At the shopping mall, a giant, noisy parking lot carnival was going full tilt. The place swarmed with shoppers, visitors, strolling entertainers, and scores of kids. Everyone dressed up, playing clown for a day.

A temporary midway of charity bazaar booths offering games of skill and chance lined the walkways.

A ring of hay bales encircling a carousel of padded steel pipes and bridled ponies made up the Enchanted Pony Ride. The enchantment consisted of colorful unicorn horns attached to the browbands of the ponies’ headstalls.

At a propane fire pit, Wilderness Girls, in khaki skirts and camo vests, toasted marshmallows and sold campfire cuisine.

At Seafood Sam’s booth, a large, decorated display tank held Goliath, billed as the biggest lobster in the tri-state area.

Three Wilderness Girls hung over the side of Goliath’s tank. They waved a stick across the water, enticing the monster lobster to grab it. Out of the murky water, a giant, lightning quick claw snapped the stick, splashing the Wilderness Girls. Soaked and left holding the stub of a stick, the girls squealed until Seafood Sam chased them away from the tank.

Buster’s clownmobile rolled up to the edge of the crowds. Lucy slipped out and flinched up against the side of the vehicle as a passel of shoppers all done up as clowns swarmed by. She dashed around to the rear of the clownmobile. Buster was already there waiting for her.

“So, you feeling a little more spiritually connected to me?”

Lucy pivoted and fast-walked around to the front of the vehicle. Buster was right there waiting for her.

“You’re getting pretty fast in those.” He pointed at her feet.

Lucy pivoted—right into Franklin who had been standing behind her.

“All right, all right.” Buster pushed Franklin’s arms away from Lucy. “How’d you get here?”

What Franklin said was, “Trade secret.”

What Franklin did was a little more desperate.

As the van pulled away and left Franklin standing there back at the apartments, he burst into a dead run in the opposite direction. He achieved cartoon velocity in less than half-a-second. A personal best, if he’d thought to clock himself.

Commandeering rides as he went, Franklin perched on the handlebars of the paperboy’s bike, doubled up with a skateboarder, straddled a mom’s baby jogger, and finished up on the roof rack of a Volkswagen. It stopped just short of Buster’s clownmobile, dumping Franklin onto the asphalt. Franklin had barely enough time to spring up behind Lucy, ready for her to collide with him. It gave him another moment of full frontal contact to savor the rest of his life.

The crowd of kids gathered around Buster’s clownmobile grew with the spectacular arrival of the lanky, blue-haired clown.

Franklin said to Lucy, “Why aren’t you gone?”

“I’m having trouble achieving escape velocity from Buster, the human glue-stick here.”

Franklin turned to the crowd of youngsters.

“Hey, kids! You know what Mister Dippy’s got in those great big pockets of his? Free candy bars! Get them before he gets away!”

The kids dived for Buster’s pants.

“Whoa! Get out of there, ya pickpockets!” shouted Buster, overwhelmed by the snaking hands of swarming candy bandits reaching deep into his pockets all the way down to his socks.

“Quick!” Franklin waved to get Buster’s attention as he struggled under the weight of a dozen sweet-seeking missiles. “Head for the stage! It’s your only hope!”

Buster high-stepped it for the safety of the mini-stage, slapping at the grabby-handed kids.

Franklin turned to Lucy. “Get lost. The only things Buster keeps in his pockets are holes.”

Lucy hesitated only a moment. Franklin thought she might even say thank you. Instead, she turned and ducked away, disappearing through the crowd.

Franklin joined Buster on the mini-stage set among the charity booths of the midway. He dropped his giant carpetbag of props with a clunk. Buster stuffed the linings of his turned-out pockets back in, then swiveled his pants to straighten them.

Franklin dived head first into the carpetbag, digging out juggling clubs, flipping them over his shoulder. As Franklin flipped each club, Buster snatched it mid-flight until he had all four of the clubs spinning in the air. He finished with a flourish, the clubs fanned out in his hands.

As Buster paraded around, soaking up the applause, Franklin went searching for the clubs he’d pulled from his bag. When he didn’t find them, Franklin turned to the kids, mouth stretched wide and arms outspread. He circled the stage, asking where, oh, where in the world his clubs had gone.

Buster, once more juggling clubs, bounced a club off the back of Franklin’s head.

Glaring at Buster, Franklin rubbed his head, hitched up his pants, and picked up the club, ready to bean him back. Buster flipped another club at him, and another, until they were juggling the clubs together, circling, Buster keeping an irate Franklin at bay.

Away from the stage, with everyone else fixed on Buster and Franklin, Lucy eased backward through the crowd, letting people fill in the gap she’d left.

The backside of the crowd thinned, clearing the way for Lucy to skedaddle. She tip-toed past a large, blue metal thrift store container piled up with donations of discarded clothing and housewares.

Before she could get her feet free and fly, a metal hinge creaked. The face of Lisker peeked out of the container.

“Leaving town?” he asked. “A little birdie told me you might be the mystery girl I’m looking for.”

Lucy threw a box of underwear at him and fled back through the crowd.

Up on stage, Buster tripped over a dirty spot and ordered Franklin to clean it up. Franklin frowned and did his slope-shouldered march over to the carpetbag. Pouting, he pulled out a bucket and a mop with a telescoping handle. Franklin scowled at Buster. He went to work cleaning the whole stage. Running the mop under Buster, Franklin forced him backward around the stage. Buster took hold of Franklin, still mopping furiously, and pointed him in the opposite direction. Once Buster’s back was turned, Franklin took aim with the mop. He raised it up over his shoulder, ready for a home-run swing at Buster’s head when suddenly Buster turned around.

Franklin jackknifed himself into an innocent mop stroke—over the shoulder, down to the floor, up over the shoulder, back to the floor. Just a clown mopping a floor. Nothing to see. Franklin waved at him to turn around and ignore what he was doing behind Buster’s back.

Buster turned his back again, then whipped around. But Franklin ignored him and kept mopping, faster and faster, his mop a pumping piston. Franklin backed into Buster, catching him in the gut with the mop handle in rapid fire strokes.

Buster, winded, staggered around the stage, recovering his breath. Franklin held his heart and pulled his mouth into a great big, sorrowful frown, making a great show of regret, even as he threw a secret laugh of victory at the audience.

Buster put an arm around Franklin and lifted his hat, tousled his hair, placed his hat on the ground and tromped it flat. He peeled it up off the ground and placed it with great care back on Franklin’s head.

Lucy swam through the crush of people along the midway and straight into a heavy-set woman. Lisker, now wearing a dress and curly wig, watched her from behind a magazine he’d rigged up with eye holes.

Lisker lowered his magazine. “Aren’t we in an awful hurry to get out of town?”

“Just one of the clowns,” said Lucy with a slapstickity laugh and clap of her hands.

“That’s not what the little birdie told me.”

Lucy fled back the way she came, elbowing her way through. She jinked and dodged between people still milling around the stage and among the booths.

By this time, a local rock band had taken over the stage, pounding away for the crowd. Franklin and Buster moved along the midway, doing their walkaround gags.

Lucy found a gap in the crowd and paused, breathing hard, her hands on her knees. She gave a quick glance behind herself and dashed right into the back of a tall, fat farmer with his straw hat pushed low on his head. The farmer lifted his hat. It was Lisker facing her, wearing his overalls backward.

“Okay, okay. Who’s this little bird?” Lucy huffed to catch her breath.

Lisker pointed across the midway.

Buster gave out with a big smile, using both hands to make moose antlers at her.

“Cheep-cheep!” Buster warbled at them, doing a little leap and a click of his heels.

Lucy backed into a gaggle of kids who swarmed her, plucking at her costume and tugging at her arms.

“Heyheyhey! I’m not a clown!” she shouted at them, prying their arms from her legs.

“I knew it!” Lisker grabbed her wrist.

“He’s the clown!” She pointed at Lisker.

The kids looked at Lisker and gave out with a collective “Ewwwww!”

“What a mopey old face,” said one of the kids, his own face pinched up at the sight.

“Hey. You know the best way to fix a sad face like his?” Lucy shouted at them.

“What?” they shouted back.

“What?” Lisker asked as well, surrounded by a pack of eager kids who looked primed and ready for some serious mayhem.

“Tickle bombs!” Lucy radiated waggle-fingers at Lisker.

Kids are always up for a game of torment-the-grouch. Especially if a bona fide clown says it’s okay. The kids flew at the sad old clown, reaching to get through the denim overalls and body fat.

Lisker burst into a dead run, showing some smooth moves for a lumpy kind of guy.

Lucy scampered in the opposite direction.

Reaching the bus stop, Lucy dropped onto a bench next to three grannies in face paint and yellow derbies. She kept glancing backward.

She sensed a presence and whipped around. The grannies were gone, leaving Buster sitting on the bench beside her. He sucked on a lollipop like he hadn’t a care in the world.

“How long do you plan on keeping this up?” she asked.

“Until I run out of tattle-tales.” Buster fanned a handful of lollipops. Kids pounced on them from everywhere. Buster sauntered off, leaving the kids sucking lollipops and watching Lucy.

Lucy, her eyes turned into smoldering slits, watched him go.

“Hey!” One of those lollipop lickers tugged on Lucy’s sleeve. “Aren’tcha supposed to be funny? Tell a joke or something.”

“You hear the one about the stupid clown they had to take away in an ambulance?” asked Lucy, watching the back of Buster’s head.

“No!” shouted the kids, primed for a great personal injury joke.

“Neither did he.” Lucy continued to watch Buster’s melon-soft head in the distance.

The kids checked with each other to make sure they were all thinking the same thing—this was one unfunny clown.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Franklin and Buster were still working the midway, roaming among the charity booths. Kids clustered around them, turning into a forest of arms stretched out for instant tattoos that Franklin drew with color markers. Buster, standing next to Franklin, tied balloon animals for the little kids, and suggestive figures for girls willing to show him a driver’s license proving they were over eighteen.

A flaming marshmallow flew past, plopping on the ground at Buster’s feet, smoldering down to a charred lump of wet goo.

Buster, twisting a long balloon into a bulging pink knot, frowned as he locked eyes with the kid sucking on one of the lollipops. The kid pointed across the midway. Buster held another balloon to his lips. With a long and mighty puff he inflated it, weaving as he blew so he could catch a quick look behind himself.

Across the way, Lucy stood with the Wilderness Girls at their fire pit. She turned to hide her face and the stick she’d been holding.

Buster tied off the balloon into a rose bud with an engorged stem, as he did a do-si-do around Franklin, swapping places with him as he handed out the balloon figure.

At the fire pit, Lucy had turned away to light more marshmallows. She didn’t see Buster make the switch.

“How about we make it two dollars a bulls-eye?” Lucy said to the Wilderness Girls gathered around.

Sticky, flaming marshmallows arched over the midway and machine-gunned Franklin’s britches with amazing accuracy.

Lucy looked around to check out their handiwork and tally up their reward.

“Oops.” Lucy handed the girls the stick and lost herself in the crowd.

Franklin sniffed, smelling something sweet, maybe a little something acrid mixed in.

“Is that you?” Franklin asked Buster.

Buster leaned back to check the seat of Franklin’s pants, now in flames licking up the back of Franklin’s costume.

“Nope. It’s you.” Buster kept twisting another biologically accurate appendage that could pass for a deformed jalapeño.

The pain finally reached through Franklin’s underwear.

“Whoa-ho-ho-ho!” he yodeled, bounding through the crowd, leaping butt-first into Goliath’s tank, the steam hissing and dying away.

Franklin’s face sagged into an ecstatic smile of relief.

Ka-SNAP !

“Yeoooow!”

Franklin launched himself off the edge of the tank, Goliath dangling from his britches, holding a good-sized chunk of Franklin’s glutes in its claw.

The kids swarmed to watch the swinging, dancing, leaping fight to the death between Franklin’s buttocks and Goliath’s claws. Franklin twisted and torqued himself trying to dislodge the beast. Franklin grabbed the shovel away from the guy scooping pony poop at the riding ring. With great, wide swings, Franklin whacked himself on the fundament, trying to bop his crustaceous attacker insensible.

What ingenuity, everyone would say later. What flexibility! What comic timing! The crowd flowed with Franklin, giving him room for this titanic battle of the species. A truly and seriously crowd-pleasing performance. Too bad Franklin was in no position to enjoy any of it.

The battle over, Franklin sat on a big, cushy pillow behind the stage, stripped down to his union suit, a red, sleeveless number. He patched the scorched and shredded bottom on his britches. Across the way, under a newly hand-lettered sign, a sour-faced Seafood Sam served up a hasty batch of lobster fritters.

Franklin, making a virtue of necessity, stitched two enormous band-aids across the seat of his costume, hiding the burn holes and claw gashes.

When he’d finished, he and Buster went back out to do more of their walkaround gags, filtering through the crowd still milling along the midway.

From out of the crowd, Buster felt a tug at his jacket. He looked down to find a little girl rubbing her eye and pointing to a large Mylar balloon snagged on the mall entrance marquee high above them. A ladder leaned, oh so conveniently, against the marquee. The rope wrapped around the bottom rung, a tad too obvious.

Buster slid a glance at another of the kids sucking on one of his lollipop bribes. The kid pointed back through the parking lot.

Lucy, hunkered down, peered over the hood of a car.

Buster looked up the ladder, shook his head at the crowd gathered round and called out, “Is there a fireman in the house?”

“Come on,” shouted the crowd, ready for him to get on with the show.

The little girl twisted her fists in her eyes, boo-hooing for all she was worth.

Buster whistled for Franklin and pointed to the balloon at the top of the ladder. Franklin took one look at the height and shook his head. He didn’t want any part of it.

Buster stretched his face into the biggest frown his cheeks could achieve as he pointed at the little girl and clutched his heart, wringing it for sympathy, circling inside the crowd.

“Come on!” they shouted again. “Be a hero!”

“Hee-ro. Hee-ro,” they chanted as Buster circled again, whipping them up.

Buster called for a vote. Who did they want to see go up the ladder? Frowning and shaking his head, Buster pointed to himself, squeezed his flabby arms and showed off his wobbly knees. The crowd booed.

Buster pointed to Franklin, holding his costume by the shoulders, faking some mighty impressive brawn on the skinny clown. The crowd cheered long and hard.

Franklin looked at the little girl who beamed a grateful smile at him, hands clasped under her chin. He looked at the smiling crowd eager for the payoff.

Franklin tested the bottom rung of the ladder and looked up. The top rung looked miniscule, vanishing into the clouds. But the crowd was keen, and an audience is an audience. Unable to resist being the hero, Franklin started up the ladder, a rickety, wobbly climb.

Halfway up, the ladder began bucking under Franklin’s heavy steps. He clamped on until it stopped. He started up again, inch-worming toward the top. Almost there, Franklin missed a rung, putting his foot through. He pulled his leg back out and slipped off the other side. Panicked and dangling underneath, Franklin bicycled his legs, desperate to get a toehold on the rung again. He managed to get a foot through and swung his leg, hooking the side to work his way back around onto the ladder. Counting how many rungs he had left to go, he was convinced there were vultures waiting for him. But the crowd, little matchstick heads way down below, seemed so happy, looking up at him. He kept climbing.

Holding onto the other end of the rope, the Wilderness Girls followed a big, bearded guy in boots and ball cap, who climbed into the cab of a pickup truck. The girls scrambled to knot the rope around the truck’s bumper as Lucy huddled with them.

Back on the ladder, Franklin had reached the top and grabbed the balloon string.

“Ta da!” crowed Franklin.

The audience cheered as Buster took the bows down below.

The truck’s taillights went on, scattering the Wilderness girls. The truck backed into the lane, turned, and headed for the exit, the rope going taut with a thrum. Lucy looked back toward the marquee and saw Franklin at the top of the ladder.

“Oops.” Lucy winced, clapping her hand over her eyes.

A moment later, the ladder clanged by, dragged by the pickup, as Lucy peeked between her fingers to where Franklin had been perched.

Franklin clung to the canvas banner hung on the marquee. With a slow, agonizing rip, it tore free of its grommets and swung Franklin cement-ward. Franklin clinched his eyes shut against the coming impact.

Morbid curiosity got the better of Franklin. He had to peek at his certain doom. He wished he hadn’t. Vehicles bore down on him as he whipped between them, brushing bumpers, then swung back up into the air. At the top of the arc, the rope stretched taut and whip-snapped, propelling him into a slow, rag-doll tumble over the parking lot.

Franklin landed in a lady’s shopping cart. The cart broke away from her and started rolling downhill, faster and faster.

Stuck backward, Franklin rocketed down through the parking lot. Unable to see the horrific danger waiting, he raced for the mall’s busiest entrance. He zipped through the intersection, against the light, horns honking, and tires screeching as cars slid to a stop.

The shopping cart carrying Franklin raced toward the parking lot opposite the mall, on the other side of the intersection. It threaded through the slicing traffic, bounced up over the curb, and slammed into the retaining wall opposite. Franklin, thrown from the basket, went flying, hard-stopped against the back-end of a delivery van.

He slid down until his belt caught on the door handle, leaving him hung up, swaying.

The delivery van door swung open, slamming Franklin against the truck body. The delivery guy peeked out, looking around for the source of the big noise against the side of his van. Not seeing Franklin, he pulled the door closed. The van drove off, Franklin still hanging, upside down, from the handle.

Morning again. Franklin came into the kitchen.

Lucy was already up and at the sink again. She hadn’t noticed him yet. She’d drained the last bit of her coffee but still held the cup. She stretched up on her tip-toes, straining to see the street behind the apartment building. She kept the curtain close to her face as she spied out the window.

“At it again, I see,” he said.

Startled, she whirled around. She flung the empty coffee mug at him. He ducked as the mug sailed past his head and bounced off the wall, pock-pock-pockiting around on the floor. Lucy shook and grunted her frustration.

“Don’t feel bad,” said Franklin. “Years of clowning plus the occasional heckler hones the reflexes to razor sharpness. You’d have beaned a lesser clown.”

“Don’t you clowns wear bells, or honk, or something?” She shaded her eyes to avoid looking at him. “Can’t you look normal?”

“Clown’s gotta eat.” He picked the cup up off the floor. “Relax. Buster and I will be at the Super City Mall all day.” He hefted the cup a few times. “You managed to find the only plastic coffee mug in the place. Someone’s looking out for me.”

He stepped toward the counter, keeping himself out of Lucy’s range as he stretched to set the cup back on the counter. He yanked his hand away and edged backward to the coffeemaker, keeping Lucy in sight the whole time.

“Everything else had clowns painted on it. The cups, the plates, the silverware.”

“Mom. She had a thing for clowns. She figured everybody else should, too. She had me sleeping on circus sheets and wearing clown boxers until my senior year.”

“High school?” Lucy winced at the picture.

“College.” Franklin tipped the coffee pot. A single drip made the perilous drop into his cup. Refusing to let her beat him, Franklin used his finger to wipe the drip out of his cup and popped it into his mouth.

“Ahhhhh. Better than yesterday’s. Coffeemaker must like you. I’ve seen it bite the fingers off strangers who get anywhere near it.” He stroked the coffeemaker. “Good boy.”

“Make your own coffee.”

“So. How’d you get out without waking Buster?”

“Trade secret.”

What she’d done was re-rig the cat’s cradle contraption Buster had hooked up to the door, then plucked a strand. Buster yanked open the door, ready to begin his new life joined to this strange and wonderful creature with the fake first name and no last name. A steam iron swung in, smacking him in the face, laying him out, unconscious. She stepped over him on her way to the kitchen.

But Lucy didn’t tell Franklin any of that.

“I may need it again,” she said, leaving him to wonder.

Franklin took a fistful of bills from his clown purse and held them out to Lucy. “It’s all I’ve got. Give us thirty minutes and call a cab or something.”

“You’re admitting you took my wallet?”

“I’m admitting you deserve a head start.”

“I’m going to need every bit of my money you lost to get out of this town. A few bucks and a bus ticket won’t cut it.”

Buster came in holding his eye, moving his hand to squint at Lucy and Franklin in the kitchen.

“Hey, now they match,” said Franklin.

“I’ve been thinking,” Buster said to Franklin, but keeping his eyes on Lucy. “Maybe it’s time for me to hang up the old nose. I never liked clowns. I mean, have you ever looked at one up close? I’ve always been on the inside looking out. How do little kids stand it?”

“We’ve got an all-day gig at the mall today. Founders Day? Remember?”

“Very appropriate. This is the first day of the rest of my life with the girl—I mean, woman—of my dreams. You honestly expect me to spoil it by going to work?”

Lucy froze, her eyes locked on Buster.

“Of course not.” Franklin gave Lucy a sidelong glance.

Lucy’s eyes clicked over onto Franklin.

“So it’s just you and me,” he said, shrugging at Lucy.

“Wait. What about you and her?”

“She wanted to be a clown for a day. You know, walk-a-mile-in-your-size-fifty-six-shoes kind of thing?”

Lucy twisted her neck so she could glare at Franklin with the volcanic intensity he was learning to know and dread. He fished an extra clown-nose from his pocket and held it out to her.

Buster leaned in at Franklin, whispering, “You said she hated clowns.”

The curl in Lucy’s lip was more than enough proof if he needed it.

“I told you. Therapy.” Franklin leaned in to Buster. “Maybe it’s me who could be the cure for what ails her.” Franklin smiled and sucked a big, airy swig from his empty coffee mug.

Lucy’s mouth smiled at Franklin. Her eyes, however, could only be described as a warm, I-will-kill-you-and-eat-your-entrails-sautéed-in-hot-sauce kind of smile.

“No way, Frankie-boy.” Buster pivoted and dashed back into his bedroom.

“I will not. Do you have any idea how badly I wanted to spit in your beer?”

“Best way is to lose yourself among all the other clowns. I’ll keep Buster busy. You grab a cab, come back here for your stuff. Key’s in the mailbox. You give Buster and the private eye the slip. Kill two birds—I didn’t mean kill.”

“What about my money?”

“I don’t have it. Buster’s not about to give it to me. Money won’t do you much good if the detective figures out you’re the one he’s been tracking. You’re running out of time.”

Franklin could see the veins stand out in Lucy’s neck, primed for her to go full negatory when Buster came bounding back in.

“Hey! I know! We could have a clown wedding! Clown bridesmaids, squirting flowers, whoopie cushions in the pews.”

Lucy, her eyes flashing in a kind of angry surrender, fixed on Franklin. She snatched the clown nose from his hand and twisted it on.

“Brings out the blood red fury of your eyes,” said Franklin.

