Clown Girl (8 page)

He said, “For now, lay on the table, on your back. Remove your, uh, your other shoe.” He stood up, put the clipboard aside. He didn’t give me his card, didn’t ask me out or offer his phone number. Maybe I’d headed that one off.

I lay back against the loud rattle of the paper sheet. The acupuncturist breathed out deeply as he tapped tiny needles into the crook of my hand, between my thumb and fingers. The needles didn’t hurt, but they felt like someone had tapped my funny bone, touched a nerve. It was a warm spread of pain that made me want to laugh and cringe and gag all at once—comedy and tragedy, aligned in every cell. I willed myself not to flinch. The silver gun was a pale glimmer on the shelf, tucked between chrome-topped jars of cotton balls and Band-Aids. An ambulance passed outside. The wail of the ambulance grew loud, then faded, as somebody else’s emergency moved into the distance.

The acupuncturist turned off a lamp on my side of the room and said, “I’ll leave you to rest for twenty minutes.”

Then I was alone, covered in needles, afraid to move. My heart raced. I wanted to sit up or roll over. My mouth was cottony. My heart spoke again in Morse code:
heart trouble, heart trouble, heart trouble…die or go crazy, die or go crazy…
The acupuncturist didn’t understand. It wasn’t loneliness, it was something more. I had to tell them—yes, I had heart trouble. Real trouble. I hadn’t filled out the forms right. Nitroglycerin and potassium! Where was the bottle he drank from? I needed medicines. I needed to relax, wanted a balloon, to stretch and tie an animal, twist balloon knots until I was at ease again.

My body weighed a thousand pounds, I hadn’t slept since Rex left town. In the smoke of a warm incense, I tried to quit listening to the story of my own frantic heart. I let go of the noise in the street, sirens and buses. My arms and legs and spine were heavy against the table. I felt then like two bodies, one outer and one inner, one smaller than even my bones, one large and ballooning. I was a balloon sheep, St. Sebastian of the acupuncture needles. The Virgin Mary. Skin was a membrane thin as rubber. I could see the inside of my eyelids, calm and dark, spotted with orange.

“OK, that’s it.” The acupuncturist snapped on the lamp. I twitched, suddenly awake. He pulled needles from my feet, hands, and head.

“That’s it?” I was an inflated balloon in a skin-colored casing, too empty to sit up.

“I’ve found some medicine that’ll help.” He handed me a palm-sized red box with a picture of a person’s profile on it. “It’s Chinese, to boost the system.” As he said “boost” he made a gesture like a weight lifter, like Natalia-Italia-Nadia flexing her narcissist muscle—shoulder dropped, one curled fist. He said, “Take ten at a time, up to thirty a day. Great stuff.”

I took the box, opened it, and shook out an amber jar with a cork lid sealed under heavy wax. The writing was in Chinese. “This’ll fix my leg?”

“Your leg? Ah, that. Ice it and apply heat. Back and forth. While you’re watching TV or whatever.” It was the same advice as Crack gave. He held my popgun out by the barrel and said, “Lay off the hostility. We store hostility in our hips and joints. It doesn’t do any good. Notice when you’re alienating yourself. And be glad you’re not dying. Earlier, I had a client with walking pneumonia, one collapsed lung. He may not make it. At least you’re not him, right?”

This was my prescription: empathy with boundaries, gratitude for what I had. The gun quivered in my hand. I stuck it back in my bag.

ON THE WAY HOME I SAW THE LAWN MOWER MAN PUSHING his lawn mower down the center of the empty road in his long, loping walk. He called over, “Hey, Clown Girl, ready to have your chicken-scratch lawn mowed?”

I adjusted my daisy sunglasses. “Don’t think we can do it.”

He stopped in the street. I limped forward, slow progress.

“What’d you do? Looks like you got a case of the jake leg coming on.” He watched me limp toward him in my oversized shoe, one hand on my hat. “Get the right fit on that shoe, might walk a little easier. Goddamn, how big is that sucker anyway?”

