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Authors: Monica Drake; Chuck Palahniuk

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Clown Girl (7 page)

BOOK: Clown Girl
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“Shit, don’t I know it,” Crack said. “Either a polyester suit or a thong and platforms.”

None of us worked for minimum wage anymore. As clowns, as long as work came in, we were paid in stacks of twenties. Cash on the spot was Crack’s rule. After another night’s pay, I’d be that much closer to Rex again, that much closer to building, or rebuilding, the family I didn’t have.

Our assignment was to wait huddled in a narrow white hallway, outside some corporate office cocktail party, until we heard the antique stylings of “The Entertainer,” electronically remixed. At least it wasn’t “Send in the Clowns,” impossible to dance to. We dropped our pink bags in a corner.

“When the player piano starts, that’s our cue, see?” Crack said. “Matey, you’ll go first. Bust out your best Chaplin waddle. We’ll be right behind you. One at a time we all fall down, get up, circle back, and exit. Strike fast, no garnish, got it?”

“Got it, Boss,” Matey said, and crouched near the door. She was good at falls. Before the clown gigs she worked grocery stores for insurance money, pulling what they call Slip and Falls in damp aisles, taking out injury claims.

“Walk and fall? That’s it?” I said.

Crack pulled a cigar from her suit-coat pocket. Twirled it in her fingers. “Listen, Sniff, let’s keep this one simple as our clientele. They get what they asked for.”

We came between appetizers and the entrée as an elaborate dinner bell, a fancy signal to corporate employee-guests: move from drinks to the dining hall. Soon enough, the music started, then a strobe light cut in. Crack didn’t say there’d be a strobe light. Anybody can do Chaplin in a strobe, but the things make me sick.

Matey took off, feet splayed and cane swinging. Crack followed Matey, with me a ways behind. We waddled like penguins while the flickering strobe made us into a stop-action film.

More than that, the strobe made me queasy. It was like being hit in the head.

Matey smacked into the back of a chair and stepped on the crossbar. The chair flipped backward under her foot. Matey sailed forward over the top. She was in the air, diving, cane flailing out to the side. On the way down she rolled into a somersault, all in the agitated, panicked heartbeat of the strobe. In that light the world was a fragmented place—a hand to a mouth, a spilled drink, a turned head—everyone diced into bits of existence.

Crack hit the chair next, shin against its side. She fell into Matey and sent them both into a tumble.

I saw the chair and was almost there, knew I had to step on the chair, trip, find a way to make it look both real and cartoon. But as I penguin-walked in the strobe, the chair flashed off and on, and the light was disorienting—was the chair underfoot, or a mile away? My own body looked wrong in that light; my hand wrapped around the cane was a monkey’s paw. I was dizzy, my head sang with the hum of bees, and the party-store bowler was a tourniquet. My cane swung like a broken windshield wiper.

I couldn’t think, couldn’t decide whether to go over the top of the chair or send myself backward. I put my right foot on the back of the chair to go over the top, but the chair slid and I slid too in my slick, mismatched wing tips. My legs splayed. I went down hard, a hot snap, a rubber band breaking. My left knee twisted and I sat on the floor—no rolls, just a grimace and the splits.

Somersaults are funny. Tumbling is funny. Pratfalls, straight back, are pure comedy. But the forward splits? I was a cheerleader. A Chaplin cheerleader.

I had to get up funny. Could I even get up?

Crack and Matey circled toward the exit, then disappeared out the swinging door. Guests followed behind me, gawky and excited in the disco lights, pasty-faced,tipsy and tired. A woman tripped on my splayed leg. Goldfish fell from her hand, swimming out of her mouth as she laughed. I worked my wing tip through the chair railing and tried to stand. I wanted the chair to throw me into a somersault, but then my oversized flatfoot really was stuck, and the chair was a ski on ice, no traction on the hotel carpet.

I tried to stand, went down again, and caught myself on one knee. The chair was a cage on my foot. I wrestled the chair, and both armpits ripped in my undersized coat. The handle of my cane caught my ankle. I tugged on the cane, jerked it loose, and knocked a tray of salmon rings from a caterer’s hand.
Voilà
! Salmon-ring confetti. The caterer’s face was ugly in the strobe, his mouth a stuttering gash. I slid toward the exit, waved my cane at the party, felt the sweat hot on my palms as I pushed myself forward with my free hand and scooted along like a jalopy in strobe headlights, the cane a dragging muffler.