In no time, they were dressed and headed for the street, with Franklin helping Lucy down the stairs. Franklin had Lucy all clowned up, her face painted with triangular eyebrows and a red-and-white frown. She insisted on the frown. She wore a multi-color, checkerboard jumper, red vest, topped off with tinsel hair under a Swiss-cheesed top hat full of random holes. She struggled down the stairs in a pair of Franklin’s biggest shoes. He could see that Lucy trying to walk a mile in anyone’s clown shoes would be tough going.

“How am I supposed to sneak anywhere in these things?”

“You’re a natural. Your own mother wouldn’t know you.”

“You think this makes up for what happened at the bus stop?”

“Could it?”

“No way.”

“Okay then, no. And I didn’t take your wallet.”

“It’s your fault I dropped my bags. Doesn’t matter who took it. It’s your fault.”

Franklin ran her bit of logic through the old neural network. “Can’t argue with that.” Although he wanted to try.

Buster burst from the apartment, still thrusting his arms through the sleeves of his coat. He pulled the door closed and duck-walked down the steps.

This was the first time Lucy had seen Buster done up in his own clown rig.

“Say something nice,” said Franklin.

“I’d like to puke on him,” said Lucy.

“The way Buster’s feeling right now, he’ll figure out a way to make it into a compliment and still blame me for it.”

“In that case, I’d rather not waste it.”

Buster wore two-toned clown shoes, multi-color baggy pants, a bright oversized red swallow-tail coat with gold buttons, a blue and white striped undershirt, fake collar and big, butterfly bowtie. He’d painted his face with oversized eyebrows, an oversized mouth turned up at the corners, which could be flexed into a sleazy leer with the twitch of a cheek muscle. He wore a long red nose, a mop of orange hair parted on the side and topped off by a battered blue derby with a tulip in the hatband.

Franklin reached to open the car door for Lucy, but Buster hip-checked Franklin out of the way. With a flourish, Buster pulled open the door.

Lisker yowled, throwing his hands out, startling the three of them and himself. He brushed an old clamshell container of stale fast food off his lap. He hooked his arms on the door and roof of the car, struggling to extricate himself from Franklin’s vehicle. Very much like a baby yak working itself free of the birth canal.

“You could help, y’know,” said Lisker.

“Makes you stronger if I don’t,” said Franklin.

With a grunt, Lisker popped free. “Thanks a lot, buddy.”

“Anytime—buddy,” said Franklin. “Why are you sleeping in my car?”

“I never sleep.” Lisker brushed himself off and straightened his clothes. “I’m on a stake-out.” He yawned, rubbed his face and fixed his clown wig and nose back into place.

“For what?”

“Catch the Slasher using your car. Saw some pretty odd tire tracks out where Big Rig nearly got it.”

“My tires don’t have any tread left on them.”

“Exactly. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

“I go out there for gas all the time.”

Lisker circled Lucy, studying her closely but talking to Franklin. “What about last night? You need any gas last night?”

Lisker stopped and straightened up, his head cocked, still studying Lucy. He shook his finger at her. “That face.” Lisker clinched up his own face as if working hard to pull something stuck between the dried-up lobes of his brain.

“You haven’t heard, have you?” Lisker went on. “They found Big Rig out on the highway early this morning. Lucky for him, he landed on somebody soft. Maybe saved his life.”

“Lucky,” said Franklin.

“Lucky for Big Rig. Lucky for the rest of you clowns.”

“How’s it lucky for the rest of us?”

“Slasher’s getting careless. Maybe soft-hearted even. You know what happens when Slashers go soft?”

“They’re easier to peel?”

Lisker pivoted, swooping in close on Lucy. “That clown face. Those clown gloves. Are you the girl from last night? At the bus stop? Phyllithh?”

“This is someone completely different. Phyllis is long gone. Never did get her last name.” Franklin pushed Lucy behind himself.

Lisker’s mouth popped open. “I only closed my eyes for a minute!” He scrambled, tumbled, pirouetted, then recovered and dived into his own car, driving off, fish-tailing all the way.

Lucy exhaled, pure relief.

“The fake face comes in handy, doesn’t it?”

“You are a real pal. You had me thinking the whole clown thing was so you could horn in on my girl.”

Franklin and Lucy turned around to look at Buster as he closed the hood of Franklin’s car.

“But—in case you do get any ideas about horning in on my girl.” Buster handed Franklin the distributor cap. With a gallant sweep of his arm, Buster invited Lucy into his clownmobile.

Lucy hesitated.

“You want to be stuck here when the private eye comes back?” Buster asked her.

The twist in Lucy’s neck as she looked from Buster to Franklin made it easy for him to see she didn’t like either option. But she got in with Buster.

Franklin could only watch them drive off.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

“She never looked back or anything,” Franklin said to Gladys. He took a puff of his cigarette. He studied Gladys a long moment. “You seem like a needy person, given to meaningless relationships in search of a manageable intimacy.”

Gladys’s mouth hung open for a moment. “Damn.” She took a drag on her own cigarette. “It shows?”

“I mention it because I want to ask—what do you look for in a guy?”

“Right now?”

“Like what’s-his-name. Whoever it was stood you up?”

“It’s still early.”

“Early keeps getting later and later. What do you look for?”

“Something sharp. All the way up to the handle.” Gladys sipped her drink, sucked hard on an ice cube, and crunched it.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Sitting in the front seat next to Buster, Lucy had looked back, which Buster saw. He gunned the accelerator, putting a lot of quick distance between Lucy and Franklin. Lucy watched Franklin diminish into a red and blue speck.

“What a pest.” Buster checked the mirror.

“He must’ve been in Franklin’s car half the night, waiting for us.”

“Not him. Frankie-boy.”

“He’s—okay, I guess. If he wasn’t a clown.”

“But would he lie under oath for you? I don’t think so. Candy? Jewelry? Doesn’t mean a thing. Perjury? Come’s straight from the heart.”

“Jail time would sure put a crimp in your style.”

“It’ll take more than jail time to keep you and me apart. It’ll take a coma or a full-body cast.”

“I like the sound of that. Do you have a preference?”

“Doesn’t matter. Suffering for love is my middle name.”

“Fair enough.” Lucy settled back in the seat.

Buster smiled and did his fanny dance, swaying and bouncing.

The clownmobile motored onward.

It was late, and the Big Top nearly empty. Red stood at the register, cashing out for the night. Big Rig sat at the bar draining the last of his beer. Buster and Franklin, at a table by the window, nursed the last swallows of their drinks. Red turned off the neon signs in the windows. Lucy counted out her tips.

She emptied the pockets of her apron onto the bar, finding very little in the way of negotiable currency. Mostly an assortment of play money, buttons, and funny badges.

“Yeah. I’ll be on my way in no time.”

“Money’s never much good here.” Red slipped Lucy an extra couple of twenties. “It’s the prestige. Being able to say you worked the Big Top.”

Franklin watched her and Red. There’s a joke she’ll never get.

Buster leaned across the table at Franklin. “She could be the most exciting thing that’s happened to me. Ever.”

“Try bungee jumping with strangers,” said Franklin. “You don’t need a condom.”

“Admit it. You had your eyes on her the whole night.”

“Just making sure she didn’t spit in my beer.”

Big Rig put the glass mug on the service rail, slid off the stool. He gave Lucy a goodnight swat and honk of the bulb horn on his belt as he passed behind her.

“If looks could kill,” said Franklin, “Big Rig would be a grease stain on the highway by now.”

Franklin watched through the window as Big Rig mounted the steps of his truck, pulling himself up to the cab. Franklin envied Big Rig his audacity, and the feel of Lucy’s fundament on the palm of his hand. Which was just shameful, of course, just shameful.

Big Rig was still on the step when he picked up a flyer plastered against the windshield.

The flyer had a bikini babe stenciled at the top and a hand-lettered headline below it. ‘Free! Free! Free!’ it read. ‘Fooling and Fueling!! Midnight Gas-Up for Clowns.’

Big Rig smiled. He was, after all, driving a gas hog. And he was a clown. He smiled at himself in the big side mirror.

Back at the bar, Lucy threw off her apron and grabbed up her purse. Franklin’s butt flexed, ready to propel him to the door and hold it open for her. The rest of his skeleto-muscular system refused to believe the electrical impulses from his brain were serious. It was finely tuned to Franklin’s crippling insecurity with women. It wasn’t ready for a risky act of chivalry.

Buster leaped to his feet and held the door for her. Lucy worked up a bit of a half-smile, letting Buster play the gallante. Franklin’s butt relaxed. His nervous system breathed a deep sigh of relief, glad Franklin’s near-brush with embarrassing stoogery had passed.

Red came over to the table to pick up the glasses.

“I can get those,” said Franklin.

“Thought I saw a little chemistry between you and her when you two first came in.”

Easy enough to recall the moment. Frozen, his arms still out and holding the air where she’d been.

“Like disco and nitroglycerin,” said Franklin.

“Come on. Looked like—”

Franklin could see himself still standing there, the phantom feeling once more filling up the now empty embrace. All the time he’d been thinking it was—

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

The glaze over Franklin’s eyes cleared. He noticed a black sedan in the parking lot of the thrift store, parked just out of the light from the street lamp. Odd, since the thrift store was closed for the night. The sedan looked like the one he’d seen the night Lucy had shinnied out of the apartment.

Franklin could see Lucy climb into Buster’s clownmobile and hear the engine start. An alley cat howled.

Franklin jumped to his feet.

“Gotta go.” Franklin dashed out the door.

Franklin hopped into his car, twisted the key, grinding the starter. Just grinding.

Buster appeared next to Franklin at the window.

“Should take better care of your car, Frankie-boy.” Buster clonked something down on the roof. “Things keep coming off in my hand.”

Franklin hopped out and found his distributor cap on the roof.

“Don’t lose that. It could be important,” Buster shouted back, already behind the wheel of the clownmobile. He threw gravel as he fishtailed out of the parking lot onto the street and into the night. With Lucy sitting right next to him.

Big Rig’s semi grumbled to life. Franklin ran and jumped onto the running board, hammering on the window.

Big Rig lowered the glass.

“Follow that van!” he shouted in at Big Rig.

“Sorry, Frankie-boy. No hitchhikers.” Big Rig bounced the wadded-up flyer off Franklin’s forehead. “Got a date with a gas pump.” Big Rig gave out with a yodeling trucker’s laugh. He closed the window, catching the tips of Franklin’s gloves. Franklin pulled loose, his gloves still caught in the window. He hopped off the running board before Big Rig could get the truck in gear and drive off with him still dangling from the side.

Left in yet another swirl of dust and gravel, Franklin bent to pick up the crumpled flyer. Seeing the pin-up and the headline, a very bad idea hit him.

Franklin rolled back the last few minutes, back to Lucy’s death ray scowl at Big Rig after he’d swatted her on the caboose. Thick blue lights lance across the bar and shrivel Big Rig in his boots, the crack and sizzle fading as smoke filled the room.

A very, very bad idea hit him.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Axle’s Gas and Go sat alongside an access road to the on-ramp for Interstate 80. The station was dark, except for one concrete island of pumps. Big Rig’s truck pulled into the station. He rolled past the large, hand-painted sign announcing, ‘Free Gas for Clowns Here.’ A painted arrow pointed to the lit-up pumps.

Big Rig hopped down from his truck and gave a shout, “Hey, hey, Big Rig’s here!”

Not another soul in sight.

“Dang.” He glanced around the dark station. “You’d think there’d be a line a clowns getting free gas.”

Big Rig gave a shrug. “More for me,” he said and went to work filling the large, saddle tanks on the Peterbilt.

A gloved hand reached from behind the pump, slipping a hose into the seat of Big Rig’s clowned-up Dickies.

Big Rig swelled until he was the shape and buoyancy of a beach ball. He tried to grab for the door handle on his truck, but his costume had fully inflated, all the way to his gloves. He could only swipe at the handle as his feet left the ground.

The gloved hand gave Big Rig a push and sent him bounding across the service area as Franklin’s car skidded to a stop at the entrance. He got out of his car. The rotundular form of Big Rig bounced directly at him. Franklin stretched out his arms to corral Big Rig before he bounced into the interstate traffic beyond.

Big Rig landed on Franklin, flattening him, bouncing over the fence and slamming into the night-time traffic. Franklin peeled himself up off the cement and ran after Big Rig. But the globular clown was in a sudden-death round of high velocity vehicular volleyball.

As Big Rig sailed from car hood to car hood, Franklin pulled out his cell phone, then stopped. He didn’t want them tracing the call back to him. And maybe her. Phyllis. Whatever her name was.

Instead, he ran for the payphone, sliding, slamming into the booth. He grabbed the handset, punching in 9-1-1.

“I want to report—I want to report—a runaway—beach ball!” Franklin shouted into the phone. “Right. A runaway beach ball—with a clown inside it.” He listened for a moment, then hung up.

“Yeah. They’ll take that seriously.”

Big Rig was already out of sight in the stream of traffic.

Another idea hit Franklin and he bolted for his car, revved it, and putt-putted back onto the interstate toward home.

Franklin drove along the street behind his apartment building, pulling in next to Buster’s clownmobile.

The makeshift rope dangled from the back bedroom window again. Franklin tromped the gas pedal and motored off.

At the edge of town, outside the bus station, Lucy sat alone in a pool of light from the building’s security lamps. Franklin pulled into the parking lot and stopped in front of her. She wore his favorite sweatshirt, a pair of his pants, and a knit cap pulled down over her ears.

Great. Just great. A favorite sweatshirt he could never wash or wear again if he wanted to keep her smell on it.

He rolled down the window. She kept her head turned away, looking off into the night. He sat looking at her for a long moment. “Aren’t you afraid that private eye is watching the bus station?” he asked.

“Not two nights in a row.” She continued looking off into the dark.

“Doesn’t matter. No buses run after midnight.”

Her eyes closed and her head drooped. She twisted around to look up at the posted schedule behind her. The frame was empty. She flopped back against the seat.

Franklin got out and came around to open the door on the passenger side. Lucy sat there for a moment longer and gave out with a long, low, grunting exhale. She let her head drop again, the burden of it pulling her forward off the bench and onto her feet. Bearing the weight of the world, she slouched to the car, throwing up her arms to fend off any help from Franklin. She dumped her bag in the back seat and got in.

Franklin slid in behind the wheel. He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine coughed to life. The headlights came on, throwing a wash of light across the sign board in front of the car. Happy, capering clowns decorated a giant poster for the Founder’s Day Golf Tournament.

Lucy cried out, squeezing her eyes shut against the assault springing at her from the darkness.

Franklin pawed at the ignition to kill the engine. The lights went out.

“Sorry,” said Franklin, small, trying to watch her without looking at her.

“It startled me is all.” Lucy pulled the cap off, slapping it into her lap. “Let’s get out of here.”

“It’s only a picture.”

“You’re not.” She stayed silent a long moment. “Sorry. I hate clowns, okay?”

“I guess I don’t understand how a fake nose and a little bit of goofy hair sets people off.”

“Oh, it is a lot more than that!” Lucy clinched her arms across her chest. “Because of your fake nose and goofy hair? You could machine-gun somebody’s mother and everybody would laugh at how funny the clown is.”

“I prefer poison lawn darts.”

She didn’t answer. Just sat shaking her head. “You could have told everyone about me back at the Big Top. Save yourself gas money.”

“What’s the point of making waves?” Watching her, the way she stared, he marveled how it made her eyes appear to glow in the dark.

“They might’ve let you drink my blood,” she said.

“You don’t look like there’s enough in you for me to enjoy.”

Lucy’s smile got the better of her, slipping free for a delicious moment before she grappled her face back to a sullen frown.

“So, I guess I should say thanks for not leaving me to sit there all night?”

“I was out driving around anyway. In the middle of the night. In the scariest part of town.”

Lucy latched onto Franklin’s mouth, gripping his cheeks and giving him the world’s chewiest kiss. The kind of kiss with the power to change a stronger man’s political convictions.

Franklin had to open his eyes to see if this was real or if he’d blundered into another of his fanciful and futile hopes. He saw Lisker leaning on the hood, staring in at them.

“Didn’t expect me, did you?” said Lisker. “I like to be where you think I’m not.”

Lucy unlatched her lips from Franklin. He inhaled with a hiss, air rushing out of a broken airlock lost in deep space. Franklin put his hands on the steering wheel, regaining his breath, dignity, and cynicism. Lucy still twirled a lock of Franklin’s bright blue hair in her fingers.

“I’m—I’m showing Phyllis all the places she should avoid late at night now the Slasher’s in town.” Franklin turned to Lucy. “So, write this one down, too. Avoid dark bus stops.” He rolled his lips in his teeth, sucking in the taste of her, while she wrote on her hand with an imaginary pen.

“Kinda dangerous,” said Lisker. “Who knows what’ll happen in all this dark. With a woman you hardly know.”

Lucy ran a knuckle along Franklin’s cheek. “Yethh. Thhumthing awful.”

“Slasher could be anybody. Gains your confidence. Gives you a false sense of security. Then—WHAMM! You wind up tomorrow’s headline.”

Lisker slid off the hood, slapping a hand-drawn wanted poster onto the windshield. A clown face done in black marker. He popped up on the other side of the car.

“It’s the last face some clowns ever see. May want to keep that in mind, buddy.”

Franklin rolled the window up, Lisker barely saving his fingers. He back away, fading into the night, leaving Franklin and Lucy alone.

“That’s twice,” said Lucy.

“You’re welcome.” He was glad she noticed who had been covering for her.

“That he’s seen me sneaking out of town.”

Then again, maybe she hasn’t.

Lucy twisted the rear-view mirror to check her face and wipe the greasepaint from her mouth and chin.

Franklin didn’t have the nerve to ask the big question. Seemed safer to ask, “You owe that guy money or something?”

“First morning I’m here, he picks me out at the diner. The one down from the shopping mall.”

“Pecker’s? Guy doesn’t seem smart enough.”

“The way I stuck out? I was the only one in the place not wearing a clown get-up.”

“Oh, right. Founder’s Day. It is kind of a big deal around here. Runs the entire week.”

“What kind of town makes everyone go around in wigs, those stupid shoes like yours, and their faces all painted up?” She was getting the teensiest bit shrill.

“It’s a charity thing. For Founder’s Day. Cops give out tickets for not wearing something makes you look like a clown. Stick you in the outdoor jail if they catch you downtown. Kind of funny seeing guys in the cage on the plaza. If they want to get out, they pay a fine and let a bunch of schoolkids paint their faces. Mostly harmless.”

“And everyone’s okay with that? You know what a nightmare that looks like from the outside? Like I really needed that. Get caught up in your bizarro world with a private eye on my trail.”

A few days earlier, Lucy, in her floppy hat and sunglasses, tried losing herself among the sleepy denizens starting their day at Pecker’s, with its legendary three-ring breakfast special. She’d slipped in, took a booth at the back, and stayed low behind the oversized vinyl-covered menu.

Lucy should have known right off something was wrong when Gabby the waitress stood next to her table. She had done herself up in wig and hair bow, red heart lips, and a clowned-up waitress uniform with an overstuffed bosom.

“I’d have never gone in the joint if they’d warned me,” Lucy said to Franklin.

Gabby put down a paper placemat, a mug, and flatware wrapped in a napkin. She started pouring coffee for Lucy who hid behind the menu.

“What’ll you have?”

“Give me a minute.” Lucy kept the menu up, covering her face.

“Sure thing.” Gabby held out a paper party hat trimmed with a spray of green hair. “You might need this, hon.” She left the hat on the table and went back behind the counter. Lucy peeked around the side of the menu. The place looked like a circus had exploded somewhere and all the clowns landed in the diner.

Lisker, wearing the same frazzled wig and the red nose, sat at the counter with Gabby and Officer Joe. The three of them scanned the diner, cataloging the customers.

“Everybody comes through here,” said Gabby. “We’re a straight shot from the interstate. Next to the motel and down the street from the bus station.”

“So. What’s this Slasher look like?” Office Joe tapped his coffee spoon on the rim of his mug.

“Never seen the face,” said Lisker. “It’ll be a stranger in town.”

“Got plenty of those out this way.” Officer Joe sucked the last of the sweetener stuck to his spoon.

“That’s why he thought it might be some drifter,” Franklin said to Lucy. “The day he came by to tell us about Blinkers.”

“You can tell the out-of-towners,” said Gabby, studying the faces in the diner. “They’re all wearing the party hats. The locals are way more serious about Founders Day.”

“What about the couple from Muncie?” Gabby pointed out the large man and woman chowing down on a pair of lumberjack breakfast specials.

“Slasher works alone.”

“The salesman from Ogden?” Gabby pointed out a scrawny guy slurping cereal while he pestered his counter-mate.

“Too loud. Slasher’s quiet.”

“Maybe he’s a she.” Officer Joe pointed toward Lucy’s booth, but Lucy was already heading for the door. Lisker watched her backside, intrigued.

“No one’s ever seen his backside, either.”

“I was trying to get on that bus,” Lucy said to Franklin, “and give him the slip. You decided to be a hero and stick your big red nose in it.”

“Tough luck for you, what happened to those clowns right after you showed up,” said Franklin.

“Yeah. Tough luck. That’s my life.” Franklin could see the irony was lost on Lucy. “Always moving, never one place very long, working odd jobs. Having to wait tables at truck stops and greasy spoon diners. Or working office jobs for guys who pay in cash and don’t ask questions if your skirt’s short enough.”

Franklin sees it. All the guys would look like clowns to Lucy. Clown-headed guys holding her tip out of reach to plant kisses up her arm. Clown-headed guys reaching up under her skirt to pull out a pair of bright red bloomers. All the other clown-headed guys stomping, whistling, and clapping at the antics.

“Then it happens. One of you clowns turn up dead.”

Classic noir is how Franklin sees it. A dumpster out behind some gas station. Clown shoes sticking out. Inside the dumpster, a clown corpse buried under the banana peels, pie tins, and peanut shells.

Lucy reads the local paper with her coffee, minding her own business. Franklin sees it all the way it looks to her. She sits, staring at a picture in the newspaper of the dead clown’s shoes sticking out of the dumpster.

“You all turn into a mob with torches and pitch forks to find whoever it is hates clowns so much.”

The whole town is one giant canvas tent turning inside out, deflating as the clowns sally forth to find the plain-faced monster.

“And it’s back on the road, off to someplace new.”

Franklin sees her alone by the side of the road, shivering, her thumb out to hitch a ride. She gets into some creepy guy’s van and disappears down the dark road until the taillights wink out.

“You tried sticking to one place?”

“Clowns keep dying. Everybody asking, ‘Who’s the stranger?’ Always wondering if you’ve got an alibi for every single second you’re awake. God forbid you have blackouts and honestly can’t remember every little detail.”

“Blackouts?” Franklin’s eyes popped wide so hard and fast, she must have heard his eyelids smack into his forehead.

