Clown Girl - Monica Drake [72]
We. The whole world was in that word: Rex was still making plans for the both of us. So he hadn’t heard, he didn’t know. My life wasn’t ruined, so far.
I said, “You’ll get in. You’re amazing.” I took a deep breath.
“There’s a lot of hot clowns in the world, Nita.”
Rex was the best I’d seen. “You miss me?”
He said, “Of course, I miss you all the time.”
The sculpted head in the closet, the face at the foot of my bed, the pen and ink drawing—they were all Rex, and spoke to me through the voice on the phone. I asked, “Rex?”
“Yeah, Sniff?”
“What’s it like when you’re modeling, to be up in front of everyone, naked?”
He laughed and said, “Well, it’s my job. I tune out. Concentrate on not getting a hard-on. Why’re you asking?”
I laughed. “You mean when I’m in the class, or all the time?” I was fishing for a compliment.
He was honest instead. He said, “All the time, pretty much.”
All the time. OK. Well, that explained the elusive, enigmatic expression—my mudroom was filled with pictures of my dear Rex Galore trying not to get a hard on. He asked, “Are you doing your art? Painting at all?”
“Sketching, some.” The chicken poster. “And working with Crack and Matey.”
He said, “Corporate, commercial.”
“It’s good money.”
“That shit’ll make you sick,” he said. “Selling out, it’s no good.” I listened to the clown hostel party in the background, a woman’s voice getting higher and higher, then a bark of laughter. Art clowns, living it up, oblivious to time or money.
I said, “Rex, if I had a choice I’d rather work with you, do shows. But Crack’s work is cash. We need it.”
“That’s why they call it whoring,” he said. “Corporate baby-sitting.”
Silence on my end. Then, “It’s not whoring. And it paid for your trip.”
He said, “Listen, Sniff, just take care of yourself, OK? Do the work that makes you happy. That’s all I’m saying. In a few days or so, I’ll come back. I’ll make you right as rain, fit as a fiddle.” He hummed a few lines of the song, fit as a fiddle and ready for love. I saw him then, juggling, riding his unicycle. It was all in the whistle. His big hands, his hair, the whole show that was Rex Galore.
He stopped whistling to ask, “How’s the ambulance? Anybody break in?”
Our ambulance, our storage room. “It’s fine. But hurry back. It can’t sit there forever.” My Rex. I was ready for him. “And you owe me a few kisses.”
“I do?” he asked. “Am I in arrears, my fair clown?”
“Definitely. Kisses in arrears.”
“Sounds fair to me.” He laughed.
I said, “Rex?” Talking to the phone, to the ink drawing, the sculpted head.
“Yes?”
“When you come back…”
He waited.
I said, “Could we maybe do some of the old stuff? Some of the street shows, like we used to.”
“You mean with the hat, the nickels and dimes, all that?”
I said, “Yeah. With the amplifier, the old buck-and-wing. Get Chance in for a few dog tricks.”
His voice was quieter. Soft. “There’s no money in it, Sniff, and I’m not so big on getting arrested anymore…but whatever you want. When I come back, we’ll do it.”
Perfect. I didn’t need prescriptions, acupuncture, and the Chinese pills. All I needed was for Rex to come home. After we hung up, I sat on the slumped futon and listened to the house creak. Now and again I heard a moan through the heat vent. Maybe it was the normal sounds of an old house, or maybe Nadia-Italia and Herman were getting it on, a tangle of muscles and sweat and skin. I tried not to think about that as I lay awake.
The summer sun rose, orange and pink, and seeped in through the broken windows. Nadia-Italia’s voice cut in on the old-time radio of the heat vent overhead: “Sleeping tight, little clown? Well, it’s not over. I’ll get you,” she hissed, her voice coming down from above, the voice of a vengeful god. She said, “Get you like you’ve never been got before.”
14.
Bounty Hunters and Piss Thieves
THREE DAYS LATER I HANDED MY JUG OF URINE TO A giant man squashed into a tiny padded chair behind the hospital lab office desk. It had taken three days since Italia’s midnight snack to find a day for collecting urine.