A drunk woman in a clinging dress doubled over and wiped her eyes, cramped with laughter lost under the music. A man patted her back, face contorted with his own party laugh. I hit the stretch of linoleum between the carpet and the swinging exit door and the ski of a chair slid fast out in front. I pushed the door open with the chair on my foot, and got out.

Matey and Crack were in the hall, where the walls, ceiling, and floor were all painted primer white, gleaming and bright as heaven. Matey had her jacket off, a cigarette in her mouth.

I groaned and said, “Kept ’em in stitches. And speaking of stitches, think I need a few.” Behind me the music was loud, then muffled, then loud, then muffled, as the door swung open and closed and open again, riding its own momentum.

Matey said, “After that dance you’ll wake up with a sore bum in the morning, and I don’t mean the man of the hour.”

Crack glowered. “What was all that?” She said, “When I said no garnish, I meant don’t blow it and don’t waste time.”

I threw the cane aside, bent my leg, and reached through the chair to pull off my shoe, free my foot. The torn pits of my coat tore again. A dishwasher leaned against the wall, apron soaked. He watched me where I sat on the floor massaging my thigh.

I said, “Show’s over, friend. Nothing to see.”

He lifted one tattooed arm, pressed his thumb and index finger to his lips, took a shadow toke, then raised his eyebrows and nodded, Yes?

A date? No way. My groin had the hot burn of a torn ligament, not lust. But I remembered my pledge to the Clown Code. I was still in costume. My head spun, face hot, and the dishwasher wanted a show. I fake-smiled back, winked, and shook my head in a demure deferral, clown style.

He made a sad face, mouth drawn down, then had another idea. He held his hands around his mouth and breathed between them, an invitation to sniff glue. When I shook my head again, he pulled a card from his pocket and handed it to me:
Jack. Dishwasher
. Two words and a phone number.

The swinging doors cut open, the music blared loud again, and a tall man stepped into the hallway. He straightened his lapel. “Excellent, excellent work,” he said. “Bravo,” and he gave a little clap and a bow. His smile was the high gloss of newly whitened teeth. When he bowed toward me, he put out his hand. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

Still on the floor, I reached up. The man’s handshake was quick and tight.

“That’s Sniffles,” Crack said. “Our latest joke.”

“Fantabulous,” he said. His hair was a sea of blond waves.

The dishwasher wiped a hand on his greasy apron, then held his hand out. I hesitated before I shook his hand too, like I was doing him a favor. His skin was waterlogged as a kid in the bath.

The man in the tux hitched up his pants and crouched down. “You were really something out there, you know? Perfect comic timing. Need help with that?”

He pointed to my leg, my hands where I massaged my thigh. Before I could answer, he dug strong fingers into the muscles and tendons of my leg. I shivered when he found a tender spot.

“Did that hurt?” he asked.

“In a sort of good way,” I said. It hurt like a massage, releasing the muscles.

Matey swung her arms, clapped her hands together, and said, “Hey! That’s my girl!”

The dishwasher, uneasy, moved foot to foot, side to side. The man in the tux laughed.

I said, “No, I didn’t mean it like that.” I tried to brush his hands away.

Crack, behind him, cleared her throat. “Got something for us?” she said. “We don’t have time to hobnob unless it’s on the clock.”

“Ah, yes, yes.” He stood up fast, knees crackling, reached into an inside pocket in his jacket, and pulled out an envelope. “Before we wrap this up, tell me, does Sniffles here ever do any, ah, how shall we say? Any personal negotiation. Private parties? One-on-one.”

I said, “No.”

Crack said, “Depends what you’re asking and what’s the wages.”

“I don’t do one-on-one,” I said.

Matey chimed in: “I’m here.” She put her feet on the two opposite walls of the hallway and took a few steps up, then jumped down, feet smacking the floor. “Let’s negotiate.”

Mr. Tux turned to me. “I’d make it worth your while.” He pulled out a business card.

I said, “I’ ve seen you before, haven’t I?”

His smile was a flat line that curled up on one side. His cheeks were high and ruddy. “Maybe you have. Maybe I’ve been to a few of your shows. Maybe I’m your biggest fan.”

That was all I needed to hear. A coulrophile.

