drawings of Rex in charcoal on paper, in pen and ink, and in pencil. A red clay bust stared down at me from the top shelf of my doorless closet. “Honey, I’m home,” I said to the clay bust. Rex. The bust didn’t blink. Every image I made of him—drawings, paintings, and sculptures—they all had the same faint smile, like the Mona Lisa, Rex’s sly secret. I said, “Don’t be mad, I still love you,” then lifted the head, turned it upside down, pulled a sock from under the neck and tucked a day’s wages inside.

I turned on a radio to block the murmur of Herman and Italia, and sat on the edge of the bed. Chance crowded against my ribs.

I dialed the number for the clown hostel in San Francisco, where nobody ever answered.

“Yello, yello, yello, kiddos!” the answering machine sang. “We’re off to the races, but if you leave your name and number, we’ll make sure your birthday party’s a smash to remember. Ha, ha! Don’t tell the folks!” A horn honked three times, followed by the beep.

“Rex, it’s Nita,” I said into the answering machine. “Are you there? I need to hear your voice. Call me, OK?” I started to hang up, then put the phone back to my ear and added, “I’ve been in the hospital, Rex.” He’d want to know.

I picked up one of Rex’s velvet shirts, ran the fabric across my neck, and smelled the smoke of old fire tricks. Clown College was one way to move ahead, but there were others. We could join Clowns Sans Frontières—Clowns Without Borders—sworn to cheer the children in war-torn countries, practice tricks around land mines, juggle in food and medical supplies. I didn’t plan to do corporate gigs forever. No, I wanted to make a difference in the world: another clown for peace. I unbuttoned my shirt. The satin slipped from my shoulders, a silky caress. I unfastened the polka-dot bra. The flurry of photos and cards fell out: St. Julian, my Clown Union card, my parents, and Rex. Family past and future.

In the early days after Rex left, when I was still pregnant, sometimes I’d imagine that he never came back and there was a romance to the idea of abandonment, the loss of a great love. At least it was familiar terrain—I’d lost my parents young, knew the way things went. But this time, I’d raise Rex’s child. Later the kid would ask, “Mom, what was Daddy like?” I’d tap a circus poster glued to a crumbling city wall or unfold a worn program. “He was the strongest man I’ve ever met,” I’d say. “He was gorgeous, and could make me laugh…” I’d tell stories of Rex Galore until Rex was mythic.

But instead, it seemed, I’d tell Rex the story of how the baby abandoned us.

Herman and Italia laughed together in the kitchen, and the sound was like two mismatched dancers. I turned up my radio, then eased out of the striped pants, the sweaty polyester.

When we met, Rex was a model. I was a student, late for drawing class. He was already naked on a pedestal, posed on a draped white sheet. He had the knotted biceps of a gymnast, the rock-solid terrain of a dancer’s thighs. It was winter. He was pale except for a blue lined tattoo of fish that swam around one arm.

Ta da! Magic.

We were a silent movie, Rex and me, that first day, in a class full of students. His eyes shifted toward me, then away, then back. I looked down as I set up my easel. I started to draw, and looked up. Our eyes met. I dropped my charcoal and stepped forward to pick the charcoal up—stepped closer to the pedestal where Rex stood, naked. He watched as I stepped in. I looked up and at the same time bent down, and with one hand groped for the charcoal stick on the floor. Then Rex was a whole geography that loomed over me, the lines of his muscles, shape of his bones, curls in his hair, and I wanted to move to that country, that continent. He was the Man in the Moon, the Eiffel Tower, Apollo, Dionysus. I didn’t have to put Rex on a pedestal, because he was already there. Posed.

My face was hot. Something inside me tickled.

He knew I looked with more than an interest in light and shadow, contour and planes. When it was break, Rex reached for his robe. We, students, were the audience, he was the show. He pulled the belt of his robe around his hips, ran a hand over his dark hair, stepped off the pedestal, and turned to me.

Then I was part of his show. Other students pretended not to watch. I brushed charcoal from my hands. My hands were hot, and the coal stuck in a black dust.

Rex walked around the edge of my drawing board to look at my charcoal drawing of him naked—Yikes! There it was: penis, dick, cock, peter, willy, wanker, forced meats, soda jerk. Call it what you want, but it’s the hardest part of a naked man to sketch. A penis always looks too big or too fat, except for when it looks too small. Too oceanographic, a sea creature. I know, I’ve worked at it long and hard, and working at drafting a dick only makes it worse; too much study and the organ is like something from the Art of the Insane, pure fixation. Carefully done, the lines of a penis grow overly detailed, painful in their stiffness, until you’ve drawn the penis like a second figure alongside the larger body. It’s a tiny man, to stand for all men. A dick.

