Clown Girl - Monica Drake [53]
11.
The Tidy Side of Hell; or, Tonics, Soporifics, and Palliatives
ONE LONE LOBSTER BEAT A CLAW AGAINST THE GLASS wall of a small tank. The lobster’s narrow, empty world was perched over a frozen sea; blue Styrofoam tray after tray of Dungeness crab, leggy purple squid, and bundled smelt rested on chipped ice below. Tick, tick. The lobster knocked, as though to flag down help. Across the aisle what had once been a herd of grass-fed cattle now lay silent in bloody pools of iced New York strip steak, flank steak, ribs, tongues, and burger. Edible flowers bloomed on a small green stand, a miniature field ready for harvest. Tap tap. Tap. Tap tap. A lobster SOS. Get me out of this dead heaven. I knew the feeling.
Luxury FoodSmart was a warehouse-sized nightmare of money just beyond the borders of Baloneytown, where gentrification spilled over from King’s Row. The building used to house the YMCA. Now, at Luxury FoodSmart, even a two-pack of hard-boiled eggs cost half my day’s spending allowance. I kept my big-frame squirting sunglasses on as a shield against overly enthusiastic fluorescent lights and wore my wig riding low. I tapped my cane against the polished linoleum, sucked on Chinese BBs like a PEZ addict, and slunk farther into the store.
Leonardo da Vinci said water was the most destructive force on the planet. Water corrodes metal and eats through rock. But da Vinci forgot about the corrosive power of cash; when money came into a neighborhood, the old buildings toppled. Even people disappeared.
I headed fast for the corner marked Holistic Pharmacy Lounge. There, beyond the organic loofahs and prescription bubble bath, one wall was lined with amber and blue vials that glistened like jewels. Tinctures. Cures.
After four hours of Crack’s photo shoot, I needed any cure I could find. My nerves were rattled. My mouth tasted like metal. The fear that Chance would never come back tugged at my throat like I wanted to cry. The Chinese pills wouldn’t last forever. I couldn’t afford to end up back in the hospital, and I’d already blown the day’s urine collection—hadn’t been able to hold my piss until I got back home. I needed a panacea, a remedy for the ache in my gut, in my heart, in my head. There had to be a cure for the broken heart of a lost dog, a miscarriage, and a missing rubber chicken. The cure for a life where family slid away, where nobody stayed and nobody lived long enough. The family tree was a hedge, a shrub, a lone weed. The only cure I knew was Rex, but Rex wasn’t around. I needed a cure for that more than anything.
The first tincture I picked up, Go-To Formula Forty-Nine, promised to cure depression, mania, indigestion, indecisiveness, stubbornness, weak circulation, confusion, and skin abrasions. Sounded good to me. Without thinking twice, I slid the vial into the wide sleeve of my clown shirt. Ta da! Magic; the vial disappeared. I’d fight the neighborhood’s financial erosion. My own little battle was an economic cure: shoplifting.
Clowns have an edge as shoplifters. Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, works in our favor; people don’t look when they don’t want to be involved, to be burdened with invisible objects, imitated in public, or made to hold a clown’s leg, a slippery fish, an exploding hat.
It was completely against the Clown Code of Ethics to use performance as a weapon: I will use my art only for the greater good, to create happiness, never to inflict harm. But yes, I did it. In clown gear, I stole.
There were liver cleansers, colon cleansers, and gallstone removers. Valerian, passionflower, and hops promised to relax muscles, heart muscle included. I slid a vial of valerian into my other sleeve.
My heart beat faster with each tincture. A cashier read a magazine behind a shiny Courtesy Counter. She licked a finger, turned a page. I reached for a vial of Chaste Tree Berry tonic.
A low voice said, “Find everything you need?”
I whipped my head around and looked