“I hate clowns.” Lucy looked over at Franklin. “This the old out-of-gas routine?”

Franklin reached for the key in the ignition, but Lucy put her hand on his, stopping him.

“Do something for me first.”

“Ohhhhh-kay,” said Franklin when he finally found the breath to make the whole word come out. Write her name in the moon’s dust, fetch down a handful of the brightest stars, subdue a whole litter of rabid dragons. Nothing seemed too hard for him at this moment, the way her hand rested on his.

“Get rid of that thing?” She pointed at the flyer of the clown face stuck under the wiper.

He reached out and pulled it off the windshield, balling it up and tossing it on the floor. He twisted the key in the ignition, praying it would start. He had to put some distance between himself and the atmosphere of the place closing in on him. A place made unbearably magical by the moon, the dark, her scent, and the prickling skin of his hand where she’d touched him.

The engine coughed to life, and he aimed the car onto the street.

Back at the apartments, Franklin steered the car under the parking shelter. Lucy hopped out and slung her bags over her shoulder. She turned without a word and headed for the makeshift rope still hanging out the bedroom window.

“That could be very incriminating.”

“In case Buster’s waiting up for me.” Lucy shinnied up the rope with far more skill than Franklin would have imagined. He watched until her khaki’d derriere disappeared over the sill into his bedroom.

Franklin eased open the front door and tiptoed for the bathroom, hooking his foot on something in the dark. He went sprawling, landing flat on his face.

Franklin tore at whatever snagged his feet. He pulled it close to his face to see. Twine. Running from the knob of his bedroom door into Buster’s bedroom.

Buster came flying out of his room.

“Hah! I knew you couldn’t keep yourself locked away from me,” cried Buster. He saw Franklin on the floor. “Oh. Don’t waste your time. You can’t see anything good under the door. I tried.”

Franklin waved Buster in close.

“You’re barking up the wrong pair of shins,” said Franklin. “She hates clowns.”

“She spent all night selling beer to clowns.”

“Immersion therapy. Worst case of bozophobia I’ve ever seen. It’d never work out between you.”

Still on the floor, Franklin could see Lucy’s toes from under the door. She must be standing close, listening. Franklin lost himself in how those toes summed up the total wonderfulness of the person attached to them.

“Therapy? Like she’s got a problem?” asked Buster.

“Right.” Franklin tore his eyes away from the sliver of space under the door.

“Like—she’s got a mental problem?”

“You could say that.”

“Like—a girl would have to be bug-ass crazy to choose me over you?”

“I believe that’s the medical term for it.” Franklin picked himself up off the floor.

“Which do you think is worse? To have loved and lost, or never loved at all?”

That had to be the weirdest question Buster ever asked.

“You must’ve thought about it. You’re love life’s been a total failure since fifth grade. Which is worse?”

“You bringing it up again?”

“If you met the perfect girl, you’d do anything to get her to like you? Right?”

“Alcohol’s a tolerable substitute when your charm wears off.”

“She’s different. She’s got what no other girl in my life ever had.”

“A working gag reflex?”

“Something to hide.” Buster pulled out a scrapbook and started to hand it to Franklin. He changed his mind and held onto it.

“I found it in her luggage. In a secret pocket. Totally by accident.”

Franklin glanced at the sliver of space under the door. The toes were gone.

Buster flipped through the pages for Franklin.

The scrapbook was jam-packed with pictures and clippings about the Baggy Pants Slasher. The clipping about Blinkers was on top.

Franklin picked the old newspaper off the floor. He paged through it until he reached the hole where the Blinkers story used to be.

“She needs an alibi, and I need her undivided attention,” said Buster. “The way the private eye’s poking around, she could be gone tomorrow.”

“With any luck.”

“Oh, yeah, right. You’re just mad there’s finally a girl in your bed and you’re stuck sleeping out here.”

“What’ll you do if she turns out to be the Slasher? For real?”

“Come on, you and I both know there’s no way she’s the Slasher.”

“What about that thing?” Franklin pointed at the scrapbook.

“Maybe it’s a hobby. Like collecting stamps.”

“A gruesome hobby.”

“She doesn’t strike me as the type to take up knitting.”

“I don’t know. Seems a natural. Those long, pointy needles?”

“As long as there’s a chance the private eye thinks she could be the Slasher, I’d make a great alibi. And—while I have this.”

“You can’t blackmail someone into liking you.”

“Pish. I don’t want her to pretend she likes me. I want her to pretend she’s crazy about me.”

“If she’s not the Slasher, this won’t matter. If she is, you’ll wind up with your own page in it.”

Buster stroked the scrapbook. “All I want is time for us to grow on each other.”

“Watch out she doesn’t take pruning shears to your huckleberries first.”

Buster re-tied the twine to his toe and stood up. “On the other side of that door is the cure for what ails me. I plan on being sick a long time.”

Buster limped back into his bedroom, dignified, twine trailing. He shut the door.

“You’ve got it down to a fine art.”

“Pssst. You out there.”

Franklin looked around, realizing it came from inside his bedroom. He leaned his head close to the door.

“The nice one’s gone back to bed.”

“Not him. You.”

“Okay, what?”

“Since I was a kid, I’d pray at bedtime all the clowns in the world would burst into a big ball of fire,” Lucy whispered through the door.

“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll keep a bucket of sand handy.”

“I’m making an exception for you tonight.”

Franklin leaned back from the door, puzzled. Then he smiled.

He made his bed in the big chair again. Tonight, it didn’t seem as uncomfortable as last night.

The smell of fresh coffee steaming somewhere close by roused Franklin. The aroma drew him out of the chair where he’d hunkered through the night, wearing a pair of gumboots for mittens covering his vitals.

Nose still a-twitch, Franklin tumbled onto the floor, cramped and aching, tangled in his blanket. It took a moment for him to figure out why he’d gone to sleep in the chair. He remembered the lunatic female, and jumped up, searching himself for wounds. Relieved there weren’t any, he remembered the rope of sheets out the window and Buster convinced she was still in the bedroom.

Relieved she was gone, he shook off the dregs of sleep, and padded to the kitchen to witness what had to be a major miracle. Buster up before Franklin and making coffee for the two of them with his very own hands.

It wasn’t Buster.

Lucy stood at the sink pouring coffee, unaware of him standing in the doorway behind her.

Her backside looked so safe and abnormally normal standing there. Nothing like the dangerous frontside from which he’d barely escaped at the bus stop. An unhealthy infatuation had taken hold of him and overwhelmed his instinct to run screaming from such a chimera. He shook his head to rattle the unwholesome idea already taking root. Nothing but disappointment or madness waited at the end of that shady lane.

“I’m surprised.” Franklin scanned for anything sharp, heavy, or poisonous she might have within easy reach.

“Surprised I’d leave without my money?” Lucy put the carafe back in the coffeemaker, not looking at Franklin.

Surprised I didn’t wake up dead, is what Franklin wanted to say. Amazing, since she had all night to finish off him and Buster both. Instead, he said, “Surprised you got back in without waking Buster. He has radar for females in motion.” A thought struck him. “Excuse me, I have to go check and see if Buster’s still breathing.”

“I’m sure he’s fine.”

“It’d be an improvement. He’s never been fine.”

Franklin put his head out the kitchen door and saw Buster still asleep in the hallway. He’d slid off the chair, his back arched, head thrown back on the seat, his arms and legs splayed out.

“He looks—unconscious.”

Lucy’s eyes shifted away as she sipped her coffee. “I’m sure he’ll be up and around, back to his old self in no time.”

“How did you get back in?” Franklin considered himself a light sleeper and worried how she could have gotten by him.

“Same way I got out. It helped that you left the window open.” Lucy finally looked at Franklin and gave out with a bark of disgust. “You ever take that face off?”

He touched his cheek and looked at the white on his fingertips. He checked his reflection in the polished steel of the toaster.

“We had unexpected company last night.”

“That face of yours gives me the creeps.”

“Good to know it’s working.”

“You can take it off now.”

“I think I’ll wait.” Franklin wasn’t about to give up his handy-dandy bozophobe repellant if it kept him out of claw’s reach.

Lucy turned her back to him once more, steadying her mug of coffee between her finger tips to sip.

“I smell you made coffee.” Franklin took the carafe from the coffeemaker, hoping she’d turn around again.

“It took some work getting the measurements right.”

Franklin tipped the pot to his mug. A single drip hung on the spout. He shook it into his mug.

“I was able to make a half cup. I don’t need coffee and a clown working my nerves at the same time.”

“They had me decaffeinated as a baby.” Franklin sipped, savoring the drop, smacking his lips. “Aaahhhh! Nothing like a good cuppa joe to start the day.”

“I have to find a job in this doormat you call a town because of you.”

“You can’t stay in my room.”

“Cough up some cash and I’m out of here.”

“Why didn’t you tell Officer Joe? At least in jail, I’d get a bunk to sleep on.”

“What’s the point making waves?”

“He might’ve let you drink my blood.”

“You don’t look like there’s enough in you for me to enjoy.”

A hit, a palpable hit, leaving him no swift reply of equal devastation. He needed coffee. If the only way to get any coffee was for her to find a job, then, “By all means, let me help you find a job.”

Franklin left and came back with a newspaper still in its plastic bag.

“How quaint.”

“It’s the neighbor’s. The least I could do for you is steal their paper so you can be on your way.”

“You don’t have a computer I can use?”

“Yes, I have a computer. That you can use? No.”

“What about Buster?”

“You have anything to barter? Anything he’s desperate to have and you weren’t saving for marriage?”

At least she’s having to think about it. She kept her eye fixed on him, a little twitch of her cheek, suggesting some deep thought. Like calculating the number of trash bags she’d need to use for their body parts.

“Give me the newspaper.”

Her choosing to use the newspaper instead of bartering for Buster’s computer relieved Franklin. He didn’t want to think why. He held out the paper and she yanked it from his hand.

Buster came into the kitchen, his arms full of clothing.

“Good morning, good morning. Great day!” Buster pressed the pile against Franklin, forcing him to catch them before they hit the floor.

“Wait. What’re you doing with all my stuff?”

“I needed some place to put all her stuff.” Buster nodded toward Lucy.

“You went through my bag?” Lucy dodged around them and flew to the bedroom, slamming the door.

“Helping you unpack. I want you to feel at home. Forever,” said Buster, following after her.

“She’s not staying,” said Franklin, following Buster.

“Yes, she is. You stole her wallet.”

“I refuse to dignify that delusion with a denial.”

“Well, I didn’t take it. She says a clown took it. Here she is and here you are. Need I say more?”

“How about, ‘Sure, Franklin, I’ll loan you seventeen hundred dollars.’ She does not want to stay here.”

“Frankie-boy, this is why you’re such a dud with women. You know nothing about them.” Buster wagged his head, chuffing a laugh. “If my name was on the lease, I’d give her your room and you could sleep in your car.” Buster went back to the kitchen.

“It doesn’t matter. She’s not going to stay,” said Franklin, still following Buster.

Buster pulled the pot from the coffee maker and tipped it into a mug.

“Of course she is. She must’ve been dreaming about me the whole night,” said Buster. “The sheets were all twisted up and thrown everywhere.” Buster shook the pot. “Thanks for drinking all the coffee. Did you at least leave her some? Next time, make enough for all three of us.”

Franklin bit off another useless remark and stormed out of the kitchen. He went to his bedroom but the door was still shut. He took hold of the knob. He should just burst in. It was his room. His name was the only one on the lease. Buster didn’t even pay his own share of the rent on time.

Lucy opened the door a crack, pulling the knob out of his hand. She showed one angry eye fixed on Franklin.

“It’ll be like a game,” she said through clenched teeth. “Figuring out where he put all my clothes.” She slammed the door.

Buster came out of the kitchen and planted himself by the bedroom door. “You can ask me. I’m ready to wait on you hand and foot. Hip and thigh. Tooth and nail. Name a body part. I can handle them all.” Then he said to Franklin, “I think she’s getting used to me. Most women hate it when I go through their clothes for souvenirs.”

Franklin picked the paper up off the floor where Lucy had dropped it. He flipped through the pages to keep his mind off the thought of her in his room, leaving her scent everywhere.

“Ah!” Franklin folded back a page of the paper. “Here’s a cheery item.” He read, “‘Blinkers the Clown was found dead in wet concrete at the new Hudson Hotel pool.’”

Buster wasn’t listening. That was clear enough. How could he? Buster’s entire neural network is running sexual fantasies in high-definition. Not a single synapse left for self-preservation.

Franklin leaned down to read at Buster’s ear. “‘The killer remains at large.’”

“Ix-nay,” said Buster, “with a capital ‘Ix.’ I’m listening to her heart beat.”

Franklin straightened up, still reading. “‘The funeral is Saturday.’” He stopped and let the paper flop at the fold. “We can send a nice arrangement of patio furniture instead of flowers.”

“Why don’t you run on along, Frankie-boy. I plan on spending the day growing on her.” He shivered in delight.

Lucy opened the door again.

“Sound like tons of fun.”

That’s what she said, but Franklin caught her brief, fierce and flaring glare as she sized up the target that was the back of Buster’s head.

“Ooo-kay,” said Franklin, as if he hadn’t seen, and hadn’t had a wonderful flicker of inspiration. “You two go right ahead and have a nice life. What’s left of it. For one of you.”

“You could get lost, you know,” said Lucy, but Franklin could see her face turn into a clash of dismay and anger aimed at him.

Franklin leaned in, smiling. “He’ll grow on you.” Franklin saw a single flicker of panic behind those deep, amazing, hazel eyes. “You think I’m kidding. He’s impervious to every kind of weed killer. I’ve tried. Don’t waste your money. Not that I want to give you any ideas that’ll be used against me later in a court of law.”

The dismay had vanished. She crooked her finger at him through the crack in the door. Franklin leaned in close. Lucy snagged Franklin by the nostrils.

“You got me into this, you get me out.”

Franklin winced at the amount of pain a pair of female fingernails could inflict on the insides of his tender snoot.

“I don’t think clearly with your fingers deviating my septum,” said Franklin, his eyes squinted shut.

“You don’t need your nose to think.”

“It’s all connected.”

“You want it all to stay connected, get me out of here.”

Buster dangled a pair of Lucy’s undies between them.

“I’ve always wondered—do girls fold their panties crotch in or crotch out?”

“The fun’s in finding out for yourself.” Lucy gave him a huge wink.

Buster’s face melted in ecstasy. So easily played.

Lucy turned her laser gaze back on Franklin.

Buster finally noticed Franklin’s predicament. “That looks painful.”

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Buster’s clownmobile pulled into the gravel parking lot in front of the Big Top Tavern.

Buster shut off the engine. Lucy sat in the front seat and Franklin sat in the back, two cotton swabs stuck up his nose.

“Has the bleeding stopped?” Franklin tried to see for himself in the rearview mirror.

“Get her a job at the Big Top!” said Buster. “I was thinking the exact same thing just before Franklin said it. If I weren’t so tall, it would’ve come out faster.”

Lucy slipped out of the clownmobile, pulled down the brim of her floppy hat, and slid her sunglasses on. She headed across the parking lot toward the tavern entrance.

“Come on. She’s hiding something,” said Franklin.

Lucy passed a clowned-up Peterbilt tractor belonging to Big Rig, a red-neck character clown. An air-horn blast blew her skirt up, giving the boys a stunning vista of skin and lace.

“And what a lousy job she’s doing,” said Buster, as Lucy whirled around, slapping down her skirt.

Franklin started after Lucy, but Buster caught him by the arm.

“I was saving this for a special occasion. But now’s as good a time as any.” Buster handed Franklin a hand-drawn, crudely colored real estate flyer. The picture was of a smiling house, its windows sprouting a woman’s legs on one side and a clown’s legs on the other.

In big red letters across the top, the message read, ‘Looking for a Place of Your Own?’

“Where’d you get this?”

“Found it on my windshield this morning. Naturally, I thought of you.”

“I’m not the one who needs to find a place of his own.”

“But look what comes with it. Read what it says here.” Buster pointed to the smaller blue letters at the bottom below the smiling house. It read, ‘Free massage with every appointment. Ask for Lady Fingers. Call now!’

“And I don’t need a massage from some woman I’ve never met.”

“That’s why you make the appointment.”

“You’re the one who throws himself at every strange woman that comes along,” said Franklin, shoving the flyer back at Buster.

“Not anymore. You won’t catch me doing something so creepy like that ever again. No matter how good they might look. Now she’s here,” said Buster, nodding toward Lucy, “I’ll never be this desperate again.”

“I have a place to live. Yours is looking iffy. And, I don’t need a free massage.”

Buster folded up the flyer and put it back in his pocket. “Fine. Don’t say I never tried to give you anything.”

Lucy had nearly reached the entrance of the Big Top. Buster hurried to catch up with her.

Franklin watched as Buster took her elbow, escorting her the rest of the way. She smiled at him. No flinching or growling as far as Franklin could see.

Up inside the Peterbilt cab, Big Rig laughed and waved his cap at Franklin. He pulled the cord over his head and sounded his wolf-whistle horn.

Franklin did a quick trot to catch up with the two of them as Buster ushered Lucy inside.

The place was full of clowns. Franklin came in behind Buster and Lucy just as Dougie sprang up in front of Lucy’s face. He wore whiteface with dagger eye accents, a black smile reaching to his ears, crowned with a mane of orange hair.

Lucy squeaked and whirled away from Buster, right into Franklin, an accidental half-embrace. It lasted only a moment before she flinched out of his arms and steeled herself for the ordeal, her face hardening.

As she stepped away, shoving Dougie from her path, she eased through the crowd and made her way to the bar.

Franklin remained frozen, his arms still out, holding the air where she’d been. He’d been reduced to memory foam holding onto the phantom feeling of the now empty embrace.

“Whadja bring us, Buster? A clown junkie?” shouted Biscuits, a fat character clown made up as a moon-cheeked baker.

The clowns shoved in close, trilling blow-outs in Lucy’s face.

“Settle down! Settle down!” said Buster. “She’s with me.”

Franklin grabbed a plastic clown-topper of yarn hair and a red nose from the stack by the door and held it out to Lucy. “Better put this on. It’ll make you an honorary clown.”

“That’s a good way to lose a couple of fingers—right up to your neck,” she said.

Stubby, a skinny auguste, called out, “Guys! Guys! Is that any way to welcome a friend of Buster’s to the Big Top?”

The rest of the clowns, their shoulders sagging with a deep chagrin, moaned, “No, of course not. Shame on us.”

“Show some respect. Let’s have a little etiquette if you please,” said Skinny. “And you know what that means?”

“Blanket toss!” all the clowns shouted back and cleared away the tables and chairs.

Franklin took a seat at the bar. Red slid a bar napkin in front of him.

“You’re not joining in?” asked Red.

“Nah. This won’t end well.”

Behind Franklin, all was in chaos.

“Red? What’s a cure for bozophobia?” asked Franklin.

A clown dashed past, a shoe bouncing off his skull.

“Anybody we know?”

Another clown flashed by covered in foam, Lucy right behind, hosing him down with a fire extinguisher.

“No one from around here.”

“I always wanted to try the Epsom Salts and bubble bath cure,” said Red. “Fill a tub with warm water, Epsom Salts, and bubble bath. Get ‘em all relaxed. Then—hold ‘em under ‘til they stop kicking.”

A bevy of clowns flashed past pursued by Lucy with hedge clippers, snick, snick, snicking away at their vitals.

“Why?”

“In case it comes up.” Franklin looked back at all the mayhem. “Never mind. Too much of a long shot.”

The front door opened. A flash of daylight sliced through the dark. Chaos took a break while everyone turned to look at the new newcomer filling the doorway.

A portly guy, the newcomer wore a rumpled brown suit and straggly tie, topped off with a clown-hair cap and rubber nose. A few dashes of odd colored paint made up a clown face under his horn-rimmed glasses and three-day stubble of whiskers.

He squeezed through the crowd of clowns, planting his big keister on a barstool.

Lucy put down the hedge clippers and grabbed up a clown-topper, slapping it onto her head. She edged toward the shadows.

The rumpled guy raised a finger to signal for a drink. He had on white, three-fingered cartoon gloves.

The rest of the clowns circled around him.

“New in town?” asked Skinny.

“Just another one of you clowns,” said the rumpled newcomer.

“You know what that means, of course,” said Fricka-Frack, a beefy whiteface.

“Blanket toss!” they all shouted.

They had better luck getting the rumpled guy into the blanket. They took hold of the blanket edges and lugged him to the middle of the floor. They gave a mighty heave—and collapsed under the weight, herniating everyone, slamming the rumpled guy to the floor.

“If they want this tradition to catch on,” said Red, “they’ll have to do it right at least once.”

The clowns scrambled to their feet, grabbed hold of the blanket again. “All together!”

“All right! All right! I’m working undercover.” The rumpled guy rolled off the blanket. “My aching back.”

“As a clown?”

“Private eye.” He gave them only a quick flash of his badge. Skinny grabbed it away from him.

“Dick Lisker? Department store security?” Skinny gave Lisker a cold hard stare. “You know what that means?”

“Blanket toss!” the clowns shouted with renewed glee.

“Waitwaitwait!” Lisker shouted over them. “You heard about Blinkers, right? How they found him in wet cement, right? But did you hear about Rib Eye? Last night?”

The clowns moved in closer around him.

Franklin saw Lucy’s face crumple up with fear and surprise.

“I didn’t think so,” said Lisker.

“When last night?” Franklin still watched Lucy.

“Late. Midnight. Maybe one a.m. Nothing left of him but his hat. It can only mean one thing.” He looked around at the clowns fixed on him. “The Baggy Pants Slasher’s in town.”

The clowns exploded in terror, running in circles, screaming and shouting, grabbing each other, pulling their hair.

“The Baggy Pants Slasher?” the cry went up. “Here? Why? When? How long?”

Red reached across the bar and grabbed Lisker by his tie, pulling him up eyeball-to-eyeball.

“What in hell’s a Baggy Pants Slasher?”

The clowns froze in mid-panic. A very good question.

“Come on. You’re clowns. You don’t know? Don’t you get news out here in the sticks?”

From inside his jacket, Lisker yanked a tattered old map marked with dead clown faces in blood red ink.

“Look!” Lisker pointed to the map. “Every X is a dead clown. Now the Slasher’s here. I’ve been on the trail half way across the country, since Bakersfield.”

“Why here?” asked Red, the other clowns nodding at the fresh doom so unnaturally settled on their little town.

“I’m guessing for that.” Lisker pointed at the poster plastered on the wall. ‘Clowns! Clowns! Clowns!’ the headlines screamed. ‘Chumleyville Founders Day Circus Scramble Charity Golf Tournament’ said the sub-headlines quietly and with more dignity.

