Clown Girl - Monica Drake [54]
I put a hand to my brow and turned to survey the wall of tinctures, from the Pacific aaawll the way to the Atlantic. I whistled long and loud, and turned back to Tim. I wiped the back of my hand across my brow and nodded. Yes. Yes, I found everything I needed, and then some! I gave the A-OK sign, thumb to forefinger, but Tim didn’t run. Instead, Tim’s eyes turned to my pink bag. I wrapped my hands around the handle of an imaginary shopping cart and lurched off, down the tincture row. Tim stood there a moment longer, watched my act, straightened a Miracle Cream display, and moved on.
I slid a vial of licorice concentrate in my bag.
Even with Tim gone, the tincture aisle was getting hot. I had to work fast. No time to research. Pau D’Arco was for blood; I liked the name—Brazilian, maybe. Where in this country would we say D’Arco? Cleavers was a good name too. I slid a vial of each into my bag and could hardly breathe, loaded down with tiny tinctures, stolen promises. I reached toward a winking golden bottle.
A hand tapped my shoulder. Tim? The blue cuff of a uniform, golden hair on the wrist. The cops! Lightning danced at the edge of my vision; the ceiling fell and my heart squeezed. Arrested? Again, so soon! When I turned and saw his face, for a minute I was relieved—at least it was the cop I knew, Mr. Magic, charming and helpful. But still, it was a cop! I was glad to see him, but didn’t want him to see me. Distance.
“You shop in your clown costume?” Jerrod asked. I could barely hear his words over the knock of my heart, the brain buzz. He held a banana pointed at me like a gun. In his other hand he had a plastic bag with two kiwis inside. It was the law enforcement weaponry of some peace-loving island paradise.
“It’s a free country.” I spoke too fast: “You shop in your cop costume.” I shouldn’t’ve said cop. Police. That’s the word. I shouldn’t’ve said anything. I felt the weight of stolen valerian slide inside my big sleeve. I added, “Right?” and smiled harder, wider. “How are you?”
“I’m all right. Thanks for asking. And no. First of all, it’s a uniform, not a costume, and I don’t usually shop in my uniform. I’m supposed to be off duty, actually, but said I’d answer this one last call. Heard over the car radio they needed somebody to diffuse a potential situation.” He waved the banana toward the front door.
“A situation?” I looked around. The place was calm. No alarms, no gunmen. Only the racket of my beating heart. “What’s going on?” My heartbeat confessed to thievery: he knows, he knows, he knows…
He shrugged. A tendon in his neck flickered to the surface, then disappeared again. “Let’s just say, I’ll give you a police escort out this time, Sniffles.”
“Me?” I reached for an empty shopping cart as though to prove my good intentions, to tether myself to the world of shoppers. The cart slid away, I slipped, and the world was untethered, off-kilter.
“The call said there was a clown scaring customers… I thought it might be you.”
I righted myself, grabbed the cart again, and reined it in. “They called on me? Who did?” My heart murmured, Run, run, run away.
“This is a family place. The clown getup makes people nervous.”
“Family? What do you mean—clowns are family fun.”
Jerrod gave me a doubtful eye. He scratched his head with the banana and took a deep breath. I took a breath too, and felt the walls expand for a moment, giving me precious room to breathe. He said, “I’ll tell you the deal—it’s more the whole John Wayne Gacy thing.” He slid the banana in the plastic bag alongside the two kiwis.
Shit. Gacy. “That guy ruined the gig for a lot of clowns. His act fostered the whole prejudice… If one Asian woman commits a crime, does that bar Asian women from grocery stores?”
Jerrod said, “Well, save that question for debate team. Here, they just don’t want kids to see it.”
I said, “Gacy was more of an ice-cream man with a clown suit for the holidays—”
Jerrod cut in: