Clown Girl. Monica Drake
His breath was a white trail of smoke, teeth yellowed and perfectly square.
“A little. Just learning pins.” I was nervous. Pins are harder than balls—the narrow side of each pin’ll slap your wrist with every catch. I held out my arm and pulled back one striped sleeve to show where my arm was decorated with blooming black, red, and blue flowers. Each bruise marked the hit of a juggling pin.
Rex laughed. “Battle scars.” He said, “I’d be into team juggling, if you’re up for it. Fastest way to learn is with a partner.”
A date. He asked me on a juggling date! That’s when he told me his name: Rex Galore. Rex, the Clown Prince! The Princely Clown of the After-hours Club Circuit, a movement artist. Of course I’d seen the posters for his shows. Rex had the best graphics in town. He was a different breed of clown—no kids’ parties, no Food Fairs. No smiling, kowtowing, apple-polishing slapstick; Rex said slap was dead. Instead of the fool, Rex was an acrobat. He could juggle toasters and blenders, live kittens even. He could walk on stilts and ride a unicycle.
I rolled down my sleeve. “That’d be nice,” I said. “I’m Nita.”
“I know,” he said.
Did he really, or was it all bluster? It didn’t matter. By then, I was already the clown groupie, the fetishist: love.
The Buddhists say if you meet somebody and your heart pounds, your hands shake, your knees go weak, that’s not the one. When you meet your soul mate you’ll feel calm. No anxiety, no agitation. I say, the Buddhists don’t have a clue. When I met Rex I was awash in nerves, because, why not? He was everything I believed in and he came right to me. He asked me out. Why settle for less?
Back in the classroom he stepped out of the boots, ran his fingers through the length of his hair, shook off the robe, and there was his body again: all muscle. He climbed on his pedestal. My statue, my date, the sexiest man in town. An older woman student leaned over and whispered, “That’s the way to pick’em. With a preview. Now you know what you’re getting.”
As though anything were ever that easy or true.
In the mudroom, the afternoon sun came in through the windows and warmed the floor and the wall behind the bed. The room was a terrarium of dog breath, turpentine, and sweat. I sang something I’d been working on, part of a skit:
Beef Brisket
what is it?
Oh, wouldn’t you like to know…
Still naked, I unzipped the suitcase Rex used to hold costumes and let clothes spill out. Beefbrisket, just ee-ee-t it… I ran my hands through his clothes, pressed fabric to my skin. Turpentine was as good as Rex’s cologne because it was the scent of the classroom where we met. I touched a dab of turpentine to the fabric, then lay on my bed with the costumes beside me like a warm body. That cop? He was helpful, sure. And he was handsome. But a man like that was white bread next to the richness of art, and love. Rex. Chance drew close against my shoulder from the other side and for a moment, in the smell of turpentine, it was as though Rex, Chance, and I were together again, the three of us. Family.
Until Herman knocked on the door. “Hey,” he said, his voice sharp. “I smell turp from the kitchen. Clean it up, ventilate, or you’re out of here.” He pushed an unpaid phone bill under the locked door. The envelope came toward me with a shimmy and a hiss, all warning and demand.
5.
Plucky, Come Home!
IN THE BACK OF REX’S PROP-ROOM AMBULANCE, I GATHERED pens and paper and made a sign: Missing: Rubber Chicken. I sketched the chicken’s long rubber neck, her fallen-over comb, dangling legs, and splayed toes. I inked in the black lines of a heart on her chest, her defining characteristic, like a birthmark or a scar.
The ambulance’s two back doors hung open to let a breeze in. Outside a mechanical xylophone blasted the hard notes of “Home on the Range,” as One-Night Stan the Ice- Cream Man trawled nearby. I perched on a pile of costumes with the shades pulled, wearing a sun hat with a big brim and a cluster of silk flowers in front. The only thing wrong with the hat was two holes cut in the top meant to accommodate rabbit ears back when the hat was part of a show.
Below the rubber chicken picture, on my sign, I wrote, Name: Plucky. Height: 15”. Value: Sentimental. Then I wrote: Reward: $$$.
I tore off the part about a reward. What could I offer? If the rubber-chicken thief were a King’s Row kid, my reward would be a bad joke next to the punk’s allowance. I crunched the scrap in my hand.
But I wanted Plucky back. Plucky belonged with Rex and me. We’d had good times together. I wrote it again, in the space that was left: Reward. Then crossed it off. I couldn’t give money away.
But who would return a rubber chicken without incentive? Plucky would end up tossed in an entryway, left in a backyard, or given to charity. I wrote it one more time, above the black cross-off mark: Reward, followed by only one dollar sign. I’d pay for that chicken’s safe return because she was mine, ours, the first and now the only child of our union, the memento of sex, evidence of sex, Rex Galore.
Rex and me, our second date wasn’t a date so much as it was a show. He invited me for a night onstage. We were juggling together, pins in the air, moving hand to hand with a good rhythm going, when he invited me to work with him, to be a moving table, a prop stand in his fire-juggling act. Put fire in the show, audiences love it. That’s what Rex always said: Burn shit up. I was wary. It was so much, so soon, I said, “You don’t think we’re rushing things?”
He said, “I’m ready.”
With the way the pins spun smoothly between us, six in the air, I knew I was ready too. I saw my future: if the date were an audition, I’d nail it.
The night of his show I wore a legless tabletop strapped to my back, in a nightclub, and underneath that board I swayed to Rex’s dance. The crowd was sauced. Somebody yelled, “Prestidigiate!” An empty plastic pitcher flew onto the stage. The pitcher spun, beer speckled my face, and I laughed out loud. The energy was nothing like the hollow garages of art gigs, the scream of birthday parties, or the dead air in the corporate scene.
Rex rapped on my tabletop and the sound amplified in my ears. Rex was amplified, bigger than life, his name chanted by strangers, his soundtrack a crazy mess of Ska, tribal, and Cambodian pop. His feet were bare and strong, legs muscled. That was all I could see from down low. His hands hit the floor between his feet and his legs scissored up and out of view. His curly hair dropped to the stage, damp with sweat. Dionysus, Pan. Bacchus, Shazam. My Wonder Twin. He was a god, a gymnast, a laugh riot, a dream.
Rex piled bottles on the table of my back. He balanced fire wands on the bottles and the flames reflected in mirrors at the edges of the stage. I was in the middle of a bonfire, a forest fire, a burning building. Magic. Everyone looked at the flaming pyramid of bottles on my back. My knees rubbed hard against the uneven floor of the stage. Rex rode a unicycle. His single wheel circled as I shuffled.
If Rex asked me to eat glass, I would’ve done it.
Later, in the quiet of the dressing room, he closed the door. I stood. My legs trembled, knees stiff with exertion, exhilaration, and nerves. Rex said, “You’re a natural.” He unstrapped the table, lifted it from my back, and set it aside.
“It was all you,” I said.
“Not at all!” His big hands reached forward to massage my shoulders. I closed my eyes and groaned. “Tough work, isn’t it?” He let his hands slide down my shoulders to the collar of my black catsuit, lowered the zipper in back. The cloth peeled away, cool air brushed my skin and my shoulders stretched larger, free of the fabric. “Goosebumps,” Rex said and ran a finger down my spine, his voice a quiet growl. His skin smelled hot, flammable as white gas. He touched a calloused finger to my collarbone, then ran his finger down over my breast