“To play golf for charity?”

“Less than three days this place’ll be crawling with clowns. Every one of you’ll be a target.”

Franklin could see Lucy shudder.

“Your lives won’t be worth an Adolf.” Lisker finger-pistoled two shots at Red. “But the Slasher finally slipped up. There’s nowhere to hide in a town this size.” Lisker blew smoke from his fingertip, spun, and holstered the imaginary side-arm.

“Why’n’cha point the Slasher out,” asked Red, “and the police can grab him.”

“Nobody’s ever seen the Slasher’s mug and lived to tell about it. Just a clown face and gloves. Then—lights out!” Lisker grabbed at them, the clowns flinching backward.

Clowns started checking each other’s face and gloves.

“I’m watching every taxi, bus, and train for the face that doesn’t fit in. The stranger trying to avoid attention, or who suddenly leaves town. That’s when I strike.” Lisker barked out a yappy dog bark. “A bulldog.”

“Uh, that’s more like a Shitzu or a maybe a Chihuahua,” said Fricka-Frack.

“Not a Chihuahua,” said Skinny. “Maybe a Jack Russell terrier.”

“Yeah, more like that,” said Freckles.

“All right! All right! All right!” Lisker swept his hands back and forth over the heads of the clowns still crowded around him.

Lisker folded up his map and stashed it inside his jacket. “Last night. Two a.m. I saw a girl. By herself. At the bus station. A little bit suspicious, if you ask me.”

“What was she doing?”

“Waiting for a bus.”

“Lot of people take the bus,” said Red.

“At two in the morning? I’d bet a month’s pay it’s the mystery chick I’ve been following since Reno. Lemme tell ya, she ain’t no Avon Lady.”

“What’s she look like?” asked Franklin.

“Like her.” Lisker zeroed in on Lucy. He leaned toward Franklin. “What’s that girl’s name?”

“No clue,” said Franklin.

Buster whimpered. The clowns edged away from Lucy.

“Phyllithh,” lisped Lucy. “P.H.Y. Double L. Ethh. Ethh.”

“Phyllithh, of course,” said Buster, “I’m surprised you had to ask. Everybody knows Phyllithh, right? Right, guys?”

No one said anything, watching her.

“See? She’s one of the regulars.”

“Wait a minute,” Gladys said to Franklin, “You said her name was Lucy.”

“Something she pulled out of the air, I guess. I didn’t know her real name until much later,” Franklin said to Gladys.

“You look exactly like her.” Lisker moved closer to Lucy, backing her up against the wall.

Buster had stopped breathing.

Lisker straightened up, chuffing his disappointment. He turned to the clowns who hovered out of range. “Except for the red hair. And her nose wasn’t so big. And she didn’t have a lisp.”

Buster’s eyes rolled back in his head as he let out all the air pent up in his shivering body.

“I’ll know her when I see her again.” Lisker turned back to Lucy. “Are you sure I haven’t seen you somewhere before? Maybe another bus station?”

“She was in bed all night,” said Franklin.

“Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho! Was she now? And did you keep your eyes open the whole time?”

“Oh, yuck!” Buster swatted away the unappetizing mental image.

“She snores. Kept me up the whole night.”

“It’thh twue. I have my dad’thh noethhe.” She gave the plastic honker a squeeze, adding a beep of her own.

“What’s he using to keep his glasses up? Hmmm?” Lisker swooped in closer to Lucy. “Answer me that, Miz Smarty-Britches.”

“If my little brother says she snores, she snores.” Buster turned to Lucy. “I for one love a woman who can rattle the windows when she snores. Helps me sleep.”

“Okay, okay. For now. But I’m watching. My eyes are everywhere.” He V-fingered his eyes then V-fingered Lucy, making sure she understood he was locked in on her. Then traced down her figure. Then back up. Then stopped. Then did a little, excited finger dance.

Lucy slapped his hand away.

Lisker kept his eyes locked on Lucy, holding his wounded fingers, and said to the other clowns, “It could be anybody behind the clown face and gloves.” Lisker backed up to the window facing out onto the alley and turned, taking hold of the sash to lift it.

“I’m—a—caaaaaaat.” Lisker strained against the sash which gave way with a slam, rattling the panes, slamming his fingers. He shoved them in his mouth, squinting hard against the pain. Shaking his hands, his voice reedy and strained, he said, “The Slasher won’t hear me when I pounce.” He squeezed through the narrow opening, lost his grip, and fell into the alley with a long, resounding crash of trashcans. Then silence.

The clowns eased up to the window and peered out.

“Don’t look! Don’t look!” Lisker shouted up at them. “Pretend you don’t see me.” He paused. “Meeoooow!”

Back at the Big Top, there weren’t quite as many clowns when the phone rang.

Red picked up. “Big Top. Yeah, we got clowns. You know his name? Lady, they’re all wearing big shoes, baggy pants, and a fake smile. Okay, okay, slow down. Yeah? Where?” Red made notes on the pad by the phone. “All right, listen up,” he said, hanging up the phone and turning to the crowding clowns. “I got a surprise birthday party for a bunch of cowgirls out at the fairgrounds.”

Rib Eye, a character clown in bushy red sideburns and a tiny cowboy hat, red union suit, vest, and chaps, grabbed for the note.

“That’s for me!” Rib Eye yodeled his glee.

“Anybody seen Franklin?” asked Red, holding the note away from Rib Eye.

“Those girls’re looking for a real bucking bronc, not a cayuse off a kiddie carousel.” Rib Eye snatched the note, calling out, “Hi-yo, Silverfish! Away!” as he galloped out the door.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Franklin decided against returning to the Big Top. Instead, he’d made the long walk back to his place. The sky was darker and the air much cooler when Franklin reached home. He trudged up two flights of stairs to his front door, overlooking a dismal side street.

Franklin let himself in. The place was ramshackle, done up in Early Carnival Chaos. Buster sat in the big chair, behind a magazine.

“What happened to Miss Pool Toy?” asked Franklin, surprised to see Buster back already.

Buster lowered the paper, his face scrubbed clean of his make-up. He gave Franklin the stink-eye, made all the worse by a radiant shiner of a bruise, purpling the skin around his eye.

“Oooh. You need some painkillers for that?”

“Of course, you idiot.”

“Good,” said Franklin. “You left me stuck, you know that, right?”

A knock at the front door interrupted him.

Buster didn’t move. “You’re closer and I’m recuperating.”

Franklin went to the door since it was clear Buster meant to wallow in self-pity the rest of the night. “I couldn’t get the car started, so I went to catch the bus. Ran into some crazy female who nearly—and speaking of crazy females, what’s this about you and some state trooper? Officer Sunshine?” Franklin opened the door. “Yes?”

Lucy stood framed in the doorway, her hands on her hips.

Franklin slammed the door, leaning against it.

“Do we know a first-class exterminator?”

More pounding on the door, way harder this time.

“Is somebody there or not?” Buster came up behind Franklin to peep through the spy hole. He elbowed Franklin out of the way, scrambling to yank the door open, holding it wide for Lucy.

“I was just this very minute telling Franklin, my houseboy, how we desperately needed—whatever it is you’re selling.”

“You’re the clown at the bus stop.” Lucy reached around Buster, knotting a handful of Franklin’s costume in her fist.

“We all look alike to you civilians.” Franklin pulled himself free of Lucy’s grasp.

Lucy held out the pom-pom torn from his costume. “Looks like you’re missing one of these, doesn’t it?”

Franklin grabbed it away from her. “They don’t grow back. You cost me eighty-five bucks in ice cream.”

“Where’s my wallet!”

“Come on in,” said Buster. “I’ll hold him down so you can search him. Then you can search me. You’re welcome to whatever you find.”

“Do I look like I’d take some perfect stranger’s wallet?” Franklin held onto Buster, using him as a shield.

“You’re the one with the fake face.”

“She’s got you there, Frankie-boy,” said Buster. He elbowed Franklin aside, “May I interject here and say, you are the most perfect stranger I’ve ever met.”

“All right, all right.” Franklin pulled out the polka-dot snap purse he used for carrying cash. “How much did you have in your wallet?”

“Seventeen hundred dollars and sixty-two cents,” said Lucy, leaning in to check out the contents of his purse.

“No way!” Franklin yanked his purse back.

“You’d rather have me call the cops?”

“Buster, loan me seventeen hundred dollars.”

“And sixty-two cents,” added Lucy.

“Not gonna do it, Frankie-boy. You’d hurt yourself with that much money.”

“I loan you money all the time.”

“You’ll do something stupid with it.”

“I’m going to give it to her so she’ll leave.”

“My point exactly.” Buster hadn’t taken his eyes off Lucy, who’d edged as far away as she could and still intimidate Franklin.

“You don’t give me back my wallet, I’m calling the police. I mean it.”

“Say—let’s you and me snuggle on the couch until it turns up.”

Lucy ignored Buster and took a swing at Franklin. “You don’t think I won’t?”

Down on the street, a police cruiser rolled to a stop.

Buster and Franklin looked at the cruiser, then at her, then at each other.

“I never saw her lips move,” said Franklin.

“Me either. And I’ve been watching the whole time,” said Buster.

Lucy frowned. She looked behind her.

A portly police officer, wearing a red nose, fringed wig and clownish face paint got out of the cruiser. He crossed the street and climbed the stairs toward Lucy and the boys.

Lucy zigged past Buster and zagged past Franklin, through the door, disappearing into the apartment behind them.

Buster hid behind Franklin.

“If he’s asking about Miss Pool Toy, it was some other clown,” said Buster. “Do I still smell like pepper spray?” Then he called out, “Officer Joe! Little early for Founders’ Day, don’tcha think?”

“Founders’ Day?” Gladys asked Franklin.

“Founders’ Day,” Franklin said to Gladys. “Big deal around here. Everyone dresses up like clowns. Long story. Officer Joe’s a good egg. Goes all out.”

“Explains a lot. I thought I’d wandered into a parallel universe,” Gladys said to Franklin.

“Hey, guys. Got some bad news,” said Officer Joe, climbing the last few steps. “They found Blinkers out at the Hudson Hotel. Buried up to his nose in cement.”

Buster sighed, sounding relieved, before adding, “I mean—really?”

“Accident?” asked Franklin.

“Doesn’t look like it. Red got a call earlier to send a clown. Chief thinks it’s some kind of grudge between a couple of you ‘pie-faced troublemakers.’ His words. You know how he is. Got out of hand. Me? I’m thinking it’s the work of a drifter, maybe. We’re not all that far from the city. But you know how he feels about clowns. I’m keeping my eye out for strangers.”

Officer Joe hitched up his gun belt and headed back down the stairs. “Sorry I had to be the one to tell you. You be careful. Let us know if you come across any suspicious characters.”

“Officer Joe?” Franklin called out.

He stopped on the stairs. “Yes?”

“I—” Franklin started, “—aaaayyyyiiiii!” he finished.

“My feelings exactly,” said Buster. “We’ll be careful.”

Franklin rubbed his buttocks, feeling them inflame with blood from Buster’s pinch.

Buster waved at Officer Joe as he got back in the cruiser and drove off.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Gladys put down her glass and said to Franklin, “So this girl, the Baggy Pants Slasher, ends up hiding out with a couple of clowns. That’s a slick move.”

“Like a fox among the rubber chickens,” said Red.

“I guess if you’re afraid of clowns, slicing them up into bloody bits would be one way to solve your bozophobia.”

“I didn’t say she was afraid of clowns. I said she hated clowns.”

“Same difference.”

“Au contraire, mon chéri. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of clowns. She hated clowns.”

“Mad dogs have hydrophobia, right? What makes ‘em so mad? It’s the water, right? Hydro? Water? Help me out here, Red.”

“Anybody hates clowns has got to be a hunnert percent mental.” Red wiped away any further debate with a sweep of his hands.

“Like the way somebody hates spiders. Nails on a chalkboard. Squeaky Styrofoam ice chests,” said Gladys.

“I hate that one.” Red shivered.

“If it’s not bozophobia, what is it when you hate clowns?” asked Gladys.

“Simple mathematics.” Red rested his hands on the bar. “Bozo equals clown, right? Phobia equals fear, right? Add it up for yourself, whaddya got? Bozophobia. Fear of clowns.”

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

“What’d you do that for?” Franklin rubbed his butt cheek.

“You’d call the cops on somebody who just might turn out to be the girl of my dreams? All because a couple of clowns can’t get along?”

“Officer Joe said it could be someone from out of town.”

“Come on, you know clowns around here don’t get along.”

“Since when?”

“We’re brothers, and we barely tolerate each other.”

“Hey! You saw her all of two minutes. She chased me for nearly a mile.”

“Because you stole her wallet.”

“I didn’t steal her wallet!”

“Women looking that good don’t have any reason to lie.”

“Fine. You go in and find out how harmless she is.” Franklin gestured toward the front door of their apartment, wide open and uninviting.

“You know I’m a terrible judge of women.” Buster shoved Franklin toward the door that had become a portal to something sinister. “You’re smaller and harder to hit.” Buster pushed Franklin again.

Buster outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, so Franklin decided he might as well go in first. He stepped through the doorway and reached into the umbrella stand for something weapon-like. He pulled out an industrial grade soup ladle.

“That’s perfect if she’s allergic to gravy.”

“You should have let me say something to Joe.”

“Have I ever been right about any woman? She may be perfectly harmless as well as perfectly gorgeous.”

Franklin stopped and looked back at Buster. “I’ve never found that to be true about any of them.” He crept into the living room with Buster crouched behind him. He did a hundred-and-eighty-degree sweep of the room, his ladle thrust out before him.

Nothing.

Franklin moved toward the kitchen, his ladle at the ready. He took a deep breath and leaped into the middle of the room.

“Ha!” Franklin pivoted first to one side, then the other, ladle out.

Nothing.

They edged up to Buster’s bedroom.

“On three,” whispered Franklin. He counted to three and barged into Buster’s room.

Nothing.

He looked back at Buster still hiding behind the door frame. “‘On three’ means you come in with me.”

“Sorry, thought you meant three o’clock. My watch stopped.” Buster shook his wrist and listened. “Don’t keep looking at me! She could be waiting to jump you.”

Franklin pushed past Buster, who slipped in behind Franklin to avoid any surprise assault. Franklin stopped.

“She might come up behind us,” hissed Franklin.

Buster whipped around in front of Franklin, watching back over Franklin’s shoulder.

“Or straight ahead.”

He whipped around behind Franklin.

“Maybe the side.”

Buster straightened up.

“You’re doing that on purpose.” Buster turned and pressed his back against Franklin and grabbed him by the waist. “You watch the front, I’ll watch from behind.” They turtled along to Franklin’s bedroom.

They sidled up to Franklin’s bedroom door. Again, with a silent count down, they burst into Franklin’s room, Franklin holding Buster by the sleeve, dragging him along.

Lucy had tucked herself under the bed, lying on her side, only her backside visible, still poking out.

“That,” Buster whispered into Franklin’s ear, “is not the face of a killer.”

She pulled her protruding backside all the way under the dangling covers.

“It’s the other end I’m worried about,” Franklin whispered back.

“Come on. I’ve seen some sinister rear ends in my time. I don’t see anything the least bit sinister about hers.”

A barrage of pillows came out of nowhere, driving them from the bedroom, the door slamming and locking behind them.

Buster grabbed a chair and wedged it under the door handle. “There. Happy? That oughta keep her awhile.”

The door opened inward and the chair fell backward into the room. Lucy threw out a scraggly clown doll.

“Hey! My mother gave me that!” said Franklin.

“We’ve been meaning to throw it out!” said Buster, smiling.

Lucy kicked the chair out of the way, slamming and locking the door again.

Buster picked up the chair and leaned it against the door but didn’t say anything this time.

“If she’s so harmless, let her hide in your room.” Franklin went to grab the door handle.

“Okay, okay, wait!” said Buster. “I will. But let her calm down first. Jeez, Frankie-boy, calm down. You scared the beejeezus out of her.”

“Me?”

“Give her a minute. Okay? Be a sport.”

Franklin wasn’t so much giving in on Buster’s say-so. He was hearing himself, and how he must sound to the attractive female on the other side of the door. The attractive—maybe-cold-blooded-killer—female.

“Hey,” she called out from the other side of the door. “You out there.” Franklin pushed past Buster, leaning his head close to the door.

“What?” he barked.

“Not you. The nice one.”

Buster lit up and pushed Franklin away from the door.

“I’m here,” said Buster.

“Is that you?” she asked.

“The genuine, hundred per cent true me.”

“You have a nice voice. Kind of sexy, but in a nice, safe, non-threatening way, you know?”

“I hear that a lot.”

Franklin rolled his eyes. Oh, brother.

“I’ll bet you’re a real gentleman under all those muscles and good looks,” she said.

Buster leaned his cheek against the door and drew little hearts on the wood panel with his finger tip. “You know, I’ve been told I’m just like your teddy bear.”

“Bears are scary,” she said, alarm in her voice. “I like unicorns. Unicorns are nice.”

Oh, brother and a half. Franklin would like to barf all over Buster’s shoes.

“Unicorns. A barnyard full of them,” said Buster. “You can come out now. I’ll protect you from the nasty old clown.”

Buster reached out a finger to Franklin before he could explode all over the two of them.

“Is it okay if I stay in here tonight?”

“No way,” hissed Franklin, but Buster raised the finger again.

“What do you expect,” Buster hissed back at Franklin. “You stole her wallet. She needs a place to stay.”

“I keep telling you, I didn’t steal her wallet.”

“Well, some clown did. And it would be a nice gesture if we make it up to her. For the brotherhood of clowns.”

“Let one of them find her a place to stay.”

“All I had in the world was in that wallet,” she said.

Buster scowled at Franklin, who scowled back, wounded.

“Would—” said Buster, “—would you like me to come in and keep you company?”

“No,” she said. “No, that’s okay. But there is one thing I’d like you to do for me.”

“Anything. Anything at all.”

“Would you keep watch for me? Stay right there? The other one makes me nervous.”

“I’ll be here the whole night. I won’t move a muscle.” Buster gave Franklin the whole eyebrow treatment, loaded with warning.

Buster righted the chair and seated himself, back to the door, his arms folded. The faithful watchdog. Ready to stand guard the whole night against any sort of mayhem Franklin might try.

“You know, I always had more confidence in your self-preservation mechanism,” said Franklin.

“Oh, it’s obvious, isn’t it? She’s just the type of killer who uses ninja throwing pillows on her victims.” Buster held up one of her deadly projectiles. “You think maybe it’s her nesting instinct kicking in right after she got a look at me? She could be settling in, and it’s her way of showing she’s got a thing for me. You think of that?”

“She locked herself in my room.”

“But she called me the nice one. Face it, hot babes have given you hives since fifth grade. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“No. What’s obvious is she’s new in town. Blinkers gets it. She chases me here—”

“You’d throw away my future bliss on a coincidence like that?”

“All right. But if you wake up dead, don’t come running to me.”

Buster, like always, had gone rock solid knucklehead on yet another female. There’d be no talking reason to him. Not with his gonads pressing so hard on his brain. Franklin rapped on the closed door with the ladle.

“Hey! You in there,” Franklin shouted through the door at her. “Throw out my pajamas, too.”

Franklin listened at the door, catching the sound of a window sliding open.

“Glad to oblige,” she said from behind the closed door.

“Not outside!”

Franklin burned a look at Buster as he slouched out the door to rescue his pajamas.

Out behind the apartment complex, Franklin waded through the bushes until he stood under the open window of his bedroom. A homemade rope of sheets and pajamas dangled from the window above. The hedge was crushed flat where a body had landed. She was gone. Even better, it was too dark to see which way she might have gone if Buster took it into his head to chase after her.

Franklin rested his hands on his thighs, doubled over with relief. “Good riddance!” he said. “Really,” he added. Because he wasn’t sure he meant it the first time.

A dark car, no headlights, rolled along the alleyway behind the apartment complex. It eased to a stop near Franklin. A shadowy figure cranked down the window.

“Lose something?” asked the figure in the car, a hissing whisper.

“Nothing I’m sorry to see go.”

The figure cranked the window up and the car rolled on by.

When Franklin returned to the apartment he saw Buster kneeling by Franklin’s bedroom door, his mouth at the keyhole.

“I never said this to a girl before,” said Buster, “but I’d face the meanest clerk in the mini mart just to buy you feminine hygiene products.” Buster frowned and looked up at Franklin.

“What? I’m trying to have an intimate conversation here. Do you mind?”

“She’s gone.”

“She’s not gone.”

“She climbed out the window. She’s gone.”

“You would say anything to have her to yourself. You are so transparent.” Buster turned back to the keyhole. “Don’t pay any attention to him, girl-of-my-dreams. I’m right here all night.” Buster stood up, keeping himself between Franklin and the door of his dreams.

“You would do anything to keep us from being happy.”

“She came looking for me,” said Franklin.

“So, it’s lucky for her she found me. I’m the heat-seeking missile with a warhead of love. Ka-BOOM! You’re a floating mine all alone in the ocean, hoping a ship’ll pass by close enough for you to go off, like—” Buster scrunched up his face, tiny, European, “büme!”

“You see the way she looked at us?” Could Buster be that dense? For real?

“I’ve seen the way she looks at you,” said Buster. “At me, the way she looks, I can feel the heat, the el-ragerino of passion just itching to blow. You may want to stand back so you don’t get singed.”

“Weren’t you listening to what Officer Joe said?”

“Right. You pull the old Steal-The-Hot-Babe’s-Wallet-So-She’ll-Notice-You trick, then blame her when she gets mad and calls the cops on you.”

“Would you let that go? I did not steal her wallet. I’m talking about Blinkers.”

“In all the years I’ve known you, that’s got to be the lamest excuse for avoiding women I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m sure she hid under my bed because she’s on the lam for not separating her recyclables.”

“She does too recycle. She loves polar bears. Eats her vegetables. Wouldn’t harm a steak.”

“And you know this because—?”

“We talked. A lot.”

“When?”

“While you were outside. I was able to get her to open up about herself. You are completely wrong about her.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re jealous. Behind this door is perfection in a pedicure, and you can’t change my mind.” Buster leaned his ear against the door again.

Franklin stood with his mouth open, but the hurricane of words he wanted to unleash on Buster failed to line up in coherent thoughts. All he could do was shrug. “Go ahead. I’ll leave you two love birds alone.” He leaned toward the door. “Goodnight, Miss What’s-Your-Name.” He listened at the door for a moment, then covered his mouth.

“Don’t get snot on the door handle, my sweet,” came a high squeaky voice.

