Clown Girl - Monica Drake [56]
Jerrod said, “It’s walking distance. She ran when I came near her. Just like somebody else I know, now that I think about it.” He turned to me. I palmed a vial fast.
Up ahead was the blue sign of Hoagies and Stogies, a cigar bar sub shop. It was no kind of place to eat, because the meat and cheese and bread all tasted like stale cigar smoke. But they sold cheap beer.
He said, “It’s hard to arrest a dog.”
“Arrest?” The last thing I needed was to pay bail on my dog. “What sort of charges?”
“Vagrancy,” he said without hesitation. Then he looked at me. “It’s a joke.”
A cop joke. I didn’t even know cops made jokes.
Hoagies and Stogies had dark, smoked glass in the windows and tiny purple lights strung up above. Anybody could be in there and could look out those dark windows and see me with Jerrod, sauntering alongside an officer. I took a few steps to the left.
Jerrod veered in close, stayed at my side. I pulled nylon hair in front of my face.
He said, “Just another block. Down an alley.”
The whole thing made me jumpy. Anticipation, nerves, the unknown of it. I tapped my cane along the ground, then balanced it over one shoulder. Jerrod’s eyes were on an empty lot. I unscrewed the lid on the valerian vial and kept my hand down low.
“Right about here,” he said. The lot was the backside of a few weather-beaten, world-weary houses. I called Chance’s name. Jerrod cupped a hand around his mouth, called and scanned the empty lots. The banana and kiwis, sweating in their plastic bag, swung from his other hand at his hip. While Jerrod wasn’t looking I hid under the tent of my own fake hair and shook drops of valerian onto the end of my tongue.
Valerian tastes like the earth, like dirt, a bittersweet promise mixed in alcohol. It was early evening. The air was soft and skin temperature, with a quiet wind gentle as kisses, a peach sky striped with hazy blue.
“You can see OK, in those glasses?” he asked.
“Of course.” The huge sunglasses, ringed with plastic flowers. I smiled, reached up and pressed behind the earpiece. Water shot from the center in a wide arc. “Keeps people away.”
He didn’t laugh, but only nodded. “Is that the goal?” he asked.
“What?”
“To keep people away?”
I nodded, and said, “Just what the eye doctor ordered.” I pressed the back of the glasses again, but this time, instead of a wide arc, the water trailed into a trickle and hit my cheek. I said, “Really, there’s no goal. It’s a job. I’m a clown.”
He called for Chance again and kept walking. I did the same. There was no sign of her. Finally, I had to ask, “Was my dog really even out here? I mean, did you see a dog at all?”
“Of course she was here,” he said. “What do you think, I’d lie about it?”
Through my glasses, his skin was tinted soft blue in the evening light. “Maybe, to get me out of the store? So I’d follow you.” I watched his face for a sign, a way to know if he’d made the story up.
“You’re funny,” he said. He didn’t smile.
“I’m supposed to be funny.” But I wasn’t joking.
“Not that kind of funny,” he said. “You’re funny because you don’t trust me. You act like I’m the Green River Killer or something. If I wanted you out of the store, I have other tools. Things we learn in the academy, right? Not subterfuge.” He said, “I let you off easy the other day, over the lawn mower thing. I did everything wrong just to let you off on that one. I walked you out nicely today, no big scene. Now I’m out here calling for your lost dog. Is anybody else helping you out?”
In the empty lot, a Styrofoam cup caught in the wind bumped along the rough ground.
He said, “We got a call today that clowns were congregating in the basement of the Lucky Strike. Suspicious activity. That whole place is bad news. All I could think was that maybe you were there.”
I said, “It was our publicity—”
“Stop! Don’t tell me.” He put his hands up fast, as though to shield himself from my bad ideas. “I took the report but didn’t follow up because I don’t want to know. I keep seeing you in all the wrong places. I like to see you—but not that way, not there,