Clown Girl - Monica Drake [114]
“Turns into a snake?” I said. Somebody had turned into a snake, right there in front of my eyes. I felt a wave of nausea.
“I think mine’s pure, undiscovered genius,” he said. “Besides, if mine’s different, or the same, what’re you worried about—you’re not using it. It’s just an idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen.”
My throat was tight, my head a scream of swarming bees. I couldn’t believe my ears. I staggered, clutched my one fake breast. The rash of panic in my brain broke into all-out cerebral hives. I said, “I am using it. I work on it all the time. I just can’t get it into production, because I’m trying to make a living. Trying to pay your way to Clown College.”
He laughed. “Looks like you’re making a pretty fast living to me.” He shook his head. “Those johns need Kafka?”
“I’m not a hooker,” I said again. “There’s just not the same fast cash in Kafka as there is in the corporate work. Not yet, not until I get ahead.”
“Get ahead, or give it? And since when is whoring corporate?”
If Jerrod was right, if clowning was my addiction, then this—not jail—was as low as I could sink; watching my gilded savior, Rex, tarnish. His brilliance was nothing, not even his own. Actually, this round? The ideas were mine. “Rex, you haven’t even read Kafka.”
He said, “I’ve seen you practice the skit like a hundred times, right? And you just said you’d help. Give me a little more of the structure then.”
If I went along with him, I’d be an enabler, a participant in my own defeat. “There’s all kinds of material, pick something else. Pick, like, Pride and Prejudice, or Romeo and Juliet. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Anything, OK? Kafka’s my deal.”
He said, “No need to be possessive. We’ve got enough to go around. We’re doing OK, you said so yourself.”
“Sure, but I was feeling a surge of love for you then. Hopeful.” I’d been noting his humanity, not his greed.
He shrugged. Smiled. “You’ll feel another.” He was so confident!
“Rex, could you just please lay off my material, until I get it together?”
He said, “Nita, cultivate some professionalism. You don’t have the rights to Kafka. Just because I haven’t read the dude doesn’t mean I can’t do my own thing with it. You know what Gold-digger the Great said—‘Cheap clowns scrounge, great clowns steal.’”
“Sure, Rex. I’ve heard the phrase, but I don’t subscribe to it,” I said. “Great clowns have a little integrity, I’d say. What about the Clown Commandments?”
He stopped walking then, stood on the sidewalk, and blocked my way. “So, what’re you saying—I bail you out, and you won’t help with the most important act of my career? This is the thing that’s going to get me past the club circuit.”
“You bailed me out with my own money, and I’ll pay it back. I didn’t sell the Kafka sketch.”
“Jesus,” he said. “That was our money when you gave it to me. Knock off the bullshit generosity next time.”
“It’s not bullshit generosity,” I said. “I wish you weren’t stoned right now. You’re impossible. You make it impossible.”
Rex laughed then, a mean, sharp snort. “Impossible? You want to talk impossible? This is all bullshit, babe. You want to think you’re not a hooker, just a clown on a private date. Think you’re an artist, working a new car lot? I’ll tell you something—that’s not art. It’s just a story you’re making up. Maybe the same story you’d tell our baby, if we still had a baby. Mommy’s not a hooker, she’s a corporate party girl. No wonder the kid bailed. Christ, maybe the thing’s lucky you dumped it.”
I stopped fast. My boob swung forward with momentum, then slapped against my real boob underneath, a thump to the heart. “What’re you saying? Like the miscarriage was my fault?” I held my torn dress like a sari wrapped around me. He shrugged.
“You haven’t exactly been leading a healthy lifestyle, have you?”
I crouched on the sidewalk. It was either that or fall over. The bees, the bees! I could barely hear. “I can’t believe you’d say that.” I whispered, “You’re blaming me.”
“Well, it wasn’t my fault.” He towered over me. His pants billowed