Clown Girl - Monica Drake [43]
I said, “Look, I can try to follow your nutso-facto deductions, but really, I barely know the guy. The cop. We’re not dating, no way. I’ve seen him around, is all.”
“Sounded like he knows you,” Herman said. He reached a hand and tugged a nylon thread that hung from my—from Rex’s—shirt. He tugged the thread like a leash. In a silky whisper he said, “What would Mr. King Clown say about you slinking around with a cop?”
I pulled the leash out of his hand. “He’s the Clown Prince. And I’m not slinking. It was an arrest, for Christ’s sake.”
“Like that’s any better?” Herman said. Even if Herman had let go of the frayed bit of my shirt, I was still hanging by a thread.
“We can’t trust her, Hermes.” Italia stretched, and came to rest against Herman’s shoulder. “Just end it.”
“Sugar, stay out of this.” He shook Italia off.
She rolled her eyes, turned away. “Gladly. Let’s both stay out of it, Hermes. Pack her bags.” She waved a hand over her head, bye-bye, and went into the kitchen.
Herman inched closer. “What’s the business card for? The phone number?” His eyes were red-rimmed. He was fried. “Relaxed,” he called it. I smelled the smoke of his breath as it left his lungs.
The business card was only another card in my stack of cards—the golf course designers, the spatial use and planning consultants, the dishwasher and the rich dandy in the tux from the Chaplin gig back hall. Now a cop was in the mix. Jerrod. Steve McQueen. Mr. Cinnamon Buns. “He’s a neighborhood cop, doing his job.”
Herman stood over me, pressed a fist into the arm of the couch, and leaned into it. Where the muscle of his forearm began to rise, that sinewy hill up from his wrist, he had the blue lines of an old tattoo. In the near dark the tattoo was blurry, but I knew what it said: NITA, my name, carved there back when it didn’t matter that a tattoo was forever. The night Herman wrote it he laughed because my name was all straight lines, razor thin. “Easy,” he’d said. Now he said, “Your other man called. While you were on your cop date.”
“Rex?” I asked. “What’d he say? What did you tell him?”
“That you’d been picked up by a cop…”
“Picked up. Great. Thanks a lot.” I said, “ You do that on purpose.”
“…and that I’d pass along his message. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll try you back in a few.’ Or maybe he said he’d be back in a few…”
Agh! I wanted to scream. I said, “Well, which is it?”
He said, “Don’t know. That’s all I’ve got, message delivered.”
“So, then, in a few what?”
“What?” Herman looked dazed, either for real or as an act.
“He’ll try back, or be back, in few what? Minutes, days? Beers?” I spoke fast; my heart beat faster.
Herman shrugged. “Sounds like you two need to iron out a few communication problems, ’cause that’s a serious relationship breaker.” He took my hat off and dropped the hat on the couch.
I said, “Very funny.” His fingers brushed my hair. I jerked my head away. “Don’t.”
“You look tired.” He lifted my hair behind my neck, gave the nape of my neck a squeeze. He ran his thumb in a small circle, just below my hairline. “Relax a little.” His hands smelled like tobacco. He said, “Thought Rex’d be back by now. What’s the holdup?”
I shrugged, said, “He’s got things going on. A few shows. Still waiting for the Clown College interview.” As though Herman had asked me to explain, I said, “They keep rescheduling. Soon as he gets it worked out, he’ll be back. For me.”
Herman dropped his hand lower and pressed his thumb into the muscles behind my shoulder blades, a tiny massage. “Three weeks of rescheduling, huh? And you still think he’s coming back.”
“Of course he’s coming back.” I closed my eyes. With my eyes closed, Herman’s hand on my back could have been Rex’s hand. A little friendly massage. I gave in to it. “I’m here, his ambulance is here…his unicycle… He said…he’d…be back. Gone a few days, then back…”
Herman’s fingers crept down to my bra line. My muscles warmed.
He said, “Is all this suffering for