Clown Girl - Monica Drake [73]
I straightened my daisy sunglasses. “That’s what they asked for. Twenty-four hours of contiguous, continuous urine.”
He shook the jug again, like a dog shaking a rabbit, then handed the jug back. “No way is that twenty-four hours. Dump that out, give it a rinse, and start again.” He said, “If that’s all you got in you, you need hydration. That’s a easy diagnosis.” He went back to his paperwork.
I gave the jug a shake. It was light, with a quiet sloshing inside. It was light even considering how much piss missed the jug when I aimed my own stream, in my funnel-less collection process. I held it up and looked at the bottom of the plastic where a seam came together—no leak. The bottom was dry.
“I swear there was more here,” I said.
The giant gave me a side glance, a short grunt. I slapped my way out of the office in my oversized Keds, the jug under my arm.
WHEN I GOT TO HERMAN’S, THERE WERE PEOPLE IN THE front yard and two women up on the porch. A tangle of black dogs swam lazy circles in the overgrown grass.
Herman was at the front door. “Listen up—we don’t need any rubber chickens,” Herman said, his voice loud. “Take your rubber-chicken playdate and piss off.” He tried to push the door closed.
A woman on the porch put her foot in the door, and held out a piece of paper.
“I got the address right here,” she said. “And I know I got the chicken.”
She slammed the chicken against the door like she was tenderizing it, with its beak open, the rubber comb trembling. She waved the paper in her other hand.
I pushed my way through the people on the steps and said, “It’s me you want. Let’s see the chicken.”
I’d recognize Plucky in a heartbeat. An indelible ink heartbeat, even.
She spun around, and the chicken flung its legs out like a kid on a merry-go-round. The woman was dressed in a pink fake Olympic tracksuit, and had her hair in two thick, matted French braids. Her skin was a mess of scars, like some kind of champion Olympic junkie. Herman let go of the door. The woman fell against Herman, and righted herself fast. A second woman in high heels and a hooker’s stained white cocktail dress pulled back against the rattling porch rail. She clutched another rubber chicken to her acne-scarred chest. Was that Plucky, held so close against the woman’s weathered skin? Would my Plucky be out with a hooker?
Herman said, “Shit.” He rubbed his shoulder.
Two men and another woman in the yard came up the stairs behind me. “I got your chicken right here,” one man said. “What’s the reward?”
“I was here first,” the Olympic user said.
It was a rubber-chicken roundup. They all had rubber chickens held out like strangled babies. Everywhere I looked I saw Plucky, but it was never really Plucky, only a cheap imitation.
“Nita,” Herman shook his head. “It’s not getting any better—it’s worse. It’s been the same story all morning.”
A man in the yard called, “Got your dog, right?”
A black mutt on a knotted rope. The dog bent his hind legs and arched his back, moving into the classic squat to leave what Jerrod called, so nicely, “litter,” in the long grass of Herman’s lawn.
Jerrod. I hadn’t talked to Jerrod since the kiss. Each patrol car that passed looked like Jerrod’s car, his silhouette inside.
I saw Jerrod everywhere, Plucky in every hand, and Chance in each roaming stray.
“Get the dogs out of here,” Herman yelled. “Off the lawn, OK?”
The lawn. The grass was summer brown and waved back and forth as though to say, Remember me? Down the block two more people headed our way. Each dangled the buttercup-yellow body of a rubber chicken. A black-and-white pit bull mix loped at one man’s heels.
A man stuck a chicken in my face. “So what’s the reward?” A price tag danced in the sun, stapled to the chicken’s foot. The scent of plastic drifted like the breath of Christmas packages,