Clown Girl - Monica Drake [28]
More than that, the strobe made me queasy. It was like being hit in the head.
Matey smacked into the back of a chair and stepped on the crossbar. The chair flipped backward under her foot. Matey sailed forward over the top. She was in the air, diving, cane flailing out to the side. On the way down she rolled into a somersault, all in the agitated, panicked heartbeat of the strobe. In that light the world was a fragmented place—a hand to a mouth, a spilled drink, a turned head—everyone diced into bits of existence.
Crack hit the chair next, shin against its side. She fell into Matey and sent them both into a tumble.
I saw the chair and was almost there, knew I had to step on the chair, trip, find a way to make it look both real and cartoon. But as I penguin-walked in the strobe, the chair flashed off and on, and the light was disorienting—was the chair underfoot, or a mile away? My own body looked wrong in that light; my hand wrapped around the cane was a monkey’s paw. I was dizzy, my head sang with the hum of bees, and the party-store bowler was a tourniquet. My cane swung like a broken windshield wiper.
I couldn’t think, couldn’t decide whether to go over the top of the chair or send myself backward. I put my right foot on the back of the chair to go over the top, but the chair slid and I slid too in my slick, mismatched wing tips. My legs splayed. I went down hard, a hot snap, a rubber band breaking. My left knee twisted and I sat on the floor—no rolls, just a grimace and the splits.
Somersaults are funny. Tumbling is funny. Pratfalls, straight back, are pure comedy. But the forward splits? I was a cheerleader. A Chaplin cheerleader.
I had to get up funny. Could I even get up?
Crack and Matey circled toward the exit, then disappeared out the swinging door. Guests followed behind me, gawky and excited in the disco lights, pasty-faced,tipsy and tired. A woman tripped on my splayed leg. Goldfish fell from her hand, swimming out of her mouth as she laughed. I worked my wing tip through the chair railing and tried to stand. I wanted the chair to throw me into a somersault, but then my oversized flatfoot really was stuck, and the chair was a ski on ice, no traction on the hotel carpet.
I tried to stand, went down again, and caught myself on one knee. The chair was a cage on my foot. I wrestled the chair, and both armpits ripped in my undersized coat. The handle of my cane caught my ankle. I tugged on the cane, jerked it loose, and knocked a tray of salmon rings from a caterer’s hand. Voilà! Salmon-ring confetti. The caterer’s face was ugly in the strobe, his mouth a stuttering gash. I slid toward the exit, waved my cane at the party, felt the sweat hot on my palms as I pushed myself forward with my free hand and scooted along like a jalopy in strobe headlights, the cane a dragging muffler.
A drunk woman in a clinging dress doubled over and wiped her eyes, cramped with laughter lost under the music. A man patted her back, face contorted with his own party laugh. I hit the stretch of linoleum between the carpet and the swinging exit door and the ski of a chair slid fast out in front. I pushed the door open with the chair on my foot, and got out.
Matey and Crack were in the hall, where the walls, ceiling, and floor were all painted primer white, gleaming and bright as heaven. Matey had her jacket off, a cigarette in her mouth.
I groaned and said, “Kept ’em in stitches. And speaking of stitches, think I need a few.” Behind me the music was loud, then muffled, then loud, then muffled, as the door swung open and closed and open again, riding its own momentum.
Matey said, “After that dance you’ll wake up with a sore bum in the morning, and I don’t mean the man of the hour.”
Crack glowered. “What was all that?” She said, “When I said no garnish, I meant don’t blow it and don’t waste time.”
I threw the cane aside, bent my leg, and reached through the chair to pull off my shoe, free my foot. The torn pits of my coat tore again. A dishwasher leaned against the wall, apron soaked. He watched me where I sat on the floor massaging