Clown Girl - Monica Drake [20]
I tore off the part about a reward. What could I offer? If the rubber-chicken thief were a King’s Row kid, my reward would be a bad joke next to the punk’s allowance. I crunched the scrap in my hand.
But I wanted Plucky back. Plucky belonged with Rex and me. We’d had good times together. I wrote it again, in the space that was left: Reward. Then crossed it off. I couldn’t give money away.
But who would return a rubber chicken without incentive? Plucky would end up tossed in an entryway, left in a backyard, or given to charity. I wrote it one more time, above the black cross-off mark: Reward, followed by only one dollar sign. I’d pay for that chicken’s safe return because she was mine, ours, the first and now the only child of our union, the memento of sex, evidence of sex, Rex Galore.
Rex and me, our second date wasn’t a date so much as it was a show. He invited me for a night onstage. We were juggling together, pins in the air, moving hand to hand with a good rhythm going, when he invited me to work with him, to be a moving table, a prop stand in his fire-juggling act. Put fire in the show, audiences love it. That’s what Rex always said: Burn shit up. I was wary. It was so much, so soon, I said, “You don’t think we’re rushing things?”
He said, “I’m ready.”
With the way the pins spun smoothly between us, six in the air, I knew I was ready too. I saw my future: if the date were an audition, I’d nail it.
The night of his show I wore a legless tabletop strapped to my back, in a nightclub, and underneath that board I swayed to Rex’s dance. The crowd was sauced. Somebody yelled, “Prestidigiate!” An empty plastic pitcher flew onto the stage. The pitcher spun, beer speckled my face, and I laughed out loud. The energy was nothing like the hollow garages of art gigs, the scream of birthday parties, or the dead air in the corporate scene.
Rex rapped on my tabletop and the sound amplified in my ears. Rex was amplified, bigger than life, his name chanted by strangers, his soundtrack a crazy mess of Ska, tribal, and Cambodian pop. His feet were bare and strong, legs muscled. That was all I could see from down low. His hands hit the floor between his feet and his legs scissored up and out of view. His curly hair dropped to the stage, damp with sweat. Dionysus, Pan. Bacchus, Shazam. My Wonder Twin. He was a god, a gymnast, a laugh riot, a dream.
Rex piled bottles on the table of my back. He balanced fire wands on the bottles and the flames reflected in mirrors at the edges of the stage. I was in the middle of a bonfire, a forest fire, a burning building. Magic. Everyone looked at the flaming pyramid of bottles on my back. My knees rubbed hard against the uneven floor of the stage. Rex rode a unicycle. His single wheel circled as I shuffled.
If Rex asked me to eat glass, I would’ve done it.
Later, in the quiet of the dressing room, he closed the door. I stood. My legs trembled, knees stiff with exertion, exhilaration, and nerves. Rex said, “You’re a natural.” He unstrapped the table, lifted it from my back, and set it aside.
“It was all you,” I said.
“Not at all!” His big hands reached forward to massage my shoulders. I closed my eyes and groaned. “Tough work, isn’t it?” He let his hands slide down my shoulders to the collar of my black catsuit, lowered the zipper in back. The cloth peeled away, cool air brushed my skin and my shoulders stretched larger, free of the fabric. “Goosebumps,” Rex said and ran a finger down my spine, his voice a quiet growl. His skin smelled hot, flammable as white gas. He touched a calloused finger to my collarbone, then ran his finger down over my breast and pushed the suit lower. Bottles rolled over the floor between smoking batons. Sweat-marked Lycra clung tight as hands against my thighs, my hips.
We dropped onto a sagging couch buried in costumes, and around us the costumes smelled like every show there’d ever been, every date, every human body: smoke, perfume, and cologne layered over the musty mix of Goodwill and basement mildew, cat piss, the hot animal ripeness