I waved a hand. “I’m fine.”

“Well then, how’bout this. How’s about you buy this mower off me. Twenty bucks, and you can mow the lawn yourself as many times as you need. It’s a good mower. I use it all day, some days.”

I knew then where he came from: For-Salesville. My head still buzzed with the hum of bees, but now I had the jar of Chinese pills deep in the pocket of my striped pants. I took a step, leaned on the cane.

He said, “Got a brand-new blade too. Cuts grass like butter.”

I said, “It looks old.”

“Sure, from back when they knew how to make a lawn mower. Won’t quit on you. Like an old Checker cab, or a Singer sewing machine.”

I hung my cane over the lawn mower’s handle. Twenty dollars. At least I’d know what I was getting—a simple thing. I didn’t care what Herman would say; I’d take my turn at the lawn, but not with the push mower while the weeds were high, while the sun was blasting, with a strained groin and the invisible hand that clutched my heart, squeezed my lungs, kept my breath shallow, and left the buzz in my brain. I pulled a twenty from the envelope stashed inside my pink shoulder bag. Clown money. Rex money.

“Nice hat,” the lawn mower man said. “Got some holes in it, though.”

I nodded, meaning,
I know
. He put the bill in his pocket and nodded back, meaning
Good-bye
.

The sidewalks were uneven and the tires on the lawn mower hard as tires on a shopping cart. The machine rattled under my hands as I pushed it home. The rattle in my hands was a larger reverberation of the hum in my head. I leaned into the mower like a crutch. The single oversized Keds spanked the asphalt.

When I got to Herman’s block, Herman and Nadia-Italia were on the couch on the porch.

Herman saw me, jumped up, and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! House rules. No gasoline, no need. We got the push mower.” He came toward me, puffing on a smoke.

I’d anticipated the resistance. Ready to negotiate, I called out, across the space between us, “I’ll use it once, get things trimmed back.”

Herman was halfway across the yard when he ducked his head and made a fast U-turn. He did a stiff-necked walk back up onto his porch.

I won the argument that easily?

The cool shadow of a car pulled up alongside me. With the deep purr of a strong racing motor, a car slowed to match my own bum-leg, rattling-lawn-mower-for-a-crutch crawl. The car’s exhaust was hot breath, breathing down my neck.

8.

Cinnamon Buns and the Angel Act

I DIDN’T LOOK AT THE CAR THAT SHADOWED ME. IN BALONEYTOWN it was better not to look: just keep moving, know where you’re going, and keep your ears open. The car rolled along beyond the fringe of my flowered sunglasses. I had my eyes on the house, was almost there. Herman, in quick retreat, made a dive for the porch, then bent to rearrange empty glasses. He consolidated ashtrays fast, like a kid whose folks had just pulled into the driveway back early from vacation. Nadia-Italia snapped into motion, tripped over the arm of the couch, and scrambled on all fours for the front door. The screen door banged closed behind her. I hefted the Snapper mower toward Herman’s broken walk. “Excuse me,” a voice said.

The blade guard snagged on the curb. My big shoe stubbed against a stack of empty fried-chicken boxes and forty-ouncers snuggled where the asphalt met the curve of cement. An electric twang cut deep into my bum hip, sent me into a flush of cool sweat. Chance, in the house, barked at the window.

“Ah, St. Julian,” I whimpered, leaned into my cane and rubbed my thigh.

“Hello?” It was a man’s voice. From the car.

Without looking, I said, “I don’t need to buy anything and don’t want any trouble. Move on.”

The man said, “You all right, Sniffles?”

I held on to my hat and looked up at the sound of my name. This was no ordinary B -town harassment. It was a cop car that shadowed me, close and quiet as a shark. And there he was—the cop, the one who whistled “Happy Trails,” who chased me from the empty lot, who cost me most of my Green Drink. Soon as I saw him I wanted to duck and run, or do a duck run, a waddle on out. I was trapped!

