Clown Girl - Monica Drake [74]
I said, “This chicken is brand-new. You know it’s not mine.”
“It’s better, right? New’s always better.” The man smiled a chipped toothed, sour beer-breathed salesman’s smile. He was a salesman with nothing to sell but the one rubber bird. “Look, I paid three bucks for this thing. You think I need it?”
I shook him off.
“You didn’t pay for that,” the hooker barked out.
Some others had new chickens; most carried worn-out old hens, the paint faded off the wings and faces. Some weren’t even rubber. Some weren’t even chickens. And all the dogs were big, old rotties and labs mixed with collies, Danes, and who knew what. The reward seekers may have been dog owners, ready to cash in on man’s best friend.
A fine Baloneytown how-do-you-do.
I pushed my way into the house. At the door I turned back. “Everybody,” I called out. “My rubber chicken was special. It has distinguishing features.”
“Like what?” a woman yelled up.
“When I see it, that’s who gets the reward. And my dog is little, with no tail.” I slammed the door closed. Turned. Herman stood waiting. He had one hand wrapped around his arm, around the tattoo that seeped into his soft brown skin, the letters that were my name. Flecks of dried blood marked the beginning of where Nadia-Italia had drafted her own lines over the top, a camouflaging peacock as one more way to obliterate me. Somebody knocked on the door. I slid the dead bolt across it.
Herman said, “You’re pushing it, Nita. If they’re not friends or family, and they’re not here to buy herb, we don’t need opportunists hanging around.”
I leaned against the door to catch my breath. Nadia-Italia was lifting weights in front of the TV. Her breath and my breath, we matched each other, wheezing. She was plotting, I knew it. Every minute—plotting how to make good on her threat.
Herman said, “If you put up a sign offering cash in a neighborhood like this, you’re going to get answers.”
Nadia-Italia stopped lifting, sat up, took a big slug of water, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “So what is this, Take Your Urine to Work Day?” She nodded at the orange jug swinging in my shaky hand.
I said, “Every day seems to be take my piss somewhere day around here—somebody drained my jug!”
Nadia-Italia only laughed, and lay back down on her weight bench. I stepped toward her and shook the jug over her head like some kind of percussion. “You poured this out—”
“Don’t talk to her,” Herman cut in. “She didn’t touch your piss.”
Italia turned her head. One eye was squinched where her face pressed against the weight lifting bench. “Think I want your urine, Clown Girl? Had my fill, thanks and no thanks.”
“I think you’re messing with me.”
“You’re breaking a house rule. No talking to me. Now scram,” she said, smiled and went back to her bench press.
15.
The Juicy Caboosey Show; or, Full Flame and Glory!
BURN SHIT UP. REX’S STAR PERFORMER’S ADVICE RATTLED in my head. Ever since talking to Rex on the phone, I was more agitated than ever. I was desperate and, worse yet, guilty. All else had failed—especially my willpower when facing down the lips of the law. Now my only recourse was fire. Burn shit up. No way could I practice fire tricks in the slim space of my tiny room. I needed to practice. A new clown skit was the only ticket I held, the only train I’d ride.
I had skit ideas aplenty: The Beef-Brisket Dance, Two Clowns in a Shower, a soft-porn balloon routine called Who’s Hogging the Water? I could pull out the old silent version of Kafka for art lovers in the crowd. And then there was Everything Sisyphus, the quintessential clown act, struggle sans redemption. Now I needed a new routine that was bigger, hotter. On fire. Darkness would transform Herman’s overgrown backyard into a stage.
In a world of clown whores and virgins, I’d cling to the integrity of art.
I waited until after midnight. The house was quiet. I waited longer. After one o’clock, I mixed a highball of valerian tincture on the rocks, rolled Chinese pills over my tongue, and braved the blank canvas of a rehearsal