Clown Girl - Monica Drake [19]
Rex laughed. “Battle scars.” He said, “I’d be into team juggling, if you’re up for it. Fastest way to learn is with a partner.”
A date. He asked me on a juggling date! That’s when he told me his name: Rex Galore. Rex, the Clown Prince! The Princely Clown of the After-hours Club Circuit, a movement artist. Of course I’d seen the posters for his shows. Rex had the best graphics in town. He was a different breed of clown—no kids’ parties, no Food Fairs. No smiling, kowtowing, apple-polishing slapstick; Rex said slap was dead. Instead of the fool, Rex was an acrobat. He could juggle toasters and blenders, live kittens even. He could walk on stilts and ride a unicycle.
I rolled down my sleeve. “That’d be nice,” I said. “I’m Nita.”
“I know,” he said.
Did he really, or was it all bluster? It didn’t matter. By then, I was already the clown groupie, the fetishist: love.
The Buddhists say if you meet somebody and your heart pounds, your hands shake, your knees go weak, that’s not the one. When you meet your soul mate you’ll feel calm. No anxiety, no agitation. I say, the Buddhists don’t have a clue. When I met Rex I was awash in nerves, because, why not? He was everything I believed in and he came right to me. He asked me out. Why settle for less?
Back in the classroom he stepped out of the boots, ran his fingers through the length of his hair, shook off the robe, and there was his body again: all muscle. He climbed on his pedestal. My statue, my date, the sexiest man in town. An older woman student leaned over and whispered, “That’s the way to pick’em. With a preview. Now you know what you’re getting.”
As though anything were ever that easy or true.
In the mudroom, the afternoon sun came in through the windows and warmed the floor and the wall behind the bed. The room was a terrarium of dog breath, turpentine, and sweat. I sang something I’d been working on, part of a skit:
Beef Brisket
what is it?
Oh, wouldn’t you like to know…
Still naked, I unzipped the suitcase Rex used to hold costumes and let clothes spill out. Beefbrisket, just ee-ee-t it… I ran my hands through his clothes, pressed fabric to my skin. Turpentine was as good as Rex’s cologne because it was the scent of the classroom where we met. I touched a dab of turpentine to the fabric, then lay on my bed with the costumes beside me like a warm body. That cop? He was helpful, sure. And he was handsome. But a man like that was white bread next to the richness of art, and love. Rex. Chance drew close against my shoulder from the other side and for a moment, in the smell of turpentine, it was as though Rex, Chance, and I were together again, the three of us. Family.
Until Herman knocked on the door. “Hey,” he said, his voice sharp. “I smell turp from the kitchen. Clean it up, ventilate, or you’re out of here.” He pushed an unpaid phone bill under the locked door. The envelope came toward me with a shimmy and a hiss, all warning and demand.
5.
Plucky, Come Home!
IN THE BACK OF REX’S PROP-ROOM AMBULANCE, I GATHERED pens and paper and made a sign: Missing: Rubber Chicken. I sketched the chicken’s long rubber neck, her fallen-over comb, dangling legs, and splayed toes. I inked in the black lines of a heart on her chest, her defining characteristic, like a birthmark or a scar.
The ambulance’s two back doors hung open to let a breeze in. Outside a mechanical xylophone blasted the hard notes of “Home on the Range,” as One-Night Stan the Ice- Cream Man trawled nearby. I perched on a pile of costumes with the shades pulled, wearing a sun hat with a big brim and a cluster of silk flowers in front. The only thing wrong with the hat was two holes cut in the top meant to accommodate rabbit ears back when the hat was part of a show.
Below the rubber chicken picture, on my sign, I wrote, Name: Plucky. Height: 15”. Value: Sentimental.