But he was also the cop who held my hand on the sidewalk, who saved my life the day I fainted—the day I almost became a show that couldn’t go on. Even more, he was the cop with my urine funnel. I needed that funnel.

“Sprained muscle,” I said. “Comes with the job.”

“I’d give you a ride,” he offered from the window of his purring cruiser. Our eyes met, and his were endless, blue as a Slushee, blue as windshield wiper fluid. An unnatural blue.

I looked away fast, kicked the mower’s blade cover back into place. “I’m home.” I nodded at the overgrown yard, the cluttered porch, Herman’s lopsided bungalow and the hand-painted sign nailed over the front door:
Baloneyville Co op
.

Chance kept up her bark against the front window:
Come in, come in, come in!

Herman was a human sonar machine camouflaged behind a plant, pretending not to listen.

The cop left his car running, got out, and walked over. “Let me help you with that,” he said.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “Any clown worth her greasepaint can lift her own lawn mower, sprained groin or not.”

The cop held up his hands in surrender. The sun hit his badge, his hair, his gun. I was dizzy, blinded by this man, his gear. I cleared my throat. He cleared his throat. He said, “Well, maybe you’ve been looking for me.”

Chance’s bark was a car alarm blasting behind us. Herman squinted from the shadows of the porch.
House rules
, his squint said.
No cops at the co-op.

The cop said, “Heard a rumor that somebody called the station. Said I had something she needed?”

“Wasn’t me,” I said, loud enough to broadcast to the whole neighborhood. I hung my cane over my arm and put both hands on the mower again. “No way, sir.”

The cop slid his hands near mine on the mower’s chrome push bar. His arm kissed the side of my arm and doubled the heat between us. Together we pushed the rattling mower up the walk, toward the driveway. He giggled. The cop giggled like a boy, at a private joke.

I said, “What’s on your mind, officer?”

“This caller, she said I had cinnamon buns.”

His cloud of spice sweetened the air as he said it, and I blushed. Sweat was a finger-tickle down my spine, a shiver in the heat. I said, “No, that you
smell
like cinnamon buns. Like cinnamon, I mean. I don’t know about your buns—or
the
buns, I mean, whoever’s buns.”

The cop’s left hand brushed my right where our hands wrapped around the mower’s handle. No wedding ring. His laugh burst again, and I saw the lines around his eyes like rays drawn around a child’s sun. He said, “So you know about the cinnamon, but it wasn’t you who called the precinct, huh? Funny, that.”

I pushed my hat farther down onto my head. “I just happened to notice the cinnamon. Independently, I mean. Just now.”

“Just happened to notice the cinnamon, you did?”

“Not that I
noticed
, noticed.” I said. “I mean, not how you make it sound. I…”

His eyes were bright, laughing, looking at me like I was the most important thing on earth. I couldn’t help but smile back. Our hands were hot and close. I had to break away.

“I’ve got it, OK?” I tugged the mower to shake him off. The cop let go, still smiling. I gave it another yank, and stumbled on my big shoe. “Crumb!” I said. My bum leg squawked and with one arm tangled in my pink bag of tricks, I fell. Tall grass rustled around me, a laugh track. I shook the cane off and flailed against the grass, against the laughing, like a clown drowning in a silent joke. The mower righted itself with its own weight like a bowling pin.

The cop offered a hand. “Practicing for the rodeo?”

“I’m not a rodeo clown,” I said, with all the dignity I could muster. My sunglasses slid low, my hat sat cocked. I dropped the pink bag. It was no small trick to get up. I fought the tall grass, straightened the hat, and took the copper’s hand in mine.

He came forward and pulled me up. He stepped on the rubber toe of my big shoe as I pulled my foot away, and he stumbled back, then pulled me forward with his momentum; the world was a fast blur, all sun and color. My heartbeat doubled. I smacked against his chest, hat knocked askew; the sunglasses smashed into the bridge of my nose and I knocked loose his shoulder mike. “Whoa, Nelly!” he said.