“I’m the boss of this gig,” Crack said, and cut him short. “I’ll talk to her, we’ll work something out.”

She took the card. He pulled out another. When he held the second card toward me, I took it.

The dishwasher started counting out bills from his pocket. Maybe ten bucks total. Crack tipped her head at him. “Put your bubble gum back in your purse and dangle, Mr. Clean. No doing.” She turned her back on him and pointed to the man in the tux. “Pay up on this job, we’ll see what comes next.”

He laid the envelope in her open hand. “It’s all there, plus a little extra.” He winked again.

The dishwasher, damp pants sagging, disappeared through a door that let out a cloud of steam.

“Thank you,” the man said, to me. “You made my evening.” He flashed his teeth, crinkled the sunburned skin on his newly shaven cheeks, then turned and strode back out into what passed for a party in the corporate world.

Crack counted out the cash, dropped a wad of bills at my side. She said, “That’s just the way of it. I do all the grunt work, I’m the brains of the operation, and old Valentino goes for the jinx. Go figure.”

“The figure is the answer,” Matey said. “Which one was Valentino? That dishwasher was hot.”

“Hot like a steamin’ pile of greasy dishes,” Crack said.

I said, “At least the dishwasher’s humble. That other guy creeps me out.”

“Sure. All high artistes are creeped out by anyone with cash, but that’s your neurosis, not mine. And not his.” Crack counted her share of the money one more time.

“Not mine!” Matey chimed in, and raised her hand like a prize student.

To me, Crack said, “We know you’re the toast of Baloneytown, living the high artiste life, but that don’t make you too good for practice.”

I said, “I practice all the time. I did a good job with the penguin waddle.”

She said, “Do you see me injured? Is Matey on the floor with a pulled crotch?”

“It was that strobe light. They mess with my head …”

“Listen, Hot Stuff. Ice the leg, then put heat on it. Back and forth like that. And next time, get in a few warm-up stretches.” She took off her bowler hat, pulled off the wig, and shook out her short hair. “I’m not just channeling Marcus Welby here. I’m giving you the first aid rap because our next big deal is right around the corner, see? A publicity shot. It costs money. We’ll only do it once, so be on time and go all out. And, I already took your share out a your cut.”

Behind her, Matey said, “In this racket, you want to be the grand artiste, start with a sex change. No joke.”

A fine tip. I said, “That’s one act I’m not interested in.”

“Well, Grimaldi the Great, then you’ll have to work with the boobs, not against ’em. And don’t think your sisters here didn’t have higher aspirations once too,” Crack said. We didn’t start as sellouts, money found us. I’m glad it did. See you at the shoot.” She headed down the long white hall.

“Pssst,” Matey said, in a stage whisper, and knocked a hand against her head. “Here’s a clue: Women wear makeup, right? But a man in face paint, people see aahh-rt. You and me, we top out at birthday gigs, and that hurts more than anything I’m doing now. That’s the meat o’ the matter.” She tipped her Chaplin hat. Was it true? Was there a latex ceiling, a made-up makeup finish line?

She said, “Careful getting home.”

“Careful getting up, more like it,” I said.

Matey added, “Call the Tux. Easy cash. For reals.”

At the end of the hall, Crack picked up one of the pink nylon bags. Matey grabbed hers. Then there was only my bag, far away, against the shine of the bare white linoleum. Rex, my bag, family, fame and Kafka—why was everything so out of reach?

My leg was a torn rubber band. The swarm of bees drifted toward the center of my head. I used the chair to stand, then sat on the chair and rubbed a thumb along the heart meridian on the inside of my wrist, the acupuncture spot, the baby-heart-spot center. That spot that says: Get back to who you were meant to be.

Crack and her jobs—that was my whole plan, the way to get back to who I was meant to be: Rex’s girl, me and Rex performing together, delivering art, not commerce.

Matey pushed the exit door open. Crack called, over her shoulder, “Practice up if you want to stay with us, Sniffster. Otherwise, kaputsky. We’ll cut you loose, understand?”

7.

Hostility Shoots from the Hip

THE NEXT DAY, I COULDN’T DO A PRATFALL IF MY ASS DEPENDED on it. The pulled muscle or tendon or rubber band in my groin from the Chaplin gig had stiffened with pain overnight. When I tried to start my day’s urine collection, no way could I sustain a high crouch over the jug and hold the jug over the toilet. I leaned against the wall. Urine ran sideways. Piss on the toilet seat. Piss on my hand. Piss on the whole homework assignment. I gave up, tossed the jug aside, sat on the wet seat, and let the urine flow.

