Clown Girl - Monica Drake [80]
“I didn’t throw it at the shed.” I coughed again. Perhaps more for Herman’s sake than my own. I hacked like I had instant coal miner’s lung. I said, “It was on fire, I tried to put it out. Besides, you didn’t like that lawn anyway, right?” I coughed again. “At least now we don’t have to mow. That’s the bright side.” His yard was a charcoal pit.
He dropped my hand. I saw what was coming and counted the seconds, like counting between when lightning strikes and the crash of thunder.
By the time I reached three, Herman blew up. He said, “Jesus, Nita. Total disrespect. Same as always. You could’ve burned the house down. That’s dangerous shit.” He took a cigarette out of his pocket, started to put it in his mouth but his fingers were clumsy and tense and he broke the smoke in half, threw it on the ground. “They’ll investigate. My insurance’ll go up, cops’ll be over here.” He said, “Bottom line, when you come back, I want you gone. Period.” His mouth was a damp red gash in his soot-covered face. “Last straw.”
I was on my deathbed—my death gurney—and Herman was giving me the bum’s rush. I said, “Herman—”
He said, “Forget my stash, you could’ve killed us in our sleep.”
The paramedics lifted my new bed. The gurney creaked and rocked as the stars grew closer, and it was like riding a wave. “Let’s talk about it, when I’m better.”
Herman backhanded an invisible foe, shook his head, and folded his arms as though to hold in a rib cage of fury. The paramedics swung my bed into place in the ambulance’s tiny room. Herman and Nadia-Italia, united against me, walked arm in arm across the blackened lawn.
16.
A Turn for the Nurse
IN THE BACK OF THE AMBULANCE IT WAS ONLY THE TOUSLE-HAIRED boy paramedic and me. The ambulance rocked and barreled into town while the blood in my body swirled as a nauseating eddy in my chest. The siren sang opera to our tragedy. Everything smelled like burnt polyester. My bigger-than-big Keds were blackened, melted cheese at the rubber toes, dripped and solidified into a Salvador Dali. The back of the ambulance was a crowded vault of supplies, but might as well have been empty for all I cared because it wasn’t Rex’s ambulance and didn’t have the sexy, sweaty comfort of his body, his presence. My cure.
“I can’t breathe,” I said. The Ass under my hips made my back arch and the fake breasts thrust up. “I feel a knock in my chest. Like a gasp in my heart. Am I dying?” My breath was shallow, the words broken. When I tapped my chest, one Pendulous Breast gave a thin wheeze. Sweat trickled down my temple. Away from the fire, my skin cooled under the sweat like a fever.
“We’re going to give it a listen.” The paramedic reached as though to unbutton my shirt but stopped short, his hands in the air in front of me.
The Kevlar boobs barred the way. Over the hill of the Pendulous Breasts I saw only the top half of the paramedic’s face, his worried eyes and twisted eyebrows. I was at his mercy.
If I could blow up a balloon, tie a few Madonnas, I’d catch my breath and settle my heart. I tried to reach in my pocket. The nylon seat belt cut across my path.
The paramedic touched the curve of the boob suit.
With empty hands I had no props, no balloons, no way to draw attention away from me and toward a trick, a rubber toy, a balloon animal.
I said, “Pass me a latex glove, I’ll make you a reenactment of the Annunciation. The whole thing, I promise.”
He slid his hand tentatively along the curve of a fake boob. He handled me like I was the prop.
“Hey,” I said. I gave a weak smile, called on my clown powers, and tried to summon the fertility goddess meant for that outfit. With my best vaudeville purr, I said, “What are you, a faith healer?” My voice cracked. I fluttered my eyelashes. “That’s a fine medicine—you touch me like you know me. I’m better already.” I took a deep breath, counted to eight, and didn’t feel better at all.
“Just doing my job.” He grabbed one mound in each hand and lifted. The left side quacked, and the paramedic jumped. The right boob, victim