My hands pressed into the grosgrain nylon of the uniform shirt, and I felt the spread of his pecs underneath. His body was hot. He held my arms a moment too long, long enough for me to feel the strength in those hands, like a decision well made. He let go, dropped his hands, reeled his shoulder mike back in by the cord, and reattached it to his chest. “That’s quite the big sneaker you’ve got there.”

Herman? The big sneak, who slunk along the porch and peered out between planters?

The cop tapped the empty toe on my mismatched size fifteen with the tip of his heavy cop shoe. “Tricky.” He picked up my cane and handed it back to me.

My breath was fast and shallow, the world aswim. The squirting daisy tacked to my hip was crumpled as used tissue, plastic petals bent. Dry grass clung to my clothes and hair. I hoisted my pink bag onto my shoulder. “You like the shoes? If you want to buy a pair, I got another set just like ’em inside. Opposite foot, is all.” I pointed and crossed my hands at the wrist to show the switched feet. The joke felt right, familiar terrain in the midst of an unnerving situation.

Herman hissed a quick, “Shit,” like I’d given out a family secret.

The cop looked toward the sound of Herman’s whisper just as Herman hid behind a narrow, broken bookshelf. He had a couple of shaving nicks on his throat. “Baloneyville Coop,” he said, pointing to Herman’s sign over the porch.

“That’s Co-op,” I said.

The cop squinted at the sign. He surveyed the place. Maybe we were a coop, trapped, and this cop was a hawk with an eye for detail. He said, “While we’re at it—last I checked this was Baloneytown, not ’ ville.’”

He turned back, wiped a hand across his forehead. “I suspected you might be the one looking for me, because as it happens, I do have something of yours.”

“Something of mine?” So he still had the urine funnel.

“Your halo,” he said, and drew an invisible circle in the air over his head. “You left it at those old buildings.”

The Ruins. I said, “Ah! About that, I wasn’t…I didn’t spray that spray paint. I found the can and—”

“No worries. You do an angel act?”

My fingers played over the tips of the tall grasses that tapped against my thighs. “Sure, sure.” I could do an angel act. “A clown angel.” I said. “That’s why I need the, ah, halo back. Got it with you, perhaps?” I tapped my fingertips together, hands like spiders. Nervous.

He shook his head. The sun shimmied in his hair as though over a field of wheat. He said, “Didn’t expect to see you. But I can bring it by here anytime.” He jerked a thumb at the house.

I said a fast, “No no no. ” No cops at the door. “It’s all right, we’ll work it out. I’ll find you, OK? At the station.”

“Or I could give you a ride, we could get it right now.” His prowler purred in the road, the door open and ready. The console was a cluttered rack of cop gear. A stack of papers filled the passenger’s seat. A shotgun gave a dark smile from another rack bolted to the floor. Heat waves rose off the white hood like fumes off gasoline. His office.

I couldn’t get in that office with Herman watching. I said, “Let me give you my card. “We’ll work something out later.” I turned away and reached a hand into the sweat of my bra.

“Funny place for an angel to keep her résumé,” the cop said.

I found the worn edge of one damp clown card and pulled it out, stuck to St Julian, that old Hospitaller. I tucked St. Julian back in my bra, turned and leaned in close to hand the cop the card. Should I turn myself in, as the one who’d noticed his cinnamon smell?

I paused, debated. Weighed the options:
Eenie meenie miney moe…
Quietly as possible, I said, “Actually…OK. Maybe I was the one looking for you.”

“I knew it was you!” He said it loud, and busted into an easy laugh.

I jumped, gave a glance at Herman, at the street, then at the cop again.
If he hollers let him go
. “Listen, it’s been nice talking, but I’ve got work to do.” I pushed the mower. A stiff wheel caught on a sharp stick, a tangle of weeds in the overgrown lawn. It rolled with a stutter. I used both hands.

