Clown Girl (9 page)

“Sheesh! Nobody trusts an officer anymore.”

“I trust you,” I said. “I just trust that you might be working.”

Herman cursed again, under his breath. Apparently, I had the script wrong. With a rattle and crash, he dove over the side railing, ponytail flying. Jerrod whipped his head around, reached for his gun.

I touched his sleeve. “A cat. Spooked by my dog.” Chance beat against the glass. A flowerpot spun and fell over the rail into weeds.

“Sounded like a pretty big cat.” He looked down the block.

“I better go look for him. Herman gets testy when he hasn’t been fed. Listen, we keep the mower out here, in the yard.” I pushed the mower to the side of the shed. “Right here. It’s done.”

Jerrod looked at me. “Leave it outside, it’ll get stolen. Even an old lawn mower. I had a call the other day, about two blocks down from here, somebody had their lawn mower…stolen…part of a big break-in…”

He said, “As a matter of fact,” and he crouched down. He took the side of the lawn mower in his hands and tipped it up. His mouth tightened. His eyes shifted in that quiet way, narrowed into a new sadness.

I said, “We never have any trouble. Been keeping it out here for ages—”

“How long have you had this?”

I said, “Oh, since, at least…”

Before I could finish my own short lie he said, “You couldn’t have had this mower more than a day, Sniffles. Look, right here.” He tipped the lawn mower over on the grass to show me a metal tag. “Robertson,” it said on the tag. Below that was a row of numbers freehand etched into the metal.

“Sniff Robertson,” I said. “Part of the clan?”

He cut me off: “I filled out the incident report myself.”

I stepped back and said, “I bought that lawn mower today, used. About ten minutes ago. Right before you showed up. It wasn’t mine before today.” How fake and weak the truth sounded! Nervous, I asked, “I bought stolen goods?”

He rose, brushed grass from his knees. He took a tiny notebook from a pocket. “And from whom did you say you bought this mower?”

Ah! The syntax, the notebook—my heart jumped. The bees buzzed against my brain. “A man, on the street. I didn’t get a name.”

“Have you seen him in the vicinity prior?”

“Sure. Maybe a week ago? He had…a different mower with him then. Shit. He wanted to mow my yard.”

“Can you give me a description?” His pen was poised.

“About my height,” I started. “Sweaty, with a boil on his lip. Soaked.”

“A sweaty man with a boil…” Jerrod moved slowly as he put his notebook away. He pulled out my clown card and read the card again, like the card might hold a clue. He cleared his throat. Across the way, on his porch, our neighbor sipped a Yoo-Hoo. Jerrod looked at me, his eyes pale blue, quiet and sad. He said, “I hate to do this to you, Sniffles.”

“What?”

“I wish I had another option.”

“What?”

He said, “It’s policy. It’s got to be enforced. It’s not my place to make selective decisions.”

“Let’s not be indiscriminate,” I said. “Policy?”

He said, “I need you to take a little ride, with me.”

That ride again! “Later, OK? Another time.” I was ready to run, to limp off. But where to go when I was already home?

“Those numbers on the side of your mower?” he said. “That’s probable cause. Stolen goods.”

“What?” I said, “I’m being arrested?” I tugged on my sun hat, straightened my glasses.

He didn’t look me in the eye. He said, “Unfortunately, you’re our only suspect to date in a burglary. As an officer, it’s my job to maintain the safety of people and property in the area. In short, yes. I need to take you down to the station, take your fingerprints and file a statement.”

I said, “A statement? Do I even have a statement? Everything’s coming out a question?” The bees doubled the size of their hive in my brain. I cleared my throat. “I don’t know anything about this mower. It’s barely mine, I just got it, you can see the yard. Does this look like we’ve owned a lawn mower?” I waved a hand over the crop of weeds and the tiny, fizzy bugs that danced like the spray on new champagne.

I said, “I don’t want to go to the station, I can’t do that. My heart.” I wouldn’t last a minute in the slammer!

Jerrod said, “Sniffles, I can’t make autonomous decisions… We have to treat all situations equally. You have the right to remain silent,” he said.

