Clown Girl - Monica Drake [60]
He ducked his head, sipped his beer, and shrugged. “Near eight years.”
I said, “You get to know just about everyone in the neighborhood, I’d guess, in your work.” He probably talked to everyone—not just to me. I wasn’t special. And the beer we drank together, it wasn’t a date.
Jerrod said, “Most of these people I’ve known since I was a kid. Nobody’s gone too far. That bartender, Addie Mulligan—they call her Mad Addie—she used to be our playground monitor, back when I fell off the Kiddie Coaster and cracked my head.” He rubbed the back of his head as though it were still bruised.
“Why do they call her Mad Addie?” I asked.
“Stick around, you’ll find out.” The smallest fleck of beer foam rested on his upper lip. He touched the fleck with his tongue, and it was gone. He slid his glass back and forth on the table from one hand to the next, and looked a little doleful, like Steve McQueen in a scene from just about every movie McQueen ever made.
“You don’t mind?” I asked. “I mean, arresting people you knew as a kid?”
He said, “I do what needs to be done, focus on the job, deal with the embarrassment later on, over—” he swirled the beer in his glass. “Over a beer. After a while, you get used to it. Besides, the way I see it, better a patient friend with a badge than an irate stranger, right?”
I slid my glass back and forth on the table too. “I see what you mean.”
“Heck, I asked to be in this part of town, and they need good police here. Growing up, these people are half the reason I decided to be a cop in the first place.”
“So it’s about more than just not driving a bread truck,” I said. “It’s about policing the playground monitor.”
He let that go. “Play pool?” The table was open. He stood up, fished change out of his pocket, and put a quarter in the slot. “No money involved, and I’ll let you cheat if you want.” He pressed the lever. Balls fell inside the table with the crash and roll of celebration, like kids let out of juvie jail early.
“Thanks for the offer, sir, officer.” I laughed. “I’ll play, but I don’t need you to let me cheat.” I was good at pool. Physics, I understood. I knew all about vectors. That was my original goal in clowning—to create the illusion of defying physics with muscular comedy. I wanted to be able to stand when it looked like I should fall, to spring up when gravity would pull down, and to balance at impossible angles. I wanted to win, or at least stay on my feet, even when it looked like losing. I grabbed my cane, followed Jerrod to the table, and slid the cane through my fingers as though knocking phantom balls in already. “I’ll rack.” I nudged him out of the way with my hip, and hung my bamboo circus cane on the table’s edge.
Jerrod’s break was an all right scattering but the balls stayed too much at the foot. None fell. He ran his hand over the powder spool.
Rex could break to cover the whole table every time. Rex could make a jump shot, run the table, and shoot out. So could I, on a good day. I chalked up the cane’s rubber tip. Then I bent my knees, bad hip trembling, and sighted down the wobbly line of the bamboo.
Jerrod said, “Think a cue might help?” He smiled, like I was a cute trick.
I smiled back, still in the crouch. “Take a cue from this,” I said, and used the cane to knock the cue ball into the ten. The ten rolled smack into a corner pocket. The cue ball spun like a dancer. “Stripes! My lucky color.”
Clown stripes, the outsider’s stripes. Hooker’s stripes, too.
Jerrod said, “Not bad, though stripes isn’t a color, last I checked.”
“Where I work, it’s the color of money.” I moved around the table. Peanut shells crunched underfoot.
He said, “In my profession, I’d say it’s the pattern of jail time. A repeating pattern, all too often.” He asked, “So, how long’ve you known those housemates of yours?”
I chalked up. “Didn’t meet them all at once.” Put the cane behind my back, twisted around with one leg up in the air, tongue to the side