Clown Girl - Monica Drake [24]
“What?”
She said, “Don’t mess with my food.”
I said it again, “What? I didn’t do anything.”
She even had knotted muscles in her face, her cheeks. She said, “Look—mess with my food, and I’ll kill you. No joke.”
6.
We’re All Chaplin Here
“IT’S FOR YOU, NITA,” HERMAN CALLED.
Ta da! Rex! It was about time. I ran for the phone; my bare feet slapped against the worn floorboards of Herman’s old house. “At last,” I said, breathless, into the receiver.
“Now that’s a reception,” Crack coughed back, her voice in my ear. “Listen up. I’ve got a chief gig, a big check here. They want the three of us. A package deal, see? If one falls through, we’re all sunk. So go to Goodwill, get yourself an undersized suit coat—smallest one you can get your bones in—and a pair of baggy pants. Black. They’ve got a pile of’em. Meet us in the lobby of the Chesterfield, 6:30 tonight. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said.
She said, “What’s a matter? I hook you up with a sweet deal, you sound like I stepped in your birthday puddin’.”
I said, “No, no, I’m glad. I just thought…”
“Ah, you’re missing your man, is that it?” Her voice was a finger jabbing me in the ribs. “Well, the bigger the dog, the longer the leash. Let him roam,” she said. “Listen, here’s the lemonade to the story, right? With Rex out of the way, we can run this town. Take over the whole King’s Row. By the time you see his mug again, we’ll be flashing the cash. He’ll love you for that, see?”
Right. I said, “Thank you. Thanks for bringing me along.” Before I met Crack, I advertised with an index card on a corkboard at the old Pawn and Preen, and got maybe one job a month.
“No balloons this time,” Crack said. “No tricks, and no excuses. Leave the chicken, the popgun, and the exploding gum at home.”
The chicken. Plucky. I wished Plucky were home.
“This is the big bucks, Sweets, the real deal. I’ll set you up with a hat and a cane.”
I said yes to all of it.
I’d been out of the hospital three days, was still on the dizzy side, head buzzing, but could move without feeling faint, could walk at almost normal speed. The orange plastic jug sat empty in my mudroom waiting for a day I could devote to collecting urine. Twenty-four hours of contiguous urine is a tougher trick than it seems. One pee away from the orange jug on ice, and the whole day’s urine file is shot.
ON THE WAY TO THE GIG, I STOPPED AND COPIED MISSING Rubber Chicken posters. The poster had a drawing of Plucky, my name, Herman’s address, and a dancing money sign as promise of a reward. I stapled flyers to phone poles, one eye out for cops, always ready to silly-walk away fast in my oversized wing tips. Posting flyers on phone poles is illegal, but how else to tell the neighborhood?
To keep my chin up, I recited the Clown’s Prayer: “As I stumble through this life…May every pratfall pay the bills. May every tumble lighten strife, all the aches be cured with pills.”
I MET UP WITH CRACK AND MATEY IN A HOTEL LOBBY.
The lobby was wide and lush, with a thicket of plants in the middle. Prom night. Girls dressed like faded flowers lingered with acne-faced dates outside the hotel restaurant. Skinny kids danced through the lobby like they were on vacation, rustling and laughing, calling out names.
Matey, all in black and white, was perched on the back of a couch, feet on the cushions and her cane across her knees. She leaned forward, elbows on the cane. Her shoulder blades stuck up under her white T-shirt like wings over her thin back and took the place of her trademark fake parrot for the night. Crack paced back and forth in front of the couch. She had on a dark wig, a tidy men’s hairpiece, black and shiny as shoe polish.
Matey saw me first, and nodded. “Here she is, Boss.”
Crack looked up. She said, “Christ, could you be any later? When I said 6:30, I meant sharp, like on the dot, like the point on your head, see?” She moved fast and bumped into a short girl dressed like an after-dinner mint, all white with red piping. Crack didn’t look at the girl even after she ran