Clown Girl by Monica Drake

Author:Monica Drake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hawthorne Books
Published: 2010-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

13.

Silence Isn’t the Only Thing That’s Golden

FOUR IN THE MORNING. THE DEPRESSION HOUR. THE hour of brain chemistry and despair. My mouth was cotton-mouth-beer-drinking dry. I reached for a cup of cold tea on the floor beside the futon. My fingers grazed the dry skin of Chance’s sharp nose. Sweet, sleeping Chance. I stretched farther, gave a pat, but there was no soft fur, no silky ears. Just the nose. I fumbled in the dark. Nose? It was no nose, but a blackened banana, caught in the blankets like a fish in a net! I dropped the banana and sat up fast; my other hand hit the coarse hair of a kiwi, smashed against the sheets. It was Jerrod’s bruised banana, the one he left on the barroom table, and his smashed kiwi—his fruit in bed beside me!

In the grainy moonlight the blackened banana was unwelcome as a severed horse head. The room was thick with the breath of overripe fruit. This was no accident—it was a threat, either from some unpaid tropical bookie or from someone much closer to home: Italia. She knew I’d been out with a cop.

The second kiwi rolled loose against the sheets in its tiny hair shirt, a fruit martyr doing penance. I’d be the one doing penance if Nadia-Italia had her way.

In the shadows, the Mount Rushmore of Rex as a clay bust perched on the closet shelf stared down at me and the banana. Rex stared from the hard lines of ink drawings and the curve of sculptures, his enigmatic smile caught in the moonlight, that smile turned now from complicit to condemning: I was guilty. I kissed a cop.

But Italia had snuck into my room while I slept. She trespassed.

God—I couldn’t stand it! If Rex were in town, nobody would threaten me with a bruised banana. Nobody but Rex would kiss me, and I wouldn’t even look at anyone else but Rex, my man, my show, my whole family and all I had.

I threw the banana out of bed and it hit a window with the soft thunk of a broken-necked pigeon. Why had I kissed Jerrod? What was I, crazy? Kissing a cop on the street. I was weak, weak, weak! So much for Clowns Sans Frontieres, those clowns without borders—I was a clown without boundaries. Without even the cheapest of boundaries! With one mistake, my world would crumble, slide away like sand in a tipped sandbox, melted cotton candy, a popped balloon Jesus. Nadia-Italia’d tell Herman. They’d both tell Rex. Maybe that poltroon had already told Herman. But no—more likely she’d drag it out, enjoy the power. I was at her mercy, and it was my own fault.

I was a worthless lump of earth. A clod.

Clown and clod came from the same root word: A lump. I shook Chinese BBs from the almost empty jar. I couldn’t lose Rex. Why did I give in to Jerrod?

If Rex were home, he and I would take a flashlight, walk the streets, and call Chance until she appeared.

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