Clown Girl - Monica Drake [98]
I didn’t answer.
He said, “’at’s cool.”
“Thanks for the blessing, Hermes, but you don’t own the street.”
“No, sure don’t,” he said. After a minute, he added, “Nita? Listen—you kin still come in. Use the bat’room, or whatever.”
I turned to look at him then. “Are you joking?”
He shook his head. Held his ice pack.
I said, “That’s real generous, Herman. But know what? You should pay me to use your toilet, that’s what you should do. I’d rather pee in the street.”
“Nita, be reas-noble. Y’burned up the yard,” he said, with his jaw still swelling further. “Almost burnt the house down. Date cops, bring people around, rubber chickens, stray dogs. I been answerin’ the door all day. I got my jaw busted. The least you could do is let the urine thing go. So I sold a li’l piss, so what?”
“I’m not dating cops,” I said. As I said the words, the bandage on my arm held me as though Jerrod’s hand were still there. A cop. The only cop. I was burned up and scabby, in my worn clown suit, but I had the bandage and I had the memory, a moment of being taken care of. A kiss. A breath. I said, “You’d think I could put aside a little piss and expect it to be there when I got back. That’s all I wanted. To keep one measly thing.”
19.
Sexy Rex and the Emergency Comforts
IT WAS TIME FOR A NEW SHTICK, THE BIG FISH, THE whole schmeer that would turn my clown career around. The Juicy Caboosey show was on the back burner, literally, with the suit scorched to ruination.
My metamorphosis sketch, the Kafka interpretation—that was a good act. It was an excellent act and close to my heart, but it was complicated, subtle, and moody, not the quick break-out piece for an unknown clown. I needed something simple and fast. I was a sinking ship. The ambulance was a fine campsite but I couldn’t call it home.
It was time to go High Concept.
Early morning, I left Chance in Herman’s burnt-up yard and went to Hoagies and Stogies. Two bleary-eyed men were schnockered at the bar. John Denver sang from the jukebox. I had my toothbrush in one hand, the orange piss jug in the other hand, and my pink bag over my shoulder.
After only one day in my new digs, already I’d lost the urine-collection tray again, either in Herman’s house, or perhaps aswim in the sea of costumes in the ambulance. I cut across the tavern’s dirty carpet and headed for the bathroom.
Mad Addie, behind the bar, wrapped her knuckles against the counter. “Customers only, customers only,” she said. Her voice was like an exotic bird, raspy and sharp. She tapped one finger against a sign on the wall: Toilets For Customers Only.
The old men looked up. I went back to the bar and bought a pint.
After I paid, I took the jug to the bathroom. So what if the first piss of the morning was meant to go down the drain? I’d gotten nowhere yet on my urine savings plan, and needed every drop. I crouched in the stall and used all the Kegel muscles I had to direct my piss in a steady stream into the mouth of the jug. I flicked stray piss off my hand, wiped my hand on my thigh. I brushed my teeth, then went back out, sat at the bar two stools down from the drunk geezers, and drank my pint.
“Could you put this on ice?” I asked, held up the jug and gave it a slosh.
“We’re not a U-Store-It,” Addie said. She tapped another sign. We’re Not a Storage Fasility, the sign said. She dropped her smokes and cursed.
“How about a few cubes then?”
When she gave me a cupful of ice, I pushed five ice cubes one after the other into the mouth of the jug.
I took my time with the breakfast pint and waited until I had to pee again, to get my money’s worth. Beer would fuel my urine factory. Why leave with a full bladder?
The tavern windows were covered with dusty red and white checked curtains. The curtains blocked the world from drinkers and hid drunks from the world. There was just enough space at the top to see the sky beyond the blue-tinted glass. I stared out the windows at the wide-open sky and tried to