Clown Girl - Monica Drake [5]
He reached for his card back and shook his wrist free. So long to the dream date! The fetish was broken, the fantasy gone; I was only a sick girl in makeshift clown clothes. He said, “Hey,” out loud to nobody, and backed away. His silver watch flashed in the sun. “The clown’s sick.”
No Florence Nightingale, this clown-stalking links designer.
Matey and Crack turned. The stuffed purple parrot swung on Matey’s pirate-clown shoulder and the world receded into a wash of soft colors. The wail of the girl in her fake leopard sundress grew dim. There was a hum that wouldn’t stop. I closed my eyes, cheek pressed into the hot hard gravel of the sidewalk. It was coming for me—the short, meaningless life of an insect. Sheep bodies touched my skin lightly, carefully, like a priest’s last rites, like gentle kisses. Swimming or drowning, there’s not much difference. I was flooded with grease-laden festival air, the bodies, the heat, the weight of air itself. I drifted toward balloon heaven. I was that transitory thing, an underinflated sheep, an empty carcass not meant to last.
W.C. Fields wandered across my mind’s eye. He shook a stogie, and in his slow, drunken drawl said, “Hey, don’t worry about your heart…it’ll last as long as you live.” He took a swig off a flask, turned away, and disappeared.
“My heart!” I said out loud, suddenly worried.
“You’ll be OK,” somebody else said, a real-world voice.
Rex Galore? My clown mate, my savior. A word from Rex and I’d revive; Rex had found me on the street. He was back in town. A hand brushed my face, trailed by the bite of cinnamon.
“Relax,” he said. “Take a deep breath. You’ll make it.”
I wanted to believe his words, to be the truth of the story he told.
I opened my eyes to the blue of a shirt sleeve, a hand reaching out. It wasn’t Rex. It was a cop. A cop had cleared the kids back.
House Rule Number One where I lived: Don’t talk to cops.
But the cop put his fingers to my pulse. My head was woozy. The cop gave me water. It was a magic trick, the way he pulled the paper cup pulled from the crowd; the cup was suddenly in the cop’s hand, then in mine. “Help is on the way,” he said and wrapped his fingers around my fingers to hold the cup. A magical cop. Hair on the back of his fingers was sparse, golden as jewelry. His eyes were pale blue. With his second hand he propped up my head. I rested against his palm like a pillow. “Can you tell me your name?” he asked.
Anonymity. It’s in the Clown Code of Ethics: I will always try to remain anonymous while in makeup and costume, though there may be times when it is not reasonably possible to do so. These were my promises: I wouldn’t talk to cops and I wouldn’t speak in costume.
I opened my mouth and said, “Nita.”
He said, “You need a…?”
“Nita,” I whispered again, with all the energy I had. The only thing holding the cup in my hand was the cop’s hand around mine. Between our two hands our skin grew hot, sweat mingled. He leaned in close. He smelled like cinnamon streusel, apple pancakes. Delicious.
“What do you need?”
His hand, and his help, made me both sad and happy at the same time, and I couldn’t hold on to the mix; I felt something inside lift. I was still on the ground while a heat in my body struggled to climb up. The feeling caught in my throat and closed down there, like a sob. Clotted. I couldn’t speak if I wanted to.
He squinted, teetered, then caught his balance poised in a crouch. His breath brushed my skin. Ah! Too much. I took another deep, cinnamon-streusel breath. The cop was so close I could’ve kissed him. For one minute I didn’t see him as a cop but as a man, concerned, all sweet skin and golden hair. The cop’s eyes narrowed as he waited and listened. Patient. I asked, “Do I know you?”
He was young enough, but still when he narrowed his eyes his skin there turned into a weathered, radiant arc of wrinkles. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “We’ve never met.” I saw the blue of the uniform again. He was a cop, doing his job. I was a citizen in trouble.
Rex Galore was what I needed. My Clown Prince. That