“Let me help,” he said. He kicked away the weeds, and reached for the mower to guide it back out on the sidewalk. “You starting it up, or putting it in the garage?”

What he called a garage was a wooden shed that leaned against the fence alongside the driveway. The shed was triple-pad-locked. Inside were items that might, to a cop, call for an explanation, if only because they needed no explanation. Herman-of-the-porch sucked in his breath, and froze.

With all four of our hands and the cane together on the chrome bar, the cop helped me push the mower up the drive to the shed. He said, “Peace officers aren’t just about crime. We’re here to make the neighborhood a friendlier place.”

I watched his jaw move. He said, “In lots of ways.”

I asked, “Anybody ever say you look like Steve McQueen?”

His blue eyes turned to me. His skin shifted into the lines of a smile. “The ears?” He nodded. “I’ve got McQueen’s ears.”

“More than that,” I said. “The eyes, that color. The upper lip. The hair…”

“Like in
Bullitt
?” he said, hopeful, and gave a McQueen eyebrow raise, a crease to his forehead.

I said, “More like in
Love with the Proper Stranger
.”

“Ah! I was hoping for
Bullitt
.” And he laughed his loud, boyish laugh again. His laugh made me laugh. “I’m Jerrod.” He held out his hand. I shook it. His skin was rough, his palm warm. Safe. We were side by side on the lawn mower handle, and as we shook we jostled into each other, and again I felt dizzy. It was all so close, I had to get out of there. On King’s Row, this cop’s hand had been the only thing between me and panic, me and despair. Back then, I’d been ready to tell him anything.

Our neighbor came out of his house across the street, in a faded blue bathrobe, and called over, “Make sure he read you your rights.”

“What are my rights?” I whispered.

“You got the right to sleep it off, Willie,” Jerrod hollered back.

“I got my rights to watch too, Jerry. You know that much.” The neighbor, William, sat on the porch, spectator to our spectacle.

“Jerry?” I said, “You know him?”

Jerrod nodded. “Like a flu I can’t shake. Sat side by side in second grade.” More quietly he said, “Now a petty criminal. I know ’em all. This part of town, they watch like I’m on TV.”

“I know the feeling,” I said.

“Yeah, I bet you do. Look,” he said. “Every window.”

A glance at the houses showed what he meant: In every front window the curtain was pulled away from the edge, or parted at the center. Some blinds were wide open with a face looking out. Others were closed, with a telltale gap.

“Let me give you this,” he said. He handed me his card. Officer Jerrod Evans, DPSST # 502210, North Precinct. “Listen, whenever you want to pick up your halo, just give a call. Maybe, if you wanted, we could get a bite to eat, or a cup of coffee? You could tell me about your life onstage, the Baloneyville Co-op.”

Behind me, Chance still spoke in her furious dog language:
Fuck, fuck, fuck. What are you doing?
I took the card, and slid the card up my sleeve.

“I could show you a few tricks of my own,” he said.

Herman, behind Jerrod, gave me the slit-throat signal, the curtain call. A finger drawn across his Adam’s apple, eyes big and bulging:
Cut. Scene’s over. Now
. Herman and our neighbor William—big men, tough guys, rendered powerless by Jerrod’s creased uniform, the badge and gun.

I was in the spotlight, sharing it with Jerrod. Did I like standing next to that kind of power? I wasn’t sure. But the power was there. Who else could leave a good car idling in Baloneytown? Nobody but a high-ranking gangster or a cop. Jerrod had the keys. The position.

He ignored the neighbors, the whole street of peepers, and asked, “You got a key for that garage? We could put this thing away.”

And get us put away, the whole house, sent up for Herman’s operation.

“I’d need to a…to…” I tried to imagine whatever script Herman would want me to follow. “To see a search warrant,” I said.