I needed that funnel back from the cop.

I had the phone, on its long cord, in the bathroom with me to call Rex. Instead, I shook piddle flecks off my hand. Dialed.

“Information,” a voice said, in a way that hovered between statement and question.

I said, “Hello there, Information. Could you give me the non-emergency cop number? I mean, the police. Baloneytown precinct.”

When I got through to the cops another woman answered, and I realized I didn’t have a name for the cop I wanted. Not that I
wanted
to talk to a cop at all, but I needed my gear. I said, “I don’t know his name.”

“Sounds like he a real good friend of yours, right?” she said.

“He’s got sort of light brown, golden hair.”

“That’s a few of’em around here.” I heard her gum crack. “The ones that got hair.”

“His pants hang too long?” I offered.

She said, “Well, I guess that might narrow it. I’ll keep an eye out. A cop that needs a tailor.”

I said, “Listen, he’s got something of mine I need to get back. He’s not too tall. He has freckles on his arms. He smells like cinnamon and Sunday breakfast.” It was all I could come up with.

“Honey, we’re not writing personal ads. If you don’t got a name or a badge number, I can’t help you.”
Click.

 

GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED ACUPUNCTURE WAS UPSTAIRS in an old house, over a needle exchange, part of a methadone program at the ragged edge of Baloneytown.
DownSide Up: Sharp-Shooters Rehab Day Treatment Center
, a sign said.
Clean Up With Our Services Before We Attend Yours
.

Treatment in the clinic was dirt cheap. “More if you can, free if you can’t” was the motto, and as far as I could tell the government didn’t even ask what it paid for—that’s how little they wanted to know.

I wanted a quick fix for my busted crotch, an easy cure, cheap and fast, that would send me back out ready to hit the pavement and tie balloons, juggle pins, make lots of funny.

The clinic’s wooden porch steps were steeped in sun-hot piss. I took a breath, straightened my big straw hat, then started in. Each step up, my inner thigh burned. W. C. Fields, a tiny devil’s voice in my ear, slurred, “Suffering sciatica.” I pushed my cane against the stairs one at a time, lifted my bum leg, and pulled on the shaky wooden handrail. I wore one regular-sized, black Keds tennis shoe and one size fifteen clown shoe turned orthopedic; it helped my hip to have a wider base so my foot could spread inside. That big shoe made sense out on the flatlands of Baloneytown’s sidewalks, but once I reached the clinic, the rubber toe of the clown-sized Keds caught against the lip of every wooden step.

Inside, the needle exchange wasn’t open yet. Men and women sat in orange plastic chairs around what had once been a living room. A man with a purple welt on his cheek cleaned his teeth with his driver’s license. A pale girl in a black dress tweaked her nose ring. Over her head, a giant sign said,
No Drugs, No Weapons, No Money Exchanged. No Loitering, No Cell Phones, No Beepers. No Alcohol, No Hand Signals, No Whistling. No Profanity, No Name Calling, No Racial Slurs. No Remaining on Premises Once Your Business is Over. If You Are Visibly Under the Influence of Controlled Substances, You Will Be Removed. ABSOLUTELY NO HORSEPLAY WHATSOEVER
.

The waiting room was decorated with flyers of runaways, missing wives, and men who slipped the guard at outpatient centers.
Needs medication
, every flyer claimed. A picture of a red-haired girl said across the bottom,
We love you. We won’t lock you up
. Below that, a second hand had scrawled,
Yeah, rite, Suckah
. A few plaques said,
In Loving Memory of
.

There was a stack of pamphlets,
From Here to Paternity: Surviving Early Fatherhood
, and a glossy poster that read,
Be Up-Beat, Not Beat-Up!
with a picture of three happy women, heads tipped back, perfect makeup.
A Friendly Message from BAPP: Baloneytown Abuse Prevention Program
.

I stole a tack from the BAPP poster and added my own cry for help:
Missing, Rubber Chicken. Plucky.

When I reached the front of the line, the receptionist gave me a clipboard with a form to fill out and a greasy pen dug from a cup on her desk. I sat lightly along the front of an orange chair, bad leg out in front. On the form, where it asked,
Employment
, I put
Clown
. Then I crossed that off. I wrote
Entertainer
. Crossed that off. Wrote
Performing Artist
.

