Valerian tastes like the earth, like dirt, a bittersweet promise mixed in alcohol. It was early evening. The air was soft and skin temperature, with a quiet wind gentle as kisses, a peach sky striped with hazy blue.
“You can see OK, in those glasses?” he asked.
“Of course.” The huge sunglasses, ringed with plastic flowers. I smiled, reached up and pressed behind the earpiece. Water shot from the center in a wide arc. “Keeps people away.”
He didn’t laugh, but only nodded. “Is that the goal?” he asked.
“What?”
“To keep people away?”
I nodded, and said, “Just what the eye doctor ordered.” I pressed the back of the glasses again, but this time, instead of a wide arc, the water trailed into a trickle and hit my cheek. I said, “Really, there’s no goal. It’s a job. I’m a clown.”
He called for Chance again and kept walking. I did the same. There was no sign of her. Finally, I had to ask, “Was my dog really even out here? I mean, did you see a dog at all?”
“Of course she was here,” he said. “What do you think, I’d lie about it?”
Through my glasses, his skin was tinted soft blue in the evening light. “Maybe, to get me out of the store? So I’d follow you.” I watched his face for a sign, a way to know if he’d made the story up.
“You’re funny,” he said. He didn’t smile.
“I’m supposed to be funny.” But I wasn’t joking.
“Not that kind of funny,” he said. “You’re funny because you don’t trust me. You act like I’m the Green River Killer or something. If I wanted you out of the store, I have other tools. Things we learn in the academy, right? Not subterfuge.” He said, “I let you off easy the other day, over the lawn mower thing. I did everything wrong just to let you off on that one. I walked you out nicely today, no big scene. Now I’m out here calling for your lost dog. Is anybody else helping you out?”
In the empty lot, a Styrofoam cup caught in the wind bumped along the rough ground.
He said, “We got a call today that clowns were congregating in the basement of the Lucky Strike. Suspicious activity. That whole place is bad news. All I could think was that maybe you were there.”
I said, “It was our publicity—”
“Stop! Don’t tell me.” He put his hands up fast, as though to shield himself from my bad ideas. “I took the report but didn’t follow up because I don’t want to know. I keep seeing you in all the wrong places. I like to see you—but not that way, not there, because I’m paid to be in the wrong places and I don’t know what you’re doing there, I just hope you’re not paid.”
He said, “You know, I’ve got a good feeling about you, but maybe I’ve been wrong the whole time. Maybe you stole that lawn mower. Maybe you crashed on that sidewalk high on drugs. Maybe you’re just like everyone else in Baloneytown. For all I know, you steal lawn mowers to support a habit.”
A habit.
The tinctures clinked in my bag and in my pockets. I winced and ran my fingers over vials like prayer beads.
He said, “I grew up in Baloneytown. My folks are still here. My old grade school friends. I’ve seen it—I’ve got plenty of reasons to be cynical, if that’s what I wanted.”
He was right. I didn’t look at him. After a minute I said, “So, why are you out here? ”
“ Well, when you say you lost your dog, I want to help find her. That’s my job, and it’s the way I’m made.” He gestured, with a swing of the bag of kiwis and the banana, at the rubble of the lot. The sun had started to sink toward the roof of a house with a blue tarp tied to it. The tarp flapped in the breeze.
“I’ve never turned my back on Baloneytown yet. There’s good people here, and some troubled folks too, but I’d like to help out, you and everybody else.” He said, “ Mostly, I’d like to see that my instincts are right, that you’re someone I can respect, not suspect—that there’s at least one good clown in this burg.”
I turned to look at him. He blinked, as though he had dust in his eyes. His eyes seemed more clear blue than ever. When I spoke, my voice came out softly. I said, “You look tired.”
“I am. It’s been a long day. A lot of hassles. Mostly, I’m tired of being treated like I’m the criminal.” His pant legs were dusty. There was a sweetness to him, and to his exasperation. He was right, I was unappreciative. What clown wouldn’t want a cop on her side? He was there to help me find Chance, my charmer, that left-handed half trained schipperke.
