Clown Girl (15 page)

I coughed, and choked out, “I wasn’t trying to mess with anyone. I have a bad heart.” Then I started crying all over again, feeling sorry for myself—sorry for the fist of muscle, that failing, overworked blood pump, the underappreciated overachiever.

Herman said, “Are you sick?”

Upstairs, Italia stamped the floor, stomped the hallway, and threw something that clunked and thudded down the stairs.

“Not sick, really. Not contagious, but there’s something wrong…They don’t know what yet.” I said, “Maybe a heart attack, maybe a panic attack, depending on who you ask.”

Herman didn’t offer a hand to my shoulder. No curative, restorative pat on the back. He said, “Huh. Well, here’s a house rule: no biohazards in the kitchen unless you clear it with me first, OK? But this time, we’ll grandfather the piss in. Store all the piss you want, as long as it’s clearly marked.
And
medical.”

He said, “And get rid of the rubber-chicken dealers. We’re still getting about three a day.”

I nodded.

He said, “What were you yelling about a banana? What’s up with all that?”

Italia coughed, and the cough rattled through my room. She had her head to an air vent upstairs.
Hack-too
. She spit again.

I said, “Nothing.”

Herman cocked an eyebrow. He wasn’t buying it. Through the vent, Italia coughed again.

He said, “What were you doing at Hoagies last night?”

Ah! So he’d heard that much. “Just shooting a little stick. Practicing trick shots. Clown stuff,” I said, and gave a shrug of innocence.

“Bull pucky,” Italia said.
Hack-too
. “She’s lying.” Her voice was far away and tinny, like reception on an old-time radio.

“Sweets,” Herman said to the air vent. “Go to bed. I’ll be right there.”

“She’s full of shit,” Italia said. A cloud of dust fell from the vent.

I stood up and yelled, “Stay out of it.” My bad leg winced, and my hands were still bleeding. I picked up a striped scarf and wrapped the scarf around my cuts.

Italia said, “She was out with a cop.” Her voice was small, and sharp. “Cop date,” her voice echoed in the vents. “That’s a cop’s banana.” It was like having a tiny, tattling fly on the wall.

“Cop’s banana?”

I said, “Herman, she’s crazy. Here’s the deal—I was out practicing pool shots, clown work. A cop came in the place. I had to run out. She saw me run… ”

Herman nudged the smashed banana where it lay near the window. He picked the banana up, held it by the stem, let it dangle. “I don’t need to hear the whole story,” he said. “I don’t think I want to. Just keep the cops away from the house. Don’t talk to Italia, and she won’t talk to you. We’ll be our own little demilitarized zone, OK?”

He stood up and dropped the fruit. “Your room smells like compost, Nita. Clean it up, before we get rats.”

I said, “It wasn’t a cop date. It wasn’t. I ran out—why would I run out on a date?” I turned up, toward the vent. “You saw me run,” I yelled.

Italia’s tiny tattling fly voice said, “I know what I saw.”

What had she seen?

Then the phone rang, and the ring was a new voice in our quarrel. The ring was light and loud and insistent. Herman and I froze. The phone, in the kitchen, rang again.

Herman said, “It’s like, past four in the morning. That’s probably the cops right now. Shit.”

I said, “The cops?”

He said, “Who else?”

The phone rang again. I whispered, “Why would the cops call us?”

“You tell me,” Herman said, and flashed a scowl. “Maybe you stood up a cop date. Maybe you ran out.” He peered into the dark kitchen.

“I didn’t have a cop date.” If I said it enough, I’d believe myself. And in the quiet of my unquiet mind I said a fast prayer to St. Julian, that clown-loving Hospitaller, the only one on my side.

“OK , all the noise then,” Herman said in a hushed voice. “ Breaking glass. Maybe they think it’s domestic violence.”

The phone rang again. We stood still, frozen. “Wouldn’t they just show up?”

Herman inched toward the kitchen. I tried to breathe. Herman picked up the phone with a clatter. “Hello?” He made his voice deeper than usual, as though he’d put on some kind of manly voice costume. Then he lightened up. He said, “Dude, you know what time it is?” He laughed. “Cool. No, no problem. I’ll put her on.”

Jerrod? Herman wouldn’t take that easy tone with Jerrod.