“Franklin!” shouted Buster, yanking his head away. “You left the helium on in your room again.” Buster put his mouth to the key hole again. “Don’t inhale. There’s plenty of air out here.”

Franklin chose the knitted throw with its figure of a clown on a ball. He shook it out and settled into one of the two club chairs. A very unsatisfactory bed. He snuggled under the throw, his extremities dangling. The victory over Buster and Who-Cares-What-Her-Name-Is would be a night of discomfort.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

The fairgrounds didn’t seem all that lively to Rib Eye as he stepped down from his pick-up. He tried the doors along the big exhibition hall. Nothing seemed open.

In the distance, he spotted a colorful string of flashing lights.

“Saddle me up, and call me Trigger!” yodeled Rib Eye, galloping toward the lights.

He’d reached a metal shed draped in Christmas lights taped around a hand-lettered sign reading, “Dressing Room—Cowgirls Only!!!”

Rib Eye checked for anyone watching. He opened the door, stepping inside.

It was dark. He felt along the wall beside the door for a light switch. The door swung shut behind him.

Outside, a gloved hand closed a hasp and snapped a padlock through the eye, locking Rib Eye inside.

Rib Eye rattled the handle, then put his shoulder to the door. It wouldn’t give. He pulled out a match and struck it, looking for a handle of some kind.

A humongous bull snort sounded behind him.

He turned to find himself chin-to-muzzle with the biggest, angriest damn bull he’d ever seen, its nostrils flaring and hoof pawing at the floor.

The aluminum siding of the shed rocked as the bull slammed Rib Eye around inside, his face and body slamming against the walls and stamping his form in the metal siding. A snort and a yodel as a face bloomed in the front wall. A snort and a yodel as a butt bloomed in the back wall. A snort and a yodel as a torso bloomed in the side wall.

Outside, gloved hands lit the end of a fuse that flared and sparked. Flame sizzled along the cord and over the ground toward the shed, disappearing under the door.

Then silence, not even the hiss of the burning fuse.

The shed went up in a bright ball of flame, a concussive explosion ratting metal and glass all around, prime rib and flank steaks flying.

Rib Eye’s scorched hat spiraled back down to earth, smoking where it had landed.

Franklin stayed bent over in a hard stoop, waddling between the cars in the parking lot. Every few yards he dropped to a knee, peeking over the hoods of the cars, watching for Gladys.

Back outside, Gladys roamed along the walkways girdling the mall. She shaded her eyes against the sunny sky and scanned the vast parking lot for tell-tale flashes of goofy blues or outrageous reds. Anything that might give away Franklin’s hiding place.

As Franklin watched, Gladys tensed up, her eyes locked on something. She could not have spotted him from that far away. Could she? From all the way across the parking lot? Gladys sprinted off the walkway, into traffic, into the path of an oncoming SUV.

What Franklin sees is gruesome and emotionally satisfying. Gladys bounces up over the hood of the SUV, shatters the windshield, passes through the vehicle, and bursts out the back glass. She slides down the tailgate, her skin squeaking along the metal as she oozes to the ground, landing with a plop. People converge on her, telling her to lie still. Insufferable Good Samaritans render first aid to her, wind her up in bandages, strap her into a neck brace, buckle her onto a back board. They cart her off to a hospital where she’ll receive the very best of care and live to a ripe old age.

Of course, that’s not what happened, and Franklin felt bad for feeling good about seeing it that way. Honest. He did. Even though Gladys kept on coming, having taken only a moment to eyeball the driver to a screeching halt. She slapped the hood of the SUV with both hands to punctuate her point.

Still stooped over, Franklin scuttled away.

His knees ached from duck-walking for what felt like a hundred eighty-two miles around the parking lot. What in hell good’s a place this size? Franklin had to stop. He flattened himself out on the asphalt, worming himself under a van, watching through the tires for any legs that might be in hot pursuit.

Seeing nothing, Franklin squirmed back out from under the van, coming nose to toes with a pair of big black brogans. He rolled his head up, squinting into the bright sky overhead. A security guard stood over him.

Franklin tapped the tire while keeping his eyes fixed on the guard. Franklin put his ear to the tire, listening. He got to his feet and pulled out his invisible tire pump, inflating the suspect rubber donut with a dozen or so hefty mouth squirts for sound effects. Franklin tapped it again, satisfied he’d saved the day, giving the guard a thumbs-up. The guard shook his head and kept on moving.

Franklin eased himself upright and scanned the parking lot. Seeing nothing of the shock-haired clown junkie, Franklin blew out a deep breath of relief and shivered at the close call.

Franklin took the long way around the mall, walking back to his car.

He hated cutting the gig short. But once a clown junkie hijacks the crowd, a working clown is little more than an inflated punching bag.

The sun baked the asphalt. The heat had him streaming sweat from under his wig. He moved along the perimeter of the parking lots, keeping the acres of vehicles between himself and Gladys in case she was still on the hunt.

He reached his car, the trunk still wide open. Franklin took hold of the deck lid and eased it down until he heard the latch snap. He held the deck lid down for a moment, stroking it.

“Good boy.” Franklin lifted his hands. Relieved, he moved around to the driver’s side. He fished his keys out of his pocket and bent down to sight in on the keyhole.

From no more than a half-dozen cars away Franklin heard a woman’s voice calling out, “Hey! Hey, clown!”

Please let there be two identical clowns in the same parking lot. And neither one of them me.

Franklin stayed hunched over. But the huffing and scraping of shopping bags on car metal closed in on him. No such luck. Franklin, out of breath and out of energy, didn’t have the gas to run anymore.

Still hunched over, hand on the key in the lock, Franklin peeked under his arm. Not the shock-haired clown junkie from the shoe store. The opposite of the clown junkie. A fetching shopper in cork-heeled wedgies, spandex pants, and a flowered shirt belted at the waist. Her shopping bags outsized her, loading her down.

“You’re the clown from the mall!” she said, a great relief in her voice.

“You’re the big-spender from K-Mart!” Franklin said back.

“They towed my car. Can you believe it? I was inside a minute, tops, and they towed me.” The cute shopper shook her head, eyes fixed on Franklin, her shoulders drooped, inviting him to share in her disbelief. “Could you give me a lift?”

Franklin interlaced his fingers, stretching and flexing his hands, squatting down, making a stirrup for her. “When I say allez oop, you oop.”

“Oh. Oh, ha, ha. Right. Allez oop. Ha. No, could you give me a ride?” she asked, adding, “In your car.”

Franklin put a hand to his ear, listening at the window. A high squeaky voice seemed to come from behind the glass, “Let us out, let us out!” Franklin straightened up. “Sorry. They took a vote. No more room. You know how it is with these clown cars. Stuffed to the door handles.”

“I got lost at the circus once and a clown rescued me. You’re like—superheroes to me.” She gave Franklin the most winsome, pathetic, needy smile he’d ever seen on the face of any woman of any age anywhere. How could he refuse when she goes to all that trouble, just for him? She added just the barest apologetic squeeze of cleavage and a peek of silver lace brassiere, in case he’d missed it.

Where were his ancestors in the dim dawn days of humankind when women were learning life hacks like this to get around his defenses? Was it too much to ask for a little something extra in his DNA? Something to call on for protection against all that winsome appeal standing in front of him?

Why couldn’t he take charge of his mouth? Why couldn’t he be the bad boy for once? Why couldn’t he say ‘no’ and make it stick?

Go on. Try it. His brain sends the word to his mouth even as his lips, cheeks, and tongue conspire to resist. He forces it out. The ‘no’ leaves his mouth in a long slow-motion wave of sound.

A radiant shield materializes around her, deflecting the waves back at Franklin to pound his head like a boxer’s speed bag.

That’s why.

Franklin grips his head to stop the vibration and regain his hold on reality.

It’s got to be some kind of unlicensed, tactical undergarmentry that women can buy from hidden boutiques, tucked away in malls across the country.

Her hands were still full of shopping bags. Franklin swallowed the sad sigh of inevitability and came around to the passenger side. He unlocked the door, offering her the seat with a spin of his wrist and a courtly flourish.

She slid in, pulling her bags in onto her lap. Franklin closed the door, did a little hip-twisting chivalry dance, and skipped around the front of the car to the driver’s side.

Franklin slipped in behind the wheel. The cute shopper had scrunched herself up beside him. Her fragrance sent fingers of desire up his nostrils into his brain.

The courteous thing to do would be to ask her name. He was a performer, used to the pressure. He could come up with something totally natural and friendly, couldn’t he? Something funny like, ‘in case we have an accident and they need to identify our tangled corpses—no!’ What idiot starts a life-long romance with a line like that?

Franklin would.

Truth was, if he started he may not know where to stop. ‘What’s your name? Do you like me better with or without the clown face? How would your parents feel about having a clown for a son-in-law?’

Or he keeps it simple, like, ‘What’s your name?’ and she turns into a craggy-faced, long-haul trucker in barrettes and bangs, with a ‘What’s it to ya, ya perv?’

So, okay, no names. Too much of a commitment. But he needed to say something. There was an attractive woman sitting alone in his car.

“Now you can tell everyone you’ve gone out with a real clown,” said Franklin, slipping the key into the ignition.

“I have dated some real clowns,” she said, laughing. “Not a real, real clown. But I’ll bet you’re loads of fun.”

Oh, if only, thought Franklin, becoming a bystander in the battle between his under-fed libido and his over-protective imagination.

Here comes the usual screech of psycho circus music as his imagination takes over, plumbing the depths of her tolerance for his shortcomings with The Test.

The world inside his car shuts out the reality around the two of them as it stretches and skews.

Franklin leans in, tender, holding out a can of peanut brittle he always keeps handy for these chance romantic encounters. “I am,” he says, “When I get to do—” a twist of the lid, “—this!” Paper snakes spring up and maybe she shrieks in surprise, maybe she doesn’t. If she’s The One, she’ll absolutely yodel with glee.

“And when I get to do this,” says Franklin, blasting a spray of seltzer down her blouse, and maybe she woofs at the cold, her eyes bright with shock. And longing.

“And this,” he says, smacking her with a cream pie.

Franklin studies her, watching for her reaction, watching for the hint of delight, the flicker of something that says he’s finally found the soul mate meant just for him.

She fingers the shaving cream from her eyes, giving him a look of utter pity.

“You think I can’t see what’s wrong with you?” she’ll say, rubbing her face clean, blowing the shaving cream from her mouth, pushing back her hair. “Poisoned by rejection and a lifetime of mistreatment at the hands of women?” If the stars align and the fates allow, and God is keeping office hours that day, she grabs Franklin’s face between her hands. “Let me be the one to make it all up to you,” she’ll say, then latch her mouth onto his face. She’ll lock her lips onto his with a lip-smacking, moaning, monster kiss. She’ll smear him with the shaving cream, leaving crimson pucker marks all over his face.

Kissing and breathing, she’ll say, “That’s for Jeannie Krebbs!” Kissing and breathing. “That’s for Amanda in high school.” Kissing and breathing. “That’s for Denise in college.” Kissing and breathing. “Did I leave anybody out?” she’ll ask.

“Um. Sheryl? Works the drive-through at the Swif-Tee Burger Barn?” Franklin might suggest, having recently added Sheryl to the list of colossal romantic mis-fires.

“Right, how could I have forgotten her, with her torn fishnets and tongue stud!” she’ll say, planting another big kiss on Franklin.

The music in his head faded, the world righted and straightened itself out. Which left Franklin watching the cute shopper. No, not watching. Gazing, really. No, not gazing. Staring. Franklin’s slack-faced, saucer-eyed look of longing capable of creeping out the strongest woman.

Franklin shook his head to unlock his eyeballs.

“Rudy, my boyfriend, would crap kittens, me going out with a clown,” said the cute shopper. “No offense.”

“Of course not.” Franklin gave a hollow knock on his noggin. “Nut’in’ up here but elephant poop.”

Franklin smiled at her and turned the key. The starter gave out with a grinding whirr. Franklin released the key and smiled at the cute shopper again, turning the key harder. The starter continued its grinding whirr. Franklin smiled at the cute shopper. She smiled back. Franklin turned the key again. Nothing but the grinding whirr. Franklin twisted harder and harder on the key. The starter kept grinding and grinding and grinding and grinding and grinding until he’d used up the last, solitary spark of a charge left in the battery.

“The old out-of-gas routine works best somewhere dark and deserted, Frankie-boy.” Another clown leaned in at the window on the passenger side.

Franklin gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. “We’ll be fine, thanks, Buster. Don’t you have a gig somewhere? Somewhere else? Way way way somewhere else?”

“Did have. Had to finish up for some clown working the shoe store. A real flake, sounds like. Got scared off by a bunch of kids and never came back. I figure he went out for a smoke and got lost. Lucky thing I was already in the mall.”

Buster leaned in at the window, his eye on the cute shopper. He doffed his hat and smiled.

“Rookies,” he said to her. “What can you do? Too old to spank. Too cute to drown.”

“They towed my car.”

Franklin, defiant, turned the key, and the starter dredged up one last, pathetic whirp, then stopped.

“They’ll be back any minute for this one.” Buster pointed a thumb at his own souped-up clownmobile idling behind Franklin’s car. “Need a lift, I assume? Because it’s the only reason an attractive and intelligent young woman would risk a ride in this self-propelled cheese grater.” He opened the door, a knight in clown-white, offering his hand to help pull her free of Franklin’s car.

Once she could stand upright, the cute shopper shimmied to straighten and smooth her clothes. She reached in for her shopping bags.

“Oh, bag boy,” said Buster, “Get those for us, will you? There’s an extra fiver if you don’t sweat all over everything.”

Franklin muscled the bags out of the front seat and loaded them into the van. He grabbed the door frame to climb in the back. Buster stepped in to block the way.

“Sorry. You won’t fit,” said Buster. He was the only clown Franklin knew who could turn his grease paint smile into an unpleasant scowl.

“There’s plenty of room in the back.”

“Not,” said Buster, speaking slowly so any idiot would get the point, “when you put the seats down. Now, if you’ll excuse me. My good deed needs doing.” Buster slammed the side door shut. Franklin plucked his arm clear before losing it.

Buster went around and got behind the wheel, tooted the horn, tootling a musical calliope call.

“What am I supposed to do?” Franklin called in at the open window.

“You could practice on a pool toy,” Buster shouted back to him. The clownmobile roared off between the cars and out through the parking lot, the tires squealing.

Franklin tore off his wig and threw it to the ground.

“Shi.i.i.i.i.t!” Franklin machine-gunned every extra syllable, jerking himself in a twisting, whipping dance of gyrational frustration.

“Thanks a lot, bozo,” shouted the brunette from the mall, standing behind him. Her boy Earnest was wrapped around her leg, his face buried in her thigh. “I convince him there’s nothing to be afraid of, that clowns won’t hurt him, and there you are, going off just like his father. Asshole!”

Of course, out of the twelve thousand women passing through the mall today, it would have to be her. Franklin watched her storm off, little Earnest in tow.

Franklin sensed a sudden heaviness in the atmosphere and turned around. The shock-haired clown junkie!

He streaked off, his clown shoes squealing, nothing but the smoke of burned rubber left behind.

“Almost had you,” Gladys said to Franklin.

“It’s all in the shoes,” Franklin said to Gladys.

“So, your very own brother hijacks your girl and here you are.”

“The girl with all the shopping bags? That wasn’t her. I wish it had been. I could have skipped the lousiest week of my life. Then Buster could be sitting here, not me.”

At the mall, Franklin reached the metal benches of the bus stop where the bus waited, idling. A line of passengers stood and watched a young woman blocking the doorway. She struggled with her luggage to reach her purse hanging behind her. Her skirt rode up her thigh as she lifted her knee to keep her bags from falling.

It was easy for Franklin to see she was attractive, despite the floppy hat and large sunglasses concealing much of her face.

He was ready to bolt and leave Miss Ready-Made-Heartbreak to wrangle alone for exact change. Until one of three scruffballs in the line of waiting passengers called out, “Almost there!” He elbowed the other two scruffballs with him. They were much more interested in seeing how high her skirt would rise than helping her out.

Franklin screwed up his face, fighting off the heartless whimsy of his imagination working to take over. But he loses.

The spinning flutter of a silent film projector and a tinkling piano fills his head. Franklin the movie hero taps the shoulder of her nearest tormentor. All three scruffballs have transformed into hulking brutes. Franklin treats each bruiser to a spinning wind-up and solid uppercut, knocking them all into a sprawling heap. The dancing stars of unconsciousness circle their heads.

The mystery babe flings her arms around Franklin, his amazing muscles visible through the skin-tight clown jumper. He lifts her and her luggage, carrying her onto the bus. He catches only for a moment, then squeezes through with a loud cork-pop, and the tinkle of change dropping into the fare box. The mystery babe puckers up and plants a wet smacker on him. Franklin’s vision irises out as his fantasy evaporates.

“Here, let me help,” said Franklin, pushing his voice down half an octave. “I juggle for a living.” He took hold of the nearest bag.

“When I have balls, I’ll call you,” said the mystery babe, her wallet nearly out of her purse.

“Oooooh!” The three little thuglings nodded at each other, impressed.

The mystery babe turned and found herself nose-to-red-rubber-nose with a clown. She shrieked, yanking the bag out of Franklin’s hands and knocking him flat. The bag’s contents went flying everywhere.

“That was Lucy,” Franklin said to Gladys. “I didn’t actually know her name until a few hours ago.”

“Oh,” Gladys said to Franklin.

Lucy dipped low, gathering up her scattered things.

The scruffiest of the three thuglings snatched up a pair of her panties, letting them unfold and flap in the breeze as he held them out to her.

“Nice,” he said, while he toed her wallet far enough away for the short thugling to grab it.

She pulled the panties from his hand, stuffing them back in her bag. She looked inside her purse.

“Where’s my wallet?” she growled, looking up at the crowd of passengers.

All three thuglings pointed at the handy clown.

She turned to an old guy, leaning on his cane

“You any good with that cane, Pop?”

He whipped it up, at the ready.

“Watch my bags.” Lucy stalked toward Franklin, who’d made it back onto his feet.

The geezer gave the cane a deft, two-handed spin, getting himself ninja-ready.

Lucy homed in on Franklin, who’d already relaxed his face into his default harmless-clown mode for defense.

“Gimme back my wallet!” Lucy’s hands locked open, fingers spread.

“Fight! Fight!” shouted the thuglings.

Franklin’s imagination made sure he could hear her talons unsheathe with a metallic zzzhing. Doing his best harmless-clown schtick didn’t mean much right now.

Franklin looked to the bus and its passengers for sanctuary. What he saw was an eager audience hanging out the windows, the driver stepping down for a better look. Every single passenger, young and old, held out their smartphones, aimed at Franklin. Don’t want to miss an actual disemboweling, no sirree. This’ll be too good not to share.

The adrenalin hit Franklin’s feet and he was gone, flying, all the way down the street, Lucy right behind him.

“Hell hath no fury,” Franklin said to Gladys, “like a woman you can outrun.”

Traffic lights favored Franklin as he ran. He kept going until he reached a quiet side street of tree-shaded residences. He dodged between two parked cars and up onto the sidewalk. He ran along the fenced-in front yards, hopping the first low fence he found.

Franklin shot toward the narrow space between the house and the fence, slamming into a locked backyard gate.

He could hear the clacketing of Lucy’s footfalls and her huffed breaths getting closer.

Franklin scrambled up and over the gate, the sharp palings tearing a pom-pom off his costume. Diving down on the other side, he tumbled, flipped over and scrambled to his feet. He put his eye to the space between the wooden boards of the gate. He saw Lucy come to a stop on the sidewalk in front of the house. She listened. She tilted her head up, her nose in the air like she could sniff for his scent.

Great. Just great. What was it about him? Why did he always manage to piss off the most feral of the fairer sex? Could someone answer that? Please?

Lucy cast her eye along the high fences in front of the other houses. She turned and stepped through the front gate of the same low fence Franklin had jumped.

Oh, boy. This one’s good. He backed away from the gate, turning to look for a way out.

The yard was filled with kids. He’d fallen into a birthday party. Worse, a birthday party with no clown.

The kids inhaled as one, ready to shout their glee.

Franklin did the biggest, most impassioned and silent hush he’d ever mimed in his life. It took both hands to contain the unexpurgated neutron explosion of happy about to burst.

Lucy reached the backyard gate, rattling it, finding it locked. She went up on her tiptoes, trying to see over. She spotted the torn pom-pom still wedged between the palings at the top.

She hitched her skirt up to her waist and got a foothold in the cyclone fencing separating the houses. She pulled herself up and over the gate, dropping to the ground.

The yard was still filled with kids, still frozen, a birthday party waxworks.

Lucy stalked through the crowd, her eyes roving for anything to prove a clown had been there.

Nothing. She picked out the pony-tailed birthday girl wearing the rhinestone birthday tiara.

Lucy leaned in to her, eyeball-to-eyeball, her hands braced on her thighs.

“Did a clown run through here?”

“You think a clown’d get through all of us?” asked the birthday girl.

Neither of them blinked.

“They will steal your soul,” said Lucy.

She straightened up and looked around at the crowd of kids, still unmoving. She stalked back to the gate, flailed at the latch, furious, slamming it behind her.

The birthday girl signaled. Two kids ran to the gate, checking to make sure she had gone. They gave a thumbs-up. Three kids standing near a tree untied a rope, lowering Franklin out of the branches. He thumped onto the ground, breathing hard.

The expectant horde closed in on him.

“What’s this going to cost me?” asked Franklin, imagining how an ever-expanding river of children would stream into the back yard once word got out.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Franklin rolled ash off his cigarette.

“Kids can smell a clown and free ice cream over a mile away,” said Franklin. “True fact.”

“So where’d Lucy go?” asked Gladys.

“To find the burrows where clowns hide at night.”

Approaching the expressway, Franklin relied on the down-slope of the on-ramp to give his car enough speed to merge with traffic.

Buster hated Franklin’s car, and never missed a chance to let people know. He called it the Car-With-No-Name, of no known make or model, its emblems and markings stripped off for the chrome. Buster told everyone how Franklin stapled it together out of beer cans and pie tins during auto shop class back in high school.

For a while, Franklin denied it. But people could see for themselves. The door handles looked like pull-tabs.

Franklin’s car was the perfect car for him—small and beat-up. He’d bought it used, painted it himself, and nursed it back to tolerable automotive health. It ran and that was all Franklin could expect for the money he’d spent.

With gentle chest bumps against the steering wheel, Franklin managed to reach the minimum legal speed limit. If he could keep it up, he wouldn’t have to put on his flashers declaring his vehicle a moving obstruction. He eased the car left, avoiding a delivery van bearing down on him.