I marked: No
Hepatitis,
No
AIDS,
No
Heavy Bruising.
No
Asthma
or
Glaucoma
or
Diabetes.
No
Jaundice,
No
Needle Sharing
. Heart Trouble? I tailored my answer:
Maybe
.

Pregnant
? I marked No. Newly not pregnant. ABSOLUTELY NOT PREGNANT WHATSOEVER.

I handed in the forms and sat back down. I dropped my pink prop bag on the floor, leaned my cane against the wall, put my hands in the loose pockets of my pants, and ran my fingers over clown toys: three miniature juggling balls, a tube of skin-safe glue, a wad of balloons. I pulled an orange balloon from my pocket, gave it a quick stretch, and started to blow. A nervous habit.

I let the orange balloon deflate against my palm in a squeaking fart sound.

“What’s that?” the receptionist asked. She pointed at the big sign on the wall:
No whistling
. I tucked the balloon back in my pocket and sat on my hands, palms flat against the sticky orange chair, until the receptionist called my name.

 

THE ACUPUNCTURIST WAS RAIL THIN. HIS HAIR BRUSHED the sloped ceiling of the attic room. He ran a hand through his hair, then knocked his head against the ceiling and his hair ruffled forward again. “Criminy,” he said, under his breath, and adjusted his tiny glasses. He held the papers I’d just filled out downstairs. There was a rice paper screen set up in the middle of the room, where the ceiling was highest. A portable air conditioner hummed. The acupuncturist looked at my papers, frowned, and said, “Tell me, what’s the problem, exactly?” His eyes were sad, forehead weathered by concern. He was a bleeding heart ready to save the world, the kind that gravitated to the sad streets of Baloneytown like litter blowing through a parking lot.

I’d written
groin
in the space on the form under “problem.” He already had that. I said, “Well, the bigger problem is money; I can’t afford treatment and can’t afford to miss work.”

He had his pen ready, a page blank. He sat on a tall stool, put his right ankle on top of his left knee, and rested his clipboard against his calf. He wore soft leather loafers with comfy brown socks. He looked ready to play a little folk guitar.

I sat on the paper-covered table and grabbed the tendon at the inside of my thigh. “I fell,” I said. “I’ve strained something.” I grabbed my thigh again and sucked in my breath.

He said, “Let me see your tongue.”

“My tongue?”

He nodded and shook his hair out of his eyes. The logic lost me. I opened my mouth, held my tongue out. The acupuncturist leaned in close, then leaned back and wrote on a blank page. He leaned close again, tipped his head sideways, and peered into my mouth like a spelunker ready to spelunk.

When it’d gone on too long, I ran my tongue over my dry teeth and said, “The problem’s in my leg, at my hip.”

He furrowed his brow, looked down, and wrote like a man deep in inspiration, a fast flurry of scribbles. “How do you sleep?”

“Little.”

“How ’s your hearing? Do your ears ring at night?”

I said again, “It’s a leg muscle bothering me.”

“Healing one part of the system involves the system as a whole. Now tell me, do you eat regularly?”

I said, “I don’t even like the smell of food. I’ve been known to faint at the first whiff of Wiggly Fries.” My brain started to hum in tune with the drone of the air conditioner.

“Smelling is ingesting, it’s all the same.” He held a flashlight to my eyes, one at a time, and moved the flashlight back and forth. “Do you know your neighbors? Are you part of a community?”

“I know some neighbors.” I knew the Baloneytown criminals, and now had made the acquaintance of a neighborhood cop, that grown-up golden boy. The acupuncturist jiggled one knee, shook his leg and shook the clipboard as he read. “How does it feel to be…”—he looked at the forms—“…a performance artist?”

“A clown,” I said. “And it’s tops, in fact. I wouldn’t do anything else. But lately I can’t think. My head is fuzzy. I’ve been wiped out, like a weak crop in a bad year.”

He held my wrist and took my pulse. “You’re exhausted.” He wrote a note on his chart, then took my pulse again from the same wrist but a different place. “Ah! Interesting.” He shifted his fingers back and forth, fretwork on his folk guitar, and counted under his breath. His fingers were warm, finding the beat of my heart.