The blue light of Hoagies and Stogies flashed down the block. “Listen,” I said, “if you’re off work, would you let me buy you a beer?”
He swallowed. His Adam’s apple made a quick duck and bob. “Shouldn’t we keep looking for Chance?”
I said, “I’ll keep looking. I looked all last night, and put up posters all day. But I want to buy you a drink.”
He nodded, and looked out over the rubble of the lot, then said, “I appreciate it, but I don’t usually drink in uniform.”
“Ah, right. I don’t drink in uniform either,” I said. “It’s against the Clown Code of Ethical Conduct.” I straightened my wig. I wanted him to know we had a Code of Ethical Conduct, because now I felt like a bigger heel than ever, suggesting to a cop that we break the rules. “It was just an idea.” I said, “ I shouldn’t even talk in costume.”
He said, “I shouldn’t wear mine once I’m off work.”
“Me neither,” I said. “It’s against code.”
He said, “Once in a while, though, in Baloneytown, I might drop in someplace. I wouldn’t do it in over King’s Row, but here. They usually like it. Helps with community policing.” He said, “Sometimes a few of us in the precinct’ll have a beer together, just to be seen on the premises, maybe at a place that’s having trouble.”
I asked, “Really? Well, we could just have one, right? We could stay here in Baloneytown, walk over to Hoagies and Stogies. They can always use a little policing.”
Tap tap
. I felt like the lobster in its aquarium, tapping against the edge of my small world. A beer with a cop—that wasn’t the way I saw my life. It was risky. I’d take the risk. I wanted him to say yes. “I’ll drink in costume if you will,” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Contributing to the delinquency of a vaudevillian…sounds punishable.” He still looked tired, but he smiled. I was glad to see the smile.
When Jerrod turned and walked back the way we came, I followed him, then caught up by his side. We stopped in front of the bar. He pulled the door open and held it, waiting for me to go in. The smoke and spilled beer of tavern air laced its way out the open door, dank but welcoming, an invisible hostess. The smell of the tavern was exactly the same as every tavern anywhere, and in that way it was the scent of all the times Rex and I sipped beer, played pool, and ate free popcorn while we worked on acts. It was the comforting, familiar smell of smoke, mildew, and hops, that herb for relaxing muscles, heart muscle included.
I asked, “Think they’ll call the cops on a clown?”
“Here they don’t mind, as long as you’re dressed. Besides, I am the cops.” Jerrod reached for his cuffs and gave the cuffs a friendly jangle. “If anything happens, we’ll say you’re in custody.”
12.
Drinks on Me; or, Oddball, Corner Pocket
WE STEPPED INTO THE SMOKY DARK OF HOAGIES AND Stogies, and through my sunglasses all I could see was one heavy-set man on a barstool and the scattered stars of cigarette glow. Other faces floated like weathered moons farther back, in the shadows. I leaned on my cane, tipped the sunglasses up to look for an open table, and, as my eyes adjusted, saw the place was crowded with huddled drinkers. I stopped fast, surveyed; Jerrod, behind me, bumped into the back of my thigh.
“Oh!” I swung my hips forward. “Don’t bruise that big banana.”
He said, “Banana? I’m just happy to be seen with you.”
I smiled, but inside winced—I couldn’t be seen with Jerrod, a cop, courting disaster.
A man at the bar pointed his stogie at me and in a loud drawl said, “Well, if it ain’t my ex-wife, Petaluma. Dressed to the nines, too. Makes me want to propose all over again.”
I stepped behind Jerrod. His badge glinted in the red beer light. The place went quiet. Eyes on the cop.
“Want to see a Baloneytown dance recital?” Jerrod whispered. In a louder voice, the voice of authority, he said, “If anyone here’s on probation, you’ve got about two seconds to get out. Then the clown and I start checking ID.”