Franklin mugged and smiled at the other drivers. Already dressed in his clown get-up, Franklin tried doing his hapless clown shtick. Sometimes it won him a little sympathy on a highway full of cars and trucks crowding and whizzing around him.

Not working today, that’s for sure. Bunch of cut-throats out here. No time for a clown behind the wheel this morning.

Franklin’s head swiveled as he watched for traffic coming up behind him as his lane came to an end up ahead. He saw that he was bearing down on a stalled vehicle parked on the shoulder, its hood raised. Puttering along well below highway speed, he could easily make out the figure of a woman in vehicular distress.

She leaned against the car, shaking what looked to be her cell phone. The old jar-a-little-juice-loose-for-one-last-call trick. Franklin often used that one himself.

He took his foot off the accelerator. The car immediately slowed, its metal mass useless in maintaining any meaningful forward momentum. He steered onto the shoulder, the gravel crunching.

“Don’t let her be cute, don’t let her be cute, don’t let her be cute.” Franklin kept his eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror, watching her. Coming to a stop, he shifted into reverse and backed up.

The sound of tires on gravel and the whine of the gears made the woman turn. She smiled, gave a wiggle of relief and spread her hands wide.

His car rolled to a stop. Franklin squeezed his face tight. “She’s cute.” He bunged his head against the steering wheel. Too late to drive off. That would make him a prize-winning clunk.

Franklin shifted the gear into park and got out. “Need help?” He gave a great big smile right back at her.

The driver’s face stretched wide, fright taking over from delight.

No mistaking that look. Still standing next to his car, Franklin gave the woman his best I’m-a-really-safe-clown smile and his jauntiest wave.

Panicked, she started screaming and jumped back into her car. She locked the doors, raised the windows, then flashed her headlights and honked the horn, the clarion call of Doomsday.

Franklin edged closer to her car, feeling the eyes of every passing driver rake across him as they zipped by. He hunched and twisted his body, so she could appreciate how harmless he was.

“It looks like you could use some help.” Franklin nodded, smiling, holding his empty hands up so she could see them. “I could look at the engine for you.”

She’d flung herself to the other side of the car as far away from him as she could, pressing herself hard against the door.

This was useless. He moved around to the other side. He’d say he was leaving but he would call someone for her.

She flung herself back across the seats. She held out an ice scraper, ready to impale him with it if he managed to get inside her car.

Franklin backed toward his own car, keeping his hands where she could see them.

He’d nearly reached his car when a highway patrol cruiser, its lights flashing, pulled up behind the disabled vehicle.

The trooper, a short female in mirrored sunglasses, bunned hair, and a crisp, flat-brimmed olive drab cover, stepped out of the cruiser.

“Ma’am! Trooper Lady! Officer!” Franklin called out. “Glad you’re here. As you can see, this poor, fear-crazed lady is—”

“Stand away from the car, sir,” said the trooper.

“It’s all right, officer, I’m leaving anyway.” Trying to salvage some sliver of dignity, he added, “Always happy to let the professionals do their job.” He hoped the trooper could hear him over the fear-crazed lady’s shrieking.

“Stay there, sir.” She rested her hand on the butt of her service weapon.

“I could see she was stuck so I stopped to help—”

The trooper raised a finger to silence him.

“—then she started—”

She cocked her head.

Franklin’s over-active imagination filled in what would happen next. The Trooper Lady raises her sunglasses. Laser beams lance out of her eyes, melting Franklin where he stands, nothing but his shoes left smoking by the side of the road. Fear-Crazed Lady dances a jig around the smoldering ash pile.

Trooper Lady touched her sunglasses and Franklin froze. She adjusted them on her nose. But didn’t raise them and eyeball him to death. Franklin deflated, relieved.

Trooper Lady approached the car and leaned down, tapping on the glass so Fear-Crazed Lady could see her.

Fear-Crazed Lady lowered her window a bare crack.

“Make him stop smiling! He’s evil!”

Franklin frowned as hard as he could, hoping to neutralize the painted smile glowing, radioactive, on his face.

“I’ll radio for help. While I do, get out your license and registration for me.” Trooper Lady thumbed the button on the mic hooked at her shoulder. She reported the mile marker number and the disabled car’s condition.

“Make him stop looking at me,” shrieked Fear-Crazed Lady.

Trooper Lady interrupted herself and looked back at Franklin. “Sir?”

Franklin slapped his arms against his sides, but he turned around.

“He’s going to get away if you don’t arrest him!”

“Let’s get you on your way first. A tow truck’s coming.”

“So, can I go now?” asked Franklin, his back still to the two women.

“Let’s have a look at your license and registration, too, while we wait.”

“No good deed—” said Franklin as he got back in his car and pulled the registration from the glove box. He had to reach deep into the pocket of his jumpsuit to pull out his wallet for his driver’s license. He handed both to the Trooper Lady.

“Why the get-up?” Trooper Lady scanned his papers.

“I’m a clown.” Franklin hoped his skin had the tensile strength to keep the exasperation and sarcasm from tearing through his face.

Trooper Lady squeezed down hard on a snicker.

“I work as a clown. It’s my job. For which I get paid.”

“Won’t you disappoint all those kiddies, stopping when you see a woman alone? In a disabled car?”

“No.”

“I’m going to run these. In the meantime, you got anything that says you’re a clown?”

“They don’t issue us a license.”

“Maybe they should.”

Franklin pointed to his face. “One-of-a-kind make-up?”

“Anyone can paint their face.”

“I make balloon animals, juggle, ride a unicycle.”

“How about making a few balloon animals?”

“I’ll get my stuff.” Franklin waggled his keys as he edged past the trooper who gave no ground. He turned the key in the trunk lock and gave a yank on the deck lid.

Nothing.

He yanked again.

Still nothing.

He smiled at Trooper Lady, held the key to his lips and breathed a long, wet breath on it. He polished the key against his chest and re-inserted it. He twisted it back and forth in the lock, jerking at the handle. He stopped, took a deep, deep breath, brought his palms together and closed his eyes, visualizing.

The deck lid will pop open, flowers will spray everywhere, a beautiful girl will rise up—no! No girl! Just the deck lid wide open and a satisfied expression on his face as he presents all the paraphernalia of his profession to the scoffing Trooper Lady.

Franklin placed his hands on the handle and the deck lid with the care of a surgeon and then—yankedy-yankedy-yankedy-yankedy-yaaaaaaaaaank—straining with the pathetic agglomeration of muscles he called a physique, finally collapsing onto the deck lid, his chest heaving air.

“The balloons are in here. Honest.” Spent, Franklin rested his forehead on the unforgiving metal of his incredibly disloyal transportation. “Because I can hear them. Laughing at me.”

“Juggle a few balls?”

Franklin pointed. “They’re in here.”

“Ride your unicycle?”

“In here.” Franklin still pointed, still forehead-down on the deck lid.

“I see. Anything else that might prove you’re a clown?”

How about the way I’m making a complete ass of myself, solely for your benefit? Should be credential enough. Instead, Franklin reared up. “I could do some of my bits for you. Would that help?”

“Maybe. You work kiddie parties?”

He looked inside his car for anything, anything at all he could use. Finding nothing, Franklin straightened up and shrugged. “Everything’s in the trunk.”

“Of course it is. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“Aw, come on. I got a job at the mall.”

“With all your stuff in the trunk, which you can’t open. Turn around.”

“I’d improvise. I’d use the stuff I’d find there. I’m a professional!” he said, doing a jerky gut-dance.

She stopped, her handcuffs dangling. “Okay. Let’s see how funny you are.”

“The way you’re looking at me doesn’t make it easy. Kids are usually glad to see me.”

Her impenetrable shades sat on top of a serious scowl. She jangled the handcuffs.

“But, okay. Ummm.” Franklin’s mind went blank.

She jangled the handcuffs again.

“Okayokayokay! Frat parties! Nobody’s ever glad to see a clown at frat parties. I can do that. Conventions and frat parties. Here’s what I do for the finish. Kills ‘em every time. By which I don’t mean actually kill. It’s a show business metaphor and not a Freudian slip that could be construed as a confession or anything, for which my rights have not been read. Not that I’m acting guilty or anything.”

Trooper Lady shifted from one foot to the other, her gaze remained iron-hard behind her shades. If Franklin had to guess.

“Ho-kay.” Franklin grabbed the soda cup from the floor of his car, popped off the lid and sloshed the leftover liquid, grateful for the weeks of trash he’d allowed to accumulate.

“I probably shouldn’t be here with you guys. Look at all the free booze! I have a drinking problem, you know. Since I was a kid.”

Franklin hooked the rim of the cup under his nose, missing his mouth completely, tilted the cup, his tongue lapping at the air as the soda streamed down the sides of his face. He stopped. “I’ve thought about quitting but I need the laughs. Good night, you’ve been great. If you’re not going to finish your liquor, don’t spit in the glass. I’m drinking clean-up.” He held out the soda straw. “And then I hold up a giant cocktail sip stick. Big enough to suck up a family of gerbils. If you could picture it.” Franklin waved the soda straw.

Trooper Lady gave Franklin a long, cold stare, then snorted, putting a knuckle to her nose, hiding the choked-off laugh.

“‘Don’t spit in the glass, I’m drinking clean up,’” said Trooper Lady. “I have to use that sometime.”

Franklin eased into a smile, relieved.

“Turn around and put your hands behind you.”

“What!”

“She’s not coming out of the car unless she thinks you’re restrained.” She snapped the cuffs on Franklin.

“I could get in my car and drive off. I’d be gone like a bullet,” said Franklin. “Not over the speed limit. Like a bullet from a very slow gun?”

“And have her think you’re waiting down the road to clown-jack her when I’m gone? I want her well on her way before I let you go.”

“Forgive my asking, and with all due respect to yourself, your uniform, and the entire personhood of law enforcement professionals across this great land,” said Franklin, “but is that legal?”

“Look at her. You see how scared she is.”

What Franklin sees is a caged-up Rottweiler, all teeth and slobber, barking and throwing itself at the glass, ready to bite a bloody chunk out of the clown-faced chew toy.

“It won’t kill you to be the hero for a few minutes. Or is that locked in your trunk, too?”

Franklin sighed and let the trooper walk him back to her cruiser, past Fear-Crazed Lady in the car. Of course, now she laughed. Her lips peeled back in a hateful grin, and she jabbed her pointed fingers at him, doing a victory-over-clowns butt dance.

One very happy Rottweiler.

The tow truck rolled past them as Trooper Lady guided Franklin into the back seat of the cruiser.

The minutes ticked off while she wrote up the incident and the tow truck guy hooked up the disabled vehicle.

The tow truck guy tapped on the window of the disabled car, telling Fear-Crazed Lady she had to get out so he could lift it. She slunk from the car, keeping the ice scraper aimed at Franklin still locked in the back of the cruiser. She scuttled to the cab of the tow truck, felt around behind herself for the door handle, her eyes fixed dead on Franklin. Finally getting a good hold, she yanked the door open and jumped into the tow truck cab, locking the doors.

Tow truck guy had to rap on the cab window for her to let him get in.

“Get in, get in, get in!” Fear-Crazed Lady shouted at the tow truck guy, pulling him by his jacket into the cab.

Trooper Lady went around to the side of the tow truck and said something to the two of them. She stepped back and waved them onto the highway, watching as they pulled away.

When the tow truck and car had dwindled from sight, the trooper let Franklin out of the cruiser, helping him from the back seat. She turned him around and unlocked the cuffs.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it? Your good deed for the day.”

“Thank you, officer.” Franklin kept his natural born sarcasm in check. He could still make it to the mall if he avoided aggravating law enforcement any further.

He started to step past her, but she reached out, fingertips rigid, pressed to his chest, stopping him.

She took off her cover, gave a shake of her head as if letting her hair loose which remained hard-bunned at the base of her neck. She looked him up and down, a tiny slip of tongue wetting her lip.

“What?” Franklin’s every muscle fiber alert for nerves tuning up to flash the fight, flee, or flatulate signal down his spinal column.

“You know what you could do for me that’d really make my day complete?”

“What?” Franklin’s nervous system screeched a U-turn, his libido shoving everything out of the way, rolling up its sleeves. He relaxed enough to let himself see and admire her compact figure and bulky bosom. “Trooper Lady? Uh. Trooper Sunshine?” he read from the nameplate pinned to her chest. “Really? Sunshine?” Franklin stood ready to forgive the universe for his run-in with the long arm, firm breasts, and cute butt of the law. With a name like hers, it had to be a sign, right?

“Tell your brother, Buster, if it had been him sitting there and not you, I’d have let that driver use my taser on him.”

She put her cover back on, straightened it, and leaned in close to Franklin. “Have a nice day, citizen.”

She got back into the cruiser and drove off, spinning just enough tire to throw gravel over his shoes as he stood there, all alone.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

“See,” Franklin said to Gladys, as he squinted against the smoke of his cigarette. “I told you Buster shows up all the time and not in a good way. Even when Buster’s not there? He’s there.”

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Franklin pulled into the parking lot at the mall. He got out and slammed the door, angry at Buster and whatever he’d done or not done to Trooper Lady. Sunshine. Trooper Sunshine. He wanted to remember her name so he could rub it in Buster’s face.

Franklin went around to the trunk and stood ready to do battle with the deck lid again.

He didn’t have to. The deck lid popped open. He sighed, dropping over. He straightened up and took out his flower-print carpetbag of props. He slammed the deck lid and turned to run for the mall. The deck lid squeaked all the way open. Franklin put down his carpetbag and slammed the deck lid down again. And again. And again. And again. And again. It refused to catch. He eased it down, listening for the click of the latch. He leaped up and landed his whole weight, butt first on the deck lid. If force didn’t work, maybe surprise would fool the lock into latching. He slid off. It squeaked open.

Franklin shook his head hard, his cheeks warbling in frustration. He grabbed his carpetbag of clown goodies, leaving the deck lid wide open. If someone passing by has a crying need for a bald spare tire, a scissor jack, or a unicycle, take them, he said out loud to the parking lot gods. He dashed for the mall’s main entrance.

Franklin bolted through the door of the entryway. He ran, following the balloons and the photocopied clown signs pasted up, pointing shoppers toward the shoe store.

A young brunette in jeans and a lavender Henley shirt reached out, catching Franklin by the sleeve. She had her other hand resting on the head of a small child gripping her leg.

“My son’s kind of afraid of clowns,” she said, working to lever the child off her leg and out where Franklin could see him. “See, Earnest,” she said to the boy, “he’s not so scary.”

Earnest gripped his mother hard at the knee, his face buried into her thigh, only a part of one eye free to examine the hideous beast in front of him.

“Could you, y’know, show him you’re harmless? It’d really help me out. I’m a single mom, and the Funny Farmhouse day care near where I work has all these big wooden clowns in the front yard. He won’t go in.” She winced a sorry-to-ask smile at Franklin, as much a plea as a question. “Please? It’d help me out. A lot.”

From further down the arcade, Franklin could hear the tinny calliope music at the shoe store. In front of him, so much cuteness in one smiling, needy package and him late for his gig.

No time for anything fancy. He dropped his carpetbag, turned around, offered his backside, inviting her to kick him. She gave him a half-serious boot in the pants that sent Franklin soaring through the air, diving into a tumble, and rolling out flat, sprawled on the tile.

Earnest inched his face out and gave a half smile. Franklin gathered himself, planted his hands on either side of his head and did a kick-up back onto his feet. He stumbled forward and into a tubby security lady in a vermillion jacket. Still bent over, he looped her arm around his waist and kicked out as if being squeezed. Then he put both her hands around his neck, faking a stranglehold as he waggled his head, his tongue lolling out, bouncing around, helpless as a rag doll. Then he held her arm up in victory, adding the rasping cheers of a mighty crowd, applauding the security lady’s victory, getting the rest of the shoppers to join in.

Earnest, his fingers still in his mouth, gave out with a huffy laugh, a chesty bark of victory over the unsavory creature in clown white his mom had so thoroughly bested for him.

“Thank you,” the brunette mouthed at Franklin, her face wreathed in adoration. The pucker of her lips would haunt a pushover like Franklin a good, long time. He fixed her face, curly bobbed hair, and fulsome figure in his mind so he could pick her out of the crowd later. He dashed down the arcade.

“Was that Lucy?” Gladys asked Franklin.

“No, but she shows up later,” Franklin said to Gladys.

Franklin reached the store where a crowd of grandmoms and kidlings were already gathered around the entrance, waiting. Franklin slid to a stop, the manager stepping in front of him.

“You’re late.”

“Stopped to help a lady with her car,” said Franklin, huffing. He left out the parts about the screaming, the police, and threat of recreational tasering.

“I’m paying for a clown, not a superhero.” The manager waved his hand at Franklin by way of introduction to the crowd.

Franklin stepped past the manager to face the collection of grandmoms frowning at the wait and the kids starting to bounce and dance.

Franklin dropped the carpetbag and wiped his brow with a great big sweep of his hand, grimaced at the handful of sweat. He made to wipe it on a nearby kid who icked and ooohed, shrinking away. Instead, Franklin wiped his hands on the manager and blew out a breath. He gathered himself, then inhaled so long and hard it bent him backward. His face puffed up as he prepared to blast them with a wide-open hello, which came out in a high squeak. He opened his mouth and sprayed his throat with an atomizer and tried again. “HAAAAA-Lo-ho-HO-ho-HO-ho-HO!” he blasted out until he doubled over, out of breath. He inhaled again, inflating himself back to full size and gave them a frog-mouthed smile of relief.

“Everybody know what day it is?” shouted Franklin.

The kids, drilled by years in rows of classroom seats, all raised their hands. Franklin pointed at the smallest kid in front.

“I don’t know?” answered the small kid.

“It’s shoesday!” Franklin bounced and flapped, dancing in a circle, stirring up the kids who were more than ready to go crazy.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Franklin leaned over the crowd of kids, sniffing a long, hard pull of air, making an awful face at some stench his nose detected. He wrestled a large bug sprayer out of his carpetbag. He aimed it at their feet and pumped the handle as he blew a string of raspberries fart-fart-farting over their shoes.

“Now we’re ready!”

The kids let out with another wave of crazy.

“Great,” said the manager. “You’re going to turn that mad mob loose on my store?”

“Hey! You’re paying for a clown, not a superhero.” Franklin gave out with a hi-yoh-oh and dived through the crowd, leading the screaming pack into the store.

Franklin acted as traffic cop, aiming kids at the sales clerks. He’d pull a long face when they showed off their high tops and sneakers with the blinking lights. Instead, he whipped out wooden shoes and swim fins, doing a sell job on the grandmoms, sweet-talking them into a test walk around the store.

Franklin pulled out baby booties for big kids, fisherman’s waders for little kids, and clown shoes for the grandmoms.

For one girl in a princess tee-shirt, he knelt and presented a glass slipper. She flung her arms around his neck, hugging the air out of him and offered to marry him when she grew up.

Franklin fainted over smelly socks. He counted toes and came up short. He showed kids how to wear the metal foot-sizers as improvised skis for a little carpet skating. He gave kiddie rides on the clerk’s fitting stools, pushing them all over the store.

Posing for pictures, Franklin knelt with short kids, sat with large kids, and hid under the chair with shy kids. For the grandmoms, he dusted his butt, ready to plant his bottom in their laps, getting a swat and a shove-off instead.

Until Gladys showed up.

She plopped herself down and pulled Franklin onto her lap. She threw her arms around him and called out to anyone listening, “Take a picture! Take a picture!”

“You just happened to be shoe shopping?” Franklin asked Gladys.

“I saw the signs, followed the balloons, heard the circus music. You clowns do something to me,” Gladys said to Franklin.

There in the store, still sitting on her lap, Franklin tensed up. He played the lap gag to be so uninviting he didn’t usually get any takers.

Franklin let Gladys hug him, her scratchy cheek to his, giving her the best of his gleeful, wide-eyed surprise.

“I’m not wearing any underwear,” she whispered, hot and breathy, into his ear.

His head followed his eyes around to see the person giving his ear the breathy lip-massage. No mistaking that look. They’ve all got it. Clown junkie!

Back in the dark of the bar, Gladys snorted, embarrassed. “I really was, by the way. Just so you know.”

“Was what?”

“Wearing underwear. I like to say I’m not. Sometimes I’ll get lucky with one of you clowns.”

Sitting on Gladys’s lap there in the shoe store, Franklin could feel all eyes in the place fixed on him. It’s the worst of the bad dreams in his eclectic collection of performance-related nightmares. The biggie. He’s lap dancing in some seedy bar for a bunch of female clown junkies. All he’s wearing is a spangled pair of saggy boxers, his clown head, ruff, and the big shoes. Clown junkies all around him whoop and whistle, stuffing dollar bills down his boxers, calling out, “take it off, take it off for momma!” And they don’t mean the wig and nose, nosirree. He rips the big red ruff from his neck, spins it around his head, and flings it at the women. Now they’re schooling sharks feeding in a frenzy as Franklin climbs the stripper pole to escape. Climbing and sliding, climbing and sliding, teeth snapping below him.

His imagination pixelated back to reality in the shoe store, with Gladys’s hands locked around his waist. Franklin planted a great big, smacky kiss on Gladys’s cheek, unlocked her hands and stood up. He gave her a gallant patting of the air, urging her to keep her seat. He drew himself up and—dashed for the door.

A half-second later, every kid in the place dashed after him.

“How’d you get the kids to chase me?” Franklin asked Gladys.

“Offered ten bucks to the one who caught you.”

“Ah.”

The kids ran through the mall, a boiling herd of highly motivated clowndogs.

“Cost me the gig,” Franklin said to Gladys. “And the manager made me pay to get my stuff back. Told me it was his basic storage fee.”

“Sorry. I see a clown, I go a little nuts. No hard feelings?”

“None,” said Franklin. “When I see a clown junkie, I go a little nuts. No hard feelings?”

“None.”

Outside the shoe store, it was hard to miss Franklin’s bouncing flounce of blue hair weaving through the shoppers. Gladys shouted directions to the kids in hot pursuit of Franklin and the prize money.

She saw Franklin pivot for the toy store, elbowing his way through the mall walkers and stroller moms.

“Figured it’d be easy to lose them in there,” Franklin said to Gladys.

“They were playing for ten whole dollars,” Gladys said to Franklin.

Gladys headed out of the mall, circled around, planted herself in front of the street-side exit to the toy store. She stood, arms wide, ready to corral Franklin as he came through.

The door whisked open, letting a straggle of kids through to the outside. But no Franklin.

She cupped her hands and put her face to the window, trying to see through the displays back into the store. She charged off through the store, leading the kids along.