My rights! A clown doesn’t have any rights. Silent? Ha. That’s already the lay of the land in clown work. The bees were frantic; my sight collapsed around itself. My heart thumped. Chance barked at the window. I covered my ears.

“I don’t have to handcuff you,” he said. “If you’ll just get in the car, we’ll go down to the precinct and get this cleared up.”

Cuffs? I dropped my hands to my sides and whispered, “Handcuff me. Please. It’ll look better.”

“Really?”

“Please. Cuffs on,” I said. I turned around, threw myself against the shed, and slapped my hands together. The shed shook under my weight, the boards loose. Something crashed inside.

“Hey! No rough stuff,” the neighbor, William, said. He waved the Yoo-Hoo bottle and rose up from his plastic chair. “I’m witness here.”

I waited for the cuffs. When nothing happened, I turned my head to one side and looked at Jerrod. Jerrod turned his Steve McQueen blue eyes to the neighbor in a glare. Muscles rippled along his jaw.

“Citizen review,” the neighbor mumbled, dropped back into his chair, then fumbled around like he’d lost his Yoo-Hoo cap.

Jerrod reached a hand to my shoulder and walked me to the car; I stayed out ahead of him. “Cuffs,” I whispered. “Please. This looks a little too friendly.”

“OK, OK. Whatever you want. I’m sorry about this,” he said, and he snapped the handcuffs on. Two silver bracelets. Tiny teeth inside. Even in the heat, the metal felt cold. Final.

“Is that too tight?” Jerrod’s breath tickled the side of my ear.

“Just fine,” I said.

He helped me settle in the backseat. Then he walked up the driveway, got the lawn mower, and pushed the mower back down to the car. The car bounced as he popped the trunk and struggled to bungee-cord the Snapper in.

Jerrod threw my cane in back with me, then closed the door again. Through the grill that separated us, I could see the back of his neck and the short hair there. I searched for his eyes in the rearview.

“I didn’t steal it,” I said, one more time, “for the record.”

We drove in silence past Baloneytown’s lineup of hookers and johns. Every other hooker leaned forward to get a better look into the cop car, to see who was in the crook’s seat. I stared into lipsticked lips and open rabbit-fur coats too hot for the weather. Every one was in costume—high heels and tiny shorts, old dresses and tall hair. I caught my reflection in the window: a sorry old sun hat, Elton John shades. My costume. I wanted to laugh and cry and most of all just keep breathing. We drove past cars marked
For Sale
, and bicycles, mattresses, couches, cardboard boxes all
For Sale
. There were even a few optimistic realtor signs, like anyone ever bought into the burg.

I said, “Out of all the deals in For-Salesville, I had to pick a hot one.”

Jerrod mumbled, “Tell me about it.”

“What’s that mean?” Any conversation would be better than none.

He didn’t answer.

We passed the same girl twice, on the side of the road in her greasy silver dress. Then we passed the same stack of tires for sale. The same worn-out old house with a dog chained to the realtor’s post. Finally Jerrod took a right where before he’d gone left. We headed down Bleak Street, then Bleaker Street, then Bleakest, toward the Ruins.

He turned onto Joad, then the short, unpaved stretch of Prosper, then onto Bleakest again, in a circle.

I said, “What, you’re paid by the mileage?”

After too long, Jerrod pulled over in back of the buildings. He sat there with the car idling. Voices squawked on the radio. He cracked his knuckles.

I was handcuffed in the back of a cop car, where the doors didn’t open. We were in a deserted part of town. I barely knew the guy. He was a cop with a boy’s laugh and a man’s gun. He had all the cards. The guns, the asps, the keys. I watched the back of his neck, and wondered if Jerrod had ever beaten anybody up. Maybe he’d clubbed a man with his nightstick. That’s what the tools were for, right? Could he have pepper-sprayed protestors, cracked a head with an asp, shocked a perp, maybe even shot somebody with his gun? For all I knew, Jerrod was a murderer. But he was a man who laughed like a boy.

He got out and opened the back door. He held a ring of keys in his hand. “Get out. And turn around.”