He wrote more notes and nodded. “Perfect. You have a perfect example of what we call Heart and Kidney out of Balance Syndrome.”

“My leg?” I said.

“A person has six pulses. On you, the heart pulse is the strongest. The kidney pulse is almost nonexistent. The heart is fire, the kidneys water. With too much fire,” he said, and used one long-fingered hand to gesture like a plant unfolding in fast motion, “and not enough water,”—his other hand made a sort of pooling movement below—“your system will become disrupted. Heart and Kidney out of Balance Syndrome.” He held both hands up, as though announcing a beautiful thing. “Your heart and kidneys aren’t communicating.”

I said, “Well, I do have heart trouble.”

He took out a stethoscope and pressed the cold metal disk to the skin of my back. “Your heart sounds OK. Let me see your tongue again.”

I opened my mouth, held my tongue out.

“Yes. Exactly!” he said, and pointed with one long pinkie at my tongue. “You have a narrow split down the center.” He wrote in his notes, then looked at me. He said, “I do too.” He opened his mouth and showed me his tongue and I saw a line down the middle of it but didn’t know enough to tell if the line was particularly narrow.

Softly, he said, “People like us, we’re genetically predisposed toward stress on the heart.” He seemed happy to learn we had something in common, our ailing hearts.

“Well, that’s cold comfort. Least I’ve got genetic relations.”

He smiled. “It’s not heart disease. Maybe you’re lonely.”

Lonely? I wasn’t lonely. I had Rex. But here it was—another clown fetishist. In a minute he’d hand me a card. Ask me out. Try the old line about acupuncture for a long-playing, extended dance version of the massive orgasm.

I’d heard it before.

“Have you experienced a loss?” He looked into my eyes. “Abandonment issues, perhaps, or childhood trauma?”

Ah, the sensitive shtick. In through the heart pulse. I wouldn’t fall for it. “No.” But even as I said it, I touched one hand to the photos tucked in my bra.

His eyes followed my hand, he flushed, wrinkled his nose, and tapped his tiny glasses. “Sometimes, we bury our feelings…” He looked at me like I was a sad clown on worn velvet, then offered his own half smile.

He offered me pity. Did I need his pity? I said, “I’m so far from lonely, it’s not even funny,” and reached into my pink bag for a pack of exploding gum, the rubber ham sandwich, or any trick to take the focus off me. My hand wrapped around the silver gun. I pulled it out—
voilà
!

The acupuncturist jumped back and threw up his arms. He hiccuped, hit his head against the sloped roof, and tripped into a wastebasket. “Take a deep breath, don’t do anything rash, your whole future’s ahead of you, let’s talk, we’re here for you,” he said, as though reciting an office training memo on emergency situations.

I pulled the trigger. The acupuncturist gave a yipe. A flag shot out. “Bang,” it said on the flag.

He looked at the flag, frowned, and straightened his glasses with one shaking hand. “That,” he said, as he eased his way back toward me, “was not even funny. That’s the definition of not funny.” His glasses were still crooked. His flyaway hair flew.

I twirled the gun to roll the flag, then pushed the flag back into the barrel with the heel of my hand. “It’s a muzzle loader.”

He rubbed a hand on the back of his skull. “Totally toxic.” He put a hand to his heart, reached up to a shelf for a brown bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a healthy swig.

It was my turn to look with pity.

“Being a little melodramatic, aren’t you?” I said. “It doesn’t even look like a real gun. Note the ‘Made in China’ sticker?”

He held a hand out in front of himself, palm flat against the air like a mime marking the hard edge of a box, and his fingers trembled. When he put the bottle down, he reached for the gun. He wrapped trembling fingers around the barrel, took the gun from me gently, and put it on the counter. He leaned in close. “You know, I should call the police,” he said quietly.

“The police?” My first thought was a secret one, curious, hopeful, and nervous:
Mr. Cinnamon?

The acupuncturist’s breath was the bite of alcohol, the musk of herbs. “We don’t tolerate hostility in the clinic.”

I said, “It’s a classic joke, old-time clown stuff. You must’ve never been to the circus.”

“I’ll let it go this time,” he said and took another sip off the bottle. Licked his thin, pale lips. “But you need to find a little help with that. You only alienate yourself.” His arms were scrawny, and for a minute I sensed acupuncture needles maybe weren’t his only needle friends.

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