“I was impressed,” Gladys said to Franklin. “Not many clowns can outrun a pack of kids. They make the best bloodhounds. How’d you give them the slip?”

In the display window, a hand-standing clown folded over, back down onto his feet. He took the sand bucket off his head. It was Franklin.

“Trade secret,” Franklin said to Gladys. “You never know when a trick like that’ll come in handy again.”

Gladys studied him through the cigarette haze, gave him a one-shoulder shrug. She said, “Anyway, you were saying how me and Buster were responsible for you meeting the clown killer.”

“Killer of clowns.”

Okay, there was a chance—the slimmest chance—Franklin gave Buster too much credit for all the relationship trouble dogging him where women were concerned. He said as much to Gladys.

“But,” said Franklin, “and it’s a big but—it sure feels like the common variable in every one of my—” he stopped, “—whatchacallems. Not relationships, since they never get that far.” Franklin thought a moment. “Romantic misfires,” he said, satisfied. “The common variable in every one of my romantic misfires is Buster. Just think about it a minute. Why’s a guy with so much going for him, hang around me, being a clown? Can you unravel that for me?”

“Can’t help you,” said Gladys, “I don’t know this Buster fella.”

“Then let me introduce you.” Franklin held up his hand, a pair of eyes and lips already inked onto his glove, a fist puppet he liked to keep handy. “Hey, beautiful,” said Franklin in his squeaky clown-voice. “You must not come here very often if you’re sitting next to Frankie-boy. He’s kind of a saggy-pants when it comes to women. I stay close to pick up the pieces for him. Get it? Pick up the pieces? Wah-wah-wah,” laughed the fist puppet.

Gladys gave Franklin a one-eyed squint. “No offense, but this Buster guy of yours may have a point.”

“I’m out of practice talking to women. Every time I try, Buster turns up right in the middle of it.”

“Now it’s you trying to pick me up?”

“If I am, he’ll magically appear. Poof. Puff of smoke and there he’ll be. It’s like he’s got radar.” Franklin looked around the bar. “I must not be trying to pick you up. No Buster.”

“All right. Remind me to be flattered if you should ever try for real. Never had two clowns at once, trying to buy me drinks.”

Franklin took a drag on his cigarette. “Or, it could be his search is over. The grip he had on Lucy when I left them there alone, would have thrilled a boa constrictor.”

“Wait. You left your brother alone with some stranger you think’s a clown killer?”

“Killer of clowns,” Franklin corrected her again.

“Anything happens, you’d be an accomplice. Wouldn’t you? You don’t feel just the least little bit guilty about it?”

“Like you said, you don’t know Buster.”

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Early on, Franklin knew that Buster hung around for the girls, not the clowning.

“Piece of cake,” said Buster when he told Franklin he wanted to give it a try.

Franklin was glad to have Buster clowning along with him. It got laughs. Buster being the bully and blowhard whiteface character was a natural fit for him. Not that Buster thought of himself as a bully and blowhard. He thought of himself as a laugh riot. That made it funny. A joke on Buster he’d never get. Franklin liked how that worked.

When it came to girls? Not so much.

“We played a lot of years with Buster bouncing me off walls or stuffing me in bags, boxes, and barrels. He loved those gags best. And going around bare-chested,” Franklin said to Gladys. “Buster always managed to remove his shirt when there were girls in the audience. Showing off because he could. Like Hercules in clown-face.”

“Must’ve picked up a lot of women that way. I mean, if he’s as good looking as you say.”

“Nah. You can put a jerk in a clown suit, but you can’t take the jerk out of the clown suit.” Franklin pondered what he’d just said. “Not sure that came out right. It always seems to make sense when I think it.”

“I get the picture.”

Buster favored any function where women gathered in large, unsupervised numbers. Buster said it made for better odds they would both score. But having Buster in the game usually meant neither of them put any points on the board.

Like the sorority party where the sisters managed to lock the housemother in the basement for a long weekend.

Doing the bare-chested clowns was Buster’s idea. Franklin and Buster made themselves up as a couple of failed male strippers in large, black plastic pompadours. Buster got to show off, being the buffed and browned body in clown-face and a tiny black bowtie. Tight, spandex clown pants let him parade his hard glutes. Franklin, a skinny whippet with rainbow suspenders to hold up super-sized pants, made for a natural stooge.

Buster floated through the crush of sisters, mugging for their pictures and squeezing their butt cheeks.

Across the room, Franklin twisted balloons into poodles.

“Drinks on the clown!” called out a tall, brunette sister, dashing a half-cup full of beer at Franklin.

The other girls showered him with anything and everything liquid near at hand. One spikey-haired blonde struggled to her feet, barking back at her sisters, calling for a cease fire. She smiled at Franklin and held out her cup to him.

“Drink’s on me.” She winked at him.

Franklin smiled back, “Thanks. You know, I have a drinking problem. Since I was a kid.” He took the cup and put it under his nose. He tipped it up, stretching his nostrils. The beer trickled down his cheeks, a liquid Fu Manchu. He stopped. “I thought about quitting, but I need the laughs.”

The spikey-haired blonde laughed and ran her thumb down Franklin’s flimsy physique.

“Do it again! Do it again!” the rest of them bayed.

Spikey put up a finger. “I’ll be back,” she said and went to the make-shift bar across the room. She picked up two plastic cups of vodka, filled to the brim. She started back through the jostling crowd, holding the cups out in front of her.

“Of course,” Franklin said to Gladys, “Buster had his ways of cutting me out of the competition. Like telling women I had a gruesome medical condition. He used that one a lot.”

Buster popped into Spikey’s view, weaving like he’d barely avoided a drenching from her.

“Whoa! Pull over there, missy,” said Buster.

Spikey bent and twisted herself, regaining her equilibrium and steadying the drinks.

“You’re doing two drinks in a one-drink zone. Let me have those before you hurt yourself.” Buster reached for the cups.

“It’s for the other clown.” Spikey pulled the cups out of Buster’s reach.

“I’m the other clown.”

“For the nice one.”

“We’re twins. Our own mother can’t tell us apart.”

“One of you’s been putting his hand down everyone’s shorts,” she said, then flinched. “Those hands.”

“Public service. Checking for wedgies. Some people never recover from the trauma. Ask any psych major. You a psych major?”

“No. And no wedgies.” She swung her rear end out of his reach. “Up. Up where I can see them.”

Buster flashed his hands. She smiled an ‘I-thought-so’ at Buster, moving past him.

“That’s not alcoholic, is it?” he called after her. “Might aggravate his condition.”

She stopped. “What condition?”

Buster grimaced. “It’s creepy talking about another guy’s body parts.”

“Okay.” She turned back to elbowing her way through the crowd.

Buster slipped around in front of her. “But since you asked, it rhymes with Venus. Not very interesting unless you’re a med student. You a med student?”

Spikey stepped around him. “No.”

Buster dodged around in front of her again. “But the Hippocratic Oath requires every citizen over eighteen to report unsafe medical conditions. I could be arrested if I didn’t at least mention it.”

Spikey dodged left then right then left again, Buster side-stepping, apologizing even as he made himself as much of an obstruction as possible.

“I can’t seem to get out of your way,” said Buster, laughing. “That’s got to mean something, cosmically speaking, right? How about you and me sitting this one out. Too fast for me. You’re a dancer, right? I mean, you move like a dancer.”

Spikey sighed. “Okay. What condition?”

“Only if you really want to know.” Buster rolled his eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled a sad, hard smile at her.

Across the room, Franklin worked to shake off his beer bath. He waggled his foot to drain the beer running down into his pant legs. Through the crowd, Franklin saw Spikey and Buster together. It looked to Franklin like Buster was showing her how to make a martini, demonstrating the best way to get the last olive out of a very skinny jar. Buster waved his hands and screwed his face into a look of utter agony.

“Never fails,” Franklin said to Gladys. “Whatever Buster told them, it left women wondering why I wasn’t in a hospital somewhere, in isolation, or intensive care, or preserved in a jar of formaldehyde.”

Franklin would find out about it when he called to ask the girl out. One or two tried to be kind, understanding. Like the Catholic girl who said she’d lit a candle for Franklin. But she couldn’t possibly go out with him because of his—you know. She hoped he understood.

From across the room, Franklin could see Spikey’s face melt into disbelief. Buster started bouncing and spinning, pitched ice down his pants, and did a tongue-lolling dog-pant of relief. Staring at him, Spikey knocked back the drink in her right hand.

No, Buster wasn’t showing Spikey how to make an exquisitely dry martini. That was clear enough.

“That’s when you call the paramedics,” said Buster. “Happens every time. How about you and me go somewhere and get you out of my wet things.”

“Unh-unh.” Spikey slugged down the drink in her left hand. “Something like that’s got to be genetic.”

“Don’t worry. He’s adopted.”

“You said you were twins.”

“That’s why mom adopted him. We look so much alike.”

Weaving, Spikey stared at the empty cups still held out, steadied, in her hands. “I need into some place up which I can chuck. I’m schwoozy.”

“You’re an English major.” Buster took the empty cups from her. “I knew I’d guess it.”

Buster held out the cups to a passing sister. “Here. Take these for me, would you? Sister fidelis!” The passing sister curled her lip and kept moving.

Buster shrugged, dropped the cups, and grabbed Spikey by the elbow.

Franklin worked his way through the crowd, looking for Spikey. Seeing no sign of her or Buster, Franklin put two and two together and came up with a five-star rat named Buster. Again.

Franklin moved through the house, listening at doors until he reached a closet just off the kitchen. From behind the door came the distinct sound of a woman straining to vomit. Which meant Buster had to be nearby.

Franklin eased the door open. Buster had Spikey bent over, head down in the slop sink of the janitor’s closet. She braced herself, one hand gripping the faucet, the other gripping the edge of the sink. Buster, helping her puke, worked her like a used-up tube of toothpaste, inching her blouse up to her armpits.

“Could you give us some privacy. She’s about to show me her meal plan.” Buster turned to see who had come in behind them. “Oh, hey, Frankie-boy.”

“What’re you doing? We’re supposed to be working. Out here.”

“Just helping some totally random female properly dispose of her recycled vodka. You know what an environmental hazard that stuff can be.”

Buster’s eye caught something behind Franklin. He grabbed Franklin by the shoulders, moving him a step to the right.

“Stand there.”

Confused, Franklin let Buster shift him. His confusion vanished with the crack of leather on his unsuspecting butt cheek that sent him leaping and spinning.

“Yeeeoooowwwww!”

Franklin found himself nose to nose with the house mother, looking surprisingly unrestrained. Only a few loose strips of duct tape still dangled from her hair and arms. She held up a black leather riding crop at eye level.

“Hey, we’ve got some serious regurgitation going on in there,” said Buster from over Franklin’s shoulder. “Sorry, Frankie-boy. She was on us before I could warn you.”

Behind them, Spikey gave out with another bubbling barf.

The house mother caught Franklin another sharp crack on the leg with her wand of pain.

“Yeow! Wha’dja hit me again for?”

“Frankie-boy, you’re the one standing between mamma bear and her cub,” said Buster. “Don’t you ever watch Naked Nature in the Raw? Very educational.”

Her eyes glowed a molten red. She raised the crop again, but Franklin ducked under and dived through the crowd gathered around to watch. He collided with Buster, who’d managed to get ahead of Franklin, steam-rollering his way toward the door.

“Gotta go!” shouted Buster, making a path through the crush of girls. His hands still managed to find just the right spots on bosom, glute, and thigh as he went. Amazing accuracy even in retreat.

The sisters made a lane for the house mother, giving her room to catch Franklin on the backside with another stinging whack.

“Ow! Get out of the way, Buster. That smarts!”

“She’s way good with that thing, isn’t she,” Buster shouted back at Franklin.

The sisters cheered, pain being funny, and men in pain being twice as funny.

The front door banged open. Buster leaped from the porch, clearing all the steps at a dead run.

The front door banged open again and Franklin followed, making the same leap. He hit the lawn, tumbling once, bounding back onto his feet, and dashed for their mini-van.

Buster, already behind the wheel, executed a weaving K-turn to get the vehicle pointed toward open road. Franklin danced to line up on the passenger-side door, the window cranked down. Timing his lunge, Franklin dived through the open window. His pants caught on the handle, hanging him up midway inside the van. The door swung open and shut, Franklin flailing, as Buster rocketed into the night.

Franklin pulled himself through, twisting to get upright, flopping into the seat. He chuffed, frustrated, the night whipping by, the air blowing in on him.

“She kind of liked me, you know.”

“Who?” asked Buster.

“The girl you had throwing up in the slop sink.”

“All those babes, you’re fixated on the one puking in the sink? That’s so like you. Pick out the only girl in the entire place who is physically incapable of talking to you, then tell yourself you’ve got a chance with her. Frankie-boy, the last thing on her mind was doing it with some guy in half a clown suit.”

“I wasn’t talking about sex. Looked like you were doing your best to get her shirt off.”

“Hey! I was making sure she didn’t get anything on it. Vodka stains are the worst. Boy, try to help and right away you think I’m putting the moves on your girl. Who was not actually your girl. I didn’t hear you call dibs.”

“I didn’t say she was my girl. I said she seemed kind of interested in me. Kind of.”

“Come on. A woman goes off to puke after talking to you. That means she’s interested? You keep thinking that way, Frankie-boy. Just leaves more for me.”

They drove on into the night.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

“About that time I started wondering how long I’d have to hold Buster’s head down in the cotton candy machine to smother him in spun sugar,” Franklin said to Gladys, “and could I make it look like an accident.”

“Sounds like quite the Casanova.”

“You’d think. He should be so lucky. And get out of my way.”

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Working one company picnic, Franklin and Buster battled each other with seltzer bottles, bouquets of exploding flowers, and buckets of confetti. Each round ending with Franklin on the ground and Buster doing a victory lap giving him a chance to preen for the crowd and scan for girls.

Later, packing up, Franklin noticed Buster fixing his patented double eye-lock on a girl in a blue tank top. Buster kept dropping props on the ground, missing the carpetbag, unable to break off his gaze. He watched her as she headed for the parking lot disappearing among the cars.

“Back in a minute.” Buster left Franklin to finish packing up.

Franklin started to call after him but spotted a big blonde lingering nearby.

She smiled. Franklin smiled back.

“Take your time,” Franklin called after Buster.

The big blonde, probably as shy as Franklin, waited until Buster was gone. She came over to where Franklin stood closing the carpet bag.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi back,” he said.

He patted the bags, smoothing the lumps, not sure what to do or say next.

“Hey, you hungry? Bet you work up an appetite getting bounced around like that.”

“Always.”

“You want to go somewhere?”

“Sure. I have to wait for Buster to bring the van around so I can ditch this stuff first.”

“I’ll bring us something. Stay right there.” She left the picnic area and crossed the street to the burger joint.

Us. Nice sound to it.

Buster stood by the door of the burger joint. When she came out, she had the bag of burgers and drinks in both hands. Buster collided with her, mashing his pecs and abs against her and giving her his usual full-frontal encounter. He held onto her as if steadying her, rubbing her back and forth across himself, helping her keep her balance.

“Whoa! I got you!”

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking.” She pulled away.

“No worries.” Buster slapped his gut. “Can’t hurt these babies. You’re in great shape yourself.”

She snorted at Buster’s come-on. Still, she checked herself in the shop window. “Really? I just started working out.”

“No kidding? Where?”

“Just around the corner.”

“Double no kidding! Me, too.”

“I ever see you there?”

“When do you work out?”

“Weekends.”

“Well, there you go,” said Buster. “Weeknights for me and the old elliptical trainer.”

“I should get these to your friend.”

“Oh, sure. But, you know, I thought I saw him with someone.”

“That was me.”

“Sure, sure. Could be I need glasses. You look a lot different up close. See you round? At the gym?”

She didn’t say, but she winced a little smile and hurried across the street back to the picnic area.

She’d reached the picnic table at the same moment a big guy came up to the table where Franklin waited. Blue Tank Top Girl followed close behind.

“You a doctor? You a doctor?” Big Guy shouted at Franklin.

“Nah,” said Franklin in his squeaky clown voice. “But if you bend over and say ‘ah,’ I might remember why I quit med school.”

“Some guy puts his hand down my wife’s blouse, he better be a doctor.”

“That’s the clown,” Blue Tank Top Girl shouted. “Hit him, Curt!”

Big Guy caught Franklin with a quick, hard jab square in the face, rocking Franklin’s head backward.

“Hey! That wasn’t me!” Franklin honked through his mashed snoot.

“It was one of you perverts,” screeched Blue Tank Top Girl.

“You can pass it on for me.” The Big Guy straightened his shirt, grabbed Blue Tank Top Girl by the hand, and marched away from the picnic area.

Franklin held his nose between his index fingers, checking for damage. Buster with the roving digits got Franklin socked again. Gotta wear different costumes.

Squinting through the pain, Franklin saw the big blonde standing, watching.

“Gag we’re working on. Timing needs work.” Franklin straightened his rubber nose, his eyes watering. “Funny, hunh?”

“Funny.” The big blonde poured the cold soda down Franklin’s pants, followed by the hot fries. Franklin sucked in a mighty wind and let loose with a warbling woo-woo. He danced to put as much distance as he could between himself and his own, fry-filled pants.

Franklin waddled to the parking lot. Buster pulled up next to him.

“Where’d you disappear to?” Franklin threw the bags into the back.

“Had to put gas in the old buggy. Somebody didn’t fill it up like they’re supposed to.” Buster arched his eyebrow at Franklin.

“That’s your job.”

“I didn’t say it was you, did I? A little defensive, aren’t we?” said Buster. “What happened to you?”

“I’m sure you can guess.”

“Hmmm. Punched in the face by a guy saying you put your hand down his wife’s blouse, and then had a soda dumped into your happy place.”

Franklin flopped back in the seat, pulling his hat over his face.

“Did I get it right?”

“You left out the hot fries.”

Buster sucked in hard, a sympathetic wince.

“Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Lucky guess. Hey, sorry about the blonde. You two looked like you were hitting it off.”

Franklin lifted his hat. “You saw us?”

“Not really your type. She’s a workout monster.”

“How would you know?”

“Ran into her getting burgers.”

Franklin groaned. And so everything was explained.

“I get why you zoomed off after the girl in the blue tank top. I get it. But the blonde? Come on. She’s totally unlike the women you’re always drooling over.”

“Maybe I like playing the field. You think of that?”

“Stop trying to put your balls through my goal posts.”

Buster laughed. “You are such a virgin.” He gunned the engine and they headed down the road.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

“You and my brother have a lot in common,” Franklin said to Gladys, rolling an ice cube around in his mouth.

“We do?”

“You both are the reason Lucy ended up in my bedroom in the first place.”

Like so many other memories stuffed into Franklin’s noodle, what he remembered happening might not be factual. What he remembered feeling was clear as yesterday. Brood on anything long enough and it wears ruts in the soul, feeding the excuses and the certainties that overtake reality.

Fifth Grade.

Franklin sat in class, beaming adoration at Jeannie Krebbs sitting one row over and one desk back, basking in her ignorance of his worship. She and her best friend Amanda Dunston were far more concerned about sneaking whispers across to each other. Everyone else watched the clock, school almost done for the day.

Miss Minchin had finished plowing the aisles, handing back marked-up homework pages. She sat at her desk in the rear of the classroom.

Franklin flicked a glance to either side, then opened his notebook and flipped to the back. He worked on the sketch he’d started, idling away the last few minutes of the day.

He inked in a fleet of airplanes bombing a two-story house with red, kissy lips. He’d marked with a bulls-eye the street number on the door of the house.

Franklin busied himself drawing a face in the upstairs window of the house. Getting the hair just right, he didn’t hear Miss Minchin come up behind him.

Her puffy hand snatched up the notebook from under his pen. She wedged the notebook in the crook of her arm and did a slow sashay toward the front of the class. She studied the drawing, hm-hm-hmming as she went.

She stopped at the front of the row and cocked her head first one way then another way, studying the sketch.

“Mm-mm-mm,” she hummed behind clenched lips, shaking her head. She looked out over the class. “There sure are a lot of drippy wet kisses here, aren’t there, Franklin.” Miss Minchin smiled. Less a smile and more of a restrained grimace as she struggled to keep herself from gnawing off his head. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

Franklin wasn’t seeing Miss Minchin. The heat radiating off his burning red cheeks distorted his view. Miss Minchin now looked like a chubby cheese sculpture in a shimmering pool of water.

Miss Minchin scanned the classroom, her eye lighting on each of the girls in turn.

Franklin’s guts tightened, sending an urgent electro-chemical memo up his spine to signal for a toilet break. Miss Minchin, portly seer into the souls of little boys, all sweet reason and scorn, was about to pull back the curtain on Franklin’s secret crush. In that same moment, she managed to heave open a window inside of Franklin, letting him see himself as everyone else saw him.

Standing outside of himself, he watches his transformation into Clown Boy. His hair, face, and eyes bloom into the primary colors of a circus clown in front of the other kids, in front of Jeannie Krebbs.

Miss Minchin sashayed back down the aisle and stopped next to Franklin.

Miss Minchin leaned down, folding herself in half to reach his eye level.

“You want to tell us, Franklin? Or should we figure it out for ourselves?”

Still hunched over, Miss Minchin twisted to scan the classroom again. The girls winced as Miss Minchin’s sizzling gaze landed and lingered on each of them.

Franklin was sure none of the girls in the room knew he existed before this moment. But every one of them sat up, primed for a communal barf at the thought of his nerdy clown lips invading their personal air space.

Miss Minchin stared down at his drawing and placed her finger under the number he’d written on the house. She squinted, tapping and thinking.

A smile of enormous satisfaction brightened her face. She straightened up.

“Class? Do we objectify our neighbor?” Miss Minchin continues to stare down at Franklin.

“No, Miss Minchin,” the class sing-songs back, well-drilled.

Franklin, wearing the false nose, scarum wig, and painted face of Clown Boy, class buffoon, ratchets down in his seat, his big red nose resting on the desk.

“Class? Do we act out our sexual fantasies on our neighbor?” Miss Minchin sprouts, shedding her kindly teacher husk and grows, towering over Franklin.

“No, Miss Minchin,” the class sing-songs back.

Franklin ratchets down to the white arches of his fake eyebrows just above his desk.

“Class? Do we use puberty as an excuse to ogle our neighbor?” Miss Minchin, now enormous and hulking, cracks the acoustical tiles of the ceiling overhead, debris raining down.

“No, Miss Minchin,” the class sing-songs back.

Franklin ratchets down to his white pate with its bright blue fringe.

“Do you think,” Miss Minchin, her voice becoming an electro-baritone, her face entirely crimson, swoops down on Franklin, “Miss Krebbs will appreciate having her house bombed with all those nasty, germ-ridden kisses of yours? Hmmm? Do you?”