I did. Turned in the empty lot. My legs were weak.

His voice was steady. “The thing is, the lawn mower’s part of a bigger break-in. There’s a procedure I have to follow and not following it could cost me my job. What I’m doing right now, it’s a punishable offense in my line of work.” He unlocked the handcuffs. I heard the key in the lock, felt the cuffs drop away.

He said, “What I should do is follow the path of probable cause. I should read you your rights, search your person, cut the locks on that garage, go into the coop and search it top to bottom. I could corral your boyfriend there hiding on the porch and check out his story. Whoever else you’ve got living in the coop. Chances are, they’d be in the car, riding along beside you now. Those are all things I should do. But I won’t.”

I shook out my wrists. Like air rising in a balloon, blood coursed hot back into the acupuncture points, the baby-heart-spot center in the middle of the inside of my wrists. The suicide slash place.

“Sniffles, I’m letting you off. I don’t think you stole this lawn mower, though I don’t have evidence to the contrary. I don’t think you’re the thief. I’d be wasting my time if I took you in, wrote you up.”

He said, “I’ll save you from a record. This time.”

I wanted to pee, needed my jug. The sun was so bright it was an insult, a slap against the walls of the Ruins. I said, “I don’t know anything about where that lawn mower came from…”

He held up a hand, like a traffic cop directing me to stop. “Listen. I don’t want trouble. I’m going to say I found the mower in an alley. Easy enough.” He said, “ Now do me a favor. Lay low for a while. Pretend like I took you in. Can you do that?” He said, “What with everybody watching back there, I had no choice but to arrest you. I’ve arrested your neighbor for less, plenty often.”

I stretched my arms over my head to feel my own freedom. My breathing grew deeper. The Ruins were mine. “How can I thank you?”

He said, “Just don’t let on that I let you go. Hang out here for a reasonable length of time. Tell anybody you can that I took your fingerprints, your statement, and that I might be in touch.”

“Will do,” I said. My shoulders ached. I stretched one, then the other.

“I mean it. You could get me fired. And don’t buy goods off the street.” He got back in the car, then tossed me the bamboo cane. I picked it up out of the dust.

“One thing,” I said as I straightened.

He waited.

“That guy on the porch? He’s not my boyfriend. For what it matters.”

Jerrod looked at me without answering.

“That’s all,” I said.

He put the car in gear. The car rocked and lurched as he drove over broken cement. The tires of his cruiser kicked up a cloud of the dry ground.

“Hey, wait.” I ran behind the car, with my limp and my bum-leg lope. Jerrod kept going, across the empty lot. He stopped before he pulled into the road and looked both ways twice, even though it was an empty side street. A law abider. I caught up to him and tapped on his window. He pushed a button inside. The window slid down.

“How long?” I asked. “How long is a reasonable length of time?”

He watched me with those sad, discouraged Steve McQueen baby blues. “A movie and a cup of coffee,” he said. He shook his head. “About that long. No longer.” Then he powered up the window and pulled away.

9.

Lost Chance

EARLY EVENING, I LIMPED HOME FROM THE RUINS. THE air was golden and dusty, the sun an orange balloon floating over the peeling, patched roofs of Baloneytown. A pack of Krumpers on a corner lot gave me a nod, like I was a distant relation. It was a generous move, because I could barely walk, while they were dancing their hip-hop hearts out.

At the co-op, Herman met me at the door. “Inside.” He nodded a tight nod toward the dark room behind him.

“Like that isn’t where I’m already going?” I leaned into my circus cane and limped up the porch stairs. The wooden steps shook and tipped under the weight. Herman closed the front door fast behind me, as though to keep a wily dog in—or to keep prying eyes out. The living room was dark behind heavy orange curtains.

I dropped the cane and pink bag of tricks on the couch, kicked off the sweaty clown shoes, and took off the sunglasses. My face was tight with sunburn. I reached for a light switch.

Herman caught my hand.

“No lights,” he said.

I said, “Sorry, I forgot.” That house rule—to keep the electricity bill low so Herman could run the grow lights.

