Clown Girl - Monica Drake [67]
In the grainy moonlight the blackened banana was unwelcome as a severed horse head. The room was thick with the breath of overripe fruit. This was no accident—it was a threat, either from some unpaid tropical bookie or from someone much closer to home: Italia. She knew I’d been out with a cop.
The second kiwi rolled loose against the sheets in its tiny hair shirt, a fruit martyr doing penance. I’d be the one doing penance if Nadia-Italia had her way.
In the shadows, the Mount Rushmore of Rex as a clay bust perched on the closet shelf stared down at me and the banana. Rex stared from the hard lines of ink drawings and the curve of sculptures, his enigmatic smile caught in the moonlight, that smile turned now from complicit to condemning: I was guilty. I kissed a cop.
But Italia had snuck into my room while I slept. She trespassed.
God—I couldn’t stand it! If Rex were in town, nobody would threaten me with a bruised banana. Nobody but Rex would kiss me, and I wouldn’t even look at anyone else but Rex, my man, my show, my whole family and all I had.
I threw the banana out of bed and it hit a window with the soft thunk of a broken-necked pigeon. Why had I kissed Jerrod? What was I, crazy? Kissing a cop on the street. I was weak, weak, weak! So much for Clowns Sans Frontieres, those clowns without borders—I was a clown without boundaries. Without even the cheapest of boundaries! With one mistake, my world would crumble, slide away like sand in a tipped sandbox, melted cotton candy, a popped balloon Jesus. Nadia-Italia’d tell Herman. They’d both tell Rex. Maybe that poltroon had already told Herman. But no—more likely she’d drag it out, enjoy the power. I was at her mercy, and it was my own fault.
I was a worthless lump of earth. A clod.
Clown and clod came from the same root word: A lump. I shook Chinese BBs from the almost empty jar. I couldn’t lose Rex. Why did I give in to Jerrod?
If Rex were home, he and I would take a flashlight, walk the streets, and call Chance until she appeared. Because Chance was gone, I wanted Rex home more than ever, and because Rex was gone, I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Chance, losing our rubber chicken, our child, and then failing the urine test because I lost the hospital equipment too.
“Nobody ever lost a dime underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” That’s what P.T. Barnum said, and he made himself a fortune. If P.T. Barnum could do it, why couldn’t I? I had talent. Brains. Maybe even looks. And I had artistic vision—the Kafka sketch, my literary interpretation. I could do more than lose things.
Clown and clod were related, but so was the word cloud. I couldn’t forget that. That’s the clown’s real job—to stay grounded on the earth, the clod, but with her head in the clouds. I needed to keep my head, and keep the clown dream alive.
All I needed was a new plan, or at least a swift variation on the old one. I’d be a Horatio Alger of the clown circuit, an American success story; I’d pull myself up by my own striped stockings. A modern, striving Emmett Kelly. I had to cut to the chase, earn some real moola, and move out gracefully before I was thrown out.
If I moved out at will, I wouldn’t have to explain. Rex would have a place to live when he came home—a real place, not a mudroom, a clod room. A clown room.
When life sucks, throw yourself into art. That was Rex’s survival tactic. If the audience doesn’t like the act, burn shit up. Light something on fire. They go for fire every time.
I could earn money as an artist, not just as Crack’s unwilling whore. Not as Trixie, Twinkie, or Bubbles. This would be the last night I’d spend as fate’s stooge.
Just thinking about my round-the-corner success made me thirsty. That, and the beers