“Oooh, iiiiiiick!” the class shouts.

Jeannie throws herself sideways, pretending a violent upchuck in the aisle.

The class explodes with laughter. Tucker Finn hops up to give Jeannie emergency blasts of cootie repellent, everyone else joining in, with wooshing squirts from their imaginary aerosols.

The bell rings. Franklin slides out of his chair. He crawls for the door, passing under a cascade of spitwads, crumpled up paper balls, and rubber erasers.

It’s not exactly the way it happened. It is how the whole experience wedged itself into Franklin’s braincells. Facts don’t matter when emotion gets to write the history.

Like the way Franklin remembered his walk home from school the same day, passing right by Jeannie and her posse before he’d realized she was there. The girls clutched their notebooks close, protecting their new bosoms from Clown Boy.

Jeannie’s disgust curdled Franklin’s hormones, his ardent desire being no match for his budding insecurity. Franklin kept on walking, his eyes on the ground, watching the tops of his clown shoes, not trusting his oversized feet to find solid ground beneath him.

Until he reached a pair of sneakers blocking his path. He looked up, finding himself inside a ring of playground thugs.

The biggest kid stood directly in front of Franklin, his crossed forearms at Franklin’s nose level. He could read where Jeannie Krebbs had inked her name across the big kid’s ulna in her recognizable flourishing, girlish script. Franklin had at one time thought it important enough to memorize her handwriting in case she slipped him an unsigned note. Instead, she’d turned it into a faded schoolyard tattoo on the big kid’s arm.

“Hey! Pucker face! You think you can kiss my girl?” The big kid pushed his fingertips into Franklin’s chest.

Franklin looked over toward the circle of girls and fixed his eye on Jeannie. By a nod, a word, a gesture, she could prevent the mauling about to land on him.

Franklin stared at Jeannie, willing her to make eye contact with him.

Wasn’t helpless, unrequited love worth some small, altruistic gesture in return from her? Like calling off her dog-boy? Blow a whistle? Rattle a supper dish? Take him to the vet? Something? Anything?

Or she could twist her face up and make gagging sounds, squinting her eyes at the sight of his face. Like she was doing now.

Franklin couldn’t see any way this would turn out well for him. His choices seemed limited to crying ‘uncle,’ eating grass, or explaining to his mom how he managed to lose teeth in a completely random, freak-of-nature, totally unavoidable act-of-God kind of accident.

The odds were impossible, any outcome in Franklin’s favor extremely doubtful. Wouldn’t the hero, the true hero, show his defiance with some devastating joke in the face of all this danger?

Franklin braced himself. “Your girl?” he asked. “I didn’t see the leash!”

The big kid twisted his head, eyeballing Franklin.

“You saying my girl’s a dog?” The big kid shoved Franklin. “Pucker face.”

Behind him, Jeannie’s mouth dropped open, the shock rising all the way up from her toes, causing her to relevé to the tippy-top of her indignation.

“If the flea collar fits.” Franklin shrugged, giving the big kid a sad smile of sympathy.

Franklin’s eyes tracked upward watching the arc of the big kid’s fist hauled back, cocked. Franklin screwed his face closed.

The resounding smack rocks him backward, dislodging his red rubber nose as it snaps to catch up to his face, his blue wig tumbling skyward. Jeannie and her posse flinched at the crunching impact.

All right, wounded memory sketched in the wig and nose, but it felt better thinking how bad his classmates surely must feel, seeing the big kid slug a harmless clown half his size.

The look on Jeannie’s face wasn’t remorse. No, more like glee. The look of smug satisfaction that comes over a girl when her dullard of a boyfriend avenges the besmirching of her honor.

Laid out, Franklin watches as the imaginary blue wig tumbles back to earth, landing on his face.

Franklin squeaked out a loud, defiant laugh for them to chew on as they walked away. Amazingly defiant. If it hadn’t been swallowed up by their own loud, derisive laughter.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Franklin stirred the bare ice with his gloved finger.

“Sarcasm is the match you light to dispel the flatulence of hope.” Franklin licked the wet from his fingertip, took up the glass and sucked down the last drops. “Pretty much a straight line from there to the special hell called adolescence.” Franklin caught Red’s eye and pointed into the empty glass.

“You’re still blaming some grade school bully for your girl problems? Way past time to let it go.”

“Hard to do in this particular case. He was my brother. Is my brother. Still. Despite repeated efforts to disown him. He had a growth spurt in third grade that lasted through college. Although to be fair, his intellect never did catch up to his size. I got all the brains in the family. There’s that going for me.”

“Your brother?”

“Buster. Turned out Jeannie had a special fondness for goons. Not just any goons, mind you. Good-looking, self-confident, well-muscled, older goons,” said Franklin. “Buster shows up a lot in this story. And not in a good way.”

Franklin, a romantic failure of a clown, falls for a woman on the run. Is she the Baggy Pants Slasher?

Use this handy-dandy table of contents to navigate
the chapters in order

Chapter One: Clown walks into a bar . . .

Chapter Two: Class clowns are made not born . . .

Chapter Three: With friends like Buster, who needs a vasectomy . . .

Chapter Four: You want hilarity? You want horror? Send in a clown . . .

Chapter Five: Going 0-for-3 in the meet-cute department . . .

Chapter Six: Finally! The girl of his dreams - and she’s out for blood . . .

Chapter Seven: How love-hate triangles begin . . .

Chapter Eight: Franklin and Lucy? Like disco and nitroglycerin . . .

Chapter Nine: Lucy gets a choice of stalkers . . .

Chapter Ten: Disaster comes in threes. . .

New chapters will be listed here as they’re posted . . .

If you read the book already, many thanks!
Consider leaving a review on Amazon.

Image: mfilippo / fotosearch

The Big Top Tavern sits just off the old main drag at the south end of Chumleyville. It’s the kind of place vocational drinkers can get that special kind of darkness at mid-day they find so attractive.

But inside at the moment, a single customer had the place to himself. The guy, alone and in the shadows at the end of the bar, sat spinning his drink in the wet rings on the wooden surface.

“I’m thinking,” said the guy in the dark, “maybe it’s better for everyone if Franklin got himself knocked off, too. What do you think?”

“That’s the bourbon talking.” Red, owner and sole bartender, polished glassware and stacked it on the service rail.

“Possibly,” said the guy in the dark, staring into his glass, “but you can’t beat it for eloquence.”

“What’d be the good of killing off Franklin?”

“He wouldn’t always be getting in the way every time I meet someone.”

“Live and let live I always say. Besides, you never know when he’ll come in handy. Finish him off and then it’s, ‘Oops! Sure wish I had Franklin here.’”

“Haven’t so far. How many years has it been? Maybe it’s time for him to go.”

“I’m just saying.” Red shrugged. “You want me to call somebody?”

“You know any women up for some recreational self-medication?” The guy in the dark rattled the ice in the empty glass. He set it down and pushed it toward Red, who came over and picked it up, ready to dash out the ice and start fresh.

“Don’t toss those out. That ice is already broken in.”

Red put the glass down, bare-handed a few more cubes in on top and splashed bourbon over them.

The guy in the dark was smoking. The glow of the cigarette revealed a white-gloved hand. The guy bent his face down, looking into the glass.

“Welcome to the team, guys.” He swirled the glass and said to Red, “It’s important you make the rookies feel welcome.”

“You sure you don’t want me to call somebody?”

“Who’ve you got in mind?”

The front door swung open, scorching the dark with a slash of late afternoon daylight. A tall newcomer stood silhouetted in the doorway. A woman.

The door banged shut behind her, restoring the refuge of stopped time. Their eyes adjusted to the renewed darkness. They could see the newcomer was big-hipped, wearing a skirt and jacket that could be lavender or gray. Hard to tell in the bar’s dim lighting. The jacket strained at its one button fastened across her midriff. She wore dark tights, her feet mashed into black, unhappy heels. In heavy makeup, she had the look of a woman on the hunt. She surveyed the room then weaved her way through the empty tables up to the bar. She planted herself on a stool at the middle of the bar, her back to the door.

Red studied the newcomer while the newcomer studied the guy in the dark while the guy in the dark studied his drink.

“White Russian. With a cherry,” said the woman in a voice husky with smoke and whiskey, her eye still on the guy in the dark.

She laid her purse and mobile phone on the bar, pushing money toward Red.

“I’m meeting some clown here today. Showing him a little piece of real estate,” said the woman, still watching the guy in the dark.

“This clown a yours. Got a name?” asked Red.

“Didn’t give me a name.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t tell me how to recognize him. All he said was to meet him here. For Happy Hour.”

Red, mixing her drink, gestured with his elbow. “Only clown in the place.”

“So, maybe it’s him?”

“I doubt it.” Red turned toward the guy in the dark. “Hey, Franklin. You supposed to meet somebody?”

“Gladys,” offered the woman.

“Gladys?” Red asked the guy in the dark.

“I’ve had my minimum daily allowance of excruciating heartbreak for the day. But thanks for asking.”

“Not him.” Red put down a napkin and placed her drink on it. “I’m guessing Lucy put him off women for a while.”

“Lucy?”

“He came in saying she threw him over for some other clown. He’s been sitting there drinking ever since.”

“Just until she forgets me,” said Franklin, the guy in the dark.

Gladys took a sip and asked, “Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”

“I always pour it in my lap when I drink it the other way around.”

“My ex was a clown.” Gladys shifted to get her whole bottom onto the seat. She sipped again, studying Franklin.

Franklin wore a bald, white pate ringed with a fringe of wild, blue hair over white, arched eyebrows, bulbous nose, and a big, red, greasepaint smile.

An actual clown.

She leaned back to check the shoes. Huge, with the toe tips balanced on the bar rail.

“Oh,” said Gladys, eyes wide, lips pursed. “Excusez-moi.”

Franklin’s costume was a patchwork jumpsuit of clashing patterns, gaudy colors, and a floppy red collar. It was grimy, scorched, and lacerated front and back. His makeup had been rubbed away in spots.

Franklin gave a quick nod to Gladys and took another drag on his cigarette. He rolled the ash off in the mouth of the ceramic clown-faced ashtray in front of him on the bar. He sucked at the bourbon.

“Rough day at the circus?” Gladys stirred her drink. “I gotta ask. You have much luck with women, looking the way you’re looking?”

“Only the one. She hated clowns.” Franklin took another drag of his smoke. “Doesn’t anymore. Hooray for me.”

Gladys lifted her glass, saluting the air between them. “To the bottomless bourbon therapy for broken hearts.”

“Nah. Just until I finish all the liquor. Hey, Red. Have I finished all the liquor yet?”

Overhead, above the great long mirror, the big clown-faced clock chuckled the hour. They all looked up.

“I can’t stand to wait,” said Gladys. “I have a formula. One drink every ten minutes for one hour. Cuts wait time to zero.”

Red tried doing the arithmetic on his fingers but had to ask, “How’s that work?”

“By drink number six, I can’t remember who the hell stood me up.” Gladys slapped the bar, barking a throaty laugh. “Time flies right by. I hate waiting. Time and most men are too short.”

“I’ve been here—” Franklin clipped his cigarette in one corner of his mouth, pushing up his sleeves to check his wrists, then stopped. “Forgot. Clown’s first rule. Never work with anything that’s got a funnier face than you.”

Gladys checked her own watch, then twisted around to check the front door. She leaned in toward Red.

“Any chance this Lucy of his showing up?”

Red leaned in toward Gladys. “Look at him. Would you?”

Gladys stirred her drink again, sucked the straw dry, and tapped it against the glass rim.

“So, who’s this Lucy who’s got you sitting here in the dark, crying in your beer?”

“Bourbon.”

“Bourbon.” Gladys raised her glass at the correction. “Childhood sweetheart?”

A scrapbook slid out of the shadows at Gladys, stopping near her elbow resting on the bar. She put down her drink to flip through its pages.

The scrapbook was a memorial to a single, bloody crime spree. It bulged with newspaper clippings, pictures and articles cut from magazines, pages printed off the internet, snapshots, postcards, and matchbooks.

“That’s gruesome.” Gladys pushed the scrapbook back down the bar to Franklin. “Yours? If you’ll forgive my asking.”

“Lucy’s,” said Franklin. “You ever hear of the Baggy Pants Slasher?”

“The clown killer?”

“The killer of clowns,” Franklin corrected her, waggling a gloved finger.

Gladys gave out with a pish. “Not in this neck of the woods.”

“A week ago, this place was wall-to-wall clowns.” Red waved his hand out to the empty tables. “Now, none a them’ll show their painted puss around ‘cause a that guy,” said Red, pointing to the scrapbook.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Until a week ago, the Big Top had for years been the place to go for clowns. Painted up to look like a circus tent, the Big Top sat between an auto parts place in an oversized Quonset hut on one side, and a cinder block building divided up into a plumbing supply store, a laundromat, and church thrift shop on the other. Dangling out front of the tavern hung a large, sheet metal clown quaffing beer from a foamy mug.

The blue-and-white canvas peak over the roof, and the windows filled up with neon announced the presence of beer, cocktails, and clowns, promising communal hilarity.

Red Bottoms loved three things—clowns, drinking, and clowns drinking. Not necessarily in that order. The Big Top let Red have them all in one place. Wall-to-wall clowns. That’s how Red wanted it. The dabblers, the journeymen, and the kinds of clowns who weren’t always welcome in the local clown alleys. Especially the ones who had bet everything on a pair of big shoes, rubber nose, and painted smile. Clowns who were still waiting for the dice to stop rolling.

It helped that clowns, the regulars, had turned the place into their own kind of union hall. The kind of place to wait for work, keep spirits up when times were bad, and share the booty when times got better.

It cut down on the more genteel trade. But that was fine with Red, as long as the knuckleheads who filled up his place paid their bar tabs with negotiable currency, not with buttons, lick-and-stick tattoos, or used kazoos.

It was the kind of crowd that turned the Big Top into a slummer’s paradise and a rite of passage for freshman drinkers. First timers needed guts and a sense of humor. If they could be a good-natured stooge and smile through their first time, the regulars took up a collection to buy their new patsy a second drink. They’d never be a stranger after that.

Back before the Baggy Pants Slasher, calls came in at all hours from people looking for clowns. Never all that particular, callers trusted Red to steer them right.

Like the call late last week. When the phone rang behind Red everyone in the place looked up.

“Big Top,” answered Red. “Yeah. We got clowns.”

That set off the riot of cavorting, ball-walking, hand-standing, club-juggling, and unicycling.

Red ignored them, wedging the phone between his ear and shoulder so he could write on the notepad by the register.

“Yeah. Yeah. Got it.” Red hung up the phone and tore off the page.

Starchy, a whiteface in a pointed hat and flowing bowtie, launched himself along the bar, sliding past Red, snatching the note. He sat up, cross-legged, and read.

“Midnight bachelorette party!”

Red grabbed back his note, only to lose it to Wiggins, a bald, character clown who waved the note over his head.

“You know what that means!” shouted Wiggins, putting a hand to his ear, waiting.

“Baby lotion Twister!” they shouted back, lunging as one, elbowing each other to grab at the note.

Red plucked the note from Wiggins and fought off the crowding clowns with the soda gun, hosing them down with its needle-hard spray, the gas cranked up for just such emergencies.

“C’mon, Red,” whined Wiggins, flinging water from his face and wringing out his pizza-paddle tie.

“You already got one.” Red looked across the room and shouted, “Franklin!”

Franklin sat against the wall, his big shoes propped up on the table. The shoes parted so he could look between them at Red. Franklin went back to batting at the inflated rubber glove dangling from his nostril by an air-filled finger.

Red came over and put the note in Franklin’s hand. Franklin studied it as all the other clowns watched.

“Trade ya.” Blinkers, another character clown, rested his chin on the table, peeking from between Franklin’s heels.

“What’ve you got?”

“Senior Day at the shoe store out at the mall. Nothing but grandmas and grandkids. Guaranteed.” Blinkers wiggled his eyebrows.

Franklin didn’t hesitate. He leaned forward and handed over the note. Blinkers shot out the door, leaving a swirl of bar napkins, swizzle sticks, and pretzel pieces fluttering in the draft.

Nothing left for everyone else but get back to their drinks.

“Franklin.” Red shook his head and sighed the deep, fatherly sigh he used on the whole collection of miscreants.

Franklin looked up at Red, the glove still dangling. “What?”

“You’d rather surround yourself with a bunch a women more’n twice your age, stuffed into their support hose?”

Franklin gave Red a shrug, still tapping the inflated glove dangling from his nostril. “Doesn’t matter. My age. Twice my age. Aged in a cave with the rest of the cheese. As long as I’m wearing this face, I’m just another clown to the whole bunch of them.”

That stopped conversation and drew every eye in the place.

Red’s frown deepened.

“You know what I mean,” said Franklin, facing the rest of the clowns, aggravated by the combined ignorance in the room. “You all know what I mean.”

Which earned him a shower of peanuts.

“Come on! When it comes to clowns, there’s only two kinds of women. Bozophobes and bozophiles. I’m nothing but one more painted face to them.” Franklin stretched to see over Red’s shoulder, eyeballing the rest of the clowns. “That goes for every one of you.”

Which earned him another shower of peanuts.

“You won’t meet either kind sitting around here with your finger up your nose.” Red pointed at the rubberized intrusion fixed up Franklin’s schnozz.

Franklin tugged on the inflated finger. It came free with a pop. “Not technically my finger.”

“I don’t say this often, but I’m making an exception in your case. Get out from behind that face. Take it off once in a while. Walk around. Be a civilian.”

“If a real woman really wants to reach the really real me,” said Franklin, pointing to his face, “she can prove it by going through this.” He stretched his mouth and eyebrows, giving them a classic clown face. In case they missed the point.

“It might help if you stopped treating women like they’re jokes.”

“Hey! When they stop treating me like a clown.”

Which earned him yet another shower of peanuts.

“You might’ve found the one, special Mrs. Franklin Slapshoes MacGillicuddy right there under your nose. Instead, Blinkers’ll get what you could’ve had all to yourself.”

Franklin stuck the finger of the ballooned glove back up his nose and gave it a thonky whack, bouncing it off his forehead.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

Blinkers turned up early at the Hudson Hotel, anxious to get started on what any clown could reasonably expect to be a nighttime romp with a collection of college-aged inebriates in bikinis. Instead, he found a construction site. No cars in the parking lot, no lights on over the pool, and a hurricane fence with the padlock on the gate dangling open, its shank cut.

A ka-chugging rattle started up.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Blinkers held up his bottle of baby lotion. “Who’s ready for a little Twister?”

A work light snapped on.

Blinkers squinted against the sudden glare. He walked toward the sound of the rattling slush on the other side of the broken ground laid out with a wire mesh grid and rebar, edged with a border of two-by-fours.

The sound came from under a dirty canvas tarp.

Blinkers lifted the tarp. Underneath, a large, portable cement mixer turned, the soggy sound of cement churning in its spinning barrel.

A cat’s curiosity is nothing compared to that of a clown. Blinkers had to stick his head inside the barrel for a quick look-see.

Gloved hands reached out of the dark and shoved Blinkers all the way into the rotating mixer, leaving him to gurgle and spin, his legs kicking. The gloved hands pushed with a rake to fold the rest of Blinkers into the mixer barrel going around and around and around.

When Blinkers quit gurgling, his legs limp, the gloved hands hauled on the lever, tilted the spinning barrel, pouring Blinkers and the wet cement into the mesh grid. Using a long-handled float, the gloved hands smoothed the cement around Blinkers, leaving nothing but his round rubber nose and the big, bulbous tips of his shoes showing. A gloved finger drew a dead clown face around the nose, marking an X for each eye.

The mixer stopped and the lights went out.

♣︎ ♣︎ ♣︎

“That’s your name? MacGillicuddy? For real?” Gladys asked Franklin.

“Nah. Red calls you that if he’s got a point to make and can’t remember your real name. Am I right?”

“Real names are over-rated,” Red shrugged. “Extra baggage for a clown, you ask me.”

“So. Your girl—” Gladys started.

“His ex-girl.” Red swiped at an imaginary wet spot, looking ready for some real conversation.

“—ex-girl is the Baggy Pants Slasher. And you’re sitting here wearing a clown suit?” Gladys gathered up her purse, phone, and drink, shifting over next to Franklin.

“I think I see your problem.” Gladys turned back to Red. “Hey, Red, top me off. And go easy on the stupid sauce in this next one. The clown here’s starting to make sense.”

Gladys hiked herself up onto the stool, tipping slightly to land her backside squarely, scooching to settle herself.

Close up, Franklin could see through the caked foundation of her makeup that Gladys was older. Her hair a shocked mop, wild and silver, could be a wig. Her face and figure already starting to round out. Franklin recognized her.

“You’re the clown junkie from the shoe store.”

“That was you? Small world.” Gladys patted Franklin’s arm. “Relax. The way you look right now ain’t stirring up the crazy-juice for me.” She pointed to the pack of cigarettes in front of Franklin. “Anyone ever tell you those things’ll kill you?”

“Many, many, many times.”

“Then you won’t miss one.”

Franklin tapped out a cigarette for her and flicked her a light. She drew delicately, streaming smoke from her nostrils. She studied the cigarette and glanced up at Franklin.

“You know, if God did away with men and cigarettes, the world wouldn’t be half bad. Present company excepted, of course.”

“Throw in women, and that’d take care of the other half,” said Franklin. “Present company excepted. Of course.”

“Let me guess. Your clown name’s Happy. Lucky? Jolly Jack?” Gladys pulled the small bowl of goldfish closer and tossed a cracker into her mouth.

“Just Franklin,” he said, taking another drag.

“Lousy name for a clown.”

“Goes with being a lousy clown.”

They smoked in silence for a moment.

“So. Where do you think you went wrong? With—Lucy, was it?”

“Good question. Where do I think I went wrong.” He took another drag. “Where do I think I went wrong. How much time you got?”

“Let’s hear it. You know what misery loves.”

“Company,” offered Red.

“Bigger losers!” Gladys laughed and slapped the bar top again.

“Plain and simple? Had to be fifth grade. With Jeannie Krebbs. Cute blonde one desk over from mine.”

“Whoa! Fifth grade? If we’re going back that far, we’ll need more goldfish.” Gladys pushed the bowl back toward Red.

Red obliged her, re-filling the bowl.

“I reached the crossroads early,” said Franklin.

“Crossroads?”

“You know. Where Puberty Street joins Sexual Inadequacy Road, becomes the Insecurity Expressway, bypasses Dignityville, heads straight into Self-Disgust City. Aren’t any street signs to warn you when you’re coming up on it, but you can’t miss it.”