He said, “Nice act, Clown Girl. ”

“Huh?”

“The cop and the talking clown, two birds on a lawn mower, the full production for the whole neighborhood. In front of my customers.” He raised an eyebrow.

I sighed and sank into the dog hair-matted couch. “How was I supposed to know the lawn mower was stolen?”

Herman frowned. “What—you thought that dirtbag you bought it from was a Costco representative?”

I said, “It doesn’t mean it’s stolen just because—”

“And you know I don’t want a gas mower around anyway. House rules.” He lifted a curtain and peered out. Herman’s ponytail slinked left and right along his back as his head jerked side to side. Herman, my lovely ex, once with the soul of a poet, now was an unwitting advertisement for the evils of pot. If I were to sketch him as he stood, I’d call the piece
Pure Paranoia
. Talking to the window, he said, “So, you’re dating cops. Tell me that isn’t true.”

“Dating?” Revise the title: I’d call the piece
Deluge of Delusion
.

A slim shaft of setting sun cut into the room when he lifted the curtain. My eyes adjusted. Across the room Nadia-Italia sat curled on an overstuffed chair in one dark corner. She unfurled her big legs and heavy arms, stood, and padded toward Herman. “Hermes—,” she started to say.

“Why on earth would you call that dating? I don’t usually get arrested on a first date.”

In a falsely high voice, meant to be mine, Herman said, “Did anyone ever say you look like Charles Bronson?” He let the curtain fall back into place.

Nadia-Italia laughed and rubbed Herman’s arm. “It’s the kisser, right, baby?” she joined in, her voice dropped lower than usual—but not much lower.

“Steve McQueen,” I said. “Not Bronson. You guys work all afternoon on that act? Maybe it’s time to take it on the road.”

“I know who needs to hit the road,” Italia said. With one finger she flicked a crumb off the phone table, and the crumb disappeared into the dark, dust, and dog hair.

In the room’s dim light, with shadows along each curve of muscle, their arms summer-brown and tank tops loose, Herman and Nadia looked like a charcoal drawing, all soft edges, perfectly sketchable. Herman’s black ponytail rested along his neck and outlined the curve of his skin as it found its way to the muscles of his back. Nadia-Italia was an overfed, Egyptian-eyed cat. The two were a pair of sleek leopards appraising a babe in the woods. It was almost lovely, almost funny. But Herman’s voice was sharp, his eyes narrow. And I was the fool babe.

“Hermes, she stole a
lawn mower
,” Italia said. She yawned as she said it. “How lame is that? Now she’s hanging with the sheriff of Baloneytown. You saw her.” She rolled her foot over a free weight on the floor. The weight made the boards creak. “Kick her out.”

I said, “Look, I can try to follow your nutso-facto deductions, but really, I barely know the guy. The cop. We’re not dating, no way. I’ve seen him around, is all.”

“Sounded like he knows you,” Herman said. He reached a hand and tugged a nylon thread that hung from my—from Rex’s—shirt. He tugged the thread like a leash. In a silky whisper he said, “What would Mr. King Clown say about you slinking around with a cop?”

I pulled the leash out of his hand. “He’s the Clown Prince. And I’m not slinking. It was an arrest, for Christ’s sake.”

“Like that’s any better?” Herman said. Even if Herman had let go of the frayed bit of my shirt, I was still hanging by a thread.

“We can’t trust her, Hermes.” Italia stretched, and came to rest against Herman’s shoulder. “Just end it.”

“Sugar, stay out of this.” He shook Italia off.

She rolled her eyes, turned away. “Gladly. Let’s both stay out of it, Hermes. Pack her bags.” She waved a hand over her head, bye-bye, and went into the kitchen.

Herman inched closer. “What’s the business card for? The phone number?” His eyes were red-rimmed. He was fried. “Relaxed,” he called it. I smelled the smoke of his breath as it left his lungs.

The business card was only another card in my stack of cards—the golf course designers, the spatial use and planning consultants, the dishwasher and the rich dandy in the tux from the Chaplin gig back hall. Now a cop was in the mix. Jerrod. Steve McQueen. Mr. Cinnamon Buns. “He’s a neighborhood cop, doing his job.”