Hidden or blurred, it’s as though the artist is afraid of seeing something clearly, afraid to look straight on, to take the bull by the horn, as they say. I’m sure Michelangelo gave his famous David sculpture those massive, oversized hands not so much to convey the power of God working through David, but more to distract from the meager proportions of David’s sculpted dick.

Rex was tall, and more than proportionate. The first time I drew him I worked to make his penis look real: a dark cluster of charcoal lines, curling hairs, deep shadows. Obsessive. Inspired. I didn’t expect the model to step from his pedestal and see that my eyes had traced every line, curve, and fold. He nodded. Maybe he liked the way I handled his dick. Who knows? He broke through the silent movie then and said, “Take your break outside?” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his bathrobe pocket.

I didn’t smoke, but said, “Sure, OK.” He pulled on unlaced, paint-stained work boots, no socks. I followed him into the hall, downstairs, and out of the building. It was raining out and we stood under the building’s overhang, apart from other smokers. Rex stood in his bathrobe, naked underneath, as though that was normal.

“Those your pins?” he asked.

I folded my hands over my chest, felt myself blush.

He nodded toward the building, the classroom. Ah, pins! Of course. My juggling pins were in a backpack. They were too long for the pack and the silver, black, and white ends poked out the top as three round knobs.

“You juggle?” His breath was a white trail of smoke, teeth yellowed and perfectly square.

“A little. Just learning pins.” I was nervous. Pins are harder than balls—the narrow side of each pin’ll slap your wrist with every catch. I held out my arm and pulled back one striped sleeve to show where my arm was decorated with blooming black, red, and blue flowers. Each bruise marked the hit of a juggling pin.

Rex laughed. “Battle scars.” He said, “I’d be into team juggling, if you’re up for it. Fastest way to learn is with a partner.”

A date. He asked me on a juggling date! That’s when he told me his name: Rex Galore. Rex, the Clown Prince! The Princely Clown of the After-hours Club Circuit, a movement artist. Of course I’d seen the posters for his shows. Rex had the best graphics in town. He was a different breed of clown—no kids’ parties, no Food Fairs. No smiling, kowtowing, apple-polishing slapstick; Rex said slap was dead. Instead of the fool, Rex was an acrobat. He could juggle toasters and blenders, live kittens even. He could walk on stilts and ride a unicycle.

I rolled down my sleeve. “That’d be nice,” I said. “I’m Nita.”

“I know,” he said.

Did he really, or was it all bluster? It didn’t matter. By then, I was already the clown groupie, the fetishist: love.

The Buddhists say if you meet somebody and your heart pounds, your hands shake, your knees go weak, that’s not the one. When you meet your soul mate you’ll feel calm. No anxiety, no agitation. I say, the Buddhists don’t have a clue. When I met Rex I was awash in nerves, because, why not? He was everything I believed in and he came right to me. He asked me out. Why settle for less?

Back in the classroom he stepped out of the boots, ran his fingers through the length of his hair, shook off the robe, and there was his body again: all muscle. He climbed on his pedestal. My statue, my date, the sexiest man in town. An older woman student leaned over and whispered, “That’s the way to pick’em. With a preview. Now you know what you’re getting.”

As though anything were ever that easy or true.

In the mudroom, the afternoon sun came in through the windows and warmed the floor and the wall behind the bed. The room was a terrarium of dog breath, turpentine, and sweat. I sang something I’d been working on, part of a skit:

Beef Brisket

what is it?

Oh, wouldn’t you like to know…

Still naked, I unzipped the suitcase Rex used to hold costumes and let clothes spill out. Beefbrisket, just ee-ee-t it… I ran my hands through his clothes, pressed fabric to my skin. Turpentine was as good as Rex’s cologne because it was the scent of the classroom where we met. I touched a dab of turpentine to the fabric, then lay on my bed with the costumes beside me like a warm body. That cop? He was helpful, sure. And he was handsome. But a man like that was white bread next to the richness of art, and love. Rex. Chance drew close against my shoulder from the other side and for a moment, in the smell of turpentine, it was as though Rex, Chance, and I were together again, the three of us. Family.

Until Herman knocked on the door. “Hey,” he said, his voice sharp. “I smell turp from the kitchen. Clean it up, ventilate, or you’re out of here.” He pushed an unpaid phone bill under the locked door. The envelope came toward me with a shimmy and a hiss, all warning and demand.