He brought the phone to my room.
Rex
, he mouthed silently. My heart picked up speed. Rex? I took the phone, and everything went into slow motion. Why was Rex calling now? Herman pointed to my little alarm clock and shook his head. I waved him off, and put the phone to my ear.

“Rex?” I said.

Herman stood listening. I turned my back on him.

Rex said, “Nita.” His voice was warm and rough and pure music. He said, “What’s up? What’s the problem? Tell me what’s going on.”

Shit. “Problem?” Maybe he’d heard already that I’d kissed a cop and was on the verge of eviction—that was a problem. I dabbed at my hand with the scarf; the scarf was soothing and cool. “Who said anything about a problem?” I could hear people in the room with him. A woman laughed, a man said something.

“I’ve got about twenty messages from you,” he said. “One says you’ve been in the hospital.”

“Ah, that,” I said, relieved. “Yeah, well…Old news. I’m OK.” I was half-sick, arms buzzing, stomach queasy. I leaned against the tipped-over dresser. “What’re you doing? Why’re you calling so late?”

Behind me Herman said, “We’ll talk, Nita. The conversation’s not over,” and he left the room.

Rex said, “We just got in from a gig. I spaced the time… You sound winded.”

I dropped the blood-dabbed scarf, sat on the floor, and collected stray Chinese BBs that lay caught in the floorboards. “We were up,” I said. “Everybody. I was talking to Herman. Hey, did you have your interview yet?” At the foot of my bed, a naked Rex in pen and ink stared back at me.

“Not yet,” he said. “They changed the date again, but it’s coming up.”

I said, “It’s good to hear your voice.” In the background, at the clown hostel everyone talked at once, then there was a noise like a blender, or a power drill.

Rex said, “So, the baby’s OK?”

Oh, no. The baby. I couldn’t tell him. Not at four in the morning, on the phone, when I was already a mess. I’d end up crying. I said, “Everything’s fine. Just hurry back.”

I chewed on a few dog hair-dusted Chinese pills, and said, “Rex, I should move down and live with you. I’m tired of Baloneytown, and I hate being apart.”

He said, “You get out much, see anybody?”

“See anybody?” What was he hinting at? I said, “I don’t do anything. I’m here. All the time. I just want to be with you.”

He said, “I mean, what’ve you been up to?”

“Up to?” I asked. “Absolutely nothing. I’m waiting for you. Say the word, and I’ll move down.”

“Babe,” he said, “we don’t have a place to live yet, not even a car to live in. I’m sleeping on a couch. Besides, maybe I won’t get into Clown College, then we won’t move here.”

We
. The whole world was in that word: Rex was still making plans for the both of us. So he hadn’t heard, he didn’t know. My life wasn’t ruined, so far.

I said, “You’ll get in. You’re amazing.” I took a deep breath.

“There’s a lot of hot clowns in the world, Nita.”

Rex was the best I’d seen. “You miss me?”

He said, “Of course, I miss you all the time.”

The sculpted head in the closet, the face at the foot of my bed, the pen and ink drawing—they were all Rex, and spoke to me through the voice on the phone. I asked, “Rex?”

“Yeah, Sniff?”

“What’s it like when you’re modeling, to be up in front of everyone, naked?”

He laughed and said, “Well, it’s my job. I tune out. Concentrate on not getting a hard-on. Why’re you asking?”

I laughed. “You mean when I’m in the class, or all the time?” I was fishing for a compliment.

He was honest instead. He said, “All the time, pretty much.”

All the time. OK. Well, that explained the elusive, enigmatic expression—my mudroom was filled with pictures of my dear Rex Galore trying not to get a hard on. He asked, “Are you doing your art? Painting at all?”

“Sketching, some.” The chicken poster. “And working with Crack and Matey.”

He said, “Corporate, commercial.”

“It’s good money.”

“That shit’ll make you sick,” he said. “Selling out, it’s no good.” I listened to the clown hostel party in the background, a woman’s voice getting higher and higher, then a bark of laughter. Art clowns, living it up, oblivious to time or money.

I said, “Rex, if I had a choice I’d rather work with you, do shows. But Crack’s work is cash. We need it.”

“That’s why they call it whoring,” he said. “Corporate baby-sitting.”

Silence on my end. Then, “It’s not whoring. And it paid for your trip.”