Herman stood over me, pressed a fist into the arm of the couch, and leaned into it. Where the muscle of his forearm began to rise, that sinewy hill up from his wrist, he had the blue lines of an old tattoo. In the near dark the tattoo was blurry, but I knew what it said:
NITA
, my name, carved there back when it didn’t matter that a tattoo was forever. The night Herman wrote it he laughed because my name was all straight lines, razor thin. “Easy,” he’d said. Now he said, “Your other man called. While you were on your cop date.”

“Rex?” I asked. “What’d he say? What did you tell him?”

“That you’d been picked up by a cop…”

“Picked up. Great. Thanks a lot.” I said, “ You do that on purpose.”

“…and that I’d pass along his message. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll try you back in a few.’ Or maybe he said he’d
be
back in a few…”

Agh! I wanted to scream. I said, “Well, which is it?”

He said, “Don’t know. That’s all I’ve got, message delivered.”

“So, then, in a few what?”

“What?” Herman looked dazed, either for real or as an act.

“He’ll try back, or be back, in few what? Minutes, days? Beers?” I spoke fast; my heart beat faster.

Herman shrugged. “Sounds like you two need to iron out a few communication problems, ’cause that’s a serious relationship breaker.” He took my hat off and dropped the hat on the couch.

I said, “Very funny.” His fingers brushed my hair. I jerked my head away. “Don’t.”

“You look tired.” He lifted my hair behind my neck, gave the nape of my neck a squeeze. He ran his thumb in a small circle, just below my hairline. “Relax a little.” His hands smelled like tobacco. He said, “Thought Rex’d be back by now. What’s the holdup?”

I shrugged, said, “He’s got things going on. A few shows. Still waiting for the Clown College interview.” As though Herman had asked me to explain, I said, “They keep rescheduling. Soon as he gets it worked out, he’ll be back. For me.”

Herman dropped his hand lower and pressed his thumb into the muscles behind my shoulder blades, a tiny massage. “Three weeks of rescheduling, huh? And you still think he’s coming back.”

“Of course he’s coming back.” I closed my eyes. With my eyes closed, Herman’s hand on my back could have been Rex’s hand. A little friendly massage. I gave in to it. “I’m here, his ambulance is here…his unicycle… He said…he’d…be back. Gone a few days, then back…”

Herman’s fingers crept down to my bra line. My muscles warmed.

He said, “Is all this suffering for your art really necessary?”

I said, “Comes with the terrain.”

“Or is it suffering for Rex? ’Cause I think you could do better, if that’s what it’s about.” He put a second hand on my other shoulder. Leaned down. He lifted his fingers through my hair, and each hair tingled my scalp, my spine, my nerve endings. “You’ve done better before.”

I had to laugh. “You?” I asked. “Ha!”

He said, “I’ll work on that sore thigh, if you want.” His breath was thick with smoke, sweet with the residue of pot and bitter under cigarettes.

“Bad idea.” I sat back and twisted to push his hand away.

He said, “Why get uptight? I’ve done it before.”

“Rex and me, we’re a team. It’s not just about suffering, it’s love.”

Herman straightened up, rubbed his face. He said, “Hey, I’m not trying to bust up your monogamy, just being friendly. You look shot, I give you support and there you go reading into it.”

“Read into this—Rex is what I need. That’s it.”

“OK, OK. Keep up the Mary Tyler Moore act, all the way, huh?”

“Whatever that means.” I shifted on the couch and reached for my hat.

“It means, you should watch yourself. You might appreciate a little generosity now and then.” He nodded toward the banging sounds in the kitchen. “She’s ready to put you on the street, but it’s my place. I say you can stay until Galore gets back. It’s a favor, because I like you, and you could recognize it. But bottom line, Nita, if you bring cops around, you’re out.”

Out?

“The favors wear thin,” he said.

Like Crack, Herman was ready to cut me loose that easily: Practice the pratfalls, or I’m out. Stay away from cops, or I’m out. I needed the clown work for cash to move from Herman’s house, and needed Herman’s cheap rent to save money until then.

