Clown Girl - Monica Drake [108]
“But why this one? He’s seen our shows. I don’t want to be in his high beams.”
Crack shook her head. “He’s been to our gigs, so what? He likes what you put out.”
“Put out?” I said. I felt the blood drain from my face.
“What you offer, I mean. You don’t have to put out.”
My mouth was dry; my mind broke out in a rash of panic. “Feels like I’m cheating on Rex. It’s not good. I love Rex, and he trusts me.” What I didn’t say was that it felt like I was cheating on art too. Cheating myself.
Crack laughed then, and not her bitter or fake laugh, but a deep belly laugh, loud and for real. “Oh shit,” she said. “You’re still hung up on Rex? And we thought Matey was the sadomasochist in the group…”
“Hung up?” I said. “We’re in love.”
She said, “Sheesh…Good old sexy Rexie back in town, and you’re his puppet all over again. Don’t think Rex hasn’t had his share of clown dates.”
My heart was a knotted balloon then, a stopped watch. “What do you mean?”
She said, “That old rubber-chicken routine? It’s a classic. Hell, even I fell for it way back when.” She slapped an arm over my shoulders. “How do you think he paid for that fleet of unicycles?”
“What are you saying?” Her arm was heavy across my back. I tried to shake her off, the way I wanted to shake off new information, the possible truth.
“Don’t be shocked, little Sniff. You make too big a deal of it.” With a gentle pressure she steered me left, and then left again, and we made a U-turn until we walked toward the van. The men were outside tipping bottles back. Crack said, “Get in the game, give it a good play. If you don’t want to do it again we won’t. My word.”
I was numb. Rex and the rubber-chicken routine? What did she mean? Plucky. Plucky the chicken, who was even now in my pink shoulder bag. How many clowns had Plucky been with?
“Call the shots on the date,” Crack whispered. “Do what you’re comfortable with, and no more.” She dropped her arm from my shoulders. “I got the down payment, but set your own prices as you go, and make sure you get cash before it’s over.”
I teetered in my oversized heels, across chunks of broken concrete.
“You get the clubhouse. We’ll find our own space.” Crack grabbed the short man by one of his thick hands. I watched their backs as they climbed over a pile of broken joists, then disappeared into the dark.
“Come on in,” Rich Johnson said from the dark cave of the van.
I was there to do a job—not a hand job, not a blow job, but the same logic applied: the faster we got started, the sooner it’d be over. I hitched up my dress. Sequins fell and glinted against the ground, caught in construction debris. I took his hand. His palm was damp. In one big step, I launched myself into the back of the van. He reached to close the door behind me. I intercepted with my elbow.
“Like a tab, let’s keep it open, right?” A quick exit route.
He shrugged. “It’s your show.” I liked the sound of that. My show. Then he said, “Besides, there’s nobody out here. Just you and me. And I thought clowns didn’t talk.”
He put a hand up as though to cover my mouth and winked. That I didn’t like, but it was part of the fetish: muteness, not mutiny.
He spit out the side door and popped the cork on another bottle of cheap champagne. The cork hit the side of the van like a bullet. I ducked. My ears rang. He sat hunched, a vulture, on a narrow, cramped wooden bench that was attached to one curved wall inside the van. He patted the plank beside him.
I crouched on the wheel well. He held a plastic champagne glass my way, pulled it back and tipped it toward his lips, then raised his eyebrows in his own little act meant to be a question: did I drink?
I fanned my hands in front of the Pendulous Breasts and pushed the air away, a flutter of sign language to say no no no. The breasts crowded my knees.
He dropped the plastic glass, took a swig off the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and murmured, “Juggle something.” He rolled an old beer bottle toward me.
I didn’t reach for the bottle,