The air in the room tightened. Nobody moved. After a moment, eight, ten, or maybe twelve shadowy figures rose from their tables and stools. They turned and bumped into each other. A chair spun and fell. The drunk at the bar held on to his straw hat and threw back a shot like the tail end of a cup of tea, pinkie finger in the air. The back door flashed open and closed, open and closed, and the room was cut with a wedge of daylight just long enough to show the tangled silhouette of drunks in a scramble. The man in the hat swiveled left and right as others stumbled around him; he rumpled his tie in fat fingers. “Forgive me my peccadilloes,” he slurred, to nobody or everybody.
“And you thought only clowns could work a crowd,” Jerrod said. He waved a hand toward a table. “Looks like a spot just opened up.”
I said, “Ta da! Nice work.” I dropped my sunglasses back on my nose. Jerrod stepped forward. As I walked in his wake I tripped against a bump in the carpet, grabbed Jerrod’s elbow, tap-tapped at the floor with my cane, then stumbled into the back of a chair.
“Careful,” he said. He led me around a skewed, fake-wood table that was nearly invisible in the darkness. “And watch out. They’ve got an extension cord taped to the floor here.” Jerrod’s hand was pale against the blackness as he pointed. Duct tape flashed at my feet; it crisscrossed the carpet like silver scars. “It’s a fire-trap. I should issue a citation.”
“Remember, we’re off duty,” I said. “No need to put the costumes to work.”
“So a cop and a blind clown walk into a baaahr!” the drunk in the straw hat called out, too loud. He gave a tug on his necktie.
From behind my dark glasses, I made out the man’s red honk of a nose, jowly cheeks and small slit mouth. Beside him sat a tiny sliver of a human with oversized hands and an oversized beer mug.
The sliver hissed, “Lay off, Duke. You’ll land us all in the stir.”
“What’s the problem, Silvo m’boy?” the first man said, in his drawn-out drawl. “A man can still talk in this land of bilk and rummy, can’t he? Everything else I do is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.”
Jerrod dropped his banana and two kiwis on a sticky table near the front window. Eighties Motor City rock rattled from a speaker fastened overhead. Jerrod stacked used pint glasses, picked up an empty pitcher, and set the dishes on the next table over. I leaned my cane against the wall. Jerrod pulled out a chair, and I pulled out a second chair, but then saw Jerrod meant his chair to be for me. Chivalry.
I pushed my chair back in, a hair’s-breadth too late; Jerrod had changed direction too and sat in the chair he pulled out. He got up again fast when he saw that I’d pushed my chair back, but just as he got up, I pulled my chair out again. His knee knocked against the table hard enough to tip the saltshaker over. With one hand, Jerrod caught the rolling salt. We both stood then, cop and clown.
He said, “Hey—I thought we were off duty. What’s with the routine?” He pulled out a chair one more time, waved a hand over it, and as though to a suspect said, “Sit.”
I sat in the chair he offered. He went to the counter to order.
While Jerrod had his back turned I fished the tincture of valerian out of one deep pocket, dripped valerian onto my palm, and licked it off. I ran my tongue over my lifeline, an eye on the cop, my new friend, antithesis to the life I’d been living in Herman’s house, with Rex Galore. They’d freak. For good measure and calm hands, I shook more valerian onto my tongue.
Over the bar, a handwritten sign said: NO DRUGS, NO WEPONS, NO FIGTING. I dug in my pink bag for Chinese BBs, ate them like breath mints, and all the while scanned the room for my neighbors, Herman, or anyone who’d care if I had a drink with a cop.
A second sign read: GAMBLING ALOUD IN GAMBLING CORNER ON STATE SPONSERED GAMBLING MACHENES ONLY.
The drunk in the straw hat called out, “Say, Addie, m’dear, was I in here last night? And did I spend a twenty-dollar bill?”
The bartender was a skinny old woman in a long black wig. A cigarillo dangled from her thin, painted lips. She set a pitcher up to pour, then put two frosty glasses in front of Jerrod. Over her shoulder, she said, “Yep. That’s right. Twenty at least. And no tip.”
The man took off his hat. He wiped a handkerchief across his forehead. “Boy, what a load that is off my mind,” he said. “Thought I’d lost it.”