I needed to stay away from the cop, for all reasons.

I was only a name cut in Herman’s arm, a needy tenant, a friend who kept coming back. I was four letters of straight lines.
Nita
, that meaningless blur of tattoo. Italia-Natalia-Nadia, banging pans in the kitchen, had a better answer with the mystery of her ever-shifting name, the way she disappeared sometimes. When she was gone, Herman always wanted her to come back.

I’d rather she disappeared.

“Thin ice,” Herman said. “Skating on cracks.”

“So’s your brain,” I said. “That cop has his own beat. I didn’t bring him around.”

And then there was a knock on the door. Herman and I, we both jumped. Italia clattered pans in the kitchen. Herman looked at the door like he’d never seen the door before. I didn’t move. Italia didn’t come out.

Herman asked, “Who is it?”

Like I could see through walls. I whispered, “Maybe it’s for you.”

The knock sounded again.

God help me if it was Jerrod.
Thin ice, thin ice, thin ice
.

Herman inched closer, looked through the peephole. He took his time. I stood behind him, afraid to breathe. He opened the door.

A high, scratchy voice said, “We gots your rubber chicken.” I couldn’t see past Herman’s shoulders. “Pluu-ucky?” the voice said. “We gots Plucky here.”

Plucky! How my heart leapt at the name!

Herman said, “I don’t know what you’re peddling, but we don’t need any plucky shit, and we don’t want any rubber chickens.” He started to close the door. I ducked in and put a hand out to keep the door open. A short woman in worn sweatpants held a faded rubber chicken by the neck. She shook the chicken as though tantalizing. Her tongue showed at the side of her smile. Half her teeth were gone. One rubber foot was gone from the chicken too. The other rubber chicken foot was pale, a bleached and weathered pink.

“Ree-ward?” she said. Then she hacked, turned away, coughed again, and stomped a foot. The chicken in her outstretched hand danced a gimpy jig to the rhythm of her cough. “Where’s the ree-ward?” she choked out again.

I said, “That’s not my chicken.”

I tried to close the door. The woman threw herself in the way. She said, “What do you mean? It’s a rubber chicken, just like in the pitcher. Reward, it says, right here.” She shoved the chicken between her knees and used both hands to check the front pocket on her hoodie. When she pulled it out, the flyer was matted and stained with something I’d like to think was a spilled decaf soy double latte, but probably not. Probably it was blood. She held the flyer toward us with one hand and retrieved the chicken from between her knees. She was barely four feet tall.

“I know what it says, but you’ve got the wrong bird.” I tried to close the door. Herman stopped me this round.

“You know about this?” He took the flyer. I wouldn’t’ve touched it.

The woman said, “This here’s your Plucky. This Plucky bird’s jus’ been out in the alley for a while. Maybe you don’t recognize your Plucky, hmm? Maybe your Plucky hit some rough times, and now you won’t take her back in.”

I said, “I’d know my own rubber chicken.”

Herman squinted at the flyer. He said, “What the hell?”

“Maybe your Plucky jus’ fell in with the wrong crowd, maybe she was looking for love and thought she’d found it…but you can’t trust nobody round here, that’s what Plucky knows now. Uh huh.” The woman’s eyes were flat and dull. She’d quit looking at me. “Plucky maybe learned a few things, and you say, ‘No way, no second chances,’ and jus’ like that, man, turn her ass back out on the street.”

I said, “Who are we talking about here?”

The woman swayed on the porch. She said, “Plucky don’t look so good now, but she’s got the same old heart she had back when you held her close.”

Herman slammed the door. Muffled, the woman’s voice came back. “Maybe spare some change? At least.”

“How many of these are out there?” Herman said. He shook the wrinkled flyer. A cigarette butt fell from one creased corner.

I gave a shrug. “It’s not like it’s got any big information.”

He said, “Cops and drug addicts. Do I need that combo at the door? You’re offering a friggin’ cash reward.” He snapped a finger against the paper.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said, though I wasn’t the only one bringing around drug users. The difference was, Herman’s were customers.