He said, “Listen, Sniff, just take care of yourself, OK? Do the work that makes you happy. That’s all I’m saying. In a few days or so, I’ll come back. I’ll make you right as rain, fit as a fiddle.” He hummed a few lines of the song,
fit as a fiddle and ready for love
. I saw him then, juggling, riding his unicycle. It was all in the whistle. His big hands, his hair, the whole show that was Rex Galore.

He stopped whistling to ask, “How’s the ambulance? Anybody break in?”

Our ambulance, our storage room. “It’s fine. But hurry back. It can’t sit there forever.” My Rex. I was ready for him. “And you owe me a few kisses.”

“I do?” he asked. “Am I in arrears, my fair clown?”

“Definitely. Kisses in arrears.”

“Sounds fair to me.” He laughed.

I said, “Rex?” Talking to the phone, to the ink drawing, the sculpted head.

“Yes?”

“When you come back…”

He waited.

I said, “Could we maybe do some of the old stuff? Some of the street shows, like we used to.”

“You mean with the hat, the nickels and dimes, all that?”

I said, “Yeah. With the amplifier, the old buck-and-wing. Get Chance in for a few dog tricks.”

His voice was quieter. Soft. “There’s no money in it, Sniff, and I’m not so big on getting arrested anymore…but whatever you want. When I come back, we’ll do it.”

Perfect. I didn’t need prescriptions, acupuncture, and the Chinese pills. All I needed was for Rex to come home. After we hung up, I sat on the slumped futon and listened to the house creak. Now and again I heard a moan through the heat vent. Maybe it was the normal sounds of an old house, or maybe Nadia-Italia and Herman were getting it on, a tangle of muscles and sweat and skin. I tried not to think about that as I lay awake.

The summer sun rose, orange and pink, and seeped in through the broken windows. Nadia-Italia’s voice cut in on the old-time radio of the heat vent overhead: “Sleeping tight, little clown? Well, it’s not over. I’ll get you,” she hissed, her voice coming down from above, the voice of a vengeful god. She said, “Get you like you’ve never been got before.”

14.

Bounty Hunters and Piss Thieves

THREE DAYS LATER I HANDED MY JUG OF URINE TO A giant man squashed into a tiny padded chair behind the hospital lab office desk. It had taken three days since Italia’s midnight snack to find a day for collecting urine. The giant gave the jug a shake in one of his thick paws. “You joking? This some kind of act?” His nose was a fat button in the middle of his face. The side of the jug said
Nita’s Piss
, in big black Magic Marker, with a hand-drawn Mr. Yuck face, courtesy of Nadia-Italia.

I straightened my daisy sunglasses. “That’s what they asked for. Twenty-four hours of contiguous, continuous urine.”

He shook the jug again, like a dog shaking a rabbit, then handed the jug back. “No way is that twenty-four hours. Dump that out, give it a rinse, and start again.” He said, “If that’s all you got in you, you need hydration. That’s a easy diagnosis.” He went back to his paperwork.

I gave the jug a shake. It was light, with a quiet sloshing inside. It was light even considering how much piss missed the jug when I aimed my own stream, in my funnel-less collection process. I held it up and looked at the bottom of the plastic where a seam came together—no leak. The bottom was dry.

“I swear there was more here,” I said.

The giant gave me a side glance, a short grunt. I slapped my way out of the office in my oversized Keds, the jug under my arm.

WHEN I GOT TO HERMAN’S, THERE WERE PEOPLE IN THE front yard and two women up on the porch. A tangle of black dogs swam lazy circles in the overgrown grass.

Herman was at the front door. “Listen up—we don’t need any rubber chickens,” Herman said, his voice loud. “Take your rubber-chicken playdate and piss off.” He tried to push the door closed.

A woman on the porch put her foot in the door, and held out a piece of paper.

“I got the address right here,” she said. “And I know I got the chicken.”

She slammed the chicken against the door like she was tenderizing it, with its beak open, the rubber comb trembling. She waved the paper in her other hand.

I pushed my way through the people on the steps and said, “It’s me you want. Let’s see the chicken.”

I’d recognize Plucky in a heartbeat. An indelible ink heartbeat, even.