“What I’d like to know is where you found it,” Jerrod said.
The drunk said, “Don’t worry. I don’t keep any secrets from you I don’t keep from myself. I’ll tell you when I remember.”
Jerrod asked, “Addie, is it still happy hour?”
The bartender leveled her eyes at him. Her mouth, around the cigarillo, was a thin-lipped scowl. “Just look at the happiness,” she said, with a smoker’s rasp, and tipped her chin at the sorry crew who lined the bar. She put one long, pale hand out.
Jerrod dropped a few bills in her palm, then came back to our table with the pitcher and two cold glasses. Frost on the glasses was wiped clear where the heat of his hands had been. He poured the beer and raised his glass to clink against mine. “We’ll find Chance.”
A hollow spot in my heart gave a squeeze as he said her name. My dear Chance. I bit on Chinese BBs squirreled away in my mouth and washed the dust of the pills down with beer.
That easily, I broke another rule in the Clown Code: Drinking in costume. Weak-willed. Clowns Sans Frontières, those altruistic jokers, they wouldn’t drink in costume. But the beer was good, cool and thin, and I gave in to its charms. My red lips marked the edge of the glass in a heavy clown smooch. “It was supposed to be my treat.”
“Next time,” Jerrod said, confident there’d be a next time. He looked at his hand on the table, at the base of his glass. The dim tavern light left shadows near his eyes that made him look older, and mysterious. He cleared his throat. Took a drink of his beer. Showed his shy smile.
“Tell me,” I started. “What made you want to be a police officer?” I took care to say “police officer” this time, not “cop.”
He nodded and said, “It’s a good job. Hard work. I like being someone who can make a difference. I guess in some ways it was either this or my brother-in-law could get me a job driving a bread truck. Union work. Being an officer is more meaningful, community-wise.”
Make a difference. I knew the feeling—Clowns Sans Frontières was my big plan to help the planet. But I acted cool. “A difference, huh?” I said. “How long’ve you been working at it?”
He ducked his head, sipped his beer, and shrugged. “Near eight years.”
I said, “You get to know just about everyone in the neighborhood, I’d guess, in your work.” He probably talked to everyone—not just to me. I wasn’t special. And the beer we drank together, it wasn’t a date.
Jerrod said, “Most of these people I’ve known since I was a kid. Nobody’s gone too far. That bartender, Addie Mulligan—they call her Mad Addie—she used to be our playground monitor, back when I fell off the Kiddie Coaster and cracked my head.” He rubbed the back of his head as though it were still bruised.
“Why do they call her Mad Addie?” I asked.
“Stick around, you’ll find out.” The smallest fleck of beer foam rested on his upper lip. He touched the fleck with his tongue, and it was gone. He slid his glass back and forth on the table from one hand to the next, and looked a little doleful, like Steve McQueen in a scene from just about every movie McQueen ever made.
“You don’t mind?” I asked. “I mean, arresting people you knew as a kid?”
He said, “I do what needs to be done, focus on the job, deal with the embarrassment later on, over—” he swirled the beer in his glass. “Over a beer. After a while, you get used to it. Besides, the way I see it, better a patient friend with a badge than an irate stranger, right?”
I slid my glass back and forth on the table too. “I see what you mean.”
“Heck, I asked to be in this part of town, and they need good police here. Growing up, these people are half the reason I decided to be a cop in the first place.”
“So it’s about more than just not driving a bread truck,” I said. “It’s about policing the playground monitor.”
He let that go. “Play pool?” The table was open. He stood up, fished change out of his pocket, and put a quarter in the slot. “No money involved, and I’ll let you cheat if you want.” He pressed the lever. Balls fell inside the table with the crash and roll of celebration, like kids let out of juvie jail early.
