Clown Girl - Monica Drake [103]
He climbed out the back doors. I rocked forward, onto my knees, following him as though caught in his wake. A kid rode a bike in the street. I pulled the cape around me more tightly, the satin a cool skin. “So what—you’ll live inside, and I’ll live out here?”
He straightened his shirt and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s only for right now, Noodle. We’ll get our own place. Here, or in San Fran. Whatever.”
I hugged the satin cape, wiggled my toes. “When?”
“When we get the money. After this Berkeley gig, when we hear back from the school, see if I’m in, and if they give me a little scratch. Then we’ll know what we have to work with, OK?”
I patted the costumes beneath my bare ass. “Just get in here. Sleeping doesn’t take money.”
He said, “Nita, I’ve been on the road all month. I need a bed.”
I was out of options. “Well, when you’re in there,” I said, “avoid Herman. And Nadia- Italia. She’s nuts. Totally unreliable.” It was all I could do.
“Thanks for the warning.” He turned toward the house, saw the yard. “Hey—what happened?” The scorch.
“Don’t ask. A real sore spot with Hermes…Nothing you want to bring up, right?”
Rex started to let the doors drop closed. Then I could only hear his voice, see one hand that still held the door. “Are those my maple juggling torches?” he said. “Like, toast?”
I pretended not to hear. I called, “Rex?” He pulled the door open and came back into view in a reprise, the Rex Galore Show. I said, “Can I go with you, when you go to the Berkeley gig?”
He put a hand on my ankle and rubbed my shin. His hand was muscled and strong. “It’s expensive, Nita. If you come down for a visit, how’re we going to save cash for a real move?”
“Earn it. That’s the easy part.” I’d been working since I was fourteen.
“We have to take it one step at a time. Think of now as an investment. I’ll go down, get the scholarship, and then we’ll put the other pieces in place.”
One door fell closed. Again I leaned forward and said, “Rex?”
“Yes?” he waited, with the second door half-closed, his fingers curled around the door, part of his face still visible. Behind him a woman parked her car.
I said, “We’re doing OK, mostly. Right? Because we’re in it together. The clown stuff. We’ll get where we want to be.”
Rex nodded and squinted in the sun.
I said, “Promise me you won’t talk to Herman. And if I need anything, from in the room, I’ll come knock on the window. You could pass things out, right?”
“Sure. Ill pass things out.” He bent toward me, gave me a kiss, then let the ambulance door swing closed.
20.
Sliding the Slippery Slope
THE AMBULANCE WAS AN EMPTY HULL, A WOMB WITHOUT a baby. I lay naked on the costumes, arms and legs heavy in the heat. I was a body but not the baby in the ambulance’s womb; I was fetal tissue, placental residue. The satin of the purple cape draped over my belly, soft and smooth. Voices sang like birds up and down the block. I tried to sleep. After a while, I heard the low cascade of Rex’s laugh not far from the ambulance window. He was outside?
I earned a new place in heaven anytime I made Rex laugh like that, low and for real.
So he was coming back to the van? Maybe he was ready to hang out. Ready to let me wrap my leg around his under the table in an air-conditioned diner. I pulled back the shade. Rex was on the porch, his bag at his feet, and the unicycle lay across the walkway like he hadn’t even been inside yet. He talked to a skinny little joker in a striped tank top. The guy had his back my way. Rex stood, legs wide, and balanced a single scorched juggling pin upside down on the palm of his hand. Rex’s face was open and animated, eyebrows moving. The other guy was in black cutoffs with big boots, white legs and a bowler hat.
But wait a minute—it wasn’t a guy. Those were Crack’s bandy legs! The bowler was from our Chaplin routine. She and Rex yukked it up on the porch, and Rex leaned against the rail like he had all the time in the world.
I fished around in the costumes on the floor for something like clothes: a velvet robe, gigantic yellow