She spun around, and the chicken flung its legs out like a kid on a merry-go-round. The woman was dressed in a pink fake Olympic tracksuit, and had her hair in two thick, matted French braids. Her skin was a mess of scars, like some kind of champion Olympic junkie. Herman let go of the door. The woman fell against Herman, and righted herself fast. A second woman in high heels and a hooker’s stained white cocktail dress pulled back against the rattling porch rail. She clutched another rubber chicken to her acne-scarred chest. Was that Plucky, held so close against the woman’s weathered skin? Would my Plucky be out with a hooker?

Herman said, “Shit.” He rubbed his shoulder.

Two men and another woman in the yard came up the stairs behind me. “I got your chicken right here,” one man said. “What’s the reward?”

“I was here first,” the Olympic user said.

It was a rubber-chicken roundup. They all had rubber chickens held out like strangled babies. Everywhere I looked I saw Plucky, but it was never really Plucky, only a cheap imitation.

“Nita,” Herman shook his head. “It’s not getting any better—it’s worse. It’s been the same story all morning.”

A man in the yard called, “Got your dog, right?”

A black mutt on a knotted rope. The dog bent his hind legs and arched his back, moving into the classic squat to leave what Jerrod called, so nicely, “litter,” in the long grass of Herman’s lawn.

Jerrod. I hadn’t talked to Jerrod since the kiss. Each patrol car that passed looked like Jerrod’s car, his silhouette inside.

I saw Jerrod everywhere, Plucky in every hand, and Chance in each roaming stray.

“Get the dogs out of here,” Herman yelled. “Off the lawn, OK?”

The lawn. The grass was summer brown and waved back and forth as though to say,
Remember me?
Down the block two more people headed our way. Each dangled the buttercup-yellow body of a rubber chicken. A black-and-white pit bull mix loped at one man’s heels.

A man stuck a chicken in my face. “So what’s the reward?” A price tag danced in the sun, stapled to the chicken’s foot. The scent of plastic drifted like the breath of Christmas packages, the wax of birthday candles.

I said, “This chicken is brand-new. You know it’s not mine.”

“It’s better, right? New’s always better.” The man smiled a chipped toothed, sour beer-breathed salesman’s smile. He was a salesman with nothing to sell but the one rubber bird. “Look, I paid three bucks for this thing. You think I need it?”

I shook him off.

“You didn’t pay for that,” the hooker barked out.

Some others had new chickens; most carried worn-out old hens, the paint faded off the wings and faces. Some weren’t even rubber. Some weren’t even chickens. And all the dogs were big, old rotties and labs mixed with collies, Danes, and who knew what. The reward seekers may have been dog owners, ready to cash in on man’s best friend.

A fine Baloneytown how-do-you-do.

I pushed my way into the house. At the door I turned back. “Everybody,” I called out. “My rubber chicken was special. It has distinguishing features.”

“Like what?” a woman yelled up.

“When I see it, that’s who gets the reward. And my dog is little, with no tail.” I slammed the door closed. Turned. Herman stood waiting. He had one hand wrapped around his arm, around the tattoo that seeped into his soft brown skin, the letters that were my name. Flecks of dried blood marked the beginning of where Nadia-Italia had drafted her own lines over the top, a camouflaging peacock as one more way to obliterate me. Somebody knocked on the door. I slid the dead bolt across it.

Herman said, “You’re pushing it, Nita. If they’re not friends or family, and they’re not here to buy herb, we don’t need opportunists hanging around.”

I leaned against the door to catch my breath. Nadia-Italia was lifting weights in front of the TV. Her breath and my breath, we matched each other, wheezing. She was plotting, I knew it. Every minute—plotting how to make good on her threat.

Herman said, “If you put up a sign offering cash in a neighborhood like this, you’re going to get answers.”

Nadia-Italia stopped lifting, sat up, took a big slug of water, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “So what is this, Take Your Urine to Work Day?” She nodded at the orange jug swinging in my shaky hand.

I said, “Every day seems to be take my piss somewhere day around here—somebody drained my jug!”

Nadia-Italia only laughed, and lay back down on her weight bench. I stepped toward her and shook the jug over her head like some kind of percussion. “You poured this out—”

“Don’t talk to her,” Herman cut in. “She didn’t touch your piss.”

Italia turned her head. One eye was squinched where her face pressed against the weight lifting bench. “Think I want your urine, Clown Girl? Had my fill, thanks and no thanks.”

“I think you’re messing with me.”

“You’re breaking a house rule. No talking to me. Now scram,” she said, smiled and went back to her bench press.