“Thanks for the offer, sir, officer.” I laughed. “I’ll play, but I don’t need you to let me cheat.” I was good at pool. Physics, I understood. I knew all about vectors. That was my original goal in clowning—to create the illusion of defying physics with muscular comedy. I wanted to be able to stand when it looked like I should fall, to spring up when gravity would pull down, and to balance at impossible angles. I wanted to win, or at least stay on my feet, even when it looked like losing. I grabbed my cane, followed Jerrod to the table, and slid the cane through my fingers as though knocking phantom balls in already. “I’ll rack.” I nudged him out of the way with my hip, and hung my bamboo circus cane on the table’s edge.
Jerrod’s break was an all right scattering but the balls stayed too much at the foot. None fell. He ran his hand over the powder spool.
Rex could break to cover the whole table every time. Rex could make a jump shot, run the table, and shoot out. So could I, on a good day. I chalked up the cane’s rubber tip. Then I bent my knees, bad hip trembling, and sighted down the wobbly line of the bamboo.
Jerrod said, “Think a cue might help?” He smiled, like I was a cute trick.
I smiled back, still in the crouch. “Take a cue from this,” I said, and used the cane to knock the cue ball into the ten. The ten rolled smack into a corner pocket. The cue ball spun like a dancer. “Stripes! My lucky color.”
Clown stripes, the outsider’s stripes. Hooker’s stripes, too.
Jerrod said, “Not bad, though stripes isn’t a color, last I checked.”
“Where I work, it’s the color of money.” I moved around the table. Peanut shells crunched underfoot.
He said, “In my profession, I’d say it’s the pattern of jail time. A repeating pattern, all too often.” He asked, “So, how long’ve you known those housemates of yours?”
I chalked up. “Didn’t meet them all at once.” Put the cane behind my back, twisted around with one leg up in the air, tongue to the side of my open mouth, and waggled the cane back and forth. I tapped the far side of the table, then the opposite side, to call a double-bank shot, and knocked the twelve in a fine run to the side pocket without disturbing the rest of the layout.
“A cop and a clown, head to head!” the drunk in the hat yelled, over at the bar. “Haven’t seen that since my dear grandmama double-parked my little perambulator.”
“You got the DTs,” his tiny sliver of a friend said. “You’re seeing things.”
“You mean to tell me you don’t see a cop and a clown shooting the lights out over there?” the first drunk asked. With one pudgy hand he reached for the flat brim of his straw topper.
The sliver nodded. “I mean to say you ain’t got a granny. And I got the DTs too.” He burped.
“Ah, yes. I see…It’s hard to tell where Baloneytown ends and the DTs begin, isn’t it, Silvo?” The man in the hat said, “Nurse Addie, time for rounds. For my fellow patient and me, that is.” He tapped his empty pitcher, then fumbled and knocked his hat off backward.
Jerrod picked out another cue stick and called to the bartender, “These sticks are crooked.”
Mad Addie rolled her eyes. “Show me somethin’ in Baloneytown that ain’t.” The men at the bar ducked low, as though to escape notice.
My third shot, my hip shrieked in a wince of pain. My knee buckled. I hit too far to the left; the cue ball veered around my mark, kissed a solid, and pushed it closer to a side pocket. Rex never would’ve fallen like that. Jerrod lined up his shot to take advantage.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
He asked, “Where’d you live before this?”
I smiled, leaned into the pool table. “Why’re you asking?”
He shrugged. The two ball went in without scratching. No spin on the cue ball, though, just angled enough to hit the bumper. No leave. His second shot hit too lightly. The ball rolled, gentle and tired, across the green felt. It rested at the edge of the pocket at the foot of the table, where a breath could’ve sunk it. The cue nestled in at the far end.
“What kind of cop shot is that?” I asked.
“Strategy,” he said. “Patience. Now the cue ball’s trapped. You haven’t got a shot.” He chalked up, like chalk would help.
“Ah, strategy. I see. And to think, I underestimated the play.” I twirled my cane like a gunslinger, caught it in front. “Nine ball, far and away,” I said, then took a gamble on a jump shot. The cue jumped a solid, hit the nine to a corner pocket, and stopped fast on impact. No wasted motion. Nice and clean.