Clown Girl - Monica Drake [116]
“She got into the stash,” Italia slurred. “Her party habit.”
“You do that on purpose…”
Rex said, “You’re always the victim, aren’t you? It’s not about Chance, it’s about you. Feeding your dog pot. It’s about your Kafka trip, your little dream.”
“Look at her, Rex.” Chance was goggle-eyed. Nadia-Italia wasn’t much better off and let her own head loll against the split fat couch. “It’s not about me.” I left the busted bust of Rex on the sidewalk, shoved dollars into my prop bag. I said, “This is what I put up with. She’s trying to kill our baby.”
“Our baby?” Rex said, and paused. “I don’t think she’s the one—”
“Our dog!” I wanted to scream. It felt good to scream. He knew what I meant.
He said, “You overreact. I’m beat. I can’t take it anymore, Nita.” He went in the house.
“Rex?” I called after him.
He was out of sight by the time he called back, “We’ll talk in the morning.”
Morning? That was hours away. Forever. I’d waited so long for Rex to come home, but he felt no urgency. Nadia-Italia followed Rex, said, “Cha-cha, clownster,” and pulled the front door closed.
Rex as I knew him—high artist, Clown God—wouldn’t waste time as an idea thief. Chance smacked dry lips. We needed hydrogen peroxide, pronto-presto. I walked barefoot to where my clown shoes lay like discarded party favors. Chance watched invisible angels in the night sky, head bobbing and loose.
At the Lucky Trucker Motel and Sundries I carried her into the store. “No dog in here,” the man at the register said. “No dog, no dog!” He flung one arm out like a wing.
A bottle of hydrogen peroxide waited on a dusty shelf. I ducked, snagged the bottle. There was a line at the register. I waved the peroxide. “Just this. One thing.”
“No dog,” he said again, “you wait in line.” The man’s teeth were a mix of gold and yellow.
“My dog is dying. Look.” I held Chance up like a puppet, the store our puppet theater. A strand of drool found its way to the floor.
Two scrawny men and a woman with shaking, veined hands all laughed. A man with a mullet and a quart of beer said, “Nice act, stooge, take it to Nashville.” He put his money on the counter. Even an old woman who watched TV in the corner, who never spoke any language at all, even she laughed.
I held my ripped dress closer and cradled Chance. “It’s serious!” They laughed harder.
And that laugh echoed what I felt inside as more real than my blood, my heartbeat: that I was a joke. In protest I said, “It’s not a joke.” But the laugh only grew. And who laughed the loudest? A hooker in a torn red dress at the back of the line, naturally. My doppelgänger. Each minute, I sank a little deeper into Baloneytown.
There was my face in the aluminum rim of the hot-foods incubator, around jo-jos and chicken. I was reflected in the glass of the Coke cooler and the grease-smeared deli case, all powdery makeup, black liner, and big red lips, the face of a clown hooker right out of an old-time jail-time act. My one Caboosey boob hung free.
The doppelgänger said, “Tha’ poodle part a your show?”
The only show was my life, and it was a bomb. The only routine was the daily one. I’d been in clown costume so long, I wasn’t an artist. I was a freak. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t blink. I felt as though I were falling, a high-wire dive, safety ropes unfurling and unraveling left and right, loose and looped. This is a strabat: an aerialist’s finale, when all could be lost.
There was nobody to be my net, to close the curtains, to know me without the makeup. Rex saw me as a muse in the worst way—a place to steal material.
Mr. Galore.
I couldn’t think of his name without love. But Rex, as I saw him, was a big projection: I wanted the artist’s life and thought I’d found it on the blank screen of his painted face.
My name is Sniffles, and I’m a clownaholic…
Man is what he believes. All I knew was: Christian clowns, hookers, coulrophiles, and the fetishized silence of mime—I was bigger than the roles.
In the Lucky Trucker I took a tip from Jerrod and said, “Just because I’m a clown doesn’t mean I have to put